I know more than a little something about catching up in PL, LOL. I tend to do well until about May, and then I stop doing PL all summer and spend the rest of the year catching up.
A few of my tips:
-Use products meant for PL so that some of the work is done for you. (My personal favorite is to use journaling cards and a matching kit, especially from one of the monthly PL collections.)
-Fill spaces with premade cards or patterned papers when you can and just add a few embellishments to each page.
-Limit your supplies. If you've chosen a particular kit or collection for the week, don't venture outside the kit. (I've toyed with the idea of choosing 1 kit or collection per month, but I need the variety of switching to stay interested. I still reuse kits about the same number of times, but I might use them 3 weeks apart instead of for every LO that month.)
Depending on my mood, I work in one of two ways. I get the most accomplished when I work on like tasks together. So I might sort and choose photos for 5 spreads, then choose templates and place photos for each of the 5 spreads, then finally pretty the 5 spreads up with scrap supplies. But sometimes I get bored with that and just want to scrap. That's when I choose 1 week to work on and do just that week from start to finish.
Here's my process. I try to do 1-5 all year long, even when I'm taking a PL "break."
1. Put all of my photos into folders by week.
2. Choose a week to work on.
3. Take journaling notes.
4. Delete any photos I don't want to save (blurry, bad expression, etc).
5. Copy the folder to my Project Life folder so that I don't accidentally delete things I want to keep.
6. Narrow the photos down to a reasonable number.
7. Choose a PL layout.
8. Edit and place photos.
9. Pretty it up with scrap supplies.
Enjoy your break. I hope you make lots of PL progress!