There are times of the year when one can get so busy at work that they can't even have time to do some of the things that they plan to do. When faced with such tight schedules, how do you create time for other activities?
Breathe. Something so simple & everybody does & has to do but when there's too many to-do's, people forget to breathe. So they breathe shallowly. Focusing on your breath helps to calm the mind which makes one more productive.
I also try not to schedule things too close together just so that I don't have to deal with the stress of having to quickly finish something and worry about not having enough time.
I try to focus on one task at a time during tight schedules, and take short breaks to relax when I feel I'm overworked. I'm not very good at multitasking, so I would most likely take more time, and make more mistakes when doing many tasks at once.
I don't allow my work to pile up. It's the way to have making your schedule to too tight by yourself. If it's coming from the work which have been given to me by my boss, I will do them one at a time after scheduling how to work on each of them.