How I Find Time for Everything: Work, Hobbies, and Beyond

I am a curious person and I have and regularly try many different hobbies. I am also passionate about art and languages, and I often do several creative projects and learn several languages at the same time. I also have five cats to take care of, some with medical needs.

People regularly ask me: How do you find time for all this? And I finally decided to share some of my time management tips.

I am by no means perfect, and there are a lot of things that fall through the cracks, that I just don’t manage to do no matter how I try.

Most of my tips are fairly simple – but they are very effective for me, and I am hoping you’ll find something useful for yourself in this post.

Let’s dive in!

Before We Begin

Here’s something I’d like you to know before I start with the tips.

At the moment, I don’t have a traditional 9-5 job. I do freelance work and I am working hard on promoting myself as an artist, which does take a lot of time and effort, but in a traditional sense, I don’t have a job. I also don’t have kids.

This makes things easier for me because I do have more time to spare than someone working a 9-5 who also has kids.

This doesn’t mean that my tips won’t work for someone like that. The tips didn’t come from nowhere, they developed through time, through trying different things. And at some point during this time I worked 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week – and still managed to find some time for other things.

So I’m hoping you read this post and see if you can use some of the tips to make things easier for you.

Write Things Down

If there is one tip that you are going to take away from this post, let it be this one: don’t keep your plans, to-dos, and ideas just in your head – write them down.

The more things you need to juggle at the same time, the more items you need to remember – the higher the likelihood that you will forget something. And even if you don’t forget anything crucial, it can give you major anxiety – and awesome but seemingly unimportant creative ideas can slip through the cracks.

Writing stuff down will take some getting used to, and it may also be some time before you find the system or app that works best for you. But even just “taking everything out of your head” and putting it down on paper (physical or digital) will relieve anxiety and increase the chances of your plans and ideas actually being fulfilled.

As for me, I mainly use 3 different apps for different things, although they may overlap a bit.

I use Trello as an archive of various information (old poems and unpublished posts, various stuff found online) and for my social media content plan – the Trello card system is very suitable for that.

For various lists (including lists of creative ideas) and learning notes, I use the standard iOS Notes app. For daily, weekly, and other regular (or not) reminders I use the iOS Reminders app. I also occasionally use Freeform if I need to create a mind map and organize some of my ideas in a more visual way.

I also sometimes just feel like I need to write stuff down on paper, for which I have a notebook.

I also have a separate notebook for language class notes and one for therapy session notes…

This may seem a bit too much, but it works for me. I also look through the apps and notebooks more or less regularly and get rid of the stuff/notes that I don’t need anymore or reorganize things if I feel it will work better.

You don’t need as many notebooks and apps. Start with one. Write everything down. And then move on to the other tips.

Categorize

After you get used to writing things down a bit and begin trusting your notebook or app to keep things for you and maybe even remind you of them, consider this next step – categorization.

If you have a lot of things to do and to remember, and a lot of creative ideas, writing them down will result in a long and somewhat chaotic list. It is still much better than keeping it all in your head, but finding each exact item could be hard.

The next step would be categorizing your notes. You don’t necessarily need separate apps or notebooks for that – a separate page or folder may just be enough, especially at the beginning. But if you see that one particular sphere needs a lot of notes and subcategories – or you just want to keep it separate – it may be time to relocate it to a separate app or notebook.

In my Notes app, I have separate folders for creative ideas, for big creative projects, for ideas related to social media management and promotion. In my content plan in Trello, I have a separate list for each social media to plan for. Also in Trello, I have a separate board for information and notes about my cats: weight, health notes, vet visits and vaccination dates.

The more complex the sphere, the more categories and subcategories it may need. But start simple: for example, you can divide your notes into “work”, “hobbies”, and “chores” (just an example), and see how it goes.

Prioritize

This may not sound too positive, but you will never be able to do EVERYTHING. No matter how much free time you have and how well you manage it.

Even if you get to the end of all your to-do lists, you’ll probably get new ideas and new plans – and there will always be unexpected things, good and bad, popping up.

To make sure that you do the “key”, the “most important” things, you must first determine what those key things are.

There are different ways of doing that. To start with, you can just go with important vs unimportant. You can also categorize things as important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent. You can have different layers of priority (high, medium, low).

I honestly don’t assign any explicit categories to each item on my lists, but do have a general understanding of which things are more important than others, which need to be completed urgently and which can be postponed if need be.

Here are some things to consider when prioritizing:

Is there a deadline?
Does your/your family’s livelihood/health/comfort depend on this?
How hard is it? (Depending on the context, this may bring the item higher or lower on the priority list. For example, if something is not urgent and really hard, I may postpone it for quite a while.)
How interested are you in doing it?
How much do you want to do it?
How would you feel about (not) completing it? (Sometimes there are things that I just feel I need to do that day and I know I will feel anxious and hate myself if I don’t – so I do them.)
Do other plans/ideas depend on this item being completed?
What will go wrong if you don’t do it, if anything?

For me, finding some time to chill with my cats may be as important as completing part of a creative project. And some of the chores get put off till I absolutely have to do them.

My prioritization system is not perfect and is a bit chaotic. But it helps me to concentrate on the things that actually matter to me – including the fun things, not just work.

Take a look at your list(s) and see if you can highlight some of the items as more important – and postpone or maybe even remove completely some of the less important items.

The more you do it, the easier things will get – and you will spend less time deciding whether you should do something and when.

Plan In Advance

Being organized spontaneously is quite a challenge – and one that doesn’t really make things much better.

By planning in advance, you can start each day, week, or month with an overview of what you need to accomplish and an understanding of how busy you will be. You don’t need to start your day with planning and preparing it – you have already done it, you can just start creating or working.

As you get used to it, planning will take less time. You will gradually build your own system, set reminders for regularly occurring tasks, find a way of organizing your days that fits you, decide how much in advance you need to plan.

By making your planning system convenient and portable (more on that later), you’ll be able to fill it in whenever you have a creative idea or remember a chore that needs doing.

I have recently noticed the effect it has on my social media management. I am still learning in this area, but I began planning and also sometimes scheduling content in advance – and it’s working out great! When I need to make a post, I don’t have to search for ideas and think of a way to present them – it’s all been done already.

I chose a convenient system (I use Trello) and I write down ideas for posts when they occur to me – this way I don’t forget them.

My goal is to learn to batch-create content: take a few days to plan, create, and schedule a few weeks’ worth of content – and then just interact with my audience and concentrate on creating. I’m not yet there but I’m working towards it.

Setting up reminders (I use iOS Reminders) for all the things I need to do regularly has worked wonders for my productivity and anxiety levels. I don’t need to try and remember to give my cats meds, or do my language practice, or check my blog and make content for it.

Every day I have a set of reminders ready – and I usually manage to complete them all. And I don’t spend any time planning this part – only occasionally adding new ones or removing the ones that are outdated.

Try planning your days in advance – it will probably work wonders!

Make It Convenient

Let me start by giving an example that will make my idea clear.

When I started learning Spanish, I had a very good textbook. Very well-made, interesting, suitable for self-studying. But it was an actual physical book I had to carry around – and it didn’t always fit in my bag. I also had to go to the end of the book when I wanted to check the exercises I did.

After 2 or 3 attempts at learning with the textbook, I switched to language-learning apps. They presented some information less perfectly than the textbook, but were convenient to carry around, my answers were checked immediately, and I could also listen to pronunciation right there and then.

With apps, I learned Spanish up to about an intermediate level.

Even though I am a motivated language learner, it was important for me to find a convenient way of learning that suited my context. This may be true for various activities in your life.

Think of the things you are struggling to do. Is there a way to do them differently so that they fit better with your daily life?

This may not be the only reason, but changing or adapting the way you do things can definitely make those things easier and save you some time.

Know Yourself

This may sound vague, but I consider this a very important tip: do your best to understand yourself, your habits, what works for you and what doesn’t.

Don’t force yourself to adopt a planning system or to create in a particular way because “everyone is saying it’s the best way to do things”.

For instance, I’ve met a few people who plan their day more or less meticulously – to the hour if not to the minute, and it works well for them. I have tried it and it has never worked for me. I have a set of tasks for each day but I don’t assign a time to them (if they are not time-sensitive like a meeting or a call). I prefer to work according to my mood, energy level, whether I have anything time-sensitive planned or not, where I am, etc. And it usually works well for me.

You may be a morning person or an evening person. Love things neat or work in creative chaos. Enjoy writing things down, typing them, or using voice notes.

If you are starting with something new, it may be hard to estimate what would work best for you, but this is where the next tip comes into play.

Try Different Things And Keep What Fits You

I used to be terrible at giving things up. If I started reading a book I had to finish it, no matter how much I disliked it. If I took up a hobby I believed I had to keep doing it forever. I couldn’t give up on deteriorating relationships no matter how hard they got.

All these and other similar things are a waste of time and energy.

If you start doing something and it’s not working out and not bringing you anything – try something else or, at the very least, adjust what you are doing.

Take my Spanish textbook example – I didn’t give up learning Spanish but I changed the way I was doing it quite significantly, and it worked.

I don’t know your context, of course, so I am just speaking generally. But I firmly believe in giving things up if they are not working out.

Is there something you keep doing out of habit only or just because you have already put some time and/or money into it? Continuing with the drag won’t do you any good. Cut your losses and try something else.

Don’t be afraid to try a few different approaches before you find what works – ultimately, it will be better if you just choose one randomly and try to stick with it even though it’s not working.

Learn To Do Things In Short Increments

This is yet another thing that I’m still learning to do, but even doing it a little is helping a lot.

One of the most tempting things for me is doing things in one go. But, for instance, my artworks can take from 1 to 10 hours to complete (and some crafting projects even more), and doing them in one go is next to impossible – at least without any negative consequences to everything else in my life.

One of the worst things to pair with that for me is to have some sort of time-sensitive event, like a call, in the middle of the day. Then, I am barely able to do anything before the event because what if I get “in the zone” and will be late or it will just be super annoying to switch from one thing to another.

Well, it used to be like that. It is not as bad these days, but I am still unlearning it.

The thing is, after I completely switched to freelancing, my days got a lot less structured. It generally works well for me. But some time kept getting lost because of what I just described.

Nowadays I “fight” this in two main ways. If I am not sure how much time I have before an event, I fill it with shorter activities. This might seem obvious, but I used to postpone even these. And secondly, I am learning to do bigger tasks in small steps when possible.

If need be, I can do 5-10 minutes of drawing if that’s all I have – it’s not much but it’s 5-10 minutes of progress on a work I’m doing. If I can’t wash all the dishes I’ll wash as many as I can while the kettle is boiling. If I can only reply to 1-2 messages on social media, I will do it.

Doing big tasks in one go is still tempting for me, but I recognize that it’s often not very productive.

Are you prone to doing things like I used to? Try and see if you have periods of time that are “wasted” because you can’t fit in a large task – fit in smaller tasks there instead or divide larger tasks into parts whenever possible.

To help with that, here’s another tip.

Divide Plans Into Actionable Steps

With many large tasks, in lots of spheres, it is extremely beneficial to divide the task into subtasks and smaller actionable steps.

It will help you on many fronts:

make a large task more approachable and much less scary
allow you to have a better idea of the whole scope of work and the time/effort needed to complete it
show you what your next step is
allow you to get started and keep you on track

Depending on the context and size of the task, you may need to write it down (I prefer to practically always write it down in some way) in a simple or more complex way.

Last year, I had the daunting task of packing up our whole apartment before moving to another country. This daunting task gave me huge anxiety and actually made me cry a few times. Because, especially at the beginning and because I am not used to doing something like this, I didn’t know what to do and the sheer magnitude of the change scared me.

I will admit, after I wrote things down and outlined the actionable steps, I was still anxious and I still cried a couple of times. But I started packing things up and I managed to finish everything on time.

If you have a big task to do, try to divide it into different segments or areas. For these areas, or for the whole task, try to determine the first step – what is the first thing that needs doing? What can or has to be done next? Then just move from step to step and adjust on the way if needed.

There is a danger of analysis paralysis here: planning and researching to the tiniest detail instead of actually doing something. Be aware of it, and try to find the planning-doing balance that works best for you.

Bring Stuff With You

At least bring your notes. Your planning/idea recording system won’t work if it’s not there when you need to write things down. If you’re going to use a physical notebook, choose one that fits in your bag. If you want to use apps, choose ones that can be synchronized across all your devices.

Don’t postpone writing things down till the end of the working day – you’ll forget half of them if not more, and if you don’t remembering them will take a significant portion of your mental energy.

Whenever possible, take other things with you too – a sketchbook, the book you’re reading, a craft project if it’s portable. Obviously, not everything you do will be portable – and even if it were, you don’t need to carry all your projects with you, you can only do one at a time anyway.

But having things with you can help you fill unexpected windows of time – a cancelled lesson or meeting, waiting for an appointment, a spontaneous walk in the park. You don’t have to do it, and if you just want to spend some time relaxing that is absolutely okay (and even necessary from time to time). But I like having at least one of my projects with me just in case.

And having your notes with you is an absolute must – writing a plan or idea down takes a few seconds but can save a lot of time.

Combine Things

Our brains weren’t really made for multitasking and it isn’t as effective as it may seem. However, if there are ways of combining things that work for you, doing it can save some time and be quite effective.

One of the things that work for me is listening or watching something when I’m making something with my hands: for example, listening to an audiobook when I’m drawing or watching a TV show or a YouTube video when I’m embroidering. It doesn’t work with all books and all shows but can be quite an enjoyable combo.

I also like listening to an audiobook or a podcast when I’m doing chores.

Another way to combine things is during times when you just have to be mostly idle. When I used to commute to work, I used public transport and filled this time with listening to music, language learning, reading, watching shows. It made the commute more fun and saved me some time.

Another possible idea is doing things together with your family – for instance, if your partner or kids are learning a foreign language you can join them, and turn learning time into extra family time. Or, if you are an artist, you can paint and craft together with your kids.

I once taught English to a father-daughter duo that worked quite well, and I am currently learning Armenian together with my husband which is quite fun.

Again, I don’t know your context so I can’t suggest specific ideas. But do give this a thought. What things can you bring together? It may not only save you time but make this time more fun.

Learn To Let Go

I touched upon this idea in one of the previous sections but I want to reiterate: learning to let go is very important.

There will always be things that don’t work out. Things that just don’t fit in your life.

Don’t give up the moment something goes wrong – but also try to recognize when something just isn’t your thing and let it go if it really isn’t.

It is easier said than done, of course, but even if you occasionally manage to do it, it will make things so much easier.

Final Thoughts

Wow, this was long! If you got through it and read till the end, you are my hero. Thank you for reading and I hope at least some of it was at least somewhat useful.

If you have any questions or want to discuss anything from the post – please, do it in the comments, I’d be happy to chat.