How to get the most out of your time

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We all get 24 hours

Almost everyone wants to find a way to get more out of their time.

We all know that there are only 24 hours in a day but figuring out how to use them is way harder than it seems. Finding the way to incredible productivity that feels fulfilling (and not draining) is a challenging task but it is one that it totally worth it.

This attempt at a motivational quote can often leave us feeling like we’re doing something wrong. How is it that there are some people that just seem to be able to do a crazy amount of stuff in so little time. *cough* Beyonce *cough cough* Elon Musk…

It’s not that they have more time necessarily, it’s that they do the things that bring them the biggest return on the time they’re spending.

How we choose to spend our time is incredibly important to how successful and fulfilled we’re going to be.

What does success look like?

This is a much more complicated question than most people give credit for. And that’s because everyone’s idea of success is different and even YOUR idea of success can be different at different times in your life.

Some people think that you need to have a big house or a beautiful spouse or a “good” job to be successful. Others think that having your family close by and the chance to go on vacation every year is successful. Maybe success is continuing to learn new skills and strengthening the relationships you have with those around you.

As you can see, success can mean many things.

So what does it mean to you?

What would a successful life or even a successful day look like?

Once you know what success looks like you can start to build your days more intentionally so that you get the most out of them.

Your Roles

Your day to day roles are important to consider when thinking of how to get the most out of your time. Are you a mom, a teacher, a team member?

Chances are that you’ve got at least a few roles to think about. Most people have about 3-5 roles that are central to their everyday identity and those are the ones that you’re going to want to focus on in order to get the most fulfilment out of your time.

How do you fulfil your roles?

The trick to becoming your definition of successful is to consistently make time to fulfil your rolls.

Let’s take the 3 roles I mentioned above: mom, teacher, team member.

In order to feel like I’m fulfilling these roles I might want to make sure that I have breakfast and dinner with my kids every day and that I spend 20 minutes of uninterrupted time with each of them every day.

Maybe I want to make sure that I give detailed feedback on student’s assignments so that they can make their work better. I could also make sure that I’m approachable and available throughout the time I’m with my students.

As a team member, I might want to make sure that I’m actively collaborating on 1-2 projects with colleagues that will positively impact our work environment.

After I define these roles and what they mean to me, all that’s left to do is schedule them in to my days.

Being Your Best Self

After you start to add these things into your calendar you’ll find that they don’t actually take up that time and that the time you spend doing these things help you in 2 ways.

First, you’ll enjoy these tasks because they’re things that make a real difference to you. Second, they’ll be the tasks that give you energy throughout the rest of your day making the stuff you have to do that’s not as awesome more bearable.

Like most planning strategies, the more you do it the more your results will compound. Just like a flywheel it gets easier and easier since you build energy and momentum for yourself by spending your time on things that are worth it.