It's long been accepted that everyone is busy. What's busy to one person may not be the definition of busy to another, and what each of us is busy with varies. But what is common amongst many is that we're not often busy with the things we enjoy doing or want to do, often forgetting that the true goal of goals is to achieve happiness.

There are hundreds of books on building up a happy tally, in short, by choosing to be happy or doing any number of relatively simple activities. As useful as these strategies might be, our mission at Roadmap+ is to help you achieve or get close to the big happy. The happy that comes from doing what you love regularly and the things Mark Twain warned you would regret not doing.

For most of us, our weekly schedule is packed with need-tos: work, study, exercise, family, sleep...There's little time to allocate to things we feel passionately about. Maybe you don't have something you feel passionately about yet, which makes it even more important to find the time to explore and figure that out. For others, there's already a long list of things they'd love to do but can't seem to make happen.

Some of the easiest and most popular ways of dealing with being too busy is by choosing what to do right now. By choosing wisely now, soon enough you'll find you have the time to begin that exercise regime, that essay, that business, that masterpiece. Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! teaches us to do just that – start with the most daunting of tasks, which will leave you with a sense of accomplishment and more pleasant tasks for the rest of the day.

To take a leaf out of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) book, when reviewing a task at hand, decide if it requires two minutes or less and, if it does, do it right away. Indeed, there aren't many two-minute tasks, so without adopting the entire GTD system, you could extend this technique to tasks that take four or five minutes. With the help of a timer or stopwatch to ensure what should be an easy task does not turn into 20 minutes, be prepared to action these smaller tasks when they come your way. You'll halt your to do list from becoming the size of an ancient scroll and feel better when you focus on a single, heavy duty, time-consuming task.

Another tweak is to dedicate a slot of 20 or 30 minutes to a number of these tasks before moving on to a chunk of work with greater rewards (such as happiness) but demands time and focus. These slots could be done between the chunkier tasks, first thing in the morning or as the last thing you do before leaving work or switching off for the day.

As you work through the more daunting and menial tasks using the strategies we've discussed, your to do list will shrink and opportunities to do more of what you really want will increase. Having adopted these techniques ourselves, we can attest to the positive can-do attitude these approaches produce, which leaves one feeling less frazzled, too. Although it may seem like you're still prioritizing the things you don't love, it's by doing those things strategically and willingly that you'll find the time to do what you do love and closer to being more fulfilled and happier.