Month: July 2023

Want time for FUN without guilt? Read this.

Before I get started on today’s topic, please help me help you with a 3 minute, 2 question survey about managing your time as a distracted entrepreneur HERE please and thank you.

And now, onto our topic:

What is a  deliberate checklist? It’s an effective way for you to take actions now to generate the results you desire quickly…without as much effort. 

Where did this topic come from?

Well, I was speaking to a client this week who said to me,“I would like to be more deliberate. I would like to work when I’m working, and I would like to carve out time to just have fun without the guilt.” This desire is music to my ears. It had me think about last week’s message, which was all about how having fun is not bad for you, so I’m grateful to hear that this has landed on ears that are listening. 

So here it is: your 3 part checklist to act deliberately.  It may not be exactly what you might be thinking!

• Slow down. Now, this is quite counterintuitive. Typically, when we want to do more, we speed up. And while there are absolutely times to speed up, there’s many times where what we need to do is slow down. Speeding up often creates the scatter that we’re trying to resolve. When we slow down we can hear the voice within. That voice within is very wise, and I find the slower I go, the wiser I get. The calmness then creates space for a deliberate action (or many deliberate actions) that matter versus “doing for the sake of doing”. Slowing down creates space for deliberateness from the inside out. 
• Create rituals. One of my clients doesn’t call the cornerstone habits that serve us our “routines”. This client calls them rituals. Rituals sound almost royal. For example, maybe you  have a ritual in the morning where you water my plants, and I take five minutes to meditate. That’s a beautiful ritual. 

Maybe your ritual is that you get up, you have a beautiful glass of water and you stretch. It doesn’t have to take long to have a ritual. Rituals are a really important tenet of the Discover Your Greatness through the Productivity Success Cake system group program. In that program,  I provide proprietary forms that I have people fill in. I call it “book-ending”. I invite you to have the morning be very intentional and deliberate, and in the evening, take a look, “how did I do?” (without blame or shame!) What went well; what didn’t go as well? And what will I do differently? Again, without any blame and without any shame. Your rituals really help with that iterative process.

• *Slowly* add Habits. A common pitfall that I see people make is trying to do too much and trying to do it all at once.  An even worse pitfall is not deciding, (which, by the way, is number one in our Success Path to go from scattered and stuck to focused and confident.) The first part is Decide, then Discern, Discover, Practice, and Celebrate. When the decision isn’t made and the habits are too many, it creates this complete scatter. 

So…decide, then build those habits slowly. For example, once I wanted to add PT exercises to my life, and kept forgetting. Then I added them easily. Here is how. My ritual: I get up right after I have my beverage and stretch.  I stretch anyhow, so, I added my physical therapy exercises on top of the stretch. This is a “habit stacker” tactic. Once that habit gets established and it becomes something you don’t think about any longer, you can then add another habit. Will it take a week? Will it take three weeks? Will it take a month? Will it take five weeks? Will it take six weeks? You be the judge of that. Just don’t try to do everything all at once.

• BONUS: Don’t kill yourself with “well, if I do this and I really want to do that, and maybe I’ll do this and maybe I’ll do that”. Keeping your options open is such a scatterbrained approach because your energy leaks, you forget what you were going to do, you can’t stay still and you can’t just focus in and zero in on just that one thing….

So let’s review actions to take now to generate results fast. 

1. slow down. 

2. create rituals. 

3. build your habits slowly.

Finally…mark your calendar for the 7th of August for our next Wisdom Warriors “How to plan ahead when your mind “squirrels” and still savor in the “now.” As always, it’s 12pm to 1pm eastern and totally free of charge.

Until next week,

Carol

Be true to yourself: juggle yet enjoy

After a week off on a beautiful full-on summer vacation, I am ready to talk to you today about why time management in the summer is not bad for you. 

You may be feeling as I feel sometimes – an overwhelm regarding summer. Why is this? Well, summer can produce a lot of new emotions that result in what I’ll call ‘squishy time’.  Time where you want to allow a lot of time to relax, a lot of time to do projects, a lot of time to visit friends, go on vacations and travel quite a bit. As a result, this can create overloading. Squishy time can create overloading. In this case, traditional time blocking is not the answer, however, we believe it is. Since we believe time blocking is the answer, we try to have rigid time blocks. However, they don’t work, as they are undermined by our true desires.

I had a client with these beliefs. The beliefs sounded like this. “I want to do ….” and then they listed off 10 or 20 things.  Iit was not possible for them to do these 10 or 20 things and have the level of relaxation and traveling and all the other stuff that they wanted to do. 

The above does NOT work. Here is what does:

1. Out of the gazillions of things that you want to do, you must remove 80%. Yes, 80%! It’s the 80/20 rule. Remove 80% of what you believe you want to do. You don’t have to erase it, just move it over. Why is that important? Less is more, and if you don’t believe me, just keep on trying to do what you’re doing. The client I’m describing has been continuing to try to do it, and you know what? It’s not working. You MUST get rid of 80% and once you get that done (the 20%), you can go back to that 80%. You have got to get rid of that 80% first, however, for your brain to be able to focus.

2. Leave white space. You may think once you have white space that you can bring some of that 80% back in.  Do not make that mistake. That’s what’s keeping you in overwhelm, and that’s what’s keeping you ill at ease with trying to do all these things. You may be thinking, “All I need is some time blocks” and it’s not true. You have to allow the white space because life will come in. For example, I’m now taking care of my aging parents.  That was not part of my project just a couple of months ago.  People call me regarding help and services and there’s a gazillion and one decisions to make. I need space in my life for that, and if I don’t have space in my life for that, then I get a headache and I get resentful and I certainly am not going to achieve my goals because I’ll just be so busy and exhausted and overwhelmed. 

3. Prioritize. Just keep it simple. Get that 80%, leave the white space and then prioritize the 20%.  What is the one thing you want to achieve today, no matter what? For example, today, I definitely, no matter what, want to be done at three o’clock because last week I was on vacation. This week I’m on partial vacation at three o’clock.  It’s nice out and I’m going to go into the lake, then after that, get ready to go out, which is great. Summer is short in the northeast, and this summer is especially short because we’ve had so much torrential rain, we’ve had flooding,we’ve had extreme weather conditions. So if I get a summer day I’m making that a priority, because tomorrow we’re going to be back to rain again!

In summary, those are three ways to have that time management in summer. Is time blocking important? Absolutely. Know what your appointments are, know what you need to get done.  But time blocking is not the answer – it is only part of the answer. You’ve got to do those three things first, namely…

1. Reduce your overall by 80%
2. Allow white space
3. Prioritize. 

Now you may be saying, “okay, then, how do I now block time?”

I’d be more than happy to speak with you personally on this topic. I want you to have a great rest of your summer so that you can set yourself up for the fall. In the fall, we generally feel like we want you to start getting things done again.

Right now it’s so beautiful you, I’m gonna just relax for a change. How about you?