3 Ways to Master Your Time

Can I tell you a secret?

I’m naturally lazy!

No joke… my natural state of mind is to chill! I love taking naps. I love mindlessly scrolling Instagram. I love binging on Netflix.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for all these things, BUT the reality is I can’t just chill for the rest of the days of my life. I mean, I guess I could, but I have bigger dreams and aspirations for myself.

So, for years I thought I could just will myself to get sh*t done.

I could.

I did.

It was exhausting.

It wasn’t fun.

It actually wasn’t as rewarding as I thought it would be.

I knew I needed a much better way.

If you know me, you know I love a good plan, but I also love a good dose of woo-woo. So I looked to both areas to find the keys to mastering time management.

Ready? Here we go!

1. Compete With Time

My husband has this life mantra, “If you wait until the last minute to do something, it will only take a minute.” I’ll tell you, it drives me crazy because he’s stressed me out with his last-minute antics, but there is something to it… things take as long as you allow them to take.

WHAT?!?!

I know. I know. But let me give you an example… I use to meal prep on Sundays. I would take my time getting all the ingredients together, fixing and packaging every meal. I’d fix one thing. Take a break. Check Instagram. Flip through a magazine. Then start on something else. It literally took me most of the day to get done. One Sunday, I had something to do and had to move my meal prep to Monday, after work. To my surprise, it only took me less than two hours to prep the same amount of food.

It blew my mind!

Our brains are tricky. They believe whatever you tell them, so if I’m telling my brain I have all day to cook, guess what… I’ll spend all day cooking. But if I only have a limited amount of time, you can move into turbo gear and get it done.

One of the ways that I master this is to set a timer and see how much I can do in that time.

How many emails can I clear out?

How much writing can I do?

How much content can I create?

How much of the fridge can I get clean?

How quickly can I get groceries? Note: I always wanted to be on Supermarket Sweep when I was younger, so it’s always fun for me to play this game.

So many things…

Here’s a timer that I LOVE:

It’s fun and it works!

Make time a game. Make time fun. Use it to your advantage.

2. Transition Better

Our culture has trained us to move from one thing to the next as fast as possible. In fact, we think multitasking is a badge of honor. Honestly, it doesn’t work. New research has shown that you get more done when you move from one thing to the next.

Not just that, you get more done when you finish one thing and give yourself a few minutes to transition into something new. We love closure! We love knowing we’ve finished something. So adding in a time for transition can save you some valuable time.

How this works: As you finish one thing, give yourself a few minutes to acknowledge the work you’ve done. Think about what went right, and if there were any lessons learned. Then think about what you’re about to start. Ask yourself what kind of energy and attention you want to bring to this next project. What outcomes do you want? How can you show up as your best self? Take some deep breaths.

Then GO!

I’m not suggesting taking hours to transition… this is just a few minutes. This practice is a total game-changer!

3. Prioritize

Raise your hand if you’ve been here before… you look at your to-do list in the morning. You feel overwhelmed. You start on your to-do list. You feel overwhelmed. You look to see what you want to tackle next. You feel overwhelmed. You spend time avoiding your list. You do another task, one that wasn’t on your list. You feel overwhelmed. You end your day by looking at your list and realizing you didn’t really get much done. You feel like you’ve failed yourself. You lose motivation. You wonder when you’re going to feel like you’re not drowning.

Everything is vying for your attention and to become a priority. Your phone is constantly buzzing at you, and you get pop-up alerts on everything from gas price dropping to emails and everything in between.

Everything can’t be a priority!

I have a running to-do list that's several pages long. It’s how I keep track of the things and ideas that I want to do. However, if you looked at my daily list there are only three things. Yes, just three things per day. It helps me keep a laser focus, and helps me to feel in complete control of my to-do list, instead of the other way around.

What I have also found is by having three priorities a day, I can start to see the difference between things that HAVE to be done, and things that would be nice if it were done. This is another layer of prioritization.

The key with mastering anything is to do it consistently. Find something that works for you, and give it your best. 

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The Path from Knowing to Doing

It’s easy to know and understand what we should do:

·         We know we should exercise.

·         We know we should sleep more.

·         We know we should eat more whole foods.

·         We know we should be kind to others.

·         We know we should save more money.

·         We know we should show gratitude.

We understand on an intellectual level what we should do. Yet, we don’t always take the next step. For example, I believe overall health is a great idea. Am I actually practicing it? Am I sleeping 7-8 hours a night? Am I getting cardio and strength training in my workouts? Am I eating more fruits and vegetable instead of my beloved ice cream? No, not all the time. Okay, probably not most of the time. Yet, it’s not because I don’t know what to do.

Or, I always think back to a former boss who talked extensively about leadership and could recite the traits of a great leader. She could quote Stephen Covey and John Maxwell like they were her best friends, but showed zero of the traits herself. She knew a lot about leadership, but didn’t really “DO” leadership.

Knowing is easy. Most of us have access to an unlimited supply of information (via the internet) and can learn new information at the click of a button. We can spend hours learning information and even deeply know and comprehend information. Yet, we can still see little change.

What stops us from actually doing?

·         Confusion is a huge barrier. Have you ever felt so overwhelmed with information that you couldn’t take action? I remember once my BFF called me to talk about how much research she’d done on painting her kitchen cabinets. She said she felt so overwhelmed that she decided to take a nap instead. That happens. Lack of clarity on first steps or next steps can hinder action.

·         Talking vs. doing. Another barrier to doing is equating talking about doing something as actually doing something. I’m going to let you in on a secret… I don’t love meetings. I love talking with people, and I love interaction that comes as a result of meetings. However, they normally last longer than necessary, and sometimes very little productivity come from them. People will mistake meetings with action. Meetings may be a step, but the action normally comes after. Sometimes, there is no after, which means lack of action.

·         The biggest barrier is fear. At the root of all of our inaction is fear. Fear of worthiness. Fear of success. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. FEAR. Breaking through fear with a new belief is an essential key to success.

Mind the gap.

There is a tremendous gap between knowing and doing. The path to doing looks like this:

Knowledge → Belief → Decision → Emotion → Action.

All of those steps have to happen in order for us to move from simply knowing to doing.

·         Knowledge: We receive the information.

·         Belief: We develop a belief about our self and our ability to take action.

·         Decision: We decide whether or not we want to take action.

·         Emotion: We develop an emotion about the action. NOTE: Sometimes fear can be positive emotion here.

·         Action: Do what you know.

People tend to be unsuccessful when they try to skip a step in the process or avoid the process all together. Look at the path from knowing to doing, where do you feel stuck? What can you do today to shift from knowing to doing?