I'll tell you why you aren't using your time wisely

What current circumstances are you dealing with?  What work project are you working on?  Are your kids running around screaming?  Have you cooked dinner?  Have you taken the time to clean around the house? Do you have any other obligations that consume any free time that you potentially could have?  With all of this in mind, you’re most likely thinking “I don’t have enough time for everything.”  

The thought “I don’t have enough time” is extremely common. 

As humans, we’ve all thought this probably several times a week, or even several times a day...  How do you feel when that thought comes to mind?  Stressed?  Overwhelmed?  Anxious?  The emotions can vary, but most of these emotions eventually lead you to try and avoid whatever it is that needs to be done.  

So what do you do when you’re avoiding tasks you need to complete? 

Are you scrolling through social media?  Watching a TV series?  Wandering around in the kitchen?  Or even hiding in your room?  Avoiding tasks also creates problems with spending too much of our time in indecision.  As we’re scrolling on our phones we might consider downloading new apps or just scroll endlessly through our social media feed.  It’s usually after we’re done scrolling that we realize we’ve wasted so much of our time and usually a lot more time was wasted than we had originally thought.  This can only mean one thing...the reason we wasted the time that we do have is because we started thinking to ourselves that we don’t have the time to do what we need to. 

Now imagine this: Sarah has seven children, with a newborn. She’s the only one at home taking care of them, and has hardly slept the last few days (because newborn). 

You probably think, there is no way for her to get anything done. She’s too busy! 

But this is where our thoughts are super important.

Because instead of thinking “I don’t have time to do anything,” she starts thinking “I’m going to make the most out of my time today. I’m going to be productive with whatever time I’m given.” 

When you have a scarcity mindset around time, that’s when things start to go off the rails and you enter a never-ending spiral of doom. But if you think that whatever time you are given to be productive, you will be productive, then you leave that spiral of doom. You begin to realize that you have the time, it’s all about how you choose to spend that time.

Now, I like to call myself a time ninja, because I’ve mastered this skill and never tell myself I don’t have enough time.  I always tell myself I have enough time to finish everything I need to for that day.  Of course I have enough time!  And the real game changer is reminding yourself how grateful you are for the time that you do have each day, and that completely changes how you feel about your time and what you decide to do with it.  I have seen amazing results from putting this into practice, and I know you can achieve these results too.  

This is where having a life coach can help you.  As a certified weight and life coach myself, I can help you bridge your thoughts to make them believable for you, so that you too can experience this process of shifting your mindset and thoughts.  You’ll see yourself beginning to also think these thoughts, from there you’ll notice the change and start to feel better, and then you can really start to take action and make true changes that will make a positive impact on your habits, choices, and life.  This is what we can do together, and what I can help you with!

Avoiding a Day Off Because of What Happens on the Other End?

Do these thoughts come into your head when you start thinking about taking a break or vacation?

• I’m just going to be overwhelmed with work when I get back.

• When I return, I’m going to be struggling to keep up.

• If I don’t take the break or vacation, I can’t get overwhelmed because I’m not falling behind.

If so, we’re going to talk about this today. A lot of my professor clients are part of the “Overworking Club,” as I call it. And I know, because I spent a lot of time in that club. Now that I know on the other end how to deal with it, I am helping others. I've got three tips for you about how to solve this issue in your life and to take the days off and the vacation that you want. 

List out why you want to take a break

Simple as that. On a piece of paper, list out why you want to take a break. By writing it on paper, we are making it very concrete for your brain. Tell me what you would do with five hours in a row in your week for yourself. Not for work, not email, not even family responsibilities. For whatever you want to do.

What would it be? What would you do? And how would you feel during that time?

That is what is going to give you energy. That is what is going to re-energize you.

Whatever it is you want to do, write it down.

Define what the break actually means

It is so easy to replace work with work.

For example, you take a day off from work and being away from your computer, and then you transfer that energy into housework, like folding the laundry.

The break we are talking about here isn’t a new to-do list at home. So when we define what the break actually is, we’re telling our brain that what we’re supposed to do is *insert your ideal break or vacation here.* And then we’re not going to feel guilty on the other end of it. Which leads us to the third step…

Corral your brain on the other end of the break

This is the part that drives you crazy. Your brain will say, after a break, you know, we really should have been in our email. Or we could have totally gotten more work done.

But instead of believing those thoughts, you’re going to remind your brain why you were taking your break and what you were supposed to do (basically, not work).

And when you remind your brain that you feel better after the break and more energized, then your brain realizes that yes, the break was actually good for you. You have more energy, you took time for yourself, and you don’t feel all of the overwhelm and anxiety during the break.

These three tips will change how you approach taking breaks and help you to wrap your mind around the mindset issues that you have with taking one. 

I would love to know what you're going to do with your break and how you're going to spend it and how you're going to feel on the other end. Send me a message and tell me the details because it's going to be amazing and you deserve it!

How to Deal with Feeling Guilty About Delegating Tasks

Do you feel guilty when you try to delegate around the house? Watch this video for some inspiration on how to approach it from a healthy perspective.

We’ve been talking a lot about purposeful productivity and what to do when we’re overwhelmed with our to-do list and how to break things down, in general, to make it more manageable in our everyday lives. One of the things that keep coming up is to delegate tasks and to come up with the things that we don’t have to be the one person that does it every single time, in our relationships, in our family lives, at work – all kinds of examples.

But a really great point that one of the people in our community brought up, thank you Maeve, she brought up “How do I deal with the guilt associated with delegation?” And so, her examples were things like, “I feel guilty when I give this task to another person because I feel like I could be doing it or I should be the one doing it.” For all of us, we’ve all been there first of all. This is the important thing to know. Maeve’s definitely not alone. To think about the things that are happening behind this and then to apply it to our lives is where we’re going to go with it.

Identify mental blocks and societal scripts

An example in my own life would be grocery shopping and in my life, my husband and I recently switched roles on this and so I used to be the one that did most of the grocery shopping and he has recently in the past couple of months been the main one to go grocery shopping for us. I had all these mental thoughts about I should be the one to do this because I have more time. I also had a mental block behind maybe I'm better at it like, “I think I'm better at this grocery shopping thing. I should be the one to do it.”

Then, there are societal blocks or the societal scripts that we know a lot about in psychology and human development about scripts to say things like “Who does the grocery shopping in households?” And a lot of times in the commercials it looks like mom does grocery shopping or the woman in the household does grocery shopping. And then we have these roles, right? Like stereotypical roles. They don’t always follow gender lines but follow a variety of scripts.

And so, I want to challenge you today to think about what are the mental blocks I have behind this task that I want to delegate.

Recognize the positive effects of delegating

I thought about grocery shopping, "I'm better at it. I should be the one to do it because I have more time and I’ll feel guilty if I do hand it over." But instead, what happened as we made this transition, I realized when he was the one to go grocery shopping, he actually spends less money than I do which is really helpful for our budget and so actually he probably is better at it right now.

I also come at it from a positive place of how it helps me. I have more time to do a different type of task because he goes grocery shopping for us. I'm kind of coming to grips with that for whatever the task might be in your head of do you feel guilt because you're feeling like “I should be more productive with my time?” Like, if I just sat at home and said “He’s out grocery shopping and I should be the one doing that and I feel really bad that I'm not being productive right now.” That’s just negative thinking, a negative thought loop that’s getting stuck in my head over and over.

Talk to the people you delegate to

It’s also having that conversation with the other person to say “I feel guilty that this is happening. What do you think?” Often times, we’re really surprised at what people have to say back to us, right? We find that maybe he says something like “You know, I kinda like doing the grocery shopping” or “I enjoy being able to get out and about in the store.” And we’re like, “Uh, that’s kind of one of my worst nightmares.” There are all these kinds of different ways that we react to tasks and so unless we ask the person or tell them “I'm feeling guilty about this.” They may actually be able to say back to us like, “Oh, you do? Why do you feel guilty?” And so, having that conversation can help clear up a lot of issues. They may say like “I really don’t mind doing this for you because of these reasons…” So, that’s something to think about – our mental blocks that are happening and then having the conversation with the person.

Can you relate? Tell us below in the comments!

Actually Scheduling out Habits for Better Time Management

It sounds so simple, but hear me out. When's the last time you actually scheduled time for one of the new habits you want to create?

Hi! Caitlin Faas, psychology professor and coach, here back to talk to you about the power of scheduling today. So, last week, we were talking about the idea that tracking our time can be really powerful, but what do you do after you've been tracking your time and you realize there are habits or behaviors you want to change?

Schedule new habits into your day

Well, now it's time to think about, how can I add this to my schedule? You may say, “But wait, I have a schedule. I follow a schedule. I go to work at this time and I do this at that time.” And yes, that schedule is also important. But, what about scheduling the new things you want to add into your day?

For example, think about last evening. What did you think you were going to get done in that evening compared to what you actually got done? I know I'll do this, sometimes I'll say, “Oh, things I want to do tonight include: Dinner, spending time with my husband. I'm also going to make sure I practice my guitar, maybe I can fit a yoga class in there, and I got to make sure I'm in bed before 10 o'clock.” Right? And then, I stop and think, “Wait, all of those things added up together. If I actually map it out, all of those things add up to more time than I possibly have in the evening.”

I need to make decisions moving forward about, “Okay, maybe yoga can happen here and here on this day, but I'm also going to fit in practicing guitar. If I do that for 30 minutes every night at this time, it's on my schedule and I know that it exists.”

Be realistic about how long activities take you

When we go to schedule, knowing how much time something actually takes to do is also part of that strategy. I’ll ask you today, what can you work on scheduling in your day and what's working? What's not working? What's taking more time than you thought it actually took or something that may take less time?

Sometimes we think an activity will take us longer. We say we have something to do on our list and it seems so dreadful. “It's going to take me three hours to be able to sort through all the mail that's been piling up.” But then, when we actually sit down to do it, “Ah! This only took an hour. I don't know why I was building it up so much in my head.”

Stop to think about that today and I look forward to hearing from you what you're dealing with in your schedule. 

How to Get Started on Improving Your Habits

We all have habits we want to improve.

Often our habits overlap too. We may have eating habits, exercise habits, cleaning and organizing habits that we want to start. Gretchen Rubin calls this list of common habits the "essential seven" because so many people want to work on them.

But how do we get started on changing our behavior?

That's the topic of this week's video. Check it out below.

I'm excited to talk to you today about how to get started to improve your habits and this is a really common technique, but something that gets overlooked too often and something I even forget to do myself sometimes.

Monitor what you’re doing now

When you want to improve a habit you want to change your behavior, one of the first things we want to know is what are you currently doing? And that means, are you tracking or monitoring your current behavior? I see this a lot with clients when they say, “I want to take control of my time” or “I want to change my schedule.” And I say, “Well, what does today look like?” “What did yesterday look like?” “What are you doing tomorrow?” And all of those moments seemed to be lost. They're not sure and maybe they can get a little bit of it, but without tracking, writing it down or putting it in their phone, they struggle to see where the time has really gone. It's such a powerful step to see all this in person when you can see it on paper, see it on your phone, in a document.

Change your behavior based on what you see

Some ways that this – this has really helped me two ways specifically even here in 2017, one would be that I knew I wanted to know where my extra money was going, that extra income of things I could spend whatever I want on.

But I resisted apps on my phone about it like, “I'm not gonna use that app. I'm just not feeling it out.” But my planner, my paper planner this year actually has a spot to track that extra money. And so, I was just able to write down every day here's what I spent and I get into that routine. Sure enough, all of that financial advice they say about lattes add up, yeah, they really do. And so, I was able to see not only do they add up, I can see exactly where they add up for me specifically, so things like that. That's one way I use the power of tracking in the past couple of months.

Watch good habits snowball

The other way would be from trying to brush my dog's teeth. I have two dogs, Calvin and Rosie, and the vet of course recommends brushing their teeth every day and I thought I probably only brush their teeth maybe once a month when I think about it, which is pretty bad I suppose. But I hadn't thought about this and I said, “Okay. I'm going to track when I brush their teeth.” And I have something on the side of my fridge where I can use a little dry erase marker. And I said, “Okay, I'm going to track.”

And I got excited to get the momentum going of wanting to check off all seven days of the week and then it snowballed of course, right? Because I want all seven days, I want the gold star so to speak – gold star junkie if we haven't met – literally, I give them out to my students – so, I wanted to check it off and then I could start to see the benefits. After a couple of weeks of brushing my dog's teeth every day, I could see that this really is helpful to them and I could make it part of my routine. But it was only through tracking and monitoring that I was able to enact those two behaviors.

So I want to ask you today, what is something that you want to work on in your life – a habit and how can you track it?

Is it on paper? Is it on your phone? Is it a recommitment to tracking that you've tried to track before but haven't been able to do it? What might it be?

I look forward to hearing from you about what you're tracking or monitoring and this new thing that you want to change.

Share your thoughts in the comments!