How to Find Extra Minutes to Work on Your Project

Goals

March 2, 2022

How to Find Extra Minutes to Work on Your Project

I have a problem. You see, I am woefully behind on prepping my house for this move, and I find myself in need of extra minutes.

We all get the same twenty-four hours for every single day.

No matter who you are. The day is the same. There are twenty-four hours, and no one gets extra minutes.

But I am going to need some extra. I want to list our house to sell in May, and that requires me to comb through each room of the house. Our house is over-packed with stuff. Everywhere you look there is clutter. Most of this is stuff we don’t even need, honestly, and it has to go. (You can read more about that here.)

Not only do I have to ditch things, but I have to organize what I do keep in a way that is pleasing to the eye so that someone will want to buy my house, right?

My current pace for this project has been completing 1 room per month.

That was not my intention. It never occurred to me that it would take that long, but here we are. The pace really must double if I am going to finish remotely on time to sell this house.

Where to find the extra time?

Have I been thinking long and hard about a solution to this problem? No no. No. I have been taking care of my children and my chores and worrying about the fact that I am behind. Ha! Brilliant, right?

But actually, I think the realization of the need for better time management and the panic and the worry are just step one.

So let’s call that step one and be cool with it.

Now for step two, and that’s what I’m going to do right here. Brainstorm all the genius ideas from my brain onto this page. I’m turning these worries into solutions.

Six Ways to Make Time for a Big Project:

#1.) Stop rewarding myself with so much time on the game app on my phone. Cut that back. Set a limit.

Actually, I have already implemented this change. This Sunday, I took a solid twenty-four hours off of my app I’m addicted to, Township. For the whole day, I did not even open it. This was to jump-start a change in thought patterns.

Normally, if I’m tired from being on my feet, I pick up my phone and play Township for a while. If I’m in the car rider line, Township. Want to take a twenty minute break to not think? Township.

This used to be Facebook for me, but politics took over Facebook, and that was not fun, so now it’s Township.

It is okay to have a zone-out fun thing that you do, but if you are on a tight deadline and need to add hours back to your day, cut back on the zone-out fun thing. Set limits to it.

#2.) Rotate my list

Each day I make out a to-do list. It’s one of my favorite things to do, but I tend to put everything in kind of the same order. What that means is that those same things get done everyday, but guess what. Also, those same things DO NOT get done everyday.

If “work on cleaning out the basement for 30 minutes” is way down on the list every day, that means it will never get done. When I move it towards the top of the list, it has a much better shot.

If you’re really feeling the crunch, keep that project at the top and rotate the lesser priorities….like cleaning and blogging.

#3.) Cook easier meals.

A vast amount of my time is spent in the kitchen since I prepare almost all of our meals here. If I make more easier meals or meals that require little prep and little thought, I have more energy to give my projects.

The last few days I’ve been making both elaborate lunches and dinners, and that simply will not do.

#4.) Do not drop exercise completely.

It’s tempting to skip exercise, especially since I don’t especially enjoy “working out.” However, that is obnoxiously counterintuitive. The thing is that exercising can actually give you more energy, so long as you don’t overdo it. Plus, it keeps your body in good health both physically and mentally to get your project done that you need the extra time for.

It’s not the time to work out all day, but a thirty minute daily exercise is actually helpful, even for better time management.

#5.) Making the Family Help with the Project

This doesn’t work for many projects. We, as a family, do not know how to help Alan when he has a big work thing that is consuming his time, for example. But for this, getting ready for a big family move, the family has to be involved anyway. They might as well help.

I am so bad about not getting other people to help me, even in my own house. Group work was never my favorite in school. The teacher would put me with random people I never talked to and we’d be expected to build a landform map, and I was always like, “Aughhhhhhh!!!!” on the inside. Torture. Awful stuff.

But you know, family life is not like school at all. I know all of these people in my house, and a lot of this stuff I’m trying to figure out downstairs is their stuff too.

Also, they have different gifts than I do, and sometimes I need those gifts.

For example, my husband and my teenage sons are much stronger than me. They can carry heavy things out of the house or up the stairs for me.

They can all help decide what things to give away and what things to keep. So many decisions are exhausting, and sometimes that is exactly what keeps me from going down there and working on it. I just dread the decisions!

And many hands really do make light the work.

#6.) Squeezing in 20 minutes here and there.

Everyday I am shocked and appalled to see how much time I log in on my phone doing stupid stuff. If instead of turning to my phone when I get a minute, I turn to my project, wow that time can add up!

I feel like this one’s fairly obvious, but with a big project you cannot expect to sit down and knock it all out in one session. I like to set 30 minute timers and see how much work I can get done in that time.

Then when the timer goes off, around here that usually means it’s time for me to go pick up the boys. These home projects are all getting done in half hour bursts.

This is one strategy I am hoping to utilize a ton this month to get the basement and kitchen done.

Here’s a video of my current project: The Basement.

I have finished the laundry room and the two storage rooms down there, and now I’m on the main big room of the basement. For March, my goal is to finish the basement and the kitchen.