Routinely friends, family, and associates tell me about their goals. They say:

• I want to get my master’s
• I want to make at least $100,000 a year in my corporate job
• I want to open my own business
• I want to manage my own retirement account
• I want to own a home and stay on top of required maintenance
• I want to work out and eat right consistently
• I want to get married and have a family with 2 – 4 kids along with a dog named Toby
• I want to attend church services 3 times a week
• I want to travel and vacation 4 times a year

But after going through the laundry list of things they want to do, they say, “But John, I don’t have enough time to do everything. I just can’t do it all.”

But what if you could do everything? What if you could have the career, the business, the body, the family, the church membership, the vacation, the recreation, and the social life?

Below I will provide some actionable tips for having it all, or more specifically, how to develop strategic time management to be able to “check off” the various items that you want to accomplish in your life and not allow the excuse of “lack of time” to deter you from your destiny.

Strategic Time Management

Strategic time management is all about listing out all of the major objectives that you need to complete for the year, then breaking them down into objectives for the quarter, month, week, and day. From there, you would create unique schedules for each section (such as per day) to make sure you are completing everything piece-by-piece.

Annual Objectives

So let’s say the following list is someone’s annual objectives in relation to an attempt to “do it all”:

• Work 50 hours per week in corporate job
• Finish master’s degree
• Workout 3 times a week
• Maintain household of a spouse with two kids
• Startup side consulting business
• Start building business credit in the name of the business
• Attend church services 2 times per week
• Do 4 vacations for the year
• Manage retirement portfolio
• Do house maintenance work
• Quarterly/Weekly/Daily Objectives

Here’s an example of how the 1st Quarter would look:

• Work Related: List out major performance objectives here
• Enroll in master’s degree program
• Sign up for gym membership to attend every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday
• Begin (insert chosen diet plan here)
• Make sure babysitter is in place to pick up kids from school at 4:00. Drop the kids off at 7:00 a.m. every morning,  and set a schedule with your spouse to make sure the house is stocked and maintained
• Outline the business plan for the side consulting business, establish relationships with vendors and get a business credit card
• Make sure to attend church services every Wednesday and Sunday
• Make plans for the first vacation of the year in March
• Log into www.Vanguard.com and rebalance Stock/Bond portfolio

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From there, you would create individual monthly listings for January, February, and March. Then you would break out the monthly listings to weekly listings, then the weekly listings to daily listings.

8,736 Hours in a Year

Give or take, there’s about 8,736 hours in a year.

Using the strategic time management schedule, you want to position everything within the quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily objectives to complete over the year using the 8,736 hours that you have available. With this strategic mapping procedure, you will notice that give or take, you should be able to “do it all”, or at least complete the major objectives of life. Per the example above, this includes:

• Have a great career and even a side business
• Have a great family and social life
• Have a great spiritual/church life
• Maintain a healthy workout/diet schedule
• Maintain your various assets including retirement and property

Maslow’s Self Actualization Of Needs

Managing all of these aspects will allow you to achieve Maslow’s Self Actualization Of Needs, which includes your basic needs, psychological needs, and self-fulfillment needs. This is why “doing it all” is an important aspect of life, because it allows you reach self-actualization, which is the closest to reaching the concept of “happiness” that’s mentioned in our Declaration of Independence.