How I Have Time For Everything

You already have enough time. You just need to know what to do with it.

People ask me all the time, "How do you have time for everything?"

It’s a fair question. Last year, I quit my job as a Principal Engineer at Amazon to make content full-time. Since then, on top of my regular YouTube videos and this newsletter, I’ve finished writing a book and just launched a new podcast. I started a business and shuttered it and grew an existing business. I’m also married, have two toddlers, two dogs, and I still make time for vacations and my hobbies.

I’m a recovering productivity junkie, and I’ve come to learn that there isn’t a secret method that unlocks more hours in the day. The truth is, most of what we call "time management" or “productivity systems” is a trap.

The solution isn't a new app or a more complex scheduling system. I know because I’ve tried them all.

If you were suddenly transported back to high school, time management would not be an issue. Why? Because you’d know exactly what’s important and what’s not. That clarity makes every decision about how to spend your time incredibly easy.

The problem is that our adult lives are filled with a thousand competing priorities, and everything feels important. The key to feeling like you have time for everything is to regain that high school-level clarity.

If we could invent a new weekday, let's call it "Steveday," and add it to the calendar, most people would just fill it with more meetings and low-value tasks. By the time the real Monday rolled around, they'd still feel behind. For many people, an extra Steveweek wouldn’t even help. The problem isn't a shortage of hours in the day, it’s how you use what you already have.

It’s about knowing what’s important, and what’s not.

Here’s the simple, three-step framework I use to do just that.

1. You Can Say "No" to Many More Things Than You Think

When the pandemic started, I was working in Live Sports for Prime Video at Amazon, which ground to a halt at the end of 2020. I suddenly had a ton of free bandwidth, so I started my YouTube channel. The next year, as my videos started to get traction, my workload at Amazon also ramped back up.

I was faced with a choice: give up the YouTube channel or find a new way to work.

I decided to run an experiment. I made a commitment to do the absolute minimum possible at my day job to get an "Exceeds" performance rating. I identified the few projects that truly mattered for my role, and I did them at the highest possible quality, as quickly as possible.

Everything else, I said no to. I stopped interviewing, which was a passion of mine. I declined meetings. I ignored low-priority emails. I stopped doing the "optional" work that I “should” be doing.

This was incredibly hard for me. As a recovering people-pleaser, my default setting is to say "yes." I want to be helpful, I want to be a team player, and I hate the feeling of letting someone down. Saying "no" felt like a betrayal of that identity.

The result? For my last three years at Amazon, I received a Top Tier rating—the highest possible—while working significantly less "wall clock" time.

I could not believe this outcome.

There is an amazing corporate psyop that makes us feel like everything we're doing is strictly necessary.

I had an endless stream of TPMs and product managers telling me that for their meetings, “attendance is mandatory.” It turns out that’s not true. I started using my manager as a shield. In our 1-on-1s, we would double-click on my top 1-3 highest priority things. Whenever one of the “attendance is mandatory” people came to me, I told them to go talk to my manager to get clarification on my priorities. I suppose I was lucky because my manager was a VP, but the principle is the same.

If you are aligned with your manager you can’t get “in trouble” with partners or stakeholders.

You have a choice. Don't get railroaded by the culture of busyness.

Actionable Advice For the upcoming workweek, do a "Time Audit." At the end of each day, map where you spent your time to your 1-3 core priorities. If an activity doesn't map to one of your priorities, you've identified something you can likely say "no" to. This audit will give you the data you need to separate the essential work from the noise.

2. The Strategic Value of Slack

After you’ve said "no" to the non-essential, you will discover something amazing: empty space on your calendar. Your first instinct will be to fill it. This is a trap.

I think of free time like my bank account balance. On the first of the month when you get paid your balance increases by a large amount. But you have to pay for housing, food, and your bills. Most of that money is spoken for. You should not increase your spending just because the number is larger when you get paid.

That empty time on your calendar from saying no, that "slack," does not mean you have bandwidth to do more. Slack is a sign of effective prioritization. It is the reward for your focus.

Slack is what gives you the bandwidth to think, to be creative, and to respond to unexpected opportunities. A schedule that is packed from 9 to 5 is a schedule that is fragile. It has no room for a crisis, a brilliant idea, a high-leverage conversation, or deep thought.

When people talk about productivity, or strength training, or even breathing, they focus on the thing. Deep work blocks, your exercise protocol, or breathing in. What they neglect is the negative space. After intense focus you need to turn off. After a workout that kicks your butt you need to recover. After you breathe in you need to breathe out.

The culture of busyness tells us that a full calendar is a symbol of importance but it’s only one side of the picture.

Being a salaried, full-time employee has distorted our sense of what "work" means. You are not paid to be "busy" for 40 hours a week. You are paid to solve problems and add value. If you can solve those problems and add that value more effectively with 20 hours of intense focus and 20 hours of recharging, that is a better outcome than 40 hours of pseudo-work spent in pointless meetings, psychotically checking email, or responding to every out-of-band request on Slack.

Actionable Advice Schedule your slack. Just as you schedule your workouts, you must schedule your recovery. Open your calendar for next week and block out two "Thinking Time" sessions. Label them clearly.

When the time comes, your only job is to not do your primary work. Go for a walk. Stare out the window. Read a book that has nothing to do with your job. This isn't unproductive; it's the necessary exhale that makes your next inhale more powerful. You know you’ve exhaled successfully when you start craving the work again.

3. The Art of Sequential Focus

Sometimes, you can't say no. You've already committed. The work is important, and it all needs to get done. You should have said no, you’ve learned your lesson for next time, but now it’s fait accompli. This is the moment when the feeling of being overwhelmed is most acute.

I just came back from an extended vacation, and my workload was highly compressed on both ends. When I got back last week, I had a terrible feeling. I looked at my list and saw ten high-priority, significant items. I had already said yes to them. I was committed.

My first instinct was to do everything at once, to work scattershot, chipping away at all ten things simultaneously. But I knew that was a trap. So I told myself something simple: Doing ten things means doing one thing at a time, ten times.

I picked one task, and I committed to finishing it completely. In the middle of it I had a couple of spare hours while I waited for a reply, but I resisted the urge to start on the next thing. I used that time to recharge and motivate myself to finish off the first item.

When it was done, my list of ten things became a list of nine things. That small victory gave me a hit of momentum. I picked the next one. Nine became eight.

I got back last week, and as I write this, that list is down to four. There's still a ton of work left, but the feeling of dread is gone. I'm motivated because I can see the finish line. But the day I came back from vacation, I couldn't.

Actionable Advice The next time you feel completely overwhelmed by a long list of important tasks, perform a "reset."

1. Write down every single item that is causing you stress.

2. Acknowledge that you cannot do them all at once.

3. Pick one. Not the easiest one, but the one that, if you finish it, will give you the biggest sense of relief or momentum.

4. Commit to finishing that single task to completion. Do not start another task until that one is done.

5. Cross it off the list. Physically. Then, and only then, pick the next one.

6. Resist the urge to start anything else, even if slack pops up.

Conclusion

This simple framework has never let me down. It not only made me more effective in my corporate life, but it also opened up a world of opportunity now that I've left.

I still fall into the trap of saying yes to too many things. But I know now, even if there are a million things on my plate, that to breathe you need to breathe in AND out.

Giving away your slack time will counter-intuitively make you move slower. Saying no, having singular focus, and baking in recovery time exponentially increases your effectiveness.

So, how do I have time for everything?

My "everything" consists of a very small number of things that I care about deeply.

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