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Time is money.

It's the one asset that we are all given each and every day. Yet many of us find it slips away so easily.

What can you really do to make better use of your time? The solution may be easier than you think. We tend to have the mindset that we have to do more to get more, but that's not always the case. There are many different ways you can manage yourself and your time in order to approach tasks with more efficiency.

By making slight tweaks to your behavior and the way you handle responsibilities, you can actually grow your business without simultaneously expanding your workload. Here are five simple ways to work smarter, not harder.

I'm always surprised when people ask me about how to manage their time.

"This time management of which you speak, what is that?" I joke.

Well, sort of. It's not really a joke, because I don't really manage my time. I manage my stress. Time management is something they teach you in bookkeeping class in college. Life teaches you to manage stress loads like you are putting weights on a scale. Overload yourself, and you won't have enough time to finish anything. Manage your stress and you will suddenly have enough time to get it all done. Here's how:

I used to work a lot — 60, 80, or even 100 hours a week.

I let my work be a big part of how I defined myself. I wore those insane hours like a badge of honor . . . I loved telling people how "busy" I was and how much I "had to do".

Sound familiar?

Looking back, I realize I used my work to try and fill a void in myself. The problem was that this void was like a black hole. No matter how many hours I worked, it never seemed to fill it up. If anything, it made me feel worse.

One day I’d had enough. Truth be told, I’d had way more than enough. I stopped and reevaluated my life, trying to figure out what was important to me, and what wasn’t.

I had to make a big change. I had to figure out how to work smarter, not harder. I needed to optimize my work process to do more in less time.

I needed the Pomodoro Technique. Here’s how this incredible simple time management system changed my workday—and ultimately, my life. I think it can do the same for you.

You probably don't need research to tell you that people are feeling more and more overwhelmed and overscheduled, but if anecdotal evidence isn't enough to make this clear, studies do exist. Americans tell pollsters they struggle to find work-life balance and generally feel like they spend their days on a slightly too fast treadmill scurrying to catch up.

But no worries--this problem has an obvious solution, right? All we need is better time management--get more done, choose and batch tasks more wisely, keep tabs on our to-do list more carefully, etc.

That seems reasonable but it's totally wrong, according to a fascinating article by business psychologist Tony Crabbe that appeared on Quartz recently. The in-depth piece looks at the history of the relationship between work and time (hint: we weren't always so clock obsessed) and goes on to argue that, as we've misdiagnosed what ails us, the prescribed treatment--time management--is actually making our problems worse.

"Time management, we believe, is the solution to our busyness: if we could organize our time better, we'd be less overwhelmed, happier, and more effective. We are completely wrong on all three counts, and it's damaging our lives and our careers," Crabbe writes.

One of the biggest challenges that we all face is the steadily increasing number of things that we have to do on a daily basis. There is nothing new about this but many people struggle with a sense of daily frustration simply because they can't get everything done and in all likelihood they never will.

At the end of the day, when you look at your to do list, and start the afternoon "I'm not good enough" session, beating yourself up because you didn't get everything done, try making a new list.