1. Get more sleep.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive to the more time movement because this may feel like you’re taking time away from your day. But in reality, it adds so much more time because you are refreshed and rejuvenated and READY to conquer your day, rather than dragging your feet because you stayed up until 3am working on your sales page and now you don’t have the brainpower or energy to do much else.

Currently, I am 38 weeks pregnant with a toddler (luckily she sleeps through the night). For awhile I was waking up at 6am and getting my journaling and mindset work done before anyone else woke up. It felt REAL good to start the day off that way, BUT I was also sacrificing an hour of sleep that would also feel REAL good especially knowing that in a few short weeks, I will be getting a whole lot less sleep! I had to decide which one was more important, my sleep or my mindset work, and what I chose was sleep, because it helped me be a lot more ready and open for my mindset work when I was able to get it done later in the morning. I chose to sleep because I knew that I needed it. Not everyone needs this and if I wasn’t expecting a new baby, I probably would have kept up with my routine (I also used to wake up at 5 to do my Miracle Morning routine, but had to stop when I was getting less sleep due to becoming more and more pregnant).

The reason why I tell you this is because I want you to KNOW yourself. Yes, goal setting is about pushing yourself and doing the things that others aren’t doing or won’t do in order to get the results you want, but in order to hit your goals, you NEED to take care of yourself or else hitting your goals is worthless. You will feel like you have more time in the day if you are feeling STRONG and CONFIDENT and sleep will get you that.

My advice is to wake up at the same time every day. I am a huge fan of sleeping in, but I found that it really rocked my productivity in the day and made me feel even more lethargic). So keeping to a schedule of waking up at the same time can give you 1) the predictability of knowing when you need to go to sleep or start winding down and 2) a deeper connection with your body and mind – your body and mind can expect to be getting up at a certain time and thus get the amount of rest that they need – allow them to do that!

2. Create time blocks.

This has been a freakin LIFE. SAVER. For me. Seriously. I had heard people talk about it over and over again, but I was resistant (yeah, I can be stubborn like that) for some reason. NO MORE. And when I say time blocks, I don’t mean you HAVE to have an hour time block every time. These blocks can be 15 minutes or 30 minutes or FIVE minutes. It doesn’t matter. But when you can start creating a flow for your day where you know what to expect and don’t have to think about it (sometimes the thinking is half the battle!) you get so much more done. Yes, I know, for you moms out there this is hard, but I’m a mom too, and even with the unpredictability of the day, I still create some predictability and order (with a dose of flexibility).

So what are time blocks? They’re kind of exactly how they sound. You are assigning a block of time to something, for example, from 8-9 I am going to work on course creation, from 9-10 is playtime and so on. I even block out 15-20 minutes for clean-up or if I want to get laundry done, I know that I can get it done during this time. It makes it a whole lot easier to actually get the things done when I don’t have to think about what I need to do. Which brings me to my next tip….

3. Create your schedule for the next day the night before.

Using the time blocks that I have created, I personally like to write down my schedule for the following day. This actually acts as a “decluttering” of my brain and allows me to relax more knowing that I know exactly what I will get done the next day. When my daughter goes down to nap, I don’t have to look at my long list of to-dos and pick what I’m going to do for the next couple hours. I already have it written down, so I can actually get going on it probably 10 minutes earlier than I would have (and than I had in the past). When I know exactly what I want to accomplish for the next 45 minutes or so, I actually tend NOT to waste that 45 minutes by going on Facebook or doing some other tasks around the house to put off my work, which I totally did when I didn’t know what I was going to work on.

It’s like lining out my schedule created more time for myself where the reality was I had no more time than I did before. It allowed me not to waste time thinking because I already did the thinking beforehand. It allowed me to lose the stress of figuring out what to do or what would be the most important thing for me to do right now, because I already chose.

And most importantly, this also allowed me figure out the tasks that I “had” to do and also make sure I got the tasks that I wanted to do done. I didn’t spend 2 hours working on some menial tasks and then not even get to the creative part of my business. I had already decided that I would spend 50 minutes on admin work and then move on to the fun stuff. This made me a MUCH happier camper by the end of the day because I actually felt GOOD about what I was doing.

After I started implementing these THREE tips to making more time in my day, I was seriously so much happier. I was getting things done that I WANTED to get done while still enjoying my day and doing the things that I NEEDED to get done. Honestly, I stopped being a crabby patty and started connecting more to myself and to others.

Um, yeah. I’d say that was a win!