Episode 1079 · Jan 29, 2025

How to Get More Time in Your Day

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Feel like your day slips away before you accomplish what matters most? You are not alone. In this episode of The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III gets practical about one of the most common challenges he sees when consulting and mentoring entrepreneurs and business owners: finding the time to work on the things that actually move the needle. The answer is not about discovering hidden hours. It is about treating the hours you already have as the valuable asset they are.

Why Time Is Your Greatest Asset

Before any tactics or tools, George draws attention to a mindset shift that makes everything else possible.

Your time is your greatest asset. It's your greatest asset.

Time is the great equalizer. Every person, regardless of income or status, receives exactly the same 24 hours. When you do not consciously assign value to your time, it disappears the same way money does when you have no budget. You may be busy all day and still end up wondering what you actually accomplished. That pattern produces regret, and it keeps your goals permanently out of reach.

How to Budget Your Time Like Money

George draws a direct parallel between financial budgeting and time management. Just as untracked spending drains a bank account, untracked time drains your days. The fix is the same: awareness followed by intention.

Start by looking at where your time actually goes. Writing it out can feel unnecessary, but as George notes, when you do it, it is an eye-opener. Once you see the reality of how your time is spent, you can make deliberate decisions about what deserves your attention and what does not.

What It Means to Be Intentional with Your Time

Being intentional means making specific decisions in advance about when, where, and on what you will spend your time. George is direct: most people do not do this. They wake up and respond to whatever the day throws at them, which guarantees they will never break free from the cycle of busyness without progress.

He speaks from experience:

My free time and flexible time is a result of managing my time, working hard and creating a return of more time.

Flexible time is not luck. It is the compounding return on consistently intentional choices. George also credits resourcefulness as the real multiplier. As he references from Tony Robbins, productivity comes down to two things: resources like time and money, and resourcefulness, your ability to create the desire and drive for change. Develop more resourcefulness and you will find more of both.

Practical Strategies for Getting More Done

George shares a set of concrete actions you can start applying immediately.

Set clear goals. Goals are the benchmarks you schedule your time around. Without them, you have no anchor for your priorities.

Use a planner or calendar. Whether it is a physical planner or Google Calendar, tracking your time is as essential as tracking your spending. If your time is not on the calendar, it is getting spent without your permission.

Start with the big rocks. Begin every day and week by identifying what matters most, then schedule those activities first. Let everything else fill in around them.

Set time limits. Enter every meeting and task with a defined end time. Open-ended commitments expand to fill whatever space you give them.

Take intentional breaks. Grinding through the day is not the same as being productive. Break your work into focused blocks with brief resets in between. Brendon Burchard teaches this well: before starting any new task, set a clear intention for what you want to accomplish in that block. That single habit can cut your completion time dramatically.

Delegate or eliminate. George's partner Robert Stuberg makes it a personal goal each year to identify at least one task to delegate or remove from his life entirely. Accounting, landscaping, cleaning: anything that someone else can handle frees your time for higher-value work that only you can do.

Plan your week in advance. Successful people do not wake up wondering what to do. Their week is already mapped out because their goals require it. If you cannot answer what you need to work on this week, you either do not have clear goals or you have not prioritized your time.

How Your Morning Routine Shapes Your Entire Day

George closes with habits that protect the most valuable part of your day: the beginning and the end.

Do not pick up your phone within the first 30 to 60 minutes of waking. Starting the day by scrolling puts your brain into reactive mode, making it harder to be proactive for the rest of the morning. For the same reason, hold off on checking email until you have completed your most important work. Reactive tasks should follow productive ones, not precede them.

Also monitor your actual phone and app usage. The settings on your phone will show you exactly how many minutes and hours you spend on social media and apps each day. Most people are surprised by the number.

Finally, build an evening ritual before bed. Quality sleep directly affects your productivity the next day. Protecting your sleep is part of protecting your time.

Action Steps

Write down where your time actually goes this week, by the hour, and identify your biggest time drains.
Block your top three priorities into your calendar before anything else gets scheduled.
Set a hard end time for every meeting and task before it starts.
Identify one recurring task to delegate or eliminate from your life this month.
Stop checking your phone for the first 30 to 60 minutes after waking up.

If you treat your time as your greatest asset, it will begin to behave like one.

If you'll begin to become more aware of your time and you'll treat it like an asset, you will absolutely grow and grow and grow your time, your active income, your passive income, your relationships, your business, your productivity, everything will increase.

That is George Wright III's promise, and it is backed by everything in this episode. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live. Start with your next hour.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III. I am your host, and today we are going to get really practical. I want to give you some tips and strategies on how to get more time in your day. These are going to be ways for you to become more productive. So here's what I was thinking the other day, because I've heard this comment a lot. have you ever felt overwhelmed with your day have you just felt like maybe the day got away from you you were just extremely busy you know maybe you felt like i have no idea where my day went you know i was running errands i was working in my business and responding to this and that and the kids and business and relationships and you know time just passes away really quickly have you noticed how quickly the year has gone by have you noticed how quickly time's passing lately well you know most importantly do you ever feel like time has passed and you didn't even realize where it went and or more importantly you feel like you didn't really get anything accomplished or you didn't accomplish at least your goals the things that were the most important to you well I think we've all felt this way I know I certainly have and it's part of just navigating this busy crazy fast-paced life but today I want to talk to you a little bit about how to become more productive and intentional with your time. Because when I consult and mentor, and I've got several companies and individuals I've mentored with, it always comes up that one of their biggest obstacles holding them back from their goals is their time management or their ability to find the time to work on the things that's important. And admittedly, this is one of the biggest challenges that people have. So today, let's talk about this because if you're going to go through life and continue the pattern of looking back, wondering where your time went, you're going to be filled with a lot of regret. You're just going to, you're going to not achieve your goals, your dreams, and your desires, and you're going to be constantly looking back rather than looking forward. So first and foremost, you need to realize, and this is the thing I want you to really listen to for a minute. You've got to realize, and you've got to believe, and you've got to accept that your time is your greatest asset. It's your greatest asset. I know we're focused on money and things and business and relationships, but time truly is your greatest asset because it's the greatest equalizer. Think about it for a minute. We all receive the same amount of time. Whether you believe it or not, you do control where you spend your time. You can waste it, you can spend it, or you can let it slip by, or you can choose to invest it in things that will create value and reward for you. You can invest your time to build relationships, to create an amazing business, to increase your active and your passive income, or even dedicate your time for service or philanthropy or to give back to those that you care about and so many other ideas, right? But you do control your time whether you believe it or not Now until you realize and accept and decide that it has value you not truly going to prioritize that You not going to value your time And so you never really spend it wisely. So that's why I wanted to start by really identifying the fact that you have to create that value in your mind for your time. Now, you've got to learn to budget your time, just like any other asset. You've heard me say this before, that what you focus on grows, It's what you focus on, you're going to attract more of into your life. And when you don't value your time, it gets wasted. It gets spent. It disappears. And you can seem, you know, at the end of the day, you just can't seem to figure out where it went. So just like your paycheck or the money that's been disappearing out of your bank account and you end up with more month at the end of the money, you know, you've got to learn to track and budget your time. Now, I joke and your budget's a whole other conversation for another day. But for now, let's just do this. Let's learn to prioritize and value and track our time. Because when you accept that time is your most valued asset and you treat it like an asset, it's going to begin to build in your life. You're going to build more wealth when you focus on wealth. So the second thing I want to say is that you have to be intentional with your time. You need to make specific intentional decisions with when and where and what you're going to spend your time on. It sounds simple, but most people don't do it. You need to protect your time like it's your last few dollars in your bank account. You have to ask yourself, how am I going to spend my time today to create the best return on my best life? So let's pause for a minute and let's think about this because I know what some of you are thinking. You're like, George, you know, it's easy for you to say because you have your own business. You get to wake up and work out whenever you like and you make your own schedule. And this is true, but it's not always been that way. You see, people think that the truth is that I have free time and flexible time and that's just a benefit, but that's actually a result. So listen to what I'm saying for a minute. My free time and flexible time is a result of managing my time, working hard and creating a return of more time. Sometimes the best return you can get on your time is more time. This comes from working hard specifically. specifically more importantly it comes from being intentional with where you're spending your time and you can't just spend your time haphazardly every day responding to the whims of life and think you're gonna you know you're gonna free yourself up that just never happens you're never gonna just somehow randomly free yourself up life is a trap it buries you in the mediocrity of being average in your existence and it takes advantage of you your mind and your time take advantage of you if you let them. So you have to break out of the pattern that you're in. You have to break out of the thinking pattern that I don't have enough time because that's what's gotten you in this situation in the first place. Stop thinking that way. You can totally change things about your day. You have 24 hours a day. You probably sleep a third of that time anyway, or maybe you don't sleep and that's the problem as well. But Tony Robbins has been quoted as saying that everything in life and productivity comes down to two things. Number one, resources like your time and money. And number two resourcefulness which is your ability to you know create change or desire or motivate yourself for change And ultimately it really only boils down to resourcefulness Because if you become more resourceful you'll find more time and money. You will. I believe that. So your ability to be resourceful and specific and have specific intent with your time is the answer. Besides, what have you got to lose right now? You know, it's time to start making some changes and get your time back and start living your best life, right? So let me give you some tips on how you can create more productivity and time in your day. And hopefully these are some things that may even jog your memory or jog some ideas for you because you've heard some of these things before, but I want you to really assess your life. The best way to figure out how to manage your time better and get more time is to actually look at your time. I've had people tell me over the years, you know, write out what you're doing. And sometimes, you know, I felt, ah, that's kind of dumb. But you know, when I've done it, it's been an eye-opener. So let me give you some ideas and things you can change right now. Number one, you got to set goals. You have to set goals because that's the milestone and benchmark you schedule your time around. Number two, you've got to schedule your time. You have to have a planner. If you don't have some kind of a planner, Google calendar, schedule or something, then your time is getting spent. It's like not tracking your budget. You know when money just goes in and out you don't have any idea where it's going how you can ever do anything with it how are you ever going to make it better a planner or a schedule is a way for you to track your time next thing you got to do is prioritize your activities always start your day and week by starting with the big rocks start with the things that are the most important and then let everything else fill in and don't negotiate those times create boundaries and barriers and then another thing is set time limits don't go into meetings or events or things and just let them drag on to whatever you want them to be. Set a time limit ahead of time on what you're going to be doing. Another suggestion is take breaks in between. One of the best ways to be productive is not to just grind through your day. Split the tasks and priorities up and then in between take some breaks. What this will do is this allow you to also, I was going to suggest, when you start a new task, reset your intention. Brendan Bouchard talks about this. He does a masterful job of this because he says every time you start an activity, you can just kind of go through that activity and be somewhat productive or you can be intentional. You have to set your intention. My goal with my time is to do this and you'll get it done in a tenth of the time. You'll save yourself so much time if instead of going into work and sitting on the phone for eight hours, you go in for two hours, bang it out, get more done, you'll be more productive. Another suggestion is to get organized. Sometimes when you organize other areas of your life, your time seems to free up as well. It's that overwhelm and that clutter and that complexity of your life that's keeping you from being more streamlined. Now, one of my partners, Robert Stuburg, likes to say every year he makes a goal. A lot of us try to come up with new ideas. His goal is to delegate or eliminate something in his life. There always ways to delegate or eliminate things you doing There might be things other people are doing I mean it might sound simple like you know taking care of your accounting which I outsourced taking care of your landscaping which I outsourced taking care of your cleaning which I outsourced because my time is worth more. So delegate or eliminate tasks that don't serve your purpose, that don't serve your goals. Be intentional. Prioritize things that match your vision. If that's not taking you in the direction of your vision, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, whether that's your family, friends, relationships, business, health, fitness, mindset, whatever it is. And most importantly, I want to just suggest plan your schedule in advance. Successful people don't wake up in the morning and say, what am I going to do today? Successful people already know what they're doing. That's why you can't get an appointment with them for about a week because they've already planned their week out. If you have goals and you have vision, then you should already know what you need to be working on for the entire week. And if you don't, then you don't have goals and vision or you haven't planned or prioritized your day. Those are the things that I want to suggest you start doing. Now, here's some obvious ones. Number one, don't wake up and check your phone. I'm not going to go into all the details, but give yourself 30 to 60 minutes before you check your phone because what you're doing is you're literally wiring your brain. Your neuroplasticity in your brain is getting you addicted to responsive mode rather than proactive mode. You've got to stop checking your phone. Number two, don't check your email. There again, you're just being reactive, not proactive. Check your email afternoon when you know you've gotten the most important things done. Another thing I would suggest to you is monitor your phone time, social media and apps and things like that. All you got to do is go to the settings of your phone. It'll tell you how much you're on your phone. It'll blow your mind how much time you're wasting every day looking at this app or that app or social media or whatever, whatever. Email, text, whatever it is. Check your phone and monitor your time. Know where you're spending your time. and another thing is take time before you go to bed. Now there are some things that may not sound productive but when you take and block out a little bit of time for your evening rituals before you go to sleep you're going to sleep your 6 hours, 7 hours, 8 hours much better. It's going to be much more productive. Sleep is something you need to be productive with as well because it affects everything else in your day. So those are some additional suggestions I have. Now these are all ways that you can create a better return on your time. They're going to lead you to more productivity in your life and as an added bonus, you're going to start managing your time better. You're going to get tons more benefits in life and quality of life. Look, it reduces stress. You get more time. You have more opportunities. Your health gets better. You have ability to recognize and realize your goals. And there's so many more benefits to time management than simply being productive. So I hope these are ideas and strategies that will motivate you, inspire you to value your time. Because if you'll begin to become more aware of your time and you'll treat it like an asset, you will absolutely grow and grow and grow your time your active income your passive income your relationships your business your productivity everything will increase that's my message for today thanks for listening i appreciate you i hope you'll share this with other people that you feel it might help help us spread the message my name is george wright the third and this has been the daily mastermind have a great day Thank you.

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About the host

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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