3 Simple Systems That Buy You Back 10 Hours a Week

If you feel busy all the time but never actually caught up, I want to clear something up right away. This is not a motivation problem. It is not a discipline problem. And it is definitely not because you are bad at time management.

What I see over and over again is people trying to run their lives and businesses without anything in place to protect their time. So the day fills itself. Requests come in. Small decisions stack up. Everything feels urgent. And by the end of the week, you are exhausted but still behind.

That is not because you are doing something wrong. It is because time will always get spent unless you decide in advance how it is meant to be used.

This is why I focus on systems instead of productivity tricks. Systems take pressure off your brain. They remove unnecessary decisions. And they help you stop reacting to everything around you.

There are three systems in particular that make the biggest difference. None of them are complicated. And that is exactly why they work.

The First System Is Deciding Before the Week Starts

One of the biggest drains on your time is the number of decisions you are making all day long. What should I work on next. What matters most right now. What can wait. What do I need to respond to. What am I avoiding.

Even if you do not notice it, that constant decision making is exhausting. By the time you sit down to do the work that actually matters, your energy is already depleted.

This system is about deciding ahead of time what makes the week successful.

Not everything you could do.
Not everything that feels important.
Just the few things that actually move things forward.

When you decide that before the week begins, something shifts. You stop negotiating with yourself throughout the day. You stop letting whatever feels loudest steal your attention. You know what you are working toward, so it becomes easier to say no to everything else.

Your schedule does not magically open up. But your focus improves immediately. And that alone saves hours.

The Second System Is Getting Work Out of Your Head

Most people do not realize how much time they lose to mental clutter.

Trying to remember who you need to follow up with.
Keeping loose ends in the back of your mind.
Holding tasks in your head because you are afraid you will forget them.

That kind of mental load slows everything down. It makes it harder to start. It makes you second guess yourself. And it keeps you feeling scattered even when you are technically getting things done.

This system is about building simple structure so your brain does not have to be the storage unit for your entire life.

That might mean having one place where tasks live.
It might mean batching similar work together.
It might mean having consistent days for certain types of work.

The specific tool matters less than the result. When structure replaces memory, your brain finally has room to think. And when your brain is clear, work takes less time than you expect.

The Third System Is Being Intentional With Your Yes

This is the one that usually creates the most resistance.

The only way I have ever found to truly save time is by being very careful about what I say yes to. Every commitment you make has a cost. Meetings, follow ups, favors, side projects. None of them are neutral.

If you decide in the moment, almost everything feels reasonable. But when everything feels reasonable, your calendar fills up and your priorities quietly disappear.

The shift happens when you decide in advance what deserves access to your time.

When you already know what you are focused on this year or this quarter, saying no stops feeling personal. It becomes practical. You are not rejecting people. You are protecting what you already said yes to.

Most people think default yes is generous. In reality, it is expensive. Default no creates space for the right yeses instead of leaving you drained by all the wrong ones.

Why So Many To Do Lists Make Things Worse

A lot of people manage their time from what I call wish mode.

They notice how things are.
They wish things were different.
And then they write to do lists based on that wish.

A wish is wanting something to change. A goal is specific and time bound.

When your to do list is built on vague intention instead of clear direction, everything feels overwhelming. Nothing feels complete. And time gets spent on tasks that feel productive but do not actually move anything forward.

Once you connect your time to real goals, things get clearer. You start seeing what is necessary and what is just noise. And that leads to an uncomfortable but freeing realization. Some of what is draining you does not actually need to be there. It has just never been questioned.

What Actually Creates Time Freedom

These systems do not work because they are impressive. They work because they are practical.

They reduce the number of decisions you make during the day.
They keep work from living in your head.
They protect your priorities before the day starts pulling at them.

The time you get back does not come from a dramatic overhaul. It comes from fewer interruptions, less mental back and forth, and clearer boundaries. Once you experience that shift, it becomes obvious why working harder never fixed the problem.

You do not need more discipline.
You do not need longer days.

You need a way of working that supports how your brain actually functions.

When that happens, your week stops feeling chaotic. You stop reacting all day. And instead of feeling like you are barely keeping up, you start feeling like you are intentionally moving forward again.

That is what buying back time really looks like.

Chapter List:

00:00 Why Time Feels Scarce Even When You Work Constantly

02:11 The Real Reason You Feel Behind Is Not Lack of Discipline

05:04 System One Creating Clear Priorities That Eliminate Decision Fatigue

09:18 System Two Simplifying How You Manage Tasks and Commitments

13:42 System Three Protecting Your Time and Energy by Design

18:36 How These Systems Compound Into 10 Hours a Week

21:10 Building a Business That Works With You Instead of Against You

Full Transcript:

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

The only way I've found to be able to really save time is to be super careful about the yeses. Be very, very careful because every yes that you have for a to do, a commitment, a follow up, a follow through, a reconnection, that is saying no to other opportunities

Good morning. Today we are talking about systems and specifically three simple systems that buy you back like 10 hours a week. And I'm super excited about this topic.

Okay. So today we're talking about getting your time back because how often do you...

feel like your to-do list is just impossibly long. You you've got so much that you wanna do. And I know as a coach especially, we are building a life that we want, right? So, you know, it's not just that we're showing up to work. Yes, that is my sub cat. This is Sabine. All right, so Sabine is my money talk cat. So as we're talking about our evil plans to be more financially successful.

I like to bust out an evil cat as we're talking about it because a lot of people feel really guilty and like today guilty about money just sort of in general guilty about the desire for something better guilty about wanting to make a change guilty about wanting to You know set set things different than they are So, yes

I am all for cats because they're very low maintenance. And I will attest that a stuffed cat is no maintenance at all. So that's a good system. So anyway, today I wanted to walk you through actually three different systems that are designed to give you more time, more money and more sanity, especially as we're getting ready for 2026.

And by the way, you haven't already signed up for the planning extravaganza, make sure that you do. It is our annual planning party that we do on New Year's Eve and I've got a big party planned as always. So if you want to sign up, I just popped the link inside of the chat.

in our Clients Over Chaos live broadcast. And you can also just DM me the word extra if you would like the link to come join us completely free for the extravaganza. Now, if you want the full recording, if you want the extras, the goodies, then make sure you sign up for the free. And then on the next page, you'll see the VIP. And we have a pretty significant discount on VIP for those early birds that are signing up right now. So make sure you do that.

So how is 2026 gonna be better? know, genuine question. How is 2026 gonna be better for you?

I've been talking with a lot of my clients about this. Many of them want to have more business. So they want to have like more clients. They want to make more money. They want to make smarter decisions. Some of my clients, they have a relationship goals. So they want to meet more people that are in alignment, that they are feeling really connected to. They're looking for more friends, in some cases, more romance.

And I also have some clients that have pretty awesome health goals. You know, they want to Deprioritizing their self-care. They want to prioritize it. That's all amazing and The thing is is that you're not going to just magically experience change in your life this is one of the biggest things that really moved me to want to be in personal growth and development in the first place is because I had some very meaningful change and

You know, some of the changes that I wanted were things to do with like my physicality. wasn't really, you know, I was a figure skater the whole time I was growing up. I gained a hundred pounds while I was in college. I was really unhappy with that. And for years I would make a wish every New Year's. I would make a wish about what I wanted to have that's like different. Here's the difference between a wish and a goal, right? A wish is when you just desire things to be different. So like you observe that something is

One way you wish that it is another way, and that's how most people go about their to-do lists. They go about their lives is this, that they're living in wish land. What makes a goal a goal is that it is very specific and time bound. in 2026, as you're thinking about where you're headed next, many people tell me like, I can't get X, Y, Z goal because I don't have time.

So today is my answer to the time dilemma. Yes, more money, more clients, maybe release some weight, maybe release some BS. I think that would be really good. Like if you've got a lot of BS in your life and it's dragging you down and it's not adding to your goals, it's not adding to your relationships, it's just annoying, right? Like let's get rid of some of it. But I wanna make sure you actually have the time.

to do it. So shout out to T in the chat if you understand like time is super important. Now thinking about time, in anticipation of the planning extravaganza, one of the biggest questions that I get is like goal setting. So how do I pick the goal so I can stick to the plan? And what we're gonna talk today is about the systems that are gonna actually bring the plan forward, right?

So I just wanna also mention if you go to ImpactfulCoach.com, I am going to be doing a companion workshop with the Planning Extravaganza and I'm doing it tomorrow night at 6 p.m. Central. It's gonna be a 90 minute session about selecting goals, knowing that you've got the right goals in the first place. So then when you go to implement a system or you go to implement a plan,

you're getting out of this to-do-itis. Like, let's talk about why we don't have systems that are gonna actually help us to do that. Who here has heard that systems are generally a good idea, right? It's so funny, because when I go to talk about systems, everybody knows you're supposed to have good systems. So as I was walking this morning,

on the treadmill at the gym, I'm deploying a system for more movement and health, hence my awesome outfit on a Monday. But I was reflecting, I was like, what is it that stops us from really making the time or making the changes or implementing systems when we know that it's already gonna be good for us? And here's when I arrived at, I was like, we as humans are generally very bad.

at determining cause and effect, just in general, right? And I was really thinking about this because in the last several months or the last half of this year, I've been really thinking more about spirituality and about surrender and about connection with higher purpose. Everybody's so wrapped up in the to-dos and doing the doing right.

but like their to-dos are just so heavy and saturated with things that either don't need to be done at all or they need to be done, but they don't need to be done dumbly. Right? So what I mean by that is like, you don't need to reinvent the wheel or, or do things in inefficient ways.

And a lot of people kind of get caught on that because they think that it's so important that they that they get the to-do list done, but they at the same time have like no time. So it's all anyway, I've been like connecting with like, what is our purpose? We're not we're human beings. We're not human doings, right? We're human beings. We're supposed to be like what does that actually mean to be? And so anyway, I've been thinking about a lot of that and in thinking about the spiritual side of things. I think sometimes that that can contribute to

not understanding what is the cause and effect in our business or the cause and the effect in our health or the cause and the effect in our relationships. Right. And when you really start to like think about this and you really kind of boil it down, it's like, I think there's a certain amount of surrender to not being able to identify every single cause. Like you won't be able to see every single cause. And just because you do work does not mean you're going to get the desired effect.

Right. Can I get a why in the chat? Have you ever undertaken a program or taken up an initiative and you did the work like you showed up and you still didn't exactly get like the outcome that you were wanting from doing it? If I'm like the only one, Cathy's had that experience. If I'm the only one, let me know. But what I'm saying in all of this.

is there's activities that you do every single day, whether you're conscious of those activities or not, and they are causing the results that you actually have in at least contribution, right? So there's gonna be some things that are beyond your consciousness, beyond your capacity to see the cause and the effect. But if we're just being for real for real right now, what is your consumption pattern?

How much do you consume? How much do you learn? Okay, so like that's one metric I want you to get very present to, very aware of. How much time do you spend waiting? Right, shout a W in the chat if you're like, oh my God, you know, I'm waiting in lineups, I'm waiting in traffic, I'm waiting for somebody else to do something, I'm waiting, it's a total pain in your ass, right? So, yeah.

how much time is spent traveling and commuting, right? So meaning like you can't do anything but the travel. You can't do anything but the commute. This could be simply like the drive, right? To go and do certain errands. But like how much time do you spend in a car? How much time are you spending, know, commuting from one place to another? Show to see in the chat if you're like, yeah, I mean like all of these things are things that take a lot of time. And

Shout out an S in the chat if you ever catch yourself just in this scroll, right? Like you're addicted to the scroll and even though you walk away from it going like, I don't feel like that added anything really wonderful to my life, you still do it because you've got all this boredom to fill, right? So here's the thing, you already have 10 hours before I tell you these three systems. Now there's three systems that you really, really wanna have and master and I'm gonna walk through those really quick with you.

So the first one is task flow. Task flow, right? So if you've ever been in the habit of making commitments and promises and then keeping that promise in your head, in your head you're dead. You need a task management process. And here's how you know you have a really good task management process.

Not everything that goes into the top of the process winds up on your calendar. Okay, not everything that, and you know you have a really good task management process where even for your way of thinking, so you know know I've got a lot of neurodivergent folks in my community, even for your way of thinking, you don't forget to do the important stuff. Show to P if you're like priority, right?

If you've got a good task system, you will always complete your priorities and you will often complete your priorities early. Right. At the very least on time. You're also if you have a good task management system, you're going to have pretty high awareness of your actual capacity. Excuse me. Your actual capacity. So.

When people ask me to do more or do different than my normal routine,

Part of my task management system is to say no.

It's actually part of my system is to just say no. Why? Because I've already decided what I want to do this year. I've already identified like what are the things that cause the results that I want to create in my life and my business. And I've already run that through my task management system that I have a good deal of clarity about what actually does matter to me.

So if somebody is asking me to do something that's over and above or radically different or is presenting me with a new opportunity, my default response is no. And that's actually part of my system, right? Now, if it's a maybe, then I use my prioritization process to determine is it still a no or is it a yes. And...

The only way I've found to be able to really save time is to be super careful about the yeses. Be very, very careful because every yes that you have for a to do, a commitment, a follow up, a follow through, a reconnection, that is saying no to other opportunities

that maybe you've already said yes to. So a couple of years ago, I coined this idea and this is like kind of the backbone of the system is that you can only spend the same minute

once and you can only spend the same dollar once, right? So being more intentional about deciding how to spend that time in advance is incredibly important. Now I actually ran into a problem with this recently because I had a dental appointment that I did not put in my system.

And so today I'm going to finish the live and I'm going to hop in the car and I'm going to go and hopefully still be able to make this dental appointment. But it was a really good illustration for me today of like, wow, if you don't put the doing of the tasks on your calendar, what is the likelihood that it's actually going to occur for me? Almost no. Right. Like, thank goodness my dentist has a text messaging service that they could remind me about it. And I was like, no, you know, I was able to

to figure it out, but I'm still gonna be late. It's still gonna be a problem because I've already spent the time. Like for the rest of this week, I'm gonna be traveling on Thursday. For the rest of this week, I know what I'm doing with my calendar, like the whole time. And I'm trying to get more done in the time by being very efficient, by using AI tools to complete deliverables, not just to explore ideas, but to actually complete deliverables, ship those deliverables, send them to whoever needs them.

for whatever purpose and it's like already predetermined, right? Yeah, so most people are pretty good with appointments, but do you book your tasks, right? And that's something to be aware of. So the second big system that is super, super important is your client flow system. So in addition to my tasks being on my calendar, I have a client

Yeah, you know, sometimes the best learning is actually reminding. So let's talk about client flow, right? So if you already know how to handle the requests, the abnormal requirements, the new things, if you already have a good system for that, the next thing you need is a really good client flow system. So for me, my client flow system goes from meeting people, talking to people, to fitting with people, to finally coaching people. And I actually have time blocked on my calendar for

those activities. Now you might be thinking like, well, Amanda, I know if Sally's, you know, Sally Smith is going to have availability to talk to me about coaching. I don't know. And I get that right. Like I used to, when I started my business, I had bad flow with the client flow. And it was because I was always chasing everybody else's calendar.

I was chasing everybody else's availability and I was chasing everybody else's constraints, right? Because you know, when other people tell you about their schedule, it's always super compelling. It's like, yeah, you have a job. It's like, whoa, you have a job? Holy, whoa, you've got a job, right? Or I've got kids. It's like, no way, you know? Like it's just, it's shocking what is influencing people's schedules. I'm joking, obviously. But the thing that I had to discover is it's like, it's

so impossible to keep up with everybody's calendar. But what I certainly can do is I can create windows on my calendar for being available for certain kinds of conversations. So, for example, having the Amanda Kaufman show as a podcast was really important to me. It was a goal that I chose about 18 months ago and I was like, cool. So I want to do podcast interviews because I want to have people come through.

I don't do interviews on Saturday afternoons. I don't do interviews on Fridays. I have windows in which people can book and I call it flexibility within a frame. Now if I get to a particular day, a given day, and I don't have an appointment booked at that time, what I do is I flip to plan B. I flip to, okay, well what's a task I can grab from the future or what's a meeting even I can grab from the future on my calendar?

and see if I can pull it into this time slot. So I call this future grabbing, right? This is genius for sales, by the way. Like if you are wanting to make more sales and you've got a consult happening on Thursday, you can always like call or text that person and be like, hey, I've had something free up and I thought I'd reach out and see if you want to meet a little earlier, you know? And what's the worst thing that can happen? They're like, no, let's just keep our Thursday appointment. Hey, no worries.

But you would be so surprised how other people's calendars also flex and people cancel stuff and things move around. Like I've reached into the future on my calendar and pulled things forward because I had capacity. like that habit alone makes you so much more money. Can you guys see that habit? Right? So don't not have availability, like put in a less double negative way. Have availability on your calendar, but constrain it.

constrain it to freedom in a frame like set up a frame that people are able to book within but then it's like I also have on my scheduling like you can't book Like in 30 minutes from now I think the fastest you can book with me is a four-hour window and for most people it means the next day right it means that the earliest we're gonna talk is the next day and I used to freak out about that because

You know, I'd hear things like sales love speed and success love speed and I'd want to be hyper available all the time. But if you're hyper available all the time, guess what? That's communicating to people, right? It's communicating you have nothing better to do. And if you have nothing better to do, if your time is not in demand, if you are not busy with things that are actually valuable, then it really diminishes your positioning with that person. So I'm not saying you need to be like, you know,

unattainably unavailable, but I am saying like having a little bit of distance and a little bit of peace and calm in your calendar is super important. When I'm working with new coaches, I'm constantly reminding them, I'm like, look, you're facilitating a process and you're juggling a lot of really high quality relationships. So it's a really good idea to have a policy in your practice about cancellation, about last minute rescheduling.

And you know, to be honest with you, I really don't have a problem in my business with people like canceling last minute or emptying my calendar because I set the expectation of how firm our appointments actually are. yeah, so that's the client flow. Third big system that I really want you to consider as you're heading into 2026 is actually less to do with your calendar this time, more to do with cash flow.

So Amanda, what does cash flow? my God. No, no, no. Okay. So example from the community. goes, thank you Cathy. She says, I have a woman who canceled on me three times and now she wants to rebook. That's pay in advance, right? I'm not saying that it would be a no, but I am saying that she needs to stop taking your time and your energy from serving people who are serious about getting help right now. And look, I've rebooked appointments. We've all done it.

Right? I'm not saying that you shouldn't be accommodating, but if someone is actively wasting your time, it's up to you to have a boundary and a standard around that. So I implemented this little process, feel free to steal, like a few years ago when I was running into the same exact issue of somebody like rebooking, rebooking, rebooking. Like I don't think they consciously were wanting to disrespect my time. I don't think it was like a malicious thing. I think it was actually just poor habit training on their part.

And it just like I realized I have to be the one to stand up for my time So I formed a communication and this is literally a process I have of like hey Thank you so much for your interest in booking some time Because we've had so many rebookings I'm gonna ask for this to be now be a paid session you can click here to book and I'm happy to talk with you and it and like

I haven't had to deploy the process honestly that often, but the few times that I have, people are like, oh, okay, well, I'll go find somebody else. I'll find somebody else to spend that time with, right?

Yeah, exactly, like someone else's failure to manage their calendar does not an emergency make on your part. And so, yeah, I don't believe that it's a malicious trait, but I do know that it is a trait that my best clients don't have. So some of this is like bleeding a little bit into ideal avatar selection, but I think it's worth noting, right? It's like, if you have standards for who you're working with,

I'm like my best clients like my god my best clients they move heaven and earth to be on time and to not move their appointment like they are really freaking disciplined about this and like that's a perfect that is a person who is perfect for me if I have somebody who like look I over deliver like a friggin psycho okay like for my clients I want their success I will go to the ends of the earth like it's sick it's not it's not it's not always good for my balance

But what I will not do is I will not chase them to make it a priority. Right? I will not chase them to make it a priority. And like that tiny little distinction has made me love my business so, so much more than when I didn't have that distinction. So do with it what you will. So what I was saying is like cashflow. So the reason that a lot of coaches and experts like struggle and put up with honestly terrible behavior from other people as well as themselves is because they're financially stressed.

Right? They're financially stressed. So why do we get financially stressed? Well, we get financially stressed because we're not making enough money, but you can also create financial stress by not have like not flowing enough money. So believe it or not, you can actually measure how much it costs to exist. Right? You can measure your lifestyle costs. You can measure the cost of your systems, your support. You can measure all of that. So the, the

The cool part is like your expense side of the equation of cash flow. It's a no-none, right? Like you're the one that's making the commitments. So you're the one that has access to the data. It could be messy, right? So I've definitely worked with people where it is messy. They don't remember what they signed up for. Their inbox is a hot friggin' mess. Like they've got 19 different credit cards. I get it, right? Like it's possible that it's messy, but...

The cool thing is that it's a mess. You can clean up and you can organize and it's a no known. Like you know how much your rent is, you know how much your phone costs, you know how much your internet is, you know how much your services cost, you know, right? So you've got really great clarity about that. The lesser known thing that I love helping people with in the Experts Network is like, what are the cause and effect activities that create cash?

flow that create revenue specifically, the sales part. And here's the thing, you can't know if Susie Smith is gonna buy from you or that she's gonna make the time for you or that she's gonna be this person that manages her calendar and manages to show up to your calls, right? You don't get to know if Susie Smith is the one in advance, right? But what you can do is you can cause your visibility. You can cause

reaching out to people. can cause having a generalized flow of conversations and the right conversations with the right sort of people. And when you do that, the effect of that cause is that you end up with more opportunities for people to say, heck yes to your amazing coaching. Can you all see that cause and effect, right? So it's two pieces for the cashflow system is the expense management. And again, defaulting to no.

only adding new burdens, especially subscriptions, to your plate after careful consideration and possibly a trade-off, right? So maybe you're going to use this software instead of that software. You're not gonna carry both softwares indefinitely, right? Like a lot of people run into that and then it ends up costing them double and then they're like, why don't I have enough money in my business? And it's like, well, it might be that you didn't make enough sales. It could be that you didn't have the right pricing.

It's possible you didn't do enough to actually spark the conversational flow to be able to support the business. All of those things are possible. But what matters is you have a system to know for sure what is going on so that you can decide what you wanna do next. All right, my friends, as I mentioned, I am already late for this dental appointment, but I appreciate you being here. I am going to be broadcasting from Canada next week, and I'm super excited about it.

We're gonna be talking about stopping the drag. So we're actually gonna be talking about like five strategies to help you feel like growth is actually easy, okay? I want there to be like ease and flow. And look, there's plenty in life that's not easy. Let's do what we can to activate flow so that we can have more ease and more activation in 2026.

All right, my friends, I will be back next week. So glad that you made it and we will see you again very, very soon.