Author: Carol Williams

Categories
Boundaries multitasking Planning Positive Thinking

4 steps to focus after life gets in the way

Weather crisis? Health crisis? Name your crisis.

Today, the topic is how to refocus after a crisis.

Small or large, life will always get in the way of your big plans; it’s just the way it is. 

In the last workshop that I did (Time management for the distracted entrepreneur), we talked about four things that will distract us. Those were: extreme weather, cash crunch, too much to do, but belt tightening, or some combination of these things. 

Recently, I’ve had one of my community members cite that they had major damage to their home (this is the extreme weather which we are all experiencing right now!) As a result, this can  have a lot of impact on our homes. This entrepreneur had to leave their home, which had an impact on their business – and I do not want your business to go down the toilet because of extreme weather! So let’s discuss steps that you can take when not if life gets in the way. 

  1. Completely accept what is happening. Be in agreement with what’s going on. Too often, we’re in disagreement with what is happening. When we ONLY wish it weren’t happening, we’re not in agreement with it.  We’re then unable to take the next step as we’re so busy being in denial. 
  1. Get quiet. Go inward and really ask yourself what you deeply want. This is, of course, after the “fire has been put out” (so to speak, or the flood or whatever is going on!) You need to deal with the crisis as it presents itself, and it doesn’t have to last forever. When you do that, think about three months out, six months out, what do you want your life, your business, your situation to be like? 
  1. Work backwards. Watch out for this pitfall, though: don’t believe that you must have the whole plan mapped out before you start.
  1. Start. Begin with one step. For example, this community member that I was working with was asking “How do I focus 9because of what’s happened)?” I asked “well, what has helped you focus in the past?” This person said “Well, usually sitting down and getting a daily plan together.” I agreed! 

Dear reader, I think you might want to try it, too. Try this! After you do your morning routine (you wake up, stretch, shower, have your coffee, etc), ask yourself:

  • What are my priorities today? 
  • What might get in the way? 
  • What is my one priority out of everything? 
  • And how does that relate to that thing that I said I wanted in three or six months? 

That’s just to get you started. With those four steps, I believe that you can emerge from whatever your crisis is. 

For more information and next best steps:

  • Download the free guide to help you get through all the steps: decide, discern, discover, practice, and celebrate. 
  • Come to my next free gathering on Zoom (the Wisdom Warriors). That’s going to be at 12pm EST on Monday October 2nd.
  • Join my UnscatterMe community on Facebook and we can have conversations about this. 
  • Set up a complimentary phone call with me to find out what your personal challenges are and what roadmap you might be able to go on. 

None of these things will cost you any money. 

You can certainly ask me about how I could help you in a more accelerated way for faster results that are tailored exactly to you. Just hit replay, and I’ll be happy to talk to you about that. In the meantime, please use these free resources to get yourself unstuck from the crises that inevitably will happen because they do. 

Have a great day.

Categories
Growth More time in my day Organization Planning Positive Thinking prioritize procrastination Productivity Time strategies

How to give your time to the projects that will bring income…and still stay creative

Boredom got you? Here is your solution

One of my community members has reached out to me about managing your time so that you have the best income within the time that you have. 

They write, “I have a problem with giving my time to the projects that will bring me the income now”.  What I’m hearing:  this person knows that they need to change their time management, such that they are being very deliberate about how they spend their time, so that they have the best income for the smallest amount of time. This person is a parent and has a lot of responsibilities outside of their business.

As a reminder, time management falls in the 3rd layer of the Productivity Success Cake, (the Productivity layer), above health and environment. Therefore, before we do anything on our time management, we want to make sure that our health is in a “good enough” place, (doesn’t have to be perfect), and that our environment is in a “good enough” place (doesn’t have to be perfect!). You can complete the Productivity Success Cake quiz here, completely free, and see where you rate (for your own purposes) on that cake. 

Now, when we dug a little deeper and the writer went into more detail about this issue, they said that they had tried different things, but that they believed what was getting in the way was:

believing that ‘everything is valuable’

The person writing in with this issue knows that time needs to get slotted to a certain kind of work (where money comes), and yet this belief ‘everything is valuable’ is preventing it. And if this is valuable, then it all has to get done. What I know about having everything needing to be done at the same time, is this is a recipe for overwhelm. When we’re in overwhelm we don’t do anything. We become stuck; we become stagnant.  In flight or freeze, that’s freeze – what we don’t want to do. So going back to the beginning, we don’t want to believe that everything is important. When we believe that everything is important and therefore needs to get done, we don’t do anything. 

Here’s where prioritization becomes really important. 

Then there are some other things that this person wrote to me.  This person found that what they know to make money (albeit inconsistent), it felt boring, repetitive, & unfulfilling. This person was thinking, ‘building my business requires many things working together in a set routine, but I can’t make myself do the same thing every day. I get bored and gravitate towards tasks that feed my creativity’.  What it takes to create that momentum and build on that momentum is known, and yet there’s this yearning, this boredom, this lack of dopamine, this lack of creativity.

Behind this, there might be a belief that it’s all or nothing. Here is what it may sound like: “either I do these boring things and I make money, or I have fun and I’m creative and I don’t make the kind of money I want to”. So do you see how these beliefs start to really impact what’s going on? 

Now let’s address ‘inconsistent income’. Money was coming in, but it felt inconsistent. When the inconsistent money came in, this person realized, “hang on, I need to do some automation to get more consistency.”  That automation was probably pretty boring. So now we’re back to the real problem: “It’s boring to make money. I really want to be creative”. 

Well, I have some really beautiful news for you. It does not HAVE to be that way.

The way I teach things and the way I run my own world, my own life and my own business is that fun, joy, and creativity are not mutually exclusive to earning an amazing living. Not just a good living, but an amazing living. These things can and will and do (and actually I believe must) coexist. Joy and income are not opposite sides of the spectrum. 

I recommend that your first step to get to a joyous place and really dial in to be able to earn the income you deserve is to download your Unscatter My Life guide. What you’ll find is that there’s a roadmap.

The Roadmap: Decide, Discern, Discover, Practice, and Celebrate. The person who wrote in with their conundrum is in the “Decide” step, because the decision must be made. “Do I really want this? Why do I really want this? What do I have to gain? What do I have to lose?” Lack of decision slowly kills us and will completely put a cap on greatness. We can only operate in that kind of a situation for so long. 

So- say this person decides “You know what? I’m done with this crap. I’m going to go ahead and do these steps”. The step after Decide is Discern and that’s where we really dig in to what we love, what we’re good at, what the world needs, and what we can get paid for. 

Before we ever get to that Productivity Success Cake (which is Discover), we really dial in on the Discern step. When we’re so deeply discerning, then that serves as our north star. The problem is not being able to focus on the things that make us money, as that’s the presenting problem. The real issue is some beliefs that are behind here, and therefore actions that then support those beliefs (i.e.  when I make money, it has to be boring. It has to be the same thing all the time, and it has to be unfun). guarantee you that you’ll stay in that loop until you die. So we don’t want that. We want you to turn that around, make a big decision, a big bold decision. 

Download the guide, do the exercises and make your decision, and from there you can go into the discernment. 

That was a lot. I can’t wait to support you. Once you download that guide, there’s a place where you can have a free call with me so that you get your own roadmap and should you decide to take that step now, you’ll be on the road to deeply discerning and therefore acting in your own best interest. And that’s why I exist in the world. So I will hopefully see you on that call. It will blow your mind and change things for the better. What do you have to lose?

Categories
Accountability Goal Setting Mastermind Groups Organization Planning Positive Thinking Time strategies

What are you committed to?

We are in love with our roadblocks, even when we say we are not.

The truth about commitment:

We love to talk about how we want to lose weight. We love to talk about ‘someday’. “I would like to get around to it, but not right now” or “I’m really busy doing …..” 

Finally, you may say, “That’s it. I’m going to do this thing. I really want my next one hundred days/the end of the year to look different. I really do. I cannot stand tolerating this negative cash flow. I cannot stand tolerating the organizational state of my office. I cannot stand tolerating negative people in my life that I just can’t seem to stop being with, and I can’t figure it out.  I go into those negative spirals. Something must be done!” 

If that’s you, you may be saying “Okay, I know Carol’s offering a program that can really whip me into shape. I know it’d be SO good for me. I’d get the result I say I want. I know it’s starting soon. I think I want to do it. Then you ask yourself, “WAIT, what happens if I say yes? Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, I’ll have to commit to it. Well, I can’t commit too much. What if something comes up? Then I’ll fail, like all those other times. I’m about an 8 out of 10, and that’s pretty committed.  I don’t give 10’s. That’s safe.” 

That’s where you’re wrong. Until you commit 100%, you are, my friend, doomed.

Here’s what happens:

  • In that 8 out of 10 commitment – that -2 will not allow you to succeed.
  • In a  9 out of 10 commitment, that -1 will not allow you to succeed.
  • Even in a 9.5 out of 10 commitment, that 0.5 will go in sneakily and *pull you down in ways that you’re not even conscious of*!

We are RULED by our subconscious. Our subconscious wants to keep us SAFE and that means not Doing Something New. Even if it’s Proven.

So- to say ‘yes’ to something new, maybe that’s Discover Your Greatness, which starts Tuesday Sept 12th, you need to TRICK your subconscious while she is not looking.  To do this, 

  1. take a deep breath
  2. imagine yourself Dec 31 with a clean office and financial abundance
  3. imagine lots of good people around you; no more negative nellies. A fun atmosphere and getting things done effortlessly with loads of support.

Then, RUN. 

You can join this cohort until midnight Eastern on Sunday (that’s assuming there are seats left!). 

Anyway, let’s go into “Okay, that’s it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to plunk my money down and I’m going to say yes to ME!”. 

Watch out for this pitfall: Don’t make the mistake of wanting something NEW- yet wanting NOTHING to change. 

It’s kind of like when you go on a healthy eating plan and you think “Well, wait a minute, I get to just have my candy bars every day. Oh wait, I don’t get to have my candy bars every day. I don’t want that healthy eating plan. I just want to lose the weight”. 

It’s the same thing with this opportunity. Yes, you’re going to have to do things differently, and I promise it will be fun and it works. 

A sneak peek of what is in store for those lucky enough to get in on time:

One of the key tenets of Discover Your Greatness…..is the proprietary DESIRE TEMPLATE forms.  – You set yourself up at the beginning of your workday for a Day of Success. You can also do it the night before. You can do it digitally, or print it.   

The first question is: ‘What is your purpose?’ It’s really important to know what your purpose is because if you don’t know why you’re doing it, guess what y’all, you won’t do it. The procrastination starts before you even begin the list! So we eliminate that problem right away.

The next item on the template is … ‘One thing I must do today, no matter what’.  Now -notice I didn’t say “What are the 25 things you want to do today?” You want to dial it down. Does this mean you won’t get any more than one thing done? No. You will get more than one thing done, I promise you. 

However, you will get that one thing done plus a lot more -because this is what gets you started and keeps you focused, which are two of the biggest problems. Procrastination is one of the biggest issues. Then of course, I know you’re going to have a little carry over from yesterday as that’s usually how it goes. 

The final questions on the template…

Identify your most important things: two of them. 

We then ask: what might get in the way? Hint:  get really specific. 

Finally, what will you do to fireproof it? In other words, put measures in place to be sure you don’t fall short of your intention/plan. 

Once you fill it out, you can print it, and save/send to me. I comment on this and watch your progress and help you along, both live and through my private client portal. 

And that’s just the beginning. It’s just *one* of the game changing resources you will use in the group.

There’s also an end of day form,, which is also very important where we debrief what we went on. You learn TONS with this form. 

Over time, by doing this, miracles happen – because the tiniest little change, little by little, bit by bit, piece by piece, layer by layer in the Productivity Success Cake, immense change happens. 

In Discover Your Greatness, we’ve got 14 weeks together. The nice part about that is it’s not like six months, it’s not like 12 months. It’s not like $20,000, it’s like $2,000. It’s not that much money and what you can get in the end, it’s crazy-good.

Game changing goodness. For example, 

people have:

  • Double or tripled their income 
  • Finally started the business that they’ve been trying to start for 14 years
  • One person had a backlog for a year of work, and finally they are not adding to the backlog anymore, and they are showing up differently with their team. This person is showing up as a bigger and better and more confident leader. 

And that’s what happens. The confidence happens, and the hidden fears that hold us back melt away. 

I’m so excited because I’ve got five people already registered and ready to go, and I’ve got three more openings at the time of writing this. On Tuesday September 12, we’re going to be getting started, and I can’t wait to see if you’re going to be one of those people to march forward together in unison toward Dec 31.

Oh, one more thing!

Did I tell you about the prizes? I also have prizes and giveaways because as we do this work together, we have fun. When you have fun, you get it done. Do you want to have some fun and get it done and finally do the darn thing that you said you were going to be doing for years that you just refuse to do? Well, don’t let this be the thing that scares you to death, so that you keep defining yourself as somebody who does it all themselves all the time. Because you know what? That doesn’t work. If it worked, you would’ve done it by now. You know that.I cannot wait to see who fills those final three seats and says yes to discovering their greatness.

Categories
Uncategorised

Why it’s so hard to say no, stay motivated, and get it done

And what to do about it…in these challenging times.

Welcome to lesson two out of three of ‘Managing your time as a distracted entrepreneur’. 

The first lesson helps you take your big idea, dream, or goal and utilize the  productivity success cake (a whole e-book!) framework to achieve it. You have seen this lesson.

NOW, the second lesson we’re going to talk about diving deeper into what’s behind the Cake Process. 

  • Why is this so important- right NOW??
  • What kinds of problems does the cake-process solve -so that you can have the life and business that you actually want to have?.

NEXT, lesson three is the live lesson on Tuesday September 5th 11am to 1pm EST, and you’re going to want to sign up for that. That’s where it all comes together.

For the purposes of this article, we will stick with highlights only. To get the full benefit you will want to download and read the full .pdf. 

So….it really * IS * hard to say no, stay motivated, and get it all done.

I know for me, motivation lately has been really hard. There just have been a lot of things in my life. I’ve got aging parents with major issues. I’ve got teenager issues. Home and car stuff.  And a new relationship. My whole life feels like a fall swirl. The economy’s being weird, and people seem to be kind of funky and non-committal.  It hasn’t been the same in my business as it has been before. That can feel strange and uncomfortable. So if any of this resonates with you, stay with me. We will get through these times together. I have been through a lot of difficult times and I have always emerged stronger and wiser. You will, too. Stay with me.

How about YOU??

Here are some reasons you may find yourself becoming un-grounded and scattered.

  • Inflation;
  • Housing shortages;
  • Prices, escalating prices;
  • Job shifts;
  • Covid has returned.

When I say job shifts I mean, you go to a restaurant and it’s not open on a Tuesday or a Wednesday because nobody wants to work there anymore. That’s where we are in 2023.  There’s things that are going on in the world. So that’s why I’m offering these lessons right NOW…about 100 days before this year comes to an end.

In fact, there is an anxiety explosion and a fun deficit. And COVID..just when we thought it was done, so it just kind of keeps coming up and slapping us in the face. It’s crazy. 

It’s really causing a new level of anxiety. Our cortisol, that stress, that thing that kicks us into gear, just keeps coming and we are experiencing too much cortisol. With that, our sympathetic nervous system goes into overload. 

When our sympathetic nervous system goes into overload, we start to jump around and we might be jumping around from thing to thing. 

When we’re jumping around from thing to thing, guess what? We get scattered. 

THAT is what the cortisol and the craziness of stuff that’s going on right now externally and internally has to do with you and your time management. 

However…there’s great news. There are things that you can do about it. 

Here are the steps… 1) reassess, 2) prioritize, and 3) consciously decide.

How do I reassess?

Let’s go behind the scenes. Go deep within yourself and ask,

  •  “What’s going on in my life and what do I want?”
  •  “What do I want in my life to be different?” 

Within that question, the productivity success cake process is invaluable.

The above is a great taste of lesson 2, so…download it now.

Then…come along Tuesday 9/5 to the Live Lesson 3 where we tie it all together.

Now, you can do it on your own, but let’s get real.  People don’t often do the things that they maybe “should.” When you can do it with other people and you can really get clear on your priorities and really get clear on your time management, your cortisol levels are going to go back down. You’re going to be able to think clearly. You’re going to be able to focus, and that scatter is going to be greatly diminished.

So- that’s just a little peek into your second lesson. Comment below and tell me: what’s going on for you and your life that you really want to shift? I want to know.

Just imagine,  at the end of this year, ringing in the new year saying, “I’m so glad that I took that time management workshop! It went so much deeper than I ever imagined.”

Get your seat while you can. I have 3 places left.

Categories
Get Organized More time in my day Organization Planning Productivity Time strategies

What to do when time blocking does not work

Quick solutions to daunting issues

Today I am going to talk about time blocking, but not in the way that you might think I will be talking about it. Instead, I’m talking about it in terms of when you time block a task and yet time after time it doesn’t get done, and what to do instead. 

There are many possible reasons for this. However, today we are zeroing in on the Environment Layer of the Productivity Success Cake. Here is the link for you to download the Productivity Success Cake ebook – the brand new and improved version! 

FIRST: We need to move away from “right and wrong” when it comes to managing our time, managing our tasks, and getting things done. When we move away from “right and wrong”, we stop the guilt, the shame, & the self-deprecation. Rather than going into a negative spiral, we can flip our mind around and say to ourselves, “Okay, this works for me”,  with zero judgment, that’s a game changer. 

Read on or watch the video

I invite you to do one of the strategies that I spoke about on Lori Kennedy’s podcast: to focus on the the circle of support piece of cake on the Environment Layer.

As a quick Cake Review,  we THINK we need to deal with JUST the productivity layer, as that is where the time and tasks piece lives. In fact, that layer is held up by ‘health’, and ‘environment’ too. By addressing the bottom 2 layers first, the productivity strategies work well. 

So, let’s focus on ‘circle of support.’  Say that there is a task that you may put in your calendar and you may time block it, but yet you find yourself not doing it.  I invite you to consider a beautiful strategy called body doubling. Lori Kennedy explains this one in her podcast – she said that if she has a task that she knows she’s really not going to do, she will make an appointment with somebody on Zoom in order to actually get the task done. Let’s say it’s something rather mundane and boring like receipts. Doing such a task does not elicit a lot of dopamine. It’s not that fun! Yet, it has to get done. That’s a really great way to get things done and to allow your time blocking to work for you!

I’d love for you to let me know what works for YOU to make your time blocking WORK. Remember: there is no right and there is no wrong. Hit reply and let me know!

And, REGISTRATION IS OPEN for the  ‘Time Management for the Distracted Entrepreneur’ workshop.  Spaces are limited, so get a front seat! We will be rolling up our sleeves and getting stuff done during this two hour workshop.

Please email me with questions about any of this, or want to chat about the workshop: carol@unscatterme.com.  You’re the reason that I do this after all, and eat cake with no calories. 

See you soon!

Categories
Balance Boundaries Get Organized More time in my day Organization prioritize Time strategies

What’s your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?

Time Management – Sleep

“What’s your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?”

This question was asked recently in one of my groups. I was looking at the responses, and what I was noticing was there was a very large percentage of answers having to do with time management, focus, consistency, and believing in ourselves.

Some of the responses were….

  • Balancing family time and business time;
  • Just plain old time management;
  • Managing my own time, not enough time in the day, 
  • Getting rest; I never sleep.  

For this article, I am focusing  on time management: sleep because several people brought up SLEEP in their responses. In this series, time management for the distracted entrepreneur, this week we are  in the health layer. Next week I’m going to move up to the environment layer, and today I’m going to stay in the health layer with a focus on sleep.

Many times I hear: “ I want to get more things done in my day.” When I’m coaching people, whether it be in my Discover Your Greatness through the Productivity Success Cake program, or high level one-to-one, what ends up happening is an “unpeeling.”  We peel back the layers of what is going on. So for example if my client wants to get up earlier….we have to start with bedtime.

Get a slice of your Productivity Success Cake here

Now you can see that time management in the day actually begins the night before. Since we are talking about the night before, we want to talk about Sleep. So today, that’s why I want to focus on Sleep. 

I’d like to leave you with a practical tip and a thought provoking question. First, the question.

If I say I’d like to go to bed by 10:30 PM, for example, what’s preventing that? And usually the answer is “things that are important” to you. So maybe you are spending time with loved ones watching TV or maybe you are doing projects late at night because it is light out later. Whatever it is, you value THAT THING in the moment over getting to bed. 

Now for the practical tip.

You can do this with an Android, or with an iPhone. If you take that home button on the right hand side, and you do three clicks, you get a red tone to your screen, and that red tone blocks out the blue light.

The blue light keeps us awake at night. It lights up a certain part of our brain that doesn’t allow us to rest. So if you are  looking to get more sleep, focus on sleep for the next week or two…the SLEEP slice of your cake.

Try it, and, if you’re having trouble with it, you can always send me an email.  You can also join the UnScatterMe Facebook Community and say, Hey, I’m having trouble with the sleep slice. Does anybody want to  join in with me and we can support one another? 

We are all in this together…. baking our cakes! If you are REALLY  interested in getting faster, consistent results, please know that there is an opportunity coming up to go even DEEPER into the cake process so you can truly level your life up beyond what you might have imagined.

So, if you are wondering “how do I really get more support with this?”

Mark your calendars for the 5th of September, because we are going to be doing Time management for the Distracted Entrepreneur in a workshop format from 11:00 to 1:00 Eastern. There is a fee for this meaty opportunity. And half goes to my favorite charity!

I will be putting the link in the comments below and you will  want to sign up for that and you can start now. So start with your sleep. Try out the red light idea, and let me know your results!

If sleep is not your issue, try something else on the health layer of that cake, and see how you do.

Start with a strong foundation of health, so that I can help you with your time management. See you Sept 5!

Book your space on the Time Management Workshop here

  • © 2025
  • Productivity Success Cake