Next time you’re enjoying a fast-food treat, watch how the catering staff operate. Their fluidity of movement saves heaps of time. It’s a conveyer-belt of efficiency: one person fills the buns, another solely cooks the fries, and in barely anytime, hey presto – you have a hot meal.

Time is a precious commodity: once it’s spent, you can’t get even a single second back. We owe it to ourselves to become mindful about how we spend the stuff. Whilst we can’t make more hours in the day; we can learn to emulate how such operatives work, and become more systematic about how we run our hectic lives.

Interestingly, midst writing this, I finally saw The Founder, which is the true story behind the colossal success of McDonald’s. In the film, we observe the visionary founder undertake a time and motion study, using chalk on a sports pitch.  He’d marked out every piece of kitchen equipment: timing the feasibility of the planned production line; and equally important, the ergonomics of the planned operation. After many dry -runs and tweaks the results were: he knew the precise time it took to make a burger, and the optimum positioning of all the machinery. It meant that the customer only had to wait less than five minutes for a hot meal.

In our domestic lives, it’s often the menial tasks that chew-up our time, as well as the repetitive chores; but once we’re consciously aware of this, then we manage our time more effectively.

We can: sweep the floor while the kettle’s boiling, plus it’s free exercise. We can get what we fancy for dinner, from the freezer, while our toast is cooking. We can be dusting whilst we chatter…

Feel free to copy some of my other ideas, as I too learn how to conserve time:

1: I now have a birthday book – means I can see in advance and plan ahead the sort of cards or gifts I wish to buy. Prior to this, I’d spent ages transferring them from calendar to calendar.

2: I only do my admin, or paperwork once a week, filing letters that may arrive straight away in a designated folder. Beforehand I’d let them mount up, only to face a mammoth recycling task.

3: I tidy, and wash up immediately as I go along. Now most items in my house, have a specific place where they’re kept.  I keep a bowl of hot soapy water to hand, and my friend bicarbonate of soda to make an effortless fast task of scrubbing saucepans. It’s also the best way to wash fresh produce: simply sprinkle some in the bowl you’re washing them in.

4: My bedlinen is folded and stored in the corresponding matching pillow case. It means I can quickly lay my hands on a full set, without the effort of heaving out heaps of sheets and second-guessing whether they’re a correct match.

5: I clean the bathroom each time I bathe. This means less weekly housework.

6: I sort out the clean washing in this manner too, putting it away in the wardrobe as opposed to letting it decorate a chair for far too long!

7: I have a set time when I answer work emails, and a time allocation to complete them in.

8: I have set and limited working hours, and work around the constraints of my disability to prevent stress or further injury. This means I don’t waste a minute of my restricted hours.

9: I batch cook every week, and always keep a running shopping list; both these things save a huge amount of time. The cooked food is kept refrigerated in containers, and I simply portion it out, or freeze it, when I’m ready to eat.

10:  I use my device, or diary to help me remember to action things, and this reduces anxiety; in turn saving me time trying to recall what needs doing and when…

And I’m thoroughly enjoying looking for other ways to save on time; it feels really nice and calming. It’s a wonderful silver-lining, and fun, since I’m childish: so, I make a game of it. One of my favourite’s is: how many boring chores can I do? – to a track or album.

I hope you find this helpful.

With SUNNY wishes,

Emma x