Time flies, and so you must learn how to manage it, here are a few tips

By the time as a woman you are raising a family it feels like the number of hats you wear is growing exponentially. Then add to that the never ending conversation about whether women can have it all or work-life balance and it positively gets muddied up.

I have heard it said that you can have it all, just not at the same time and that you have to choose. I think that you can be all you want to be, you just have to decide where to devote your time and energies to. Bar the basic things such as making time for your health and wellness, anything else is something you have to make a conscious effort to devote your time to. And no, sleeping for seven to eight hours a night is not optional. Choices

Say you want to create a reading culture in your life or your household. But from when you get home, the TV is blaring in the background. Granted, some people use it to wind down and transit from the office to the home. But the things we do on autopilot represent the chunks of time we could devote to other pursuits. Make a goal that you will watch 20 minutes of TV but only after you’ve accomplished the tasks on your wish list. And make it strict, do not let it encroach on the next activity, sleep included.

Avoid perfection

It is said that perfect is the enemy of good. Pick a few positive things that you would like to incorporate into your life and work on consistently getting better at them. You want to workout but don’t have the time? Park farther from your grocery store and take the stairs instead of the lift to build in more activity. Take a ten minute walk after lunch and take a few minutes every hour to get some water from the kitchen or cooler. Be more conscious of how you can move more, more often if one chunk of time seems a stretch.

Plan in advance

Sometimes you embark on one chore only to dis-cover your whole day has turned out to be centered around this activity. On errands, it’s preferable to split them into bite size chunks for during, say, lunch time in the week instead of bundling them into weekend activities. Take into account dynamics such as traffic and queues which is time wasted, if you go to the bank a lot switch to one more easily accessible.