"The Power Circle Time Strategy: Managing Your Time While Empowering Others"
Hey Power Family,
Can I share something that completely transformed how I manage my 70-hour weeks? It's called the 2-Hour Priority System, and it's built on one fundamental truth: The essential key to success in setting priorities is having a long-term perspective.
You see, most of us get caught up in the urgent demands of today – the emails, the meetings, the immediate fires that need putting out. But here's what successful women understand: You can tell how important something is today by measuring its potential future impact on your life.
Let me show you how to make this work in just 2 hours a day.
The Long-Term Perspective Shift
Picture this scenario: You come home after a demanding day. You have three choices:
1. Collapse on the couch and scroll through social media
2. Catch up on emails and busy work
3. Spend quality time with your family or invest in your personal growth
Option 1 feels good right now but adds zero value to your future.
Option 2 feels productive but often just keeps you busy, not effective.
Option 3 might require more energy upfront, but it's an investment in your most important relationships and your long-term success.
The woman who consistently chooses Option 3? She's thinking with a long-term perspective. She understands that investing time in the health and happiness of her family, or in developing her own skills and capabilities, is a high-priority use of her precious time.
The Sacrifice Principle: Your Key to Breakthrough
Here's the word that changes everything when you're setting priorities: sacrifice.
But before you roll your eyes, hear me out. This isn't about depriving yourself or living a joyless life. It's about making strategic choices that serve your bigger vision.
Setting priorities usually requires sacrificing present enjoyment for future enjoyment. It means giving up a short-term pleasure now to enjoy a far greater and more substantial reward later.
Think about it:
- Choosing to take that evening course instead of binge-watching Netflix
- Investing in your business development instead of another shopping spree
- Having that difficult conversation instead of avoiding conflict
- Waking up early to work on your goals instead of hitting snooze
Each of these choices requires sacrifice in the moment, but they compound into extraordinary results over time.
The 2-Hour Priority System Framework
Based on my experience balancing professor duties with building PowerTalks559, here's how to maximize impact in minimal time:
Hour 1: Future-Impact Assessment (30 minutes daily)
The 5-Year Question Method:
Before you start any task, ask: "Will this matter in 5 years?"
High-Impact Activities (Focus Here):
- Skill development that advances your career
- Relationship building with key people
- Health and wellness investments
- Financial planning and wealth building
- Personal growth and mindset work
Low-Impact Activities (Minimize These):
- Endless social media scrolling
- Perfectionist busy work
- Gossip or drama involvement
- Activities that just fill time
Hour 2: Strategic Implementation (90 minutes daily)
The Power Queen's Priority Matrix:
Quadrant 1: Urgent + Important (30 minutes max)
- True emergencies only
- Deadline-driven critical tasks
- Health or family crises
Quadrant 2: Not Urgent + Important (60 minutes - YOUR POWER ZONE)
- Skill development and education
- Relationship building
- Strategic planning
- Health and self-care
- Business development
Quadrant 3: Urgent + Not Important (Delegate or minimize)
- Most emails and phone calls
- Some meetings
- Other people's poor planning
Quadrant 4: Not Urgent + Not Important (Eliminate)
- Time-wasting activities
- Mindless entertainment
- Busy work that feels productive but isn't
Real-World Application: My Personal System
Let me share how I apply this as someone juggling professor responsibilities with building PowerTalks559:
My Daily 2-Hour Power Block (6-8 AM):
6:00-6:30 AM: Future-Impact Planning
- Review my 5-year vision
- Identify the 3 most important tasks for long-term success
- Eliminate or delegate low-impact activities
6:30-8:00 AM: Strategic Implementation
- 30 minutes: Urgent/important tasks (emails, immediate needs)
- 60 minutes: Not urgent/important work (content creation, course development, strategic planning)
This system allows me to make significant progress on my business goals before my professor duties begin, ensuring that my long-term priorities get attention regardless of how busy my day becomes.
The Delayed Gratification Advantage
Economists tell us that the inability to delay gratification – the natural tendency to do what's fun, easy, and enjoyable right now – is the primary cause of economic and personal failure in life.
But here's the flip side: Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.
Examples of Strategic Sacrifice:
- Investing in education instead of immediate luxuries
- Building an emergency fund instead of lifestyle inflation
- Developing skills instead of just consuming entertainment
- Having difficult conversations instead of avoiding conflict
- Creating systems instead of just fighting fires
The 2-Hour System in Different Life Seasons
For the Overwhelmed Professional:
- Hour 1: Career development, skill building, strategic networking
- Hour 2: Health maintenance, family relationships, financial planning
For the Entrepreneur:
- Hour 1: Business strategy, product development, market research
- Hour 2: Team building, systems creation, personal development
For the Working Parent:
- Hour 1: Quality time with children, relationship with spouse
- Hour 2: Personal growth, career advancement, health maintenance
Overcoming the Common Obstacles
"I Don't Have 2 Hours!"
Start with 30 minutes. The principle works at any scale. Even 15 minutes of future-focused activity daily compounds into significant results.
"Everything Feels Urgent!"
Most "urgent" things aren't truly urgent – they're just loud. Practice asking: "What happens if this waits until tomorrow?"
"I Feel Guilty Taking Time for Myself"
Remember: When you invest in your growth and well-being, you become more valuable to everyone in your life. You can't pour from an empty cup.
"I Don't Know What My Long-Term Goals Are"
Start with these questions:
- What do I want my life to look like in 5 years?
- What skills would make me invaluable in my field?
- What relationships matter most to my happiness and success?
- What would I regret not pursuing?
Your 30-Day Priority Transformation Challenge
Week 1: Assessment
- Track how you currently spend your time
- Identify your biggest time wasters
- Clarify your 5-year vision
Week 2: Implementation
- Start your daily 2-hour power block
- Practice the 5-year question for every major decision
- Eliminate one low-impact activity
Week 3: Refinement
- Adjust your system based on what's working
- Add accountability measures
- Celebrate small wins
Week 4: Integration
- Make the system a non-negotiable habit
- Teach someone else the principle
- Plan your next level of growth
The Compound Effect of Strategic Priorities
When you consistently apply the 2-Hour Priority System:
Month 1: You'll feel more in control and focused
Month 3: You'll see measurable progress in key areas
Month 6: Others will notice your increased effectiveness
Year 1: You'll have achieved goals that once seemed impossible
Year 5: You'll be living a completely transformed life
The Professional Power of Long-Term Thinking
In your career, this system creates:
- Strategic advantage because you're always developing future-relevant skills
- Leadership opportunities because you think beyond immediate problems
- Increased value because you invest in capabilities that compound
- Better relationships because you prioritize connection over convenience
Your Personal Priority Manifesto
Create your own priority manifesto based on these principles:
Example:
- "I choose long-term impact over short-term comfort"
- "I invest in relationships that matter most"
- "I develop skills that will serve my future self"
- "I sacrifice immediate pleasure for lasting satisfaction"
- "I measure success by future impact, not present ease"
The Bottom Line, Queen
The 2-Hour Priority System isn't about doing more – it's about doing what matters most. It's about recognizing that every choice you make is either building the life you want or keeping you stuck where you are.
The women who achieve extraordinary results aren't necessarily the busiest – they're the most strategic.
They understand that success isn't about having more time; it's about making better choices with the time you have.
Your future self is counting on the decisions you make today. What will you choose?
A Second Look:
Perhaps the greatest single problem that people have today is “time poverty.” Working people have too much to do and too little time for their personal lives. Most people feel overwhelmed with responsibilities and activities, and the harder they work, the further behind they feel. This sense of being on a never-ending treadmill can cause you to fall into the reactive/responsive mode of living. Instead of clearly deciding what you want to do, you continually react to what is happening around you. Pretty soon you lose all sense of control. You feel that your life is running you, rather than you running your life.
On a regular basis, you have to stand back and take stock of yourself and what you’re doing. You have to stop the clock and do some serious thinking about who you are and where you are going. You have to evaluate your activities in the light of what is really important to you. You must master your time rather than becoming a slave to the constant flow of events and demands on your time. And you must organize your life to achieve balance, harmony, and inner peace.
Taking action without thinking is the cause of every failure. Your ability to think is the most valuable trait that you possess. If you improve the quality of your thinking, you improve the quality of your life¾sometimes immediately.
Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value. All work requires time. And time is absolutely essential for the important relationships in your life. The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management immediately.
I used to think that time management was only a business tool, like a calculator or a cellular telephone. It was something that you used so that you could get more done in a shorter period of time and eventually be paid more money. Then I learned that time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.
In your work or business life, there are so many demands on your time from other people that very little of your time is yours to use as you choose. However, at home and in your personal life you can exert a tremendous amount of control over how you use your time. And it is in this area that I want to focus.
Personal time management begins with you. It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you in life. And it only makes sense if you organize it around specific things that you want to accomplish. You need to set goals in three major areas of your life. First, you need family and personal goals. These are the reasons why you get up in the morning, why you work hard and upgrade your skills, why you worry about money and sometimes feel frustrated by the demands on your time.
What are your personal and family goals, both tangible and intangible? A tangible family goal could be a bigger house, a better car, a larger television set, a vacation, or anything else that costs money. An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your spouse and children, to spend more time with your family going for walks or reading books. Achieving these family and personal goals are the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.
The second area of goals are your business and career goals. These are the “how” goals, the means by which you achieve your personal, “why” goals. How can you achieve the level of income that will enable you to fulfill your family goals? How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead of the curve in your career? Business and career goals are absolutely essential, especially when balanced with family and personal goals.
The third type of goals are your personal development goals. Remember, you can’t achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved on the inside. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and your career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. You must build yourself if you want to build your life. Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal that you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.
Once you have a list of your personal and family goals, your business and career goals, and your self-development goals, you can then organize the list by priority. This brings us to the difference between priorities and posteriorities. In order to get your personal time under control, you must decide very clearly upon your priorities. You must decide on the most important things that you could possible be doing to give yourself the same amount of happiness, satisfaction, and joy in life. But at the same time, you must establish posteriorities as well. Just as priorities are things that you do more of and sooner, posteriorities are things that you do less of and later.
The fact is, your calendar is full. You have no spare time. Your time is extremely valuable. Therefore, for you to do anything new, you will have to stop doing something old. In order to get into something, you will have to get out of something else. In order to pick something up, you will have to put something down. Before you make any new commitment of your time, you must firmly decide what activities you are going to discontinue in your personal life.
If you want to spend more time with your family, for example, you must decide what activities you currently engage in that are preventing you from doing so.
A principle of time management says that hard time pushes out soft time. This means that hard time, such as working, will push out soft time, such as the time you spend with your family. If you don’t get your work done at the office because you don’t use your time well, you almost invariably have to rob that time from your family. As a result, because your family is important to you, you find yourself in a values conflict. You feel stressed and irritable. You feel a tremendous amount of pressure. You know in your heart that you should be spending more time with the important people in your life, but because you didn’t get your work done, you have to fulfill those responsibilities before you can spend time with your spouse and children.
Think of it this way. Every minute you waste during the waking day is time that your family will ultimately be deprived of. So concentrate on working when you are at work so that you can concentrate on your family when you are at home.
There are three key questions that you can ask yourself continually to keep your personal life in balance. The first question is, “What is really important to me?” Whenever you find yourself with too much to do and too little time, stop and ask yourself, “What is it that is really important for me to do in this situation?” Then, make sure that what you are doing is the answer to that question.
The second question is, “What are my highest value activities?” In your personal life, this means, “What are the things that I do that give me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction? Of all the things that I could be doing at any one time, what are the things that I could do to add the greatest value to my life?”
And the final question for you to ask over and over again is, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Since you can only do one thing at a time, you must constantly organize you life so that you are doing one thing, the most important thing, at every moment. Personal time management enables you to choose what to do first, what to do second, and what not to do at all. It enables you to organize every aspect of your life so that you can get the greatest joy, happiness, and satisfaction out of everything you do.
What's one long-term goal you've been putting off because it requires short-term sacrifice? Share it in the comments – sometimes declaring it publicly is the first step to making it happen! Let's support each other in thinking beyond today. 💪✨
Ready to create a personalized priority system that aligns with your unique goals and challenges? My Business Consultation ($199) helps you develop strategic systems for managing competing priorities while building the life and career you truly want. We'll work together to identify your highest-impact activities and create sustainable systems that support your long-term success. Contact me at powertalks559@gmail.com or call (559) 556-0228.
About the Author: LaQuia Louisa is a communication consultant, certified life coach, and founder of PowerTalks559. She successfully balances her role as a higher education professor with building her consulting business using strategic priority systems. She specializes in helping Black women over 40 create sustainable success through intentional choices and long-term thinking. Her approach combines practical time management with strategic life planning to help women achieve their most important goals. Connect with her at powertalks559@gmail.com or follow @powertalks559.
