Month: September 2022

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 30. Today, we’re going to set the foundation for managing your time. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach, Olivia Vizachero.

Hey there. How’s it going today? I hope you are well, and I hope that you have taken me up on my invitation, that I talked about in the last episode, to start doing time audits. As we continue on in this time management series, I hope you take the opportunity to dive in and really gain all that awareness that I talked about, when I talked about how to do time audits and why you want to do them, and the benefit of that.

So, I hope you’re up to your eyeballs keeping track of how you’re spending your time and gaining a ton of awareness, as a result. I hope they’re going well. One of my clients in my mastermind actually asked me a question about time audits in our session this week. And she was just asking, like for some more specificity on how exactly to do them. And I gave an example of the awareness and the benefits you would get from doing a time audit, and how it would help you plan going forward the next time you do something.

And, the example that I used was travel. So, because I’ve done time audits with travel, I now know, to work backwards from when my flight’s gonna leave, and how far in advance they start to board, and how much time it takes me to get through security, and how early I want to be through security before the flight starts boarding. I tend to cut it pretty close, but I do like to leave enough time so I’m not rushing.

I keep track of how long it’s gonna take me to check my bag at the curb. How long it’s gonna take me, even if there’s a little bit of traffic, to get from my house to the airport. So, when you’re doing a time audit, you’re keeping track of all of those little micro expenditures of time and how they add up together, so you can stay on track and stay on schedule. So you can better manage your time.

Speaking of travel, I’ve got a ton of it coming up. One of my clients told me recently he was like, you’re gonna be like Carmen Sandiego. Because I seriously am bouncing all over the globe, or at least parts of it. I’m going to be in New York City, I can’t wait. I get to see two people that I’ve never met in person, and I’m really excited to see them. One is a former client, and the other is a friend of mine that I met through LinkedIn® and I’ve never met her before.

And, we talk on the phone for hours each week. And we’ve never seen each other in person, so that’s super exciting. And, I’m flying through New York because I’m on my way to Italy. And I couldn’t get a direct flight from Detroit, so I had to pick New York or Boston. And I have people to see in New York, so I’m going to spend a few days in New York City and then, I’m going to head to Rome.

And then, I’m going to the Amalfi Coast. And then, super exciting, I’m going to fly from Italy to Nashville, where I’m speaking at Clio Con. If you are going to Clio Con, reach out to me and let me know that you’re going to be there. I would love to meet you in person. So, I’ll be in Nashville for Clio Con, that’s October 10^th and 11^th.

And if you’ve decided to go at the very last minute, and you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, go to my Instagram®, my handle’s thelessstressedlawyer. And click on the link in my bio, and you can get a discounted ticket to Clio Con if you do that. So, that’s available to you too. But if you’re going to be there, or you’re on the fence about going, definitely go in person, it’s so much more fun to get to see everyone and meet face-to-face.

And, I love soaking up an immersive environment. That is what I love about my own mastermind. With my clients, we meet in person. twice a year. And we get to soak up all the goodness and just be in a really collaborative, immersive, all-consuming space, and really focus on the personal development. I love that part of it. So, if you’re going to Clio con reach out. I’ll be there, in Nashville, speaking all about, actually, this topic: How to make the most of your time.

And then after that, I’m going to hop on over to Charleston to scope out some hotels for the next live event, for The Less Stressed Lawyer mastermind. So, that’s where the next event is going to be. And, I can’t wait. Charleston; such an amazing city.

So, I’m going to be there, and I’m going to bop around and check out the places that I want to have the welcome dinner, the farewell dinner, and where I want to actually host the event. I want to compare some venues; more on that later. But that’s my travel.

So, as you’re listening to these next couple episodes, I’ll be bouncing all around the globe, again, like Carmen Sandiego. All right. So, we’re continuing on in this time management series, right? We’ve been talking about the three P’s.

Now we’ve really dove in to start talking about procrastination, and how to manage your time. We talked about the two models of time management: firefighting and procrastinating. We talked about your thoughts about time, and your to-do list and work in general, and time management. We also talked about doing time audits, to start to gain some of that awareness.

Now, I was gonna dive right in to the three steps that I teach my clients on how to manage their time. The three steps that they need to implement in order to do that effectively. But I realized I want to set just a little bit more of a foundation before we dive in to discussing each of those three steps. So, that’s the purpose of this episode.

It’s gonna be pretty short and sweet, but I wanted to make sure that I covered that. There are just a few other things that I wanted to talk to you about before we dive in deep to each one of the three steps.

Alright, the first thing that I want to talk about is always being behind. The problem of always being behind. And the reason that I want to talk about that is because it’s probably one of the most common problems that I see my clients face. They come to me, and they say, “Olivia, I’m always behind. I feel like I’m never on top of things. I’m never caught up. I’m always late on stuff. There’s always stuff that I’ve promised to people that is behind schedule,” right?

They’re just constantly behind day after day. So much so that they find themselves waking up first thing in the morning, and the way that they’re talking to themselves, they’re telling themselves that they’re already behind. Their eyes just popped open, it’s first thing in the morning, and yet they’re already believing that they’re behind. Right.

And what they’re doing, the reason this is happening, is because they’re treating their behind, like rollover minutes. If anyone remembers rollover minutes from the early days of the cell phone, back in the 2000’s, it’s kind of like that, right? It’s, we’re carrying, also, like miles or PTO (paid time off). We carry it over into the next month or the next year.

Well, people were doing the same thing with being behind. They didn’t get through everything that they planned for the day on Monday, so they wake up on Tuesday morning, and they’re telling themselves that they’re already behind.

We also start our weeks like this. If we told ourselves we were going to work over the weekend, and then you didn’t, you procrastinated, you did something else instead, you wake up Monday morning and you already feel like you’re behind the eight ball, right?

And why is that a problem? Well, number one, it feels terrible, right? If you’re telling yourself you’re constantly behind, you’re gonna feel really discouraged and have this heaviness that you start your day with. That’s no way to start your day. And it’s going to create so much more resistance to you getting started, and to you accomplishing work, and having a really productive day. So, it’s not going to serve you.

It’s also, not true. And I know if you hear me say that you’re probably going to be like, “Olivia, I disagree with you. It is true.” It’s not, it’s just a matter of opinion. And you get to tell yourself, you get to have the opinion, that you’re behind at the start of every day, or you get to decide that every day is a new day. Right?

Think about it. Telling yourself you’re behind first thing in the morning doesn’t make sense. Whatever happened yesterday, happened yesterday. Whatever happened last week, happened last week. All right. Every day, you wake up and you start a fresh day. You get the opportunity to make a new plan for a new day. So, why would you tell yourself that you’re behind?

You would just start fresh, and anything that didn’t get accomplished the day before you now factor in and put it into today’s plan. You get a new plan; you get a fresh start. You’re not behind. You’re only behind first thing in the morning, if you decide to tell yourself that you are. And again, I highly recommend you don’t do this, it’s going to make you feel terrible.

Now, what I teach my clients, is the only time you can ever be behind is at the end of a day. Right? You made a plan for the day, and then, you didn’t get through all of it. So, at the end of the day, it makes sense that you feel behind.

Now when that happens, most people want to beat themselves up for being behind. They want to kick themselves, they want to start that negative self-talk, and really gang up on themselves, and have that inner dialogue get really negative, right? If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that that doesn’t lead to anything productive.

Negative thoughts create negative results because they make you feel badly. And then, you’re really prone to take negative action or no action at all, when you’re feeling those negative emotions. Which ultimately, produces nothing good.

So, instead of beating up on yourself when you’re behind at the end of the day, I just want you to get really curious and do a quick evaluation. There are only ever three reasons that you’re behind. And it may be that you are experiencing a combination of the three. That happens sometimes; that’s alright. You just want to know what the three are, so that you can evaluate really effectively and gain some awareness.

And then, troubleshoot, problem-solve, for what happened, what went wrong, what didn’t work that day, that led to you being behind. So, the three reasons that you’re always behind: Number one, you’re just doing the math wrong. You’re packing what I like to call 10 pounds of potatoes into a 5-pound bag. So, you’re planning about 10 hours of work in a five-hour period. Or, 20 hours of work in an 8-hour period.

You’re not making time assessments for how long what you’ve planned for the day, will take you. So, you just plan too much work. Which, if you’re doing that, of course, you’re going to be behind at the end of the day; the math didn’t work out. You’re not going to be able to do 15 hours’ worth of work in 7 hours. That’s just not how time works; it’s not how math works.

So, that’s gonna be the first reason that you’re behind at the end of the day. You’ve simply done the math wrong and planned too much for the amount of time that you allotted yourself.

The second reason, that you’re going to feel behind at the end of the day, is because you reshuffled. So, maybe you planned the appropriate amount of work, you planned eight hours for eight hours. Or, more realistically probably, because it takes a little bit of time throughout the day to be a human, you planned seven hours or seven and a half hours for an eight-hour period.

So, that should fit, that should work, right, in theory. But if you reshuffle and you take a detour from the plan, you divert from the plan, that’s going to make you be behind at the end of every day, right? If you take unscheduled calls, if you answer emails when you didn’t plan to be answering emails, if you’re doing all of those things.

You’re letting a colleague come into your office and spend 30 minutes kind of talking about work, but also just making small talk when you were supposed to be working on something else, you’re going to be behind. So, you’ve reshuffled your schedule, and everything that you had planned for the day got pushed down, right? That’s the second way that you’re going to be behind at the end of the day.

And the third way, that you’re going to be behind at the end of the day, is simply if you procrastinate. So, you planned maybe, an appropriate amount of work, but you just aren’t doing it; you are buffering. You’re doing those actions that I talked about a couple episodes ago.

You’re scrolling on Instagram, maybe you’re texting friends, you’re listening to music, you’re messing around on the internet, maybe reading ESPN.com™, or the news, right? Maybe you’re grabbing a snack, watching some Netflix®, you’re just doing anything that you didn’t plan for, in order to avoid work.

So, those are the three reasons that you would end up being behind at the end of the day. And like I said, you might be guilty of a combination of them. But you just want to know if you’re doing any of those things. If you’re engaged in any of those behaviors, and that they’re contributing to being behind. If you are engaged in any of those behind-making activities, for lack of a better term, you want to know, so you can course correct, right?

If you’re guilty of the first offense, by planning too much, you’re going to start planning accurately, and doing the math right. If you’re guilty of reshuffling, you want to stop reshuffling. You want to stop doing that and just stick to your plan.

And if you’re procrastinating, of course, you want to not do that. You want to get started and make your way through the work that you planned for the day. So, you don’t get to the end of the day feeling behind, and not having gotten through what you planned to accomplish for the day.

Now, if you constantly feel like you’re behind, this probably isn’t going to be a problem that we remedy overnight. It’s going to take some trial and error; it’s going to take some practice. You’re going to stumble, you’re going to have missteps, you’re gonna make mistakes. And, all of that is going to be a learning opportunity.

You’ve heard me say it before, that I really don’t believe in failure. As long as you don’t quit, you can’t really fail. So instead, you’re really going to be existing in this world where you’re just winning or learning, winning, or learning. And that’s how I want you to approach time management.

It’s going to take some time. You’re going to get a little bit better each day, if you’re evaluating what’s working, evaluating what’s not working, and making a plan for what you’ll do differently to fix what doesn’t work. So, you can start doing that evaluation process, that process of taking action, auditing, and adapting, when it comes to being behind and trying to remedy that problem.

The other thing you want to do though, is get really clear on what you mean by “not being behind”. Most people really don’t know what they’re aiming for. We use terms pretty loosely, like, we’re behind or we want to be caught up, right? Everyone or most people, I shouldn’t make that big of a generalization, but most people I work with and most people I know are constantly striving to, “get caught up”.

And, what do you mean by get caught up, if that’s the way that you speak? If that’s the thing that you’re aiming for, that’s the result that you’re trying to create in your life, when it comes to managing your time. Let’s get really clear on that.

I used to speak that way, too. I was always aiming to be caught up. And I finally forced myself one day, to answer the question of; what did I mean by that? What would it look like for me to be caught up? And, I allowed myself to be really honest with the answer that I came up with. I was just very candid.

And it’s funny, speaking of candor, I was talking to a client earlier today. And I said, one of the ways that you get really great at time management, is that you just start having very candid, honest conversations with yourself. You really eliminate all the white lies, all the fibs that you might be used to telling yourself, about how you spend your time, about how you manage it, about what you’re going to do, and about what you’re not going to do.

You just really want to start to engage in the most honest conversations around expenditures of time that you possibly can. So, I want you to get really honest. What do you mean when you say you want to be caught up? What would that look like for you?

When I allowed myself to answer that question really honestly, what I meant by being caught up, was that I wanted to be done with everything. And I joked once, and I told a client of mine that, and I think her response to me was like, “Does that mean like your dead, like six feet under?” Because that’s kind of what it means to be done with everything, right?

Other than that, there’s always going to be more for us to do. We’re always going to have outstanding items on our to do list, things to take care of tomorrow. We’re never really gonna be “caught up”, where we’re done with everything. But a lot of people, when they’re using that phrase, they’re kind of in the back of their head aiming for that.

And what’s funny is, as soon as I described being caught up in that manner, I realized I don’t even want that. Because it would mean that I have no work to do tomorrow. I have no clients to meet with. I wouldn’t have any money coming in. And as someone who’s self-employed, that would be a nightmare, right?

Same thing goes for a lot of people who are working a billable-hour model; you want more work on the horizon. You don’t want to have an empty day tomorrow, with nothing on your to-do list and no work to bill for. So, you want to get really clear with; what do you mean by caught up? And number one, is your answer even really desirable? Do you want to be done with everything if that’s what you mean by it?

Or, two, is it even possible? And when you think about the practice of law, you’re probably never going to be caught up. It’s not like working… I’m from Detroit, and we’ve got the big three here, the automotive companies. And if you work in a factory, and you’re responsible for putting engines together every day, right?

The engines, part by part, are going to be assembled on the assembly line. And, it’s one person’s job to put the bolts into this section of the engine. And, it’s another person’s job to assemble another part of the engine. And, you’re going to do that over the course of your shift. And then, you’re done for the day, when your shift comes to an end. And, there’s no more work to do until your next shift.

The practice of law is really not like that, right? There’s going to be unfinished work at the end of your day. So, I like to introduce people to a third way to talk about time; there’s being behind, there’s being on schedule, and then, there’s being caught up.

Being caught up would be where you’re done with everything; there’s nothing left for you to do. Being on schedule is a little bit different than that; you’re still going to have outstanding items coming due in the future. You’re not behind on them, yet. They’re not late; they’re due at some time up ahead, but you still have work to do, right? It’s not like you don’t have anything on your to-do list.

That’s what it would look like to be on schedule. And then, of course, when you’re behind, it’s going to be either at the end of the day when you committed any of the three mistakes that I mentioned earlier: the causes for being behind. Or, you’re going to be behind on something that you already promised to someone. And if that’s the case, I just want to offer you; you can create a fresh start for yourself on everything that you’re behind on.

And I highly encourage you to do that, so you can get out of this narrative that you’re constantly behind. Make a list of everything that you’ve already promised people, and set new internal deadlines for yourself. If you need to communicate external deadlines, with clients or supervisors that you work with or other colleagues, whatever the case may be, set new deadlines.

And make them realistic, push them out far ahead of you, so you can work towards them. And, get out of that state of constantly being behind just because there are deadlines that you previously missed, that you’re carrying with you, that are looming with you, right?

So, you can get out of behind that way, and then, you’re just dealing with that end of the day behind, from bad planning, reshuffling, or from procrastinating.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about what I call the “catching up conundrum”, or the “caught up conundrum”. And it’s this phenomenon that I see people bring with them, that they picked up from school, right? Think about high school, college, law school, any of that, you would get, essentially, like an outline or a syllabus for the semester.

And you’d be able to figure out whether you were behind schedule, whether you were caught up, or you could even get ahead of schedule, right? Because you could look ahead. You could read ahead if you wanted to. Complete assignments early or ahead of time, but you always knew exactly where you were, with respect to the schedule for the class, for that semester.

And then, the semester would culminate in some final project. And then, there’s a nice tidy little bow that would be put on that semester, it would conclude, and then you’d get a fresh start shortly thereafter. Now, the kicker here, is that school’s an artificial environment, right?

So, your professors don’t come to you two days before your tort’s exam, while you’re cramming, and say, “Hey, I really need you to stop what you’re doing. I’m not going to move the exam, but before you finish studying for my exam, I need you to write a term paper, or do this draft motion for something,” right? They don’t do that.

You’re in this artificial bubble, protected from any of those infringements from the outside world. You have a concrete schedule of what’s going to be expected of you, and that’s all you have to think about. There are no infringements, nothing unplanned pops up to interrupt your schedule, to interrupt the plan that you’ve created for yourself. You’re really existing in this finite world of to-do list items.

And that is just completely contrary to the practice of law. To what it looks like to have a career and be working within your career. They’re just different beasts. With your career, it’s not that open-closed, tidy, little bow finality, and then fresh start scenario that we’re used to. Instead, it’s the world of spinning plates, right?

You have a to-do list, from day one of your career. And you keep adding to it and some things drop off, and then some things add on. And most people like to refer to to-do lists as ‘never ending’. I think that has a negative connotation, so I don’t love that terminology.

Instead, I like to think of your to-do list as ever evolving, because that’s exactly what it is. You’re going to work through parts of your to-do list each and every day. You’re going to scratch some things off as you conclude certain tasks, and you’re going to add some more stuff. Because as you complete some work, you’re going to have new assignments, new cases will come to you, new matters will come to you.

You might do a particular task on a matter, and it opens the door for a couple follow-up items that you need to take care of. So, that to-do list is going to be ever evolving. And, you’re never going to reach the end of a day where you’re completely done with everything.

So, if that’s what you’re aiming for, when it comes to being caught up, that sense of completion. If that’s what you’re chasing, in order to get that same sense of relief, or satisfaction, or accomplishment, that you’re used to getting from school; I hate to be the one to break this to you. But you’re just not going to get that from your career.

That’s not how the program is set up. You’re going to have that to-do list that’s constantly evolving, and you’re going to constantly have things on it that are coming up, that aren’t complete yet. So, if you’re seeking that sense of completion, you’re going to be pretty dissatisfied. You’re going to be underwhelmed at the end of every day, if you’re looking for that tidy, little bow.

Knowing that, you can start to shift your expectations. You can decide that that’s not what you’re aiming for anymore. Instead, you’re just looking to make a plan for the day, and get through the plan for the day. Not be behind at the end of the day, and have more to do tomorrow. But have that not be a problem. You’re not trying to get through everything to get that sense of finality.

The faster you make peace with the fact that you’re not going to be “caught up”, as in done with everything, and that you’re not going to have that sense of completion, and that there’s always going to be more to do tomorrow, the faster you are going to enjoy your career.

You’re going to dial down the pressure and the overwhelm significantly, because you’re not going to be chasing something that really is unattainable, right? You’re going to be much more realistic about what you can accomplish, and that’s going to allow you to feel more accomplished at the end of each day.

Now, once you’ve made peace with the fact that there’s no such thing as really being caught up, as in done with everything, in the practice of law, I also want you to start to make peace with time. And that’s really the purpose of those time audits, right? Is to get a clear picture of how much you can get done in a given day.

If you’re constantly behind, you want to evaluate why are you behind? Are you planning inaccurately? Are you reshuffling? Or, are you procrastinating? And then, solve for that. What do you need to do differently, in order to make sure you remedy each of those missteps, each of those mistakes, each of those time management faux pas?

All right, you’re going to have to get brutally honest with yourself, about how much you can accomplish in a given day. And I will tell you, most of my clients tend to be pretty mad at time. They wish it was a lot different than it was. They wish they could get a lot more done in a given time period, than they can actually get done.

So, they tend to be a little disappointed and a little underwhelmed, by what they can get done in a certain number of hours. The faster you accept what you can actually get done in a day, the faster you’re going to make managing your time so much easier on yourself. The better you’re going to get at managing your time so much faster.

Because you’re not lying to yourself about what you can accomplish in a specific time period. You’re making peace with time, you’re accepting it, for what it is, for being how it is. That’s what I want you to do.

Now, once you’ve done that, once you’ve recognized that you might have been trapped in the catch-up conundrum and you get out of it, you define what it means to be caught up, or better yet, on schedule for you. And, you stop beating yourself up about constantly being behind.

And, you start to reframe your thinking around what causes being behind, and what it means to be behind, and what it looks like to be behind. And, you stop doing those rollover minutes when it comes to being behind.

What do we do next? Well, that’s when we really start going to work and mastering the three steps to managing your time. All right, and here’s what those three steps are:

In order to manage your time, you need to control your calendar. Or, for most people, you need to reclaim control over your calendar. All right, and I’m going to teach you how to do that in the next episode.

The second step to managing your time, is planning your schedule accurately.

And then the third step to managing your time, is honoring that plan; that schedule that you set for yourself. And in order to honor the plan, you’re going to have to start work on time, work without interruptions, and end on time.

I’m going to do a deep dive into each of these three steps, over the course of the next three episodes. I’m going to teach you exactly what you need to do to reclaim control of your calendar. I’m going to teach you exactly what you need to do, in order to plan your schedule accurately. And then, we’re going to really talk at length, about what you need to do to honor the plans that you make. All right?

If you follow these three steps, you will manage your time effectively. All right, it doesn’t need to be more complicated than this. I work with a lot of clients who come to me and they’re like, “Hey, I heard I need to separate my to-do list items into urgent tasks versus important tasks. And which one’s both?” And that, I just think it’s so complicated.

Most of my clients think all of their work is both; it’s both urgent and important. And I think that just adds one more thing on your to-do list that gets in the way of you doing your work. So, we want to eliminate that. And we’re just going to create this framework. Follow these three simple steps to managing your time: reclaiming control of your calendar, planning your schedule accurately, and honoring the plan.

We’ll dive into each one, like I said, over the course of the next three episodes. All right. So, stay tuned for those. Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast, so you don’t miss any of those tips that are coming out over the course of the next three episodes. All right.

That’s what I’ve got for you this week. I hope you have a beautiful week, my friends. I’ll talk to you in the next episode. 

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 29. Today, we’re talking all about time audits. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach, Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there. How you doing today? I don’t know about you, but things are pretty great over here. Are you ready for fall? It’s literally right around the corner when this episode is coming out. And, I got a taste of fall weather when I was recently in Mexico City. And man, was it lovely.

I have to say that, you know, I really love summer. I like it hot. But the Mexico City weather was so refreshing. I was expecting it to be pretty hot because I was just in Florida. And based on like, as far as latitudes go, it is a little bit further south than where I was at in Florida.

So, I was expecting it to be even hotter. But when I got there, I realized because it’s so mountainous, that it’s actually really quite cool. So, it felt like fall. It was in like the mid-60’s most of the time that I was there. And again, it was so refreshing.

So, coming back to Michigan after that trip, and it being in the middle of September now, I’m just so ready for fall. I get to break out my fall wardrobe, that has all of my signature colors in it. It’s one of my favorite transitions of the year, bringing out all those jewel tones; lots of Navy, lots of burgundy, those rich jewel tone colors. I love it, it always puts a smile on my face.

Now, speaking of fall, before I dive into today’s topic, I want to give you a rundown of what you can expect from me this fall. Like, break out your calendars, make sure you mark them, we’ve got a bunch of exciting stuff on the horizon. So, I want to make sure you’re up to speed on all of the specifics, so you don’t miss anything.

Okay, I want you to be able to plan ahead, get everything on your calendar, know what’s coming your way, so you can plan accordingly. So, you don’t miss a beat. If you don’t know this by now, every single month I teach a free masterclass. It’s normally towards the end of the month, typically on Fridays, but I post all of the dates on my social media accounts.

I will also, in the show notes, tag the link, but I’m going to give you the dates right now, just so you have them handy, and you can mark your calendars if you want to register for them. I will give you the link in the show notes of how you can register for each one.

Okay. Now, for each of these master classes that I conduct, I cover a different topic. They’re an hour long. And during that hour, we do a deep dive into whatever topic I’m covering for that session. And that’s what I call these master classes, I call them my Less Stressed Sessions. They’re so informative and valuable. If you haven’t made it to one, you’re going to want to make sure you don’t miss the fall lineup.

Okay, so coming up for September, I’m teaching you how to build a book of business, that’s on September 23^rd. In October, we’re going to cover how to set and honor boundaries, one of everyone’s favorite topics that I teach, that’s on October 28^th. In November, we’re going to cover how to be confident, that’s on November 29^th. And in December, we’re really going to set the pace for 2023, so we’re gonna go over how to stop tolerating the parts about your life that you don’t love, and that’s on December 16^th.

Okay, all of my master classes are at noon Eastern time. If you go to my social media, and again, I’m going to link the sign-up for these in the show notes, as well. But if you go there, you can find the links, sign up, make sure you get them scheduled and on your calendar, okay? You don’t want to miss them. They’re so good.

Now, these upcoming masterclasses aren’t the only things on the horizon. I’m getting ready to open the doors for enrollment into the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind. What’s the mastermind? It’s a six-month group coaching program that consists of a three-and-a-half-day live event, in person. We all get to come together for an immersive in-depth learning experience, where we cover all the fundamentals of coaching, and we set the foundation for our next six months of work together.

After the live event, we coach once a week, in a group. You get access to a member portal, a Facebook® group, and a ton of extra content that you can watch and consume on demand to take your learning and your growth even further. All right. Now, here are the specifics you need to know about enrollment. Okay.

Early enrollment for the mastermind is going to open up on October 28^th. And you have to be on the mastermind waitlist, in order to be able to enroll during that time period. It’s gonna go from the 28^th to the 31^st of October. Enrollment to the mastermind will not be open to the general public during that window.

So, if you’re really interested, and I’m only going to offer a certain number of spots for the mastermind, if you’re interested and you know you want one of those spots to be yours, you want make sure you get your name on the waitlist. And I’m gonna drop the link for that in the show notes, as well. But you want to make sure that you sign up for that, so you’re the first to find out, you can be the first to secure your spot in this next group, during that early enrollment period.

After October 31^st, on November 1^st, I’m going to open it up for general enrollment, okay. Now, the mastermind itself doesn’t kick off until the beginning of February. But enrollment starts October 28^th, okay, that early enrollment period. And that gives you enough time to know that you’re in, and to start planning your travel, and to get situated, in order to prepare yourself to do this work. To really commit, to show up fully, embrace it, and get to work. It’s going to be so much fun.

So, I wanted to make sure you had all of that on your radar. All of my upcoming free masterclasses, and the upcoming enrollment for the next round of the The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind. So, mark your calendars for all of those dates. Okay.

Now, let’s dive in to today’s topic. I’m so excited to talk about it, and kind of for a sadistic reason if I’m being completely honest. We’re talking about time audits today. And this is not an understatement, not even kind of, people hate this topic. And, normally that wouldn’t bring me joy. I don’t… What’s that called? Schadenfreude, I think when you take pleasure in other people’s pain or suffering, that’s not me.

That just is totally out of character, I don’t enjoy that at all. But for some reason, I kind of do, with this very particular narrow topic. It just does it for me. All right. So, we’re talking about time audits. And you might be asking yourself; Olivia, what the hell is a time audit? I’m about to tell you. All right.

But first, I want to set the stage and provide some context, if you’re just tuning in, and this is the first episode you’ve listened to, or the first episode out of the time management series that you’ve listened to. So, how did we get here, to talking about time audits? Well, first and foremost, we’ve been going through the three P’s, which are the three problems that most of my clients suffer from, or struggle with. And those are people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination.

Now procrastination’s, one of two parts of bad time management styles, right? You either procrastinate, or you’re a firefighter and you’re constantly scrambling and reshuffling and working in a really unintentional, reactive manner. Right. And I talked about that a couple of episodes ago. About firefighting and procrastinating and how you can be one or the other, or both, depending on what situation you’re in or encountering.

And then, in the last episode, once I set the stage for how you might be managing your time, in either of those two models, we started to create some awareness as to why you’re acting this way, or not doing the things that you need to be doing, and creating your time management results. It’s because of those thoughts, right?

Now, today, we’re creating some more awareness. We always want to start there, because if we’re going to solve a problem, we have to make sure we know what’s actually causing it in the first place. And why we’re doing what we’re doing, and what exactly it is that we’re doing. Right. So, that’s where time audits come in.

Now, what exactly is a time audit? Well, number one, it’s a tool that helps us gain awareness, or exercise that helps us gain awareness. And it’s essentially where you keep track of how you spend every minute of your day, all 24 hours of it. And what I recommend my clients to do, is to do that for a minimum of two weeks.

One week just simply isn’t long enough, you might have some anomalies, or some outliers. So, you want to make sure you have a little bit more data than just one week, in order to gain accurate information. And to be able to make decisions going forward based on it, for that information to be reliable, right. That’s what we’re looking for.

You want enough information to be able to identify patterns. And doing this for two weeks, conducting a time audit for at least two weeks, will help you begin to see those patterns. Now, if you do this for an even longer period of time, like a month, it’s going to be more impactful. I don’t want you to do this forever, because I think we can end up buffering and indulging, in conducting this activity.

You want to use it and leverage it, and then put the information that you’ve gained into practice, to adapt and make changes to how you manage your time and go throughout your day, and treat and interact with your schedule. Right. So, time audits minimum of two weeks.

Now, when you hear me say that you might be thinking; how the hell am I going to keep track of all of my time? Well, you’re in luck. Today’s the day for, like all the things in the show notes, apparently. But I created a timesheet that’s broken down into 15-minute increments. I actually created this when I was still working in big law. And I’ve repurposed it, and I give it to my clients all the time.

It helps them keep track of their billable time, if they work in an environment where they have to keep track of their time. But it’s also amazing for time audits. Okay, so that worksheet’s broken down into 15-minute increments, and it helps you track how you’re spending your time. Like I said, I’ll drop the link to that in the show notes, so you can go download that worksheet if you want, and use that to conduct your time audit.

You also, if you join the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind, get whole binded notebooks of these worksheets, so you have them at your disposal. Now, if you’re not inclined to go download that worksheet, that’s okay, you can just keep track of your time on a blank sheet of paper, or on a note in your phone.

You might be tempted to keep track by using those app trackers that come on your phone automatically, that keep track of how long you use your app or monitor your screen time. I want you to resist the urge to use that, it’s not as helpful as you think it is.

And the reason for that, partially, is that it only tells part of the story: A, it’s only keeping track of your screen time. And B, I want you to gain the intel of when you’re checking your phone; when you’re on apps, when you’re distracting yourself with some form of entertainment, versus doing your work or doing something else that you said you would be doing.

Just looking at the total numbers of time spent on certain apps, isn’t going to give you all of that intel, so you’re going to miss out on some really crucial information, that would help you course-correct and make better choices about how you spend your time, going forward.

We don’t want to lose that, so I want you to do this manually. And doing this manually, just means that you’re going to keep tabs on how you spend your minutes, and which minutes you spend, throughout the day. Right? Obviously, I know that you spend all of them. We all spend the full 24 hours each day. But I want you to know, when specifically, you’re spending time doing particular activities. That’s the information that I want you to glean.

Now, why do you want to do time audits? Why do you want to conduct them? Again, it’s because we need to create and gain awareness around how you’re actually depositing your time. I love to think about time, like an allowance, like with money, right. And as we go throughout our day, we’re just making little deposits of that resource, of our time. So, you want to create awareness as to how you’re depositing yours.

So many people don’t realize where their time goes. Or, they’re completely unaware of how they’re actually spending it. They might think they’re spending it one way, and it turns out, when we do a time audit, they actually aren’t spending it that way, they’re spending it doing other things.

We also constantly overestimate and underestimate when it comes to time. We tend to think that we can do certain things much faster than we can actually do them. So, we underestimate how long things take. We also underestimate how much time we spend doing, especially activities that don’t serve us, we don’t think that we spend as much time as we do.

Then, we also will think that some things take us longer than they actually do take. And that’s when we’re in a really avoidant pattern, we’re assuming something is going to be so challenging, so difficult, and we avoid it. And then, when we finally force ourselves to do it, maybe out of fear, down the road, we’re always surprised that it didn’t take much time at all.

So, by doing a time audit, you gain a lot of awareness as to how exactly you’re spending your time. You may not know, so we want to clean that up, and make sure that you know how you’re spending it. And, we want to help you become better at estimating exactly how long things take. Because that’s one of the reasons people constantly feel behind and really struggle with time management, they plan inaccurately.

Now, when you haven’t done a time audit, you’re really able to just go through your day-to-day life, pretty unaware of how you spend your time. And, you may not realize that there are certain things that you do that take up time throughout the day. And if you aren’t planning for those things, those tasks, then you end up unintentionally double booking yourself, right? Which leads to a disaster, or to put it more mildly, it leads you to being behind schedule all the time.

I want to give you a couple examples of this. And first, I just want to say that I used to be the queen of double booking myself. I used to work really long days, and I would plan about 24-hour’s worth of work in about a 10-hour period.

Now, I didn’t sit there and map out the math of it, right, it’s not like I came up with the total number have hours that I needed to work in order to complete a task. Like, I came up with the number 24, and then tried to shove it into that 10-hour period. I just had a blank calendar and a to-do list a mile long.

And I just kept telling myself; I’ll get it all done in this amount of time. Even though, that was a completely unrealistic plan, because the math just didn’t work out. So, of course, when I did that, I was always setting myself up for failure.

Now, when I planned the 10 hours of work for the day, I also didn’t leave any room for what I call humaning; eating lunch, grabbing coffee, using the restroom, talking to someone, checking my phone. Which, you don’t need to be doing all day long, but you’re probably going to do it once or twice, or a couple times throughout the day, right?

All of that stuff takes time. So, if you’re planning 10 hours’ worth of work in a 10-hour period, or better yet, 24 hours’ worth of work in a 10-hour period, and you’re not accounting for any time to human, you’re really going to set yourself behind the clock, right? Because you are, in fact, going to do the things that are required of being human, like I just listed out.

So, if you’re not planning for those, if you’re not building that into your schedule, you’re going to be double booking yourself. It’s a recipe, again, for disaster and being really behind. Now, a couple other examples of double booking yourself or being unaware of how long something takes, and then planning poorly, accordingly.

A great example that I see all the time, are my clients who say they don’t eat lunch. And maybe you don’t eat lunch; I typically don’t eat lunch, and I didn’t eat lunch all that frequently in some of my past legal jobs. But with that being said, I encounter a lot of people who actually do eat lunch, they just don’t eat a lengthy lunch, or at least that’s what they tell themselves.

They’re like; oh, I just grabbed something, and I eat at my desk. And when we do a time audit together, I always ask them to really pay close attention to how long that takes. Because they never account any time for it. So, if you’re telling yourself; oh, I’m going to work on that motion, or I’m going to work on that draft of a contract, or I’m going to send emails from 12-1 and it’s going to take me about an hour.

And you also plan to eat lunch during that time, even if you eat at your desk, here’s what’s happening. Your lunch still takes a few minutes, at minimum, to prepare. Normally, it’s more minutes than you think it is. And you can’t really multitask. So, you can’t eat and type at the same time. You have to be shifting your attention from one thing to the other. And every time you shift your attention, you’re losing time.

So, you’re trying to do two things within the same exact timeframe, and of course, that’s not possible. So, your minutes are going to be pushed back, you’re going to find yourself starting to fall behind. People also do this when they plan their schedules, and they don’t factor in all of the time they spend on reading and responding to emails, right.

So, I was guilty of this too, I’d plan 10 hours’ worth of “substantive work”, which for me, as a litigator, was like in Microsoft Word™ or in Westlaw™, either drafting or researching. And I wouldn’t take into account, that every day, I probably spent at least an hour, at a bare minimum an hour, oftentimes two to three hours, just reading and responding to emails.

So, you need to factor that in to your schedule. If you don’t, now you’re trying to fit the eight hours that you planned plus three hours for email, into eight hours. Instead of planning 11 hours’ worth of work, or better yet, 11 hours in a 12-hour time period, to leave room for that humaning time. Right. If you do it any other way, you’re unconsciously double booking yourself.

So, when we’re doing a time audit, I often have my clients keep very specific, detailed account of how much time they spend emailing, reading emails, responding to emails. We need to get a general sense of how much time you devote to that activity, so you can build it into your plan and avoid double booking yourself.

And, you will probably be surprised to see how much time email takes up for you every single day. A lot of the substantive work that people do, is sending and receiving email. That’s just the work world that we live in, nowadays. So, you want to make sure that you’re really conscious and aware of exactly how much time it takes you every day. So, you can bake that into the scheduling cake. All right.

Another big time suck, that people tend to be a little blind to, is how much time they spend talking to people, like co-workers, colleagues, clients, things like that, that they are not accounting for, okay? You also want to see if your meetings actually go as long as you say they’re gonna go.

If you’re calendaring them, and then you’re accounting for time right after to be used for something else, but you, when you conduct a time audit, start to learn that your meetings always go long. Instead of a half an hour, they normally always end up taking an hour, that doesn’t have to be a problem, you just really want to know that. You want to know that your meetings take an hour, so you can plan very accurately.

Same thing with some of those buffering activities. You may not realize how much time you engage in that behavior, like scrolling on Instagram® in the morning, while you’re lying in bed, because you don’t really feel like getting ready for work and getting up for the day. Right, you’re avoiding all of the things that you have to do. So, you just start to scroll.

And when you’re confronted with the amount of time, when you see it written down on paper, and you see when, in your day, you do that. And you start to think about how you could have spent that time instead, it’s really hard to keep ignoring the problem. So, we want to create a lot of awareness, by conducting a time audit.

Now, when you do this, you will probably be really floored and learn a ton about yourself. It will start to make sense why you have the exact results with time management and your workload that you do. Based on the activities that you engage in, and the activities that you don’t engage in right; two sides to that coin.

Now, you can start to see why you might want to do a time audit. It’s going to create all of this awareness. You won’t be able to hide from yourself. You will start to gain data and information, in order to make more informed decisions about how you deposit your time in the future. So, there’s a lot of great stuff that comes out of doing a time audit.

Regardless, people typically hate completing them. I’ve watched my clients resist doing this, at all costs. And maybe that’s you, maybe you can totally relate to that. Maybe, as I’m talking about doing a time audit, and you hear me recommending it, suggesting, and breaking it down; how it is that you do it, how specific you want to be with it, you might be thinking to yourself; no way, Jose, I’m absolutely not doing this.

And if that’s you, let’s talk about it, okay. Because you’re really missing out on all of the incredible value that you gain when you conduct a time audit. So, here are some of the reasons people resist completing this exercise. And then, why you want to make sure that you aren’t one of them, that you don’t resist completing this exercise.

First and foremost, people resist conducting time audits because they tell themselves that they don’t have the time to do it. All right, which is always a lie, we always have the time. Because we make choices with how we spend our time. Time doesn’t happen to us; we choose how we spend and deposit our time.

So, you do have the time, telling yourself that you don’t is simply inaccurate, it’s a lie. That being said, telling yourself that you don’t have the time is a very effective way to avoid doing a time audit. So, if you don’t want to do one, that’s going to sound really reasonable to you. And listen, I get it.

You’re probably coming to this episode, and to this topic of time management, generally pretty stressed, and overwhelmed, and anxious, and feeling behind, and pressured, and rushed. So, it’s gonna be hard to devote extra time to another task, right?

But I want to encourage you, that you actually don’t have time to not do this. Because you keep squandering so much of your time with bad time management practices, that we need to clear that up, we need to clean that up. And the way to do that, the fastest way to do that, is to get really clear on how long things take you, and how you’re currently choosing to spend your time. All right.

You also might think that it will take too long to do. I see that with a lot of my clients. They’re like; oh, it’s gonna take me forever. I have to write everything down. It’ll take me basically all day. Lies, again. No, it won’t. You don’t need to write War and Peace descriptions of how you spend your time. You just need like a one-word statement, or at the most, a phrase, you don’t even need a complete sentence. Okay?

This isn’t billable time narratives here. It’s just something that will jog your memory, where you’ll be able to look at it and you’ll know exactly how you spent that time. Okay? So, keep it simple, specific, but short, don’t indulge in syncing time into this activity, or telling yourself that it’s going to take too long, when it doesn’t have to. Because if you’re telling yourself that it’s going to take too long, you’re going to have a ton of resistance to doing this.

You also, will create resistance for yourself, if you tell yourself that this is a tedious task, okay? Who cares if it’s tedious? First of all, tedious is subjective. So, that’s an opinion, that’s just a thought and you can choose to change it. You can also just decide the tedious isn’t a problem.

Tedious is a good thing here. We want to be tedious because we want to gain all that amazing information, all that intel, to make better informed decisions going forward. So, you can course-correct and better manage your time.

Another reason people have resistance to conducting time audits, is that they’re telling themselves that it’s not going to make a difference. Why would they keep track of their time, if they’re still going to manage it the exact same way after they keep track of it? They think that’s what’s going to happen; that nothing’s going to change.

I promise you, if you become painfully aware of how you’re depositing your time every day, and you’re currently struggling with time management, you’re gonna have to face the hard truth of how you spend time. And that truth alone, gaining that awareness, in and of itself, will force you to course correct. Maybe not 100%, but probably pretty significantly. So, just gaining this awareness can be life changing, super transformative.

Now, if you’re telling yourself that it won’t make a difference if you conduct this time audit, I implore you to just give it a try and see what happens before you come to that judgment. Remember what I told you several episodes ago. That in order to tackle the three P’s; people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination, that I needed you to be three things. And those were being resourceful, patient, and coachable. This is where that kicks in and comes into play.

I need you to be resourceful, patient, and coachable. And specifically coachable here, because I’m telling you to do something, and you might have resistance to doing it. And I am on your side, I’m always on your side. I always want what serves you, what gets you where you want to go. I promise you time audits are the way for you to get where you want to go, when it comes to time management.

So, take a deep breath and find that coachability within yourself, and just try on this exercise. Just try on the possibility that I might be on to something, that I might have experience with this that you don’t yet have. That I might know something that you don’t yet know. Just trust and have a little bit of faith. Okay.

Now, the other reason that people absolutely hate this exercise, is because conducting this exercise forces you to confront the reality of how you spend your time. And for most people, that really triggers their perfectionism. It goes into direct conflict with their perfectionistic preferences, right? You want to be hitting the nail on the head with how you manage your time. And then, when you keep track of it, you are confronted with the harsh reality that you’re not managing it all that well, right.

And you probably, intellectually know that, but seeing it written down on paper is a whole other story, right? It’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s a hard truth that you get confronted with. Now, it’s a catalyst. It’s super impactful doing this, but it does force you to confront reality, and it will trigger your perfectionism.

It’s going to conjure up feelings of guilt, of shame, of inadequacy, of disappointment in yourself. And as humans, our natural inclination to those emotions, is to do a couple different things: Either bury our head in the sand, or busy ourselves with doing something else, rather than slowing down, getting curious, and taking a good hard look at how you’re spending your time.

But here’s what we don’t do here: We don’t bury our heads in the sand. That’s not a thing. We take full, radical ownership over our behavior, over our choices. That is what is required for you to live a more fulfilling, more intentional life. You’ve got to own the choices that you’re making. All right.

Now, the only way to fully own how you deposit your time. is to keep track of how you spend it. There’s no other way around it. If you want to take full ownership and course-correct we’ve got to confront reality. And confronting reality looks like keeping track of how you spend every minute of your day, again, for at least a minimum of two weeks.

Now, this exercise is going to be uncomfortable for you, probably. That is okay. That’s actually a huge part of learning how to master time management. You have to be willing to feel uncomfortable, and do things in spite of and despite the discomfort. You have to be willing to do things that you don’t want to do.

You get to start building that skill set, building that ability to do things that you don’t want to do, by conducting these time audits, every day for at least two weeks, all right. Track your time, every single minute of it. Figure out when you wake up, how long it takes you to get ready, when you start work, how much time you spend working, how much time you spend not working, how much time you spend relaxing, and how much time you spend sleeping, and everything else in between.

Figure out how long you spent in meetings, or on emails, or working on big projects. Figure out where, in your day, your productivity really drops off. Figure out how long it takes you to simply be a human every day, and where you’re losing track of time, or where you’re not accounting for things that take time. Where you’re double booking yourself, unconsciously.

I want you to keep track of all of that, we want to know it all; all the professional parts and all of the personal parts. So, we can start to piece together what your life looks like, as far as time is concerned. From there, once we have that intel, once we’ve gained and created that awareness, we can start making more informed decisions about how we deposit our time, we can start to plan accurately. And that’s one of the steps, to the three-step process, that I teach on how to manage your time.

All right, so that’s your homework this week: I want you to go to the show notes, download the worksheet, and start keeping track of how you spend your time. We’re going to do this exercise for two weeks, because we’re not done talking about time management, yet. But get started now, gain some intel, start learning about yourself, how you spend time, what you do, what you don’t do, where the train starts to fall off the track.

Gain all of that information, and then we’ll take that information, and we’ll figure out a game plan moving forward, in order to course-correct. All right. So, you can get started on that now, and we’ll keep going as you work through conducting the time audit.

Remember, if you’re in a ton of resistance, that’s okay. You can do uncomfortable things. You will survive it, it’ll be fine. Just gag and go through the discomfort and complete these time audits anyways. Doing this exercise will blow your mind and change your life. I assure you.

All right. That’s what I have for you this week. I hope you have a beautiful week, and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, episode 28. Today, we’re talking all about your thoughts about time and to-do lists. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach, Olivia Vizachero.

Well, hello there, how you doing? I am great. I’m back from Mexico City. And I’ve got a short break in between bits of travel that I’m doing. I’ve got another big trip coming up towards the end of the month. But I’m back home in Michigan for a little while, and getting settled back into the swing of things.

Now, we’re picking up where we left off. We’ve been talking about the three P’s; people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination. And now, we’re focused on the last P, that procrastination part. So, we’re really going to do a deep dive in to time management.

And in the last episode, I talked to you about the two different time management styles, right; you can either be a firefighter or a procrastinator. Sometimes you’re a combination of both. Normally, not at the exact same time. But you might flip back and forth between one or the other.

As we’ve talked about that, now I want to start to go into more specific problem solving. And once we gain awareness, then we’re going to go into the specific tactics that you need to apply and implement, in order to solve your time management problem.

So today, I want to focus on gaining some more awareness. You’ve probably heard me talk about this already. But it’s so important to start with gaining awareness, because it’s really impossible to solve any problem if you aren’t clear on what’s causing it in the first place. Right. So, we want to create some awareness around what’s causing your time management problems.

Now, normally, when I talk about gaining awareness, I always want to address two specific problems. I’ve told you guys before, there’s always only two problems, or two causes to any problem; the negative thoughts that you’re thinking, that don’t serve you.  And negative feelings that you’re unwilling to feel, that you react to or avoid. All right.

So normally, I will approach gaining awareness with this two-prong focus. We’ll focus first on the thoughts that don’t serve you, and then on the feelings that you’re unwilling to feel. But I’m going to do this a little differently this time. Because I’m going to address all the feelings that you resist or avoid when I walk you through step three of my three step time management process. So, that’s going to be in a couple of episodes from now.

In the meantime, we’re just going to focus, especially for the purposes of this episode, on the thoughts that you think about time, time management, and your to-do list, that don’t serve you. Okay, we’re going to focus specifically on the thoughts.

Now, a little bit of a refresher here, right? Why are our thoughts so important? It’s because the thoughts that we think create all of the results that we have or don’t have, right. We encounter a circumstance, a task on our to-do list, time, time management, sticking to a schedule, any of those facts; circumstances are always just facts. And then, our brain serves us up thoughts about them.

And our thoughts cause our feelings. Feelings are just one-word emotions that we experience. And then all of the action that we take, is driven and caused by the feelings that we feel. And it’s that action that we take or don’t take, that ultimately produces our results. So, our thoughts cause our feelings, our feelings drive our actions, and our actions produce our results. Which ultimately means, if you’re following the flowchart, that your thoughts create your results, always.

So, our thoughts are so important here, right. They’re going to determine how we manage our time, the result we have when it relates to time management. Now, before I talk about the common thoughts my clients think about time, I want you…

You can pause this episode and just take a second, and write down, do a quick thought download. And all that means is, you’re going to write down the most common thoughts you think about a particular topic. In this instance, use the topic, time. What are all the thoughts you think about time, right? Take a second and list them all out.

Either make a list in your head, you can write them down, but make sure you flush this out really specifically. What happens when we don’t take the time to get clear on the specific individual thoughts that we’re thinking, is that they end up being all tangled and jumbled together in that head of ours, right?

And it makes it really hard to make any change when you aren’t clear on the specific thoughts, the sentences that are running through your head, about a particular circumstance. So, you want to parse these out. Go one by one, get really clear on the individual thoughts you think about the circumstance.

All right, now that you’ve had a second to think about what are your most common, most practiced thoughts about time, I want to clue you in on what some of the really common ones that I see in the coaching work that I do with my clients are. And you should start to see, when you do a thought download, you’re going to be able to pick up on the thoughts that don’t serve you.

A way to flesh this out a little bit further, next to each thought that you write down, in parentheses put the one-word emotion, the one word feeling, that you feel when you think that thought, all right. And you’ll identify pretty quickly whether it’s a feeling that serves you, or whether it’s one that doesn’t. If it’s a negative emotion, that’s probably going to drive you to take negative action, or no action at all. All right, that can help you get a better sense of what’s causing your time management problems.

So, some thoughts that are really common for my clients. First and foremost is the thought, “I don’t have enough of it,” when we’re thinking about time. I don’t have enough of it. And when they think that thought, I don’t have enough time, they end up feeling scarce, or pressured, or helpless.

And when they’re feeling those emotions, they tend to do one of two things; either they react in a really unintentional manner, they try and multitask, they reshuffle, they’re jumping from one thing to the next, constantly interrupting themselves, being really inefficient and unproductive, as far as how they use their time, right?

Or, they avoid these emotions by doing something that brings them temporary pleasure and instant gratification, instead. So, this is what it looks like when you’re procrastinating right? You do something else that brings you more entertainment or more pleasure, instead of sticking with your game plan, and doing what would really benefit you in the long run.

Now, when you’re thinking, I don’t have enough time, and you’re feeling these negative feelings, and you’re either reacting unintentionally, or avoiding these emotions altogether, you create the result of still not having enough of it. You need more time to get done what you need to get done.

Now, I’m going to introduce you, a couple episodes from now, to all of the thoughts that you’re going to want to practice about time and time management. So, you can really cultivate the time management mindset you need, to be able to manage your time effectively and efficiently. Like I said, I’m going to talk about that a couple episodes from now.

But right now, I just want to offer you that whenever you’re thinking the thought, I don’t have enough time, I want a little alarm bell to go off in your head. That’s really, for coaching purposes, an incomplete thought. All right, instead of thinking I don’t have enough of it, I want you to complete the sentence. So, you’re going to do that by answering two questions. I don’t have enough time. Question number one; to do what? Question number two; in what timeframe or by when?

Our brain likes to just throw spaghetti at the wall with some of these thoughts, to see if they’ll stick. Telling yourself that you don’t have enough time is a surefire way to react and distract yourself or avoid, which is always what your brain is going to try and get you to do. Because it’s easier to do that than to do some of the heavy lifting, and stay patient, and focused on one task. All right.

So, you want to be on to that brain of yours. You want to know that it’s going to try and serve you up the thought, I don’t have enough time, to get you to hit the escape button, and do these activities that feel better in that moment, in that instant. You want to be able to interrupt this thought pattern and say no, no, no, that’s an incomplete thought.

Let me provide context, let me get more specific: I don’t have enough time to do what, by when. And when you get more specific, you’re going to find out one of two things is true; either that’s an accurate statement, you literally do not have enough time to complete a specific task, by a certain deadline; like the math just doesn’t work out.

Or, you actually do have enough time, and your brain’s just lying to you because it wants you to slip into one of those reactive, avoidant patterns. So, you want to create context, so you can get clear on whether or not you even have a time management problem.

All right. Another thought that people think about time, is that they need more of it. And if you’re thinking the thought, “I need more time,” you’ll probably feel something like desperate, right? And when you’re feeling desperate, again, you’ll react, or you’ll avoid. And however you do that, whatever reacting or avoiding looks like for you, you’ll still end up creating the result of needing more time.

So, you can see how your thoughts start to mirror or match your results; thoughts create results, right? So, if you’re thinking that you need more of it, you’re probably going to squander time. And then, you’ll end up still needing more of it to get your work done.

Another super common thought that my clients tend to think when they come to me, is that they don’t have control over their time. When they’re thinking about time, one of their most practiced thoughts is, “I don’t have control over it.” And when they think that thought, they end up feeling really out of control, really helpless.

And guess what they do when they feel out of control and helpless? The action that they take is, that they relinquish or cede control over their calendars, over their schedule. They take a lot of unscheduled calls, they let emails “interrupt” them, even though nothing ever interrupts us, we allow ourselves to be interrupted.

That’s definitely a radical ownership concept, when you really start to look at time in that way. Where you’re always the one distracting yourself or interrupting yourself; it’s not happening to you, it’s something that you do. Alright. So, when you’re thinking, I don’t have control over my time, and you’re feeling out of control or helpless, and you relinquish control, you create the result of not controlling your time, right? You still don’t have control over it.

If this is a thought you think, I want you to start to identify how are you relinquishing control over your time, over your calendar, over your schedule? Who do you give control to? Maybe to your supervisors, maybe to your subordinates, maybe to your clients, maybe to friends and family members, maybe it’s outside of work.

I really want you to start to identify the patterns where you relinquish and cede control. Gaining that awareness is really going to help you course-correct here, you’ll be able to stop yourself and interrupt yourself when you’re in that relinquishing pattern.

Another really common thought that people will think about time, is simply that they waste it, and that thought is probably going to feel very true for you. It might feel like a fact. But waste is something that’s going to be subjective. What you consider a waste of time or wasting time might not be what I consider a waste of time or wasting time. So, that’s always going to be an opinion, that you’ve wasted time.

Now, if it’s an opinion, it’s optional to think. I have unsubscribed from the concept of wasted time. I don’t really think that it serves us to think that we’re wasting it. I think we can always benefit and learn from how we spend time, how we deposit our time allowance, so to speak.

And maybe you don’t love the result, the ROI (Return on Investment) that you got from how you made a time expenditure in the past. That’s fine. Just learn from it. You don’t have to think that you’ve wasted it. You just gained some intel and you do better next time.

But if you’re thinking the thought, “I waste time,” you’ll probably feel guilty, or ashamed, or disappointed in yourself. Maybe you’ll feel inadequate, right? And when you’re feeling guilty, ashamed, disappointed, or inadequate, you’ll again, slip into a really avoidant pattern. Because those emotions are so uncomfortable, you want to throw them away like a game of hot potato and get out of them.

 So, you’ll slip into an avoidant pattern. You’ll seek that temporary pleasure, that instant gratification, so you can feel better in the moment. And, what do you end up doing when you’re in that avoidant action? You’ll end up wasting more time. So, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think the thought about time, that you waste it, and then you end up wasting more of it.

Another common thought that people choose to think about time, is that time flies. And, that might seem like a really innocent thought, but ask yourself, if that’s a thought that’s really common for you; how do you feel when you think it? Maybe you feel hurried or rushed? It’s never going to feel good.

And when you feel hurried or rushed, you’re going to do one of two things again; you’re either going to react to feeling hurried and rushed, and take a lot of unintentional action. Or, you’re going to avoid altogether, you’re just going to try and get out of that discomfort.

And then, what result do you create? Time ends up flying by without you accomplishing much. So, you create more evidence that time flies, that you don’t have enough of it, that it’s precious, right? But not precious in a good way where you’re cherishing it, precious in a way where you feel scarce again, you don’t have enough of it.

You can also feel really overwhelmed when you’re thinking, “I don’t have enough time.” I know I mentioned that thought earlier, I haven’t mentioned the feeling of overwhelmed, yet. But I want you to ask yourself if you feel overwhelmed often, ask yourself; what thoughts do you think about time that make you feel overwhelmed? Maybe it’s the thought, “I have too much to do,” right.

And when you’re thinking about time, I have too much to do, in a given amount of time, you’ll feel overwhelmed. And then again, you’ll react or avoid to feeling overwhelmed, in the ways that I’ve described already. And then, what happens when you react or avoid to feeling overwhelmed?

You still don’t have enough time, to get done what you need to get done. You still have too much to do. Because you haven’t gotten through those big-ticket items, you haven’t made enough progress on your to-do list. So, that thought still feels true for you.

Another very common thought that my clients come to me thinking, is the thought that they’re always behind. Oh, what a painful thought that is to think, right? When you think, “I’m always behind,” you’re going to end up feeling overwhelmed, and probably discouraged, or defeated. And when you’re feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, and defeated, again, you’re going to react and avoid.

And what happens when you’re reacting or avoiding? You end up staying behind. Either because you’re constantly reshuffling your schedule, you’re procrastinating. And then, the third reason people are behind, is that they just plan inaccurately; they plan 10 hours of work in a 5-hour period. And if you do that, if you get the math of time management wrong, you will always feel behind.

That’s one of the things that we’re going to work on in this time management series, is learning how to plan accurately. Okay, so you can start to see how your thoughts about time create your results, that you experience in your life, as far as time is concerned. Now, let’s talk about your thoughts about time management.

Again, take a second, if you need to pause this episode, and just do a quick thought download. What are your most common, your most practiced thoughts, about time management? Start to think about how you think about time management, is what’s creating your results with time management.

So, if you don’t have results, as far as time management goes, that you like, if you have negative results in the time management department, it’s because you think negative thoughts about time management. What are those thoughts? All right, take a second, write them down, list out those thoughts one by one. And again, to gain extra clarity on whether these thoughts serve you or not, you can put in parentheses next to the thought, what’s the one-word emotion that you feel when you think it.

Or, you can run a complete model, and that’s what I’ve been walking you through in this episode. As I go through the thoughts, feelings, actions, and results that get created when you think these thoughts, about whatever the circumstance is, time, time management, or your to-do list. Okay?

So, you can run a model, and that just means filling in each of these lines. So, you’ve got the circumstance, I’m giving that part to you, time, time management, your to-do list. That’s the C; the circumstance. And then, you’re going to identify these individual thoughts, that you think about that circumstance.

And then, you’re going to identify the one-word emotion you feel, when you think that thoughts; put that in the F line. And then ask yourself; what do you do? Or, what don’t you do, when you feel that feeling? Put all of that on your A line? And then ask yourself; what result do you produce when you take that action, or when you indulge in that inaction? You put that in your results line, in your R line.

And, it looks like an acronym. It’s just stacked on top of each other: C-T-F-A-R (Circumstances-Thoughts-Feelings-Actions-Results). That’s the model. I have a whole episode on the self-coaching model. I believe it’s Episode 10 of the podcast. So, if you haven’t listened to that yet, go give it a listen. And, you will have just greater context for what I’m talking about in this episode. But do that after, let’s finish this one first. And then, you can go listen to that.

Now, conduct a thought download, list out those thoughts, or run some models on your thoughts about time management, to see how your thoughts are creating your current time management results. Some common thoughts my clients tend to think about time management, are something like this:

They’ll think, “I’ve always been bad at time management.” And when they think that thought, they’ll feel discouraged or ashamed or maybe even embarrassed. And when they’re feeling those emotions, again, they’ll avoid the work that they need to do.

They’ll avoid managing their time. They might quit and give up. They may start attempting to manage their time, but they’ll give up pretty quickly, they’ll stop. They’ll also judge themselves, really beat themselves up, instead of getting curious of valuating how they’re managing their time, and how they’re spending their time, and making consistent improvements over time. They won’t be patient; they’ll be really impatient, and get frustrated easily.

So, when they’re thinking the thought that they’re always bad at it, they’ve always been bad at it, they’ll continue being bad at it, that’s the result that they’ll create.

The same thing goes if you think thoughts like, “I suck at time management.” If that’s the thought that you think, you’ll probably, again, feel defeated, exasperated, maybe even resigned. Like I suck at it, it is what it is, there’s no changing that. It’ll feel very out of your control. And when you’re feeling defeated, exasperated, or resigned, you’ll probably just accept the status quo.

You won’t do anything to fix the problem, you’re going to give up, maybe you start and stop again, maybe you don’t even get started in the first place. You just accept it as being, it is what it is. And the result that you create, when you think I suck at it, is that you continue to suck at it. You don’t get any better.

You might also think that, “It’s so hard to manage my time.” And if you think that thought about time management, you’re probably going to feel discouraged, exhausted, tired, maybe frustrated. And when you’re feeling those feelings, again, you’re going to avoid; quit give up, you’re not going to get curious, you’re not going to stick with this.

And you’re not going to get better at managing your time. It’s going to stay hard, you’re going to make it harder on yourself, right? You’re not going to learn, you’re not operating from curiosity, you’re not figuring out what’s working and what’s not, and making changes and improvements moving forward. So, it will always be as hard as it is right now. We’ve got to change your mindset if we want it to get easier.

You also might think the thought, about time management, that you don’t know how to do it. Right? That’s a super common thought that my clients think. They think, “I don’t know how to manage my time.” And when they think that thought, they feel super confused.

And when we feel confused, you know what we tend to do? We tend to indulge in confusion, we indulge in ‘I don’t know’ thinking, we don’t get resourceful, we don’t figure it out. We don’t search for solutions. We don’t evaluate, figure out what’s not working and make a plan to change it, to adapt.

We don’t do any of those things, we just spin in confusion. And we create the result of, still not knowing how to do whatever it is that we’re trying to do. In this case, it’s managing your time, right? If you think, I don’t know how to do it, you’re not going to know how to do it.

It’s just going to create more of that loop, more of that cycle. Instead, you need to think, “I can figure out how to do this. I can learn. I am learning.” Those are thoughts that are going to serve you a lot more.

Another thought you might think about time management is that, “Nothing I do seems to make a difference.” And if you think that thought, what a painful thought, first and foremost. Second, if you think it, you’re probably going to feel defeated, or really discouraged, or maybe just dejected altogether.

And you’re going to, again, avoid, quit, give up, not figure it out, and not stick with it, not evaluate. And, nothing you do is going to make a difference. Because you’re not doing anything, you’re just going to create more of that result.

You also might think the thought, “I should be better at managing my time.” That’s a really common thought my clients think. It’s like; if I’m so smart, why can’t I just manage my time, right? We get all through law school, we take the bar exam, we know a thing or two about a thing or two. So, we think that this should come easily to us.

And I always counsel my clients, to get them to see like, that’s not true. We’ve never learned how to manage our time. No one’s ever taught us how to do this. So, it makes perfect sense that we’re not great at it. We’ve never learned, we’ve never been taught.

But if you’re thinking that you should be better at it, even though that thought doesn’t make any sense to me, there’s no reason you should be better at it if you’ve never learned how to do something. It’s like; I should be better at riding a unicycle, even though I’ve never ridden one, right? That doesn’t make any sense.

But regardless, people still choose to think this thought, that they should be better at time management. And when they think it, they end up feeling really ashamed or inadequate. And when they’re feeling ashamed or inadequate, what do they do? Avoid, Avoid, Avoid, right? Give up, avoid, buffer with all the things that bring us temporary pleasure instead.

They don’t stick with this. They don’t get curious. They don’t evaluate. They don’t practice to make progress, and make incremental improvements over time. Which means, that they don’t get better at it, and then they just keep feeding into this belief that they should be better at it. Right.

You also might think about time management that, you don’t want to do it or that you hate it. “I hate managing my time. I hate sticking to a schedule. I don’t want to manage my time. I don’t want to stick to a schedule.” If you’re thinking any of those thoughts, you’re probably going to feel controlled, forced, stifled, constrained, a lot of very uncomfortable emotions.

And what are you going to do when you feel those feelings? You are going to rebel. You’re going to resist these feelings. You’re going to avoid them at all costs, by doing anything else that gets you to feel like you have agency, like you have control, like you have freedom, right. We create a resistance rebellion cycle. It’s very reactionary.

Now, what happens when you do that? When you avoid managing your time, and you don’t do it well, or you don’t practice it, you never create the results, the positive results, of having managed your time effectively. So, you never find out what it’s like to be someone who manages their time well. It might be awesome; you might actually not hate it.

I think the process that we hate, is attempting to do it but not doing it in an informed way. And then, we feel awful as we’re going through the process, we think we’re doing it badly. And, all of that feels pretty awful. Right?

If you’re doing it well, and you create all of this freedom in your life, as a result of managing your time effectively and efficiently. And you create space to do the things that you enjoy most in your life, managing your time, if you do it that way, becomes really awesome. It creates all this freedom, and you really get to enjoy your life as a result of doing it.

But if you never try it, if you never stick with it, if you’re always starting, stopping, and giving up, you never actually experience the result of excellent time management. So, you never really know. You just keep believing that it sucks, that you don’t like doing it, based on, really, no evidence at all. And you keep not managing your time well, as a result.

So, that might be you. Check-in with yourself; do you think that it sucks sticking to a schedule? That you don’t like it? That managing your time is awful, that you hate doing it? If you do, I promise you, you’re never going to do something that you hate, it takes so much discipline. So, we really want to clean up that thinking if that’s a thought that you’re commonly thinking about managing your time.

All right, I also want you to do a thought download about your workload, about your to-do list. What are the thoughts you think most frequently, most commonly about your workload and your to-do list? It might be thoughts like, “Oh, my to-do list is so long, it’s never ending.” And when you think about that, in that way, you’re going to feel really overwhelmed, really pressured, really stressed. And you’re going to react and avoid, right?

So, you’re never going to get to the end of it, because you’re working unintentionally, or you’re not working at all. It’s just going to feed into that thought, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Same thing goes if you think your workload or your to-do list is really unmanageable, right? You’ll probably feel out of control, helpless, or hopeless, defeated, maybe.

And from there, you’re going to react or avoid. And then, you’re not going to manage your workload. You’re not going to make your way intentionally, through your to-do list. So, you’re going to keep feeding and creating evidence for this thought, that your workload is very unmanageable; that thoughts not going to serve you.

You might also think the thought, about your to-do list or your workload, that you don’t know where to start. And if you’re thinking, “I don’t know,” I talked about this a moment ago, you’re going to feel confused or overwhelmed. And then, you’re going to spin out, and indulge in ‘I don’t know’, and stay confused. And then, you’re not going to figure it out.

So, you still won’t know where to start, you don’t actually get started. Instead of just deciding you do know where to start, picking a starting point and getting started. Right. That’s a much more intentional way to go about working.

You might think the thought, “I should be further along,” when it comes to your to-do list. And if you’re thinking that, you’re going to feel really guilty. And when we’re feeling guilty, what do we do? We tend to avoid, we tend to buffer, we seek that temporary pleasure, that instant gratification. And as a result, this is what you create.

You don’t get further along; you stay right where you are. So, it’s super easy to keep thinking, I should be further along. I always challenge people to think; should you actually be further along? And what I mean by this, is not do you want to be further along. Of course, you probably do want to be further along, but should you be further along?

And if you look at the actions that you’ve been taking, you probably should be exactly where you are. That’s a little bit of an uncomfortable truth, I understand that. But the more honest you are with yourself about how you manage your time, the faster you’re going to be able to make improvements in this department.

So, you probably should be exactly where you are. Ask yourself; how is that true? Look at the actions that you’ve been taking. And ask yourself; does it make sense that I’m here? Does it make sense that I haven’t gotten more done? The answer will probably be, yes. If you’ve either been avoiding or constantly reshuffling, it will make perfect sense that you’ve accomplished exactly what you’ve accomplished.

All right, those are a few thoughts that you might be thinking about your workload or your to-do list. I want to encourage you to spend a few more minutes with this, and think through and identify; are there any other thoughts that you think about your to-do list or your workload, that really aren’t serving you? Write them down, find those feelings.

Ask yourself; what do I do, or what don’t I do, when I feel this way? And then ask yourself; what result does it produce? As it relates to my to-do list? As it relates to how I treat time? What I accomplish? How I tackle my to-do list? What results do you create when you think those thoughts about your to-do list?

And last but not least, I want you to do a quick thought download and run a couple models about particular tasks that you have on your to-do list. So, identify a few tasks that maybe you’ve been avoiding. Tasks that are outstanding that you haven’t completed yet. What are the thoughts that you’re thinking about each of these tasks? Go task by task.

Sometimes when we bundle all of the tasks together, and we’re just thinking about our to-do list, we don’t identify other thoughts that aren’t serving us. So, if you go task by task, you’re going to get much more specific thoughts, and you’re going to see how those thoughts are presenting as roadblocks, for you completing that particular task.

You might think that a particular task is time consuming. And if you’re thinking that thought about it, you might feel exasperated, or exhausted, or tired ahead of time. And what will you do when you’re feeling those feelings? You’ll avoid, or you’ll do something that’s less time consuming, because you’ve decided that time consuming is a problem. Right?

Now, when we do that, we create the result of not completing that particular task. Also, I always want to turn people on to the truth, that literally everything we do is time consuming. So, you can decide right now, that something being time consuming actually isn’t a problem. If you stop making something being time consuming a problem, you’re going to dial down your resistance and your avoidant behavior so significantly.

You might also, think a particular task is hard, or difficult, or complicated, or tedious. And if you think those thoughts, you’re going to feel a negative emotion as a result; maybe challenged, maybe annoyed, or frustrated. And if you’re thinking that thought and feeling those feelings, you’re going to avoid and do something else instead. And you’ll still have the hard thing to do, you don’t complete the task, you just avoid it.

You might also think about a particular task, that you shouldn’t have to do it. If you’re thinking that thought you’ll probably feel entitled, righteous, maybe slighted, or cheated. You might think that it’s really unfair that you have to do this, right? Those thoughts aren’t going to serve you. They’re going to conjure up these negative emotions, and what are you going to do when you feel them?

You’re going to avoid; you’re going to do something else. You also might react by way of complaining, that happens all the time. And what happens when we avoid, or we complain? We don’t complete the task, right? We still have to do it.

Another thought you might think about the tasks on your to-do list, like the individual, specific tasks is the thought, “I don’t want to do this.” Right? It might not sound like a good time to you; it might not sound like fun. So, when you’re thinking about a particular task, I don’t want to do this, you’re going to feel; maybe bored, bothered, annoyed, frustrated, irritated.

And when you’re feeling those feelings, you’re totally going to avoid, you’re going to do something else that brings you more pleasure. You might complain, right? And you’re still not going to want to do it. You’re probably actually going to want to do it less after you’ve done those things. Because now you’ve taken more time, and just allowed more resistance to grow, rather than gagging and going through the discomfort and just getting it done.

But I promise you, every time you think, I don’t want to do this, you’re going to make it so much harder on yourself, for you to do the task. So, that thought’s not going to serve you.

Neither is the thought, “I’ll do it later.” If you’re thinking, I’ll do it later, you might feel detached or relieved. And even though relief sounds like an emotion that might feel good, oftentimes it doesn’t serve us. So, I’ll do it later, it also might make you feel hopeful. Or, like encouraged, that you’ll do it later.

And those are tricky emotions, hope normally doesn’t serve us. So, I’ll do it later, is going to create an emotion that’s going to drive you to take your foot off the gas, take a break, and you’re not going to complete it, you’re still going to have to do it later. Right. So, that thought might not serve you either.

Neither will the thought, “I deserve a break.” That’s a super common thought that my clients think. They’ll complete one task, and then their brain will serve up to them the thought, “You deserve a break. I deserve a break.” And they’ll feel entitled to take a break, and then they’ll take one. So, they don’t complete the other tasks on their to-do list.

Now, I’m not advocating for working all the time. I’m not trying to celebrate hustle culture here. But you want to make sure your breaks are intentional. I’m all for taking breaks, you just don’t want them to be unplanned. Normally, that’s a way of avoiding work in a very unintentional manner. Rather than being kind to yourself, and engaging in self-care activities, and giving yourself an opportunity to rest.

So, if you’re thinking, I deserve a break, and you’re feeling entitled and you’re taking a break, you’re probably self-sabotaging a bit and not setting yourself up for success, as it relates to managing your time and completing the items on your to-do list.

You might also, be thinking the thought, “I’d rather be doing something else, than completing this task.” And if you’re thinking that, you might feel deprived over whatever that something else is. You want to be doing that, you’d rather be doing that, and it conjures up an emotional experience of deprivation.

And what do we do when we feel deprived? We either react to it or avoid it, and we go do the activity that we’d rather be doing. So, if you think that, it’s not going to serve you, it’s going to lead to you avoiding the task that you want to tackle.

And lastly, you might be thinking thoughts like, “I should have done this already,” about a task on your to-do list. And if you’re thinking that, you’ll feel guilty or disappointed with yourself, and man, do you create resistance to completing the task, when you’re feeling guilty and disappointed. You’re going to want to avoid it and beat yourself up, instead. And then, do something else that distracts you from that guilt or disappointment, and brings you some temporary pleasure.

And guess what? As a result of thinking, I should have done this already, you’re still going to create the result of not having done it. So, that thought’s not going to serve you either.

Maybe, about particular tasks, you think the thought, “I’m terrible at doing what I say I’m going to do, when I say I’m going to do it.” And if that’s you, I recorded a two-part podcast episode about the skill set, developing the skill set, of following through and being consistent.

If you haven’t listened to that yet, make sure you go give that a listen. But right now, I just want you to realize, if you think that way about yourself and about a particular task, you’re going to create more of that result. You aren’t going to follow through, you aren’t going to complete the task. You aren’t going to do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it.

So, you want to be on to yourself. Do you think that way, about yourself, about your habits, when it comes to time management and tackling to do list items? If you do, we’ve got to course-correct, those thoughts aren’t going to serve you. Okay?

All right, we’ve just created so much awareness in this episode, about how you think about time, time management, your workload, your to-do list, and particular tasks on your to-do list. So, you should be able to start to see how your current thinking is creating your current results, in each of these areas.

However you’re thinking, it’s going to cause your emotional experience, it’s going to cause how you’re feeling. And your feelings drive the action you take or don’t take, and that action is what produces your results. So, curating the right thoughts is so important here when it comes to managing your time effectively and efficiently.

All right, the first step, like I mentioned earlier, to cultivating the mindset that you need to have to manage your time well, is by gaining awareness as to what you’re currently thinking. So, we just did that. Now we know what’s causing your problems. We’re on to yourself about where you have room for improvement, when it comes to your mindset. We’re going to talk about that a couple of episodes from now.

And in the next episode, we’re going to do an exercise together to create some more awareness. I can’t wait to get into that. We’ll talk about that in the next episode. In the meantime, have a beautiful week. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 27. Today, we’re talking all about two different management styles: Firefighters & Procrastinators. You ready? Let’s go.

Welcome to The Less Stressed Lawyer, the only podcast that teaches you how to manage your mind so you can live a life with less stress and far more fulfillment. If you’re a lawyer who’s over the overwhelm and tired of trying to hustle your way to happiness, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your host, lawyer turned life coach, Olivia Vizachero.

Hi, my friends, how we doing today? Greetings from Mexico City. I feel like I’m turning into Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? One of my clients just called me that. I am traveling a ton, lately. I was just in Florida, I told you guys that, for work and for a little bit of pleasure. Now, I’m in Mexico City. It’s my first time here; I am loving it. So, I am recording this episode live from the Four Seasons™, in Mexico City.

And I’ve been bopping around town here, it’s so green and so beautiful. And I love authentic Mexican foods. So, I’m eating tons of that. I had churros this afternoon, they were just delightful. And you know, it’s really neat to be able to take you guys with me when I record these episodes, and speak to you from all different parts of the world. I love that I get to bring my microphone and record from the comfort of my hotel room. It’s just starting to become like this really fun thing that I get to do.

I’ve got a lot of travel coming up over the course of the next few months. So, I’m going to be in New York, and then Italy, and then Nashville to speak at Clio® Con. Which, if you are going to Clio Con and you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, head on over to my Instagram™, I have a link in my bio that gets you a discount to Clio Con. So, make sure you take advantage of that.

And then, I am going to Charleston to scope out locations for The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind event; the live event that’s coming up in February. So, I’m hopping all over. And then, I’m going to be in Phoenix for a Life Coach School event. So, got a lot of travel and I plan to take you guys with me. So, I’ll be coming to you, not necessarily live, because I know this is recorded and it comes out on Tuesdays. But I will be coming to you from around the world.

And if you have any recommendations about any of the places that I just mentioned, reach out to me on social media. I would love to hear about them. I’m such a foodie. I love to explore. So, give me all your suggestions.

All right, now that I’ve told you about my Carmen Sandiego adventures, it’s time to talk about today’s podcast episode topic. I want to introduce you to two different types of time management styles. Both of them end up being pretty problematic.

First, we have firefighters. And then, we have procrastinators. And obviously, there’s of course the third time management style, which is to be very intentional with your time and to manage it well. Which I’m going to teach you over the course of the next several episodes.

We’ve been going through, as I like to call them, the three P’s: people-pleasing, perfectionism, now we’re on to procrastination and time management. And I wanted to introduce you to these two different problem styles or problem methodologies of managing your time, to see if you can see yourself in them.

Because we always want to address the problem first, create awareness around it. So, then we make it so much easier on ourselves to make changes going forward. If we know what to be on the lookout for and where our problems are and what causes them, we can create change so much faster.

So, that’s a little bit about what this episode is going to focus in on. Identifying these two ways that are problematic, that we manage our time or ineffectively manage our time, is probably a better way to refer to it. But I want to introduce you to them and then we’ll get into the nitty gritty, over the course of the next several episodes, on the mindset and then the tactics, the actions that you need to take, in order to manage your time really well.

All right. So, let’s start by talking about these two time management methods: being a firefighter or being a procrastinator. Being a firefighter looks like trying, with your best intentions, to get all the things done, but multitasking, jumping from one thing to the next, hitting those low-hanging fruit items instead of tackling the big project. Constantly reshuffling your schedule, triaging everything that comes your way, right?

It’s a very reactive way to work, rather than being proactive. And it’s different from procrastinating, because procrastinating is just putting something off because you’re avoiding it. You don’t want to do it. This is different. You’re well intentioned. You want to do all of the things and you wish you could do them all right now, but obviously you can’t. You can only ever do really, one thing at a time, which is a firefighter’s worst nightmare, admitting that truth, right?

So, you’re trying to do all the things. You’re not really able to do anything well. You’re not bringing intentionality with you into any of the activities that you are engaging in. Everything just feels like a scramble. You’re running around, playing Whack a Mole™, and spinning plates; you know, on the sticks where you run around and one plate gets wobbly, and then you give it a spin, and you run to the next wobbly plate, and you give that one a spin, and you’re just in that pattern constantly, right? That’s what it looks like to be a firefighter.

Now, the second version of managing your time ineffectively, is being a procrastinator. Where you’re constantly putting things off. You’re doing what we call in coaching, “buffering”, where you’re taking some action that isn’t normally work related and you’re doing that instead. So, you might be scrolling Instagram, watching Netflix®, you can buffer with sleep, you’re just really in an avoidant pattern.

Some people even procrastinate just by staring at their computer screen but not doing anything. So, it might look like “they’re working”, but they’re actually not completing anything. They’re really just spinning out.

Alright, so normally people are either one or the other. Every once in a while, I have someone ask me, they’re like, “Olivia, can you be both?” And yes, you can absolutely be both a firefighter and a procrastinator. Normally, it will depend on what people are working on, that determines which methodology they’re acting from. What kind of person they show up as; are they being a firefighter, or are they being a procrastinator?

If there’s a really big project at work, normally, anytime someone uses that verbiage to talk about an assignment, they’re going to slip into procrastination mode. When people are feeling really overwhelmed and behind, and they’re trying to do all of the things and do them all right now, which of course isn’t possible, they might be in that firefighting mode.

Especially my people-pleasers, probably see themselves firefighting a lot. Because they’ll be in the middle of something, and then someone asks them to do something else and they drop what they’re doing. And they switch to that something else, in order to people-please whoever asked them. So, you can start to see how all of these things interrelate with one another; the three P’s.

Same thing goes with procrastination. My procrastinators, if they’re indulging in perfectionism, and I discussed that in the perfectionism series that I just did, that’s a reason that we procrastinate. Because we don’t want to do something imperfectly, so we think to ourselves; why ever get started? Better to not do it at all, instead of do it imperfectly, right.

So, you can be both; you’ll normally only be one at a time. But you can see both of those patterns show up in your day-to-day work life. Now, they may look pretty different, right, one’s kind of like overworking, hustling, really reactive, very unintentional, that scramble, that rat race. And the other, is just that total avoidant pattern as far as work goes. Where you’re just not doing any of the things that you’re supposed to be doing. Nothing productive, not even the low hanging fruit, you’re just really avoiding work altogether.

So, on the surface, these two behaviors look pretty different. But what I want to offer you today, is that they’re actually not. They’re actually a lot more similar than you may think. Ultimately, these two different time management methodologies are caused by the same three things.

So, they’re caused by thoughts that don’t serve you, feelings you don’t want to feel, and a desire for instant gratification. Okay, so when it comes to firefighting, now remember, we have a think-feel-act cycle here, right? That’s the model at play. So, whatever work is coming your way, you’re going to have a thought about it. And then, it’s going to cause a feeling, and then it’s going to drive an action.

So, with firefighting, the thoughts that drive you to firefight and to play that game of Whack a Mole, so to speak, our thoughts, like; I have to do this, I need to do this right now, I can’t say no, I can’t put this off, they’ll be mad at me if I don’t do this right now.

A lot of my clients also think thoughts like; just this one more thing, just one more email, just one more quick phone call, just one more whatever. Or, they’ll think to themselves; I can do this really fast. So, they want to just triage it, take care of it right now, rather than being intentional with their time, sticking to the schedule that they have for the day, and staying on course. So, just one more I can do this faster, I can do this really fast right now, this won’t take me that long.

All of those thoughts drive us to firefight, when it comes to our schedule. The other thing that will happen with people, is that they get in their heads about other people waiting on them. I have a lot of clients who struggle with the game of tennis or volleyball, that they perceive is going on with the work that they do. So, they’re really concerned with; I don’t want anyone waiting on me.

And when something comes back to them, it gets lobbed and volleyed back over the net into their side of the court. Right, the ball’s no longer in the other person’s court, it’s now in theirs. They get really anxious. They don’t want anyone waiting on them. So, all of these thoughts drive us to firefight. So, these thoughts don’t serve us, they’re not going to lead us to intentionally working and managing our time.

The second part of a firefighting problem is the feelings that someone who’s firefighting is unwilling to feel. So, firefighting is a reaction to a negative emotion that we don’t want to sit with. So, feelings that we want to jump out of.

Our feelings like; worry, or guilt, or pressured, or overwhelmed, right. Other feelings that will let us give up control, or leave us to give up control, our feelings like; resigned, out of control, obligated, all of these feelings are feelings that we react to in one way or another. And we don’t take intentional action, in spite of them.

So, you’ve got the negative thoughts that you’re thinking, that don’t serve you, that drive you to firefight. These negative emotions that you’re unwilling to sit with. You’re letting these negative emotions drive the wheel, so to speak.

And then, there’s also the third component here; your desire for instant gratification. So, when you’re in firefighting mode, you get instant gratification from putting out the fires, from triaging whatever it is that you’re working on, from playing that game of Whack a Mole.

It gives you a sense of accomplishment. It makes you feel satisfied, useful, productive, even though it’s not the most intentional use of your time, and it leaves you in that scramble, it feels good while you’re doing it. So, in order to not firefight, you have to be willing to give up that sense of instant gratification.

Now, procrastination is basically the same exact patterns. It looks differently in your action line, of how you spend your time, right, but it’s being caused by the exact same thing. So, my procrastinators, they think thoughts like; I don’t feel like doing this, I don’t want to do this, I shouldn’t have to do this, this is going to be hard, I don’t know where to start. All of those negative thoughts.

So, those thoughts aren’t serving them, and they drive them to procrastinate. Again, that’s the first issue that’s causing a problem. The second, is that there are feelings you don’t want to feel when you’re procrastinating. So, it might be feelings like; overwhelm, pressure, confusion, fear that you’re going to do something wrong, maybe some shame because you’ve already put something off for quite a while and you’re behind.

And instead of powering through these emotions, you let them dictate how you show up, what you do, what you don’t do, right. So again, there’s thoughts that don’t serve you, and then feelings that you don’t want to feel, driving this behavior. There’s also the desire for instant gratification, right? Unlike firefighting, where you’re doing something else work related, normally, with procrastination, you’re not.

You’re getting that instant gratification from something that you find more entertaining. So maybe, you’re texting a friend, or scrolling on Instagram, or LinkedIn®, or Facebook®, or binge watching a Netflix special or series, or shopping on Amazon®, right?

The list goes on and on, all the different things that you can do. Maybe you clean, when you procrastinate. Like, that’ll give you a different sense of accomplishment. It allows you to get out of work, but do something seemingly “productive”, even though you’re in that procrastination pattern. Right.

And when we think about not procrastinating, what you’d have to be willing to do is you’d have to be willing to feel deprived. So, that’s normally another emotion that people aren’t willing to experience, that drive them to procrastinate. They don’t want to feel deprived; to do what they want to do.

They also feel a little entitled or deserving. And those emotions drive them to do the thing that causes them to procrastinate, the procrastination activity. So again, just like with firefighting, it’s caused by thoughts that don’t serve you. Feelings you’re unwilling to feel, and a desire for instant gratification.

Now, just like these two time management methodologies are caused by the same three issues, they’re also solved by the same process or protocol. And what that looks like is, you need to change your thoughts. That’s always where we’re going to start, right. We need to pick thoughts that serve us. Second, you need to embrace discomfort. And third, you need to avoid the temptation to indulge in instant gratification; you have to say no to it.

So, when it comes to thoughts, instead of thinking, if you’re a firefighter; I have to, I need to, I can’t, that is typically never true. I’ve talked about that on the podcast before, that there are only four things you ever have to do; sleep, drink, water, breathe and eat sometimes, that’s it.

If you’re listing anything else and telling yourself I have to do it, I promise you, you don’t actually, “have to”. There may be plenty of reasons why you want to, because you don’t want to suffer the consequences that come along with not doing that task. But you never have to do it, you’re always exercising agency, you’re always making a choice.

So, in order to get yourself out of firefighter mode, you may want to remind yourself that you’re making a choice and that you get to choose. That’ll help you dial down that pressure, dial down that sense of feeling out of control or obligated. Right? You might want to talk to yourself and tell yourself it’s better for you to focus on one thing; I can only do one thing at a time. If I constrain to completing this task, instead of multitasking, I’ll get further faster.

I like to tell myself that multitasking is a lie. It’s not a benefit. It doesn’t serve us. It doesn’t help us accomplish more; it slows us down. I once had a court officer tell me, “Slow is smooth, smooth is steady, steady is fast,” or some variant of that. Maybe it was, “slow is steady, steady is smooth, smooth is fast,” right. And that always sticks in my head, I love to practice constraint. And I love to methodically go one thing at a time, I get so much more done that way.

So, I teach that to my clients, as well, for them to slow themselves down. I also teach my clients to stick to a plan. So, when they’ve planned something, and they’re in that just one more thought pattern of like, I’m not going to follow the plan, I’m just going to stick with this. Or, I can jump to one thing and then jump back. Right?

I teach them that they want to become someone who follows through, that sticks to a plan. Simply for the sake of sticking to a plan because it’s such a vital skill set. So, that may be a way that you want to talk to yourself. When that temptation to firefight comes to you, you want to remind yourself that it doesn’t serve you in the long run, it makes you really inefficient and unintentional. And that’s not what you want when it comes to how you manage your time, and how you approach work.

You’re also going to have to make a deal with yourself that you’re going to feel some of these negative emotions and not let them be in the driver’s seat, when it comes to how you approach your to-do list, right? You’re going to have to feel worried, or guilty, or pressured, or overwhelmed, and methodically approach work regardless, rather than playing that game of Whack a Mole.

You may feel guilty about not answering an unscheduled phone call, or someone emails you and you just want to respond to it, because it’s only going to take a second. And you’re going to remind yourself to sit in that pressure, sit in that guilt, sit in that worry, and stick to your game plan anyways. You can get to that task later in the day, once you’ve gotten through the work that you planned.

I teach my clients, and we’ll get into this in a future episode, but I teach my clients to build in flex time into their schedule, and also specific time where you’re checking emails and responding to them. So, you’re able to be intentional with whatever task is in front of you. You don’t have to be half pregnant and jump back and forth between all of these different to-do list items.

You want to make sure that you’re planning, in line, with how you actually spend your time. If you plan differently, you’re going to set yourself up for failure, which we don’t want to have that happen. So, you need to change your firefighter thought and you need to be willing to feel these negative emotions, and be willing to resist the urge to indulge in instant gratification that comes from firefighting.

If you’re a procrastinator, same process that you need to follow. So, you need to change your thoughts, right? Instead of telling yourself that you don’t want to do something, or that it’s going to be hard, or that it’s going to be so time consuming, you want to switch to thoughts that drive you to feel motivated, right?

That might look like, I am not going to put future me in a worse position. That’s one of my favorite thoughts to think. I’m following through because I’m someone who does what they say they’re going to do. It’s not going to take me that long. It’s okay that it’s going to consume a little bit of time. I tell myself all the time, everything is time consuming, right?

Our brain always offers us up that thought as if it’s a problem that something’s time consuming. It’s never a problem that something’s time consuming. Everything we do consumes time, right? So, if you catch yourself thinking that, oh, it’s going to take me a lot of time, or that’s a really time-consuming task. Just catch yourself, remind yourself that everything consumes time, that doesn’t have to be a problem, and then get to work. Follow through with doing that task.

I also like to look at why I think something’s going to be hard. Or, if I’m telling myself, I don’t know where to start, I solve for that stuff, right? If you can narrow in on what you actually think is hard, chances are, you’ll figure out how to work through it a lot faster. Our brain loves to throw that thought up to us, like it’s throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it’ll stick or not.

And if you get really specific, you might find out oh, it’s actually not that hard. That’s just a lie, my brain serving up to me to get me to procrastinate. And then same thing with, I don’t know where to start? If you sit with that question for a second, your brain will actually solve for it. You will know where to start. Just pick one place, take a little bit of action, and then go from there.

So, I like to remind myself, it won’t be this hard. I’ve done stuff like this before. I’m really competent, I know what I’m doing. I can get through this one step at a time. That’s the mental rehearsal that I engage in, instead of the procrastination thoughts of; I don’t want to do this, this sucks, I hate this stuff, I deserve a break. All of that, right?

Now, same thing, like with firefighting, we need to allow ourselves to feel negative feelings. So, we’ve got to embrace the discomfort. With procrastination, we have to be willing to feel bothered, bored, frustrated, annoyed, pressured, overwhelmed. Those are typically the emotions that pop up for people. And they are hard to stomach, at first. But I promise you, it’s just like a little bit of a speed bump when you’re entering a parking lot. It gets easier once you get started.

One of the things that I do myself is, I just tell myself, do something for five minutes, and then see what happens. See how you feel. Normally, we just avoid getting started. That’s the hardest part. So, if you can get yourself past that part of it, you’ll be off to the races. But you’re going to have to embrace a little bit of discomfort in the beginning, to override that primitive, protectionistic part of your brain that just wants to seek pleasure, avoid discomfort, and conserve energy, right?

That’s what’s driving you to procrastinate. It’s what’s serving you up those negative procrastination thoughts. And it’s what’s telling you to avoid all of these negative emotions that you associate with doing the task. You get to decide that you’re just going to feel them on purpose.

So, you got to change your thoughts, feel your feelings, and then again, avoid the desire to indulge in instant gratification, that comes from buffering and doing whatever other fun, entertaining activity you’d prefer to be doing, other than the work that’s in front of you.

All right, we’re going to dive in, over the course of the next several episodes, about specific time management strategies. But they’re going to be in one way or another, a breakdown, or a more specific solution or protocol, of this general overview that I just gave you.

Three problems, three solutions: Thoughts that don’t serve you. Feelings you don’t want to feel. A desire for instant gratification; that’s what’s causing your time management problems. And then, the solution is to change your thoughts, embrace discomfort, and avoid instant gratification. All right.

What I want to challenge you to do, as we lead into this time management series that I’m going to walk you through, is I want to encourage you to identify when am I firefighting? When am I procrastinating? Maybe you do one or the other. Or, maybe you’re like some of my clients, and you see yourself in both of those time management models.

But I want you to start to identify when you’re in either one of those patterns, and then ask yourself, get more specific: What thoughts am I thinking that are driving me to take this action, right now? This action that doesn’t serve me. What are the feelings that I’m unwilling to feel?

One of the ways that you can identify the feelings that you’re unwilling to feel, is to ask yourself; if I were managing my time with intention, sticking to my plan, planning accurately, not reshuffling, not playing Whack a Mole, how would I be forced to feel, if I just did this thing right now? If you’re procrastinating. Or, if you just stuck to the schedule and didn’t interrupt yourself, what’s the emotion that you would be forced to feel in that moment?

That’ll help you identify the feelings that you’re unwilling to feel, that are driving this time management problem, okay? And then, it’ll be easy for you to spot the instant gratification that you get from firefighting or from procrastinating, you just want to be on the lookout for that.

So, go out there, identify this week; what are the thoughts that you’re thinking that are causing your firefighting or you’re procrastinating? What are those feelings? And then once you’ve got that information, you’re going to be in a really good position for us to take this work even deeper, over the course of the next several episodes, all right?

Okay, I will talk to you next week. I can’t wait to dive in to this really intense series. Giving you all my best nuggets, tips, tricks, and tactics for you to become a master at time management.

Until then, have a beautiful week, my friends, I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast. If you want more info about Olivia Vizachero or the show’s notes and resources from today’s episode, visit www.TheLessStressedLawyer.com.