Do you ever go weeks at a time wondering, “where did my time go?” While we often focus on metrics like the number of sales calls, or financials, time can be more difficult to track. Even with an intention to track it, as a busy professional, you likely don’t have time to track it. Time, however, is one of the economies that cannot be bought.

If you have no time to track this elusive unpurchaseable economy, how can you get more of it? The good news, is you don’t need more time or money to gain this valuable resource.

Start with these 3 tips to reclaim your time now:

1. Mind your clutter.

Stuff attracts stuff. Have you ever put a pair of shoes in the corner to find a backpack, water bottles, umbrellas, empty boxes, and a million other things building a tower around it? Eventually, you give in and spend 20 minutes trying to find homes for the clutter. Once those 20 minutes are gone, you can’t have them back. Then you vow to yourself that you will not leg clutter build again.

The next week, it is back.

This goes for digital clutter as well. Open your inbox. How many e-mails are hiding there? How much time do you spend sorting through them each week to find what was important?

Contrary to what social media preaches, you don’t need to become a minimalist to stop wasting time sorting clutter. Instead, start with two simple practices. First, assign everything in your home and office to its own home. When assigning homes, ask yourself what purpose each item serves and when you will use it. If you cannot find a purpose, a time, and a home, put it in the donation box.

This goes for your inbox too. Set up categories for important communications that you don’t want to delete. Once everything has a home, use the one-touch approach. Every time you touch an object or open an email, address it or put it in its home immediately. This will save you hours of wasted time sorting each month.

2. Activities versus strategic actions.

Think back to being a student in school. How did you feel when you were assigned busywork, like worksheets, that seemed to have no purpose? Chances are you did them because you were told to, or maybe even enjoyed them since they didn’t relate to your grade.

Now, take inventory of your own week. How much time did you spend on non-purposeful business activities? Did you find yourself scrolling social media for hours? Did you find yourself listing dozens of podcasts you’d like to be on, yet realize three weeks later you haven’t even made one pitch? Did you re-work your freemium for hours on end? As entrepreneurs, we often juggle so many interests and communication channels at one time that we get lost in the activities without an outcome.

Instead of continuing with non-purposeful business activities slurping up your time, carve out an hour each week to purposefully plan strategic actions. This requires thinking backward from the goal. Start by stating your outcomes for the month and week. What do you want to achieve? How does it relate to moving your business forward one notch from where it is today?

Now, outline the specific actions for the week that can lead toward that outcome. Next, map out when each of these actions will fit into your planner. Finally, when you find yourself lost in the social media scroll hole or re-workshopping your product 100 times, say “STOP.” Take 5 minutes, look at your strategic action list, and start performing a strategic action instead. The more consistent you are with your “STOP” signal, the more you will find new chunks of free time to work with.

3. Create energy.

Do you find yourself drinking pre-workout, even when you aren’t working out? Do you crave carbs like a gremlin after midnight just to keep going on a project? Are you skipping workouts to find more time for your business?

These are signs that your body is seeking energy to keep your brain going.

This past term, in my role as a college adjunct instructor, all of my students were struggling. They were balancing family, with overtime work or multiple jobs, and trying to navigate new pandemic-related stresses. All of them had completely given up workouts due to lack of time. We tried an experiment. I gave them the assignment to work out 15 minutes for each of 3 days, then write a one-page paper reflecting on how this made them feel. The “workout” was a loose term, as they could go for a walk, stretch, do an exercise video, go to the gym, or do anything that required movement. 100% of the students reported feeling energized and more efficient and focused when they returned to their school work post-workout.

What can we learn from this experiment? Movement creates energy. Even when we are exhausted, just enough movement to get the blood flowing for 15 minutes can fuel our focus and time efficiency. Instead of skipping workouts, commit to taking a 15-minute break each day to do anything that moves. Give the experiment a try for yourself and see how your focus and energy change.

Now that we’ve shared our tips, it is your turn! Which tip will you employ right now, immediately to create more time in your life?