How many times have you found yourself in a situation where there just wasn’t enough time to do what you want? Life got busy and what you wanted to accomplish didn’t happen.

You felt frustrated, irritated, and probably downright upset that you didn’t get a chance to do what you really wanted.

The excuse of not having enough time is one that many people use time and time again. They don’t have time to hit the gym. They don’t have time to go for that morning run. They don’t have time to cook healthy meals – and they certainly don’t have time to sit down and eat those meals multiple times per day.

Lack of time is essentially ruining their progress.

For a moment though, I want you to shift your viewpoint. Each and every one of us gets 24 hours in a day. It’s what you do with those 24 hours that matters most.

Rather than complaining that you don’t have time, think of it as an issue with priorities. Are you really prioritizing what’s most important to you? Chances are, if something had to be done and it was a life and death situation, you would find a way to get it done. No matter what else you had going on, it would become top priority and you would make it your mission to accomplish it.

It’s time to start treating the things in your life that you want to do (but never have time!) like this. Start making them a top priority.

Watch how this changes your thought process.

I want to workout, but it’s just not a priority.

I want to eat healthy, but it’s not my top priority.

I want to go for a morning run to reduce my risk of heart disease, but it’s not a priority.

By replacing ‘I just don’t have time’ with ‘it’s not a priority’, you take the onus off an external factor and put it onto something that you can control.

Because you can control it. There are people out there with CRAZY busy schedules and yet they still find a way to eat right and get in some exercise. They make fitness a top priority and squeeze in short workouts whenever they get down time.

Right now, you should take some time to evaluate your day. Ask yourself,

  • How many hours do you spend browsing social media feeds?
  • How many hours do you spend watching TV each night?
  • How long are you surfing the Internet before you go to bed (and another thing to note, sleep should also be a top priority!)
  • How much time each day do you spend doing needless tasks that really just don’t matter all that much?

When you start asking yourself these types of questions, it becomes crystal clear that you do have time, you just need to learn how to manage it better.

For most people, the issue is not that they are too busy or that they just don’t have time. Instead, it’s that they don’t know how to prioritize their time properly so that they can fit in all that they need to do.

As soon as they learn to start prioritizing better, the issue resolves itself completely. So ask yourself, do you really not have time? Or is that just a cop-out you’ve been using for too long to take the responsibility off yourself?

If you need some help with time management, here are a few tips.

  • Write down how you spend each half an hour segment during your day. Set a timer on your phone to go off every 30 minutes and when it does, jot down what you just did during the last 30 minutes. Once you’ve done this, look for trends. Is each 30 minute segment meaningful?
  • Use a schedule/day planner. Start scheduling those workouts in. Likewise, schedule in meal prep. If you have time booked on Sunday to do it, you’ll be less likely to ‘not find time’ because you’ll have a few hours devoted to it and it only.
  • Cut back on things you really don’t need to be doing. Most of us have certain things in our life we’re doing when we could easily pass them off to someone else. Perhaps this means hiring a house cleaner to free up some of your time or delegating tasks at work to an assistant. Figure out what you don’t need to be doing and then hand those off. It’ll allow you to get done what needs doing easier.

So there you have a quick look at how you can find/make time. If you switch your viewpoint on what time really means and start thinking of your priorities, chances are you’ll make it happen!

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