There are many pieces of advice out there about how to save time, both in your personal and professional life. Everybody seems to look for the best time saving tips. But many of those time saving hacks are in very practical terms (such as “choose your outfit the day before”). And I don’t know for you, but I don’t enjoy this kind of micro-managing pieces of advice! Plus, if you choose your outfit the day before, you only move the issue to the day before, right? Globally speaking, it doesn’t save you time! It only allows you to save some stress in the morning (if you have an important meeting and you are nervous).

To be clear, struggling with time and having a jam-packed schedule has been my everyday life for many years. I’m a mom of 4 and I was pregnant with my first child when I decided that my career as an engineer and team and project manager didn’t fulfil me anymore. So I decided to go back to university to become a psychologist (a major area of interest for me for many years) … while still working full time at my 9 to 5 corporate job! So I studied during nights (typically from 11 pm to 2 am) and weekends. I graduated from these studies while giving birth to my children and running after time each and every day. So time saving hacks? I have tried them all. And Here are those which work, and those which don’t work.

Let’s dive in!

Time Saving Do’s

These 9 tips aren’t about micro-managing you. They are not about when you should wake up or when you should clean your bathroom or do your laundry! Instead, they give you some real strategies to better managing your time.

1. Drop some tasks!

I know, this one is very deceptive! You would like to add something new to your schedule, to start a new project or start to allow yourself some me time. But to do so, you have to discard something else! Listen, we all have 24 hours in our days, 168 hours in our weeks. Rich or poor, you can’t add more hours to this asset. This is one of those areas where we are all equal! You can’t start something new without dropping something else. Whether it’s screen time, rest time, running errands, or even spending time with your loved ones, you have to stop or reduce something. And the decision is very personal. You want more time in your life? Do a honest screening and decide what else you want to reduce or stop.

2. Let go of perfectionism

If you are not a perfectionist, I envy you! I belong to that tribe and I know how difficult it can be to stop a task before I have done it perfectly. I know, my perfect may not be your perfect, but when I am doing something, I need it to be done the “right way” (aka my way!). But most of the time, “good enough” is just what you need. Perfect is very time consuming. And it can be a way to procrastinate, to avoid to face the real problem or to face our fears. It will be hard, but decide what are the areas of your life you need to do things perfectly. And let go of perfectionism for the others.

3. Say “no” without guilt

This one is a big one! You need to say no more often, for sure. There are those easy no’s, no to acquaintances, to projects you dislike or people you want to avoid. But there are also the hard no’s: no to something you like (this no means you drop something to make room for something new, as we saw in #1) and no to your loved ones. Each time I start something new and I need to spend (a little bit) less time with my kids, I receive loads of complaint from them L And I love spending time with them! It’s heartbreaking but necessary.

3. Set routines

Why routines are so powerful? Because our brain loves them. More than 80% of our actions are automatic, we execute them without thinking. The brain tends to turn everything into a routine. Indeed, thinking has a price! Routines help the brain save energy and minimize risk. From a neurobiological point of view, this measure is not only useful, but also necessary for survival. Of course all routines are not helpful. After a while, you may have lost the purpose of what used to be helpful. That’s why a honest screening from time to time is necessary.

How to do transform an action into a routine? By setting a regular time and process. You also need to keep in mind the benefice of your new routine. Why? Because you are asking some additional effort to your brain, so you need to motivate it. And having a great outcome in mind is a great way to motivate your brain.

4. Do some planning, the right way

Let’s be honest: planning doesn’t save you time in the moment! While you are planning, you invest some of those precious minutes or hours for organizing rather than actually doing. But planning is part of the screening we mentioned in tip #4. You can’t be perpetually in motion. You need to press the pause button from time to time to evaluate the results of your actions and decide if you need to change something. When done the right way (and with moderation), planning can ultimately save you time. Just be careful to not use the planning time to procrastinate.

5. Delegate … if possible

Delegation seems a great idea: you ask someone else to do what you do so that you free some time. Delegation can be paid (for example, you pay someone to clean your house or to babysit and help your kids with their homework) or unpaid (that’s when you ask your kids to participate in some of the household chores or your spouse to do some of the commuting for your kids extracurricular activities). But to have a successful delegation, you may need to 1- have some extra money to spend 2- let go of your perfectionism (remember, nobody does things the exact same way as you) 3- let go of the guilt (especially when you delegate things regarding your kids’ life) or all three of the above!

6. Batch tasks

First what is batching? It’s grouping similar tasks and executing them in a row. Batching helps reduce the strain on your brain. Indeed, when you move from one task to another (different) one, you are doing something called “context switching” and your brain needs to shift in the thought process.

To perform a challenging task optimally, you need to reach a “state of flow”, where you give your complete attention to one activity. Studies have shown that it takes around 15 minutes of uninterrupted work on the task to reach this state. This is why context switching can keep you from being truly efficient. It reduces concentration and lowers the quality of your overall work by stopping you from reaching an optimal state of focus. And again this has a cost: by doing so you lose energy and time.

So if you want to save time daily, scan through  your daily tasks and try to group similar tasks. This will truly help you save time and enrgy.

7. Close the loops

We have all done this: you are in the middle of a task and something urgent requires your attention, si you switch to this new task and maybe you will never come back to what you were doing. Switching from one task to another without completing the first task makes us lose a lot of time, and chances are, when you come back to the first task (IF ever you do so), you have lost the purpose or the motivation and most of the time you end up starting over the whole process.

If you look closely to you past week or month schedule, chances are there are some tasks you have never finished. So go finish them! This is one of the most important sources of time saving and productivity.

Time Saving Don’ts

Besides these 9 powerful tips, there are some pieces of advice which are not helpful at all! Here are some of them:

1. Multitasking

Multitasking is the most common time saving myth that end up being a mistake. We have all done this: we need to achieve multiple tasks so we try to do them all simultaneously. But there are very few tasks that require a very low level of attention and allow effective multitasking. And in fact, even easy tasks, when done at the same time as another one, are of lower quality. By multitasking, we’re forcing our brains to constantly switch gears, working harder to do things at a lower level of quality and exhausting our mental reserves.

Think about a very common example of multitasking: a lot of people eat while doing something else. They walk, they drive their car or work on their computer. But research has shown that when you eat while doing something else, you don’t let your brain to be aware of the satiety signal and you end up eating too much, which is bad for you and your body!

2. Waking up early in the morning

I often hear this piece of advice that really doesn’t make sense. When you wake up one hour earlier in the morning, you are basically stilling your sleep time! And this is not sustainable in the long haul. Unless you have an emergency and you need to achieve a specific task, you shouldn’t make it a habit. Lack of sleep can be very detrimental to your health. Unfortunately waking up early in the morning sounds like you are someone hardworking and go-getter. And it’s funny how nobody tells you to go to sleep one hour later, even if the effect is the same: you are still shortening you sleep time!

Waking up regularly earlier than what your body needs (or going to bed one hour later) is another common time saving myth that end up being a mistake.

3. Forgetting to take time for yourself

You can skip it for a short period, and think that you are saving some additional time. But this another common time saving myth that end up being a mistake. Making pauses, taking time for yourself, is fueling your mental health. Taking care of yourself is at least as important as achieving tasks. It can be tempting to skip this. But you need to be healthy and in good shape to show up for youself and others.

Remember this safety instruction we hear in the airplanes: in the event of loss of air pressure in the cabin, first put on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else (including your young children). Why? Because if you pass out, you won’t be able to help others.

Taking some time for yourself, making pauses, are like putting on your oxygen mask first. You won’t be of any help to anybody if you aren’t in good shape your self.

Conclusion:

Don’t take for guaranteed all of the time saving tips out there. If you want to start a new project and add something new to your schedule, you need to be careful about what possibly works and what doesn’t. And don’t forget: we all have 24 hours in our days so we can’t expand forever what we do. We need to be wise with our time!