Eric Thomas, the renowned motivational speaker, once delivered a message that resonates deeply with anyone striving for greatness:
All of us have the same 24 hours in a day. It's not how hard you work that makes the difference—it's how you use those 24 hours.
This message resonates deeply for anyone chasing a big dream, running a nonprofit, or leading a business. I see it every day: passionate, hard-working leaders facing burnout, lack of resources, losing staff, volunteers, and donors. Overworked and overwhelmed.
You’re constantly putting out fires leaving barely enough time to come up and breathe. It feels like there are never enough hours in a day.
That’s because we all have the same 24 hours.
The time you spend—or waste—during your 24 hours determines your level of impact, productivity, and success. It’s not just about being busy but about making the most of the precious hours you have each day.
At PhoenixFire, we understand the urgency of using your time effectively.
For the past year, I’ve been living an extraordinary journey—scaling our scrappy and personalized boutique consulting firm while living abroad in Spain, traveling and spending priceless time with my family, meeting people from all over the world, both helping and learning from them, and growing our business from a global perspective.
This adventure wasn’t luck or circumstance; it was intentional, driven by mastering time, leveraging AI tools to maximize efficiency, and creating personalized, scrappy solutions for our nonprofit and small-business clients that allow us to live big, bold lives while delivering big results for nonprofits around the world.
We didn’t just talk about time-saving strategies and efficient workflows; we built our business around them. From managing projects across continents to automating routine tasks and focusing on high-impact work, PhoenixFire is proof that mastering your 24 hours can unlock the potential to thrive both professionally and personally.
This isn’t just a company philosophy—it’s how I’ve managed to build a growing consultancy while also spending quality time exploring the world with my family.
Here’s how we do it—and how you can too. Below, I’ve outlined TWELVE time-saving strategies that have transformed the way we work at PhoenixFire. These strategies, combined with powerful AI tools, allow us and our clients to maximize time, make better decisions, and drive enormous positive impact.
Today, I’ll cover the first FOUR of our top twelve time saving tips in detail. Stay tuned for upcoming blogs that go in depth with the others!
List of Time Saving Strategies
I’ll also add one quick and easy but powerful bonus time saving strategy at the end that will win back a shocking amount of time!
Check out Parts 2 and 3 in future blog posts to see more about:
Parkinson’s Law (Part 2 of 3)
SMART Goals (Part 2 of 3)
Delegate Wisely (Part 2 of 3)
Batch Processing (Part 2 of 3)
Pareto Principle - 80/20 Rule (Part 3 of 3)
Block Distractions (Part 3 of 3)
Automations and Templates (Part 3 of 3)
Artificial Intelligence (Part 3 of 3)
2 - Minute Rule
The Two-Minute Rule is that if a task takes less than two minutes to complete, do it immediately. This prevents small tasks from accumulating and overwhelming your schedule.
Why you need it: Procrastination on small tasks that eventually pile up.
What it is: If a task takes less than two minutes to complete, do it immediately.
What the result is: Helps clear quick, minor tasks out of your schedule before they accumulate.
Why it works: Completing small tasks right away clears them from your to-do list, reducing mental clutter. This allows you to focus on more substantial tasks without distractions. It also feels great to check some of your to-do items off right away.
Research support: David Allen's Getting Things Done framework has shown that using the two-minute rule reduces stress and increases task completion rates by over 20% (GTD).
Eat That Frog
"Eat That Frog" is where you tackle the most challenging or important task first each day-- even when you really don’t want to. This method, inspired by a Mark Twain quote and popularized by Brian Tracy, helps you overcome procrastination. Just get it done. You’ll feel much better after.
Why you need it: Procrastination on difficult tasks.
What it is: Tackle your hardest or least desirable task first thing in the morning. Mark Twain wrote, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
What the result is: Boosts momentum for the rest of the day, ensuring that the most challenging tasks are out of the way early on.
Why it works: Completing a hard task early in the day boosts momentum and relieves anxiety, making the rest of the day’s tasks feel more manageable.
Research-backed: A Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study confirms that addressing difficult tasks first leads to increased productivity throughout the day. See Lark's take on Eat the Frog at the link here: Lark
Eisenhower Matrix (Urgent vs. Important)
The Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritization tool that categorizes tasks based on urgency and importance. Tasks fall into one of four quadrants: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, or neither urgent nor important. This system helps you focus on tasks that align with long-term goals while managing immediate demands.
Why you need it: Difficulty in prioritizing tasks that lead to reactive rather than proactive management.
What it is: A decision-making tactic tool that categorizes tasks based on urgency and importance, helping leaders decide what to prioritize, delegate, or eliminate. We often recommend drawing a physical grid with the four quadrants to clearly illustrate where each task lies.
What the result is: Ensures that high-impact, long-term tasks get the attention they deserve while reducing time wasted on low-priority activities.
Why it works: By sorting tasks, you can minimize time spent on low-priority activities and ensure that you focus on high-impact work.
Studies show: A 2017 study by Harvard Business Review found that this method significantly reduces stress and improves goal alignment. It promotes a proactive approach, helping to avoid the constant fire-fighting that leads to burnout (HBR).
Time Boxing
Time Boxing involves assigning fixed blocks of time for each task. When time is up, you either stop or move to the next task. This method prevents tasks from expanding beyond their allotted time. Time Boxing is a strategy that counters Parkinson’s Law, and works with SMART goals.
Why you need it: Procrastination, task overload, and constant distractions.
What it is: Allocating fixed blocks of time to specific tasks. Once time is up, you either stop or move on to the next task.
What the result is: Increases focus and productivity by creating deadlines for each task, reducing time spent on unnecessary distractions.
Why it works: By setting a time limit, you create urgency, which increases focus and prevents procrastination. This technique is particularly helpful for breaking large projects into smaller, more manageable pieces.
Research shows: Studies indicate that Time Boxing can lead to a 25% increase in productivity by setting clear task boundaries (Asana)(Hubstaff).
We all have the same 24 hours.
Then, whether it’s the end of the day, end of our career, or end of our time on this Earth, our time is done.
I ask myself, every day, am I better today than I was yesterday? Is my team better because of me? Are our clients better off because of our team? Did we all learn something new?
At PhoenixFire Strategic Consulting, we live and breathe these strategies. Our entire business model, from helping our clients maximize their impact, managing our scrappy but global team across continents, to moving our HQ and living abroad to Spain, is built on the foundation of making the most of every minute.
These 12 time-saving techniques—combined with our use of cutting-edge AI tools and hard earned wisdom—are how we help nonprofits and small businesses scale, grow, and make a bigger impact.
We invite you to start thinking about how you’re using your 24 hours.
Are you using your time in the best way, or are you working hard despite the clock running out?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and want to master your life and mission by using your 24 hours in the absolutely best possible way, let PhoenixFire help you build a time-management strategy that works.
BONUS STRATEGY!
Watch my quick video on why the easiest way to save a ton of time is to only ever read your emails once. This is so simple and yet so powerful! Imagine how much time you waste every single day rereading or re-rereading emails. Now multiply that by 365 days a year.
Here’s how you do it: Read the email and immediately take 1 of these 4 actions.
If it requires a response or quick action, Respond and Complete the 2-minute task.
If it requires an action that takes more than 2 minutes, Delegate it to someone else.
If you need to keep it for some reason, Sort it into well organized subfolders.
If the email requires no action and no future reference, Delete it.
It’s harder to master this than it may seem, but you can achieve the ever-elusive Zero Inbox and, as a result, save an absolutely tremendous amount of time.
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