How to do more with less

Why the busiest people are often the least productive - and what to do about it

I want to describe a woman I know well from years of coaching.

She is busy. Genuinely, legitimately busy. She has a job or a household or both. She has people who need her. She has a calendar that fills up before she can catch her breath. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, she is trying to take care of her health — trying to eat better, move more, sleep enough, and feel like herself again.

But here’s the thing. The busier she gets, the worse she feels. And the worse she feels, the harder it is to do the things that would help her feel better. It becomes a cycle that no amount of hustle seems to break.

Sound familiar?

What I’ve come to believe after years of working with people — and from my own life — is that the answer is almost never to do more. It is almost always to do less, better. To identify what actually moves the needle and protect it fiercely. To stop spending energy on things that feel productive but aren’t. And to create enough margin in your life that the most important things actually get done.

The myth of the full calendar, how to do more

We live in a culture that equates busyness with importance. A packed schedule is worn like a badge of honor. If you’re not busy, the implication is that you’re not valuable, not in demand, not working hard enough.

But Jesus — who had the most important mission in human history — regularly withdrew. He went to quiet places. He slept. He ate with friends. He walked slowly enough that people could stop Him on the road. He was not in a hurry.

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” — Luke 5:16

If the Son of God built margin into His life, the argument that we are too important or too busy to do the same doesn’t hold up. The full calendar is not a sign of faithfulness. Sometimes it is a sign that we have said yes to too many things that belong to someone else — or to no one at all.

Busyness is not the same as fruitfulness. And the sooner we separate those two things, the more effective we become.

Less social media

Let me start here because it is the most concrete and the most immediately actionable.

The average American spends somewhere between two and four hours per day on social media. For many people it is the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they look at before sleep. And it is doing more damage than most people realize.

Research consistently links heavy social media use to increased anxiety, disrupted sleep, reduced attention span, and lower overall life satisfaction. The comparison culture it breeds is particularly toxic for women — constant exposure to curated images of other people’s bodies, lives, and achievements creates a chronic low-grade sense of inadequacy that is almost impossible to escape when you’re inside it all day.

There’s also the pure opportunity cost. Two hours a day is fourteen hours a week. That is nearly a full day of waking hours every week spent scrolling. What would your health look like if even half of that time went toward sleep, movement, meal preparation, prayer, or genuine rest?

The phone is not neutral. Every hour it takes from you is an hour that belonged to something more important. Protecting your time and attention is an act of stewardship.

A few practical starting points:

• Move social media apps off your home screen so they require intentional navigation to open

• Set a daily time limit in your phone settings — most people are genuinely shocked when they see their actual usage

• Create phone-free windows — the first 30 minutes of the morning and the last 30 minutes before bed are the highest-value places to start

• Replace one scrolling session per day with a walk, a prayer, or ten minutes of something genuinely restorative

Less on the schedule

This one is harder because it requires saying no — and most of us were never taught that no is a complete sentence.

Every yes is a no to something else. When you say yes to the committee, you are saying no to the evening at home. When you say yes to the extra project, you are saying no to the workout. When you say yes to every request that comes your way, you are saying no to the margin that makes everything else possible.

Jesus modeled this. He did not heal every sick person in every city. He did not respond to every crowd that sought him. He regularly said ‘not now’ or ‘not me’ — not because He didn’t care, but because He was deeply intentional about what He was called to and protected that calling fiercely.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” — Ecclesiastes 3:1

Not every good thing is yours to do. Not every need is yours to meet. Part of wisdom is discerning which things genuinely belong to you and which things you have picked up out of guilt, habit, or the inability to disappoint someone.

A useful exercise: look at your schedule for the next two weeks and ask of each commitment — does this align with my top three priorities? If it doesn’t, it is worth questioning whether it belongs there at all.

More of what actually matters

Doing less is not the goal. It is the means. The goal is to have enough margin that the things that genuinely matter — your health, your relationships, your faith, your calling — actually get the time and energy they deserve.

Here is what I have consistently seen in the people who make real, lasting progress with their health: they don’t find time for it. They make time for it. They protect it with the same seriousness they protect a work commitment or a family obligation. They understand that their physical health is not separate from their capacity to serve, love, and live well. It is foundational to it.

You cannot pour from an empty cup. The margin you protect for your health is not selfish. It is what makes you available for everything else.

What does more of what matters look like practically?

• A consistent bedtime that protects seven to nine hours of sleep — guarded like an appointment you cannot miss

• Two to three movement sessions per week that are on the calendar and treated as non-negotiable

• One weekly prep session that sets your food environment up for the week ahead

• Time in scripture and prayer that happens before the phone comes on — filling your mind with truth before the world gets to it.

• At least one genuine rest point in the week — not catching up on tasks, not scrolling, actual rest

The connection to health

I want to be specific about why this matters for your physical health, because sometimes the connection isn’t obvious.

Chronic busyness elevates cortisol — your primary stress hormone. Chronically elevated cortisol disrupts sleep, promotes fat storage particularly around the midsection, impairs immune function, disrupts hormonal balance, and increases hunger. It also impairs decision-making, which means the busier and more stressed you are, the harder it becomes to make the food and movement choices you actually want to make.

In other words: the busyness that prevents you from taking care of your health is simultaneously making your health worse. It is a double loss. And no supplement, no diet, and no workout program can fully compensate for a lifestyle that is chronically overloaded and under-rested.

Slowing down is not weakness. It is one of the most powerful health interventions available to you. And it is free.

A personal note

I built the 6:19 Method because I kept having this conversation with clients. Not just about nutrition or exercise, but about the pace of their lives and what it was costing them. About the guilt of putting themselves last while giving everyone else their best. About the exhaustion of trying to steward their health in the margins of a life that had no margins left.

The program is designed around this reality. Lessons are short enough to watch while folding laundry. Workouts are ten minutes. Nothing is live. It fits into a real life because I know what real lives actually look like.

But more than the logistics — the program starts with the why. With vision. With understanding what you actually believe about your body and your calling and what God says about both. Because until that foundation is solid, all the practical strategies in the world won’t stick.

Signups for the June 13th cohort of the 6:19 Method open in two weeks on June 8th. If you’ve been waiting for the right time — this is it. Spots are limited and this cohort will fill. Learn more and get on the waitlist now at dg-fit.com/619method