Month: October 2022

You’re listening to The Less Stressed Lawyer podcast, Episode 34. Today, I’m gonna teach you how to do time management evaluations. 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 you doing? I am so excited to talk to you today about time management evaluations. It’s gonna be the last episode in the time management series. Of course, I will continue to talk about time management on the podcast in future episodes, but I wanted to create a really comprehensive series for you. And, that’s what we’ve done.

But this is the last episode in the time management series. And I’m really going to get into the thick of it with you. I want to give you a really deep understanding of how to evaluate how you spend your time, how you plan, and how you execute your plans. So, we’re going to do a deep dive on evaluations today.

In the meantime, couple of things. Number one, I want you to stay tuned for the next two episodes that I release. I’m really, really excited about them. I’m going to do an episode on the impact of coaching, and all of the real-life applications where you can use what I teach you. And, I’m gonna use examples from my own life.

My clients often tell me that they love how many examples I give them, from my own life or from other clients of mine, and how they work through issues and apply the coaching tools that I teach. I’m going to do a whole episode on some situations that I’ve recently encountered, and how coaching has helped me navigate them pretty seamlessly. So, you can start to see what it looks like to apply a lot of the tools that I teach you, a lot of the concepts that I teach on a day-to-day basis, like in the real world.

I’m going to do an episode on that. And then, I’m also going to do an episode about the importance, the value, the impact, of investing in yourself. The reason that I want to talk about that is because I am getting ready to open up enrollment for the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer Mastermind.

A lot of people encounter obstacles to investing in themselves, and they end up not doing it because of those roadblocks, because of those obstacles. So, I really want to talk about what those obstacles are and the impact of overcoming them, working through them, to invest in yourself and why you want to do that.

Kind of keep that in the back of your mind, mark your calendars. The next couple of episodes that I’m going to release are going to be really meaty, and really meaningful. I just want you to check back in and make sure you’re subscribed if you’re not already subscribed. Make sure you hit that subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you listen to this on, so you don’t miss those two episodes. They’re gonna be really, really good. I’m super excited to record them and to release them to you.

Speaking of the podcast, and subscribing and all that good stuff, I would also really appreciate it if you would take a second and leave me a review. They really make a difference in getting the content that I produce in front of more people. So, if you’re loving the podcast, if you think it’s really valuable and you haven’t yet, please rate. Give me five stars if you love it. Rate and review the podcast, it would mean the world to me.

All right. With that said, let’s dive in to time management evaluations. So, I’m gonna start by breaking down the actual steps you want to take, the process that you want to follow, to complete a time management evaluation. And then, I’m going to go into an actual example. I’m going to run you through a day, and how you would evaluate it.

To start, ideally, you would have made a plan for the day, right? As a refresher, I’ve talked to you about the three simple steps you need to follow in order to manage your time: You want to reclaim control of your calendar, plan your schedule accurately, and honor your plan. And in order to honor your plan, you want to start on time, work without interruptions, and end on time.

Now, if you are following those steps, you should have created a plan for the day, and you executed it, and now, it comes time to evaluate. If you didn’t make a plan, I want you to not skip evaluations. You can still learn so much if you evaluate whether or not you made a formal plan for the day, and stuck to it or didn’t stick to it. So, I really want you to be careful and don’t let your perfectionism get in the way of your learning, alright, of the progress you want to be making here.

Ideally, you would have made a plan for the day, and you executed it, and maybe it didn’t go perfectly, right? And you want to evaluate, so you can learn from what didn’t go well and make consistent, constant improvements. So, you executed your plan, and you’re going to answer three questions.

The evaluation process that I teach people is very simple. It’s just these three simple questions: What worked? What didn’t work? And what will you do differently, going forward? Now, I’ve explained this before, you really want to start with what worked. So many people have a tendency to skip this part and go right to what didn’t work. And that’s our brains being brains, and automatically seeking out negative information, faults, all that stuff.

You want to interrupt your brain’s desire to do that, to take you to the dark place, so to speak. And, you want to start with focusing on what worked. It’s going to help keep your evaluation process really positive. It’s going to feel a lot better; you’re not going to feel as badly about yourself. And it’s really going to set you up to move into the ‘what didn’t work’ part of the evaluation process, in a much more curious, less judgmental place. So, don’t skip that step.

Force yourself to make a list of what worked. A lot of people that I work with struggle with doing this. I want to offer you that that is also a skill. Learning how to evaluate and find the good is something that you can practice. I often help clients learn how to develop this skill.

They really struggle, you know, they’ll tell me, they’re like; nothing worked, absolutely nothing worked. And then, I’ll push back on that. I’ll actually help them identify some of the things that did work. Every win is a win to be celebrated. There’s no win too small to celebrate.

So, you want to catch yourself if you struggle with identifying your wins. Force yourself to answer that question, and really take it seriously. It can be easy to be dismissive about it. You want to make sure you’re not dismissive. Take it seriously, and come up with some good answers to that question; what worked? What’s going well? What did you do a good job with?

Now, when you go into what didn’t work, again, you’re going to go into that from a curious place, not a judgmental place. You’re going to identify all of the things that didn’t go according to your plan. All the things that felt like hiccups, or obstacles, or mistakes, or errors, throughout the day. Any divergence that came up from your plan. Any place that you made a detour that felt unintentional. Anything that you wouldn’t want to recreate.

So, you go through, and you identify the things that didn’t work. I also, to give you a little bit more guidance and a little bit more structure for this part of the evaluation process, you can answer these questions: What negative thoughts were you thinking that caused the results that didn’t work?

Your thoughts create your results. So, you always want to identify the negative thoughts that you were thinking, the thoughts that didn’t serve you, and you want to address them and replace them with better thoughts, if you can.

That starts with gaining awareness of what you were thinking, that led to the problem in the first place. Figure that out; make a list of the thoughts. What were you thinking about your day? What were you thinking about yourself? What were you thinking about time? What were you thinking about the assignments you were working on? What were you thinking about setting boundaries, in order to stick to your schedule?

You want to be really clear about all of that because those thoughts are creating your results. So, in the ‘what didn’t work’ section, you’ve got some negative results that you don’t love. You want to find the negative thoughts that lead to those results.

You also want to identify the feelings you weren’t willing to feel? So, that’s the second question you could answer: What feelings was I unwilling to feel? If you’ve identified the thoughts that you were thinking, you can just ask yourself: What’s the one-word emotion that I experience when I think this negative thought?

You’ll start to see how you avoided that feeling or reacted to it in an unintentional manner. That’s going to start to formulate this list, of the emotions that you would have needed to feel on purpose, very intentionally. You know, I always describe this, you have to allow them to ride shotgun with you in the car, so to speak. You don’t want them driving the car and determining what you do or don’t do for the day. But they’re going to have to come along for the ride, unfortunately.

What thoughts were you thinking? What feelings were you not willing to feel? And then, what actions did you take that didn’t serve you? And what actions didn’t you take, that you would have needed to take, in order to create a better result, the results that you wanted?

You want to make that list. That will help really flesh out your what didn’t work section? And then, from there, I want you to get curious: Why? Why were you thinking that? Why were you unwilling to feel these feelings? Why didn’t you do certain things? Why did you do others? You really want to explore and understand your reasons for all of the action that you took that didn’t serve you. Or, all of the action that you didn’t take that you would have needed to take.

Another amazing question here, to create additional awareness is the question: If there were specific actions you “should” have taken but didn’t take, you want to ask yourself, what negative emotions would I have been forced to feel, if I forced myself to take that action? And then, add those feelings to the list of feelings that you weren’t willing to feel.

Okay, that ends up becoming your roadmap for what you’ll do differently. You can use these three subcategories: What thoughts would you need to think, in order to create better results, your desired results? What feelings would you need to feel on purpose and allow? And then, what actions would you need to take? What would you need to do differently, in order to create your desired results? You want to make a list.

That might also include what you need to not do. Okay, so make sure you include that, as well. Now, one of the big things that I see people do, is they don’t get specific enough with their ‘what they’re going to do differently’ section. You want to be very, very precise with identifying what you’ll do differently.

The more precise you are, the more impact these evaluations are going to have. The more improvement you’re going to make, because you’re going to have a very clear plan of how to move forward and make these incremental changes, in order to move the dial. So, you want to be really specific about your ‘what didn’t work’ section and your ‘what you’ll do differently’ section.

Okay, that’s the overview. Three questions: What worked? What didn’t work? What would you do differently. You want to get really specific, and figure out the thoughts you were thinking, the feelings you weren’t willing to feel, and the actions you didn’t take that you would have needed to, and the actions that you did take that maybe you shouldn’t have, all right?

Then, you just want to get really specific with what you’ll do differently, with what you’ll think differently, and what feelings you will feel, in order to make improvement moving forward. So, that’s the overall evaluation process.

Now let’s walk through an example. I said, ideally, you would have made a plan for your day. This is the plan that you would have ideally made: You plan to wake up at 6:30. You plan to start working at 8:00. Let’s say you plan to go into the office, so you plan to be at the office by 8:00.

You’re working on a brief, or if you’re a transactional attorney, maybe you’re reviewing a contract or something like that. Maybe you’re drafting a contract, or terms, provisions, things like that. But whatever writing assignment you’re working on, you plan to work on it for three hours. And then, you’ve got a meeting at 11:00. You plan it to be an hour long. You plan a quick lunch at 12:00. You give yourself 15 minutes for lunch.

And then, you plan to work on the writing assignment for another two hours and 45 minutes. Later in the afternoon, you plan to complete a few other assignments; three specific tasks that will each take an hour a piece. You plan to stop working at 6:00. You drive home from work; that’ll take a half an hour. Then, when you get home at 6:30 you plan to do some chores. Then, you are going to do dinner from 7:00-8:00. And then, your game plan is to relax for the rest of the night and be in bed by 11:00. Okay?

Now, I want to be really clear on something here; this plan that I just walked you through, has you starting work at 8:00 and ending at 6:00. I am not suggesting that you need to work 8:00-6:00. If you want to work 10:00-4:00, work 10:00-4:00. If you want to work 8:00-8:00, work 8:00-8:00. If you want to work 9:00 to 5:00, work 9:00 to 5:00. It is up to you.

There is no right and wrong answer for how much work you should be working. You get to decide what that number is for you. I’m just using this as a for instance. You get to pick the schedule that feels right and in alignment for the results you want to create.

So, I always let people decide how much they want to work for them, what feels right for them. I certainly don’t start working at 8:00. I, at least, don’t start client sessions, normally, not until 10:00. I’m actually changing that, to start my days at 11:00. And, that’s what works for me. I do social media from 8:30-9:30 every day, and then, I get ready for my calls.

But you get to decide what works for you. That’s what works for me, right now. I am not suggesting you need to start working at 8:00. So, please don’t misunderstand me here, it’s just an example.

That’s the example schedule. Now, let’s take a look and see how your day actually went. Instead of what you planned, here’s what your day looked like: You set your alarm for 6:30, but you ignored it and hit snooze until 7:30. And then, you grabbed your phone, and you laid in bed scrolling on social media, until 8:32. At which time, you were like, “Oh, shit, I’m behind schedule. I need to hurry up and get ready.”

So, you rush to get ready. It feels like a frenzy. You spend extra time, more than you would have liked to spend, picking out what you were going to wear for the day. And then, you finally leave. You get in the car. You hit traffic because you left later than you anticipated. And, you don’t get to work, into your office, until 9:28.

You start to work on that brief that you were planning to work on, that writing assignment. But instead of the three hours that you plan to spend on it, now we’ve only got about an hour and a half before that 11:00 meeting. You end up being late to that meeting by like eight minutes, because you didn’t leave your office, and stop working, and doing your legal research until basically 11:00.

So, the time it took you to walk down the hall, get into your colleague’s office for that 11:00 meeting, you didn’t factor that in, so you were late. The meeting runs over; you budgeted an hour for it, but it runs over by an extra 37 minutes. So now, it’s 12:37. It’s almost 1:00 and you’re like, “I need to have lunch.”

You end up actually spending an hour on lunch, because you go out to lunch, instead of bringing something with you. So, you spend about an hour doing that. While you do it, you kind of leisurely look at your cell phone, and now it’s 2pm. You were supposed to spend two hours and forty-five minutes on that brief, right? So, you try and get back into the brief, but you actually spend most of your afternoon in your email, instead.

Someone swings by your office unexpectedly at 3:20, and they hang around for like, 25 minutes. So now, it’s 3:45, and you really haven’t spent any time on that brief. And, you also haven’t gotten to those three other tasks that you planned.

Finally, the person leaves your office, and you start attacking the brief. So, it’s 3:45, and you’re really just starting to make headway on it. You do some research towards the end of the day. You promised your spouse you’d be home by 6:30, but that would require you to leave the office by 6:00, like you planned. But you’re in the middle of some research, and you really don’t want to stop.

So, you don’t stop, and you don’t end up leaving the office until 6:52. You get home by 7:20, and you haven’t figured out a game plan for dinner, yet. You spend some time talking about that. You don’t get the chores done that you planned. You decide that you’re really trying to be healthy, so you want to cook dinner instead of ordering out. That ends up taking about an hour and a half, for you to prep and prepare dinner.

And then, you have to take time to eat dinner. So, by the time you’re done, preparing dinner, eating dinner, it’s now 10:00. You wanted to be done hours ago, but it’s now 10:00. You started to watch some TV with your partner while you were eating dinner, and you tell yourself, “We’re just going to watch like one more episode,” and then, one more episode.

You’re feeling guilty, because in the back of your mind, you’re telling yourself you should be working because you didn’t get nearly enough done on that brief, and you didn’t get to those other three tasks, so you are “shoulding” on yourself, feeling guilty, while you’re watching TV. Not really enjoying yourself. Not really able to be present. But you still watch TV instead of going to work on the brief.

Eventually the guilt really starts to consume you, so you log back on, to work, and you work on the brief a little bit more. You go down a Westlaw™ rabbit hole, and you stay up till 2am doing research. You haven’t typed up anything, you’ve just been researching. Finally, at 2am, you’re exhausted, and you crash. And the whole process starts again the next day, right?

So, that’s how your day actually went, and you want to do an evaluation. Now, I am going to do a very full, complete evaluation with you just so you can see what it looks like. But if you find this process overwhelming or too time consuming, here’s what I want to offer you. You can do the lite version of an evaluation. Which is just picking one answer to each of those questions: What worked? What didn’t work? And, what would you do differently? Pick one thing.

If you evaluate one aspect of your day, every single day, you will change your life. The compound effect and impact of doing that is so transformative. So, don’t let yourself get perfectionistic, and say, “If I can’t do the complete version of an evaluation, it’s not worth doing it at all.” That is total malarkey, and excuse that your brain is serving up to you. So, I really want you to be onto yourself here, and don’t let yourself get away with those excuses.

We’re going to start with what worked, because we always want to start there in order to highlight our wins. What worked? You went into the office. Maybe that’s something that you had been struggling with, and you had to have a lot of resistance to going into the office. So, you did get into the office, amazing. You had a successful meeting with your colleague, and maybe a client, if it was a client meeting. So, you had a successful meeting.

You made time for lunch. Maybe that’s something that you’ve been working on, too. Actually, feeding yourself throughout the day, so you can maintain your energy. You also enjoy cooking, it’s something that you do as a form of self-care and leisure. So, you cooked dinner, and you ended up eating healthy. That’s what worked, too.

You had dinner with your spouse, which is really nice; some quality time with someone. And you got to watch a little TV with them, and relax with them, and just enjoy their company. So, that’s a what worked. You responded to X number of emails in the afternoon.

You had a couple that you really wanted to get out, and you made sure that you got those out. You did conduct some legal research for the brief that you’re working on. So, those are all wins that you want to celebrate. Those are things that you did that worked.

Now, we’re going to turn to what didn’t work. And I think it’s really easy to do an evaluation where you go through what didn’t work, and then figure out what you would do differently, for each thing that didn’t work. Rather than doing all of what didn’t work, and then doing all of what you’ll do differently. I like to go one by one by one. So, you get really specific solutions for what didn’t work.

We’ll just start at the beginning of the day. You didn’t wake up on time. That’s something that didn’t work. Now, we want to explore that, there’s a couple different avenues to go here. Are you waking up earlier than you actually prefer? If you constantly try and force yourself to wake up earlier than you prefer, you’re going to encounter the struggle every single day.

So, you can do one of two things: You can adjust the time that you wake up, to be more in line with your preferences. Like, I’m never going to wake up at 5:00 in the morning, that is not who I am. I’m not a 5am person. If you are, amazing for you, if that’s what works for you. If you’re not, you don’t need to be, in order to be successful.

But you want to be really honest about the time that you actually want to wake up, because you’re much more likely to stick to it. So, are you waking up too early or trying to wake up too early? And are you not getting enough sleep? If you’re going to bed at 2:00 and trying to wake up at 6:30, that’s only four hours of sleep, four and a half hours of sleep. That’s not enough, more than likely.

So, you want to be onto yourself, and that you’re giving yourself enough rest. You also, the second part of this, is that you’ve got to resist the urge to snooze. So, you’re going to have to feel some negative emotions and stick to it anyways. There’s going to be some discomfort involved, in getting up when you say you’re going to get up, and you just need to be willing to feel that discomfort and stick to your plan.

Maybe what you’ll do differently, is that you decide to set your alarm for 7:30 instead, it gives you a little bit more time to sleep. And it’s more in line with when you’re actually getting up anyways. So, you make that plan. And you’re also going to plan to feel your negative feelings at 7:30, when your alarm goes off, and you still don’t feel like getting up. Okay.

Now, the second thing that you did, was you scrolled on social media for a little over an hour. That’s going to be something that didn’t work, as well, because you didn’t plan to be on social media. If you like to spend a time on social media, there’s nothing wrong with that. You just want to plan it into your schedule. Be really intentional about it.

Don’t plan to be doing something else, and then be on social media. That’s a recipe for disaster. That’s a way to always find yourself falling behind. Okay, so plan your social media time. You can plan all of the things that you do for leisure; TV, reading, sleep, social media, all of that. Conversations with friends, you want to plan that into your schedule.

Because if you don’t plan that stuff, what you’re doing is double booking yourself. You’re spending time doing those activities, but you’re planning to be doing something else. So, you’re double booked. Even though you probably don’t think of it that way. You probably think double booking only as like, double booking meetings at the same time. There are a lot of ways you can double book yourself.

This is one of the ways that I see this happen most frequently. You plan to be doing one thing, but you’re actually doing something else. And the thing that you are doing instead, you never planned to do, but it’s something that you do all the time. So, you want to factor that in.

You’re scrolling on social, and it’s really a way that you’re avoiding your day, right? So, what thoughts are you thinking that are driving you to buffer with social media? Maybe thoughts like; I don’t want to go to work. I have so much to do, I don’t know where to get started. I’m never gonna get it all done. Just one more minute, just one more scroll, just one more post, and then I’ll get started. I’ll get off and I’ll start my day.

Those are the thoughts that are really going to present as obstacles for you to stick to your schedule. So, you want to be aware of them. And you want to think, really specifically, what do you need to think instead? For me, whenever I’m thinking the thought; just one more, just one more minute, just one more episode, just one more cocktail, just one more potato chip.

Like, just one more, I’m always on to myself. That is a really sneaky thought that creates a lot of negative results, that I don’t love. So, I know that is a little whispery lie that my brain likes to tell me. And, I know not to believe it. Just one more begets just one more begets just one more. So, you want to be able to interrupt that.

You also want to identify the negative feelings that you were feeling that you avoided by scrolling on social media. So, ask yourself with those thoughts that you had just identified, what were the negative feelings that you felt, when you thought each of those thoughts? Maybe you felt dread about work for the day. Maybe you felt overwhelmed. Maybe you felt deprived with the thought of thinking; I’m not gonna be on social media anymore. I’m gonna put the phone away and get started.

So, you’d have to be willing to feel dread, overwhelm, and deprivation. That would need to go in your ‘what you’ll do differently’ moving forward, gameplan. And maybe you make just a hard and fast rule, speaking of what you’ll do differently. Maybe you make a hard and fast rule, no social media in the morning, because it just ends up sucking up way too much time. And it creates too much temptation, and triggers too much deprivation. And it’s just too hard to stop once you’ve started.

Maybe you make the roll no social media in the morning, so you can have a more streamlined, smooth start to your day. Okay, so from there, you started to get ready. And it was kind of a scramble. If you don’t like how that felt, what you want to do differently, is figure out exactly how long you need to take to do all of the things in your morning routine.

So, maybe you budgeted in your head, it only takes you 30 minutes to get ready, when in actuality, it takes you 45 minutes to an hour. So, you need to build that in to your schedule. Also, you noticed that you spent extra time kind of spinning in confusion about what to wear for the day. So, you want to address that, as well. What can you do differently there?

I like to create a work uniform, or make decisions ahead of time about what I’m going to wear. It gets me out of indulging in devoting extra time to decisions like that, right? When we make in the moment decisions, we really waste a lot of our mental energy. So, those are decisions that you can make ahead of time, and really constrain what you wear to work, in order to make that a lot more seamless and streamlined.

Now, you didn’t get to work until 9:28, when you planned to be there at 8:00. So, obviously, that’s going to be something that didn’t work, either. You want to ask yourself a couple questions: Was 8am too ambitious? Again, if you’re planning your day out of alignment with what you’re most likely to do, with what your preferences are, you want to be onto yourself there, and see if you need to adjust your expectations.

So, maybe you decide 8am is too ambitious, because you want to start and wake up at 7:30. And again, it’s going to take you about an hour to get ready, and then a half an hour to get to work, to go into the office. So, you’re going to change your game plan to get in at 9:00, instead. Like I said, which means you need to leave by 8:30.

So, part of this planning, you want to start working backwards so you see exactly how long you need. What are the negative emotions you’re going to have to feel, in order to get to the office by 9:00? You’re probably going to need to feel constrained. Most people don’t love following a schedule because it feels restrictive. So, you’re going to have to change your thoughts about following a schedule.

You want to make sure you’re thinking positive thoughts about doing it. Maybe you need to think that that’s how you get the most done. And, that sticking to a schedule creates a lot of freedom for you. You’re also going to have to be willing to feel feelings like constraint and restricted.

Same thing goes for being late to that 11:00 meeting, right? You didn’t give yourself enough time to stop the work that you were doing, and to make your way down the hallway or to a different floor, in order to attend that meeting. So, you want to build that time in. It might take you longer than you realize. You want to be really clear about how long that travel time takes you, and factor it in to your plan.

Again, this may require you to feel constrained or restricted. Or, I find a lot of people struggle with feeling unfinished. They don’t like to feel interrupted and what they’re doing. So, they will devote longer to something than maybe they should, in order for their plan to work. But they don’t want to stop what they’re doing, so they don’t stop what they’re doing. And then, they wait until it’s too late or at the very last minute, and then they make the switch.

When, ultimately, you’re going to interrupt yourself anyways. So, you can figure that out ahead of time, and make your plan accordingly. Another thing you could do, it would be up to you, but you could also decide, when you’re working on a brief, you don’t do meetings on those days. You really can exert a lot more control over your schedule, and when you meet with people, than you probably realize.

So, this may be an area where you need to control your calendar a bit more, and set some boundaries and push back, and not agree to the meeting, and put it on another day that works better for you. You’ll probably have to allow yourself to feel guilty, or worried, or ashamed, or exposed, or judged, if you do something like that.

You just want to build that into what you would have to do differently. All right, the meeting ran long, right? So, you were late for it, but it also ran over time. So, when that happens, you want to ask yourself; what’s the solution here? Do I need to just plan more time?

Did I really underestimate how long that meeting was going to take? Did I need more than an hour? Should I have known that I needed more than an hour going in? Or, was that sufficient time and you just let it run long? Was it a meeting that took almost two hours, but it could have been an hour?

And you’re gonna have to trust yourself to know the answer to that question. If the answer is you needed to plan more time for it, then you know next time you have a similar meeting, make it two hours instead of one, or an hour and a half, instead of one. If you decide that you should have just ended it at an hour, that that was sufficient enough time, then what are the feelings that you’re gonna have to be willing to feel?

Again, guilt for cutting it short. You might have to be willing to feel a little rude. Not that it is rude to cut a meeting short, you just might have to feel rude. That might be one of the negative emotions that comes up for you. Or, maybe worried about what other people will think. So, build that into your ‘what you would do differently.’

You’re going to have to feel those feelings, and cut the meeting short and end it on time. That also may change the way you show up in the meeting, right? You might be a lot less willing to make small talk, and you’ll be much more focused on getting through your agenda items. So, your meetings become much more effective and efficient.

All right. Now let’s take a look at your bad lunch plan. You took almost an hour, but you only budgeted 15 minutes for lunch. So again, you want to ask yourself; do you want to give yourself more time? Or, do you want to give yourself the amount of time that you originally planned, and you just need to stick to it? What would you need to do, specifically, in order to stick to your plan?

If you decide, let’s say you want to give yourself half an hour for lunch. And if you’re one of the people who says, “I can just prep my lunch really fast, it doesn’t take me very long. And then, I can eat it at my desk, and I just work through lunch.” This is you double booking yourself. You can only be doing one thing, meaningfully, at a time. So, if you’re eating lunch, you’re eating lunch. I wouldn’t budget the time that you’re eating lunch to do anything else.

Really allow yourself to be present with whatever it is that you’re doing. You will find, if you time yourself, that’s why we do time audits, that lunch probably takes you longer than 15 minutes. So, whether it’s half an hour or an hour, figure out the amount of time that you want to devote to lunch, and then stick to it.

A way that you can limit the amount of time that you spend on lunch is to eat the same thing every day, or to plan your lunches ahead of time. So, you don’t indulge in any confusion about what to eat and waste time there. How might you need to be willing to feel if you were to do that?

You might need to be willing to feel bored with your lunch selection, and a little deprived, if you want something that you didn’t plan for. If, like you’re craving a Reuben, but you planned to eat a salad from the place in your building, right, you might need to be willing to feel those feelings, in order to stick to your plan.

Now, you spent a big chunk of your afternoon reading and responding to emails, instead of working on that writing assignment. So, if you did that, I want you to take a look at your plan for the day. It didn’t include any time for email. Again, this is how you double book yourself. You, of course, are going to be reading and responding to email throughout the day, you need to plan that in your schedule.

Otherwise, you’re going to get to your end of your day and feel behind, because you read and responded to email when you should have been doing something else. Or, you didn’t read and respond to email, and now you’re doing email at the end of the day, or feeling like you need to get through email. So, you want to make sure you budget email time accordingly. You need to include that in your plan.

I like people to get very clear, by doing the time audit process, how much time they spend, on average, reading and responding to email. And, include that in your plan for the day. You can do it in one big chunk. You can break it up into a couple chunks throughout the day.

I don’t love people being half pregnant between their email and an assignment that they’re working on. You want to be very clear and present with whatever task it is that you’re completing. So, you’re either knowingly working on email, or you’re working on the assignment that you planned. But you don’t want to be doing both at the same time. Multitasking is really inefficient.

So, if you do that, you want to be onto yourself. You want to come up with a different plan. In order to work on the brief, instead of being in your inbox, by the way, you probably are going to have to feel guilty and worried. Guilty, that you’re not getting back to people as fast as you might like to get back to them. And, worried that they’re going to be upset about your response time.

Another thing that I teach people to do here, is to define what responsive means to you. So, you want to figure out how responsive you want to be. What’s your standard? What’s your expectation for yourself? And you want to use that to inform when you’re working in your inbox, when you’re responding to email. And, when you’re working on those more substantive assignments.

Now, in the afternoon, that coworker also stopped by, and they stayed and really, you didn’t have time to talk to them. So, that’s a ‘what didn’t work,’ too. What would you need to do differently there? You might need to set a boundary, and communicate that you aren’t in a position to talk, right now. So, you might need to tell them that you’re in the middle of something.

You’re probably going to have to feel guilty, rude, and worried, as you communicate that. Of course, you can change your thoughts, so you don’t feel those feelings. But you’re a human, and if boundary setting is something that you’re just learning how to do, it’s probably going to feel uncomfortable. So, you’re gonna have to be willing to feel those feelings.

And you would want to take a look at what were the thoughts you were thinking, about telling them that you didn’t have time to talk, that prevented you from doing it. So, maybe you thought that you couldn’t tell them no, or that you want to be a person who has an open-door policy and who’s really accessible. So, you’re gonna have to change those thoughts if you want to create a different result.

You need to think that it’s okay for you to have boundaries. And, that your work, that you’ve planned for the day, is your top priority, and then you help other people when you are able to. Their needs don’t come first, you come first.

Another thing you can do, is to schedule standing meetings with people, to really prevent them dropping by unannounced. You can also build some flex time into your schedule, and flex time is time you literally don’t plan to be doing anything.

So, when something unexpected pops up, it has a place to go in your day, rather than, again, you being double booked. By having a game plan and then tending to that emergency instead, that’s a double booking that you create. So, if you create flex time in your schedule to do nothing, and people love to put flex time in their schedule. And then, in their head, they plan what they’re going to do in their flex time. That’s not proper flex time.

Flex time is really blank. You don’t plan anything for that time. And, you just see what comes up through the day. If nothing comes up, move on to the rest of your schedule. But normally something comes up, so you want to have a place to put that.

You can also have office hours, so you can teach the people that you work with, whether it’s clients or colleagues, when you’re available for those swing-by sessions. Again, you can see how specific the ‘what you will do differently’ section is here. You want to have a very clear plan on how to prevent stuff like this.

Now, you also didn’t get enough done on the brief. You did start working on it late in the afternoon, but you didn’t get enough done on it. So, you want to assess that. Did you not plan enough time? Did you underestimate how long it would take?

Figure out the total number of hours you thought you needed to spend on it. If you thought you would be done with it by the end of the day, and then you ended up really not even making a dent, ask yourself why. You reshuffled a lot, right? You procrastinated, some. You didn’t control your calendar. Kind of the three main offenses, violating those three simple steps.

So, you needed to control your calendar, you needed to honor your plan, but also, maybe you needed to plan on more time to work on it. So, you want to be really clear about that. Maybe you needed longer than you initially gave yourself. And, you want to look at the very specific reasons that you didn’t get enough, done.

You reshuffled. Maybe in the afternoon, even while you were working on it, you stared your screen; you scrolled on Instagram®. Maybe you spent too long looking for templates, and that prevented you from getting started on the research portion. Maybe you went down some rabbit holes. Come up with your game plan, for what you’re going to do differently.

If you were staring at your screen, you might have been feeling confused about where to start, or overwhelmed. Or, feeling inadequate, worried that you’re not going to do a good enough job, and you started to spin, instead of moving forward. If that’s the case, you need to be willing to feel those negative feelings, and work in spite of and despite them.

You also may need to address your thoughts, right? What are some of the positive thoughts you would need to think? And what are the some of the positive emotions you would need to feel, in order to take positive, productive action working on the brief? You might have to feel bothered if you don’t feel like working on the brief. You might need to feel bored. You might need to feel deprived, to not go on Instagram, right? You might need to feel imperfect, if you pick a template, and it’s a little ill-fitting, and you just make it work.

You might need to feel incomplete or unsatiated, if you’re researching and you’re spending too much time going down rabbit holes. So, you want to be really clear about the things that you can do differently. Maybe also, you’ll ask for a template from the person that you’re working for. And maybe, they have a good idea of a great template for you, rather than you struggling to find something on your own.

So, that’s a specific ‘what you could do differently,’ in order to help with the situation. You can also make a much more specific list of the tasks you need to complete that go into the brief. That’s going to help you get a much more accurate time estimate for how long the brief would actually take you. So, you break it down. You’re going to have to have time to find a template, and then to identify the issues you need to research.

How long is it going to take you to research each one? Do you need to start by reading the briefs from earlier in the case, or any other materials that would be relevant to the brief? Maybe a transcript you need to read? What portions are you going to research, and when? How long do you want to spend researching? And, do you want to have work to show for the research you do?

That was another one of the things that didn’t work; you don’t really have anything to show for the work you did. You were just researching. But you didn’t actually put your fingers on the keyboard and type up any of the research, you didn’t summarize anything. You didn’t make headway on the writing portion of the brief.

So, if that’s something that you struggle with, you want to solve for it. What will you do differently? I like to teach people to summarize the research that they do, as they’re doing it. So, either at the end of the session, you don’t stop researching until you’ve summarized what you’ve found for the day.

You can also do case summaries. This is total perfectionism that comes up for people. They read something and they’re like, “Oh, I’ll go back through later, and I’ll make summaries of all these cases.” No, no, no, that’s duplicative. What you want to do, is summarize as you go.

So, even if you want to edit it later, you still have something to show for the work that you did throughout the day. You’d also be able to send that to someone else, to show them the progress that you’re making. So, that’s really good, too.

I also, this is just a little tip and trick, I also used to have two documents, the Word™ document that my brief would be in, and then I’d have a separate document where I’d dump my research. And that second document would become really unworkable and unhelpful after a while, it would just have all these quotes from cases without any context. And, that wasn’t great.

So, if you do that, I really want to advise you to combine the two, and drop your research into the brief document that you’re working on. the outline that you’ve started. That will keep everything all in one place, and it will save you a lot of time, and make you much more efficient in your writing process.

Okay, you also, another thing that didn’t work, is that you didn’t enter any of your time for the day. Because you ended up working later than you planned to, and then you scrambled and ran out the door. So, what do you need to do differently there?

Number one, you need to build in time, in your game plan for the day, to enter your time. I also advise people to plan when they’re going to enter their billable time, and to make a plan for the next day. So, you’re not scrambling the following morning trying to figure out what you’re going to do. So, you want to make your plan, and you want to enter your time.

If you have really negative thoughts about planning and time entry, you’re going to need to change those thoughts. You’re also going to need to feel the negative feelings that you associate with doing those tasks. You get to decide; do you want to put in your time throughout the day? Or, at the end of the day? Pick one and stick to it. Don’t be half pregnant between two different options. That’s a recipe for disaster.

And pay attention to the lies that you tell yourself, like, “Oh, I’ll do it later. Oh, I’ll do it first thing in the morning. Oh, I’ll do it later tonight, when I get home.” That’s your brain selling you snake oil. So, you want to catch those thoughts, be onto yourself, and come up with a specific ‘what you’ll do differently’ gameplan, in order to fix this.

You also need to identify the discomfort that you feel about leaving work when you say you’re going to leave work. Those negative emotions are emotions you’re going to have to allow, in order to stick to your schedule. So, what will you do differently? You’re going to leave on time. You’re going to feel those negative feelings. Maybe you need to feel overwhelmed or again, incomplete, because you’re not done with the work that you planned for the day. And you need to feel those feelings, and leave work anyways.

Now, when you got home, you had planned to do some chores, but you didn’t end up doing them. You want to ask yourself; Do I need to give myself more time? Do I need to force myself to adhere to this plan? Or, was my plan overly ambitious?

You also didn’t get to those three other action items that you had planned for your late afternoon. So, same thing; was your plan overly ambitious? It sounds like it was. Sounds like, if you were being really honest, you would have never had enough time to get to those three things, and work on and complete the brief.

So, going forward, you want to plan less items to complete in a day, when you’re working on a big brief like that. It doesn’t work; you just don’t have enough time. So, you were being overly ambitious about those three extra tasks and about the chores. So, maybe you make a decision to only do chores on the weekends. You might also decide to outsource what you can, right, maybe you hire someone to clean your house. Or, maybe you have a laundry service, rather than needing to do that.

And there may be some negative emotions that you have to be willing to feel, in order to leave the chores to the weekend, or to outsource them. Maybe guilt, maybe shame, maybe embarrassment, right? Maybe you need to feel inadequate.

You can, of course, change the thoughts that cause you to feel all of those feelings. And then, you will just get rid of those negative emotions, if you change your thinking. But if those negative emotions are sticky, you’ve got to be willing to feel them.

Now, one of the things that did work, is that you cooked dinner, you got to eat a healthy meal; amazing. But dinner took too long, so again, it goes back to this consistent question, you can start to see a theme here. Do I need to take less time to do something? Or, do I need to give myself a more honest, accurate allotment of time in order to complete the task?

Dinner’s probably going to take you longer than you budgeted if you’re going to cook. So, you want to make a decision: Do you order out and you plan something healthy to eat? You decide ahead of time. Maybe you have a hit list of places you order from when you order out, that all support your food goals and your nutrition goals. You can do that.

Or, you can decide, no, I do want to cook. But I’m going to give myself more time to cook, because I know, if I’m being really honest, it’s gonna take me a lot longer, probably an hour and a half to prep and prepare dinner. So, you get to make the decision there. But you want to make sure you are decided on how you will approach that moving forward.

Maybe when you’re working on a brief you decide that it’s not the best day to cook. Or, you figure out what you can make in the shortest amount of time, and you make that instead. All right, maybe you want to meal prep, that’s another option.

I find that meal prepping, for people, tends to be a perfectionistic thing that they would love to do, and they plan to do, and then they don’t do. You just want to be really honest with yourself. Are you likely to stick to that? Is it in line with your preferences? Do you like to eat the same thing every day?

If you do, amazing. If you don’t, but you want to implement that. What negative emotions do you need to feel? Probably bored with food. And that’s okay, you can feel bored and eat something that you planned to eat ahead of time, anyways.

Alright, so dinner took too long. You’re going to figure out what you’re going to do differently there. And you also buffered a little bit with TV, right? One episode turned into three episodes. So, you want to figure out what thoughts created that result. Maybe you were thinking; I deserve a break. Or, again, that lovely thought; just one more episode. Just one more, just one more.

And you were feeling entitled, and deserving, and tired maybe, and feeling dread about getting back to work, and just overwhelmed. Nothing good, and maybe guilty. And, you avoided guilt by seeking entertainment. So, you want to make that hit list, of the feelings that you’re going to have to be willing to feel, in order to cut the TV off after the one episode that you watched while you ate dinner.

So, you might have to feel deprived if you limit TV, or annoyed, or frustrated, or constricted, or controlled, or sad. Because you want to watch your shows and you wish you had more time. Again, those are all the different emotions that come up when you are not going to buffer, when you want to interrupt the buffering process.

And buffering is just any activity that you engage in, that allows you to temporarily avoid negative feelings, and provides you with that instant gratification. So, when you don’t buffer, you normally have to feel a lot of deprivation. So, that’s going to be part of your ‘what would you do differently.’

You also get to decide if you want to be someone who works late. You did work late, and maybe that’s something that you think is a ‘what worked.’ Because you did put in a couple extra hours of work on the brief that you’re already a little behind on. But you get to decide how late do you want to work.

You don’t have to work in the evenings, at all. And if that’s the decision you make, what will you need to do differently in order to create that result? You might need to plan better and stick to your schedule. Start work on time. Work without interruptions.

You might need to feel negative feelings, like unfinished, or guilty at the end of the day, because you’re not done with what you wanted to be done with. Maybe underwhelmed by what you accomplished. So many emotions go in to not working late at night.

So, you want to figure out how do you want to approach evenings. Do you want to work? Do you not want to work? I also think this is an area that is ripe for making decisions ahead of time. Like, what’s your drop-dead time for going to bed? If you make that decision ahead of time, you will be a lot more likely to stick to it.

So, maybe you decide what’s enough sleep. Enough sleep is seven hours. So, if you’re going to wake up at 7:30 instead of 6:30, what time do you need to go to bed? 12:30, right? If you want more sleep than that, you just need to work backwards. When do you need to go to bed, in order to give yourself enough rest?

You also want to take a look at the thoughts that you’re thinking, that lead to you staying up late. Some people, I think it’s called “revenge bedtime procrastination.” It’s this concept where, you know you probably shouldn’t stay up as late as you’re going to stay up, but you feel like you never get to spend your time doing the things that you want to do.

So, you kind of self-sabotage by staying up late. In order to do things that you want to do like, scroll on social media. Maybe you want to watch TikTok®; you want to watch TV; you want to read. Whatever the case is, you do those activities, even though you’re going to pay for it in the long run.

The only person you’re hurting is yourself, but you still rebel against going to bed earlier. So, if you do that, you want to make a plan not to do that. Also, if you tend to stay up late, you want to examine what are your thoughts about sleep and needing rest.

I used to have really negative thoughts about sleep. I used to think that it wasn’t important, that I wish I didn’t need it, that I should be able to operate with a lot less of it. And I used to pull all-nighters, as a result, and I ended up being really unproductive. So, you want to take a look at how you think about sleep and about rest.

And I’ve done a whole episode on that before. You can go back and listen to it. I’ll drop it in the show notes, a link to that, for you to listen to. It’s about the sweetness of doing nothing and learning how to rest. But if you’ve got a bad relationship with sleep and rest, you want to take a look at that, and think about what you would need to think, instead.

You also want to identify, like I’ve been saying, I know I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but what are the negative feelings that you’ve been unwilling to feel? And what are the emotions that you need to be willing to feel moving forward, in order to stick to your schedule and go to bed at the time you say you’re going to go to bed?

All right, that’s the full evaluation of your day, right? You went through; you figured out what worked, you made a really comprehensive list of all your wins. And then, you went in to what didn’t work, and what you’d do differently.

And when you do this, you’re gonna have a really comprehensive list. And a ton of awareness as to what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. The thoughts that you’re thinking that are causing the problems. The negative feelings you’re not willing to feel. And the actions that you were taking that didn’t serve you, and the actions that you need to take that you didn’t take. And then, you formulate that game plan for what you’re going to do differently, moving forward.

I told you already, in this episode, this is a very comprehensive evaluation. Because I wanted you to see how full and robust these evaluations can be if you choose to really invest time into this process. You will make massive transformations in how you manage your time, if you do these robust evaluations.

That being said, I am cognizant of the fact that doing a robust evaluation like this takes a decent amount of time. Doesn’t have to take a ton of time, I think you could do a pretty comprehensive evaluation in like 10 minutes; 10-15 minutes a day, where you’d be able to run through the process that I just walked through.

I gave a lot of explanation, but if you were writing this out yourself, you’d be able to do it a lot faster. So, it’s not going to take you an hour, like how long this episode is. That being said, if you just answer one item for what worked, and one item for what didn’t work, and you come up with one very specific solution for what you’ll do differently to remedy that one ‘what didn’t work’ item that you identified, you will still transform your life.

I actually think that that is a really effective way to go about leveraging these evaluations. Because it can be really overwhelming to try and attempt to make all of these changes at once. I love the robust evaluation, but if you pick just one change to make going forward, with each evaluation you do over time, you’re going to make really massive shifts.

So, it may not seem like enough change. It may not seem like you’re moving the dial enough. But I assure you, you will move the dial, even if you just do the simplest, smallest evaluation possible. Okay. I really want to encourage you to try this evaluation process. I think it will be life changing for you.

If you do it, reach out to me on social media. I can’t wait to hear how it goes. Again, it’s very simple: What worked? What didn’t work? What would you do differently? And then, figure out the thoughts, the feelings, and the actions, all right, that are getting in your way and that you would need to change, in order to manage your time more effectively.

All right, my friends. That’s what I’ve got for you this week. I hope this was helpful. I will 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 33. Today we’re talking all about how to honor your plan. 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? I hope you are, well. I am coming at ya live, I guess not really live, because this is recorded. But I am recording this late at night from the comfort of my home. I’m actually home again after all of my travels. And, it’s so nice, was so amazing to see my cats for the first time in a couple of weeks. Shout out to my amazing cousin, Emily, who was kind enough to stay here with them and take care of them while I was gone.

I’m ready to kick things off and get back into a regular work week, which starts tomorrow. My sleep schedules a little wonky because I’ve kind of been all over the globe. Like I said in a previous episode, I feel like Carmen Sandiego. But aside from that, hopefully I get back on track, as far as sleep’s concerned, this week, but it’s good to be home. And it’s good to be getting back into my routine, back into the swing of things. So, I hope you’re about do the same.

By the time you listen to this on Tuesday, you’ll be kind of into your week already. But I hope your routine’s going well. And I’ll record an episode on that, just on routines in general, because I get a lot of questions about routines. But before we talk about routines, which isn’t the subject of today’s episode, I want to finish the conversation we’ve been having about time management.

One of the things that I did while I was traveling, I spoke at Clio Con, and man that couldn’t have gone any better. It was so amazing to speak in front of a live audience. I do monthly webinars, and I have an amazing, engaged audience, but I never get to see them. So, it was so great to be able to speak in person and be on a stage. I really, really loved it. I had a packed house, in the room that I spoke in, which was so lovely, and a virtual audience, as well.

The whole team at Clio Con was just amazing to work with. And, I was so honored to be a part of that team. When I spoke at Clio Con, I talked about how to make the most of your time and how to manage your time. And, that’s what we’ve been talking about here on the podcast for the past couple of weeks.

We’ve been talking about the three P’s; people-pleasing, perfectionism. and procrastination. And then, kind of dovetailing off of procrastination, I hope I’m using that phrase the correct way, but dovetailing, I’ll use it again, off of procrastination, we’ve been talking about time management. So, we’re in this time management series right now.

I’ve been introducing you to the three steps that you need to follow to manage your time. Step number one is you need to reclaim control of your calendar. Step number two is that you’ve got to plan your schedule accurately. And step number three, is the subject of today’s episode. And step number three, is that you need to honor your plan.

Step number three really is that simple. It’s not more complicated than that. You made what I hope would be an accurate plan, after everything I taught you, in the episode about step two. Which was the last episode that I released. So, you know how to plan your schedule accurately, now.

Now, it just comes down to sticking to that schedule, to honoring your plan. So, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Now, I’m going to be honest with you, this tends to be everyone’s least favorite step. And it’s everyone’s least favorite step because it’s the most uncomfortable. I want to offer you a different way to look at this, a reframe. It might actually be the easiest step; you just have to do what you’ve already planned to do.

It’s literally just following your plan. There’s really no extra thought that goes into it. So, I want to just offer that to you. You can start to think about this as the easiest part of managing your time. But for a lot of people, it’s the hardest. Not because it’s actually hard, but because it’s very uncomfortable to honor your plan, and to do what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it.

And remember, I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but you want to be really careful to not conflate ease with comfort. Just because something is easy, doesn’t make it comfortable. And, just because something is on uncomfortable doesn’t make it hard. So, you want to be really good at discerning between the two. And to accurately assess why it is you’re avoiding something.

A lot of times we like to say we’re avoiding something because it’s hard. And, it’s not actually hard. So, it’s a little bit of a fib that we tell to ourselves. Beyond onto yourself, if you do this. A lot of times, it’s actually quite easy to do what we’re avoiding, it’s just not comfortable. Which is exactly the case with step three, honoring your plan.

Now, like I said, this isn’t difficult, this isn’t hard, just uncomfortable. I make it even easier for you by breaking this down into another rule of three. And you’ll notice I use rule of threes. It’s an old trial attorney trick; tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them again; tell them what you told them.

So, I use rule of threes because it makes things really easy to remember. That’s why I break time management down under the three simple steps. And then step three, I break down into another rule of three, just to make it even easier for you to follow.

I’ve seen a lot of time management gurus break things down and you have to discern whether something’s important or urgent. And, I find that really unhelpful. I remember when I was practicing, I felt like all of my work was both things all of the time, so it was really hard. And, it also felt really time consuming. I was already scarce on time, or thought that I was scarce on time.

So, I didn’t really want to give more time into making that determination: Was something urgent? Was something important? Was it non-urgent? Was it an emergency? That just felt like a little too cumbersome in the moment, all day long. So, I don’t make you guys do that, I make it really simple.

There are only three things you need to do to honor your plan: You need to start your work on time. You need to work without interruptions. And, you need to end on time. All right? We’re gonna just get a little bit more specific about each of those three things, today.

If you do those three things; start on time work, without interruptions, and end on time, you will honor your plan. One just comes with the other. So, if you follow these miniature, micro three steps, the bigger step, step three, is done.

Now, before I get more specific about each of these three micro steps for honoring your plan, I just want to say that this part of time management truly is a masterclass in learning how to embrace discomfort.

If you haven’t listened to it, yet, go back and listen to Episode #4, Uncomfort Entitlement. That’s really what comes up with people when they don’t honor their plan. They’re entitled to feel uncomfortable, they begin to feel uncomfortable, and then they avoid that discomfort.

So, learning how to honor your plan by; starting on time, working without interruptions, and ending on time, really is a masterclass and learning how to not avoid discomfort, but how to embrace it, instead. Now, with that in mind, we can break this down into these three micro action steps: starting on time, working without interruptions, and ending on time.

Okay, so you’ve made your plan for the day, that was step two. So, you should have something on your calendar, and the time should come to start working on it. All right let’s just say you decided to work on a brief, you were going to do legal research for four hours, from nine to one. It’s 9am, so it’s time for you to start working on that brief, and you don’t feel like doing it.

Typically, when you don’t feel like doing something, you avoid it, you do something else instead. Maybe you procrastinate altogether. You do something that brings you that temporary comfort, instead of honoring your plan.

As we go through each of these three micro steps; start on time, work without interruptions, end on time, what you want to be paying attention to is your reasoning for not doing any of those micro steps. And it’s going to be because you’re unwilling to feel a negative feeling that comes with doing the micro step.

So, taking the micro step number one, starting on time, I want you to be thinking; what types of discomfort come up for you that cause you to not stick to your plan, to not start on time? For a lot of people, they might be feeling confused because they’re thinking; I don’t know where to start. And instead of starting on the project, they don’t start on the project. They just avoid it.

Now, if you planned your schedule accurately, you should have planned to solve for this confusion. You should know where to start, but confusion might be a reason that you tend to avoid getting started. If that’s the case, you just want to be aware of this. You’re going to have to allow yourself to feel confused and work through it, instead of avoiding it or reacting to it.

If you’re anything like me working on discovery responses, you might feel bored or really bothered, or maybe frustrated or annoyed. Maybe you think the project that you’re working on is really pointless or stupid, or there’s a better way to do it.

And when you’re thinking those thoughts, you feel those negative emotions; bothered, annoyed, frustrated. Maybe you just think what you’re working on is really boring. If you think it’s really boring, you will feel bored. And it’s going to create so much resistance for you starting that task, right? So instead, you’re going to avoid those negative feelings by avoiding the task that you plan to do.

The answer here, is to feel these negative feelings on purpose, and take very intentional action, in spite of and despite them. You’re going to feel bored and start the task anyways; you won’t die if you feel bored, I promise. You can feel bothered or annoyed and work on what you planned to work on any ways, instead of avoiding it or reacting to it.

You might be feeling overwhelmed, you just have so much to do. And even though you planned to do this one thing, something else feels more urgent in the moment. You want to get to something else that maybe you didn’t have in your plan for the day, but it just came up. You have to sit with feeling worried and anxious, and stick to your plan. Most of us don’t do that.

Instead, we avoid feeling worried or we react to it. And we don’t follow the plan, we do something else, instead. Maybe we tend to that more urgent task that came in, that we hadn’t anticipated. Same thing happens when we avoid feeling guilty, right? Maybe someone asked us to do something, and we had a plan for the day. And instead of honoring our plan, and feeling guilty about sticking to our plan, we avoid feeling guilty.

Or, we react to feeling guilty, and we people-please, instead of honoring what we said we were going to do and starting on time. So, whether it’s guilt or worry, if you’re not starting tasks on time, you’re not feeling these emotions, you’re avoiding these feelings. They’re uncomfortable, and then you run for the hills. Rather than feeling that discomfort on purpose, and sticking to your plan, and starting on time.

A lot of these emotions are going to be the same, or very similar, for all three micro steps: starting on time, working without interruptions, and ending on time. I want you to be on the lookout for them. You’re going to probably see trends and themes. The common emotions that you don’t like to feel, that you tend to avoid, instead of embrace.

Another big one for people, that will keep them from getting started, their unwillingness to feel it and take action in spite of it, is inadequacy. So, they feel unprepared, or they feel inadequate. Worried that they’re not going to do a great job, maybe that they don’t have the requisite skill set or the knowledge.

They’re not “good enough.” I’m using air quotes; you can’t see it. But they’re not, quote unquote, good enough at doing whatever it is that they’re supposed to be doing. They don’t like doing it and feeling inadequate, so instead, they avoid, right, they push it off, they put it on the backburner. They do something else that they feel more competent and capable to do, or they just procrastinate altogether.

But either way, they’re not sticking to the plan, they’re not starting the work that they planned to do on time. So, you want to be on the lookout: Are you avoiding any of these emotions? Do they start to come up for you? And then, do you try and escape them?

The solution is always going to be to feel them on purpose. Now, people ask me this a lot, “Olivia, you say if your thoughts cause your feelings, we should just be able to change our thoughts, and then we won’t feel these feelings,” totally.

The work that you’re going to be doing here is always tandem. So, you want to find the feelings that you’re feeling, that are coming up for you. And then, you want to find the thoughts that you’re thinking, that are causing you to feel those emotions in the first place. What’s making you feel confused? What’s making you feel bored or bothered, frustrated, or annoyed? Worried? Guilty? Overwhelmed? Inadequate?

You want to find those thoughts and ask yourself: Can I choose to think something else? I love debunking a thought by saying; how is this not true? Right? Remember, our thoughts aren’t true. They’re just statements that our brains serve up to us. They’re subjective, they’re opinions; they’re not true.

So, we can replace them with something else. We can think something else that serves us more. But sometimes our negative thoughts are really sticky. So, you can try and move the dial as much as you possibly can. But if some of that negative thinking still lingers, the negative emotion that is caused by it, is going to linger, too.

And in that case, you’re going to try on a more positive thought that maybe makes you feel committed, or determined, or motivated, or certain, or confident, or compelled. Those are great emotions to cultivate with your thinking. So, you’re going to try and cultivate those positive emotions, by practicing some positive thoughts.

But then, in tandem, you’re also going to allow yourself to experience the lingering negative emotions, okay? They’re going to be there, maybe not as strong as they once were, but they’re gonna still be lingering. And you just have to allow them to be there and take intentional action, in spite of and despite them.

I always like to use the analogy of driving a manual transmission car, a stick shift. You’re doing two things at once; you’ve got the clutch all the way down, and then you’re giving the car a little bit of gas, right? Little less clutch, little more gas. Little less clutch, a little more gas. And you do that in order to start building momentum. And then eventually, you can completely release the clutch and just go down on the gas.

That’s what this process looks like, a little positive thought, a little gas, and a little less negative emotion. A little more positive thinking, a little less negative emotion, until you’re just off to the races. But most of us, when we’re operating based on our default conditioning, and we’re avoiding these negative emotions, or we’re reacting negatively to these negative emotions, we’re letting them drive.

We’re letting the negative feelings dictate what we do, what we accomplish. And we don’t want to give our negative emotions the keys to the car, so to speak, and determine where we ultimately end up, where we ultimately go, what we ultimately achieve.

Instead, we want to let those negative feelings just ride shotgun. Okay, so that’s what you’re going to do. When it comes to starting on time, you’re going to be thinking the positive thoughts that you want to think, in order to start on time. So, ask yourself; what do you need to think, in order to start your work on time, in order to stick to your plan? What are those positive thoughts for you?

I thought that I love, is that I don’t negotiate with myself. If I plan to do it, it’s what I’m going to do. I like to think; this is what I’m doing. Not I might, not I hope to, not I want to do something. I am doing this; I’m doing this when I said I’m going to do it. This is non-negotiable. All right, think about what thoughts you need to think in order to start your work on time.

And then, identify the negative emotions that you have to be willing to feel, and take that action, start on time, in spite of and despite them. You can feel bored, and confused, and bothered, and frustrated, and annoyed, and worried, and guilty, overwhelmed, and inadequate, and start on time anyways. Like I said, this stuff is a masterclass in learning how to feel your negative feelings and take intentional action, in spite of and despite them.

The same thing is gonna be true for the next two micro steps: working without interruptions, and ending on time. Think about when you’re in the midst of working on something and you start to get a little bored or fatigued. Maybe you get a little tired or exasperated, or you get stuck, you start to feel confused, and you’re not quite sure where to go next.

That’s a big one, for me. Confusion always is a direct route for me to buffer. I know that now, so I’m able to catch myself and bring myself back, and work through the confusion. You want to be onto yourself; what are the emotions that come up for you, that drive you to interrupt yourself? Maybe it’s that worry or that guilt?

Someone else is calling you and instead of sticking to what you’re doing, you want to answer because you don’t want to feel worried, or guilty. Or, you feel bored, so you welcome the distraction, right? Instead of sticking to what you’re doing, what you planned to do during that time, and feeling your negative feelings. Instead sticking to the plan in spite of them.

Same thing goes with ending on time. And ending on time is actually, I guess, a little bit different because with ending on time, normally you’re coming up against your perfectionism. We will take as long as we give ourselves to complete something, I believe that’s Parkinson’s Law. As far as time management goes, you will take as long as you give yourself.

So, even if you are planning to do something in an afternoon, if you really have two days to work on something, you’ll take the two days. Which is really counterintuitive, because if you could just do it in an afternoon, you would free up so much extra time by doing it in the afternoon, rather than letting it languish and fill up two days’ worth of your time, right?

You want to be onto yourself if you have a tendency to do that. It’s a natural human tendency. But once you become aware of it, you can guard against it, right. So, that’s what we want to do here. When you’re in indulging in your perfectionist tendencies. And you’re overworking something, and you’re letting it languish, you’re letting it go on and on and on, what you want to do is you want to identify that course of action, and the emotions that are associated with it.

How would you be forced to feel if you forced yourself to stop working on something? How would you be forced to feel, if you constrained to finishing your task in the time that you planned for it? Right? Normally, people have to feel imperfect, and that’s really uncomfortable. Unfinished, if you think it could just be a little bit better, right?

Maybe you have to feel some fear, or some worry that something bad might happen, because you didn’t put that extra little bit of perfection into something. That’s what leads us to pour so much more time into tasks that we take on, than what is actually necessary. And a great way to guard against this is to define what a good enough job is.

And then, when you reach that point, you want to make sure it’s objective and attainable, when you reach that point, you can stop yourself, right. And if you’ve planned accurately, you should have given yourself just the right amount of time to be able to do something in a satisfactory manner, not in a perfect manner.

Because, A, that’s not attainable to begin with. B, it’s also not necessary for doing a, quote unquote, “good enough” job. But you should have given yourself enough time to do a, quote unquote, “good enough” job. And when you reach that point that you’re able to easily identify, because of how you’ve defined it, then you can stop yourself, alright? You can complete the task within the timeframe that you gave yourself to complete it, you can end on time.

Same thing goes if you’ve planned things back-to-back, to back, to back, right. So, in order to start one thing on time, you need to have ended the thing that you were working on before that on time, as well. This is how it goes all together; you need to start on time, work without interruptions, and end on time.

Now, if you start on time and work without interruptions, ending on time gets a lot easier. You’re really just battling that last part, that perfectionism, or you didn’t plan enough time. And if that’s the case, you’re just going to take note of that and do better next time. I’m going to talk about that in a second.

But if you’ve done the first two micro steps; started on time and worked without interruptions, ending on time should not be that much of a challenge. But for that perfectionism. Now, let’s talk about not letting your perfectionism be the enemy of completing step three of honoring your plan, okay?

This is where people really struggle with time management. They make a plan, and then when it comes time to honor it, they don’t stick to it. And they get really frustrated, and they give up. They throw in the towel, they want to be good at this immediately, they want to see a night and day difference, and get a lot of traction instantaneously.

I promise you, that’s very, very unlikely. You’re working with time in an entirely different way than you have most of your life, or all of your life, right. So, this probably is not going to be a night and day change, overnight. It’s going to take some time. There’s going to be a lot of trial and error.

And you just have to accept that, make peace with it. You don’t need to make it a problem because it isn’t one. And instead, you just want to embrace this learning process. You’re going to make a plan in step two, and then you are going to practice honoring it. Every single day you get a new opportunity to do this. And every day, at the end of your day, you’re going to evaluate.

I’m going to do a whole episode on time management evaluations, so you really know how to do this. But you’re just going to figure out; what worked, what didn’t work? What do I need to do differently tomorrow? And you’re going to learn; why did I not stick to my plan? It’s only one of three reasons: Either you didn’t start on time. You didn’t work without interruptions. Or, you didn’t end on time.

If you do either of those three things, or any of those three things, you just want to ask yourself, why? Or, if it’s a combination of those three things. For each one, identify what specifically you didn’t do; you either didn’t start on time, you didn’t work without interruptions, or you didn’t end on time.

And you just want to ask yourself, why? Why didn’t you do those things? What happened instead? Remember, this is a masterclass in feeling uncomfortable feelings on purpose. So, you can always start with; what were the negative emotions I was unwilling to feel? What kinds of comfort was I feeling entitled to, instead?

Then, your work just becomes to practice feeling your negative feelings, and sticking to your plan, in spite of them. This will get easier, and easier, and easier, over time. And again, in tandem, you want to be working on these two things; feeling your feelings, and cultivating the positive thoughts, the positive mindset that get you to stick to your plan.

So, what are the positive thoughts that you need to be thinking about your work, about individual tasks, about your to-do list, that would make you stick to your plan? How would you need to feel to stick to your plan? What are those positive one-word emotions that would drive you to do that?

To recap: Three micro steps; start on time, work without interruptions, and end on time. For each one, be identifying the negative emotions that you have to be willing to feel. And then, think about the positive thoughts you want to be thinking, you want to be practicing, in order to stick to your plan.

And then, just practice. Get a little bit better, like 1% better, at this every single day. Take action, audit the action that you took, and then adapt. Fix what’s not working and try again the next day. I promise, over time, you will get better and better and better at honoring your plan. And remember, it doesn’t have to be hard, it’s just probably not going to be comfortable; that’s okay. You can honor your plan anyways.

All right, my friends. Those are those three simple steps to managing your time: You’ve got to reclaim control of your calendar. Plan your schedule accurately. And, honor your plan. To honor your plan, you just take those three micro steps; start on time, work without interruptions, and end on time.

I’m going to do a whole episode, like I said just a second ago, on how to do a time management evaluation. So, you’re able to get the most out of your evaluations, in order to make the most progress. In order to improve as quickly as you can with this act, audit, adapt process. That’s for a different episode, though.

So, in the meantime, have a beautiful week. I will 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 32. We’re talking all about planning your schedule accurately. 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? I am tuning in live from Nashville. I thought I was going to talk to you, while I was in Italy, a little bit more than I did. But turns out, I was too busy having fun. So, you’re coming along with me in the second leg of my trip. I spent a little bit of time in New York. I spent about a week in Italy. And now, I’m in Nashville for the Clio Cloud Conference.

And then, I’ll be heading to Charleston to do a little live event reconnaissance. In order to scope out some venues and some great spaces to meet with people, and come together for the next round of The Less Stressed Lawyer mastermind. So now, we’re on the States side portion of my travels. And I’m so excited to bring you along with me for the ride, and talk to you as I go from spot to spot to spot.

I hope you’re doing as well as I am. Things have been busy over here with all the travel, but things are really good. I just got into Nashville tonight. And after, I don’t know, like 22 hours of travel, I think… Between going from Positano to Rome, flying from Rome to Atlanta, Atlanta to Nashville, and then getting here, it’s been a long day.

But I’m super excited to talk about today’s topic. And, I didn’t want to keep you guys waiting. So, we’re gonna dive right in. Let’s do a little recap while we’re at it. Okay, so we’re talking about time management, and the time management series is part of the three P’s, that I’m teaching you guys about; how to overcome people-pleasing, how to overcome perfectionism, and how to overcome procrastination.

Okay, so as part of that third P, the procrastination part, we’ve been talking about time management. And we’re now into the part of the time management series, where I’m teaching you the three simple steps that you need to follow, in order to manage your time effectively.

And remember, those simple steps are that you need to control, or better yet, reclaim control of your calendar. Step two is that you need to plan your schedule accurately. And step three, is that you need to honor your plan.

So today, we’re really going to dive in deep and explore step two of that process. We’re going to talk about planning your schedule accurately. Okay? Now, I think out of the three steps, this might be my favorite step. And it’s because it’s the most numbers-based. For those of you who aren’t fans of doing math, we’re gonna make a little love to some math in this episode. You’re gonna be just fine, you’re gonna survive it. I promise, it’s going to be okay.

I actually think it’s really important to underscore that time management is a math problem. It’s numbers-based, right? We’re doing the addition, subtraction, and just the simple mathematics, of how a numeric allotment of something works. We have a certain number of minutes, hours in the day, and we get to split them up however we want to.

But we want to be really intentional with how we spend them. I always like to think of it like an allowance that you get through the day. And you want to be intentional with how you budget. I know a lot of people have an emotional response to the term budget, but a budget really is within your control to create. You get to spend your time allowance however you want. But there’s definitely a numbers-based aspect to time management; time management is a math problem.

It’s just made complicated by an unmanaged mind. So, there’s the math part of it. And then, there’s the mind drama. And the reason that I think step two, out of the three steps, is the easiest one to tackle is because it’s the one that really focuses on the math, not the mind drama.

When you’re talking about reclaiming control of your calendar, you are typically talking about setting boundaries and saying no. There’s a lot of mind drama that comes with that. It’s very emotional for people, a lot of guilt, a lot of worry.

When you talk about honoring your plan and sticking to your schedule, that’s super uncomfortable for people. It requires you to feel confused and get started anyways. To feel overwhelmed and work through it. To feel bored or bothered and get to work, regardless. Those two, the first and the third steps, are so emotionally heavy. Lots of mind drama, lots of resistance.

This second step, I really think is the easiest part, because it really just focuses on the math and there’s not a ton of mind drama. That being said, it’s not entirely intuitive, which is why I wanted to devote an entire episode to it. Just to really break it down and make it super simple for you guys. But I definitely think it’s the easiest part, because it has much less of the mind management component and just focusing on the numbers.

So, with step number two, planning your schedule accurately, what we see here, is really one step that breaks down into two separate components. There’s the planning part of this step, and then there’s the second part, the accuracy part. So, planning your schedule accurately.

First, we have to plan and then we have to make sure the plan is accurate. We’ll focus on the first part, the first component of this step, the planning part. And here’s what I tend to see, a couple different ways that people approach planning their schedule.

All right, number one, they don’t plan at all. And there’s a couple different reasons why people will avoid making a plan entirely. Number one, it’s their perfectionism showing, I talked about this, when I discussed perfectionism. That people don’t like to make a plan, they don’t like to get a game plan together, because if they don’t think they’re going to stick to it, that really triggers their perfectionism.

They feel like they’re falling short, and they’d rather not try at all, not make any plan, because if they’re going to not stick to it perfectly, it conjures up a sense of inadequacy and imperfection that’s very uncomfortable for them. So, you can’t fail if you don’t make any plan to begin with. That’s definitely perfectionism driving, not making any plan.

People also might think that planning is pointless if they really don’t have any self-trust, that they’re going to stick to the plan that they create. They have a lot of self-doubt that they’re going to be capable of sticking to the plan. They won’t even make one, because they just think that it’s superfluous, there’s no point in doing it.

People also tell themselves that they don’t have the time to make a plan. And, we want to make the time. All right, I understand if you feel scarce on time, if you feel really overwhelmed, behind, pressured. It’s going to be a little bit of a tall order, in the beginning, to set aside a little bit of time.

Not a lot of time, but just a little bit of time to make a plan. Those minutes are going to seem scarce, and you’re going to be telling yourself that you could be spending them in some other better way.

Now, sometimes people will plan as a form of procrastination. And you really want to be careful, and be on to yourself here, to make sure you’re not doing that. All right, a plan should not take you very long to put together. I would say if you’re planning more than five minutes, really, you’re taking too long doing it; but definitely more than 15. We don’t need any more time devoted to planning than that.

So, you want to make the time, you want to really get out of the mindset that you don’t have the time to create a plan. This is going to save you so much time, because you’re going to be so much more intentional with how you spend your time. We’re going to find some minutes in the day so you can plan.

And then, people will also not make a plan because they think that they can do this in their head. And there are a lot of different reasons why we don’t want to make the plan in our head. Number one, you’re much more likely to stick to something if you write it down. Number two, there’s a lot of trial and error, and tweaking and learning, that comes from seeing your time visually.

Understanding how it’s laid out, and being able to evaluate what worked, what didn’t work, what will you do differently. Being able to observe conflicts or see what’s really unrealistic that maybe, if it was just in your head, you’d think it was totally doable.

So, you really need to see it mapped out on your calendar, that’s very important. We want to make sure that we’re making a plan. That’s one of the things that I see for the planning part, that people don’t make any plan. I will also see people only plan external meetings, where they’re meeting with someone else.

I will see people make fantasy plans. So, they’re very perfectionistic and they’re very ideal, but they’re completely detached from reality. There’s no way that you’d ever be able to complete the plan. So, very lofty plans, very overwhelming plans, that you’re not going to stick to.

That helps perfectionists feel like they’ve accomplished something amazing, something really miraculous. And, you actually haven’t done any of the work, but you got the dopamine hit that comes from that really lavish, extravagant fantasy planning. So, you want to be onto yourself if you do that, as part of your perfectionistic tendencies, creating fantasy plans and then never sticking to them. Okay.

And then, I also see people make the mistake of only planning work. They don’t plan any of the stuff that’s required for them to be humans and to have a personal life. So, that ends up creating a disaster, as well.

And if you’re doing any of these things; not making a plan, only planning external meetings, creating fantasy plans, or only planning work, you’re going to see that each one of those forms of planning really creates a disaster.

Here are some of the consequences I see from doing those things. Number one, you don’t prioritize your most important work. So, if you’re only planning external meetings, or you’re only planning when you meet with other people, that leaves off so much of the important work that you have to do, that’s just work that you do alone.

And if you’re not factoring that into your schedule, and making it really your top priority, it’s going to be an afterthought. It’s not going to get the time that is really required for you to do your best work.

You will also see, if you’re only planning external meetings, or you’re only planning work, that you’re really double-booking yourself, a lot of the times. This also happens when you’re not making any plan, you’re doing the math in your head, and you’re probably doing the math wrong. And you’re double-booking yourself; you’re spending time in your email, and you’re not accounting for email.

You’re thinking that you’ll be using that time to be working on drafting a contract, or writing up a brief, or doing legal research, and you’re not factoring in that you’re going to have to take a break and go get a coffee throughout the day. So, that counts as double-booking yourself; you’re doing both things, and that time has to go somewhere. You’re not going to be able to multitask; multitasking is such a myth. So, you’re creating double-booking.

This also happens when you think that you’re going to be traveling to work or traveling to meet someone, when really, it’s going to take you longer to get ready in the morning than you anticipate, because you’re not doing the math, right; you’re not planning it out. So, you double-book yourself there, between the personal and the professional.

And ultimately, what happens here, is that you set yourself up for failure. You set yourself up to constantly be behind, to have a schedule that doesn’t work for you, because you’re doing the math wrong; when you’re not planning, not putting things on your calendar, only planning those external meetings, only planning work, creating those fantasy plans that would never work out. …If you actually focused on doing the math right.

You also never make time for yourself if you’re only planning work or only planning things that are external. You never make time for yourself. All of your individual needs end up coming last, and they get left off. Again, if you do end up making time for some of them, you’re double-booking yourself. So, then you’re creating the problem of being behind.

And the other issue that I see here, is that you leave out things that you are actually doing. This also goes to the whole double-booking concept. If it takes you 10 minutes to get dressed and get out the door, and you’re not realizing that it takes you 10 minutes to do that, you’re leaving things out that you’re not doing. It’s going to take you 10 minutes, regardless. You’re just going to be behind schedule because you didn’t account for those 10 minutes.

Same thing if you have a meeting that, let’s say, it starts at 3pm. It takes you five minutes to walk to the meeting. I know this seems really obvious, as I say it to you, it might, but if that’s the case, this isn’t obvious for everyone.

And, you know, you have to plan into your schedule that it’s going to take you the five minutes to walk down the hall, or to change floors, or to get in the elevator. There might be a little bit of a wait for the elevator. Or, that you’re going to take the stairs and that that’s going to take a few minutes. You have to build all of that into your plan.

And when you don’t, you double-book yourself and you end up making yourself behind. If you’re someone who’s chronically late, I have a lot of clients that really struggle with being timely, with being punctual. It’s because they’re double-booking themselves. They’re not paying attention to how long things take. They’re not getting the math, right.

Like I said, you end up doing these things, but you’re just not planning to do them, so you’re always behind. This leads to a lot of unnecessary stress, a lot of unnecessary frustration, a lot of unnecessary guilt, a lot of unnecessary worry and fear. It makes your life much more dramatic, much more chaotic, much more emotional. And that emotional weight can be really exhausting, right.

It’s such a distraction that really prevents us from doing our best work, from showing up at the highest level. We want to make sure that we’re not doing this, so we can live a much more intentional, calm, grounded life. It’s such a gift that you get to give yourself when you really master time management.

I remember I used to think time management wasn’t sexy. And then, I finally decided that I wanted to be someone who mastered this, and as I have mastered it, it is sexy to be someone who’s calm all the time. It is sexy to be someone who’s punctual; who doesn’t feel messy or chaotic, who’s not scrambling, running around, feeling really frantic; that feels terrible.

It’s also how people experience you. I really have changed my thoughts about this, to see that as being kind of sloppy, and unintentional, and unprofessional. And I wanted to become someone who was really polished, really sophisticated, really intentional with everything that they do.

And like I said, I used to kind of think that that was boring, but I don’t, now. I think it’s something that’s really admirable and impressive. So, you want to be careful of how you think about being someone who is scheduled. If you think really negative thoughts about it, you’re never going to do it. You want to make sure you’re cultivating that mindset, in order to set yourself up for success here.

Now, once you’ve done that, once you’ve sold yourself on being someone who plans, being someone who’s scheduled, because you’re convinced, and maybe you have to take my word for it, that’s fine. But you’re convinced, or at least hopeful, that I might be on to something, that it’s a better way to live your life. It’s a simpler, calmer, more polished, more professional way to live your life, and that it’s something that you want to strive for and achieve.

Once you get yourself there, then we get to undo a lot of these bad habits and start to implement a proper planning strategy. Okay. So, here’s what I teach my clients to do. Number one, and I think I’ve mentioned this already on the podcast, but I’m just going to restate it here.

You want to have one to-do list. And I know you probably love your written to-do lists, but it’s got to go. So, you want your to do list to be electronic. And this is why; number one, you can copy and paste, and reorganize things, and delete things.

And you don’t have to keep rewriting the same list over and over and over again, because you crossed half of the things off, and then you want to make a fresh list. And now, you’ve got multiple lists and you can’t keep track of your lists. That’s so confusing, we don’t want that.

You’re going to create one electronic to-do list. I use the Notes app in my iPhone because it syncs with my computer. That’s what’s easiest for me, I want to be able to have access to it on my cell phone. A client of mine recently told me that Microsoft now has a to-do list app, that you can have on your phone, and syncs with Outlook.

So, if you’re a Microsoft user, not an Apple user, check into that, look into it, see if that’s an option that would work for you. But you want to come up with your one electronic to-do list.

You’re also going to have one calendar. I know people also don’t love this because we’d love to have everything compartmentalized. I really don’t think that works; I think it makes for a really cumbersome process.

And not all of your calendars end up talking to one another. And it can lead to you getting double-booked. It can lead to some things slipping through the cracks, and a conflict being created when it would have been otherwise avoided, if you had just been using one calendar.

So, I use my work calendar for absolutely everything. My personal dinners with friends go on my work calendar. Everything syncs with my electronic scheduler, my Calendly. So, my availability is always up to date, and I never get double-booked. That’s really important to me, to avoid those unnecessary conflicts.

Now we’ve got one electronic to-do list, one calendar, and here’s what you’re going to do. In the beginning, we’re going to plan day-by-day. And you’re going to plan a day in advance. Because you access a different part of your brain when you plan a day in advance.

You use your prefrontal cortex, which is much more logical, much more supportive of your long-term goals; what you want to achieve in the long term. Rather than the primitive part of your brain, which is what you use when you make decisions in the moment.

And that’s that primitive part of your brain that’s just looking to protect you. It wants to seek pleasure, avoid discomfort, and conserve energy. So, it’s really going to set you up to fail, because it’s going to do all of the things that are really instant gratification seeking, instead of being aligned with your long-term goals; the long-term success that you want to achieve.

So, you want to plan a day in advance. All right. Over time, we’re going to work on working up to sketching out your week, sketching out your month. But you still want to check your plan for the following day, a day in advance, as you go throughout this planning process.

Now, first things first, you need to plan in how long it’s going to take you to just be a human every day. All right. How many hours do you want to sleep on average? You need to start to build in that structure to your schedule; start there. How long does your morning routine take on a given day? And, you want to be really honest with yourself about this.

We’re going to do some trial and error and gather some data. I’m going to talk about that in a second. But you want to start making a guess and putting in the amount of sleep that you want, how long it takes you to get ready in the morning, what you like to do in the morning. Are you a person that eats lunch? What do you do for dinner? How do you spend your evenings? What time do you go to bed? You want to start to put in these staples throughout your day. And, this is going to give you a better sense of how much time you actually have to devote to work.

I don’t want you to look at your to-do list and say, this is what I “need” to get done in a day. And then, everything else is going to be an afterthought. It just doesn’t work because you end up doing the humaning things anyways. And then, you set yourself up for failure; you end up being behind. So, we’re not going to do it that way.

We’re going to plan for your life first, and then we’re going to work ‘work’ into the schedule. Okay. Now, in the past, I did an episode on making decisions ahead of time. That is a great episode, if you haven’t listened to it already, to go back and listen to after you finish this episode. Or, to go back and listen to it as a little bit of a refresher.

But this part of your schedule is really ripe for making decisions ahead of time and sticking to them. It’s gonna make the planning process so much easier because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single day. So, you can have kind of a week day protocol, where you’ve made decisions ahead of time about how you spend your time. You can have every day be the same if that’s easier for you.

Planning gets really simple when you make one decision, and you repetitively honor it over and over and over again. And again, it’s not boring, I promise. Even if it sounds boring, even if it sounds restrictive. It’s not, it is really so freeing to plan your time this way.

So, let me give you an example of this, of making decisions ahead of time and building them into your process, building them into your game plan for the day. If you’re someone who likes to work out, and again, I mentioned on a previous episode, we want to make sure you’re planning in alignment with your preferences.

So, if you don’t like to work out, and if we’re being really honest that you’re not going to work out every day, don’t build that into the plan. That’s a bad plan; you’re not going to stick to it. I always like to tell my clients; you want your plan to be something that you think you’ll stick to. On a scale of 1 to 10, you want to be at an 8 or higher. Okay, I’m great if it’s a 10. And we’ll see once we actually implement the plan if you do stick to it at level 10.

In the beginning, you probably won’t. There’s going to be a little room for error and room for improvement; That’s fine, that’s normal. Tell your perfectionism to take a chill pill for a second. There’s gonna be some imperfection in this process, as you learn to become someone who plans accurately and then sticks to the plan.

But don’t make a plan that’s far out of alignment with how you prefer to spend your time. So, if you are not someone who works out, don’t plan to work out. If you are someone who works out, be really honest, how long does that take? How long does your workout take between getting dressed? Maybe you work out from home?

Or, maybe you have to go to a gym, right? If you go to a gym, how long does that take? You’ve got to put that in the plan. How long will you be at the gym? From entering the gym to the time you actually work out, to leaving the gym, to getting back in your car. And then, going back home and showering, getting ready for the day, right? You have to build all of that into your schedule. So, we’re going to have to figure out how long that takes.

Same thing if you have a particular morning routine. I’m working with a client on this, right now. We’re working on creating a morning routine that he can stick to. And one of the things that he’s on the fence about is do I eat breakfast every day? And I know it can sound a little strict to make that decision every single day right now, for every single day right now. But you want to.

It just doesn’t make any sense to me, to be undecided every day about whether you’re going to eat breakfast or not eat breakfast, alright? That’s something that you can really systematize. Everything becomes easier when you decide that you’re a breakfast person or you’re not a breakfast person. I’m not a breakfast person. So, I never have to factor that time into my schedule.

If you are a breakfast person, and you decide every day you eat breakfast, think about all of the other decisions that go into making that; what are you going to eat? What time do you eat? When do you eat? How long do you want to devote to the process of eating breakfast? Is there cleanup that you do? Do you grab something on the go as part of your commute? Right?

All of those decisions go into that, and you don’t want to be making those decisions in real time. Again, that’s how you end up double-booking yourself or planning really inaccurately. It’s because you didn’t make a plan at all.

Another example of this would be packing, right? When do you pack before a trip? I pack the night before. I don’t like to leave it till the morning. I used to leave it till the morning, and now I’m really realistic about how long it takes me to pack. I just don’t have that kind of time, normally, in the morning, so I like to pack the night before.

Same thing with grocery shopping, like, when do you do that? How long does that take you? I do a lot of my grocery shopping via the Shipt® app, that makes it super convenient for me. But I want to build that into my routine. There’s going to be time devoted every week to that process.

And if I’m not building that into my plan, I end up double-booking myself. Because in my head, I’ve allotted that time to doing something else. And then. I end up spending it grocery, shopping on my phone, because I need to have things for the week, right?

So again, these are things that you can decide ahead of time, and build into your plan to create a lot of structure, to create a lot of routine, and make your life a lot simpler. Okay, I really do think that it’s kind of insane, that you would leave this undecided, things like this. The simple everyday things that you do over and over and over again, you really want to make one decision, one time, and stick to it. It makes everything so much easier. Same thing with lunch. Same thing with dinner. You can really build in a lot of structure. And again, this comes back to this mindset component; you really need to become someone who stops believing that there’s benefit to living your life in a see-as-I-go manner.

I used to think that being scheduled was really constraining and boring, and that I wanted to be more spontaneous, and just go with the flow, and plan as I go. And that really is not the best way to go through life. That ends up being, again, very chaotic, very messy, pretty frantic.

So, it’s not restrictive, to make these decisions ahead of time and stick to them. Do you always have free will to make a change in the moment? Yes, you do. I just don’t want that to be the way that you live every minute of your life.

It makes for a really unintentional way that you would go about living every day. And you squander a lot of time, your most precious resource, when you’re not being intentional with how you spend your time, with making these decisions ahead of time.

And it creates an ability for you to do a lot more, not less, when you make these decisions. When you create a schedule and plan this way, it allows you to do it with that calm, grounded intention. Okay? I promise, if you’re skeptical, give it a try and see how much time you get back, how much time you save, how much more you’re able to accomplish, how much calmer your life feels when you make plans this way.

All right, so you’ve got the one calendar, you’ve got the one schedule. the one to-do list, you’re gonna plan your day, a minimum one day in advance, and you’re gonna work up to sketching out your week and your month, right? As you start to do this, the rule needs to be everything goes on the calendar, okay? Because you want to get that visual representation of how long things are going to take you.

So, breakfast goes on the calendar. Don’t give me, that it’s gonna take you too long to do this. You can set up recurring appointments. I do this all the time. So, your days, that structure, that skeleton outline, so to speak, is already set up in advance. If you’re someone who does breakfast every day, create a recurring calendar event, so your calendar reflects time for breakfast. So, you don’t double-book that time.

You’re going to have your main structure, sleep, your human routines. And then, you’re going to put those meetings on your calendar, if you have recurring meetings. I love a recurring meeting and creating a calendar event. So, that time is safeguarded and blocked off on your calendar.

And then, you’re going to start to see these pockets of time that you’re able to do work in. Between those recurring meetings or one-off meetings, all of those go on the schedule. And my rule with those is, that as soon as the need arises to create a calendar event, you create it.

And we do that because it’s going to prevent against you being double-booked. It’s going to prevent against creating unnecessary conflicts, because you didn’t put something on your calendar, and then you forget. Because we’re fallible, as humans, and sometimes we don’t remember everything that we have planned.

So, you want this to become a process where, before you commit to anything, you’re able to go to your calendar, check to see if you’re available. Or, you’re using an electronic scheduler like I do, and your availability is already blocked off. So, people wouldn’t even be able to get access to that time slot.

But if you’re doing this in real time and you’re checking your phone, checking your calendar, to see if you’re free or not, that meeting, that conflict would already be there. And then, you would very clearly see that you are not free at that time. So, you would request another time slot.

I used to have a boss who never did this. And he would always just people- please judges, and take whatever court date they gave him. He would create so many unnecessary conflicts, that we would then, at our office, have to spend so much time unworking.

We’d have to ask for a lot of adjournments, you’d have to draft a motion, you’d have to call the prosecutor. It created all of this busy work. you’d have to call the court, in order to request the adjournment, in order to get hearing date for the adjournment, it was such a nightmare.

And it was completely avoidable, such a time suck, completely unnecessary. All he would have had to do, if he followed my system, would be to check his calendar while in court. Say, “Judge, that date doesn’t work for me.” The judge will not be pissed, they don’t care; I promise you.

They don’t care. They would much rather you just give them your actual availability, than to give an answer that’s inaccurate. Or, for you to show up late because you double-booked yourself, and planned to be in two places at once. That’s never going to work, right? So, you would check your schedule, and you would be able to see you’re not free at that time. And you’d be able to give a time that you’re actually available.

Now, speaking of court hearings, or things like that, if you have out of office meetings or things that require travel, you want to build in that travel time as part of your schedule, too. My hairdresser is an hour away from me; he’s a really good friend of mine, and I’ve gone to him for years now. I need to factor into my schedule that it’s going to take me at least 45 minutes. If there’s traffic it’s going to take me longer, I have to build that into my plan.

So, not only do I block out more than enough time for my hair appointment, and I like to do that at the end of the day, so I don’t have anything after my hair appointment, just in case it takes longer. But I’m really conservative with how long I estimate that it will take. I normally give myself a lot of time. I also build in that it’s going to take me about an hour to get there, just in case there’s traffic, and then an hour to get home. So, all of that goes on my calendar, too.

If you have out of office meetings, or meetings that require travel, hearings that require travel, you want to make sure you’re putting in that travel time. I just had a conversation with a client of mine, and she realized that she wasn’t doing this. It always led to her being behind because people would schedule her back-to-back, people in her office, which goes back to reclaiming control of your calendar.

But people would schedule her, and they wouldn’t factor in that she would need travel time in between these two meetings. And then, she would end up being late for things, because she didn’t put that travel time on her schedule. So, you want to make sure that you’re planning your travel time.

Now as you start to do this, you’re going to see these pockets of time start to appear. Between the meetings that you have. Between your regular everyday routines, as part of being a human. You’re going to have these uninterrupted pockets of time where you’re able to do work. I want you to start to get a sense of how long email takes you. Because this is such an area where people double-book themselves.

They don’t realize that they spend three hours a day reading, responding to emails. So, they plan, let’s say, after you’ve created your structured skeleton, you have about seven or eight hours of uninterrupted time where you’re able to do focused work, okay.

And you’ll also see if you have a lot of meetings scattered all over the place; can you consolidate that? I’ve talked about this before, with making decisions ahead of time and constraining when you do things. This is why we want to be doing that. It makes it so much easier for you to have these big chunks of time where you’re able to do really deep, focused work, rather than jumping, kind of, in a scattered, frantic manner between one thing and another thing.

Constantly interrupting yourself. Not really allowing yourself, or creating any opportunity, for you to do that really deep, focused uninterrupted work. So, these pockets of time should start to appear to you. And you’re going to get a general sense that on a given day, you have a certain number of hours to play with here. For a lot of my clients, it’s somewhere around, between six to eight hours, depending about how long you’re willing to work.

Now, if you’re someone who spends, like I said, close to three hours a day, reading and responding to email, you want to build those three hours into your schedule. Instead of planning eight hours of deep uninterrupted work on projects, on substantive assignments, and then not factoring in any of the three hours that you’d be spending on email, right?

If you plan eight hours of deep, substantive work, and then you also end up spending three hours of time on email, you’re either going to be working 11 hours, instead of the eight that you planned. Or, you’re going to work the eight hours, but you’re only going to get five hours of that deep, focused work done. And you’re going to spend the other three hours on email, and then you’re going to get to the end of your day and feel really behind. That feels terrible. So, that’s really what we’re trying to avoid here, by planning.

Now, once you see these pockets of time; you’ve built in your email, you’ve planned for that. You’re going to see how much time you have left over in the day for those uninterrupted tasks, that deep work, okay. And maybe it’s five hours, maybe it’s six hours, whatever it is, depending if you have a really heavy meeting day, it might be a lot less than that.

But what you’re going to do, is you’re going to take a look at your to-do list, and then you’re going to start putting, like puzzle pieces, like little bricks, like Legos®, you’re going to start putting those tasks into those free chunks of time on your schedule.

Now, this is where the accurate piece comes in, the second component, the second step, to managing your time, planning your schedule accurately. We want to make sure you’re doing this accurately. So, what you’re going to do, you’re going to look at that to-do list, and you’re going to estimate how long things take you. Okay?

And we’re not going to use really vague descriptors, like a long time, or a while, or that’ll be fast; we’re actually going to estimate in the number of minutes or hours, okay? And if you’re not sure how long something takes you work on it, you’re going to take your best guess.

All right, I really want you to think of your schedule. this part of your schedule, it’s like you’re working on a puzzle or playing a game of Tetris®, right? We’re making these little building blocks fit together. And as you do this, you’re really going to start to see, as you estimate, and plan, and take a guess for how long things are going to take you.

And then, you compare it. Because you make your schedule, and then you see how you did for the day. And it’s going to be this trial-and-error process for a little bit. You’re really going to start to see; A, how much you’re double-booking yourself. And you’re not actually seeing that right now, because you’re not putting things down on your calendar. So, you’re going to become acutely aware that you’re double-booking yourself.

And you’re going to see how inaccurate your math has been, in the past. And it’s going to make sense to you; why you feel so behind, why you feel so rushed all the time, why you feel overwhelmed, why you get to the end of your day constantly feeling behind and feeling really unaccomplished, as a result. It’s because you’ve been doing the math wrong.

So, we’re going to start doing the math right. Don’t tell me you don’t like math; it really is the secret to time management here. So, we’ve got to make love to the math part.

Now as you start to do this, you’re going to take a guess about how long things take you. If you really have no sense of it, or you haven’t done something before, you’re going to take a guess. I love to tell people to double it, because we’re just horrific at understanding how long things take us. This is called the planning fallacy.

One of the things that I see all the time with clients, is that they think that they’re the only ones who are bad at this. And I always joke with people, I say, “You know, everyone thinks that they’re a unicorn, and that it’s only them that struggles with something. That’s so, not the case. People are horrifically bad at this. It’s just a natural human tendency for us to really underestimate how long it takes for us to accomplish a task.”

But you want to be mindful that there is this thing, called the planning fallacy. And that you do tend to underestimate how long something takes you. So, I like to say, if you’re really not sure, and you don’t have data that you’re using to make data-driven decisions about planning your schedule, about how long something will take you, you want to take a guess and then double it.

If you find that those estimates still really fall short of how long it actually takes you to complete a task, quadruple it. I have a couple clients that do that, because they just find that they really, horrifically, underestimate how long things take. So, if you have to times it by four, take a guess and then times it by four.

But you’re gonna go through, with your to-do list, and estimate how long everything takes you. And then, you’re going to see what you can accomplish in a given period of time. And you’re going to place those items, from your to-do list, into your schedule for the day.

If you have five hours of uninterrupted time to work on things, you’re going to find five hours, or really even better, like four and a half hours. Because you might take a break, you might have an interruption. I teach my clients to build in a little flex time into their schedule in the afternoons.

Just in case something unplanned arises, it doesn’t screw up your schedule for the day. But if you’ve got about five hours of extra room to work with, you want to plan about four and a half hours’ worth of tasks. And then, you build those in. Put them on your calendar; that’s your game plan for the day. That’s how this works.

Now initially, you’re going to be really underwhelmed with what you can accomplish in a given day. I remember when I started to practice planning my schedule this way, I was really disappointed at first, with how little I could accomplish in a given day. I wanted to be able to do, essentially, like three times as much as I could actually get done.

But you have to make peace with time. I tell people all the time, they’re really mad at time and the reality of what they can accomplish in a given time period. So, we’ve got to make peace with this. We’ve got to come to terms that it’s a little underwhelming what we can accomplish in a 24-hour period.

Now the best way to get the most done, is to plan in the way that I’m teaching you to plan. It’s going to set you up to get the most accomplished, to be the most efficient, to be the most productive. But you also, may still be a little underwhelmed.

I have people tell me all the time they make these fantasy plans. And they’re like, I have to get all of this stuff done. And I always tell them, do you know how I know that’s not true? Because you just planned like 20 hours’ worth of work, and you’re probably only going to work for eight hours, today. So, 12 hours of it isn’t actually going to get done today.

You’re lying to yourself, saying it needs to get done today. But it doesn’t actually need to get done, because it’s not going to get done if we’re being really realistic. So, again, that goes back to that concept of rating your game plan on a scale of 1 to 10; how likely are you to actually accomplish it? If it’s not an eight or higher, it’s a bad plan.

Now, a couple episodes ago, I talked about the three skills that I really wanted you to cultivate, to access, to bring with you, as we work through these three P’s. I taught you that I want you to be resourceful, patient, and coachable. Those are really the qualities that you need to exhibit, as we work on solving and remedying these bad tendencies; the people-pleasing, the perfectionism, and the procrastination, to bad time management skills.

Because this isn’t going to be an overnight switch, right? There’s going to be some trial and error. So, I really want you to tap in to those three qualities. As you go about learning this second step, in managing your time and planning your schedule accurately, they’re gonna come in big time here.

It’s going to be really easy for you to throw your hands up in the air and say, “Olivia, I don’t know how long something takes me. This is too hard, it’s too hard to figure out.” We’re not going to do that. You’re gonna tap into your resourcefulness, you’re going to take a guess. And you’re gonna use whatever data you have available to you, to make an educated guess as to how long something takes you.

And again, as we start to make these plans, and then implement them and evaluate, your accuracy is going to increase. Your planning is going to get so much better, so much more accurate. So much more realistic and reliable. But there’s going to be a little bit of trial and error.

That’s where that patience is going to come in. Where you just have to be willing to go through this learning process. It’s not going to be an overnight process. It doesn’t need to be it’s okay. You’re also going to tap into your resourcefulness when you’re taking a guess.

Like I said, everything takes longer than you think. If you don’t know, double it or times it by four, just to be really conservative. And also, use context clues. If you’ve done things that are similar to the task at hand, but this is the first time you’re doing something, again, make that educated guess.

Now, you’re gonna want to fight me on some of the things that I’m telling you in this episode. I want you to tap in to that coachability. Really show up to doing this work with me in a very coachable manner. Don’t fight me on the things that I’m telling you in this episode. I get that it’s a new way of doing things for you. I get that that might be a little bit uncomfortable.

But you guys, I have dedicated years and years and years to figuring this out. I used to be so bad at it. And I am so good at it, now. I’ve dedicated so much time to solving this time management problem, to really understanding why people struggle with it, why I used to struggle with it, and figuring out a system that actually works. Okay?

It is simplistic. It’s not complicated, but it’s not completely intuitive. There’s going to be some trial and error here. So, I want you to not fight me. I want you to tap into your coachability. Trust me, keep an open mind. I know what I’m talking about. I follow this exact same structure, and I teach my clients this every day. It works; I promise you. So, be resourceful, be patient, and be coachable.

Now, as you do this; you’ve created a plan, you’ve taken your to-do list, you’ve found the remaining time that you have left over. After the humaning, after those external meetings, after those planned items on your schedule. And you’ve planned in that to-do list item; one after another, one after another, one after another, until you filled up your schedule.

Okay, now you’ve got to plan for the day. You’re going to do this every day. I have explained it in a very drawn-out manner, to be very specific and give you everything I possibly can, to set you up for success. It will not actually take you this long. This episode is a lot longer than the planning process will take you.

And if you’re doing this day in and day out, you’re going to start to, again, create that skeleton structure, create that routine. You’re going to get in that habit of having all those external meetings on your schedule. So, these pockets of time are just going to become filled in. So, your planning process is going to get shorter and shorter and shorter, every single day. Which is such a treat you get to give yourself.

And ultimately, what you’ll end up working up to, is really just a system where you’re able to plan a little bit every day, those free pockets of time, based on your to-do list. And then, I like to, once a week, do a little bit of a review. I look at the week ahead. And, I resolve conflicts.

I like to do this on Sunday. I see my seven days ahead of me, that are coming up. And, I just review for conflicts. Are there any double bookings that I need to resolve? There shouldn’t be, but I like to just do a quick review. All right.

Now, once you’ve got your plan, then it’s time to implement it. You’re going to implement every single day. And in the beginning, for a couple months at least… Because we’re making a 1% improvement every day. That’s really our goal here. What you’re going to do, is you’re going to put the plan into action, you’re going to implement it.

And then, you’re going to audit, you’re going to evaluate, and you’re going to adapt. So, we’re collecting data here, right? You make a plan, you implement it, and then you see how the plan goes. What worked? What didn’t work? And, what will you do differently?

This is going to be such an important part of the time management improvement process. You’ve got to collect some data and evaluate, and make tweaks and changes, in order to get more accurate, in order to plan better day in and day out.

A 1% improvement, every day, is going to put you in a wildly different position; it is going to be life changing. But it’s going to require that patience that I talked about, okay? Eventually, you will master planning accurately.

But as you go through this evaluation process, and I’m going to do just a whole separate episode on evaluating your time. Because I think it’s so helpful, I think it’s so informative. I really want to spend a whole episode just diving into the different things that you would notice when you’re doing a time evaluation.

But as you do this, you’re going to make these incremental, slow improvements. And, you’re going to make more informed decisions each time you plan anew, moving forward. It’s going to be revolutionary over time, right?

Now, like I said, with planning, you need to be accounting for everything that you do; the humaning, the work, your personal stuff that you do day in and day out; you want to build that all into the plan.

Another good rule of thumb here, is that I think it’s really helpful to work backwards. I also think it’s very helpful to break down a list, that goes into accomplishing one task. So, when I said earlier, working out, break down all of the individual steps that go into that.

If you’re talking about eating dinner, what goes into that? If you’re ordering food, you’re going to have to look up the food on DoorDash®. Then you’re going to order, and then you’re going to have to wait for it to get delivered. And then, you’re actually going to have to eat; all of that takes time.

All right, when I do social media marketing, I plan in how long it’s going to take me to write the post. and then I have to post the post, and then I want to engage with the comments that I get. I build all of that in. When I do webinars, I know how long it’s going to take me to write the webinar.

And then, I do a flip chart. So, I have to put the flip chart together, and then I know how long it’s going to take me to actually prepare. As far as like, getting myself ready, shower, makeup, hair; all of that stuff getting dressed for the webinar. All of that has to go into my game plan.

Same thing with getting ready in the morning, there’s so many different individual tasks; how long does it take you to shower? How long does it take you to brush your teeth? How long does it take you to do your makeup or shave? How long does it take you to pick out what you wear? And then, to get dressed? To make coffee? You want to factor all of that in.

This may sound onerous or daunting, it’s not. It’s just making really informed, data-driven decisions, which is ultimately, what you want to be doing to plan your schedule very accurately.

And like I said, we’re just going to make a plan, implement it, see how things go, and evaluate, and make constant tweaks and changes, until you’re able to do this really accurately.

Alright, that’s what I’ve got for you in this week’s episode. You might have to listen to this one a couple of times; that’s okay, go back. And also, like I said earlier, go check out the constraint episodes and the episode on making decisions ahead of time. It really ties in to this concept of planning your schedule accurately.

But you’re going to work on making the plan. And then, you’re going to work on getting really clear on the math, in order to plan accurately. And we’re just going to keep making tweaks and changes, and get 1% better, a little bit more each day.

Over time, you will be in a wildly different place with time management. You’re going to become someone who’s really punctual, really accurate with how they plan their time. And that is going to be such a gift that you give yourself and everyone else that you interact with.

Because it’s so lovely to be someone who’s punctual. To be someone who can stick to a schedule, to be someone who isn’t constantly late or constantly frantically running from one thing to the next. You’re going to be someone whose word really means something. And that’s so professional, it’s so polished, it’s so responsible.

And again, if you haven’t thought that that’s sexy in the past, you really want to make sure you change your mind set on that, because if you don’t, you’re not going to be someone who does this. You’re not going to want to stick to it, because it’s going to leave a bad taste in your mouth. You’re going to think that it’s a little unpalatable.

Alright, that’s what I’ve got for you guys this week. I can’t wait to talk to you about the third and final step, in next week’s episode. In the meantime, have a beautiful week.

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 31. We’re talking all about reclaiming control of your calendar. 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, how are you? I am talking to you from my hotel room in Rome. I just got in today. And I know I mentioned in the last episode, I’m kind of being a world traveler, right now; I’m bouncing from city to city. And it was my original intention to record a podcast episode in every single city that I’m in.

So, I could kind of take you guys with me as I travel. But I was just in New York just for a really short period of time, just a couple days. And it was such a whirlwind. I had a really packed calendar, and it just didn’t work out for me to be able to record an episode while I was in NYC. But to kind of fill you guys in, I was able to, like I mentioned in the last episode, meet with two friends that I have only ever met online or through Zoom, because I met them during the pandemic.

And it was amazing. I got to go to dinner with one of them, we had such a good time. He treated me to an amazing dinner at an Italian restaurant, it was just so perfect. And then, I got to meet another girlfriend of mine. We have become like best friends since the very beginning of “quaren” times, as I like to call them. And we had this phenomenal lunch together. We talked for hours. It was so much fun being able to finally like hug and squeeze her in person, I just had the best time.

So, so far, so good. As far as travel is concerned. One of the things that I was thinking about, as I was making my way to the airport yesterday to catch my flight to Rome, was that a couple of years ago, I guess not a couple but like five years ago or so, I wouldn’t have made the time to have dinner with one of my friends, and then have lunch with another one of my friends.

I would have told myself that work was too busy, and I couldn’t fit it in. And I would have flown straight to Rome, I wouldn’t have extended my layover in New York, to be able to stay there for a couple days. I would have just had that narrative about time scarcity in my head. And, I would have cut everything short, and probably would have been working a lot while I was traveling.

 And even though I’m recording the podcast, other than that I’m not working. I’m not meeting with clients while I travel. It’s just some downtime for me to give my brain a rest, get some really good ideas, prep for all of the exciting stuff that I have coming up.

So, it was wild to think about how much I’ve grown, and how I’ve transitioned, and how I’ve transformed, into a person who’s so much more calm, much more intentional. And someone who really makes time for those memories, those really unforgettable moments, that you only get a few opportunities to create in your lifetime with friends.

So, if you are like old me right now, take this as your sign to become someone to start to make that transformation, that transition, to becoming someone who makes the time. Who makes the time to stay an extra day to go to dinner. Who makes the time to stay an extra day to go to lunch. Squeeze in those moments with the people in your life that really matter. You will be so grateful that you did, in the long run. You get one life.

I just wrote an email about this. I send out an email every Friday to my email list. And, it’s just a little dose of inspiration. So, if you’re not signed up for that, head to my Instagram, and there’s a link in my bio where you can get on that list. So, you get those little doses of inspiration straight to your inbox.

But I just wrote an email last night, while I was at the airport, to my list, talking about how you get this one incredible life. You get one chance at it. Make sure it’s a memorable one. And I promise you, coming from the girl used to work a ton on vacation, I did doc review poolside. Bless my friend Nevila’s heart, she has put up with me lawyering while traveling for several trips, back in my big law days. But you want to make sure you’re making the most of your life. So, figure out where you can squeeze those moments in, and squeeze them in. All right.

Speaking of Nevila, she is getting ready to meet me in Rome. And, I think this is the first trip that we’ve taken together since I quit practicing law. So, she is in for a much calmer version of me. I’m sure she’s excited.

All right, with that being said, I want to dive into today’s topic. So, as you know, we’ve been talking about the three P’s: people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination. And now, we’re in the time management portion of this series; really the fundamentals of the coaching that I do.

And we’ve talked about the mindset that you need to start to cultivate. I set you up in the last episode, talking about the overarching three steps that you need to do take to manage your time; reclaiming control of your calendar, planning your schedule accurately, and following the plan.

But what I want to do is go in and do a deep dive into each one of those three steps. So, there’s no confusion about what it looks like to take action and make those changes, implement those changes, as you go through these three steps. And this is really the meat-and-potatoes of the time management series, these three steps.

You don’t have to overcomplicate it, one of the things that I see people do, with time management, is when they’re really struggling with it, they consume, consume, consume all of this time management content; I used to be guilty of doing that, too. And, it’s too complex.

You have to categorize between what’s urgent and important. And there are a lot of tactics, and maybe you need to use certain apps. And while technology is great, I find that that is just a way that we are one step removed from what we actually need to be doing, which is following these three steps.

They’re so simple. There really isn’t much room for confusion, and you get to let it be this simple. I think people like to think that time management is difficult. And one of the things that I’m always telling my clients, is that it’s not necessarily difficult, it tends to just be uncomfortable. And, we love to conflate ease with comfort. And, we want to make sure that we’re using the appropriate terminology where it fits.

So, time management, these three steps; reclaiming control of your calendar, planning your schedule accurately, and honoring your plan. They’re not difficult; climbing Mount Everest is probably difficult. I have a friend who just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. And I’m sure that was a difficult challenge, right? This isn’t that.

But managing your time, sticking to your schedule, controlling your calendar, not people-pleasing, starting work when you say you’re going to, finishing on time instead of indulging in perfectionism. All of that stuff is uncomfortable. So, you want to figure out what type of discomfort comes with doing each of those steps, so you can implement them and overcome those negative emotions.

Now, one of the reasons that I love the simplicity of knowing these three steps, is that it makes it so easy to evaluate how you spend your time and what you’re doing. So, I mentioned to you in the last episode, talking about if you always feel like you’re behind, how you want to evaluate. You want to go through and identify the specific reasons that you’re always behind.

And if you’re working on time management, and you’re struggling to manage your time, you, similarly, want to conduct weekly or daily evaluations. And those are going to be simple, too. You’re just going to ask yourself; what is working? What is not working? And, what can you do differently, moving forward, to correct what isn’t working.

You always get to bring it back to those three questions: What’s going well? What’s working, what’s not working? What will I do differently? And, you want to bring that evaluation back to these three rules: Where did I not control my calendar? Where did I not plan accurately? Where did I not honor my plan? And then, why? Always asking why because that has so much really helpful, beneficial information, really great intel there.

So, why didn’t I control my calendar? Thoughts that you’re thinking, or negative emotions you’re not willing to feel, right? Why did I not plan accurately? Did I do the math wrong? Why did I not honor my plan? Again, negative thoughts you’re thinking or negative emotions that you’re unwilling to feel.

So, you can use these three steps as a framework for consistently improving. And if you’re evaluating and you’re figuring out what you’re going to do differently moving forward, you’re always going to be making these small, incremental improvements. And, that’s how you become wildly better at time management over time; it may not happen overnight. And, that doesn’t have to be a problem, that’s okay.

You’re going to make consistent progress in this area, rf you stick with it, practice these three steps, evaluate meaningfully, and keep going, keep tweaking to improve. Okay?

Now, let’s talk about step one, reclaiming control of your calendar. And the reason I say reclaiming, is because most people aren’t controlling their calendar. So, really, it’s control your calendar, that would be step one. But for those who have ceded control over their calendar to the other people in their lives, we want to reclaim that control. All right, we want you in the driver’s seat of your schedule.

So, what does it mean for you to reclaim control of your calendar? First things first, I want you to check in with yourself and be really honest here; Do you think that other people have control of your time? Do you think other people have control of your calendar? A lot of my clients do. So, I want you to do a little bit of an audit here.

Think both, in your personal life and in your professional life, who has control instead of you. And if you’ve heard me talk about this before, you know where I’m going with this. I’m going to tell you that it’s a lie, right? You’re always in control of your calendar, you’re always in control of how you spend your time; you always get to choose.

And if that feels like a really foreign concept for you, if that feels very untrue, I really want you to sit with that for a second. You can pause this episode, and just give yourself a few minutes to really think about it, and find the lie. Find where you’re making the choice. Find where you’re exercising agency and control.

One of the examples that people give me all the time, is that courts control their calendar. And I understand that a court can set a date, right, but you choose to attend the court date. I know it may not feel like it, but you do. You actually make a decision, and you choose to go, because you don’t want to suffer the consequences of not going.

Also, a lot of people are able to reschedule court hearings and get adjournments, and get another date on the court’s calendar. Same thing goes with closings. If you’re a transactional attorney, people frequently tell me that they don’t have any control over when the closing date is and that they can’t move it. And then, a couple weeks later, we talk, and the closing date gets moved, right, for one reason or another.

So, I really want you to find the lie here, where you’re telling yourself that you don’t have control; you do have control, find it. Find where you’re making the decision. Same thing goes with people with kids and their personal lives.

You may think that your kids control your time, or maybe your spouse controls your time, figure out where you’re making the choice. And again, this may be a challenge for you to find it, but really sit with it and find where you’re exercising your own agency, your own autonomy.

Another way that I have people start to identify their agency and autonomy that they’re exercising, is not to sound really dramatic, but think about what would happen if you were in the hospital. If you got into a car accident, God forbid, and you had to be rushed to the hospital. And, you were supposed to be at something.

And the narrative of whatever you were supposed to attend, you were telling yourself that you had no control over attending that or not. That you didn’t have a say in the matter. That someone else made that decision for you and that you just had to abide by it. But then you don’t go because you’re in the hospital, right?

So, something else would happen because you’re not there. Either someone would cover for you, if you had a court hearing, or things would get postponed; people would figure it out. But the plan would probably change. And, you’d figure out what to do from there.

So, I love that drastic example, just because it evidences that the world wouldn’t come to a screeching halt, if you didn’t attend something, all right; people would figure it out. So, think about that in your own life. What are the things that you feel like you really don’t have control over? Who has control instead? Find those people, find those instances, and then find the lie. Where do you actually have control? Where are you making a decision on how to spend your time?

I also want you to find, what one of my clients calls the “creepy crawlers”, in your schedule. Now, creepy crawlers can either be things that are unplanned, and they make their way into your schedule. It can also be people who have access to scheduling for you, that come in and infringe on your calendar and make plans without your permission. They literally creepy crawl into your calendar. Right?

So, I want you to think about that for a second, and find the creepy crawlers into your schedule. Does anyone have access to your calendar? Do they schedule for you? I know a lot of people work in organizations, whether it’s a law firm or a business, and people are able to see their availability. And then, they’re able to schedule things based on the availability that they see.

If that’s the case, we want to make sure that we eliminate that as much as you possibly can. So, you can go in and block off your time. And really limit your availability for other people to do that. Or, you can just take away the ability for people to schedule for you all together.

Now, again, remember, not hard, but uncomfortable. This may be uncomfortable for you to do. For you to go into your calendar, and operate differently than the rest of your team. For you to block off entire days, so people can’t schedule for you. So, it appears that you’re busy instead of available.

And if that does make you uncomfortable, I really want to challenge you to think about; why? What are the thoughts that are making you feel uncomfortable? And, get really specific about what uncomfortable you are actually experiencing? What type of discomfort you’re actually feeling. Is it guilt? Is it worry, right? Those are two of the big ones. So, you want to make sure you’re identifying that and asking yourself; why? What are the thoughts that are causing you to feel those emotions?

A lot of people just don’t like to go against the status quo or the standard way that organizations operate. If everyone is always free and people have the ability to schedule anything on your calendar, it’s going to feel a little foreign to operate differently, to be more boundaried, to block off time and have your calendar display that you’re unavailable instead of free. Right?

It would require people to email you probably, or give you a phone call, to ask you when you’re available. When you’d be able to meet, rather than just being able to go into your calendar and schedule that automatically.

You could set it up to where you are only available at certain times of day. So, I teach a lot of my clients to have what I call, “office hours”, where they maybe, in the past, have operated with an open-door policy and that has really led to mismanage time. So, instead of not being available at all, they just really limit their availability.

So, maybe instead of being available all day, they decide to have office hours, where they’re available to be contacted by someone else between three to five, or two to four, or one to three, something like that. That gives them the morning to really get the bulk of their most important work done, free of interruptions. And then, they’re still able to be accessible to their team members, to their clients, to other colleagues, opposing counsel, when they have those office hours.

Same thing’s true if you have creepy crawlers who dropped by your office unexpected. I know a lot of people are working from home, nowadays, so maybe this is by way of Microsoft Teams™. or a phone call instead, or Jabber™; I know we used to have that at the firm that I worked at. So, maybe that’s the case, that’s how people are reaching out and getting a hold of you, or, they’re swinging by.

And, you want to be the person who’s accessible, but then, they come by, they ask a question, and then you make small talk, and then a half an hour goes by, and you lost 30 minutes of your day. If that happens every single day, that adds up. Or, multiple times a day. I used to be the office that people loved to swing by to have a conversation, because I was really personable.

And even though I love communicating with people, and getting to know people, and being really open and welcoming, it made me really unproductive, right? So, you want to get clear on when you’re available when you’re not.

Have those office hours, if it makes sense for you to have them, and be able to tell people, “Hey, I can’t talk right now, I’m in the middle of something. But you can come back today at three, I’ve got time then.” And you just plan on it, you build it into your schedule. You know that if someone comes by on announced, that you limit that interaction as much as you can. If possible, you limit it completely, so you don’t get thrown off schedule.

You don’t let other people have control over how you spend your time. And, if they’re able to just swing by and spend as much time as they want with you, they’re controlling your schedule. A better way to say that is, you’re letting them control your schedule. But they’re dictating, essentially, how you spend your time because you’re not controlling it yourself. So, you want to reclaim control of your calendar that way.

Another example or pushback that I hear from people all the time, they’re like; well, it’s my supervisor who swings by. Or, my supervisor who calls me unexpectedly. And, I don’t have control over that. They outrank me, what am I supposed to do?

And I really want to encourage you to tap into your resourcefulness, and get creative, and think about how can you still exercise control? How can you reclaim control of your calendar?

Now, one of the things that I teach my clients to do, is to head them off at the pass, essentially. So, if you know that a partner that you work with loves to swing by in the afternoons, or a couple of times a week, just to talk about a case. Reach out to them first and schedule a standing meeting, so they know that they’re about to meet with you. It will reduce the need for them to swing by unexpectedly.

Same thing if you are supervising others, and they love to come to you with a lot of questions, and it ends up being really disruptive to your day. Plan scheduled meetings: you can do it once a week, twice a week, you can do it every single day if you want to. But build that into your calendar, so you know to plan for it. You know when it’s going to be. You’re able to plan your other work around it, so you’re not multitasking and interrupting yourself.

And you can also limit the amount of time that you spend in those meetings, in those exchanges. So, if you want to spend 15 minutes or 30 minutes, you can plan for that and then keep it to that timeframe. It’s going to teach you how to be much more efficient and productive with the meetings that you have, when you actually decide on a timeframe for them, and you force yourself to stick within that time limit.

A big and common creepy crawler situation that I see in people’s personal lives, is family members that call them unexpectedly, out of the blue. And a lot of people will have habits where they talk to their siblings or their spouse or their parents, multiple times throughout the day, or throughout the week.

And if that’s you, and it sucks up a lot of your time, and you want to limit that, again, you can also decide; here’s when I take these calls. Here’s how frequently I take them, and here’s how long they last. And you don’t have to do this in a way that feels really restrictive.

I talk, on Fridays, to my friend, Shari. She’s the person that I had lunch with, in New York. And, we talk for hours on Fridays. But we plan it into our schedule. I normally talk to her after I’ve gone to the market, and I’ve gotten everything that I need for dinner. And I’ll start to cook dinner, and we’ll talk for a couple hours about business and just our lives and everything.

But we’ve built that time, that really leisurely, luxurious amount of time into our schedule, so it’s not like it’s stealing from anything else. It’s not like it’s keeping me from accomplishing anything else. I’ve built that into my schedule. So, if you like to have lengthy conversations, that’s fine, you just want to plan for that. Make sure that the math works.

This is another reason that I love doing these time audits. Is to find out how much time do you spend on things like this; on talking with coworkers who swing by your office, or talking on the phone with friends and family members who call you unplanned, unexpectedly, and you just have the habit of answering. Because, again, you want to be accessible.

You’re gonna start to decide, how accessible do you want to be? Do you want to be so accessible that it prevents you from managing your time? If the answer is yes, and you love your reasons for that, amazing. Chances are though, if you’re listening to this podcast episode, and you’re really trying to work on time management, you’re probably not going to love your reasons, and you’re going to want to make a change.

So, you want to be doing these time audits, gathering all this intel, learning about yourself and how you’re currently spending your time, where you’re ceding control of it and start to reclaim it.

Now with a boundary, you can decide, if you call me more than once a day, I don’t answer, right, I call you back the next day. If you want to talk longer than an hour, I’m going to tell you that I have to get off the phone, and that I’ll talk to you tomorrow or later in the week. You really get to decide how you show up, how you spend your time, and how you limit those interactions, so it works for your schedule.

A lot of people also spend a ton of time on the phone with their family, for one of two reasons. Number one, they do it because they feel guilty. I especially see this with clients who spend a ton of time on the phone with parents.

Their parents call them and of course they do, they want to talk to you; you’re their children, they love you. And maybe they’re a little bored, especially if they’re up there in age. So, you might be a form of entertainment for them.

I also find people, whether it’s friends or family members, they love to buffer; avoid something else with a form of instant gratification or pleasure. They love to buffer with conversations with friends and family. So, you may notice that someone is using a conversation with you for that reason, to accomplish that. And if that’s the case, it’s alright for you to say, “You know what? You’ve got to call someone else. I love you. And, I can’t talk right now.

Just because you’re not available to talk, right now, because you decide you’re unavailable, that’s plenty good enough reason. Just because you’re not available, doesn’t mean you don’t care, doesn’t mean you don’t love someone. And, it’s okay, if they don’t love your lack of availability. That’s all right. We get to let them not love it; we get to let them be a little uncomfortable about it.

And that’s going to be one of the main themes here with this first step, with reclaiming control of your calendar. You’re really going to have to exercise feeling a little worried, feeling a little guilty, about having boundaries. About being really boundaried about how you spend your time. About not being as available as maybe you have been in the past. You’re just going to allow that negative emotion to be there.

And it will decrease, because what you’re going to prove to yourself, as you start to be more boundaried with your time and control your calendar more than you have been, you’re going to see that people don’t mind. And that is going to be so freeing for you. You’re going to see that the world doesn’t stop spinning on its axis.

People are really okay with you limiting your availability and being more in control of your calendar. They will take what you give them, they really will. So, you get to limit what you give them, it gets to be okay, and they will survive it; you will too.

Now, the pushback that I get here, from people who have that guilt come up, who have that worry come up, who have that fear come up, around setting boundaries and being more in control of their calendar. They say to me, “Well, what if someone’s upset? Well, I want to be accommodating. I want to be responsible. I want to be responsive.” And I think, you can be all of those things and still be very boundaried with your time.

I don’t think that I’m inaccessible, or that I’m irresponsible, because I’m very boundaried with my time. People still get access to me, but on my terms, not on their terms, right. And it’s no one else’s job to respect my boundaries around time, other than mine.

I see that happen all the time with people, they say, “I can’t believe that this person is just so disrespectful of my boundaries. They don’t respect my time. They don’t respect my schedule.” It’s not their job, it’s your job to do those things. So, I think you can do both. That’s absolutely true. You can be boundaried and be accessible, and be accommodating, and be helpful, and be responsible, and be responsive, all of those things.

But I do want you to give some thought to, what do you care about more? Let’s say one of those things, it’s not necessarily an either/or, but something has to beat out the other. All right. So, I want you to think about; what do you want more?

Do you want to be accessible, or do you want to manage your time? Do you want to people-please other people, or do you want to manage your time? Do you want to spend time making other people comfortable, or do you want to manage your time? Do you want to be hyper responsive, or do you want to manage your time?

Those are really important questions for you to ask yourself and answer. And you want to be brutally honest with your answers, here. Okay. You want to know and love your reasons for ceding control of your calendar if you decide to cede control over it. Most of the time, you’re probably not going to love your reasons.

And if that’s the case, you want to make a different decision about how you spend your time. And it’s probably going to require you to feel those uncomfortable feelings, that I mentioned earlier. Now, again, that’ll be temporary. Because you start to get the result of spending your time how you want to spend it. You start to get the result of having a lot of control over how you spend your time; what you do with your time, what you’re able to accomplish in a given amount of time.

And that feels really powerful and really empowering. So, it’ll become pretty addictive. Once you get the ball rolling, with controlling your calendar and reclaiming a lot of that control, you’re going to want to do more of that. You’re going to be much more restrictive about who gets access to you, when they get access. Because you’re going to be able to accomplish so much more of your best work, when you’re controlling your time and you’re not letting in those creepy crawlers.

Couple other examples of creepy crawlers, just so you can be on the lookout for them is, unscheduled phone calls. Being in your inbox constantly, throughout the day. And if someone emails you, feeling like you need to get back to them immediately. So, you drop what you’re doing, and you respond.

Allowing people to schedule for you, at all times of the day, rather than within predetermined times that you’ve set up. Letting people linger, right? Letting people draw out an in-person meeting or a virtual meeting, right? Being someone who’s unbounderied. If a call is supposed to be an hour, at the end of an hour, you gotta wrap it up. And, building the skill set to become someone who’s really capable of doing that; Ending a call on time, even though it might be a little uncomfortable.

And especially if you have a gift for gab, which a lot of my clients do, this is going to be tough, because you like talking to people, it’s fun. But you can start to see how impactful, in a negative way, it is to let things go on longer than you planned for, right? So, you want to not let other people linger, and you want to not linger yourself.

You want to limit that open-door policy. You want to create those office hours, instead. So, those are some examples that I see, where creepy crawlers come into play here, and some tweaks and changes that you can make, in order to limit them. All right.

Ultimately, like I said, this is why we want to be doing time audits. So, you can see where you’re not controlling your calendar, where you’re ceding control to other people. Figure out who you’re ceding control to, find the lie, figure out how you’re actually in control, how you’re actually exercising autonomy and making a decision, making a choice.

And then, figure out what you would need to do differently, in order to control your time. All right, in order to reclaim that power, reclaim that control. And decide, what do you want more; to people-please and be constantly accessible, or do you really want to be someone who masters managing their time?

If you do want to be someone who masters managing their time, it starts with reclaiming control of your calendar. Okay? So, that’s what you’re going to do this week. Really identify the places that you can reclaim more control over your calendar, so you can control more of your time.

All right, my friends. That’s what I have for you this week. In the next episode, we’re going to talk all about planning your schedule accurately. All right, I can’t wait to dive in to step two of how to manage your time.

Until then, have a beautiful week.

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.