Welcome to the new manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here. And I hope you're doing well today. I wanted to start with a shout-out to one of my listeners Wendy who emailed me and said I'm reaching out to tell you thanks for the awesome podcast. I've been stuck on a professional issue, and I powered through several episodes yesterday to try to figure out what was really going on and in listening to the episode, identify the real. Problem.
I came up with a solution breakthrough time and that just means so much to me. So thank you, Andy, for that message. And to all of you who are listening and are finding ways to deal with all the different challenges that show up at work and there will be a lot. So don't feel bad. Nothing is going wrong. Humans are just being human together and you know, things get tricky sometimes. So I I'm here for all of it. And so are you? Because you're here and I'm glad
that you're here. So today I wanted to start by sharing that with you. And if you want to ever leave a review and let me know why you love the podcast do that. You can also email me or connect with me on LinkedIn. Although as a heads up. If you connect with me on LinkedIn, you have to send a note. So I know that like you're a listener, otherwise like it. Register and I'll, you know, probably just ignore it.
So just let me know that you are in my listener audience, and I'm happy to connect with you on LinkedIn as well. Okay, let us talk about time management and I feel like this is a topic that can feel very dry. It can feel very prescriptive. Like people will tell you what to do or how to do your schedule.
It can also feel kind of overwhelming, you know, like there are so many things to do and how do you get them all done in the course of the day, but when I think about time management, I really see this as a very sacred practice. Because when you are making decisions about how to spend your time, you are making decisions about how to spend your Life. You are making decisions about what to give your energy to what to give your attention towards.
That is some of the most important decision making that you do as a person is to decide, where am I going to direct my life force energy. And from that perspective. I wanted to introduce this topic and share it with you. It's also a topic that has been coming up a lot recently in my coaching practice. So I've been working with a lot
of my clients on this. And the number one thing I've noticed that I want to share with you is that when we're asking questions about how we spend our time, it is never just about how you spend your time. It is always about something else. It is always about more than simply what you're doing. When and how many meetings are on your calendar. It's always connected to who you are as a person, what you value how much? Autonomy, you believe you have, what is important to you at this
stage in your life? Not just at work and in your career, but in terms of your whole life, so for example, if you have elderly parents and you are needing to manage their care, that is going to have an effect on your schedule. If you have kids, and they are in the school year or they're out of the school year on holiday, that is going to Fact your schedule. If you are dealing with chronic health issues, that also is going to affect your schedule and how you choose to use your time.
And one of the interesting things that came up very recently in a conversation I had with one of my clients is she has a lot of success in her professional life and now she's at a stage where she is launching her own work. Under her own name and in her own voice. And she found that she was feeling overwhelmed with all the things to do around getting that started. And she had a lot of judgment. The Judgment was, this should be easier. I should know how to do this.
You know, what, why am I, you know, feeling confused about which, you know, like which platform to use all of this. So there was added pressure because of that solved. I meant and what we found in the course of working together and exploring this, like what was really going on was actually, it was very scary to be doing work under her own name and in her own voice. And because of that fear of, you know, will it work? What if you know, what if nobody comes, what if it's, you know, a flop.
Like what if I, what if I can't do it, right? What if I get rejected? All of that fear? Fear was creating this resistance which turned into avoidance. And once we understood kind of what was going on under the surface, then it actually became very easy to make decisions about what she was spending time
on and why it mattered. And so for you notice if you have a lot of should like a lot of pressure of I should be able to do these things in this timeframe, or I should be focused on. Even though my heart really is interested in that if you feel a lot of pressure, be super tuned in and curious about what is the effect of that pressure. Now some of you might perform really well under pressure, you might like that feeling of compression and that sense of
urgency and like it is go time. You might use pressure as a way to generate a Drennan to Then move you forward in a way that feels enticing and exciting to you. If you are not that person, then what might happen is, you create pressure thinking it will move you into action. But what actually happens is, it ignites your resistance, it activates your avoidance, and then we go into procrastination, or as I like to call it in my own life research mode.
You're an intelligent person and your brain will think, you know, what I need to do. I need to do more research and it can be a very tricky form of avoidance of stalling of delaying something because it seems smart.
I'm going to do more research. But what ends up happening is you spend more time, simply going down, rabbit, holes, or becoming overwhelmed with information and then the The information overload creates overwhelm and that creates fear, and that adds more pressure and more avoidance and becomes very
fascinating pattern. So notice for yourself kind of what what your relationship is to pressure and how that fits into the way that you schedule things and begin to question if it is effective, or if it isn't, that's all we're doing here. So we just want to notice What is actually happening and ask is this effective. And is, it isn't now one practice? I also want to share with you is at the beginning of the week or at the end.
Actually. I'm going to just throw this out here for some of us. We like to do our forward-thinking towards the end of the week when we feel like the week is behind us for some of us who like to do it at the top of the week, what we feel really fresh, but choose a point in the week where you're going to step back. Take a higher level. Look at what is on your Calendar. That's the number of First like
the number first question. The number one question, is to Simply ask what is on my calendar and then ask yourself? Why? Why is this on your calendar? Did you choose it? Or did you feel like you have no choice? You might be a person who anytime someone sends you a meeting invite. You feel like you have to say, yes.
You don't think that you can decline or you're worried about what they'll think, if you decline, or you're not sure if you can ask for it to be at a different time, or a different day. So, just notice, what is on your calendar. And why because what is on your calendar? Is what you are agreeing to give your life to. And this is not a trivial thing. This is actually really important for you. As a human, you know, we get to be alive for a certain amount of
time. We don't know how much time we have. And so it's meaningful to spend time noticing what is on my calendar and Y and notice the stories you tell yourself about. What is on your calendar? And why one more point I want to share with you is we often think about organizing our time as though Each bit of time is like a little brick like a little unit.
Like I imagine the calendar grid that I have an each day or each hour or each little block of time is a little chunk and I get to allocate it and I only have so many little chunks of time. I only have so many little bricks and so I'm trying to match tasks or responsibilities to little bricks or chunks of time. It's how I used to think about it. What I've come to find that. I find to be much more helpful. Is to think in terms of energy
and attention. So on one hand, if I have here are all the things that I want to accomplish here, all the tasks that I want to get done, then on the other hand. I want to ask myself. What is the quality of energy and attention that I will need for each of these different things. So some tasks don't require a lot of energy or attention. It's just kind of going through
the motions. It might be a very administrative tasks or it might be something that doesn't require a lot of creative thought, because you already know how to do it really? Well, that will take different energy and different attention than something that requires really creative work, or really focused Innovative work or higher level strategic thinking, where you need to kind of, like, take a high-level view of a project, and Think about it in a
different kind of a way. And so you can think about organizing your schedule and organizing your tasks and your time in terms of how do I appropriate appropriately, allocate energy and attention to the outcomes or the tasks that I want to accomplish? If you know that the morning is, when your brightest and most alert and most attentive, then use that energy. G and attention for the tasks
that need that kind of thinking. If, you know that the afternoon is, when you're a little bit more sleepy and your little bit less sharp. Hey, maybe that's when you do, you know, the the admin work or the meetings where you can be really collaborative with others, be aware of how your own mind, and how your own system works and design your schedule around that. You might also be very effective. Affected by the time of year.
So depending if it's cold and dark or depending if it's really sunny and bright and warm that might have a strong effect on your energy and on your attention or whether your kids are home or whether they're at school. And so don't presume that your calendar should look the same over the course of a year or more.
And in fact, you can take this pause and look at each month or each quarter or according to the school year, but take this strategic perspective of what are the things that I want to work on or accomplish or experience? What is the quality of energy and attention? I want to bring to those. And then how does that kind of map out on my calendar? And what this means to you is
that you will be making choices. To say yes, to some things and you will be making choices to say no to some other things. It may also mean in the workplace, making decisions about delegating work about advocating for additional resources, either, in terms of head, count or budget or timelines. It may require collaboration with others, but now all of a sudden were not focused on a certain amount of hours. Is that you're trying to parcel
out. Now, we're working with this Dynamic quality of being a person and that level of awareness and flexibility can inform your decision making in a way that can be really useful and will also uncover your hidden assumptions and your deep fears. And by Deep fear. It doesn't even need to be like a deep scary fear. I just mean it. It's a bit out of sight and it's underneath the surface. And then as you understand and learn this for yourself, it also
becomes helpful. If you notice other people that you work with who might have a very let's say wobbly sense of time and if they are consistently blowing through deadlines or they're not reliable about their agreements. About when they say, you know, things will be. This also gives you Another way to have conversations. So rather than just focusing on the time, things take with people on your team. You can be aware of and even
have conversations around. Hey, like what is the energy and the thinking that you'll need in order to accomplish this and then given that like, how can we organize schedules and time so that you have that energy and that Focus to get it done as effectively and efficiently as possible? So that That is why I want to share with you today. Time management is really about, how are you choosing to spend your life? This is a sacred practice. These are really personal questions.
They do tie into your values, your fears, your desires. They are connected. Not just to you today and your goals, but you might also be influenced by the season in the year and just what is going on. On in your life as a human and you'll realize that's also true for everybody else as well. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week and I'll talk
to you next time. If you know it's time to level up but you feel your perfectionism Self Doubt and uncertainty getting in the way then come work with me. We'll have six months of one-on-one coaching and it all starts by. Going to my website, chemicalguys.com coaching and joining my waitlist. Talk to you soon.