How to Save Time in Daily Life

Simple Ways to Save on Time Each Day

Businesswoman overwhelmed by work and time restraints in an office

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There are thousands of piddling, trivial things anyone can do to save time. But this article focuses on how to save time in daily life by focusing on the general things that anyone can do that will actually make a big change in the amount of time you have to do what you want to do. Best of all, each of these ways to save time is relatively easy to do. If you do all ten, you'll save so much time you may have to take up a new hobby!

Have a Regular Place for Things

If you always set your keys on the table in the hall when you come in, you’ll always be able to find them easily when you go out – and never waste time looking for them. And what works with your keys will work with just about everything else that you use regularly, too. Your reading glasses. Your can opener. Your dog leash. Develop the habit of keeping the things you use regularly in one place and put them back in that place when you're done using them.

Don't Multitask

It's one of the biggest time wasters there is for most people. Why? Because as Kendra Cherry points out, multitasking can reduce productivity by approximately 40% according to some researchers – perhaps because switching from one task to another makes it difficult to tune out distractions and can cause mental blocks that can slow down your progress. Instead:

Relearn How to Focus

Many of us waste oodles of time just because we're so easily distracted - a problem that multitasking makes worse for many of us. Instead of focusing on one task and finishing it in short order, we allow ourselves to be pulled off-task numerous times. The result? The original task takes much longer than it could have and should have. Getting into the habit of solely focusing on whatever task you're working on and concentrating on completing it before you move on to something else is a great way to save time in daily life.

Use a Calendar and Write Down Everything

It doesn't matter whether your chosen calendar is electronic or paper. What matters is that you create and maintain one "appointment central," a one-stop-shop, if you will, of everything you must and want to do. This serves two purposes; it ensures you don't miss anything important and it serves as a to-do list. Using a calendar that can travel with you (such as a calendar application on a smartphone) is a real time saver compared with ferrying bits of paper back to wherever your paper calendar is located.

Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is itself isn't bad. What's bad is what happens to whatever you're procrastinating about when you do it. Problems grow. Misunderstanding multiply. Trash piles up. Dealing with things when they're smaller not only saves time but makes it much easier on yourself too.

Plan Your Trips and Consolidate Your Chores

Imagine you have seven items on your grocery list, and instead of making one visit to a grocery store and buying all of them, you make seven separate trips, buying one item each time. That's the equivalent of what many of us do with our shopping and chores. Instead, to save time, think ahead. Some things can be picked up or done on the way to or from work. Or a trip to one place can be expanded to include other stops that are close to one another.

Learn to Love Routine

Routine is the number one way to save time in daily life. My friend Andy goes to the same coffee shop every mid-morning – with such regularity that whichever barista is working always has his latté ready for him. Now that's a time-saver! A routine doesn't always speed up customer service, but it certainly makes it easier to find things and get things done. And it frees the brain for other things, another good thing.

Plan Your Meals Ahead of Time

Menu planning in advance speeds the meal preparation process and simplifies grocery shopping. It makes things a lot less stressful, too, if you're not holding a family conference about what you should have that night or worse, having to rush out right before dinner to get some missing ingredient.

Learn What Your Personal Time-Wasters Are

Personally, I can easily spend 45 minutes figuring out what to wear in the morning – because it's a ploy to stay longer in my warm, comfy bed. Guess what? It takes me less than five minutes to decide when I do it the night before – and that includes laying out the clothes. Once you know what your favorite personal time-wasters are, it's usually easy to come up with a strategy to stop doing them.

Stop Fretting

Some of us would easily increase our life spans by 20 years if we had back the amount of time we spend worrying about things that might happen or about things that we've done. Fretting seems to be embedded in some people's personalities. But even if we're one of those people who seems to be a natural worrier, it’s still worth working on cutting back on our habit of worrying. Besides saving time, it's a whole lot better for our health.

From Saving Time to Time Management

These are by no means the only things that you can do to save time. Time management, for instance, provides strategies for saving time – and for using it more productively