Find More Time and Energy to do What’s Most Important

Today, I’d like to share how I find more time in my day to achieve goals and do the things most important to me.

When I was in college, my dad told me I had to get a 4.0 or he wouldn’t pay for it. That was some stress! I had heard how you planned for college was different than high school. Each credit hour required a certain amount of studying per week. Is anyone out there a literalist like me??? Well, that trait helped me…funny how things that we perceive as negative can be positive. I took my dad seriously. I got a 4.0 for three semesters and slid to a 3.9 in semester 4. How did I do that?

Planning and scheduling.

Although it may not be a fun and exciting activity, it is essential. I’m not exactly sure where I obtained the skill. My guess was fear of not achieving the goal drove me to do something big to make sure I would succeed. My tool for success was 1 of those small spiral notepads. To begin, I listed the hours of the day and proceeded to schedule out every single hour. Chemistry for 3 hours. Psych for 30 minutes. French for 1 hour. You get it. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building the skills of planning, scheduling, and prioritizing.  

The Primary Obstacle to Achieving Goals is….

Time.

What I have found over the years is that the most significant complaint people trying to make a change or achieve a goal is they believe they don’t have time. Precision Nutrition did a poll and found that people fell off their goals in health and fitness primarily due to a lack of planning and scheduling. Why is that?  

No one taught you to plan and schedule things. I remember when my kids brought home their planners and had to show them to me. They had no idea what to do but had to make plans. They were robots, and I had to sign off. As a result, my kids struggled to manage their time in college because they believed that they knew how. They had false confidence because they used planners throughout school.

Similarly, I observed that adults lacked these skills, too. “I don’t have time for” was the tagline any time personal development came up, special projects to make them more visible to senior management, and other wants and desires that they said they had. Something I found interesting in the workplace was that managing time effectively was never identified in business planning sessions as an opportunity, although increasing productivity was discussed frequently.

Is it Really True That you Don’t Have Time?

I hate to break it to you, but the answer is no. We have time for the things we make time for and prioritize. The mind wants to keep us safe and tell us we don’t have time or we can’t do something. TIt’s important to realize that our general thinking is the easy path or default thinking. I will do the same thing as yesterday because it was comfortable and worked. Ok, maybe that’s true. Does that help you grow and become a better you by doing the same things you have always done while you plan every year to get better…be better…achieve more?

You may be thinking that planning and scheduling will make you too rigid and that alone makes you uninterested in it. Hear me out. Planning and scheduling will reveal more time for you. Say what?? Yes, it will. Things do not take as long as we think. Likewise, we can cap on them when we know and own the things we need to get done.

We all have 24 hours in a day, yet some people get more done than others. Why? Because they plan and schedule their day. They prioritize the most important things and don’t get distracted by the small stuff. We each have 24 hours in a day. Consider each hour as a building block for your life. What can I do? Why? Let’s goooooo!

If Everything is a Priority, Then Nothing is.

What do you need to do and why? Get serious about those questions. It’s easy to say everything is necessary. Think about your goals and values. Question the task: Is this something I should be doing and why? We all have way too much distraction. It is easy to roll into IG swiping when you know you have other things to do. We all do it. There are many more distractions in life, so you have to get solid on creating your schedule. If you don’t, life will take it over, and you may begin to think that “life happens to me” rather than for me or through me. I know you don’t want to be there.

You have a choice. Do you want to be disciplined or default into the things you have always done, creating the results you always created? I think you want to make a change. Real talk: your mind will already be telling you all the reasons why you shouldn’t do something different. Do it anyway. The primary job of the mind is to keep us safe, not successful, healthy, or happy. The mind needs to be challenged, but it is uncomfortable. I know you can do this. I did it when I was 17 (yes, I went to college at 17) and had no idea what I was doing. 

7 Simple Steps to Find More Time in Your Day

This is my process for planning and scheduling. For more detail, download my free guide here.

1. Pick a day to weekly plan.  Commit to this day and to creating a distraction-free space.
2. Add must-do appointments to your calendar.
3. List your top 5 goals for the week and the actions needed to complete them.  Do this as a brain storm. Add to your schedule.
4. Add workouts, cooking, meal-prepping, and shopping to your schedule.
5. Choose your self-improvement time and add it.
6. Pick your recreation times and add them.
7. Define your bedtime and add it to your schedule.

I can confidently tell you that I wouldn’t have achieved some of my more challenging goals if I did not manage my time. These steps are simple but don’t let that make you believe they are ineffective. Simple beats complex any day. Why? Simple works. You can adhere to simple.

Expect Resistance

Changes we want to make are met with resistance somewhere along the path. Meet resistance head-on. When you feel resistance, acknowledge it. I like to say, “Hello, resistance. I’ve been expecting you.” The simple act of acknowledging can sometimes be enough to push through it.

Commit to building this skill for 40 days. I promise you will feel better. You will have more energy because you will lose the feelings of overwhelm and anxiety about the things that you need to get done. As a health and life coach, I can teach you how to meet life as it is, rather than how it should be. Together, we can improve your mental, emotional, and spiritual health through skill-building and daily actions that will move you toward the life you desire and crave. Apply to work with me here.