How to Be Amazingly Productive in 2021 with These Time Management Strategies
The Aligned Time Method is a whole-person, time management system to help you become powerfully productive without ever feeling overwhelmed. At the heart of the Aligned Time Method is the Aligned Time Journal, a workspace where you can plan your goals and then align your hours and days to make progress on what matters to you.
When discussing the Aligned Time Journal with people, I often hear that they don’t want to switch over from their existing to-do list and calendar to the Aligned Time Journal.
To them, I reply, “You don’t have to!” In fact, the Aligned Time Journal seamlessly integrates with every existing to-do list and calendar system that you already use.
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11 Proven Time Management Tips from Successful Entrepreneurs
I love talking about time management, goal setting and productivity. What started as a desperate search for more balance, has become a long-standing fascination with this question: What does it take to do what matters – important, critical, world-changing work – without burning out or procrastinating?
This question has driven me to read hordes of time management and productivity books, purchase dozens of journals and planners, and ultimately, create a time management system and journal of my own: The Aligned Time Journal!
The Journal Launches on TUESDAY but is available for pre-order now!!! Wooooooohooo!!!!!
To join in the fun, I asked 11 of my most successful entrepreneurial friends to chime in with their best productivity advice.
Continue reading How Time Management Saved My Life
Almost six years ago on a beautiful spring day in April, I checked myself into the hospital, certain I was having a heart attack. I was stressed, maxed, exhausted, and BEHIND. And I was hounded by my time management failure:
- Failure to keep up with the endless emails, tasks, reports, and deadlines that would proliferate after I fell asleep with my computer on my lap at midnight.
- Failure to advocate for myself when the workload became unsustainable, as 8 projects became 10, and 10 became 14.
- Failure to protect ANY of my time in support of my mental and physical well-being. Eating, sleeping, exercise, and “downtime” were a luxury I told myself I couldn’t afford.
- Failure to be a nice person, a kind wife, a patient mother, or a functioning adult.
How To Make Progress On Your Goals
Have you had the experience of setting a goal (like: get more clients, stay ahead of my paperwork or taxes, reach out to members of my network, or write a weekly blog) and then done NOTHING about it?
I’m not talking about setting a goal that you actually have no intention of pursuing (Hello, “10 pushups!”).
No, I’m talking about a goal you care about, would love to accomplish, and in fact, fully intend to accomplish.
And yet, despite all that interest and commitment, nothing happens. I call this Goalnesia, because its so mysterious and feels completely out of your control- like selective amnesia.
I’m very confident that you have had this experience, because I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t. In fact, if you are like many of the people I’ve worked with, you may have had this experience so often that you’ve developed a story about how you are “just plain lazy.”
That’s not true, by the way. People who declare themselves “lazy” are almost always either overcommitted, tired and in need of a break (which is wildly different), unmotivated or confused (which is entirely fixable), or are doing an incomplete job of managing their new goal (which is simply a matter of process).
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Why You Need to Make New Friends in 2021
It’s 2021! We made it! And what better way to start a new year than with new friends?
Why do I need new friends, you ask?
Well, let me first go on the record to say that your old friends are GREAT. There’s no problem with them and you don’t need to kick ’em curbside unless you want to.
And yet, that doesn’t negate the need for new friends! Friends, for example, who want the same things that you want. Who see the world the way you see the world (or even better, friends who see the world the way you WANT to see the world). Friends who will watch you grow your practice with their hearts on FIRE for your success.
Friends, who will push you to be:
- Strategic and hopeful
- Powerful and authentic
- Successful and resourceful
Where can you find such AMAZING friends, you ask?
As always, I’ve got you covered.
It’s Time to Believe That You Can Change
The prevailing cultural belief about change is that it comes when people are “ready” or it comes only to those who are “worthy” or “special.”
That’s not true, and it’s time to let it go.
You can be better tomorrow, even though you’re weak, imperfect, and only partially (if at all) “ready.” The only thing special about people who change is that they are willing to change.
You can be special like that, too.
2020 Year in Review: Not great
Is it just me, or have we been wrapping up this year for a decade? The week between Christmas and New Year has always been chock full of year in review articles, best and worst lists, and lessons learned… it’s usually one of my favorite weeks of the year! I love a good retrospective- there’s something glorious about laughing again at something you laughed at in March.
But, this year it feels different, somehow. Rather than the usual lighthearted lifestyle fare, these articles feel a bit desperate.
Desperate to make sense of a year that didn’t go as planned. Or perhaps, desperate to regain control of a world that has shown us how little control we actually have? I’m not sure what the desperation is about exactly, but one thing is for sure:
It’s all kind of a bummer out there in the interwebiverse.
But wait! What about the clothes and the performances and the ridiculousness!?! Where are the listicles that make me smile? Where do I discover new moments to enjoy, way after the fact?
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How to Strengthen Your Connections During Socially Distant Holidays
As I was walking my puppy around town yesterday I noticed a LOT of cars with Christmas trees on the roof. With Hanukkah starting on Thursday and Kwanza, Solstice, Festivus, and New Years on the horizon, there’s no denying it, the holidays are upon us. Though things will certainly look different this year (Zoom Caroling? Fireside Facetime? TikTok New Year’s Eve Parties?), the heart and soul of the holidays is the same: it’s the season of connection.
This is the Perfect Year to Strengthen Connections
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Three Secrets That Will Grow Your Practice Faster
In October 2018 I launched my first group coaching program. The group that came together was a fun-loving, passionately dedicated, extremely supportive crew. Together we dove into refreshing websites, rewriting copy, getting out into the world, and generally going all-in on our private practices.
To our collective delight, everyone’s schedules were completely full by the end of the program. I am talking, no more spots for private clients, starting a waitlist, FULL.
Imagine that, will you? We started as a group of people who had private practices and amazing therapeutic skills, along with a lot of confusion (and, if we’re honest, some fear) about how to get clients.
The next round of this program (the Thrive Mastermind) starts up in 2 weeks and to prepare I’ve been watching recorded calls from way back when, looking for clues about how and why the program worked so well. While I was watching, one of the mastermind members spoke directly to the mystery of it all:
“You know, it’s strange. I’ve been trying to figure out what we’ve been doing that has been so effective. I mean, my website is a lot better and I’ve got all these ideas, and I’m enjoying the business side of having a practice for the first time EVER… but it’s not like people are mobbing my website and I’m not running around all over town networking with lead magnets… the only thing I can come up with is confidence… and clarity… and the fact that I’m actually doing something to promote my practice for once. Do you think that’s all it is?”
Is my client right? Is it ONLY confidence, clarity and action? And, maybe most pressingly, is the word “ONLY” even appropriate in that sentence?
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How to Be Grateful, Even When Times Are Hard
About a year ago, I was up to my ears in full-scale burnout. I hadn’t had a real break in months and the pace of work seemed to be ever-increasing. What I remember disliking the most about that time was how generalized my unhappiness was. Everywhere I looked was more work; I just couldn’t see the joy.
One Saturday, my son (who was 3 at the time) was standing on our coffee table wearing star-shaped glasses, holding a crayon like a microphone, singing “Let it Grow” from The Lorax. I, on the other hand, was obsessively conveying some story to my husband about how something had happened and then someone said something, and then something else happened (you know that story, I’m sure. It’s NEVER interesting.). He looked at me and said “Ok, I hear you, but right now- look at this.” and he physically turned me around to face my son.