8 Tips to Manage Your Time Better to Achieve Your Goals in 2024
How I balance a full-time job, creating content, and two kids without going crazy
Dear subscribers,
Happy New Year! People often ask me:
How do you balance a full-time job, creating content, and two kids?
So today, I want to share 8 tactics that I use to manage my time better. I hope that you can use these tactics to achieve your goals in the new year.
1. Focus on one big thing
I used to make long to-do lists and feel guilty about not completing them.
Now, I structure my to-do list as follows:
One big thing
Less important thing
Less important thing
If I finish my one big thing, then my day is a success. To find it, I use this matrix:
This matrix does have one flaw. From my experience:
Your one big thing is usually important but not urgent.
So you should do (not plan) your one big thing as early as possible every day.
Otherwise, you can spend all day putting out important and urgent fires only to make no progress on your long-term goals. This brings me to my 2nd point…
2. Manage your energy
As a parent, my energy peaks in the morning.
That’s why I try to do my “one big thing” right after waking up.
Specifically, I try to work on it from 6 - 7 am before anyone else in my family is awake. If I can finish during that time, then my day is already a success.
The same principles apply to the rest of my day:
Before noon, I do tasks that require critical thinking like writing and making important decisions at work.
In the afternoon, I do tasks that require less mental energy like sharing product updates or consuming content.
There are a few caveats to call out:
If I don’t get good sleep, then it’s very hard to wake up early and feel energized.
By waking up early, I often have low energy to play with my kids at night.
If my one big thing is a meeting, then I try to schedule it before noon.
Speaking of meetings…
3. Ask to discuss async
Getting into a flow state is a wonderful feeling. But even a single 30-minute meeting in the middle of your day can disrupt your focus.
That’s why my favorite response when someone asks to meet is:
Can we discuss async first?
Many decisions can be made async and it’s so much easier to respond to several async threads at once than to have your day broken up by meetings.
I do make an exception for lunch meetings. Grabbing a meal with a coworker or colleague is a great way to build relationships.
Otherwise, keep asking the question above to save your focus time.
Speaking of grouping things…
4. Avoid context switching
Your brain needs downtime to transition from one topic to another. It’s very hard to think if you’re context-switching all the time. To put it bluntly:
Fear is not the mind-killer — context switching is.
To avoid context switching, I try to:
Block out focus time in the mornings.
Schedule meetings and 1:1s on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Group meetings and similar tasks together in the same half-day slot.
If you’re struggling to do this, Clockwise is an AI tool that helps you find focus time.
5. Say no until it feels uncomfortable
There’s a great rule from musician and author Derek Sivers:
If you’re not saying “hell yes” about something, then say no.
Here are a few examples of saying no from my creator's work:
I don’t plan to teach my PM course for a while even though it brings in 5-figures.
I don’t plan to make many appearances on podcasts.
I don’t plan to learn how to run paid ads.
I don’t do any of the above because they distract me from making this newsletter as good as it can be. That’s the one big thing that matters to me the most as a creator.
6. Delegate and automate
You can’t do everything yourself, so invest time upfront to:
Delegate tasks to other people or automate them using AI.
Great tasks to delegate include those that you don’t get energy from or are bad at.
For example, I love interviewing product leaders and creators for this newsletter. But I don’t love cleaning up transcripts or editing video clips afterward. So instead: