Ep #47: How to Create More Time in Your Schedule

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode 47. This is the one
about time management, what you think about it, how you control it and how it
controls you. Let's dive in. This is a podcast for over thinkers,
overdoers and overachievers who are tired of feeling over anxious and just want to
feel better. I'm your host, certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis.
Hey there, and welcome back. So I don't know about you, but it has been incredibly
hot where I live lately, and kind of muggy. Now, I know in the UK, they had like
record breaking temperatures at like 104, and I know all over the South,
it's been extremely hot, and certainly in Hawaii, it has been super hot and muggy.
So I have not been sleeping well at night. I don't know about you, but when I
don't sleep well, I toss and turn, and then I wake up hot, and then I'm kicking
off blankets, trying to cool down, and then I fall back asleep, but then I'm cold.
Anyway, it was one of those mornings when I woke up, I was just relieved the night
was over, but I also felt like I didn't really ever sleep. So now I'm just kind
of dragging. And uncharacteristically, I've been procrastinating today,
certainly procrastinating about sitting down and recording this podcast. So even when
I went into the kitchen to make lunch this afternoon, I noticed that the rubber
seal of my freezer had cracked and mold had started to grow in where the rubber
seal is supposed to be sealed. And my immediate reaction was just, "Ugh, I gotta
now buy a new refrigerator or freezer." But when I mentioned that to my husband,
he's like, "Yeah." Or we could just Google how to clean it, which he did.
And then I said, well, there's no way I'm going to clean that gross stuff. It's
just easier to buy a new refrigerator. And he's like, yeah, but it's not easier to
spend $2 ,000 on a new refrigerator. And at that point, I found myself 10 minutes
later with rubber gloves, a wooden skewer, a paper towel, and some hydrogen peroxide,
cleaning the rubber gasket on my freezer and procrastinating what I was really
supposed to be doing, which was sitting down and recording my podcast. And this is
all a long way of saying, I get it. I get how time can slip through our fingers.
And when we're fatigued, it can really make us procrastinate. And that's exactly what
I wanna talk about today, which is not procrastination, but about time management. So
time is something that comes up in a lot of my client sessions and I hear it from
people all the time they say to me I have no time or I don't have time to do
this thing that I want to do. I don't have time to take a vacation or I don't
have time to start a dating life or I've always wanted to write a book but I
don't have time. I hear, "I would like to exercise and get in shape, but I don't
have time." My favorite one, of course, is, "I really want to learn to meditate,
but I simply don't have the time." Okay, here's the thing. Time is one of those
commodities like money. No matter how much of it we have, it's easy to fall into
the trap to think that we don't have enough of it. But time is just a
circumstance, meaning it's neutral. It's just a thing. If you've listened to my
podcast before, you know, I've talked about this a lot, the concept of circumstances
being neutral. And if you've listened specifically to episode 26,
learning to reframe your thoughts, you're familiar with this teaching tool that I use
a lot called the model or the thought model. It's how we and all circumstances as
a neutral thing. And then we explore our thoughts and feelings on that particular
circumstance. So again, time is just one of those circumstances. So when I hear
clients complain, they don't have enough time in their lives, I like to challenge
this notion. See, we think there's only 24 hours in a day and only seven days a
week. So we think time is finite. That's technically true. There are only 24 hours
a day and then only seven days a week, but as we know, there are some people who
are incredibly prolific with the same amount of time as others. So accepting the
fact that time is kind of a manmade construct and it was intended to describe
monitor and control industries and individual production. The Historians believe that
it was the Egyptians who broke this period from sunrise to sunset into 12 equal
parts giving us the forerunners of what is today's work hours But the construct of
time is really just about productivity So when we say there isn't enough time What
we're actually saying is that we're not feeling or fulfilling our productivity bucket
in the way we think or someone else would like us to. Now when I worked in the
television business there was a common expression used amongst all the crew members
on the set. They would say hurry up and wait. Everyone on a TV and movie set is
always on a deadline running behind and pushing their limits and then everyone has
to hurry up and wait. We have to wait for traffic to stop or wait for an actor
to be ready or the lighting to get set or the rehearsal to be over or a contract
to get signed or the hair and makeup to be finished. But there's always something
you're waiting on. So there's both never enough time, and yet time is always being
wasted. And this is like a great metaphor for so many other things. We rush out
the door early just to sit in traffic. We arrive at an airport early just to stand
in a TSA line or wait for our plane to depart or have flights canceled or delayed.
We wait on hold on telephones all the time. We wait in lines. We wait for people
to call us back, email us, text us. We have a never ending to -do list of things
that we have to get done, driving our kids to and from school and sports and play
dates and activities, cooking, cleaning, working, family time, couple time dating,
exercising self -care, it feels like it's impossible to get it all done,
or to do anything extra, or sometimes simply just enough time to have fun and
relax. Now some of this is legitimate. If you are working full -time commuting,
raising a family, or taking care of other family members, your time is very limited.
Other people are dictating a lot of your schedule and there doesn't seem to be
quote enough time to make yourself a priority or to have time to just decompress.
But here's the thing, it's just a thought. It's how you choose to look at time.
You can see it as a fire -breathing dragon like right at the base of your neck or
a monster in the closet or a beast of burden or whatever scary animal metaphor that
works for you or you can choose to believe that time is abundant. Time is more
readily available than you think. And as I said earlier, time is a commodity and
just like money, we all tend to waste it. We throw away our minutes like coins in
a fountain. We don't realize that it adds up. Oftentimes, we think there's no time
for healthy habits, like meditation or exercise. But if you didn't wait for the
perfect environment for some of these rituals, like the meditation excuse, "Oh,
I can't meditate because I don't have the right cushion or I don't have a quiet
place to meditate," or "My kids are always running around," it's just not true. You
don't need the perfect place to meditate. You can meditate on your bed. You can
meditate in a closet. You can meditate in the bathroom. You can meditate outside.
You can meditate on a walk. You can meditate in your car. There's so many places
that you can meditate if you just give yourself permission to take five minutes to
pause. So again, if you didn't wait for the perfect environment or time for these
rituals, you would just do them. So let me give you an example. Let's say you're
on hold or waiting for someone to get back to you. Why not take a few minutes
away from your desk to simply stretch? Like just move around, get some exercise.
You don't have to break a sweat, but you can move. If you've arrived early for an
appointment, take five minutes in your car to meditate. If you have a cancellation
in your day. Rather than be annoyed by it, what can you do in that time that's
sitting on your to -do list? Or what can you do to just decompress for a few
minutes? Now if you have a creative project, for example, that you're struggling with
to find motivation to get started or finish, one of the best things you can do is
try removing all distractions. My favorite trick for this is to put my headphones in
and listen to music. I prefer classical so as not to be distracted by the vocals,
but play whatever music gets you going for the project that you need. And oftentimes
I have to make a concerted effort to put my phone on silence mode or put it in
the other room so that I avoid the bad habit of checking my texts and scrolling
through social media. and therein lies kind of one of the biggest problems with time
disappearing. Our phones, our tablets, and our computers. The very thing that makes
us so hyper -efficient, productive, and allows us to make a living, make our
communications easier, and even research things instantaneously, is also the biggest
thief of our time. Because our phones, tablets, and computers have so many options,
it's very easy to get lost in all of it. My husband's really smart. He doesn't
have the habit of looking at social media on his phone, nor does he rely on it
for his work. But he loves the news and he plays a lot of online chess, so he
can get lost for hours reading articles or playing chess with people from around the
world. But he finds that productive, He feels like he's using his brain and he
feels like it's a great way to decompress. So for him, that's not wasting time. My
youngest daughter loves the convenience of all the streamers like Netflix and Hulu
and Disney Plus right there on her phone. So when she's not watching television or
movies, she's often watching TikTok or Snapchat or one of those are scrolling through
Instagram. And what happens to her like so many teenagers is Time disappears.
So what was like a simple chore in the morning? Maybe doesn't get done till the
evening because she's fallen down a rabbit hole of screen time and this happens to
all of us I'm guilty of it too I'm easily distracted by my phone with everything
from work text to emails social media word games I play a lot of word games I
have a group two different groups with wordle and curdle, and boggle, and scrabble.
And I love podcasts. My favorite is Currently Smartless, which is an interview format
show with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett and Sean Hayes. If you haven't heard it and
you love the entertainment business or you love those three guys, it's amazing and
hilarious. But the point is, it's just so easy to look up one thing on your
computer and then fall down a rabbit hole of interesting articles, YouTube videos,
et cetera. And all of a sudden, time disappears. Now, I'm not saying all of these
things are a waste of time. Many of them have huge value. There's entertainment,
there's distraction, there's research, there's education, there's all kinds of things.
But when we talk about, quote, not having enough time,
This is because we're often wasting it. Or we adopt the habit of thinking that we
don't have enough time. And that's kind of the danger zone. So time or moments of
time is kind of like picking up the change, picking up the coins and start saving
it. It's about scheduling blocks for something that is important to you. Time to
exercise, time to be with your family, time to play, time to rest. Schedule it. If
you're not getting enough of it, build it into your calendar. And if you want to
get healthier, make it a priority. Schedule your exercise.
Schedule your meal prep if you want to eat healthier. If you want to write a book
or a screenplay, schedule time to write it. And by saying, Well, I don't have time,
I have a full -time job and I have kids and I have all these things. Well, what
are you doing at night? Are you watching TV? Are you scrolling through social media?
Or could you be using that time to write the book you've always wanted to write?
Or could you get up early and do those things? And if you wanna take up a new
hobby, schedule time for lessons and time for practice, right? So maybe it's like
one less lunch with friends. I knew a guy who was a CEO, and he started marathon
running on his lunch hour. He would, three days a week, ran a huge company.
He would put on his tennis shoes, and he would start running on his lunch hours.
So it's possible to do anything you set out to do. But again,
it's really just about priorities, and it's about becoming mindful of your time. But
I want you to think this thought. I have more time than I think. If you were to
spend a week or two tracking your activities and your time, you would see how much
you're spending. I've given this homework assignment to clients in the past to keep
a journal of how each hour is spent without judgment, just as a neutral witness.
They're not allowed to write down, "I worked from nine to five," because that
doesn't tell the whole story. When you're forced to break it down by hour, you get
much better at catching yourself in your own story. Like, do you literally have
meetings every hour of the day? And if so, how much time is spent on small talk,
chit chat, redundancy? Can you cut your meetings from one hour to 45 minutes, or
even down to 30 minutes. Can you eliminate some of your meetings altogether with
just an email or a quick phone call? And if you're not in meetings all day, how
are you spending each hour? Are you staring at your computer the entire time? And
if so, do you take physical breaks, mental breaks, water breaks, bathroom breaks?
Because that's important too. It's important to take a break if you're working
intensely, particularly if you're sitting in a chair, because you need to move your
body. You need to be kind to your body, you need to replenish, because that's part
of where the brain power comes from, and that's where the clear thinking comes from.
So the other question is, can you work more efficiently? In other words, smarter,
not harder. Where can you cut back? Where can you delegate? Because it's possible
that creating less might actually be creating more value in your work and your
personal life. Sometimes when we do less, it frees up the space in our brain to
think more clearly and we become more efficient simply by being less burned out.
So if you had more time, what would you do with it? Would you see more friends?
Would you be more Creative, would you be more active? Would you spend more time
with your family? Are there any of these things you could do in smaller increments?
When you have those breaks, is there something that you can do in five or 10
minutes? Rather than just mindlessly space out or scroll through social media?
Is there an opportunity to fill the gaps where time you feel is being wasted,
But, in fact, you can turn into productivity. Here's the thing. Time is not your
enemy. Time is elastic. And you can create more time in your life for what you
want, if you change your thoughts about time. But it starts with having a really
honest relationship with what you're doing with it. So being mindful of your time,
tracking it like you would money or food, it's a learned skill and it's a new
discipline and it's possible for you to change your relationship with time starting
right now. So that's what I have for you this week friends. I'm going to challenge
you to go out there and redefine your relationship with time. I know you can do
it. I know you can have more of it and I know You can learn to enjoy it more by
taking command of it instead of letting it take command of you oh And one more
thing I have a favorite ask Whether you've been listening to this podcast for a
while or if this is your first time if you're enjoying the content I would love
you to leave me a review or share it with a friend Thank you guys have a great
week, and I will talk to you next time. Bye for now Thank you for listening to
this episode of the Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you're enjoying these episodes,
please subscribe or follow this podcast so you can always be in the know when the
next episode drops. 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 dot com