Do you ever find yourself saying, Gosh! if only there were more time in the day? Don’t we all say that? I know you’re right. It’s definitely a frequent thought that crosses my mind too.

It seems like that would be the answer to all of our problems, but in reality, the more time we have, the more opportunities we have to waste time.

Today, I’m going to share with you how you can get more time in your day. You can use this extra time to work or play, or a little bit of both. It’s up to you. I’ll Share 4 Tips:

1. Wake up earlier
2. Put your phone away
3. Get yourself organized
4. Learn to manage your time more efficiently

What would you do if you had more time?

I’d love to hear your answer!! Connect with me over on Instagram, and DM me your answer.

As you find this time in your day, what are you going to do with it? I’m very curious to know. 2023 is going to be your year, the year where you get laser focused on your goals for your business. Where you stop wasting time on those things that are not important and you get super intentional about how you spend your time.

Tip # 1: Wake Up Earlier

The first thing that I want to talk about that will allow you to have more time in your day, is to wake up earlier. Now, before you roll your eyes at me, because I know that some of you just did, I really want you to think about how simple that is. Just waking up an extra 30 minutes earlier a day will give you 30 more minutes. Now, if you already wake up extremely early, you can skip this one. If you have a newborn baby, or a child who doesn’t sleep through the night, maybe save this one in your back pocket for later. But for the rest of us who just conveniently like to sleep in, or maybe you’re just woken up by your kids or maybe you just prefer to have more time at night, hear me out for a moment.

I want you to give this a try and if you’ve tried it in the past and it didn’t work, please try it again. Because I’m telling you what, I heard this 18 times before I actually started doing it. And once I started doing it, it became life-giving for me to have uninterrupted time, when I could just do whatever it is that I wanted to do.

This might mean that you’re going to have to go to bed earlier to wake up earlier. It might mean that you aren’t going to be able to watch as many shows on Hulu or Netflix as you normally do at night. But I want you to set yourself up for success by just giving this a try.

So, if you’re waking up 30 minutes earlier in your day, what are you going to do during this time? Are you going to do a little bit of extra work? Are you going to do something just for you?

For me personally, when I wake up in the morning, I try not to do any work. There are very rare occasions when I do have to get something done, but for the most part, this is my time to do whatever it is that I want to do.

And I recommend that you have a morning routine, like something that you do. A rhythm that you flow through every single morning, that just gives your brain something to think about because sometimes often I feel like if we don’t have a plan for how to spend our time, we’ll waste it.

Tip # 2: Put Your Phone Away

Again, the eye rolling, we got to stop the eye rolling ladies because it’s true. And we know it’s true and that’s why you’re rolling your eyes. But here’s the problem, we hear things all the time, yet we know it’s good for us, but we don’t do it. This is about calling it out, calling you and me out: why is it that we know we should put our phones away but we don’t?

I’m going to challenge you to check your screen time often, regularly. See what it is that you are doing with your time. There is even a way to check how many times you pick up your phone every day and I think that’s so fascinating because if our phones are near us, we are so much more likely to check them.

So, my recommendation for you, number one, is to charge your phone in another room so that when you wake up, you don’t wake up to a screen.

Next, I want you to make it hard to get to your phone so that you’re not reaching for it out of habit. So, this is something too that has really changed for me, if I notice that I’m checking my phone regularly. I will go put my phone away. I’ll put it completely out of the way, so that if I actually need it, I have to go make an effort to get it. I really challenge you that if you put your phone somewhere that’s hard to get to, you will be less likely to reach for it and then you’ll have more time in your day. I don’t have an exact number of how much time you’ll get back, but I guarantee you’ll get back at least 30 minutes a day if you charge your phone in another room and make it hard to access it during the day.

Tip # 3: Get Organized

One of the easiest ways to get more time back in your day is to get organized. We often spend so much time looking for things like important websites or links or passwords.

It seems so simple to get organized, but it’s one of those things where we can easily create a bookmark for a website or we can link it in an important info board on our task management system. It’s important to pay attention to the things that we are finding are slowing us down, and then create a system for it.

This is true for anything, not just business. This is true for things in your home life as well. Make that list of the things that are taking up the most of your time. What are you finding you’re doing on repeat that maybe you can automate, things that you are always looking for or can never find?

Another thing I want to talk about here is it’s really hard to switch gears to go from one thing to another. If we can predetermine what we’re working on and when, that will save us so much time and brainpower. These are the things that I feel like really slow us down, because we love as mamas to be multitaskers and it’s really detrimental to be multitasking, because that generally means that one task is not getting your full attention.

Things might be getting done, but they’re not getting done with the amount of intention or the quality that you want them to. I have started to really be a single task-oriented person, where if I can’t answer within three seconds, what is the task I’m working on, I’m doing too many things at once. Check below for some links to some complimentary episodes about time blocking and productivity. Because I feel like that’ll really help with this, when I’m talking about like predetermining what you’re working on. So basically, having blocks of time in your schedule where you’re getting really specific as far as when you’re going to be working on particular tasks.

Tip # 4: Manage Your Time More Strategically

And finally, the last thing that you can do to get more time in your day, is to manage your time more strategically. I mentioned earlier to identify the things in your life or your business that are taking up a lot of your time, take that a little bit of a step further and create a simple system for them. Every morning when I sit down, I open up Asana, I click on the My Tasks tab, and anything that’s due today will show up, then I can also scroll through and see what’s upcoming. It’s really important that you have this system in place so that you can plan ahead.

If this is something that you struggle with, or this is something that you need more support with, I actually offer 1:1 Deep Dive strategy sessions, where we go through and we really map out your entire quarter for the year, and I teach you exactly what to do to plan this. If that’s something you’re interested in, head on over to thepurposegathering.com/deepdive, and you can find out all the details about how to book your session.

Another thing that you might consider thinking about is streamlining your editing. Maybe your editing is taking you way too long. Can you hire somebody who is very quick with editing that can teach you some tricks and tips? Can you sign up for a course that would teach you how to be more streamlined with your editing? Can you outsource your editing and just hire a company like Photographer’s Edit, to just take that off your plate completely?

There are so many things that we can do to get more time back. Another one too that’s really stressful for my family and me is meal planning and meal prepping. This is something that I always struggle with, so what can you do to make it more simple? I was talking to a student of mine the other day, and that was the exact advice I gave her:

When things are feeling stressful for me, I ask myself the question, ‘What could I do to make this more simple?’ And really, strategically, what it comes down to is done is better than perfect.

I know that’s an overused cliche, but it is true. And if we could just think that through and really apply that to our life, ‘how can we focus on being okay with things being done, rather than perfect?’ Because nothing will ever be perfect and there’s always room to grow in anything and everything that we do. So, we might as well get it done, put it out into the world, and then learn from that and do better next time right.

Next, when it comes to managing your time more efficiently, time tracking is such an important tool. And this is something I feel like a lot of people really struggle with and they don’t want to. But toggl.com has an incredible way to time track and I’m not even joking you guys when I tell you it is like a fun game for me to try to be faster than I was before. I definitely think that it helps you at the end of the week, evaluate and say, okay, what did I spend most of my time on? Did I get any inquiries? Where did those inquiries come from? This is what a CEO does and I know it feels overwhelming, but if you don’t time track, you’ll never know where your time is going. So, I feel like this is so valuable in knowing how you can get more time back in your day.

Another quick tip that I wanted to give you was to create a list of tasks that you can do in less than five minutes. You’ll be so surprised at how much you can accomplish. I bought this course once about how to get your kids to help more around the house and she had this genius idea of doing a five minute tidy, like multiple times a day. You would just set a timer and you just challenge the kids. We’re going to clean up the kitchen area for five minutes, when the timer goes off, we’ll be done for now, but we’ll do another five minute timer later.

It is so incredible how much you can get done in five minutes.

So, keep this little list on your phone and anytime you find yourself having five minutes, check this list and say, okay, what can I do in five minutes? Instead of getting on your phone and scrolling Instagram for five minutes, what can you do to be productive in that five minutes?

This is another tip that I heard that I love: If something takes you less than a minute, just do it. This principle is true and can be applied with everything. When you think that you don’t have enough time to do something, I want you to ask yourself, how much time would this actually take? And then when you actually go do the thing, time it and keep track of this. I used to think that it took 30 minutes to fold laundry and maybe it will take you that long if you had like 10 loads, but I’m just talking about one load of laundry. It does not take me that long, so I timed it and I made it fun. I put on some music and I was like I’m going to see how fast I can fold my laundry and it wasn’t that bad.

So, I think that we need to just readjust our priorities sometimes, get some new perspective on time, and make it fun.

Recap

Just to recap, friends, the four things that you can do to get more time in your day are to:

1. Wake up earlier.
2. Put your phone away.
3. Get yourself organized.
4. Learn to manage your time more efficiently.

All right my friends, I hope that you found value in today’s post. If so please take a screenshot of it, share it out on Instagram and tag me @thepurposegathering and while you’re there, let me know what you’re going to do with more time in your day. I’ve given you so many tips and strategies for getting more time, now what are you going to do with it?

I certainly hope that you’re not going to waste it and that you’re going to put it to good use. Let me know how you’re going to spend your time and I can’t wait to see you next time. As always Mama, I am here rooting for you and you are not alone on this journey.

Resources:

• Complementary Episode: Episode 111: The Most Effective Productivity Hacks for Mom Photographers
• Ready to go all in with your photography business? Join the Side Hustler to CEO  
• Ready to get your photography business on the right track? Take the Free Passion to Profit Challenge
• Are you lonely as a mom photographer and lacking community? Join our Free Purpose Gathering Mamas Community
• Have a question for me? Or a specific struggle you’re dealing with? I’ll address your question on the podcast. Submit your ‘Ask Ashley’ question here
• Find me on Instagram: @thepurposegathering