Take Back a Day a Week Using One Simple Tool

Just over 8 years ago, I started my own business. After 20 years in corporate roles, I was no stranger to hard work, deadlines, and hustle. But as any entrepreneur will tell you, along with the rewards, there are a few downsides to the path of being a business owner. 

That constant feeling that you are never doing enough. The overwhelm. The imposter syndrome. The clear vision you hold in your mind of what you are building, yet feeling farther away from that dream every day. The struggle is real, but there is hope. And time is the key. So I set about figuring out how to master it.

One of the biggest challenges almost all entrepreneurs face is feeling that there's never enough time in the day. That if you just had an extra hour a day, you would finally feel that you're getting some progress. Things would get done. Problems would be solved. Customers would be happy. Systems would work like they're meant to. If only there was more time to get to everything on the list.

As a business owner, it's so easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you're not doing enough. There's always more work to be done, more emails to answer, more calls to make - the hard fact is that the work will always expand to fill the space, if you let it. 

You probably wonder sometimes if you have sentenced yourself to a lifetime void of fun and sleep and family time. If becoming an entrepreneur was the right path for you. Only you can answer that, but what I can tell you is that it doesn't need to be this hard.

You CAN run a successful business WHILE living your life AND enjoying time with your family and friends.

I know it seems impossible and so far fetched when you barely have time to pause and enjoy a cup of coffee anymore, but it is possible to take your time back, and create an extra day a week to spend on the stuff that matters to you.

Best of all, it doesn't require you to find weeks of your life to learn and implement the solution. In a few simple steps, you can start to reclaim control over your time and finally get off the 'too busy' bandwagon.

I have spent my entire corporate and business career testing, learning, refining and perfecting the mastery of my time, and over the past few years I have created more than 1 full day a week in the process. That's 156 days. 1,248 hours. What could you have achieved in the last 3 years with all that available time?

Sometimes I spend it on me, sometimes I spend it back in my business - but the great thing is that I now have it and can spend it however I choose.

Want to learn how I did it? 

You're in luck! I've bottled the framework into my Take Back Your Time Success Blueprint! It is a simple, tried and tested framework that helps you get more done, faster, and create more space for the important things in your world. I've shared this framework with dozens of business owners over the last couple of years, and the feedback has been outstanding.

Why did I create this?

Because I've been in your shoes.

I know that running your own business is hard. There's so many plates to keep spinning and sometimes you wish you could clone yourself to get everything done. I've been there and I know what that feels like. I also know that you started that business of yours because you had a dream and you are passionate about making a difference in the world. I'm the same. I know that you can make the world a better place, you just need the right tools to get you up and running.  

So, while I'm a huge believer that the work is never done , and will constantly look for more ways to improve and evolve this framework (ahem, did I hear someone say 'perfectionist'?), I know that the methods and tools I used to take back 1 day a week of my time can help a lot of other business owners. Small businesses need support now more than ever, so I've decided to share this framework with the world! 

My 5-step framework is all outlined in the Take Back Your Time Success Blueprint - and I'll share these steps with you in a minute.

How did the Blueprint come to life?

I have ALWAYS been a planner. At school I'd spend days organising, colour coding and preparing for everything (and very little time doing the work, hehehe), so the motivation and foundations for the journey to time mastery came quite naturally to me.  The difference is that now I'm doing what I love, so procrastination is a thing of the past!

In my hunt for productivity as an employee and as an entrepreneur, I tried all the tricks - getting up at the crack of dawn, using the Pomodoro technique,  the Eisenhower Matrix, and many other time-saving & time-making methods. Some of the ideas stuck, some evolved, and some were just not my jam. 

Over time the breadcrumbs and learnings from of each of these methods morphed into my own framework for creating extreme efficiency and time mastery. Then I realised that in search of my own time mastery, I've managed to develop a framework that even the non-planners among us (I see you!!) can use to claw back chunks of their valuable time.  

So let's dive in, here is the 5 steps framework I use to master my time, and it takes just 1 hour a week to follow:

STEP 1 - IDENTIFY

Identify all the stuff that needs doing in your life and business and write it down. Stop giving it rent-free space in your head allowing it to clutter your thoughts. Don't rely on your memory either. There's wisdom in the old saying, "A dull pencil is better than the sharpest mind."

Capture everything all in one place (preferably digital) and ensure that you have absolutely clarity on what needs doing across your life and business.  

STEP 2 - PRIORITISE 

Prioritise and categorise each item based on the impact it will have and the effort it will take to help you decide what to focus on first. Boil down your 'too-long list' into your short 'this-week list' to help keep that headspace of yours clear of clutter. Prioritise items across your work, life and self categories to help you stay aligned and balanced in your execution. 

One of the things that will come from this process is a "stop-doing" list, which is just as, perhaps more important than your "to-do" list. Book author Patti Digh defines this as "tasks or activities that have little to no effect on your achieving your goal but you do them daily". I know you have them. We all do! 

In her book titled "Four-Word Self-Help: Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives", Patti wisely adds, “Sometimes our stop-doing list needs to be bigger than our to-do list.”  Be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time and eliminate these time wasters one-by-one to help you focus on what you really need to accomplish.

STEP 3 - PLAN

Build your success plan for the week ahead. Take all of the day-to-day decision making about what to do and when out of your hands (and your mind), and simply wake up and follow the plan. Future you will be eternally grateful and astonishingly more productive. 

STEP 4 - ADAPT

Plans will never go exactly to plan, so create the space and structure that allows you to easily adapt your plan in response to these impacts. Create sacred focus time, actively eliminate your distractions, and allow additional time for key tasks so you can absorb some inevitable interruptions. 

For more strategies on how to create time and space in your calendar, check out my number 3 tip in my recent blog article "The Secret to Getting More Done in Less Time".

STEP 5 - REFLECT 

Reflect on the success of the week just gone. Where can you improve? Where did things go well? Identify how best to build on your new skill of planning for success, do the work to keep improving it, and watch your productivity soar. 

Need more ideas on how to boost your productivity? Check out my top 10 tips here!

"OK that's awesome, but..."

Now you may be thinking, "Well that's great, but how exactly am I supposed to implement this? I barely have time to sleep let alone figure out how to bring all of this to life." 

I know. I get it. I've been there. 

The bad news is that building any new skill takes time and commitment, and there are no magic wands or easy fixes in life. You have to do the work to see the results. Sorry about that. 

The good news is that I've bundled this framework into a simple success blueprint that is free to download, and you can work through it start to finish in less than 2 hours. Surely there's something on your "stop doing" list that will free up a couple of hours to help you take back a day a week of your time?

Plus I've created a bunch of extra support tools like training and templates that you can access if you want to accelerate your implementation progress. 

Once you've got the ball rolling, it will take you less than 1 hour a week to maintain that momentum. I've been using this framework now for around 3 years, and my weekly ritual is down to about 20 minutes total. 

That's a pretty solid return on investment in my book. 

Try it for yourself! 

As an entrepreneur, author, consultant and step-mum, I realised that if I was to succeed in this crazy business world, I would need to level up in how I was using my time and find ways to develop extreme efficiency without sacrificing the commitment or focus that my business demanded of me.

And this blueprint has been the answer for me and for dozens of successful business owners like yourself.

So go ahead! Download the blueprint today to start taking back your time and watch your business results skyrocket!

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So, I've got one question for you:

What will you do with all that extra time?

Why not join my Time Mastery Group on Facebook and let me know!