If you constantly feel like your life is always busy, packed with responsibilities, obligations, and endless tasks, yet you somehow never have time for the things you genuinely love and want to do, this is for you. I’ll show you how to find time for the things that truly matter to you.
I promise, this is not another productivity hack that does nothing but squeeze more work into your already overwhelming day.
Instead, I’ll help you uncover where your time is really going, identify the blind spots in your daily routine, and redirect your schedule toward the areas of your life that need you most right now.
At the end of the exercise, you’ll find it super easy to make time for those things you keep telling yourself you’ll get to ‘when things slow down’ so that you can fulfil those goals that quietly sit on the back burner while your days fill up with everything else.
The best part is that this exercise will not only help you ‘find time’. It will also help you clearly see your priorities and habits, and how closely your current life aligns with the person you want to become.
What You’ll Need to Find Time for What Matters
To do this exercise properly, you’ll need:
- A physical journal (not a notes app, not your phone, because when something is physical, it feels real, is easier to revisit, and harder to ignore. It also doesn’t get lost in any digital archive.)
- A pen
- 30 minutes of focused time
Step 1: Identify the Three Most Pressing Areas of Your Life You Need to Find Time for
Open your journal and write down three areas of your life where you need to take immediate action.
I am not talking about mere aspirations like “be happier” or “live better.” I’m talking about areas where you already know you’re not doing enough, and you need to step up.
Examples might include:
- Health
- Career or business
- Relationships
- Personal growth
- Finances
- Mental or emotional wellbeing
Step 2: Define the Specific Actions You Need to Take
Next to each of those three areas, write the specific actions you need to take. Specific actions, not vague goals or unattainable wishes. If you want to learn how to find time for what matters, you need to be clear on what that thing is.
A perfect example would be: Instead of writing “lose weight” under health, write:
“Walk for 15 minutes every evening after work.”
Notice what I did there to make this powerful:
- The activity is clear.
- The time is defined
- The duration is defined.
- It’s anchored to an existing (necessary) habit (after work)
This is how you’d write your goals or intended actions for those three areas to transform them into concrete, actionable plans.
Step 3: Audit Your Entire Day in 15-Minute Blocks
This part is where the real insight happens.
Turn to a new page and write today’s date at the top.
Starting from the moment you woke up, outline everything you do in an average day in 15-minute increments.
If you wake up at 6 a.m. and go to bed at 10 p.m., you should be looking at about 64 fifteen-minute blocks in a day.
But if you spend more than 15 minutes doing one activity without multitasking you don’t need to break it down. Just batch it as one activity.
Step 4: Cross-Check Every Activity Against What Matters Most
Now, take each activity you did and wrote down, and cross-check it against your three priority areas.
Ask yourself:
Does this activity help me move closer to at least one of these goals by 30% or more?
If the answer is no, that activity becomes questionable and should be up for ejection.
I know, not every activity that fails this test is ‘bad’. Some things are necessary and unavoidable; others are simply what you must do to survive. No worries, just ignore those necessary activities, even if they failed the test.
With this step, you’ll start to notice:
- The time you spend on mindless scrolling
- Time wasted on unnecessary errands
- Those overextended social commitments
- Low-value tasks that feel busy but lead nowhere
- Activities that can be outsourced to free up your schedule
All of these activities are your time leaks. Thankfully, the goal of this entire exercise is to identify those leaks, eliminate them and create time for what truly matters.
Step 5: Replace
This exercise will be futile if we stop at merely identifying time leaks. So, go ahead and replace those low-value, time-wasting activities with high-impact ones.
Those 15-minute blocks you keep saying you don’t have? You’ll see that they’re already there. You only had to recognize that they’re just being used for things that don’t move your life forward.
By consciously redirecting even a few of those blocks toward your top priorities, you will find time for what matters and begin to realign your daily life with the person you’re trying to become.
Why This Exercise Works
This process forces you to confront reality – not your intentions or plans, but your actual behavior.
It helps you:
- See where your time truly goes.
- Understand your real priorities (not the ones you say you have).
- Identify what needs to change immediately.
- Create space for the things you claim matter most.
And most importantly, it proves that time isn’t your problem. Awareness of your relationship with time is.
Conclusion
Can you now see that you don’t need more hours in the day and you’re not too busy to do the things that matter most to you?
If this exercise has helped you find time for what really matters, go ahead and share it with everyone you believe needs it.
