This weekend just passed I had a major step outside my comfort zone.

I presented a talk/workshop on the subject of ‘Effective Time Management’

Of all topics, this one seemed like the ultimate challenge. I am chaos. I am hectic. I have ADHD (actually AuDHD but we’ll stick with ADHD for the moment), I have time blindness. How on Earth was I going to do this?

But these initial thoughts of not being good enough were exactly why I wanted to do it.

I am the Queen of ‘failed’ time management strategies. New planner with the ultimate system? I’m buying it.

And two weeks later, you can guarantee I’m beating myself up when it doesn’t work.

New self-help book on the block, ‘guaranteed’ to set you up with the perfect one-size-fits-all strategy to redesign your life?

YES PLEASE!

And then I force myself in to it for three days, get stressed, and again, curse myself for not being able to stick to it.

What I’ve come to realise though, is that I DO manage my time. In fact, the worst thing about the way I manage it is simply the story I tell myself. the one that says I can’t do it.

I just manage it differently to what we’ve been fed is the right way.

I home educate my children. I have three kids, one husband, two dogs, one cat – a really busy household. I run a direct sales business – I have a good-sized team, I have leadership responsibilities within the company. I have just finished the first tear of a modern languages degree (and got over 80% in my end of year grading). I am visually impaired, I have parents with increasing needs. I have my own medical appointments and then those of family.

And I get it all done. I manage my time.

So when we hear quotes like ‘We all have the same 24 hours in a day’ it makes me cringe. We absolutely do not. The container – those 24 hours – may be the same. the contents most definitely are not. I have friends, colleagues, family, who have far more things they need to attend to in life. I have some with less.

I went on the hunt when I started preparing what I was going to say on this subject. I hit Google and found an article – the 15 best books ever on time management, as rated by entrepreneur.com. I’ll pop ten of them below – let’s see if you spot what I noticed?

Yep, 9 out of those 10 were written by men. All firstly established within their industry, all with a decent financial background, and all with very different lives no doubt to you and I.

And this seems to be where we keep getting unstuck. We are taught by people with different commitments to us, different challenges, different ways of thinking and working, even totally different hormone and energy cycles, how we should be performing.

What and how we need to be to hit the optimum productivity target.

But how are we supposed to reciprocate that?

How are we supposed to work to maximum efficiency by ignoring our own needs and strengths and challenges?

We are gradually learning that success looks vastly different to all of us – and so surely our ways of getting there are also going to be?

I could write about this subject for an age – and in fact I recorded my presentation in to a video so I’ll link that below juts in case you’r interested – but essentially, it’s time we abandoned this ‘cookie-cutter’ approach to what productivity means and how to achieve it.

That being said, I do think it’s super useful to share strategies we do find – so I’m going to pop a few things that work best for me below in case they help.

1 – Alarms! My Alexa is probably my most-used tool. I only set it for short bursts – 20 minutes at a time. Two things then happen. I have either plunged myself in to a state of hyper focus and so I work through the alarm and crack on, job done. Or the intended outcome – I stop for a short break. I spend five minutes scrolling, or making a cuppa, chatting to someone, playing a game on my phone – just something that lets me zone out and then jump back in to it.

2 – Rewards! I have a nice little array off them – a break, a cuppa, a sweet treat – or sometimes it’s allowing myself to move on to a creative task or something else that I’m excited for!

3 – Strategic prioritisation! The difficult or the mundane comes first. I set my alarm, I crack on, I use the rear to get me there. I don’t get to do the stuff that lights me up until I’ve done the greyer bits that need crossing off my list.

4 – The Art of the brain dump! This is integral to getting stuff done. I try and do it the night before any time I’m going to work but starting the session with it works at a push. Pen to paper and letting it all flow out – don’t filter it at this point, just let everything in your head that you want or need to get done flow out. The filtering can come later.

5 – Post Its and a Whiteboard! These work perfectly for me due to my sight – you can go smaller with a notepad if you want. Those things that flowed out in the brain dump head over to Post Its, with the ones that don’t need doing or don’t fit in to my goal not making it. They then go on to my whiteboard. I don’t like scheduling things in for set times – that feels like too much of a demand. so I have them all there and can grab them off as and when I can – I also keep a photo of this on my phone so if I’m out and about and want to crack on, I can refer back there!

There are so many more I can share – but this will go on forever! I’ll pop them on my social media over the next few weeks – but what would you add? Let me know in the comments!

want to check out the video I mentioned? Find it below!