So much to do, so little time.

It’s not just that there are only so many hours in a day — it’s that only certain hours are suitable for particular activities. You’re not going to play with the kids or the dog if you need to get dinner on. You’re not going to have exercise and shower at 2 a.m.. It’s unrealistic to expect that at the end of a long work day, that’s the moment when you’re going to crack out Astrophysics Made Simple. All you want at that point is a jolly podcast or an easy magazine. But feeling that you’re not making the most of your time is stressful in itself. Herewith, I give you 27 tried-and-tested tips for managing your day-to-day demands.

1. Develop a “do it now” mindset. That’s not the same as rushing.

Take advantage of your opportunities. If the fridge is nearly empty because no one has gone shopping recently, choose that moment to clean it — not when it’s heaving with goods and it would take half an hour just to get everything out. If someone is working on your home, cleaning or repairing, and the power tools are loud so you can’t get anything else done, take that as an excuse to tidy the garage, rake your leaves, weed your driveway, or do the sweeping that needs doing anyway. Instead of tapping your fingers restlessly waiting for the hired help to be done, get yourself moving in a similar way. Once it goes quiet, then you can switch gears and return to more normal pursuits.

2. Assess how much “tending and mending” that you currently do.

A happy life requires some “tending and mending.” It also requires that you don’t do too much of it.

3. Focus your efforts where they can do the most good.

We all know the adage about not putting all of your eggs in one basket. This idea is different, and is rather the reverse. If it were expressed as an adage it would be: “Give the best feed to your most productive chickens, and keep the best basket for your tastiest eggs.” Invest the most time in projects or pursuits that promise multiple benefits, for which you have more than one motivation.

4. Don’t have time to exercise? Do Periodic Exertions.

Five minutes here, ten minutes there. Walking on the spot is better than standing, which is better than sitting.

5. Get to bed on time.

Night owl that doesn’t like going to bed early, even though you know you should? If you need cues to get you to stop what you’re doing and go to bed, buy a timer or two (they’re inexpensive) and set your lamps to go off at a predetermined hour. That will be the “lights out” signal to remind you of the plan.

6. Identify your most alert and therefore productive period of the day.

Get your most necessary work done in that period. Leave your less essential task, or less demanding work, for other times.

7. Rise earlier.

Even if you don’t think of yourself as “a morning person,” try to be an earlier riser, even if it’s just half an hour before the time that you usually get up. This doesn’t mean that you get up and immediately storm the world like Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”). Nor does it mean that you have be like Condoleeza Rice, rising with a four-handle and hitting the gym. But if there are gentle things that you do during your day, such as showering and self-grooming, checking e-mail, paying bills, watching YouTube videos, or reading, now you have an extra half hour to do those things.

8. Establish in your mind soon upon waking what your priorities are for that day.

Do the most important ones when you are most physically and mentally able — and as soon as it’s really convenient, before other things can crop up and throw you off schedule.

9. Spend a day or two making notes about what you do, as if you were a lawyer or an advertising team filling in a timesheet.

In their case, they want to bill the client for time served. In your case, you want to have an objective look at how you actually spend your time. You can use the timesheet below as a guide. If you do something like wash up glasses (which takes a few minutes) or dip a chemistry-check strip into your swimming pool (which takes a few seconds), note what you did as “Quick.” Everything else will be noted as “Quarter’”(of an hour), “Half,” “3/4’ and “Hour.” The aim is not to bog you down with precise numbers but to get a feel for what is eating at the time you don’t seem to have in your day. You may find that the time you spend checking e-mail, replying to e-mail, or browsing the news online is more than you previously assumed. You may find that tasks you thought were “no big deal really” actually take significant chunks of time: ironing clothes or doing laundry, for instance. Feeding, grooming, and attending to your pet. These seem like small things, taking only minutes, but the minutes add up. Even a thorough tooth-cleaning — brushing, flossing, rinsing, and gum-stimulating — can take six or seven minutes to complete. That’s several minutes you’re not spending on some other activity.

10. Gauge your mental versus physical energy, and try to align your activities accordingly.

There are broadly four distinct moods or states that have the upper hand at any given time of the day (and night). They are, in no particular order: 1) energetic; 2) mentally keen; 3) relaxed and receptive; 4) slow-acting and contemplative. These moods or states can change from hour to hour and day to day. Part of effective living is to recognize when you are in a day-long slow phase — or, to the contrary, find yourself in an energized, somewhat restless state. Instead of doing your taxes on a high-energy day, decide to wash and vacuum the car instead. Or do the demanding gardening jobs that you didn’t feel like doing yesterday and probably won’t be as “up” for tomorrow. By the same token, if you are feeling especially alert mentally, now is not the time to wash all the windows or paint the bedroom walls. Those jobs may be necessary, eventually, but you they don’t take much thought. Tailor your day’s priorities to what you feel most like doing, in terms of your task-mood match.

11. Don’t let jobs pile up.

See yourself as an experienced tennis player: you can hit balls coming at speed and frequently — but you can only hit one ball at a time. If you know that the garden’s sprinkler system is not working properly, deal with it promptly if you’re in the dry season and will likely need to use it. Don’t wait till your car battery has died, the toilet is phantom flushing every hour, your power outlets have mysteriously failed, and your air conditioning unit is backed up and flooding the garage. In short, deal with problems one by one, as they arise. That way you won’t be cheated of time your require for earning a living and having fun, since all of your time has been claimed by problem-solving (and resting from the exhaustion you feel afterwards).

12. Don’t wait till you need someone to get their number.

In an emergency, you can’t lose time or opportunity waiting for a reliable someone to come to your aid. When you’re out and about, take down numbers on vans and cars and lawn signs. Keep a pad and pen ready in the car, or take a snap of a number with your smartphone. Then put these numbers in The Book.

13. Dual-task but don’t multi-task.

It’s possible to sweep the floor when you’re cradling a phone; to stir a frying pan when you’re listening to new information. But it’s not possible to chop an onion while absorbing a podcast, keeping the dog from ferociously scratching, and teaching your child French. Trying to do too much at one time guarantees that you’ll do none of them well, and could mean a chopped finger, a trod-on dog, a garbled message, and a lesson not learned.

14. Make your social media time a treat at certain moments of the day.

Set a timer (or two!) if you need a reminder to call it quits for now.

15. There are occasions when we don’t want to accomplish anything. Acknowledge this.

Though you might be driven and purposeful, at other times there are moments — sometimes hours, sometimes whole days — when you just want to enjoy what the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau called “the sentiment of existence.”

16. Delegate (but see also No. 20).

What’s worth more to you, the time or the money? Is it a job that someone else can do just as well or better than you (e.g. lawn mowing, tree pruning)? If so, hire someone to do it while you use your time for tasks that only you can do well (e.g. choosing new plants for your garden, shopping for clothes).

17. Have an “Everything” drawer.

This is not a place like a cutlery drawer or a glasses cupboard or anything else where the items are similar. This is a place where, by contrast, the things in it have no relation to each other and nothing in common but for the fact that you use them often, don’t want to hunt for them, and want them always to hand.

18. Learn to love lists.

Prioritize according to what is urgent and important (do it first), important but not urgent (do it second), not urgent or important but desirable (do it last).

19. Keep records of key conversations.

Get a notepad and pen to sit by the phone, and make a note of any conversations that involve transactions, such as billing disputes, appointments with service-providers or contractors, and purchases that you make by phone. Always ask for the name of the representative you speak to, and write down the time and date of the phone call with the rep’s precise instructions or advice. Keep these notes in a nearby drawer for easy reference. They will make any conflict resolution quicker — because you’ll have the facts at your fingertips and will able to cite them authoritatively — and they will help to keep your memory of the transaction crisp instead of vague.

20. Sometimes it’s better to do it yourself.

Consider whether, by the time you’ve had someone out to the house, explained the job to be done, supervised the job as necessary, and written out a check, you could simply do the job yourself and be done with it with less bother and in half the time.

21. Get the tools you need for the job.

When you’ve decided what sort of tasks you’re willing to do yourself, get the right tools to do the job effectively, conveniently, and correctly. Doing a botched job that then has to be fixed — or be completed by someone else — wastes time.

22. Realize that other people don’t value your time as you do.

Consider the example of the airport traveler (hi, Mom!) wanting to save money on a taxi and asking for a pick-up that would take more than two hours out of the driver’s life: the drive to the airport, the wait for the traveler, the return to town, the dropping-off at the traveler’s home and then the final leg to the driver’s own home. A complete bore, and the loss of the driver’s time is not worth the saving of the money a limo would have cost the traveler. Put another way, the traveler wanted to save a few bucks at the expense of someone else’s time. It’s up to you whether you want to allow that or not. Since other people won’t always appreciate that you value your time as much or more than they value their own, you may have to invent acceptable reasons for why you have to be elsewhere when they want your time for little or nothing.

23. Prepare for loss, wear, or mechanical breakdown.

If you really like something but it could fail, break, or wear out (alarm clock; china or glassware; shoes; clothing; bedding), buy more than one and either rotate their use or store the extras in the closet. Shopping for clothes and hunting down the right items takes time. If you buy on sale or at a good price, this will save you money, as well.

24. Shop online whenever feasible (and reasonable).

If you can get an acceptable price, buy more stuff online, even if these are items that you are used to shopping for in person. This means you don’t run out of printer paper, toothpaste, or hot sauce, and it means you don’t have to keep running to the store. Yes, you MAY end up paying slightly more for certain items, but if you’re getting cheap or free shipping, you don’t have the cost of gasoline or the wear and tear on your car, and overall you save money as well as time.

Pastel and watercolour on paper, Amanda Payne

25. Know when not to bother with a task.

Sometimes procrastination leads to good outcomes. Sometimes not acting immediately leads to further information, and the situation resolves itself. Sometimes the delay in acting means that you never needed to act, in any case.

26. Accept that waste is a part of life.

We can’t manage all our moments perfectly, all our lives. Sometimes, we lose time — during surgery, waiting for appointments, attempting to achieve something and then losing the data or finding that we’ve got an insurmountable obstacle. It is frustrating to spend an hour trying to assemble a piece of furniture, and then come to the final screw and find that the hole was wrongly drilled. Either you’ve got to spend more time seeking a fix, or you’ve got to dismantle the whole thing and send it back. Singing while you pack it all up, cracking jokes and having a good laugh about it, will help at such moments to shrug the annoyance off.

27. Use your email as Mission Control.

Write yourself notes there (rather than using a separate application of Notes which may make them harder to find later), and label or categorize messages as they come in, so that there’s not a constant stream of undifferentiated messages. The capacity is there in contemporary email systems, but you have to do your part in using them. Looking at folders of information and selecting the one you want takes far less time than hunting through hundreds and possibly thousands of emails (and leaving it to chance that the search command will actually bring back what you’re looking for, along with a lot of other messages that meet the search terms in some way but are NOT what you want). Also, keep an Internet password book or better yet, make your address book a combined telephone/address/email/Internet accounts and password book. But all your passwords should also be somewhere in your email, or else on index cards that you carry in your handbag. Basically: accessible at all times!