I vividly remember watching Superman as a little girl. There is a scene cemented in my memory of Lois Lane and her car getting swallowed up by the earth after a massive earthquake.

Superman, who was busy saving countless other lives, is distraught he failed to save Lois. In a fit of anguish, he explodes into outer space and flies around the world with such force that he turns back time.

So, how did the future productivity coach and practical thinker in me react on seeing this awe-inspiring display of otherworldly strength and force of will?

I thought, I want to have that superpower.

Now I am older and wiser, and as passionate as I am about productivity and making the most of busy days, I realize of course we simply cannot manufacture time.

But what if I told you we can work as if we can manufacture time?

This is what the world’s most elite performers do. Despite working with the same 24 hours the rest of us have, successful people seem to yield out-of-this world results. How do they do it?

It all comes down to having a routine. A Proactive Routine.

Soon after I graduated university, I had the fortune of attending a talk by David Chilton, author of The Wealthy Barber. This was right around the time in my life when I was becoming financially independent from my parents and it was abundantly clear just how expensive life could be. I was working full-time, renting an apartment and juggling all the expenses life brings.

In The Wealthy Barber, Chilton recommends we first put money aside for savings and investments before spending in other categories. When you adopt this approach of paying yourself first, you make savings a priority. This key principle made perfect cents (pun intended) to me and I began to apply it immediately.

As I progressed in my career, and life became busier and busier, I realized the principle of paying yourself first is equally important when it comes to our productivity. Except, of course, now we’re not talking about money. We’re talking about our most precious resource — our time.

You pay yourself first by protecting time for your top priorities before other pursuits get in the way.

You could budget your time daily, based on that day’s meetings and deadlines, for example, but taking a daily approach is kind of like reinventing the wheel each day and this gets tiring fast.

When you take a proactive, long-term approach built around a routine, you have a plan you can use to spend your time around your most essential work. Your individual goals. Your top priorities. Your big dreams.

Your routine should include your non-negotiable commitments, such as weekly team meetings, as well as time to keep up with email and personal goals like exercise, family time and sleep (yes, sleep!) This short video includes 4 tips to build your proactive routine.

Once you put your non-negotiables in your calendar first, you will find everything else fits around them. Items and activities that simply don’t make the cut must be deferred until you have “saved up” more time for them.

This is the power of a Proactive Routine. And it will change your life.

At the end of the day, the solution is simple – but effective. The secret to finding time is making time. No superhero cape required.

If you would like some guidance on building and keeping your Proactive Routine, we’re here to help.

Related: The power of routine