It’s hard to believe, but my precious little girls are growing so quickly. And that means some glorious time has started to open up in my schedule.

They are sleeping through the night more often and happily putting themselves to sleep, which has opened up about 10-15 hours a week.

With the extra time I have right now, I’ve felt like superwoman in terms of my ability to knock out so much more each day and each week.

But I noticed an interesting phenomenon in myself. With the increased time, I started to want to make my daily plan longer and longer. That lead to me feeling behind instead of accomplished.

I quickly recalibrated to putting down just what I needed to do with a few extra things I wanted to do. I had to accept the reality that even with more time, I still can’t do everything.

Now I feel great about the new openness in my schedule.

How about you? When you have more time to get things done, do you overfill it, and overwhelm yourself?

If so, pull back and remind yourself that it really is OK to complete everything on your to-do list. You don’t have to pile on more and more tasks when you have more margin.

And if you are struggling to find the balance on your to-do list, I am here to help. Feel free to set up a time to connect with me here: Consultation Schedule

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post How to Manage Your To-Do List appeared first on Real Life E®.

Sometimes you don’t just want a new job, you want a radical career change. Perhaps you’ve been in finance and now want to be an acupuncturist, you’re a marketer eager to lead a startup, or you’re an educator looking to shift into catering and event planning.

In these situations, it’s going to take more than listening to a few webinars to build the knowledge or experience you need get to where you want to go. You must set aside a significant amount of time for self-directed learning, formal training, or even a second job to gain the skills for the big leap.

This is not easy, but it is possible.

In my experience as a time management coach, I’ve found these strategies to be the most effective for consistently making time for acquiring brand-new career skills.

Accept the Time Commitment

At the onset, it’s important to recognize that between taking care of your personal life, your main job, and this specific skill-building work, you likely won’t have time for much else. For a major career change to work, you need to be willing to cut back in other areas. That may look like limiting optional items like keeping up on your favorite TV shows, going to happy hours and concerts, and volunteering. And at times, you may need to scale back on essential activities. For example, maybe you can still go for runs, but training for a marathon is out of the picture. Perhaps you can still get an acceptable amount of sleep at night throughout the week, but sleeping in on the weekends is no longer in the cards. Or maybe you make sure to have quality time with your family every day, but need to go to class or work on learning once the kids are in bed.

I don’t recommend that you sacrifice your health or most important relationships to make this change work. But you do need to commit a significant amount of time if you plan to leave your current career.

Pick Your Focus

If you’ve decided you really are serious about making a huge career shift and you’ve set aside the time, you need to then research what’s required for your new field. That could be an education program that sets you up for formal licensing or certification, or it could be more independent learning or side hustle work.

Before you put in a lot of time, make sure you know where that time counts. If you must do a formal program to legally practice in your new profession, put your extra time into the prerequisite courses and applications and then, once you’re accepted, the required coursework. Don’t spend lots of time on self-directed learning where you’re not getting credit for what you’re doing. The opposite is true if a formal program isn’t necessary. You might be significantly delaying your success by going back to school, when you could be taking advantage of other ways to acquire skills and gain experience already at your fingertips.

Layer in Learning

One of the best ways to find time for independent learning is by layering it onto activities that you’re already doing throughout your day. For example, if you need to listen to course material, do that while walking or driving to work. If you need to read, do it during a commute if you take public transportation or use an app on your phone that will read the text to you while you’re walking or driving. (Using voice reading apps, such as Talk and Text to Speech!, is the primary way that I get through long pdfs.)

If you tend to revert to reading or watching things on your phone during downtimes, like when you’re waiting at a doctor’s office or during a child’s soccer practice, use that time to work through your learning material instead. Every little bit counts towards the career change you desire.

Continue reading on Harvard Business Review how to designate time and modify your current work schedule to make this goal a reality.

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post A Realistic Guide to a Radical Career Change appeared first on Real Life E®.

I recently had a day that should have been pure productivity bliss turn surprisingly stressful.

Upon reflection, I realized I had made a common time management error. I thought I would share in case it could help as a useful reminder for you.

Here’s what happened…

Recently, I had a day with fewer coaching calls than usual, and I was so excited to knock a bunch of projects off my list.

Typically, I savor these days and don’t find them stressful at all. But this particular day, I started later than I would prefer because of a lot of morning construction traffic on the way to dropping off my daughter.

I should have just readjusted my daily plan based on the hard fact that I started after my normal start time.

But I didn’t and told myself maybe if I just tried really hard and was super focused that somehow my work would take less time than it usually does.

This strategy didn’t serve me and instead of feeling relaxed during this relatively open day, I felt extremely pressured that morning trying to race to “catch up.”

In the afternoon, I stepped back from the situation and realized where I went wrong.

It wasn’t planning or time boxing that caused this stressful day, but the unrealistic expectation that I could keep to the same plan when I lost time on my commute.

Can you relate? Are there times you hope that you can stick to the same plan even when plans change?

If so, step back, take a deep breath and re-evaluate the situation.

Staying in touch with reality leads to peace because reality always wins.

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post A Strangely Stressful Day appeared first on Real Life E®.

One part of you feels like you really long for something more for yourself, your life, and those you care about in the coming year.

But the other part of you just doesn’t know if change is possible because you’ve tried before and failed–again and again. You don’t want to set up expectations for yourself, not meet them and then just feel worse.

If you feel this way, you’re not alone.

It’s vulnerable to try..

To want…

To dare to dream.

But it’s worth it.

If you find yourself tied up in knots even thinking about resolutions, here are a few ways to move forward:

Write all your thoughts and feelings down

Writing out what you’re thinking and feeling can help you sort out the tangled mess in your brain.

Acknowledging what went well in 2025 as well as your disappointments, failures and hurts can bring you to a place of acceptance. It can also help you learn from the past to chart a path forward.

Start small

If it feels too overwhelming to make goals for the year, start with a quarter, a month, a week or even a day.

Recovery programs focus on the idea of living “one day at a time” because the idea of staying sober for years is overwhelming when your past experience tells you that’s impossible.

A similar principle can apply to time management where you focus on going to bed or making a daily plan or staying off your phone one day at a time.

Get help

When I am struggling to move forward in an area where I’m not as comfortable or familiar and particularly where I have any emotions of anxiety, guilt, confusion or shame involved, I get help.

We aren’t meant to walk through life alone. That help could be through a friend, family member, mentor or coach.

If you would like my help to finally making lasting changes, I would be honored to partner with you on the journey.

The first step is to set up a time for a conversation with me here: Consultation Schedule

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post Nervous to Make a Resolution? appeared first on Real Life E®.

In an instant, the miracle of you began in your mother’s womb. 

At six weeks, your tender little heart was beating. And at 10 weeks, your beautiful little feet and 10 precious little toes were fully formed.

At 20 weeks, all of the parts of your body, including your organs, were formed and could be measured. 

Just a few weeks after that, you have the opportunity to live a full and happy life, even if you were born prematurely.

You always have been and always will be worthy of the most tender care and unconditional love from the instant you were created until now. 

This Christmas, I want you to know that you matter and how you were created is perfect, special and wonderful. You make a positive impact in the world just by being you. Your life is a priceless gift to the world.

You don’t matter because you cook the perfect meal.

Because you buy the best presents.

Because you get your cards postmarked before Christmas.

Because you have a family or lots of friends.

You matter simply because you are.

I pray this Christmas season that you will realize what a gift you are to the world and cherish those around you as gifts.

My heart’s desire is that you will also step away from the busyness of action and mental activity to stop and savor this time, reflecting on the prior year and looking ahead to what’s to come. 

My favorite part of Christmas this year is simply looking at my daughter in the illumination of the Christmas tree lights. Her presence is the biggest gift I could receive.

And if you are a Christian, may your heart be full of gratitude for the precious gift of Jesus who came as a baby in order to give a life of peace, joy, and hope to us all. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from my family to you! 

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post You Are a Priceless Gift appeared first on Real Life E®.

You’ll also want to explore different systems until you find one that works well for you. No matter how elegantly they’re designed, tech tools don’t work for everyone. If you’ve tried apps and online calendars with no success, here are some of my favorite paper planners to try instead.

There’s no one right tool for everyone. If paper works best for you, use it!

Day Designer Planner

Best for: Daily structure & work–life balance Overview: A day-by-day planner focused on prioritization, with large daily pages. Each day has sections for your schedule, top three priorities, to-dos, gratitude, and notes. The layout helps you plan a full day in detail, while also helping your mindset by directing you towards gratitude.

Best Self Planner

Best for: Goal achievement & weekly reflection Overview: A structured planner combining daily pages with goal-setting frameworks. It helps you move forward on larger six-month goals with weekly check-ins and reflections. It also includes motivation prompts and accountability systems. This planner is an excellent choice for those who need a little more support in seeing their goals become reality.

Full Focus Planner

Best for: High achievers & quarterly planning Overview: Created by productivity author Michael Hyatt. It emphasizes quarterly goals, daily rituals, and weekly preview sessions. Uses a “Big 3” priorities model to keep you focused on what matters most. This format is an excellent choice for those who struggle to stay focused on their “must-do” items each day.

Passion Planner

Best for: Purpose-driven planning & reflection Overview: Combines scheduling with deep personal reflection. Offers space for long-term vision, monthly and weekly spreads, and “Passion Roadmap” sections to break down goals. With Passion Planner, creative minds gain the structure to effectively plan their time, with the space to also record ideas, and reflect on past projects and create a vision for the future.

Purpose Planner

Best for: Values-based life planning Overview: Helps you clarify purpose, break goals into weekly and daily tasks, set intentions, and build empowering habits. Often includes reflection pages to track alignment with your purpose. This planner is ideal for those being pulled in many directions. The reflection pages will help ensure that plans and commitments align with overall goals.

Bullet Journal

Best for: Customizable planning & creativity Overview: Not a pre-printed system — a method you create yourself in a blank notebook. You build calendars, trackers, lists, and notes using rapid logging. Infinite flexibility. If ready-made planners do not provide the flexibility you crave, then the bullet journal framework may be the system you’ve been looking for.

High Performance Planner

Best for: Productivity + well-being balance Overview: Developed by Brendon Burchard. Combines morning and evening routines with weekly planning questions, focus blocks, metrics tracking, and reflection prompts. This format will provide additional support in creating or maintaining habits to keep your days flowing smoothly.

Ponderlily Planner

Best for: Creative planning & lifestyle tracking Overview: Aesthetically appealing planners with layouts for life areas like health, finances, self-care, and goals. Includes habit trackers and motivational spreads.

Project Me Planner

Best for: Personal growth & self-reflection Overview: Focuses on goal setting, mindset, and intentional living. Combines daily planning with self-discovery prompts and prioritization tools. Often includes reflection and gratitude sections. This planner is a great fit for those who need a little support in stepping away from reactively responding to life’s needs, and instead foster a mindful approach to planning their time.

With 2026 just a few weeks away, now is the time to ensure you have the right tools to start the year off well. If you would like additional time management coaching support, I would be delighted to speak with you further.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. I recommend products I have personally vetted and believe will add value to you.

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post Popular Paper Planners appeared first on Real Life E®.

But lately, I’ve been trying to slow down a bit more and make sure I’m savoring the moments, especially with my young family. 

This shift was in part due to an email I recently received from a time management coaching client who I worked with nine years ago. 

It was a poignant reminder to not miss out on the good of the moment. 

With her permission, I’m sharing an anonymized version below….

“You are always such an inspiration, and I’ve been thinking of you and our past work often. I continue using the strategies I learned with you… I don’t remember the exact year we worked together, but it was about 10 years ago!

TIME – written large – has been at the center of my life over the last year and a half.

In May last year, my husband was diagnosed, out of the blue, with terminal cancer. At first I was told he had three months left. He fought really hard and bravely, and time expanded. He reacted so incredibly well to the therapy that we started believing, against reason, that he could make it. And even if he couldn’t, I kept saying that we wanted to get all the possible extra time – stolen time – that we could have with him and that my son, who was 11 when my husband was diagnosed, could have with his dad.

I took time off work as soon as he was diagnosed, because if he had a chance of either surviving or having a lot longer with us, it would have only happened if I was next to him all the time. And if he only had a few months left, I wanted to spend every possible moment with him. In March, my husband deteriorated sharply, and he died. When he realized he was about to pass away, his biggest sadness was for not seeing his son grow up, maybe get married, have children, and have a job.  

When he was diagnosed, the only regret I had was for the times when we did not fully enjoy life or each other because we were stressed or angry or upset about… I couldn’t even remember about what. The things that we allow to steal time – good time – from our life felt so ephemeral and insignificant. And at the same time, my husband and I really lived life to the full: we lived in different continents, we travelled, we had so many experiences, a wonderful child together… and that really helped accepting with no regrets that the end of our time together was coming.

When he was in hospital and about to die, a counsellor encouraged me to think hard about anything I really wanted to tell him before he passed, and I felt very fortunate because there was nothing. Nothing other than what I had told him already a million times and he knew already – how much I loved him and how lucky I had been to have him in my life.

I spent six more months at home before returning to work, which I did three weeks ago. Having this extra time together with my son made a world of difference to how we now feel, though the hard part is starting – the first few months felt surreal, the summer was nice, and now reality is hitting home, particularly for him, as he starts 8^th grade and as I have returned to work, and I am no longer around all the time.

Time is one of my most precious commodities right now. I am in a demanding job with enormous time pressures on my life.

One of the most important things I have to manage is arriving home early enough to not let work seep into my evenings and weekends and the little time I have with my son. I have to make sure I get enough sleep, and that I plan the week and the meals and everything in the most efficient way.

I have been thinking a lot – with gratitude – to the work we did together. About how time management is not just about techniques to get organized, but making space for what’s most important in our life.

I think often about how much I had regretted those times when work distracted me from my family, took time away from my son when he needed it, and I am determined not to do that again, as difficult as it will be.

I need to do a very difficult exercise over the next couple of months with my team to rationalize a portfolio that is currently too much – so that we can all manage without burning out and still feel good about the work we do. And I need to calibrate my life in such a way that allows me to maintain positive energies without becoming a snappy ball of stress. The number one priority is good time for me and for my son.

I went into a much longer ramble than I had intended… sorry. But I wanted to share my reflections about how the difficult time we have gone through really brought home the importance of spending time intentionally.

I now find myself thinking and telling people that we often fall into the trap of believing that we have a “credit” with life that we can cash “later.” That we work hard, and we will have “later” the time to enjoy the things we don’t find the time to enjoy now. And what a mistake that is. Not because we may die early, but because whether we die young or at 100, life is still short, and every moment is incredibly precious.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. If you’re struggling to be present to the good of the now, feel free to set up a time to connect with me here: Consultation Schedule

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post A touching story… appeared first on Real Life E®.

Motion

If you’re looking for a tool to structure your week around tasks + calendar time blocks, especially if you juggle multiple projects/clients/meetings, Motion is a great option. It automates a lot of the “when do I do this” decision and helps keep your week aligned with priorities rather than just reactive.

You can define preferred working hours, focus zones (when you don’t want meetings), and Motion will try to respect those and schedule tasks accordingly rather than letting meetings dominate the day. You get the week’s schedule laid out (your meetings + blocks for tasks) so you can see how your week slots together.

Focuster

If you’re someone who struggles with the “when will I actually do this task?” gap, or you often feel your calendar fills up with meetings and your real work gets squeezed, Focuster is the tool for helping you carve out time for your priorities each week.

You connect Focuster to your Google account/calendar, and it scans your free time slots and places your tasks into that open time. 

Reclaim.ai

For someone looking to structure their weekly planning around priorities — especially if you find your “real work” gets squeezed out — Reclaim.ai is an excellent choice. It helps turn your calendar into a more strategic asset rather than just a reactive list of meetings.

This tool is ideal for users who work mostly in very fluid/unstructured ways (e.g., creative work that resists time slots), or who prefer manual control over scheduling at every step, or who need heavy-duty project management features beyond scheduling and time-blocking.

SkedPal

If you’re looking for a tool to structure your week around tasks + calendar time blocks — especially if you have many commitments, meetings, or projects and want a system that helps you schedule your priorities automatically — then SkedPal is a strong candidate.

You capture tasks in an “Outline”, then define their deadlines/constraints, set priorities, and SkedPal automatically schedules them into your calendar.

TimeHero

Time Hero is the weekly planning tool for someone who juggles tasks and calendar events, often finds themselves unable to accomplish your “real work” (tasks) because of meetings, or you struggle to carve out dedicated time for tasks. Its strength is in turning tasks + calendar + priorities into a schedule rather than just a list.

To see all of my recommended tool and resources, including non-tech weekly planning, to improve your productivity, check out my Time Management Tools and Resources page.

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post Fiv Favorite AI-Integrated Weekly Planning Tools appeared first on Real Life E®.

If you would like to make the most of the last few weeks of 2025, here’s what I recommend you do now.

List Everything to be Done Before the End of the Year

Identify Your Must-Do Activities:

Make a list of all of the tasks you need to do, including:

• Thanksgiving, Christmas, and/or other holiday prep
• Travel plans
• Work deadlines
• Health appointments
• Finances wrap up

Identify Your Would-Like-To-Do Activities:

Make another list of tasks that you really hope to get done but don’t need to happen before January 1, such as:

• Home projects
• Social plans
• Optional work projects
• Optional holiday activities

Map Out the Must-Do Activities

Place the must-do activities that need to happen at a specific time directly in your calendar. For example, if you need to prep for out-of-town guests the Sunday before Thanksgiving, block that in now as a reminder.

Any must-do activities that will require a significant amount of time need to find a place in your calendar. For example, an activity that requires a whole Saturday goes in first. (If you’re struggling with having realistic expectations and knowing how to plan out your time, feel free to set up a time to connect with me here: Consultation Schedule)

With the rest of the must-do activities, you have a few options. You could break them down week-by-week now. Or if you find that too overwhelming, just pick a few that you want to work on in the coming week. Find spots for those in your calendar such as a Thursday evening or Saturday morning. Then do the same thing again next time you do weekly planning for the week after that.

Evaluate Your Would-Like-To-Do Projects

If your time is already pretty tight with your must-do projects, you won’t have a lot of time to do would-like-to-do projects before the end of the year. But it’s good to give yourself some space for things you just want to get done.

Each week, look at the list of would-like-to-do projects and see what could be possible. Some weeks, you might have very little time to move anything forward on this list.

But other weeks, you might be able to find a good chunk of time on the weekend or on a few evenings. For me, Sunday afternoons during my daughters’ naptimes tend to be the best for these kinds of activities like putting together our family Christmas card or listening to an interesting training.

Be Very Careful About What You Add

Once you’ve come up with these lists, be careful about what you add to them. Only write down the absolutely necessary items that pop up to the must-do in 2025 list. And even be careful about what you add to the would-like-to-do list.

If your list is already pretty long, you’re better off making a potential items for 2026 list than piling on ideas for the end of the year.

One of the big keys to fulfillment with what you do or don’t do is having realistic expectations of what can fit.

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

The post Finish 2025 with Intention and Focus appeared first on Real Life E®.

Life rarely perfectly follows a plan

But that doesn’t mean that you should just give up and not make a plan. It means that you should embrace a realistic expectation of what planning can and can not do for you:

Planning Can Not:

• Guarantee everything will go perfectly.
• Make all work fit within the desired estimates.
• Eliminate all unexpected obstacles.

Planning Can:

• Give you clarity on your priorities.
• Reassure you that you’re not forgetting anything.
• Allow you to get the most important things done on time.

The importance of realistic planning was re-emphasized for me in the completion of my book manuscript, which I turned in this summer. I would like to share a bit with you about this simple yet very powerful secret to dramatically reduce stress:

On Time is Late

I’m a realistic optimist in the sense that I think very positively but I plan very responsibly. A very simple, yet important principle that I’ve incorporated into my planning is the idea that “on time is late.”

This principle resulted from the fact that I used to plan to do things “on time,” yet then sometimes ended up super stressed out or slightly missing deadlines whenever something unexpected happened.

To solve that problem and reduce my anxiety, I started setting personal deadlines for myself before the actual deadlines. With short, rather predictable projects, that could look like simply making a goal to get things done the day before they’re due. But with larger, more complex projects, like my book, that means pushing myself to try to get everything done far in advance of when it is due.

For instance, I finished writing my manuscript two and a half weeks before my deadline so that I would have a few weeks to go back through and do the style edits and proofreading. And I’m so glad that I did! This is my first book writing project, and I vastly underestimated how long it would take me to do all of the fine tuning and tweaks. But because I gave myself extra time and a personal deadline before my “real” one, I had the time to do what needed to be done and even to delegate some of the work.

This one mental shift in your approach to planning could dramatically decrease your stress levels. Here are some ideas of how to apply the concept of “on time is late” in other areas of your life:

• Prepare for meetings the day before they happen, including reviewing notes, location, and any items you need to bring.
• Before you go to the grocery store, look out over the entire week to see if there are any gatherings like a BBQ or a birthday party that require some special food purchases.
• When you have a special event that requires a gift, like a wedding, put time into your calendar to shop for the gift on the next possible free weekend or evening. You want to avoid that last-minute panic at Bed Bath & Beyond just minutes before the bride walks down the aisle.
• If you have people working for you, delegate projects to them as soon as they come into your inbox instead of waiting until it’s too late to pass them off.
• Plan on finishing any large projects like presentations or creative projects at least a couple of days before they are actually due so you have a buffer and time to “sit” on them.
• If you need to leave the house at a certain time, get completely ready first and then work on optional activities.
• When you have a big trip, go through a checklist like this one at least a week before you leave.
• If it’s very important you arrive somewhere on time that’s very far away, try to arrive the night before. If it’s very important you arrive somewhere on time that’s near, give yourself at least a 30 minute buffer unless you’re in a big city in which you’ll want to plan even more time.

Aiming for early will play a dramatic role in helping you to achieve more success with less stress!

To your brilliance!

Elizabeth Grace

About Real Life E®

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and best-selling author who empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She helps people struggling with new levels of responsibility after receiving a promotion or becoming a parent, who aren’t meeting expectations at work, or who need better work-life balance to overcome burnout.

Elizabeth was named one of the World’s Top 30 Time Management Professionals by Global Gurus every year since 2018 and is a member of Forbes Coaches Council. McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. And FaithWords published her third book Divine Time Management. Elizabeth regularly writes time management articles for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.

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