How to Make Time For Everything You Want to Do
I’ve read countless articles and watched handfuls of videos on YouTube relating to this topic, they all have very useful tips so I’ve compiled what I’ve learned through trial and error as well as methods I’ve picked up from content I found impactful. Here are my top 7 tips for making time for everything you want to do!
Analyze Your Priorities
This goes without saying, but nonetheless, the first thing you absolutely need to do is decipher what your main priorities actually are. This is the time where you sit down with your notebook, your laptop, your whiteboard, whatever it is that you work best on, and brain dump every single goal you think you want to prioritize in your head. Regardless of what category each goal falls in to, just write it down and deal with that out later. Warren Buffet actually has a method where you start out with writing 25 goals out, and then you circle five of those that are your absolute top goals. Once you’ve narrowed down your goals to a select five, throw the rest away, forget about them because they don’t matter in comparison to your main goals, you can think about them once you’ve finished the top priorities. Your top five might not actually change if you have a basic list of priorities that remain important to you in the long term, but still, nothing else makes the cut right now.
This is how you can analyze that things that come your way, you can easily look at your top five and see if what’s currently being thrown at you has to do with your top five priorities if not, fuck them. I also have two main sets of priorities because let’s be honest if you’re ambitious or type A, you’re gonna want more. But usually the two lists are just one for my career and work-related priorities and the latter are my personal goals. This is where my personal relationship, my health, and my fitness come into priority.
Track Your Time
Once you’ve narrowed down the priorities aspect of this equation, it’s time to analyze how you are currently spending your time. Most of the time it’s difficult for ourselves to self analyze what we’re doing because a) it’s probably habitual or b) we’re just lazy and forget. So, the best way I can think of in tracking where you spend your time is by actually timing yourself throughout the day. Bonus points if you can track and analyze your constant activity throughout an entire week. Now, you can do this with any kind of timer and just manually write down every single thing you do and the duration of each activity, this reminds me of that episode of the office where Pam had to write down every single thing Michael was doing throughout the workday lol. But anyway, I actually found a digital way to do this, which if you’re like me, is going to really be helpful in your case. So this app is called “Now Then” and essentially you go in and write what you’re doing and time that specific activity, then once you’ve tracked every single thing you’ve done from am to pm, you can view it all in this perfectly constructed chart. This is soooo helpful in seeing where the fuck your time goes throughout the day, especially whenever you have downtime.
Now, the point of doing this is so that you can examine exactly where you allot your time and if anything in your daily life can be altered to be advantageous towards your top five that you previously chose. You can physically see what you’re filling your time up with and see if they are actually working towards your benefit in the long run or are they just fun at the moment that leaves no mark.
Saying “NO” When It Matters
Sometimes we fall guilty of agreeing to plans that seem important or exciting at the moment but don’t serve our greater purpose. They, in fact, alter your progress negatively. Find the confidence to stand firm and say no to plans such as a night out drinking on a weekday when you know you have an important meeting or workday ahead of you the following day. When you work from home this can be especially difficult. Although you have no one holding you accountable for your work time table aside from yourself, you need to stand firm. This will show you what your priorities really are.
Time Block Within Your Digital Calendar
Google Calendar is your best bet in blocking out your schedule through a digital calendar. I also am highly on the side of using a digital calendar versus a physical planner just because life always switches upon us and it’s just a hell of a lot easier to manage and adjust things digitally than it is to get out the white-out and keep altering things in your hard copy.
Having this form of a schedule can help you so much in being effective with your time if you use it right. Don’t put shit in the calendar unless you plan to treat it as an appointment with a designated start and end time, if it can be easily moved by you then it’s not a priority to you. Because you’ll move things that don’t matter to do things you think matter to you. So be serious about every single thing you block into your calendar and hold yourself accountable to it.
A small tip that goes along with this but one that I find vital is color-coding each category within your calendar/schedule. Utilizing a color-coding system makes your schedule easier to decipher, especially if you’re on the go and need to take a quick glance or pencil something in.
I altered my color system on google calendar a bit, to fit my warm-toned aesthetic a bit. So, now my main schedule which I have labeled as “The Schedule” is a bright orange mango color and this encompasses all the general related appointments in my calendar. This ranges from my beauty maintenance appointments like lash refills, nails and waxes to appointments like certain events or errands I’m taking care of.
Now for work I have three separate colors in use as my work includes YouTube, this podcast, and my blog… Which is in the works and coming out on October 7th! YouTube-related work falls under the color of a warm-toned tan, this podcast is a banana yellow, and the blog is under a pale pink. All of what is scheduled in with these colors are pretty self-explanatory, anything relating to one facet of my work is put into the calendar in its respective color.
The next three color systems within my calendar are for school, social activities, and then self care related things which I deem as “selfish”. The school category is a pretty obvious one, as this just entails my classes for college and anything related to school. This has in avocado green. I love my social category because it reminds me how often I’m making time to be with other people, that isn’t just my boyfriend. So social is represented with a deeper and darker shade of pink. Lastly, we have selfish, this is full of things that make me happy or benefit my mind, body or soul in some way or another. The color I use for this category is olive green. I am a huge advocate of having this kind of category within your current scheduling system because it forces you to be aware of how much time you’ve dedicated to your self-care. If I see a week with little to no activities solely based on my happiness and self-care, then that’s a big no from me. Some things I schedule in with this category are exercising, treating myself to a day at the beach, going to the farmer’s market, a bubble bath or face mask kind of night, and also I put my weekly resets in this color on Fridays.
Why I believe so much in color-coding your calendar is because it makes you aware of where you are allocating your time and energy. You want to see a good balance and symmetry between all of your categories or priorities. I heard on a podcast a while back that when your life is feeling a bit chaotic and unmanageable, it’s essential to circle back to your priorities and rate where you feel you are in each area. That way you can effectively go in and fix the problem, giving more or less time to one category of your life. That’s why having it already chunked out into your general calendar is an easy way to watch which priorities are getting the most or least attention.
Time Batch to Maximize Your Productivity & Time
This is a big one regarding making time for all of your priorities, specifically, and that is time batching. In a nutshell, time batching is taking advantage of your full focus and concentration by grouping a bunch of similar activities together and doing them all within the same time. Therefore, less clean up and prep time getting in the way of your schedule and you can knock out more for your time. For instance, things I like to time batch are writing podcast outlines, video outlines, meal prepping, writing blog posts, filming videos, etc. You get the idea of this. You can also do this with photoshoots, so basically if you know that you’re going to have you makeup on one day for whatever reason, utilize that, schedule as many things that require you to wear makeup on that day as possible. You can knock out multiple photoshoots within this day, schedule time for social outings, filming videos, renewing your license, getting your mugshot taken, etc.
Don’t Neglect Self Care
Burnout is a very real thing and I am definitely someone who feels this often if I don’t fuel up with self-care. If you’re not treating yourself right, physically or mentally, then you’re not going to be as effective in reaching those goals you’ve sought after. I’ve witnessed a lot of people who thrive off being “busy” for busy’s sake, but being busy doesn’t necessarily equate to being effective, or even productive. You can work smart and still have those free moments to yourself where your primary objective is solely on recharging your mental energy.
You’re naturally going to feel overwhelmed if you don’t give yourself that time to step back and chill out. In my case, feeling overwhelmed or way too much pressure on my hands does nothing for me besides raising my cortisol, which I already have a hard enough time consciously trying to lower. And another downside to not giving yourself self-care breaks is that you can end up feeling too overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion where you just procrastinate everything all together, which leads to getting nothing done and that time isn’t even used for recharging, it’s used as a limbo. So make getting re-inspired and taking care of your mental and physical health a priority in itself. Actually block this shit in your calendar or incorporate it within your current routines. Also, self-care does obviously include your sleep regime and diet as well as your mental health!
