Hi Dinky,
With limited time you just need to choose exercise that carry the most bang for your buck really mate. A variety of factors lead to muscle growth that relate to how you stimulate the tissues, so your training should reflect these things.
I’d look to have a couple of key exercises or movements patterns that lend themselves to be done heavily for lower reps. Creating lots of tension within the muscles by lifting heavy loads stimulates tons of muscle fibers and makes any lighter load exercises feel lighter and faster as a result.
I would also have some exercises that you tend to perform a little lighter for more reps for the same movement pattern to got some volume into the workout and get blood into the muscles. I would also look to have some exercises that stretch the tissues too. Exercises that stretch can help with increasing ROM but some people also think that the loaded stretch also helps to stimulate growth.
So,
Heavy stuff: Barbell presses (military, bench), deadlifts, squats, front squats, barbell rows, Romanian deadlifts, etc
Medium-heavy stuff: Dumbell presses, dumbell rows, leg presses, etc.,
Stretchy exercises: Pullovers, Flyes, pullups (i think all pullups should go from a dead-hang), etc.,
I like higher frequency lifting myself and would probably look to train each muscle every 5 days at least. Some muscles recover even sooner and could be trained more frequently. Largely, this depends on your total training workload and recovery capacity though.
So, get a mixed bag of exercises and training weights, be sure to stretch tissues out and maybe look to get some exercises that stretch things out every now and then and you will be golden. Train and eat progressively also though mate; what you do outside of the gym should reflect your goals inside of the gym too. Life is about balance though, so do what you need to do to find that balance and be happy. If thats drinking, so what mate, do what you want to do.
my 2 peneth…