5 Simple Ways to Make the Most of Your Time | By Ruby McGuire

We all have so much to do… and so few hours in the day. There's a lot of information out there on success strategies for getting the most mileage out of our time, but they're not one size fits all. What works for someone else might not be ideal for you, so you need to play with different ideas until you find your thing—but even that takes time!

So to get you started, I've narrowed my own experience down to the 5 time-saving strategies that have made the biggest difference for me.

Here are 5 Simple Ways to Make the Most of Your Time

1. Create a Morning Routine

You'll have read all about incredibly successful entrepreneurs and their magical morning routines. You might be thinking, "Yeah, right. It's alright for them. They're already successful. I don't have time for that yet—I have a business to build!"

Stop right there! They're right! A morning routine really is a success habit worth adopting.

If you want clarity in your business, then you need to clear your head before the day starts. Whether you take a full hour or just 5–10 minutes, it's about using that time to figure out what you need to be the best business owner you can be.

My routine changes over time as I like to mix things up a bit. But currently, it looks like this:

1. Think of 3 things to be grateful for.
2. Do a short meditation (3–5 minutes).
3. Write and fill at least an A4 (letter size) sheet of paper, to get my thoughts out of my head and clear my mind.
4. Do a 5-minute tai chi routine.
5. Write out my top 3 "Most Important Tasks" (MITs, as they're called by Stephen Covey).

When I don't do my morning routine, my head feels fuzzy. I'm way less productive, and just generally off my game.

Action: What morning routine could you create to give you sanity and clarity throughout the day?

2. Be Brief

Being brief is a skill we all need to learn. Our time is precious. Other people's time is precious. We generally don't have time to read War and Peace length blog posts or watch three-hour webinars. We live in a state of information overload, and keeping things brief is like a breath of fresh air.

As a Virgo, I get straight to the point. When someone starts telling me a long-winded story, I just want to know the outcome already. I need to know right away why it's important for me to listen. They can fill in the detail later—if it's absolutely necessary!

In his book "Brief", Joseph McCormack talks about delivering information succinctly, whether it's social media posts, newsletters or emails.

Here are 3 tips that both McCormack and I recommend:

1. Create interesting headlines that make people want to read more. I LOVE using the Advanced Marketing Institute's Headline Analyzer¹ (thank you for that recommendation Emma-Louise!).
2. Get to the point quickly. What do you want them to know? Share your information in bite-sized chunks. You don't need to hear the sound of your own voice or make yourself sound super important. Brevity will make people's hearts sing, cutting through all of the online noise. If they want more information, you can give that on request.
3. Check if you're being too wordy. Are you using 20 words when you could use 10? My go-to concept for email is to keep it to 5 sentences. If it's getting a bit long, I'll strip it back. Be polite, and say what you need clearly.

Action: No matter what you're writing or creating, choose one area to focus on, and be brief—people will love you for it!

3. Create Templates to Save Time

Decision fatigue is real. The less you have to think about the smaller, sometimes trivial, things in your business, the more time you have to be the leader you need to be, and make the bigger decisions.

So if you find yourself repeating things over and over again, create a template for it. We've all heard the phrase "There's an app for that". Well, in my world it's, "I have a template for that!"

For example, let's say you get lots of inquiries from people wanting to do guest blog posts for you, and you know that you don't ever take on guest writers. You could create a mini template along these lines:

Hi xxxxx, thanks for getting in touch. Unfortunately, I don't take guest writers for my blog, as it's a space purely for my own writing. I wish you every success with your writing endeavours.

It's polite, brief (see point number 2), and will potentially stop any further messages from that person, saving you time.

Action: Notice when you seem to be sending the same message repeatedly. Copy and paste that message into a document/app, so that next time you don't have to overthink it—you just copy the message and hit send.

4. Be Playful (Take a Mind Break)

When you're focused on success, it's easy to go into the hustle mode mentality of how to maximize our results. While having sharp focus is important, sometimes the secret to success is to take a break!

Our brains need time to process information. When we're always "on it", we aren't allowing ourselves the space we need to connect the dots, make distinctions and arrive at clarifications.
Even in the middle of the day, taking a break for a few minutes to bring in some "play" time, can help you generate lots of new ideas for success.

Some examples of your play might be doodling, reading 5 minutes of a book, going for a quick walk, or watching a video. You're just giving yourself a fighting chance to make connections that you might not otherwise make. Take time out to recharge.

Action: Carve out some time in the middle of your workday to recharge your brain. What could you do for 5 minutes that would rejuvenate you?

5. Waste Nothing—Repurpose!

Being successful is about knowing what's the best use of our time. We only get one life; we want it to count.

One activity that can take up a lot of time and energy is creating new content for social media. It's fun, for a while… until it isn't. So, repurpose your content wherever possible.

Here are a few simple ways to re-use your content:

• Expand an existing "Tweet" into a longer Facebook post.
• Use your Facebook post to share a personal story about something that's relevant to what you do.
• Turn that 7-tip blog post into a 7-part video series or email series.
• Divide up that workshop you created into loads of different content: quotes, mini-stories, blog posts or even a book.

Everything you create in your business can be upcycled or recycled into something even more fabulous, saving you time and allowing you to grow your business more effectively.

Action: Go through your content, and work out how you could repurpose it gradually. Notice how much time you'll save—time you can use to attract dreamie new clients to your business!

Wrap-up

Here's a reminder of those top habits for success:

1. Create a morning routine
2. Be brief
3. Create templates to save time
4. Be playful (have a 5 minute mind break
5. Waste nothing - repurpose

So, which of these 5 strategies appeals most to you? Which will you focus on first?

I'd love for you to share your top time-saving strategies in the comments below.

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Contributing Author:

Ruby McGuire is a Business & Mindset Queen. She's an Accredited Master Coach & Master Mentor with the IAPC&M, Trainer, Inspirational Speaker and Author of multiple books. She loves helping her clients step up and become leaders (aka Queens) of their businesses. She helps her clients develop their leadership and business skills, create a success mindset and attract dreamy clients. She is a Brit on a mission to live a simpler life without marketing on social media so that she can spend more time in her beautiful Scottish surroundings. You can find her at her pretty online home, over on her podcast show, Rock Your Fabulous Biz, and here where she shares her Mini Guide to Marketing Without Social Media. When she’s not working you’ll find her surrounded by books, making hand-made cards, and enjoying life with her hubby, little dog and chickens (usually with a Whittard Vanilla cappuccino in her hand)!

Learn more about Ruby & see all their articles here >>