A common reaction I get when I teach people my relationship building system is, “My schedule’s killing me! And now you want me to fit in all these pings and calls and meetings and dinners and…?”

Here are my favorite tips for making all those important relationship building activities fit inside the schedule you already have – no add-ons!

1. Blend Not Balance. Blend your personal and professional life, rather than trying to keep them in separate worlds. Don’t be afraid to mix friends with colleagues and associates during evening and weekend socializing.

2. Clone meetings. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that every meeting needs to be one-on-one. Look for opportunities to introduce members of your network; you can’t clone yourself, but you can double or triple up the number of people you’re seeing in any given hour. If you are savvy about who you match up, the meeting will be more beneficial for everyone involved.

3. Imbed it. Imbed relationship-building activities into your daily, weekly, or monthly schedule. For example, you might use a concentrated 30 min a day for proactive pinging. You might send a weekly group email. You might reserve noon every Friday for lunch with a new person. Find a routine activity that works for you.

4. Use your taxi time. We all have wasted time slots; they’re wasted because we’re not prepared to use them. So carry around your contact lists; dedicate that “free time” to texting, email, calling, and tweeting. (For info on managing time specifically for social media, check out Amber Naslund’s blog post.)

5. Make it fun. Don’t think of it as a networking chore. Every opportunity to connect with someone is an adventure! Discover the joy in it and you won’t feel like it’s (ugh) more work.