Author: Carol Williams

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Decluttering Get Organized Productivity productivity in the workplace Time strategies Wellness

How badly do you want to prioritize it all?

What do to when you feel squirrely

You know you love a lot of things.

You know you have a hard time deciding what to do…how do you prioritize it all?

Great news!

For the next 4 weeks, starting now, I’m doing a series. It’s Time Management for the Distracted Entrepreneur.

Recently, I polled my community (people just like YOU! Maybe YOU, actually!) Here is what you said. You want more Income. You want consistent routines. They want to be able to block your time in such a way that yo

u can spend time with your family -and also with their work- in  a way that really feels good to you.

One person said that she wants “a solid foundation”. That sounds phenomenal. It sounds like the Productivity Success Cake! And there it is. Today we will begin with that first layer of your solid foundation: the beginning of your Productivity Success Cake.

Productivity Success Cake, get your copy here

Don’t forget…

Managing your time, time blocking, etc…. is actually on the third layer, your Productivity layer.  YES this is a series on Time Management (layer 3). 

However,  your first layer, the foundation, which is what many people said they wanted: a clear foundation and consistency. That’s the Health Layer.

Another colleague asked her community “what helps you” with any kind of scatter or distraction that you have, whether you have a neurodiversity or you don’t.

Here are the answers people gave to “what helps me with the scatter?”

Meditation 

Tapping 

exercise

getting outdoors

lion’s mane supplements

vitamin B12

Adderall 

journaling

Cannabis mushrooms

CBD oil

binurial beats 

being sugar free

being vegan

having no Alcohol

focusing on really good sleep. 

***Do you see a pattern here?***

Right. They all live on the bottom: the Health layer. 

So imagine that these are answers from people that either have a neurodiversity or maybe had a traumatic incident, whether it be childhood, partnership, whatever the case may be, that is creating a scatter in their lives. And they are all saying that one of the most powerful things they can do is right here on that Health layer. So I’m going to ask you, what would you like to focus on, on your Health layer? You can do it right in the unScatter Me community.

So if you’re not a part of the UnScatterMe community, please join HERE.  You can jump in say, for example, “hey, this, this week I’m going to be meditating some more.” Or “ I’m going to try that Lion’s Mane.” It’s YOUR community…lean in and be with one another!

In the coming weeks, I’m going to be releasing some new resources. 

Your first one is: Productivity Success Cake.

It’s going to lead up to a really big release the very last week of this month. So pay attention!

However, you don’t need to wait until the end of August. You can start moving ahead right now! It’s Summertime, it’s August, and I don’t know about you, but for me, I have more free time in August,, and I get to think bigger.

 So- do yourself that favor.

If you are in a slower mode, maybe going to the beach, maybe taking more walks, etc. ,do yourself a favor and take advantage of this time.  What better time to take care of your whole cake – and especially that Health layer? It is the first big step to calming the squirrel-scattter.

And that way you will be ready for your Fall. 

Start here: GRAB YOUR COPY OF THE SUCCESS CAKE GUIDE!

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Uncategorised

The Acting Deliberately Checklist! Actions to take NOW to Generate Results FAST!

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

Categories
Balance Positive Thinking Productivity Time strategies vacation Wellness

Why having fun is not bad for you

The counterintuitive way to get more done

Happy summertime!

It’s interesting – FUN has been coming up a lot lately.  I received an email from somebody  asking, ‘Should business be fun?’   This company takes six figure people and brings them into the seven figure realm…and they were asking the FUN question. There are loads of reasons why fun is so poorly considered, and they generally come from our upbringing. 

You might hear, in your head:

 “You must work hard and it must be difficult.” 

“You must sit for that exam.”

“You must have your nose to the grindstone.”

However, when you sit back and you take a look at the true success, in all the way (not just money and prestige from the outside), what do you see? Do you see a person who is happy inside and out, and you want to be him or her? I doubt it.

For example, look at students in Korea – look at their happiness levels and their success on their terms. Sure- they’re more successful perhaps in their grades in an overall way, but are they happy? What’s their mental health like? Consider then those living in Sweden, where the children are allowed to play  – there’s more flexible schedules and parents have more time to be with them because of the social safety nets that there are. Those folks-  generally speaking- are more happy. I believe that if we’re unhappy, it’s really impossible to be successful, truly successful (depending on your definition of success). 

I define success as being fully aligned with who we are in the world and how we want to show up in the world and we’re able to do, be and have the things that are important to us.

Watch the video

It’s true in our business, and it’s true in our lives. 

The above argument shows that having fun is NOT bad for you. In fact, it will help you get more done. Please absorb these 3 points about fun and getting things done, and why they’re important. Then take some action on at least one of them. Hit reply and tell me what transpired 🙂

  1. FUN is embedded in the 3 pillars of success from my dear friend Susan Cowan: MOTIVATION, CHALLENGE, AND NOVELTY. Fun is so important in all of those, and particularly in motivation. If it is not fun for you, the motivation is going to be almost nil. It’s therefore very important that your task, dream, or desire  is fun for you in some way.
  2. Fun is embedded in our culture. We live in an entertainment culture. People like to play games. Children like to play games; adults like to play games.  There’s “words with friends” that folks play remotely. For people that are scattered, maybe they have AD/HD, games are really important. They raise our dopamine level. Dopamine is a feel good hormone. AD/HD has lower dopamine levels so therefore it’s really important to have that. 
  3. We are in a fun deficit in 2023. 2020 had a low level of fun. 2021 the same thing. In 2022 we started emerging and started to have some fun. But we’ve got two and a half years of fun not happening.  Now, people are back integrating. We’re having a lot of fun. Slowly but surely the cloud of unfun is lifting and we are finally saying “You know what? We get to have fun because you know what we do?” I’s important to have fun because when we have fun, we get it done. 

Yesterday I was on a free webinar regarding a new software I was checking out, and the woman who was giving the webinar, the leader of this new software, said ‘Flowi is fun’. In other words, “the technology (Flowi) that I’m showing you won’t just be another burden.”

So I ask you this, how can you make your life fun? 

I try to do it every single day. That’s why I made my productivity success signature system into a cake – because guess what? When’s the last time you frowned while eating a piece of cake? 

Go and have so much fun. Have your cake and eat it too. 

Go, go dance in the sunshine. 

Pretend you’re a little kid again, at least for five minutes. Raise up your hands and scream and be so happy. 

You’re going to be more of a magnet to the people that you want to have magnetized around you. 

Your stress levels are going to decrease. 

Your health is going to increase.

….. and it’s free. 

It’s free to have fun. People want to be around you. You’re going to get more done. You’re going to enjoy it more. You’re going to be more in alignment. At the end of the day, you’re going to be more successful. 

So don’t forget the fun. 

And hit reply to let me know, how are you going to have fun today? 

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Uncategorised

Why time management in the summer is not bad for you

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.
  1. 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. 
  1. 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?

Categories
Goal Setting Growth More time in my day Organization Planning Positive Thinking Time strategies

Counterintuitive thoughts that will change overthinking and dancing with overwhelm

Let’s get back to Whelm!

It’s summer of 2023 and…we’re back! There’s essentially no (that I can see) leftover pandemic-shut-down things that affect us. Hooray! We have a lot of pent up desire to do a lot of things, and especially to have a lot of fun. I want that for you: to have a lot of fun! I want you to enjoy your summer, enjoy your life, and to do the things that really matter to you – and to be the person that you really want to be. However, sometimes because we want to do all these things, we can over commit and then we dance with overwhelm.I love dancing, and I don’t love dancing with overwhelm. How about yourself?

Today we are focusing on avoiding overcommitting and dancing with overwhelm in the context of creating a summer that you want.

Now that it’s July, here are some tips for a No Overcommit Summer.

  1. Remember that you get to decide to have the summer that you want. You are allowed to believe that you have all the time you need. My mantra: “What if I had all the time I need?” can be shared freely! From that mindset and from that perspective, I think automatically we’re more grounded. When we’re more grounded, we make far more rational decisions. We make decisions from our gut, from our heart and from our soul, and not from a place of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and feeling as though we have to commit to everything.  
  2. Be grounded with lists. Making sure you’re grounded means different things to different people. It may mean creating a ‘not-to-do’ list. It may mean creating a ‘nice to-do’ list. The other day, I did that:  I wrote down what I wanted to do for the week, and as I was doing this I realized I could pull out a “nice” (not necessary) list. So I made a line at the bottom of my to-do list and created the Nice To Do list. This was so empowering!

Continue reading or watch the video

  1. Be grounded with Sleep. When you look at your schedule, make sure the first thing you do is say, “okay, this is my sleep time”. That sleep time could be different in the summer, and you still need sleep, right? 
  2. Be grounded with Focus time. Ask yourself “when am I best?” or “When am I at my best focus?” Make sure you’re clear about that. 
  3. Be grounded with deciding: One overarching thing to remember about being grounded is being totally at peace with deciding. You may know about the five step UNSCATTER process starting with 1) Decide; 2) Discern; 3) Discover; 4)Practice; and 5)Celebrate. That first step, DECIDE, is in RED because it’s a really big deal!  In my group programs, that ‘decide’ is in a big red ball. In fact, if you go to my website, I’ve got an entire 10 page guide to help you DECIDE (just enter your name and email). When we keep our options open because we’re “not sure” and there’s too many options and too many ideas, and we are thinking to ourselves “maybe I’ll make this plan, but maybe I’ll cancel, or maybe I’ll make these reservations and maybe I’ll cancel, or maybe I’ll buy something and then I have to return it” that is so much scatter and so much energy wasted.  However, if you just take a moment, get grounded, and then make a decision from that grounded place, you can avoid all that back and forth and get a ton of time back. You get a lot closer to the truth: you have all the time you need (see tip number one!)

BONUS TIP: When you’re looking at your calendar and you schedule your vacations, you schedule your sleep, you schedule things that you’re already completely committed to, and one final thing. Go deep into your value system and say “what is my most outlandish desire?” Find a place in your schedule for THAT!

In fact, I did that yesterday. I had this outlandish desire that -in truth -I didn’t believe I could actually get. I would like a whole weekend completely and totally to myself, where I had no phone calls, no friends, no family members, no work, just absolutely, positively, for me and no else but me to do as much or as little as I want to. I have scheduled that, and it is the third weekend in September. I can’t even believe I’ve done it, but I have. So that is my most outlandish desire.

I wonder- what is yours? Let me know. What is your most outlandish desire that you’re almost afraid to say out loud? I’m going to have you say it and or type it below. And then- as a bonus – put it on your calendar. It took me 15 minutes to try to find this one weekend. It wasn’t easy. I’m a busy person, and I am so excited that I found this because the truth is that you have all the time that you need overcommitting, committing and dancing with overwhelm is a habit that you can break. 

Have fun and stay in Whelm!

Warmly,

Carol

PS:  I will see you again in two weeks.  I’m on vacation starting Monday, July 3rd. My next blog/video will be sent out on Sunday July 16.

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Get Organized Goal Setting More time in my day Organization Positive Thinking Productivity Time strategies

 4 practical tips for blocking out your time mindfully this summer

An easy way to focus and get things done

We are officially past the summer solstice, which in the Northern hemisphere is the longest day of the year. It is timely, therefore, to put our attention on the summertime; this season is very short and very precious here in the Northeast US.

On Monday, June 19th (which is Juneteenth in the United States: a holiday to mark the abolishment of slavery) I ran a  workshop to expand the Time Management in Summer for the Distracted Entrepreneur topic. In this article, I’ll highlight an important, practical, and immediately actionable portion of that workshop: 4 practical tips for blocking out your time mindfully.

  1. Step One:  Get a blank calendar – an old school one with squares – something you can print (like this).  Next, get several colored pencils.  Pick a color. Color in date squares for items to which you’ve already committed. For example, anything on the weekend that you’ve already committed to, any holidays you’ve committed to, your work schedule etc.  Get those all blocked out. What’s left is the time that you have to work with. Doing this visually is really powerful because you can see how much time you have left in a given month. We really just have a little more than two months as early September is culturally “autumn.”
  1. Step Two: Pick your top 3  desires this summer by category.  Sample categories: beach, work, children, fun, planning. You may start with more, and pick the top 3 categories.

Continue reading or watch the video below.

  1. Step Three: Pay special attention to the category that you wrote down in third place.  Why?  That third category is the one that you really need to place your focus on. Most likely, it lights you up the most and the one that you dismiss the most, or the one that’s perhaps the most important for your health and wellbeing. Examples of the third category might be: self care, gardening, or program creation. For that third category, create actionable items. Using the example of self care, actionable items could be ‘move every day’ or ‘make sure your body is eating organic and fresh’ or ‘allow yourself small joys like special cups of coffee’ 
  2. Step Four: Add the bullet pointed action items into your calendar. Use a new color for this. If you put it on your calendar and do not take action on it, don’t give up. Talk to a friend, talk to your coach,  talk to or DM me and say, “oh my gosh, how can I get this on the calendar AND pay attention to it?”

Repeat step 4 for each category and place it on the calendar.

There you have it: 4 steps to mapping out your summer mindfully. 

Bonus tip: allow white space. White space is time where you’re not planning anything because that white space gives you that ‘stare out the window’ time and that ‘stare out the window’ time is in fact your creative time. You are in fact blocking out creative time, but also block out some white space time because that white space time gets your mind flowing freely and it gets your creativity big. And it also helps you feel really grounded – and you can’t do any of this stuff very well without being grounded. 

If you want a lot more of this, I am running a summer program. You can start July 20 and you must sign up by June 29. Imagine:   your summer is not waste, it does not go through your fingertips, and you wake up on Labor Day (if you’re in the United States) and you feel like “I did it!”. 

That’s how I want you to feel. Let’s do this!

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