Author: Carol Williams

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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

Categories
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?

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