The Power of Time Management: Mastering a Balanced Life

Have you ever wondered how to squeeze more out of your day? Join me as I break down time management into easy steps and practical tips.

In this episode, I'll share simple tricks to make your time count, find your energy groove, and decide when to delegate. I'll help you master your schedule, trim meeting times, and reveal nifty scheduling hacks.

So, are you ready to make every moment matter? Subscribe, share, and let's get started on your journey to an awesome endgame!

Don't miss out on the wisdom shared in this episode. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and join the discussion to unlock your potential and create the ultimate end game you desire. Talk to you soon!

Introduction (00:00) 
Defining Time Management (01:05) 
Managing Energy, Not Time (02:55)
The Art of Delegation (05:04) 
Mastering Your Calendar (07:17) 
Tools for Efficient Scheduling (10:51)
The Art of Vendor Management (12:36)
Key Takeaways (15:49) 

Transcript

0:01

When you're looking at schedule and time management and how to be a master of your schedule, don't just automatically default to 30, 60, 90, right? So of course you want to leave time for the things you need time for. But again, time is a resource we can't get back. It is ultimately the most valuable thing we have. And so when you're going to give 90 minutes to something, make sure that it is worth. Your time of 90 minutes, right? What is, what is your value of that 90 minutes and how much value is that going to bring back to you? Hey everyone, welcome to the end game podcast, where I bet you didn't know what you didn't know. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakeham, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. I invite you to sit back, relax, and tune in. As we talk about today's really important topic, which is the power of time management and how to use that to master a balanced life. Time management is one of the most important concepts within the confines of the business world. It's also, as we always talk about critically important for your. Personal life as well. So I don't personally have children, but I know time management, especially as you think about work in balancing that between your kind of extracurricular after hours with your children and weekend activities and sports and all this stuff and how we choose to manage our time actually reflects very much on how successful we may be when we talk specifically about professionally. And so when we think about. What is time management? What does that mean for me? What does that mean for my family? What does that mean for my work family? I think it's really important to first define what is time management. And then let's talk through, what are some skills you might want to implement or some techniques you might want to think about in terms of how you can be better with time management. So time management itself, pretty simple. It is truly the idea of being able to use one's time effectively, productively, efficiently, right? So it's, it's pretty simple, which is how do you take your 24 hours in a day? 365 days a year. And how do you use the time wisely? How do you use it effectively? How do you use it productively? How do you use it efficiently? And you know, time is the one thing that is, we're never going to win. So, you know, I've had many mentors tell me time is the only thing that we'll always lose to, right. Which is you can't just create time. We can create a lot of things in our lives whether that's scientifically or otherwise. We are truly stuck to the confine of 24 hours a day, 365. And so one of the early concepts I learned, and just as we think about kind of mindset and reframing, one of the best ways I learned to think about time management is actually this concept of managing your energy, not managing your time. And so if you take a step up and think about that what that implies just at base level. Is that there are many things that come at you through the day. We've kind of talked about this before around you know, kind of is something urgent is important. Is it is it purposeful and how do you look at different tasks, different situations, you know, roof is burning. And how do you also think about what do you tackle versus what do you have someone else tackle, right? So this concept of delegation. Really becomes critically important around time management or managing energy again. So you may end up having 10 tasks in a day. And that may take up all of your time, but then how do you allocate energy to those different tasks, I think, is what's actually kind of step two, right? So step one is truly being a master of your schedule, truly understanding what can you get done efficiently, effectively in a certain window of time. And then the next layer, the next step to that would be, then how do you allocate your energy accordingly in order to get there, though, as I said, one of the key concepts here is. How do you figure out what to delegate? And my wife still jokingly says as a, as an MD, my title actually isn't medical doctor, it is master delegator. And frankly, I, you know, this is before you know, this has been, she'd been saying this for many years and, and interestingly, I think she's actually quite right. And so what allowed me to become successful, what allowed me to kind of shift mindset and think about how do you manage energy. Is that I was able to be a master delegator. So let's kind of take a pause and think about what does delegation mean? And so at its core or at the most. Simplistic way of thinking about this, I would say the most effective and simple way to think about this is when you think about how do you delegate something you should really think about, and this goes back to one of the concepts from before, what do you want to pay for versus what, maybe not one is even the right word, what should you pay for? In other words, what should you pay someone else? Or what should you pay other people to do, like what, what tasks or delegated tasks are just truly not in your lane, not your core competency. You are not an all star superstar at it. What should you pay someone else to do versus what should you get paid to do? Right. So this idea of pay for versus getting paid for and so if you are truly, you know, a CEO or a manager or a leader, you need to be thinking through the lens of what is my superpower? What am I exceptional at? What am I a key opinion leader in? What is my lane? What is my strength? And so those are the things you probably should get paid to do. Versus what is not my strength? What is a weakness? What is not a superpower of mine? What, what causes my eyes to glaze over when I'm in a meeting and someone's talking to me about this, this concept or this topic, and that's probably something you want to figure out how to delegate and pay someone else to do. So as you think about how you get to managing energy, I think you have to first start with. Basic time management and kind of step the bridge in between to me would be the delegation piece. So then taking one other step back and going back to basic time management. That includes being a master of your own schedule, right? So again, we only have 24 hours a day. We only have certain, you know, we only have 60 minutes in an hour. We only have certain number of days a year. And then when you talk about the business world, especially if you're going to keep a healthy work life balance, you only have certain number of days of the full days in a year. And so in terms of how are you most effective, I think it's important to first and foremost, be a master of your own calendar. Right. And part of that is scheduling meetings for the appropriate amount of time. We get this a lot in kind of. Business life or as an entrepreneur we say, you know, if you're a yes man, or you say yes, a lot, you end up with a whole lot of meetings. And then oftentimes those meetings you'll find, if you truly look at these or, you know, start a clock or, or truly concentrating on the meeting, you'll find that they often are probably longer than you need. We in the, in the concept of time management, we often do things in intervals of 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, you know, everything's a 30, 60, 90 meeting. And the reality is, and actually this is something David Meltzer taught me effective meetings, or, you know, a lot of times phone calls or meetings could be compressed down to as short as 10 minutes. You could really get the same amount in, you could get the same value out of a meeting in 10 minutes as you could a 30 minute. And so. You know, again, as you think about stretching outside your comfort zone or thinking outside the box, when you're looking at schedule and time management and how to be a master of your schedule, don't just automatically default to 30, 60, 90, right? So of course you want to leave time for the things you need time for. But again, time is a resource we can't get back. It is ultimately the most valuable thing we have. And so when you're going to give 90 minutes to something, make sure that it is worth. Your time of 90 minutes, what is, what is your value of that 90 minutes and how much value is that going to bring back to you? So at the basics time management, it becomes this exercise of managing a calendar again. Do not think outside the box there. You don't have to set your schedules for. 30, 60, 90, and then again, who's in the meeting with you and then how are you then bridging the gap through delegation to then really focus on managing your energy. So those are kind of the core concepts of what I would say are important principles of time management. So what it is, what does it look like on your actual schedule and then how do you bridge to that kind of next tier concept, which is managing energy. Another important thing to think about schedule is, especially as you think about what you need to get done, not just blocking 30, 60, 90, or hopefully maybe less, but also pre blocking or putting in blocks out into your schedule into the future for things, you know, you have to get done. If something is, if it's something you're going to get paid to do, again, you're something you're not going to delegate or something you need to check on, because again, you may be delegating something ultimately. That person's responsible to do it, but you may be the accountable party, right? You may want to make sure that it's getting done. So you might need a check in or you might need to need a debrief. And so when you think about what that looks like on your schedule, there's the meetings you have to have today and tomorrow and the next day. There's also the meetings you'll likely have to have two weeks from now, four weeks from now, six weeks from now, whatever intervals you decide. Again, be mindful of your intervals. Don't just blindly do weekly meetings to do weekly meetings. But you might want to look at how you would pre block that time out into the future. Another really basic concept or really Basic tool that I found to be incredibly helpful for me is using a scheduling service like a Calendly where it integrates with your different schedules. You can send a link to someone and rather than doing, you know, wasting your time on back and forth, 10 different emails, trying to corral a group into a phone call, giving out your link and letting everyone else figure it out. Right? So whether that's a true personal assistant or using a link like a Calendly link. Where you can give someone that link, they can book with you when you're available based on integration with your schedule, and then it's something that just comes to you rather than you have to put. Undue time and energy into even just getting a meeting on the books to then decide what to do next after the meeting. So some really basic stuff that I think goes, not thing I know goes a long way for helping me to be more productive and efficient with my time. And I want that for you as well. Thinking through again, the delegation piece, thinking through what is. You know, what you should get paid to do or what is your superpower, what is your specialty versus what is someone else's I one kind of word of wisdom here is if you delegate a lot, that doesn't mean it's no longer mentioned this, but that doesn't mean you're no longer accountable. It doesn't mean that you can just give someone a task with no guardrails, no context. And just expect to get, to get done. In fact, as a master delegator, one of the things I learned early on that I wasn't good at as I was kind of, you know, stretching and bridging into that managing energy piece is that I wasn't really great at the followup. So I've said this before, but you know, a goal without a strategy or a plan is really just a dream. And it's great to have dreams, but you really need to have a true strategy in place. You know, there's a concept of by when dates, if we want to think about, you know, kind of preventing procrastination and lack of productivity. We've talked about it before, but not just setting a goal, but also setting a date for that goal. So if I were to delegate something like, Hey I really need you to do X. For me, conceptually, we'd also want to give that context. So, you know, you'd want to convey why that's important to you or the business. And then you'd want to help provide some guardrails. Maybe, Hey, I really need you to do X. It's important to the business because of why these are the things I know to this point, or this is the information I can give you, or this is a website you may want to go check, or this is a resource I have around it. And I really need this result by X date. Right. So again, giving them not just the tasks, but giving them the task with resource concept, context, and an end date so that you're actually much more likely to get the result you want as being the delegator of said tasks. And you know, this can, you can bring this back to your personal life too. So I don't personally do any cleaning of the house. That's not something that for me that, you know, my time management doesn't really allow for me to go around and clean the house. And so that is a service that I've delegated out again. Even in something like that, you got to make sure you tell the person, you know, this is what I want done. This is how I like it to be done, et cetera, et cetera. If you just have someone, you know, come to your house, some sort of vendor or service, and you know, just conceptually, you're going to do this service and you give them no guardrails the chances are that you're going to get a product that you want and be happy with are actually quite low. So just keep in mind as you delegate different services. Whether that's to a personal assistant or an outside vendor service make sure that you give them kind of the whole package of information they need to be successful so that you don't find yourself in an upset or disappointed. Because you didn't get what you thought you were going to get from the other word of wisdom. There is, if you start to delegate a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people going back to time management, it's really important that you have reminders or hard block time on following up on that on check ins because. You know, one of the biggest things I've seen be unsuccessful for people who work towards delegation is that they have zero ability to have oversight on what they've delegated, right? So they've delegated so much, they don't have any vendor management. Things are just kind of happening. No one's checking in. So again, just as bad as giving someone a task without any context or, you know, that package of information, as I described, is to give a whole bunch of different people tasks and have no ability to know. What result are you getting? So in closing today I wanted to impress upon you just how important time management is from the very, very basics of journaling and using things like Calendly or getting into the kind of the higher order concept of what does delegation look like and how might you be successful in delegation as we talked about. And then that final piece, right? So how do you manage your energy again, just to hit on that one more time. That is that higher level order of thinking where it's not what are the tasks for today or what is the time those tasks are going to take. But what is the energy I'm going to provide those tasks to make sure that they get done productively, effectively, efficiently, and in a way that's both successful and purposeful for me, myself, the business, my personal life, et cetera. So I encourage you to think about how you can be a better time manager. And then over time through delegation, how you can actually be a better purveyor of your energy. Time is the one thing you can't take back. Time is the one thing of truly priceless value. So I encourage you to get really good with time management and truly cherish the minutes and moments you do have. With those you love. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakeham, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. I'm here to teach you how to exist today so you can expand tomorrow and create the ultimate end game of your wildest desires. Hope you liked today's episode. Don't hesitate to like subscribe, share. I hope to see you again sometime. I hope you join the podcast and if you have anything by all means, don't hesitate to drop it in the comments. Otherwise I'll talk to you soon.