Master Your Time, Transform Your Life
As an entrepreneur, product manager, and team leader with ADHD, I’ve always needed to create strong, supportive habits to thrive in high-demanding jobs. During my burnout recovery sabbatical, I immersed myself in how to build supportive habits and practices to achieve balance in life. This journey led me to collaborate with Sandy Bean, an expert coach who specializes in supporting neurodivergent female entrepreneurs. In 2023, we created the “Time Mastery Workshop” to help neurodivergent female entrepreneurs. We incorporated time-tested techniques and the latest research on high-performing leaders to create a comprehensive program to redefine their relationship with time and achieve their highest potential.
The Invitation: Rethink Your Relationship with Time
Time management isn’t just about being efficient; it’s about aligning your schedule with your core values and well-being. Many of us, especially those with ADHD or high-stress jobs, often find ourselves feeling frantic and burned out. Our calendars become a chaotic mix of meetings and tasks, leaving little room for personal fulfillment and mental peace. This constant busyness can lead to feelings of resentment and a perpetual state of exhaustion.
Your calendar can support your wildest dreams.
During my sabbatical, I realized that effective time management starts with a mindset shift. We need to move from a reactive approach to a proactive one, where our schedules reflect our values and aspirations. This concept is the foundation of the Time Mastery Workshop, where we guide participants to reimagine their relationship with time and build supportive habits that enhance both productivity and well-being.
6 Core Principles for Powerful Time Management:
1) Time is our most valuable and only finite resource.
We all get 24 hours in a day for an unknown number of days. Make the most of them! Be greedy and intentional with your time.
2) We can find powerful solutions… when we’re open.
You have the power to make your time spent align with your values. But you can only solve what you’re willing to solve. Be honest about what you’re doing now and what you want.
3) You must be rested & well-cared for to do your best work.
Taking care of yourself and getting support is absolutely critical to do amazing things sustainably and with longevity. Don’t live on martyr island trying to do everything alone.
4) Focus on the most important & eliminate everything else.
If every day you accomplish only your ONE most important thing, it was probably an amazing day. Weed out time-wasters. Use as few tools as possible to manage your time and tasks.
5) Rituals, Routines & Rewards! Incentives are everything.
Train your body and mind to work in the best way possible. Use rituals & routines to start and stop. Use rewards to ensure you complete & celebrate!
6) Track and reflect to improve. Follow your rhythms.
Regularly examine and reassess your time management practices. Make shifts to your time and calendar to reflect your personal, monthly, or seasonal energetic preferences and rhythms.
Let’s leverage these principles…
Our Overall Strategy: Focus on the RIGHT Things
Overwhelm makes us forgetful, rushed, scattered, frustrated, less creative, short-tempered, distracted, rude… When we are overwhelmed, our precious & finite time is less enjoyable and effective.
Focus on the Most Important & Eliminate Everything Else
It’s absolutely crucial to be intentional with your time. In her book “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think,” Laura Vanderkam emphasizes the importance of prioritizing time based on core values and long-term goals. Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” also stresses the importance of focusing on high-impact activities.
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey
To navigate through overwhelming tasks, and focus on what truly matters, start with the Eisenhower Matrix. It’s a simple yet effective method for consciously deciding where to invest your time. It divides tasks into four categories to ensure that your most valuable time is spent on activities that drive real progress and value.
Work towards minimizing urgent work by improving your planning, preparation, prioritization, and passing things to other people or paying folks to help!
Prioritize Time for Deep Work
In our world of increasing distractions, the ability to focus deeply is a valuable skill. Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” defines deep work as professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. This kind of work creates new value, improves skills, and is hard to replicate. Conversely, shallow work consists of tasks that are not cognitively demanding and can be performed while distracted. To maximize productivity, it’s essential to distinguish between deep and shallow work and prioritize tasks that fall into the former category.
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” — Warren Buffett
Deep work allows you to focus on high-priority tasks that require significant cognitive effort. By minimizing shallow work and dedicating time blocks to deep work, you can enhance your productivity and achieve extraordinary results. Create a distraction-free environment, set specific goals for your deep work sessions, and practice saying “no” to less critical tasks.
Let’s Create Your Ideal Schedule!
Keep in mind before we dive in… Human minds crave the familiar so much that we often stay in a familiar hell rather than support changes that could feel heavenly. As we go through these exercises, you might feel triggered, defensive, or blocked from finding solutions. That’s NORMAL. However, to improve, you have to make changes. James Clear found that small, consistent changes can lead to significant improvements over time. However, this requires being honest about what you’re currently doing and what you truly want.
As a woman with ADHD typically coaching other women with ADHD, I understand that telling us to “just focus” 🙄 can feel like getting the middle finger. We need really powerful tools to make it happen (and a whole lot of deep breaths!). Using structured tools to manage your time can significantly enhance productivity. Here are some super effective methods we’ll be leveraging in the activities below:
- Day Theming: Choose one high-impact activity to focus on each day. This helps in maintaining focus and ensuring that you tackle significant tasks without feeling overwhelmed.
- Time Blocking: Divide your day into blocks of time, with each block dedicated to accomplishing a specific type of activity. This method helps in managing your tasks efficiently and avoiding distractions.
- Task Batching: Group similar tasks together, especially those that can be done in one go. This method contains tasks, making them more manageable and less time-consuming.
- Time Boxing: Limit the time spent on specific tasks, especially those that could run uncontained. This includes brainstorming, cleaning, browsing/shopping, and anything distracting like social media or email. Reward yourself when you complete these tasks.
The book “The One Thing” emphasizes the importance of focusing on one thing at a time to achieve extraordinary results. By theming your days and blocking out time for specific tasks, you can ensure that your most important work gets done.
Step #1: Create a New Time Mindset & Mantra
I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. - Louise Hay
A lot of people have a very bad relationship with time, especially entrepreneurs and neurodivergent individuals. They tell themselves, “Oh, I’m just always late” or “I never have enough time.” Repeating these beliefs is self-defeating and reinforces bad habits and a fixed mindset. To counter this, we introduce the concept of positive affirmations.
For example, using affirmations like “My calendar supports my integrity” or “I have time for what I love” helps reframe your mindset. This approach is supported by Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on the growth mindset, which emphasizes the power of belief in one’s ability to change and grow. By changing the narrative around time, you can begin to see it as a supportive resource rather than a constant stressor.
Step #2: Create Rituals, Routines & Rewards (The Power of Helpful Habits)
Creating rituals and routines that become habits is a game-changer for consistently and efficiently completing important tasks or seamlessly transitioning through different parts of your day. Here’s how you can harness their power:
How to Easily Build Good Habits
James Clear’s #1 NY Times bestseller “Atomic Habits” breaks down the process into four simple yet powerful laws of behavior change:
- Make It Obvious: Set a specific time and place for your new habit. (Habit Stacking is linking a new habit to an existing one to make it easier to remember. IE: If you already wake up and use the bathroom, pour yourself a glass of water to drink right after.)
- Make It Attractive: Bundle new habits with fun stuff to boost your motivation.
- Make It Easy: Start small. For example, to start exercising in the morning, start by just laying out your workout clothes the nigth before.
- Make It Satisfying: Reward yourself after you finish. This positive reinforcement makes it more likely to stick.
Creating Supportive Rituals
Rituals and routines are powerful because they signal to your brain and body that it’s time to start or stop a task. BJ Fogg’s research highlights the importance of using small, intentional actions, to build supportive habits and using sensory cues to establish new habits. By leveraging all of your senses to cue different transitions or activities, they can become smoother and more enjoyable, more easily making them habits. For instance, lighting a candle or playing specific music can signal the start or end of a task, helping your brain and body adjust seamlessly.
Ritual Examples: Light a candle or set lighting. Open or close the blinds. Use specific music or sounds for activities. Lotion, essential oil, or spray. Drink specific tea to start the day or go to bed. Brush teeth or chew gum.
Holistic Wellness Routines for CHAMPIONS
To ensure a well-rounded approach to wellness, I developed the CHAMPIONS acronym, encompassing all core components of holistic health backed by the latest science. Without these elements in your schedule, you’ll likely suffer.
These elements can be used powerfully within and alongside the rituals and routines you want to create. For overachievers and neurodivergent folks, without making them part of your daily and weekly schedules, they’re too easy to skip, and then we wonder why we feel like crap.
Use Rituals to Help Eliminate Distractions
- Tidy Spaces: We all do best in tidy spaces. Include tidying in your start and stop routines to prepare yourself for great work and a good night’s sleep. Use time blocks to avoid spending all day/night on it.
- Manage Screen Time: Screens are addictive by design. This makes phones, social media, the news, games, and entertainment incredibly distracting. Use DND mode. Schedule time blocks for screen use. Monitor screen time and keep your phone off your desk and bed.
Step #3: Day Theming
Part A) Choose one thing per day to be your #1 focus.
Part B) Make sure you’re covering all your bases.
- Personal: Your body & soul. Everything in CHAMPIONS. Rest, nourishment, fun, growth.
- Money/ Career: Your service & success. 2+ hustles: use different colors.
- Adulting: Managing your time, spaces & responsibilities. Bills, laundry, cleaning, errands, cars, etc.
- Relationships: Those we love and care for: family, friends, spouses, mentees, etc.
Step #4: Task Chunking
List the crucial & must-do tasks for each day’s focus area.
Step #5: Ideal Workday
Part A) How do you want to feel in your typical workday? Remember your core values.
Part B) Create a draft ideal workday schedule.
Pro Tips:
- A “Reasonably Optimistic” Mindset: Aim for a schedule that is realistic yet slightly aspirational. If your schedule feels particularly chaotic, create a couple of versions to experiment with different approaches. Stay in a creative, problem-solving mindset through this process. For example: Maybe you currently do pickups and dropoffs with your kids. In your ideal schedule, you never drive them. However, you realize by getting creative, you can split the responsibility with another parent and add several hours to your week.
- Use Rewards Effectively: Especially for the dopamine-deprived, rewarding yourself after completing less enjoyable tasks can be highly motivating. Refer back to CHAMPIONS and select rewards that boost your happiness neurochemicals and are good for your mind and body. For example, take a short walk outside after completing a tedious task.
- Eat the Frog: Brian Tracy’s popular concept of tackling your most challenging task first thing in the morning when your energy levels are highest. This ensures that you address the most important tasks before the distractions of the day take over.
Step #6: Weekly Schedule
Remember to include:
- ✅ The Day Theme you chose for each day.
- ✅ The key Daily Rituals you’ve defined.
- ✅ Your Ideal Workday as the scaffolding for your 4–6 work days.
- ✅ Time Blocks for your crucial and must-do recurring tasks.
- ✅ All components from CHAMPIONS.
Color code this schedule to check for balance across Personal, Career, Adulting & Relationships. Use other colors or shades to distinguish between different types of activities. For example: Some folks make 1:1 time with partners a different color from quality time with their kids or whole family. Or you may want R&R personal time distinct from fitness. Or volunteering distinct from spiritual or religious activities.
Play around with what works for you, striving for meaty chunks of time that alternate and spot-checking for balance across life, values, and business.
Step #7: Make It Digital (Yay Google Calendar!)
Digital Calendars (like Google Calendar): Your calendar is your best friend. Using some structure to your day is supportive for even the most creative and entrepreneurial folks. A digital calendar is always accessible, never forgets, offers alarms, is repeatable, shareable, and searchable. Integrations with other tools make it even more powerful.
- Put Everything in Google Calendar: Add all events, activities, and also tasks in your calendar to keep everything in one place. This helps avoid conflicts and ensures you don’t forget anything important.
- Use Color Coded Time Blocks for Your Task Batches: Create blocks of time for groups of similar types of tasks to minimize context switching.
- Add Preparation and/or Travel Time. You should start to notice ways to optimize that time by grouping errands in the same area or adding pitstops that are already on your route.
- Make Events and Time Blocks Recurring: For tasks or events that happen regularly, set them as recurring. This saves time and ensures consistency in your schedule.
- Set Smart Reminders: Use notifications strategically.
- Subscribe to Other Calendars: Add external calendars for events like holidays, local events, or trash and recycling pickup times to stay informed without cluttering your main calendar.
- Share Your Calendar: Share your calendar with key people (like colleagues or family members) to improve coordination and transparency. (If you do, remember to Set Office Hours.)
Step #8: Track and Reflect to Improve:
Regularly reassess the schedule you’ve created to further group, balance, and organize your calendar.
If things flew into your schedule because they seemed urgent, especially if they derailed you or delayed other, more important things. Think back to the things the Eisenhower Matrix and ask yourself:
“Knowing that I love myself and I don’t need to punish myself no matter what, is this something I could have foreseen with a little more planning and preparation? AND Is this something I can plan and prepare for now as I think about my schedule for next week?”
As you learn about how you work best, stay open to making shifts to your time management practices.
Conclusion
To start transforming your relationship with time, download the Time Mastery Companion PDF which includes all the exercises from this post.
Creating and implementing practices like these can be life-changing. However, it can also be challenging. Getting a coach (like Sandy Bean) or finding friends or colleagues who can hold you accountable can be incredibly helpful in making these changes last.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need further assistance in implementing these practices. Let’s create magic with your most precious resource — your time!
About the Authors
Jessica Barnett is an entrepreneur and product expert with a passion for wellness and productivity. Sandy Bean is a coach and educator specializing in supporting neurodivergent female entrepreneurs. Together, they created this program to help individuals achieve balance and success.
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