A simple GMing prep timesaver: Whenever you have a moment — and not necessarily while you’re doing all of your other prep work — take a couple of minutes and get the small stuff out of the way.
That small stuff is micro-prep: stock your RPG to-go box, sharpen your pencils, set aside the books you’ll need, photocopy your monsters, bookmark commonly-referenced rules, make sure your Tact-Tiles are wiped off — in short, all of the myriad little tasks that you don’t want to leave until the last minute.
The nice thing about micro-prep is that you can do it at any time, and in fits and starts. Even if you only have a minute or two, chances are you can knock out one of these smaller tasks.
Makes sense. Of course, it’s competing with real life micro-tasks, like taking out the garbage…
It’s good way to slip thinking of the game into those stretches between when you’ll have time to devote to serious prep.
If you have an area dedicated solely to gaming the best thing to do is to clean it up right after the game ends. Then you have plenty of time to work on the big things before the next session, but don’t start it with “Where did I put my miniatures?”.
Interestingly for us, the physical duties are either immediate or not the GM’s responsibility, because we play at my place. So the GM clears out at the end of the session, but Jennifer and I get the place back on track before the next session. Other than game prep materials, everything stays with us– including the tactiles, dice, etc.
Another thing that can be done is grabbing the miniatures that will be used ahead of time. Obviously, this doesn’t work if you’re using lots of random encounters (unless they’re the same/simlar kind), but if you’re running a prepared adventure/module, you can at least gather/group the monsters ahead of time.