If you think it's impossible to find more time for family -- or even yourself -- you're wrong.
People make themselves crazy with overbooked schedules, performance coach Andi Bednar said. There are many things you can do to find more time in the day, she said.
She recommends you spend several days logging your activities and figuring out what your current habits are.
"Most of us don't realize how long certain things really take us," Bednar said.
Checking e-mail and surfing the 'Net sucks up hours of your day. So do nonessential telephone conversations.
Working mother Anne Peterson, of Plano, said she has reclaimed large chunks of wasted time just by changing a few habits.
"I would run to the grocery store two, three, four times," she said.
Now she plans each meal ahead of time and does all her shopping all at once.
"I think that probably saves me at least two hours a week," Peterson said.
She even schedules time to answer phone calls and e-mails.
"So I get my job done between six and eight hours, when I used to spend 10, 11, 12," Peterson said.
She also hired someone to clean her house.
"I'm definitely more efficient, much more productive for sure," she said. "But the biggest benefit for me is that I'm happier."
Bednar said solutions are different for every person, but the first step is to realize you can't do it all.
"We spend time justifying why we didn't get stuff done, even if it only takes five minutes," Bednar said. "If you do that five times in a day, you've spent 25 minutes saying why you couldn't get everything done. And people actually do that."
