the number one question that I get asked F how do you do it all well being a newly graduated doctor working full-time running a business and trying to maintain healthy habits and mental stability at the same time can be pretty tricky but I do have five Secrets up my sleeve and we are going to go through them at the awards ceremony of the year the time management Oscar awards that will be given out on this wonderful evening include number one the sneakiest secret in time management two the lowest maintenance Secret in time management three the best kept secret in time management four the worst kept secret in time management and five the overall winner for hands down the best time management secret and the award for the sneakiest time management secret goes to understanding rate limiting steps I'm very sorry if that is a letdown it's not very catchy or glitzy or glamorous but honestly neither is time management great limiting steps are the things that take the longest amount of time and ultimately slow you down now the reason this is the winner of the sneakiest time management strategy is because it enables you to steal time away from areas of the day that you thought were already accounted for if this still isn't making that much sense here are some examples number one when I was in medical school and sometimes I would have to get the bus to placement I would use this opportunity to go through through some of my flash cards to help me prepare for my exam or occasionally if I'm going to the gym and I'm not really in the mood for a pretty arduous workout I will go on the treadmill on an incline and just walk and I'll use that time to maybe go through and reply to some emails or a great one is beauty maintenance activities I tint my eyebrows myself this normally takes about 15 minutes I'll put on my eyebrow tint and use this as an opportunity to Blitz clean the kitchen or put the laundry on and use that as an opportunity to sit down at my desk and concentrate on a task for as long as it takes for my laundry to get done or another smaller example that James Clear uses in the book Atomic habits is when you're waiting for your shower to heat up and you're about to get in use this time to bleach your toilet if you do that every single day your toilet will be nice and clean and you're doing it at a time just before you're about to get into the shower and clean yourself not only does this help you maximize the time that you have but it also creates an association between two tasks making it more likely for you to form a habit and get them done the secrets making this time management hack work is to identify these pockets of time within your day it might be waiting for the castle to boil when you're making your morning coffee using that as time to unload the dishwasher or clean your kitchen or message in your gratitude group chat or maybe using your commute on your way home from work as an opportunity to start a journaling habit a huge rate limiting step whether it's reading a report for work or a research paper for University or even a really detailed itinerary for a group holiday is reading so what if I told you there was a way to Unriddle documents to read write and ultimately learn faster for free here your prayers have been answered because un riddle turns any document into an AI assistant that you can literally have a conversation with all you have to do my friends is take any document maybe download from the internet and then upload it to Unriddle and you're ready to go ask it to simplify complex language summarize huge bodies of text or even ask it a specific question instead of searching the entire document you can even use it to generate writing based on the documents that you've uploaded or site research papers if you have an essay to write or maybe you've read a self-help book that You' found really really useful and you want to create a concise summary of that information so that you can come back to it time and time again h ly un riddle is just the ultimate time saving tool especially if you're a student but even as a grownup with a big girl job I often have to make presentations from research papers at work and using Unriddle to structure my Powerpoints and get through research papers quicker has meant I have way more time for the fun stuff as I mentioned and riddle is completely free to have a go so click the link down below and please let me know how you get on or what projects you use it for to give me some inspiration for how best I can use it next next we have the award for lowest maintenance time management secret and that is habits guys because let me tell you when I decided that I was going to start working full-time as a doctor this year and I wanted to continue doing social media on the side I came to the realization that my routine was going to have to be so strict for me to make time for everything going on and not get burnt out that I needed to build up strong consistent habits in order for this all to work having habits means that your routine is so drilled into you you don't have to think about what happens next planning your day out every single day wastes precious time whereas if you already know what you've got to do you just get up and do it but not only that if you have a strict routine that you stick to you're also very aware of how much each task takes I think we've all been in a situation where we allocate a task maybe an hour two hours whatever and then we overshoot because we actually have no idea how long that task takes to do obviously building habits is not exactly low maintenance that can take a lot of work but once they are built and intrenched in your daily routine they become so much easier to maintain and of course they take up so much less brain energy moving on to the award for the best kept secret in time management and this goes to Outsourcing I can guarantee most of the gurus you see preaching about productivity and time management on social media and not doing it alone Outsourcing is basically paying other people to do tasks for you and that might sound incredibly daunting and expensive but it's probably cheaper than you think I also think that high Achievers especially women tend to be Control Freaks and I definitely struggled relinquishing control and letting someone else complete a task for me but ultimately it's important to remember that there are many tasks where it's not imperative that you complete them but also a lot of the time someone else will complete a task better than you I have done a full video on how I Outsource which I will link here but if you can't be bothered to watch the full video then I'll briefly outline some of the tasks that I have outsourced to other people finding an outfit for an event you can just send someone a mood board of outfits you like the look of and they will then do all the hard work and find links and shops that are selling outfits at that price range and suddenly you have half an hour or an hour to do whatever the hell you'd want with it another one using a virtual person assistant to input my work rotter onto my colorcoded Google Calendar me doing that myself is not the best use of my time it's boring mundane and I reckon it would have taken me upwards of 90 minutes if you've put in the work to maybe create a lesson plan or a talk or even done the bare bones of a PowerPoint you just want someone else to make it look pretty that is a perfect task that you could Outsource to someone else and they might do a better job than you and finally doing research of any kind mind whether it is where you want to go on holiday next or preparing a YouTube video someone else can do the ground workor for you so that you have more time to work on the stuff that actually needs you the next award is a little bit more boring and mundane but it's an important one all the same and that is the award for the worst kept secret in time management and it goes to Google Calendar regardless of whether you prefer to use a digital calendar or a paper planner a system that works for you should be the foundation of any time management system personally for me I love my Google Calendar because I have three separate colorcoded calendars a calendar for my personal life a calendar for work including my work rotor and any portfolio deadlines and finally a calendar for social media AKA this stuff now to make sure my calendar is effective as possible I have a couple rules rule number one as soon as anyone mentions anything immediately it goes in the calendar never trust your brain with trying to remember anything even if someone is looking for weekends that you are free to potentially do something I will still put that in my calendar as penciled in meeting X to do y rule number two is making sure that your calendar is as visible and as accessible as possible so I have a Google Calendar widget on my home screen on my phone so I literally see it every single time I unlock it and I can click on it super easily to make sure that I don't miss anything important coming up and rule number three I make sure that my notifications are on for events in my calendar ideally notifying me an hour before I would have to leave I'm in ADHD girly so time blindness is something I really really really struggle with which can obviously be an issue if I've penciled something into my calendar that starts at 6 and goes on till 7 when in actual fact it will take me half an hour to get there and of course I want to be alerted a sufficient amount of time before that time to give me a chance to get ready which is obviously why it's so important to make sure that your notifications are on and set early enough that it gives you adequate time to prepare the final time management Oscar and definitely my favorite is to the best time management secret and that is to love what you do when you genuinely enjoy the process and love what you do then making time to work towards your goals doesn't feel like a chore if I have a moment to myself maybe in a train or as a passenger in a car Journey then I'm not thinking about how I can make the most of this rate limiting step I just end up writing down ideas for Content or reading about news in the medical world because it's what I find fascinating and brings me joy if you're not familiar with the Japanese concept of icky guy it is the idea of finding something that brings you fulfillment and a sense of purpose I think if you're really struggling with procrastination and time management it's it's worth taking a step back and looking at where you are spending your time and whether it is on things that bring you this sense of fulfillment because ultimately all the time management secrets in the world can't really save you from not wanting to do something that you hate you may be interested in this video about how I overcame imposter syndrome or if you'd like to see a little bit more about my life then I will pop a vlog here if you did enjoyed the video then please don't forget to like comment subscribe I hope you have a wonderful wonderful wonderful week and I will see you in the next video