Minimalist Time Management (For People Who Are Overwhelmed by Managing Their Time)

Picture this: you sit down to turn your TOTAL MESS of a life into a nice organized schedule, and you start Googling around for ideas… you end up on a blog or a YouTube video of some Hyper Organized Person™ demonstrating how they organize the crap out of their life — you take one look at it, feel super overwhelmed and daunted, then decide: “managing my time is more overwhelming than NOT managing my time!”

Here’s the thing: most people who gives time management advice are SO ORGANIZED they don’t know what it’s like to start at square one — never mind help other people who feel like they’re stuck on square one. If they do give you any good advice, they recommend you overhaul your entire life and become a machine of productivity and functionality… But all you wanted was to just get a better grip on your schedule!

Fear not. I’m here to introduce you to the non-overwhelming method of managing your time — I like to call it minimalist time management. Not time management for minimalists, but time management for people who are overwhelmed by the hyper-organized methods out there. < IF THIS IS YOU, GOOD NEWS. This post is for you.

The life-changing magic of tidying up your schedule

Basically, it comes down to this: you have too much stuff on your plate. Just like how messy people have too much stuff in their house, you have too much stuff cluttering up your schedule — so much so, you feel like you don’t HAVE a schedule.

It’s time to tidy up.

And because we’re going minimal with this approach, it’s really just a simple 3 step process:

express and sort what’s on your mind
get rid of what no longer serves you
prioritize and execute

Now I realize that’s a little too minimal — so let’s dive deeper into each step and I’ll show you what I mean (and how to get control of your time again) using as few Hyper Organizer words as possible.

Step 1: Express and sort what’s on your mind

Grab a notebook. And a pen. Or open Google Docs. Start writing what you’re feeling. If you’re stressed or overwhelmed or confused — it doesn’t matter. JUST WRITE EVERYTHING. It doesn’t have to make sense, because nobody is going to be reading this except you (thank goodness.)

Try writing down things like

what’s stressing you out
what you wish you had more time to do
things you miss doing
people who bother you and why
what you wish you could say no to
how you wish your life would change

I know, that sounds like a pretty negative list of things. But don’t worry — even if you feel like crap after brain-dumping all of this into a journal, I promise it will help you in the long run. We often think that bottling up our feelings and ignoring them will make them “go away”… But, more often than not, those feelings just quietly grow stronger.

So let it all out. And then, when you feel like you’re completely empty, go back and read it. Maybe not right away — but when you feel ready to sort out your mess. Take a highlighter and another notebook and notice the things that show up in your brain dump. Identify the things that are stressing you out and contributing to the “cluttered” feeling in your life. Make a list in your other notebook of these observations. Take notes as if you’re trying to diagnose someone else’s problems.

OTHER HELPFUL ARTICLES ON TIME MANAGEMENT:

Step 2: Get rid of what no longer serves you

Everyone has a cluttered schedule. Just like physical clutter in real life, we can’t help but accumulate it. It’s only natural for our brain to follow the path of least resistance. Which means we go through life on the default setting of saying “yes” to pretty much everything.

But sometimes we have to say “no.” And sometimes it hurts to say no — either because we don’t want to disappoint someone else, or because we don’t want to disappoint ourselves. But here’s the unvarnished truth: if you don’t get rid of the stuff that is no longer serving you in this season of your life, you will continue to feel overwhelmed.

Everyone knows that I’m a big advocate for “you can do literally everything” — but I never say that you can do literally everything ALL AT ONCE. That, my friend, is a recipe for disaster. But we have seasons in life for a reason. You have to choose what is most important to you in this season. And you also have to choose what is no longer serving you and LET IT GO.

Step 3: Prioritize and execute

Now comes the actual “time management” part!! I didn’t want to jump into this right away because that’s what a lot of people get wrong. They don’t realize: the reason your life feels like a mess is not because you can’t schedule things on a calendar — it’s because there’s a deeper problem holding you back from reaching your potential and enjoying your life to the fullest.

But after you express and sort what’s on your mind, AND decide what no longer serves you and get rid of it… then you can move on with more clarity — to prioritize and execute your actual day-to-day tasks.

Start with this:

list the really important things that made it past step 2
decide what your priorities are out of these “important things”
make time in your week/month to do these things
even if it means postponing (or saying “no” to ) other things

And if you want to go deeper, check out these videos I’ve made on time management. They’re not overwhelming, but they do break down the process of scheduling even further so that you can be the boss of your life (instead of letting your life control you) :

TALK, BRO

Do you ever get overwhelmed by all the time management advice out there? If so, I hope this post has helped to bring some clarity and productivity into your life. Tell me in the comments below: what is YOUR favorite productivity method??