Ep #92: Time Management: A Secret Hack to Staying Focused

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy episode 92. This is the one
where we're going to talk about time management, productivity, and an awesome
technique to help you get stuff done. Let's dive in.
This is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers, and overachievers who are tired of
feeling overanxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host certified life coach,
Jackie de Crinis.
- Hey there, and welcome back. So it is pouring rain here.
I mean, like, it's coming down sideways, in sheets, in buckets, all the cliches,
all the metaphors. Holy cow. I'm just hoping my sound quality is good enough because
it is raining like cats and dogs. Did I leave out any more cliches, or is that
all of them? I think that's all of them. Anyway, it's quite beautiful. It justifies
me not going for a walk for the moment so that I am forced to do what I am
supposed to do, which is record a podcast today, because in order to get it on the
air next week, I need to record today. So here we are. Today, we're going to talk
about something that I've been talking about quite a bit in my newsletters the last
week or two, which is time management. Time management.
Kind of a generic term. Time management, productivity, focus,
whatever you want to call it. Because I have so many clients who are creatives,
many, many of whom are television writers but also producers and artists and
entrepreneurs and also just small business people who have to generate their own
product and /or get clients and /or market themselves and all the things,
productivity is a big issue because there's the things that my clients have to do
like invoicing and billing and taxes and, you know, just part of owning a business.
And then there's the things that the clients have to do to be able to generate
money or clients or work, which is produce something creative.
And oftentimes, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, in one of my newsletters, when
they're not being paid, that is, they're not under contract to write a script, or
they're not under an overall deal to write a script, or they're not sure if their
next project is gonna sell, there can be a tendency to lack focus or lack
commitment to just, as we say, put our butt in the chair and sit down and write.
And it's really hard when people are used to corporate life and many of my
producing clients were at one time executives and now are independent producers or
writers who have always worked on a show or with a partner or on staff somewhere
where they're given an assignment or they're given a deadline or they're being paid
every week and there's kind of an urgency to finish a script and there's generally
an executive producer to bounce ideas off of or there's a studio or there's there's
network. And in the case where my writing clients have to generate their own work
and their own productivity, focus can be a huge problem. And I can attest to this
because I produce a podcast every other week and I write a newsletter every week. I
know that whether it's a self -imposed deadline or it's an external deadline, it is
very helpful to forcing me to meet that deadline, which is why I created them for
myself. But once again, when you're freelance or you're between gigs, it can be very
difficult to just find that motivation to just sit down and focus. And like a lot
of creative people, there are sometimes issues of ADD or ADHD or hyperactivity
because sometimes what makes us creative in the first place is also what makes us
insanely distracted.
And I think the rules are the same for all of us, which is that we just need to
find that motivation to focus, to sit down and just do the work.
So over the last few weeks, I'm thinking it's, I think it's about eight weeks now,
I made the commitment this year. I set the goal that I was finally going to write
a book. And I talked about this in a recent newsletter as well. I have always
wanted to write a book, although I've changed my mind about a billion times about
what kind of book it would be. I knew it would not be fiction. I'm not a fiction
writer. It's not where my brain goes, even though I spent 30 plus years in
television. I knew it would be nonfiction. I knew it would be self -help. and I
just never really figured out what the format was or what story I wanted to tell
or how I wanted to help somebody in the self -help world. I keep kicking the can
down the road. I keep saying this is the year that I'm gonna do it. So let me
just tell you the history behind this book. A number of years ago when I was
leaving corporate America and I was retiring as a television executive or I thought
I was retiring as a television executive, I spent the last year of my television
career, writing what I thought was going to be my first book. It was basically a
series of essays. And every Monday, I forced myself to sit down and write an essay
about what was going on in my life, my frustrations at work, my frustrations in
life, my insecurities, my fears, my thoughts, whatever it was, because I felt like
Monday was always the heaviest day of the week as it is for most people. And I
thought if I could at least write about the Mondays and start a countdown of the
last 52 Mondays of my corporate life, it would sort of, I don't know,
ease the pain of my last year or it would give me something to look forward to or
it would give me some kind of deadline or it would segue into hopefully writing a
book. So it was called 52 Mondays, I knew what the title was. I wrote an email to
myself every Monday about what was happening. And at the end of the 52 weeks,
at the end of my last year as an executive, I compiled it and thought, maybe I
have a book. So I put it together and I sent it out to, I don't know,
half a dozen people that I trusted and I'm like, this is what I've been writing
for the last two weeks or 52 Mondays, what do you think? And the response was
pretty good. People were like, "Oh, I like the writing and it's pretty interesting."
And it's easy to read because they're short and they're emails and they're personal
essays and it's all fine. But they're not really cohesive and there's no beginning,
middle and end other than they're all from you and they're all about your Mondays.
In order to write a book, you really need some kind of beginning, middle and end,
unless you are going to just do a collection of essays. And I'm not sure there is
even enough connective tissue between the Mondays other than Monday to have a book.
But keep writing, because it feels like there's more story to tell. So I did. I
kept writing it for another 52. And I think I did it for two or two or three
years. I just did it as an exercise for myself. And then I ended up with the
recommendation of, I think it was my sister, who said, "Why don't you just turn it
into a blog and write a weekly blog and just call it 52 Mondays?" And that's what
I did with the help of my assistant who taught me how to put up a blog post and
put it on social media and find an artist who brand it and a logo.
And I learned a ton of stuff by my failed attempt at writing a book. So I ended
up not retiring from television for those two years. I ended up producing television
or what they call producing television. I produced one mini series and then went
into development hell for another year and a half on a bunch of projects that
didn't go forward. But I was technically a producer and I was writing my 52 Mondays
blog. And so at the end of being a producer and realizing I don't want to be a
producer and I really don't want to be in television anymore, I took a gap year.
So during my gap year, I took a yoga certification course and learned how to teach
yoga. And I actually did teach yoga for about a year before the pandemic. I
continued my blog. I took My life coaching certification course, I hung up my
shingle as a life coach, whatever that means since there's no brick and mortar
building, but hanging up my shingle in terms of announcing it on LinkedIn that I
was now a life coach and developing a social media platform to let people know I
was a life coach and taking course after course after course to try and learn to
be the best coach I could be by taking other people's courses and learning different
styles and modalities and techniques. And then I realized I needed to channel that
energy that I was using as a blogger into blogging for my coaching business because
part of coaching, of course, is marketing because you have to let people know how
you think, how you speak, and what they're going to get if they come work for you.
So 52 Mondays got shelved. It still exists, but I stopped writing on that blog and
I started writing my own newsletter, which is basically a blog. And shortly
thereafter, I started a podcast originally called Joy Hunting for those of you who
have been with me since the beginning. And then I rebranded that and sort of just
changed its focus a little bit and that became this, which is the Overthinker's
Guide to Joy. So that's a very long history of how I started as an entrepreneur,
but also started as a coach and also as a writer and also as a podcaster. But the
point of all of this is that when I went from corporate life, which was incredibly
restricted and very much my day was dictated by, get to the office at this point
and have meeting after meeting after meeting, my lunch hour was dictated I needed to
be home for a certain time for my children and the babysitter to leave. My weekends
were very confined by children's activities and birthday parties and sports and more
work. And so I was on a treadmill for decades where my time was not my own,
or I didn't believe my time was my own. I would argue that today, having a
different mindset about it. But the corporate structure of having layers of bosses
and running a department and having a staff and having an assistant or being an
assistant at whatever point I was in my career. Time was very structured and
deadlines were very clear and people were always telling me what the priority was
and what the deadline was and working within those confines. But when you go to
work for yourself or you're a creative person, whether you're a writer or an artist,
musician, producer, small business owner, you have to generate that pace.
You have to decide when enough is enough. You have to decide when it's time to sit
down and focus. You have to decide how you're going to structure your day. What are
you going to work on? Whether you're going to work on, again, if you're a small
business owner, getting clients or you're going to work on marketing or you're going
to work on invoicing or learning software or taking more courses or working,
or meeting with clients, or all the things. And it can be very challenging if you
are in between gigs-- that is, in between paid gigs-- to find where you should put
your energy. And this is something I talk about at Nauseam with my clients, who are
writers. Because they'll say, if somebody is not paying them, it's very difficult to
sit down and generate that work. Now, I have a handful of writers who are extremely
self -disciplined, whether they're being paid or not, whether under contract or not,
whether they're on a show or not, they are so dedicated to sit down and write
something every day. But other people really need that what we call container to
motivate them. So that is a lot of backstory to basically get to It's amazing
discovery that I've had in taking my own course on how to finally write a book.
So I signed up for this course, and it was a guy by the name of Joshua Sprague,
who I think I saw an ad on the internet. He was like, "You've always wanted to
write a book. I'm going to tell you how. Take my 30 -day challenge and write your
book." Now, I don't think it's possible or I didn't believe it was possible to
write a book in 30 days. I still don't. But I did love the idea of signing up
for something and taking a challenge. And if nothing else, could I finish it?
Would I finish it? Was he going to give me enough instruction that I would even
generate an outline or a first chapter? And here's what I discovered. First of all,
it was kind of an amazing course. And it was amazing because all he does is and
an email prompt every day about what you're supposed to do time -wise, how you're
supposed to manage your time. He doesn't tell you what to write. He doesn't even
give you feedback on your book. That's up to you. But he basically schedules your
time every day for 30 days so that you do end up generating some piece of material
that then you can figure out whether or not you want to write it or rewrite it or
send it out or self publish it or what have you? I mean, in addition to, I loved
the daily prompt of getting an email from somebody and feeling accountable and he
would write back. Like if I emailed him, he would email me back and say good job
or whatever, which was kind of great because so he was actually a live person. But
what was really amazing was he introduced me to a method or a technique that I
have since recommended to a in different clients because I found it so powerful.
And I might be late to the party. This has been around for a long time. First, I
thought he invented it, but I'll talk about that later. He did not. And I've since,
because I've recommended it to so many people, done a little bit of research on it.
So the method is called the Pomodoro method or Pomodoro technique,
depending on who you ask. But the Pomodoro technique is a time management method
based on 25 minute stretches of focused work and then broken up by five minute
breaks. And it's like a fairly simple model. It's just six steps.
So the first is identify a task or tasks that you need to complete. This is kind
of crucial because you can't just sit down with the Pomodoro method and just expect
that you'll be able to figure out what you're supposed to do. You really want to
sit down, and I've read a bunch of reviews on this, you really do want to pick a
task or tasks that you need to complete so that you're very focused for the 25
minutes. Then you set a timer for 25 minutes, and then you work on that task with
no distractions. So you turn off your phone. If you're working on your computer, you
can't turn off your computer, but you can turn off the notifications on your
computer, you turn off all your social media apps so you don't hear any dings or
notifications, and you just work. And then when the alarm sounds,
you take a five -minute break. And then you can repeat the process up to three more
times. And if you do three sessions of 25 minutes with five -minute breaks, obviously
that's two hours, then you're supposed to take a longer break of like 30 minutes
before you start again. So the idea behind this Pomodoro technique is that it helps
you resist all those self -interruptions and retrain your brain to focus.
Because as we all know, anybody who works in front of a computer, it is so easy
to go down a Google rabbit hole. It is so easy to check your social media.
It is so easy to want to answer every text, particularly if you're on any group
text chains. And what this does is it retrains your brain to focus on one task at
a time. So whether that's invoicing for a client or writing a blog or writing a
podcast or writing a scene in your script or designing a room. I have a client
who's an interior designer. I have another one who's an architect. Whatever it is,
it's focusing on that one task and then taking that break. Now, there's a couple of
caveats. The first thing is you have to make the most of your breaks.
So when that alarm goes off, you want to sip some water, nibble on a snack,
stretch, use the bathroom, or even take a short walk. These activities can help you
feel refreshed so that you're ready to get back to work after the break. Now,
here's what's interesting. I assumed, because it was called the Pomodoro Method or
Pomodoro Technique, that it must be, because it's Italian, right? Pomodoro means
tomato in Italian. I figured it was something invented by like Da Vinci, like when
he was painting the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper or Michelangelo when he was
painting the Sistine Chapel or hoping David had a marble. I figured like this was a
very old Italian technique and I was just becoming aware of it. And this is what
happens when you assume things. Because it turns out the Pomodoro technique was
actually developed by a student in 1987. His name was Francesco Cirillo,
I may be pronouncing it wrong, but he was a university student and he used this to
study for exams. It helped him focus on his books. And apparently the name Pomodoro
came from the timer he was using. It was a kitchen timer that was in the shape of
a tomato. So that's how he came up with the name. So so much for this lofty idea
that this was this incredible Italian brainchild. He was probably Italian,
Cirillo or Trillo, but the timer itself was just his mother's kitchen timer.
And he said it in two minute increments for himself and then challenged himself to
stay focused for just two minutes at a time. But when it worked, he set the timer
for a longer interval and found that it helped him stay focused on whatever task he
was working on. He experimented with different intervals and found that 25 minutes
worked the best, followed by that five minute break. 10 -minute intervals were too
short to really get anything done, and hour -long intervals without a break were
probably too long. So in developing this technique, the motivation was to use time
effectively and turn it into an ally rather than thinking of it as a predator or
something to be afraid of. So let me add one thing to this method. The way it was
taught to me in my class was Not only should you obviously set your intention for
the tasks at your timer don't be distracted by other things. Let my teacher told us
to find music that we played while we were sitting down on our focus task.
Now for me it works best if I turn on studying music now studying music is
different for everyone when I was in college I had a terrible time focusing. And I
remember a rainy weekend when I went to visit my brother and his partner in San
Francisco. And I came with a stack of textbooks and I was studying for a psych
exam. And my brother's partner loved to play classical music. And I just found
myself so focused and so relaxed listening to classical music. And I ended up
getting an A on that test. And I realized, although I should have realized that
there was a connection between the music and my focus. It developed my love of
classical music. And so I still love classical music, and it is what I choose to
listen to when I am trying to relax or I am trying to focus. But over time, I
developed a love of a different genre, which is neoclassical music. And so some of
my favorite composers are Ludovico, Iain Iainudy, Max Richter,
and Johann Johansson. Now a lot of these composers have done musical soundtracks for
famous movies and television shows, and you can find them on Spotify or wherever you
listen to your music. But what works for me about these neoclassical music composers
is that the music is calming. And because there's no lyrics, and that's essential
when you're studying, you're not distracted by the words. I think that although
that's not part of the original Pomodoro method, I find that an essential component
to helping me kind of dig in and get into that groove of focus.
So identifying a piece of music that you love or a composer that you love or a
genre of music that you love again without words, I think that's also key to the
success of this. The last thing I was going to say, and this is the only thing
that's controversial on the Pomodoro method, is that for some people,
the alarm can be quite distracting. So they're in a groove, and then this alarm
goes off and it throws them out of it, sort of like a meditation when the alarm
goes off. And some people say you should never give up on a creative groove.
I'm going to leave that up to you. I've done both. I like the alarm because it
reminds me I've accomplished something. But the belief is that you really do need
that physical break. Again, whether it's a sip of water or a stretch or just to
stop to the bathroom or some fresh air or sunshine on your face, that it really is
helpful so that you don't get stiff, your muscles don't get tight and you stay
fluid, you stay loose and you stay focused. But if you are doing something creative
and you are in the flow, I think it is okay to be fluid with the 25 minutes.
I do think it's okay to let it run over. But I would say reset the timer for
another 25, because I think 50 minutes has got to be like the max before you
shouldn't force yourself to get up for, again, that sip of water or that stretch.
So that's the one thing I will say. If it is a creative flow, maybe you stay in
it, maybe you reset the timer, but if it's task -oriented, like accounting or
invoicing or filing or getting through your bills or whatever it is,
I would say take the break and come back after five minutes. But anyway, I would
love to hear from my audience whether you send me an email or you leave me a
review or you sign up for my newsletter and then contact me through my website.
I would love to hear if this works for you and really,
really, really, you know, stick to it. Like give it a chance. It's super
uncomfortable at first. And I will say like everything, it's a practice. But after I
did this course, I did have my first draft. So he was right.
I wrote a book in 30 days. Now, I have many more edits to do, and I'm a long
way away from even publishing it. But I completed the task which I signed up to
do, which was to come up with a concept, write an outline, and generate the first
draft of a book. And that was a really, really powerful feeling. And my goal now
is in the next month to finish that edit and see what I can do with it,
which you can stay tuned for. If you have a goal, a daily goal, a weekly goal,
monthly goal, yearly goal, a lifetime goal, and something has been holding you back,
whether it's your focus or the thought that you don't have the time or the
discipline or the attention span, try this method. I think it's pretty amazing and
the clients who I have recommended it to over the last few weeks have found it
really, really powerful as well. So I'd love to hear from you. All right,
friends, I wanna wish you a great week and I look forward to talking to you next
time. Take care and bye for now.
If you would like to learn more about working with me as a coach, you can connect
with me through my website at jackiedecrinis.com, that's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I
-N -I -S .com.