Ep 216: 4 Steps to Overcoming Your Time Scarcity Beliefs

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello , friends . I hope you had an amazing week . It is almost the end of January when this episode comes out , and that was kind of an epiphany for me .

This week I got a little bit panicked because I have not gotten everything done that I wanted to get done in January and that brought up all kinds of baggage about time . And so today we are going to talk about time , my friends , because we can do a number on ourself in this day and age around what it means to have enough time .

That can be just as it relates to just trying to fit everything in in a given day or a given week , just with all the different things we have going on in our lives , but it can also be something that by the time we get to midlife so those years between 39 and your mid-60s that's when we can really do a number and really at a much more high level or

global scale , start telling ourselves things like we just don't have enough time left on the clock of our life to get everything done . So time is a thing and we all have our different ways of dealing with it . We all have our different stories that we're telling ourselves about time , and that's what I want to help you examine today . In this episode .

I'm going to offer you up a quick little exercise four things that you can do to examine your unconscious beliefs about time . I think it's going to make a big difference in how you look at the year and maybe your life and your ability to get all the things done that you want to get done . So enjoy this episode on time .

I started the year off with a bang . I had a list of things that I was going to get done . I have a ton of goals for this year . I'm spinning up another business , I've got structured schedule around writing because I'm starting to write books again . So my days are very scheduled and I started off January with a bang .

But while I'm still on pace , sort of , I did look up about five days ago when this episode's being recorded like .

It was like the 20th of January and I got panicked because there were certain milestones that I promised myself that I would hit by the end of January to stay on pace , and some I'm going to hit and some important ones I'm not , and I could feel myself starting to panic and telling myself all these things around time I'm not going to be able to get the

things done this year that I wanted to get done and I was trying to cram too much in and that , you know , I just don't have enough time , and I felt kind of panicked about it . And so that is something that I wanted to explore on this episode , because the truth is that when I really stepped back from it is it true that I'm off pace on some things ?

Yes , it is , but what does the pace even mean and do I need it ? I was kind of starting to do a number on myself on what I was making the end of this month mean in relation to my ability to get the things done I want to get done this year , and so I thought it was really interesting .

What I realized was telling myself because I actually I'm going to walk you through later in this episode , four steps that you can take to uncover your own unconscious beliefs around time , and I think it'll be very helpful because for me , it helped me unwind this very , very complicated narrative that I had around time that I've decided I don't want to believe

anymore . It's not true . It's just a bunch of things that I've come to make time mean , and all it really does is stress me out and , in some cases , pushes me off the path of what I want to achieve . And before I go any further , I just want to say that all those things that I just said are just stories that I'm telling myself .

None of them are true . Telling myself that there's only a week left in January , and years , if that matters . Telling myself that it's a super busy month and that because of that I won't have time to finish the things that I said I wanted to get done this month . All of those are just things that I'm telling myself to get done this month .

All of those are just things that I'm telling myself they're not true , even though to me they feel true , right , they're just things that my brain has made time mean , and we'll talk about this more in a minute . But it's interesting because , as I started to look at it this week . As I looked at the time left in January , I felt that stab of panic .

I thought what is coming up for me when it relates to time ? Like what am I thinking ? Here ? I'll share some of my own weird thoughts about time , because you probably have some thoughts of your own that may or may not be serving you .

I look at time as a container , and it's just an odd thing that my brain does , but there's a start date and an end date , and I look at my goals as do I have enough time to accomplish them by the end date , as if the end date even matters .

We'll talk about more on this in a minute , but when I explored my own thoughts and beliefs about time , it made me think about others that I've worked with , or people in my family or friends .

We all talk about time and specifically , so many of us today believe we don't have enough time or that we're constantly feeling pressed for time , and that's why I thought time would be a really interesting thing to talk about today , since we're a month into the year , so let's go ahead and dive in Now .

We do all have different lives and different pressures on ourselves with time , but for me when I looked at , oh gosh , it's almost February already . That's what brought up the time issue for me .

It's probably different for you , but by sharing my own thoughts around this , maybe it'll help you think through how you look at time and whether or not it's in a way that's serving you . So I like to be goal oriented .

I'm not saying I always accomplish everything I set out to do , but I do like having goals and I like feeling like I'm moving forward in my life and there are certain points in the year . So if I set goals , usually naturally in January , there are certain points in the year when I'll look back to evaluate how am I doing against those goals that I set .

And I'll do this to evaluate whether I've used my time wisely . But depending on what time of year it is , the outcome that I have or how I feel about my goals usually varies widely and it has to do with I realized just recently with how I look at time .

So when I do it in June , july , and I look back to see how I'm doing against my goals , I feel super motivated , even if I have mixed results or even if I haven't even started on some of the goals yet , and that's because I'm telling myself things like well , I may not have gotten to that yet , but I still have six months left in the year , and I'm

making that mean that I still have plenty of time left to get things done , to really accomplish the things that I said were important to me this year , and that makes me feel motivated and so , as a result , I'm usually inspired to dive back in with renewed focus and energy . Back in with renewed focus and energy .

But in early December it's a completely different experience for me . Now we're at the end of the year . So remember , I told you I've realized I think of time as a defined container and I think of each year as a different container . It makes no sense , but it is something that goes on in my brain .

So when we're at the end of the year and I look back to see how I'm doing against my goals even if I have accomplished a lot of them I tend to feel super panicked because I tell myself I don't have a lot of time left to go after that goal . I tell myself that the year's basically behind me and it's too late to get anything new accomplished .

Now again , none of those thoughts serve me . None of them are true . The year doesn't end . I mean the year does . The calendar year ends in December , but my ability to continue going out to that goal could continue into the new year . There's nothing preventing me from doing it . Nothing said I had to finish that goal by the end of December .

Sure , I might have said it would be nice to do , but is anything really going to ? You know , is the earth going to come to an end if I don't totally finish the goal by the end of December ?

If it takes me until March , like it doesn't make any sense for me to feel that way and to completely stop working on things which I do , by the way , when we get to early December , because I tell myself there's not enough time left .

So when I tell myself that I feel really demotivated and that usually means that I don't do another thing about those goals until January I'll just sweep them under the metal rug and just worry about it next year .

So I realized that somewhere along the line in my life I started thinking of time as a container and that there's a defined start and stop date and that I have to be able to accomplish things within that container of time .

So I view time in buckets and I make myself have to accomplish things within that bucket and if I can't , I'll just give up on the thing until I get into a new container of time . It makes no sense from a logical perspective , but I'm just telling you all this because it's how our brains work . Yours may or may not view it the same way as I do .

You might have your own little glitches when it comes to time , but it's important to take a look at those things because they can really get in our way . Those things , because they can really get in our way . And time is a precious thing .

We all have the same amount of time , the same 24 hours , but I've found that it's usually less about the amount of time we have or the things that we have to get done in that time , and more about what we're telling ourselves that that time means . That gets in our way .

We can start our goals anytime we choose , and what difference in my case does it honestly make if we accomplish them within the calendar year or not ? It's a completely made up thing that I have that I have to finish it by year's end , right ? I don't . Some goals could take three or four years .

It's just fine , like what difference does it make if I finish it in December of 2025 or if I finish it in September of 2026 ? It doesn't matter , it's completely made up .

And yet this is something I've done to myself my whole life , and what it's done is it's taken some big goals that I could honestly continue making progress on and I'll just sort of completely opt out of them and I'll kind of restart the effort on January 1st . Can you relate to this Like ?

A good analogy of this that I've noticed with a lot of my clients and even my friends relates to weight loss . You know , with a lot of my clients they'll ask themselves maybe they want to lose 10 , 20 pounds or whatever , and they'll say do I have enough time to get to my goal weight before swimsuit season ?

And if the answer to that is no , then it's like oh well , there's not enough time , so bring on the cupcakes , right . Or for you the time thing may be different .

Like , you may be a parent , you may have a couple of kids and all of them are involved in activities and that , coupled with your job and your daily life , might have you in a constant state of feeling like there's just not enough time to get everything done for my family and my household , let alone tackling important things that I want to do for myself

personally . And while you're legitimately busy , you might still find yourself spending hours scrolling Instagram or doing like I did last Wednesday getting lost in binge watching the new season of Selling Sunset . That's what I did on Wednesday night instead of going to the gym of selling sunset . That's what I did on Wednesday night instead of going to the gym .

What about that time , the vegging out time ? It's always interesting to me how I can personally feel like there's not enough time to do the things I want to do because I'm so busy . And yet on Wednesday night at 10 o'clock , I'm like did I really just spend four hours watching an entire new season of Selling Sunset on Netflix ?

What other things , like going to the gym , could I have done with those four hours if I'd been making a conscious choice of how to spend the time , versus just plopping down in front of Netflix ? It's an interesting question . Versus just plopping down in front of Netflix ?

It's an interesting question , and there's a book called Pressed for Time that's super interesting if you're interested in this concept and she basically says that we live in an age of paradox when it comes to time .

We work as much as if not honestly less than people did a half century ago . I think there's three hours less in our work week . Now it's 37 on average versus 40 .

And I know a lot of us say we work 60 hours or whatever and sometimes we do because I've done that myself but you know , the truth is usually there are periods of time when we're working on a normal schedule and most of us are in less physically taxing jobs than maybe our relatives were 50 years ago .

And yet today , in the modern world , with all of our technological advances and all the amenities and all the cushy jobs and all the stuff , we experience more scarcity of time than we have at any point in human history . And the book Press for Time calls this the time pressure paradox and I thought it was interesting . She says it's driven by three things .

The first is that there's an undeniable rapid pace of technological change . So all the sexy little gadgets and techie innovations and Netflix , things like that , facebook , instagram that steal our time .

Second , there's the acceleration of social change , so we've got constantly shifting paradigms around business and family and societal structures that are putting more pressure or more ambiguity around time . And then three , the accelerated pace of life , so again driven largely by all the technological and social change .

You know , we've just got this super feeling of just a really fast pace , and there are endless books and software programs and tech devices and coaches and all kinds of stuff that promise to help us improve our relationship with time , and those are never bad things .

Having more time , learning to be more organized , you know , being more productive is a great idea , and while some of those things can give us some relief , the truth is they're probably not going to fully solve the problem unless you go deep , because the root cause of your time perception issue is probably not going to be solved with the productivity hacks or the

latest sexy gadget that could help , but the root cause , what's really causing us the problem , is your brain , and I gave you the example of how I think about time as a container when it comes to my goals , with the defined start and stop date Not helpful at all . Right , and it's not true .

And no one taught it to me Somehow , I just made it up along the way , and so most of my life I've been putting all this arbitrary pressure on myself when it comes to achieving goals and really it's about thoughts that got stored away in my brain .

Time pressure really is about believing that we don't have enough time to do what we want to do , and I think that sentence says it all Enough time to do what we want to do . What does enough time even mean ?

Right , and according to research there's been lots of studies you might imagine done on time we can find the source of the problem in our own mindsets . After all , think about the way that I twist my own brain as I described to you . When it comes to time .

I have this very limited , weird view of time as a container , and each year is a container , as if there's a huge delta between December 31st and January 1st of each year where we fall off a cliff . It's like no , like it just kind of keeps going right and my goal pursuit could keep going .

But I tell myself that if I'm not done by December 31st , I kind of give myself a pass to sort of stop working on it for a while until January 1st rolls around again . You know , we all do that . You know whether it's about getting promoted within a calendar year , or losing weight before the swim season or the next birthday .

But the truth of the matter is that time is a continuum . So where did this idea in my head of time being a container that ends on December 31st even come from ? Why don't I view now as the perfect time to start anything I care to and who cares when I finish ? Does it have to be done by December 31st ?

Could it not be done by June 30th or September 30th of the next year , or even a few years from now ? What does the container of time mean to me , and why does it mean anything at all ? Because it's silly when you really think about it from a logical place . It's just something my brain came up with earlier in my life .

It got programmed in and now I have all this pressure that I put on myself when December rolls around . It's super stressful , it's demotivating and it really I decided this week it's not a way that I want to continue to live . It's not something I want to continue to believe about time .

And what about ? You know , you might be a super busy working mother who never has the time to get to the gym but still somehow manages to stay up to date with all the latest seasons of the Real Housewives . Right Again , I'm not judging . I just lost four hours last Wednesday night to selling Sunset , so I get it .

Instead of going to the gym , I just fetched out with a glass of red wine and I got lost in the dysfunctional , glamorous lives that those characters live . But the truth is that we don't want to just continue on with our unconscious and not helpful beliefs about time .

Yours may be very different from mine , but I can promise you that most people in today's society are feeling some form of time pressure and there's something that you're thinking about time that is causing your own time scarcity issues , and I'm going to give you a four part approach to kind of trying to get underneath your own .

This is the approach I followed to help me unlock my own viewing of time as a container , and if you do these four steps , you'll be able to examine your own thoughts and beliefs about time and decide which of those you want to keep in and which you don't .

And , by the way , this approach works for pretty much any other problem or challenge you might have aside from time . So the first thing is notice what's happening . When you notice that you're feeling rushed or pressed for time .

So when you're feeling anxious or demotivated or like you're feeling like panicked about not having enough time , you need to take a pause and ask yourself what triggered it right ? So for me , it was this feeling of I have all these goals I said I wanted to do and now it's December , so I only have four more weeks and it's not enough time .

That was what triggered it for me . You may have different things that are causing your time issue . It's important to kind of pause and ask yourself what's going on , what just triggered that Like why am I feeling like I don't have enough time ?

And just kind of pause and ask yourself what's going on , what just triggered that Like , why am I feeling like I don't have enough time ? And just kind of write it down . You know , write the situation down , what's happening , and then the next thing I want you to do is examine , now that you have the thing written down .

So for me , it was it's December and I don't have enough time to accomplish my goals .

I want you to kind of look at that and do what we call a thought download , and here all you need to do is just take out a pen and paper or open up a Google doc or whatever , and look at the situation that you're in that brought it all up in the first place and just start writing .

Ask yourself what you're thinking , what you're making it mean that this thing is happening , every crazy thought that you have .

Keep writing until you're done , and you should have several things written down , you know by the time , like if you run out of things , just keep asking yourself what else and pause and let yourself come up with whatever thing that you're thinking . And for this I do like to do one sentence per line , and because they're all separate thoughts .

That's not when you do a thought download . It's not one paragraph of thoughts , each thought is separate , and I think it's helpful to look at it that way . It helps you kind of see , kind of see , kind of the dimensions of the way that you're thinking about the thing and just keep writing until you run out of thoughts .

There's huge value of seeing these thoughts down on paper . And this is where I first realized for me oh , I act like the year's ending or this container of time has a cliff , that we fall off on December 31st , which , of course , is not true . And then I was like where'd that come from ?

Right , but you don't know that until you really examine what you're thinking about , because really the things that your brain will serve up around time , or any other problem you're having , will just feel true until you really take a moment to write it all down and then examine it .

And that is number three , which is once you've written all the things down , once you've done your thought download , I want you to . Number three be curious about the thoughts . So just look at them , look at the things that you wrote down and review them . Don't judge them , don't make yourself bad or wrong for having the thought .

Just be curious , because when you're curious about them you can really get underneath the issue .

Because for me , when I started to realize , oh , for some crazy reason , I'm looking at a year as a defined container and that it somehow doesn't carry over into January and that if I can't get it done in the year , there's no value in it and I have to just stop working on it until January rolls back around , it's so goofy , it doesn't make any sense , and

I say that in , you know , just kind of making light of it for myself . I'm not making myself bad or wrong , but I do find it funny that I made it mean that it doesn't make any sense . So look for where you're telling yourself things that just aren't true when it comes to time or your ability to get things done or whatever Like for me .

As I examined my own thoughts about time and goals , I realized the container thing and so I really , as I explored that , I looked back at all the previous years and some of the big things that I wanted to do and some of the times when I stopped working on those things and I realized that it's the belief that I had around time as a container and that

everything falls off a cliff on December 31st and so if I don't get done , it's hopeless , right that I have to start all over again in January . None of it was logical and I realized that that belief was getting in my way .

But once I became aware of the thought and I examined it , I realized it wasn't true , that it was just totally arbitrary and it was thinking that got programmed in at some point , probably when I was very young , that none of it served me . For example , like if my goal was to lose 20 pounds and let's say it's , you know , by the end of the year .

I made that up and it's December 1 . And why couldn't I start the weight loss now , on December Well , I guess it's November 28 , instead of on January 1 . Sure , I probably wouldn't be able to lose 20 pounds healthfully anyway , but I might be able to lose 20 pounds healthfully anyway .

But I might be able to lose five or 10 by the end of the month , by the end of December , and that's five or 10 more pounds that I have left to lose when January 1st rolls around . So it just means that doesn't mean that it's bad that I didn't get it done . It just means I'm further ahead when January 1st rolls around , right ?

So why , like , when you do it that way , when you reason your way through it , you're like , oh , this is a very unhelpful way of looking at goals as it relates to time . Right Again , you've probably got your own ways .

But when you start noticing what's happening , when you're feeling rushed for time , and then you examine what you're thinking you feeling rushed for time and then you examine what you're thinking , you do that thought download and then you get curious about your thoughts .

Then you can really explore it and ask yourself if what you believe about time is actually serving you . You know , because the other example is how I told myself that there wasn't enough time for me to go to the gym on Wednesday , but I didn't give a thought , I wasn't even conscious .

Honestly , when I turned on Selling Sunset on Netflix , I just noticed , oh wow , the new season's out and I dove right in and I watched episode after episode after episode without giving it one thought , when the last conscious thought I'd had before that was I didn't have enough time to go to the gym .

The gym would have taken me one hour total from probably , you know , getting in the car and getting there to doing the workout to getting back home , because it's super close , and yet I spent four hours watching a Netflix show . The truth was , when I looked at it , it had nothing to do with time .

I told myself I didn't have enough time to go to the gym , but really I didn't want to go to the gym , right , and that made me realize that sometimes for me , when I'm facing something I want to , you know that I say I want to do , but I don't really want to do . That's kind of a little hard .

I'll soothe myself by instead doing something else , that does feel good , and for me that day it was about some serious Netflixing time . Sometimes it's about other stuff , so my telling myself that it was about time scarcity wasn't even true . I had plenty of time . I had clearly had four hours right and I spent it watching Netflix instead of going to the gym .

So that's the value of noticing when you're feeling pressed for time and then examining the thoughts behind it , because as you get into it and you get curious about it , you can identify the stories that you're telling yourself about time , and we all have our own ways of looking at this , and so it's super helpful for you to get into it and start to uncover it

, especially if time is a thing for you . And then , lastly , number four , decide what you want to think about time instead . This is important because once you realize what the issue is , so for me , my container time thing I decided I didn't want to think about it that way anymore .

That , first of all , it's not true , like time just keeps going as long as we're on this planet . So I don't think it's helpful for me to think anymore that time is this container and put all this pressure on myself to kind of get things done within that one container .

It's fine to set time-based goals it really is but if you don't end up hitting them on that date , who cares ? Keep going , you're making progress , right .

So I've decided to change how I want to think about goals and time and instead of looking at time as a container which I honestly , like I said , didn't even realize I was doing until I did some self-coaching this past week I have some new go-to thoughts . I'm going to choose to think and believe instead .

And now , if there's something big that I want to do and it's getting late in the year , I've decided I'm going to tell myself I can start this any time I choose , or I might just to think to myself now is the perfect time to get started .

When I have these new thoughts , they're going to shift me out of a time scarcity thing or time as a container narrative , and instead I'm going to be feeling very empowered and motivated .

That's because , with these new thoughts , I'm no longer thinking what if I'm not done in time or there isn't enough time , and instead I'm just focusing on the goal or the outcome itself . Doesn't matter , it might take me three years , who cares , doesn't matter , right ?

So when you start thinking about that , the time pressure goes away , right , and you're just focused only on what you're trying to do , that you're telling yourself is important to you . So in the new scenario , it doesn't matter when I start or finish , only that I do .

So , bottom line , what I want the takeaway to be on this episode is that be aware of how you're spending your time .

If time scarcity is a thing for you and here , in addition to the four steps that I just gave you , which are super helpful for dissecting it and getting into it and understanding your thought loops around it and things like that I do think it's also helpful to journal for a week or two , just jot down things that you do that are more mindless or that don't

add up to anything . So , like the watching the TV , like the Netflix thing , like I did , or maybe for for you it's Instagramming or something like that Not to say those things are bad , I'm not saying that but when we get lost in that for a long period of time , like I did , there's clearly it's fine .

If that's a choice you want to make , that's fine , but if you're doing that instead of doing something else that you said was really important to you . I think it's important to put those two things next to each other and just decide was that a good decision or not , and is it something I want to do again or not ?

So you know , take note of the hours each day when you're Netflixing , facebooking , instagramming , talking on the phone anything that is more mindless and fluff in nature . More mindless and fluff in nature , again , not to judge it , but just to say be aware if you're feeling the time scarcity is a thing for you .

Be aware of how much time you're spending on things that maybe are less important to you . Many times when we don't have enough time to get to the things that we say we want to do , it's because not always , but many times it's because we're spending time doing things we don't even realize we're doing right .

It's amazing how fast an hour of watching Netflix goes by , right , like I wasn't even aware of time passing , and I spent four hours watching that entire season . The important question for you to ask is is that how I want to spend the time Right ? And maybe it is . We all deserve a little downtime .

There's nothing wrong with any of it Netflixing , facebooking , instagramming but just be sure that you like your reason for doing it and that it's not keeping you from doing something else because maybe that other thing is hard or uncomfortable or tedious . You know you don't want to make those trade-offs unconsciously .

You want to be very conscious of why you're avoiding doing that thing . With practice , you can change your relationship with time , no matter how busy or full your life is . It's about trade-offs . Without time scarcity , life gets more peaceful and we all could use more of that .

So here's to doing your own exploration of time and your relationship with time and getting to a place at the beginning of 2025 when you feel like you , like how your relationship with time is going and you no longer feel pressed for time in the way that you might do today . That is what I wish for you for 2025 .

Until next time , make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at the purposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career in life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .