S2, Ep 5 Tips & Tools for Mastering your Time

Ever wished for more time, found yourself sacrificing sleep to fit more into the day.  This is the episode for you.  Part 3 in our Time and Boundaries series we are delving into tips & tools for mastering your time and setting you up for success.

Time is such a hotly discussed, bemoned, and challenging issue right now for so many and it is so, so important for our mental wellbeing that we take back control of our time.   
To recognise our time for the absolute asset that it is and to ensure we are actively owning our time.   

Action Challenge: 

Inspired! We encourage you to jump right in & select one of the time management tools (best to start with one, then come back for another once the first is locked in & working). This should be the one that you think will give you the quick win or add the most value to you and put that into action.  We look forward to hearing how everyone goes with that in our next pod. (We would love to hear your thoughts & how you are going with the challenges - please add your comments here, on Instagram post, DM us or email elevatewithgrace@gmail.com)

Show Notes:

Donna McGeorge, The 1 Day Refund https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-one-day-refund 

Laura Vanderkam, 168 hours https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-168hours 

Laura Vanderkam, I know how she does it https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-iknowhowshedoesit 

Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog! https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-eatthatfrog 

Gary Keller & Jay Papasan, The One Thing, The Surprisingly Simple Truth behind Extraordinary Results https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-theonething 

HBR. The Research is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and For Companies

Next episode
 Bringing together all of the topics from this season so far - difficult conversations, boundaries + time management & the perfect juncture as we move into topics around our financial pillar is Own It by Sallie Krawcheck.  Look forward to sharing this gem with you & our key takes from this.  

Sallie Krawcheck https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-own-it 

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Transcript

Claire: 0:15

Welcome to season two of the elevate with grace podcast, for women who were short on time and long to take steps, to create success on their own terms. This podcast is here for women who feel overworked, underappreciated, and stuck in the constant swirl of spinning plates. We take the plethora of Intel out there and curate it into the highest value insights. We combine it with our lived experiences to offer bite-sized actionable tips so you can look back at the end of this quarter at the end of this year, knowing that you were working towards achieving success on your own terms.

Miranda: 0:50

Welcome back for part two of our time and boundary series. is Miranda. And with me is my gorgeous co-host declare. This is part two of our executing on boundaries and time management. Like we did last pod for boundaries. We're exploring how we make all of those all important time management changes to improve our quality of life. starts with examining our mindset, our key tips and tricks to help find your groove in this space and acknowledgement that these things take time to test, to trial, to adjust until it's right for you. instituting these boundaries and time skills. We give ourselves one giant step closer achieving our goals therefore walking the path to achieving success on our own terms.

Claire: 1:34

It's great to be back I am glad that we made call to split boundaries and time management tips and tricks into two different parts. I think that exploring the boundaries like we did a fortnight ago I was an interesting space because there is. Strange dichotomy of what we ourselves and its foundations around relationships. Our action challenge about practicing and looking at. The way is that we want to maybe tweak our planning around creating boundaries that provide more energy for us. So elves. Is a really important thing for us to be exploring. I think. Time management from the boundary exploration. And what I like about time management tips is that they're a little bit more straightforward. There's a lot of extra tips and tricks that we can. Draw from all of the research and the amazing work that's been done, and we can work out what applies to us, so looking forward to diving into that with the healthy boundaries exploration that we're all currently doing. As we chat through some of the tips, tricks and hacks over the next 20 minutes or so for how we get laser sharp. With managing our time and also our energy. We'd like for you, to keep our action challenge for this pod front of mind. Hopefully over the last month or so, you've been experimenting with our action challenge on tracking your time over the week. To understand where it really goes along with taking some notes on your energy levels. When you're feeling quite burnt out or drained at the end of each day. And when you're feeling more upbeat and energized, This will be helpful as we embark on this pod's action challenge, which is to choose one of the time management tips and hacks. We're going to be talking about today and put it into action. So that with the boundary setting, activity you did in our last pod, you'll be able to get much more laser focused with your time and ensuring that you're spending it on doing the things you need to do to create the life you want for yourself. On your terms. I've been reading a great book this week. It's called the one day refund by Donna George. the main premise of the book is about all about budgeting your time, so that you're in the zone of adaptive capacity instead of surge capacity. And I founded. really. of thinking about. Where we've all got to in terms of a burnout space, how many people were feeling burnt out after the last couple of years of COVID. Donna talks about We've often get ourselves into working at surge capacity all the time. So I am operating at a hundred percent. We've convinced ourselves that we need to operate at a hundred percent in this world where, there's continuous signals. And if we want to be achieving and winning at life, like we need to be burning the midnight oil and doing a thousand things at once. And she also talks to the fact that it can be addictive to because we can feel a level of self-importance that we're helping people. And, it can actually be hard to unwind it when we get into that space. What she talks about is the one day reform is we should be operating at 85% we should be leaving a 15% gap in a week. A month out here. It's basically one day a week that we should be using that time to have thinking space, being space, having the flexibility and just those little gaps. So we can pivot from one thing to another so that we're not running with such a short few years that you've one tiny thing goes wrong. Like we lose our keys or the car breaks down, there's a knock on effect for the whole day and that can impact the way that we feel about stuff. So she's encouraging us to really add 15%. Into our week. And she describes that as capacity in the sense that it gives us the ability to think we get some space to really adjust ourselves. external anticipated or unexpected stresses. and then we're just really operating much more from a sense of feeling calm and in control.

Miranda: 5:24

I definitely want to check out that book. what a great way to set up this topic so often we're just trying to get more out of time and, time is that resource that we all have equally. some people seem to do more into that. And I think maybe this book is in onto something there where it's more about the quality than the quantity and giving yourself that pause.

Claire: 5:42

got two other books called the 25 minute meeting and the first two hours. So I'm definitely going to check them out as well. The one day refund. Came from her thinking about missing the commuting time. As people are not commuting in and out of the office half, would you be using that time? To work towards your goals to work towards your vision, to make sure that we're creating the lines that we want. So I thought that was great. A couple of podcasts ago I brought up the Atlassian article that talks to how bad it can be and how there is diminishing returns for organizations and people are working more than 40 hours a week. So once you hit the 50, 60, 70 hour a week, there's a lot of evidence does the hate it. That's not. anything for the organization? The individual is. Health consequences, I think my phone algorithms must've picked up on that. It threw back to me HBR article. Called the research is clear long hours backfire for people and for companies. interesting thing about this article is it talks to the various narratives we hear on overwork and why we work long hours. Does the vision of where we were going. And it was because our bosses tell us two or at. The current culture that if we want to be seen and get promotions, get pay rises, then we must buy into it working those long hours for our organization as. Signaled by management. The second narrative is that we're all just flotsam. to the macro economic forces and we have a little control over the powerful combination of digital technologies, economic incentives and corporate culture. And so It's out of our control. Then the third is the narrative that looks at our psychology and in this one, It's that we lock too many hours because it's actually a mix of our inner drivers. It's like ambition, greed, anxiety, and guilt enjoyment, pride. The towards short term rewards, a desire to prove we're important. Over developed sense of duty. so it's all about this internal psychology and Miranda, we have been talking a lot in the last few podcasts. About it's all of that. a big blend of all of that. I liked what the article put at the end, which is rather than ask the question as to who's to blame, is it our bosses? Is it ourselves? Is it just, the model around us. article proposes Rethink about does all this overwork actually work? And the clear data point says it definitely does not produce better results. So this is a great thing to, for us to be having in the back of our mind. as we're going through our tips and tricks of time management. That. All of this overworked doesn't produce better results. So then question is, why do we keep doing it? Is it that we just buy into that there's any benefits of not overworking? Or could it be something stronger than maybe when you combine economic incentives, authority, figures, and psychological needs. You end up producing a cocktail that's simply too intoxicating to overcome.

Miranda: 8:36

There's some quite difficult points here where we start questioning our internal motivations now ego, as opposed to this big authoritarian figure, that it's their fault. As you've said all of the above are going on right now. We can certainly change our internal motivations and how we show up also change the conversations we're having with those authoritarian figures. And this is the time I really do feel like we are on this exciting cusp that is going to lead into a new way of working. Everyone listening to this podcast you and I get to adapt to this new way of change. It sounds new industrial era. It's the workforce. Creating a work-life balance that hopefully we all get a lot more value out of value something that's really showing up in this space for me in the research. So I think there is this broad consensus. In the time management space that we're just not valuing our time enough. and in this you've got on a Donna trends. I've got an Laura Vanderkam trend.. She writes a lot in this space. There's I know how she does it is a book and this is another one. One 60 hours. Put an example in, from Barack Obama asked Teresa Daytner how she was able to do it all. She has six kids. And this massive corporation. her secret was around valuing her time. She knew that her time was worth more than money. And then her time was this finite resource. And therefore she's putting her focus on. Do I value these, does this add value to my work, to my family, to myself. And if it doesn't. No. Thank you. Which is pretty amazing. So I feel there's a real mindset shift around this I certainly don't think I'm valued or respected my time. Like I have my money and not giving it so freely he's quite a big one. So for those that identify with like pleasing, yes people perfectionist type of personalities. This is a tough one to overcome because I think we've freely been giving our time to those will last much kind of criteria or equations. valuing it like you do money, I think is going to really change that conversation. And I guaranteed. You're giving away your time to tasks. your phone and to people who haven't answered from you. I think it's really important.

Claire: 10:41

That whole value pays and knowing what's important to yourself keen all of this. I've had a look a couple of the Laura Vanderkamp things. And do you think she's an excellent resource on time management? Got a couple of really good female thought leaders in the space that we've mentioned so recommend checking out some of this stuff, because lots of practical examples bringing it all to life as well as tips and tricks to put it into class. We've also got to be careful of that compare and despair. So we see on social media, how everyone seems to be doing it all in and having it all. maybe we're getting a bit distracted with I want to achieve having more, maybe that's the life I should be looking for, as opposed to really thinking about internally, what do I want for my life? What's important to me. What am I key value is What's the one thing that I want to get done because I think we can get so distracted by what everyone else is doing. Sometimes we really need to bring it much more. Internal. I'm really starting to think what does success look like? On my turns. And then I think that you get much more laser focused about how you're spending your time. But it's a good example about treating time as a. more precious resource then. Our money.

Miranda: 11:53

Absolutely. And Emma Isaacs it's actually a great one in terms of time management as well. talks about four buckets and never being able to actually do all four buckets at one time. So her focus was on making sure that. She focused on her work and her family bucket. And the social bucket and the fitness. It could wait different times in her life or different seasons when that became the priority. the other one that I picked up out of this book is. Based on the title that you have 168 hours in the week. hours is quite a lot. So if we start to track our time and there's a lot on, in a lot of these titles, not just Laura, Amanda can spend a lot of the thought leaders in the time management space. That you have to track your time to really understand where it's going. And I did speak in the first one that there was really interesting study where people whose both that they were working 50, 60 hours were actually working so more 35 to 40. So probably again, back to that, conscious, really dedicated work versus trying to push yourself to work when you're just not on. instead of giving yourself that pull was giving yourself that the one day refund, actually listening to your body, listening to your brain and giving yourself that time when you needed it. And so that, of course it goes on to spell out is 1.8 to 2000 working hours a year. we just work a standard eight hour day accounting for public holidays of four weeks. So if we have the mindset that we have enough time, achieve everything we need. we need to invest our time where it matters the most that we need to invest our time where it's valued for us, where we value it. I think we'll make a really big mindset shift. So let's get into some tips and tricks on how we can make this happen.

Claire: 13:30

Two books that I think are great, that I've got a lot out of from time management perspective is the one thing with whatever few times. And also eat that frog is got a bunch of like great little tips and tricks.

Miranda: 13:42

The ones. Referred to often, it's been around for a long time, but completely relevant even now. Like it's such a good concept.

Claire: 13:49

I think what I like about those is that there is a lot of things that you can start just putting into play. experimenting with pretty quickly. I think one of the things that they both talk about is the needing to prioritize your to dos and In our first podcast on this series, you gave some great. I context around to do lists and how the mental load that if you've got a to-do list of things that most of us don't even tick off the majority of them, we want to feel like we're taking off. But the fact that they're sitting in our mental low takes up a lot of brain capacity. Talk to that in eat that frog and the one thing. Both. Books talk to needing to prioritize how to do that. They're not all equal. the one thing book it's pack on this is it. You take the top 20% of your to-do list and you just scrap the rest. And then you take from that 20% you take the 20% of that and scrap the rest. of that and scrap the rest. Like you end up with one or two things on your to-do list that you must do everything else is. Not really going to turn the dial on anything. So you can just forget about all of that. The eat that frog does a similar thing, or it's basically saying rank your. do list as an a to E priority, a being top priority all the way down to a Into what needs to be done. Look in my mind. I think you can do that. First, then I liked the one thing idea, which is just gets rid of the 80% and the 80% And it's. I was really nicely to what you were saying a few weeks ago which is all of that in our mental load. And this is not serving us at all. So I thought that was quite a good trick.

Miranda: 15:25

That's definitely been something I've been implementing since learning about the side effect, which was. don't want to hold onto this and the mental load. So what are those priorities? And another tip in that regard is calendaring not to doing listing. So working out what those top five priorities are, what those top couple of things are and putting them in a calendar. they're not important enough to go in the calendar. They're not on your list. So they're not that in the mental load.

Claire: 15:49

Yeah. That's good. think the other thing that I'm very proud to talk about as well is. And we talk about this a lot, you need to first have your plan. You've gone. what does success look like for you over the next 12 months? What's your purpose? What's your one word? What's your values that you're sticking with? It needs to have that. Because otherwise, how do you know how to prioritize stuff? Season episode four, we have some great packs for how to get Crowley on what the. It's the done is better than perfect thing. Start with out Renee brown to him just to get the best. As to what you want. To achieve in the next quarter Whether you can do a year, all the way up to five years is great. If you can do it. Even if we just have a vague understanding, always going to be able to tweak and change that around. But having that plan and those goals in place. A very high level. It means that you can do that prioritization piece. I think that's key to. Other thing. We want to talk about, and there's a fifth bit of information out there. This concept of managing time versus energy. There was a great, how I work podcast episode with Kate Morris. Kate Morris is the Adore online BD platform. Australian female entrepreneurs. In February, 2021, the how I worked podcast head and it was where she was talking about. Tips on how she managed her energy when she was on a. Week of 12 hour back-to-back Zoom's incredibly locked down. Cause she was doing investor to launch a door beauty. The ASX. And there was no way around it. So she had to do these. This four week of back to backs In preparing for that to make sure that she can keep her energy levels up a couple of the tips and tricks that she gave You need to keep your why. First and foremost. In your mind and so she had in a. Post-it note sitting there, a really simple why. So she was reminding yourself of how to keep it energy. She found that was good. the other thing was knowing your values. When you're living into your values, it means that you got a lot more energy happening. When you're trying to squeeze in a lot of stuff. I work on their savior. If you're working in that search capacity mode. Having an understanding of why what's important to you and your values behind it. It really does help when you're trying to. Do your time management strategy.

Miranda: 18:08

I'm so glad you've mentioned energy. This one came up for me a lot in the research and we did ask in the action challenge. For you to try to track both your time and your energy, because it can be one of your biggest challenges to managing your time. think we underestimate how much time we invest. In energy, sucking tasks or sucking vampires. lifetime tracking, tracking your energy can help you uncover those people that are sucking your energy those tasks or those meetings that are just not serving. sometimes you've still got to do them. at least if you're aware of them, You don't then try and schedule your next thing to be. The most important thing you need to do in your day. Schedule a walk, schedule, an uplifting meeting with somebody that really lives here. Energy. So that awareness on energy can really help you uncover. are you procrastinating sometimes? Why you get stuck in that? That loop where you just can't seem to make yourself move. Move to the next task. And generally it's because you've just done something that's really such that energy. The tip you've just said about, Kate Morris and keeping that value in front and center is why vision boards are so important. being able to have that pause and go. Yep. Okay. my energy. It's on the board. I can draw from that. I can use that to lift myself up and to get onto that next task, a quick walk and a little bit of nature is also a really good tip here restore your balance and make sure that you are ready to take on those next challenges of the day. that's your flows into that finding flow state time when it's uninterrupted. you can just write, or you can just think, or you can create, or you couldn't plan without interruption. And it feels like you've just done a week's worth of work in two hours. And it's an amazing state and it's so hard to get into. And I do believe we very rarely. our flow state anymore. So incorrect time hacking trivia to maybe lock yourself away in a library or a meeting room or something. With a little note that just says, I just need to focus. And the one thing actually talks to that flow state, just having that really set, concentrated time. Second really making sure that you're focusing on those important tasks when you've got your time. I'll have to look up the study and I'll put it in the show names. apparently we have the most amount of energy at eight o'clock in the morning. Getting those most important tasks done. First thing, so even if you're in the car maybe recording on like a voice recorder on your phone those notes or some of those thoughts to help you so that when you hit the ground running, you've got that important task. Sort of half completed, cause you've done a lot of the mental thinking around that. Time blocking is another great tip. Trying to group your tasks so that you're not just continuing to go back and forward, actually time blocking so that you do of your updates, maybe at one time or all of your reporting at one time even meetings, sometimes it can be good to get a whole stack of meetings done at ones that have one flow. that then you feel like you're getting twice as much done, but you're also able to then switch into the work. Distractions and interrupt. and interactions. I, one of the worst things that we can do for our time management, so interruptions are considered to be over 20% of the time stuck that people experience in a Workday. probably where we are not getting that eight hours and not getting to finish those tasks now to do list and the interruptions that come in.

Claire: 21:26

think the interesting thing with that, cause It's a bet using all of those. Tools at your disposal, like the of you just check emails twice a day. Or you time blocking. And ratings or you. sure you turn your notifications off. So I think one of my things that I'm focused on and become a bit of a bugbear is in the virtual meetings. should be paying attention. I think, as people are becoming exhausted, it can be easy not to be present in a virtual meeting and you have there and you have to read something else or you're having the meeting and half checking your emails. None of that is great for our energy or time for productivity. And so I think, using those tools of do not disturb. So your messenger, isn't pinging your phones, not pinging your. Emails turned down. I think. hard for us to do, because I think we actually locked being distracted because the focus work is hard. But from an energy perspective time management. 50. There's so many tools out there for putting, do not disturb one stuff and focusing on the one task and time-blocking stacking your day in a way that that you're able to get focus, work done, and. Love your collaboration interaction work done. Being very deliberate about. If I'm on. If I'm setting up a few hours of zoom meetings, I'm present for that three hours. I was 30 minutes, 30 minutes. AMLs are turned off. I'm not doing anything I'm present then I've got an hour to check my emails after that. And all of that time blocking, I think. We get older, you so much greater. I know that I've got to do much better at it, but the tools are there. We just have to use them. Absolutely calendaring will help as well because of got dedicated time booked in your calendar for that important work. And it's have with yourself. that's one of the other things that we do not do very well is actually keep those calendar appointments with ourself. So if it's on a, to do list, you've got no chance. I think even in a calendar, have to get really good at valuing our time and making sure that we don't schedule. over our tasks or let people interrupt during our time. People wouldn't interrupt you in a meeting. need to set that boundary that this time, if it's not important, if it's not like the world's crashing down, I need your attention let you have that time booked in your calendar and come and see you when you've got a free spot in your calendar. If they do need to make an interruption or. May even educate a boundary that they book a little note in your calendar and that says come and see me when you're free. So we can still use those teams tools, even if we're in the office to try and help to mitigate some of those interruptions. us to get out important work, then how urgent work done them into the calendar and keep those. with ourselves. We would not keep somebody sitting in a meeting room. Without us and we shouldn't do it to ourselves. Probably the only thing that I would add to that is. a trombone at the very beginning of the week, which I do like nine o'clock to 10 o'clock every Monday morning, I've got one of your top three things now. That you're going to do this week, and then you're looking at. week ahead. And I've got a similar one on a Friday afternoon where I basically take myself out for coffee. And I just think about what how did I go with my weight behind? That one out of the beginning of the week to set what's the one thing or the two things, or the three things, max, what are the 1, 2, 3 things in there? That if I do them, my life will become easier or everything else will be unnecessary. And I think having that priority set at the beginning of the week, and then reflecting on that and moving that forward. I think the two time block helps that you need to do about the planning and the retro at the end of the week, that's really make.

Miranda: 24:55

I love that you take yourself out to coffee at the end of the weekend reflect. I think a lot of people can do the nine to 10. Set up the week. One of my objectives, I think very few of us actually take the time on a Friday to have a coffee and reflect. And to maybe pull out what did work, what didn't work. Hopefully we can all start to bring that into our world.

Claire: 25:12

Being mindful about our time and our listeners' time, I think it's is a great spot to be drawing our podcast episode to a close. I just want to do a quick recap of the action challenge for this pod. Which we spoke about at the beginning. And it's to pick one of the time management, hacks, tips, and tricks that we've explored throughout the podcast. And strongly recommend diving into some of the books that we've called out or pick one that you think might be most valuable to you. And put that action. Into your week's going forward. We look forward to hearing about how everyone goes with that in our next pod episode. Speaking of our next pod. I am pretty pumped for it because it's book review time. It's our first book review for season two. And we will be reviewing. Own it by Sally Krawcheck. Sallie Krawcheck is the former head of bank of America's global wealth and investment management division. And she's currently the CEO and co-founder of Ellevest. Which is a digital financial advice company in the U S specifically for women, which you launched in 2016. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Ellevest raised$53 million in funding. Which was back to largely by women led investors. It's pretty exciting stuff. For me specifically, because as we know, I'm very keen on financial independence for women. And so I'm a big fan of Sally's. In her book own it, that we'll be reviewing in next pod. Sally gives a bunch of great advice, strategies and real life examples from her own experiences in the corporate world. And more recently as an entrepreneur. On how to succeed in the business world today as a modern woman. It's got a lot of great, inspiring and easy to understand financial tips to, for women to help us close the gender imbalances around our investment gaps, our pay gaps and our retirement income gaps. So I am extremely excited for our upcoming podcast. And talking all about owning it. a couple of weeks time with you Miranda.

Miranda: 27:14

As always we've put all of the curated content and quotes we've mentioned today in the pod episode notes. So you can check them out over the next week or so and dip into some of the stuff that resonates with you and will inspire you to take small, actionable steps for your own success journey. Also check out our website, elevate with grace.com. You on would love you to hop onto our Instagram and give some notes about how things are and we'd love, love, love to hear from you. If you want something more personal, please send us an email to elevate with grace@gmail.com. Can't wait to try it again. In a fortnight's time. And thank you so much for listening. Thanks