Finding Time to Prep When You Have None

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When I asked readers what gets in the way of their prepping, money came first and time came second. Some pointed to a busy family and life schedule, and others said there just isn’t enough time. Nobody said they didn’t want to prepare; they said they don’t have enough time to do it.

That’s most of us. A job, a family, other responsibilities, and health or physical limitations all take time, and while that happens, the list of preps we want to get done keeps growing. I covered money in episode 323, [Prepping on a Budget](URL TBD). Today, I’m discussing how to make time for preparedness, first by looking at how we view time and then through seven tips experienced preppers use to manage it.

TL;DR: You can’t add hours to the day, but you can decide what your time is for. Start with the preps that address your greatest risks, then work in 30-minute blocks. Attach prepping to things you already do, take the first small step, and pay for tasks you have no interest in learning. Stay flexible with your circumstances, and call a prep done when it works and is reliable.

Time Is a Resource

Time, like money, is a resource. You have a set amount of it, and most of us don’t have as much as we’d like. That makes time a valuable commodity, because every prep requires it in the form of thought, learning, experience, or working for pay. Your food storage took trips to the store. The first aid kit Heather put together, which I mentioned in the last episode, took time to organize. The skill you’re most proud of took practice, and practice is time.

You can’t add hours to a 24-hour day, so the only way to get more time is to manage the time you have better. That means saying no to some things, because saying yes to one thing is saying no to something else. Every hour spent on one task, including an hour on the couch watching YouTube, is an hour not spent on another, and once it’s gone, you don’t get it back.

When you manage your time, at least four things change:

1. You become better prepared because you’re making effective use of your time.
2. The “I should be doing more” self-doubt eases up because the things you still want to do have a place in the plan, with a time frame and a budget, prioritized against your risk profile.
3. Time-related stress decreases because you control the pace, scheduling an intense project for a quieter period and smaller tasks for busier weeks.
4. When something happens, you’ll be more likely to manage time well in hard times because you’ve already practiced it in good times. You can apply the process that works in normal life to a crisis, with some adjustments.

In my book, Mind4Survival, I discuss Ed Clark’s point that managing risk emotionally is called spurious risk management. I think it’s fair to say we can also have spurious time management. The fourth change works much like John Boyd’s OODA loop: a pilot who has thought through the process in advance can act faster, and practicing time management in normal life helps you act faster when time is short.

I’m not a good time manager. I do a lot at once and have a tough time focusing on one thing. If you’re the same, it helps to know that time touches everything. Even working on your mindset, which is free, takes time, so better time management improves everything else you’re working on.

Why it works: Time is the input for every part of your preparedness. Manage it well, and your preparedness will improve.

People Who Feel Rushed

Being stressed for weeks or months can change how well you judge time. In a 2015 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers measured long-term stress in 62 healthy young men at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and then tested how well they could judge short lengths of time. Stress didn’t make time feel faster or slower in any set direction, but it did make their sense of time less accurate. The more stressed they were, the worse they were at telling how long something took.

If you’ve been under pressure for a while, you may have lost track of how long tasks take. A chore you expect to take an hour takes twenty minutes, while something you figured would be quick takes the whole afternoon.

There’s a second problem, and it’s one of the common prepping struggles. People who constantly feel rushed can get worked up about that feeling, and that keeps a loop going. You feel like you have no time, so you rush and don’t manage your time well. Little gets done that makes progress toward your goals, so you feel even further behind.

Managing your time is one of the few ways to break that loop, because it replaces the feeling of having no time with a plan for making the most of the time you do have.

Why it works: Knowing you’re using your time well makes you feel less rushed. Less rush means less stress, and less stress helps you manage resources like time and money and make better decisions about your preparedness.

7 Ways to Manage Your Time for Preparedness

1. Decide What Matters First

A lot of lost time goes to tasks that probably should never have been priorities. Go back to the [risk profile you built on Day 3](URL TBD) and look at your greatest risks and your vulnerabilities to them. The task that accomplishes the most for the least, especially one that addresses several risks at once, becomes your priority, and everything else can wait. If you live in an apartment in the suburbs, storing a week of water and food in limited space and planning for an extended power outage will do more for you than prepping for an earth-smashing comet. Go over your prepping to-do list every month or two. It takes a few minutes and can save hours of wasted effort.

2. Work in 30-Minute Blocks

You don’t need a free Saturday; you need 30 minutes here and there. In that time, you can rotate the water, check the batteries in your flashlights, go through the medicine cabinet and toss what’s expired, or watch a YouTube video on a skill you’ve wanted to learn. You can also check the gas can in the garage to make sure the fuel is fresh and see whether you’re topped off before prices rise. Over time, these small jobs add up. Keep a short list of them on your phone, or on an index card or sticky note on the fridge, so you always know what to work on next.

3. Attach Prep to Something You Already Do

Tony in the Mind4Survival Facebook group buys a little extra every shopping trip. He didn’t add a task or a trip; he attached prepping to a trip he already makes every week. Try the same approach. Read an article while your morning coffee brews, or listen to a podcast on your commute. Keep a piece of cordage next to wherever you sit to watch TV or YouTube, and practice knots. Building prep into your routine this way checks a lot off your list over time.

4. Fix the Start, Not the Task

When I asked the group what prep they keep putting off, Kristina answered that starting is the hard part. Many of us, myself included, know that feeling. Often the task isn’t the problem; the first step is, or you got partway through, stopped, and now you’re trying to get going again. Decide on the first or next step, keep it small, and if you have time when you decide, go do it. If you put it off, it’s easy to find another excuse the next day, and I’m good at finding one. Instead of “organize the garage,” make the task “Saturday, pull out the water containers, count them, and sanitize them,” or “clean off the workbench.” Once you start, the rest tends to follow. If it doesn’t, you still got something done, and that’s progress.

5. Hire Out by Hours, Not Dollars

Wendy made the case that money is the bigger hurdle because money buys time. You can hire help, buy purpose-made items instead of building your own, and pay for training instead of learning by trial and error, which can add supply costs and take much longer. Clearing an acre, hauling garbage, and working on the house all cost time. However, some time you have to spend yourself, because nobody can build your first aid skills for you. So pay for the hours you don’t need to be part of, such as tasks you have no interest in learning and only need done. Then spend your own time on the skills and work that build your capability.

6. Be Flexible

Jeff told the group he’ll have more time to prepare after he retires. Naomi is in the suburbs for a couple more years until her son finishes school. Both are making the most of what they have despite their time constraints. The mistake would be doing nothing until circumstances change. Even if you work 60 hours a week, you may not finish a big project soon, but you can plan and make progress over time. If you’re renting in town, you can’t put in a well, but you can store a couple of weeks or a month of water and learn to collect and purify more. Prep when you can, how you can, and where you are, and keep adjusting as the seasons and your life change.

7. Define Done, Without Perfection

For many of us, myself included, prepping is never finished, and I’ll probably never be satisfied with mine. That becomes a problem when nothing is ever done, because the to-do list keeps growing and keeps taking time. Pick one focus for a week or a month and stick with it. For example, in October, you might focus on first aid by taking a class, watching videos, and researching equipment, then move on to the next focus based on your needs. When you finish what you set out to do, call it done and set your next goal. You’ll get more done over time, and you’ll notice it because you’re marking things off as complete. Holding every prep to a standard of perfection can lead to prepper burnout. Sometimes good is good enough, and you can come back to a working, reliable prep later and improve it.

Why it works: Each of these seven tips turns time you already have into preps you didn’t have. None of them requires a free weekend; they require a decision about what the next 30 minutes are for.

The Bottom Line

If you’re pressed for time, you can’t fit more than 24 hours into a day. What you can do is decide what your time is for and use it that way. Pick what addresses your risks most, work in short blocks, and make preparedness part of what you already do. Hire out the work you have no interest in learning, stay flexible, and know when a prep is done. It doesn’t have to be perfect, because a prep that works and is reliable can be improved later. If you struggle with time management and follow these steps, you’ll likely struggle less over time and find more time in your day to become better prepared.

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