Ep 232- The Concept of Creating Time- How Do We Fit it All In?

Episode Introduction: This episode is from a special request

Hello everyone. 

How are you? 

How’s it going? 

I’ve had a special request which was about:

“How do we create time?” 

Let’s be honest – let’s be absolutely honest – we can’t create time. 

Creating time isn’t a thing, but at the same time, it kind of is.  

When we’re working, and when we’re in business, we have to have time, but we also have to run our own lives, don’t we?

We have to create that time that we need, to be able to do everything we need to do. 

I wrote myself a little list of the things that I wanted to talk about, and how we can make sure that we do have the time. 

I have spent today with a VIP client, which means that I spend the whole day with them. We do hour blocks – then we have an hour to go off and do what we need to do – then we have an hour block. So I will do things for her – she will do things – at one point I had to have lunch – at another point she had to have lunch in that hour block. So you’re working and eating, admittedly, but it means that she got so much information and so much done.

Now, normally that’s  the 90-Day Program because it can be done either way. Either we spend the solid day together, or we spend that time extended over an 90 day period, which to be honest, is actually 120 days. But 90 days sounds way better in the advertising, doesn’t it? So 90-Day Program sounds really cool, whereas the 120 day program doesn’t have quite that same ring.

Creating Time:

Now creating time and the concept of time …

There’s a lot going on in creating the concept of time, but what we can do to create our time is start the day right. 

“How do you start your day right?” 

“How is it that your day becomes the best?” 

That’s different for everyone.

So my day:

My alarm goes off at 6:45am. I’m actually already awake by then. 

I’m normally on my phone. I’ve checked my day’s events for the day ahead. 

I don’t journal as such – that for some people is really important. 

I stretch in the morning and when I can, I try to get my exercise in the morning.

Today I haven’t because of the time zones of the VIP client.

I had to start much earlier here, so my exercise will actually wait until the afternoon. But I know that every day I have to have some sort of exercise in there. 

On days like today, it had to be stretches in the morning rather than an hour of exercise.

Time Management:

Really, time management is part of that time creation, isn’t it? 

Time management is really, really super important

One of the ways every coach suggests that you figure out your time, is:

1. Getting yourself a spreadsheet or a piece of paper 
2. Over a few days – ideally a week, in 20 or 30 minute increments, write down what you did

You may think “who’s got the time to write down every half an hour of what they did?”

Sometimes you may need to go back and say:

“Well, I started this task at 1:00 and it’s now 3:00”

“So I was seeing clients between 1:00 and 3:00” or 

“I was in Canva creating posts between 1:00 and 3:00”

… “So I’ve done all of this in this time”.

When we think about our time blocking, we’ve got to say:

“What is it I like to do?” 

It might be that you want to spend 3 hours at Canva, but you are avoiding doing your finances. 

That was what I used to avoid. Now I’ve got a bookkeeper, I’m all good.

I just sent her a copy of everything and off she goes and does it all. So that’s marvellous. 

That’s the other thing, isn’t it? It’s delegating the things we don’t want to do. 

I will get to that in a minute, but let’s talk time management for right now. 

Let’s talk about figuring out what you do for the day.

How you spend your time.

* Screen Time:

On my phone, I’ve got this screen time. 

It tells me how long I’m on the screen for each week, and I can ask it every day. 

So I know exactly how much time I spend playing games, or on social media. 

It breaks it all down for me so I know what I’m doing.

I could theoretically go back and have a look.

I think on the Android phones you probably get more information, because there isn’t the security around it that there is on the iPhone. 

So you can probably get more information back from your provider. 

* Time Blocking:

When we time block

we are choosing what we’re going to do in a certain period of time

If we know what we are doing

we know when we are wasting time

Might be that you are playing Candy Crush – maybe you are playing a particular game more and more often. 

You need to ask yourself:

“Why am I playing that game and what could I be doing instead?”

“What is it (like that game), I am doing instead of something else?”

“What is it that I should be doing?”

 “Yes, I need to prioritise tasks”

I’m sure you all get pretty good at doing last minute things. 

You’ve all done study, so you all spent a bit of time avoiding tasks, and then doing last minute study, and last minute logs and things to hand in at college.

So we’re all good at catching up, and doing last minute things

but isn’t it nice on the odd occasion when you’ve done something in advance?!

* Advance the Deadline:

Let’s start by lying to yourself. 

You know that the assignment needs to be in Friday at midnight. 

So start by saying to yourself:

“Well, it needs to be in by midnight on Thursday”

Because once it’s in your head, and you are repeating it to yourself, you’re going to believe yourself if you put it in your diary. 

Then you’re going to make sure it’s done in advance so that if you are running late, if something happens, then you do have Friday to catch up.

So that’s one of the ways of sort of double checking ourselves, and getting things done in advance …  if we’re always working to the deadline (if we’re a deadline person), and we want to reign some of those deadlines in.

* To-Do Lists:

We can use to-do lists. 

Obviously, a to-do list is great, isn’t it? 

But when we’re on a to-do list, sometimes it can become overwhelming. 

• So take your to-do list
  • and break down that to-do list
  • and prioritise within the to-do list

So you might use different colours:

• That assignment has to be in Friday at 5:00pm
  • so you might mark that out in red
  • and then tell yourself it has to be in Thursday at 5:00pm 
  • so you’d mark that out in red 
• It might be that you want to update your website 
  • and that might be in yellow 
  • because you know that you’ve actually got to do quite a bit of work there 
    • and you can do little things on the side
    • but you don’t have a deadline for it
    • So maybe you’re just putting that one off
    • So maybe that gets its own to-do list

So we have to prioritise within a to-do list.

* Use Your Calendar:

Using our calendar is 100% the best way of doing that. 

Also using a timer.

I’m forever saying, “Set a timer for …”, and all of my devices have suddenly set a timer. 

So with my VIP today, I was talking to her, and my time is up. 

I would set a timer so that I came back in time.

“I’ll see you in an hour”, and I’d be back.

By preparing in advance, we’re actually taking away a lot of our stress and nightmare. 

* Take Our Own Advice:

Now don’t we tell our clients to do that all the time? 

Aren’t we saying:

“How about you prep food on Sunday so that you’re all ready for the week?”

Well, we need to sometimes take our own advice. 

Meal deliveries are great. 

If you can’t do a meal delivery, do a “click and collect” from your supermarket.

So I’ve got “click and collect” from all of my supermarkets, and I did that all up until this year. Because I had children at home.  At the moment, it’s only my husband and myself, so it’s quite nice for me to tootle out, and go to the supermarket, and get the few things that we need. But when I had kids at home, it was definitely “click and collect” was the way to go.

My sister – who was super organised – it’s all “click and collect”. She’s on the way home from work – she’s in – she collects the food – she knows exactly what they’re eating – she’s got it’s all organised. 

These are the things that we do with our clients, don’t we.

And yet we are not helping ourselves. 

We’re not looking after ourselves – because we give a lot, don’t we? 

We give so much of ourselves to others, and to our clients, and to our families

and our empathy bucket. 

I do like to think of it as a bucket

because we are scooping out cups full of that, and giving it to people.

We have to remember that there is a bottom to that bucket 

and we have to look after ourselves. 

We don’t want to hit the bottom. 

We don’t want to be hitting the bottom of that bucket. 

We want that bucket refilling. 

So to refill it, we have to have time for business, and time for ourselves. 

Refilling Our Bucket:

So how do we refill that bucket?

Reward time. 

What is your reward time? 

It might be something that’s not a reward at all.

For instance playing a game on your phone. That’s not a reward. 

That is some brain dead time. 

That is a time when you desperately need to just turn off the brain and do something else, and you need to set a timer for that, so you don’t get sucked in.

I quite like TikTok, but I only go on it on a Sunday evening because once I get sucked into that vortex, I can’t get out again. 

I follow people who talk about politics and all sorts of things, and it’s really interesting, but I only do it on a Sunday evening. That’s it. No other time. If I notice that I’ve gone over there to have a look, I come out again and say to myself: “Oh, it’s not Sunday!”.

What is your reward time? 

What are you rewarding yourself with? 

So I get my hair done. That’s my reward. 

I’ve gone a nice lilac at the moment – gone from the pink, thought I’d have a change. 

I get massages. 

I go to our remedial massage therapist. 

I actually have a lot of aches and pains, so it’s actually quite painful going for a massage to be perfectly honest.

But I’m rewarding myself for the work that I’m doing. 

It helps my shoulders, it stretches my shoulders. 

She tells me the exercises to do, and then I don’t do them. 

Use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Technique:

We have to “time manage”. 

We have to reward ourselves.

• Then if there’s something that you don’t want to do
• you find that you are just going off to do something else:
  • you’re playing a game
  • or you found yourself in the kitchen 
  • or you’re suddenly out in the garden doing something
  • or you’ve wandered off somehow 
  • and you are not doing that job that needs doing

It’s 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . 

• We have to recognize the job that needs doing
• We have to ask ourselves why we are not doing the job, whatever it might – it might be your accounts

I always go back to the accounts because that’s the thing that I hate the most. 

So that’s always my avoidance issue – except it’s better now, because I’m just sending pictures off to a bookkeeper. 

But back in the day, it was totally my avoidance. Yet if I did it more regularly – if I’d done it once a week, as I was meant to do it, it would never have overtaken, and I would never have found that was overwhelming for me. If I’d actually spent the time in the beginning doing it and organising myself, and working on the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

• That is, you recognize the problem, you see the problem
• you know you want to avoid it
• but that it has to be don 
• and you go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! 
  • You sit down and you do it
  • You sit down, you allocate the time
  • You say: 
    • “I’m going to do this thing”
    • “I’m going to email my bank statements”
    • “I’m going to do (whatever it is)”
• 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 
• You start now!

It’s like running a race, 3, 2, 1, go.

It’s the same sort of thing, but you’re actually giving yourself the 5, 4 as well.

It means that you get on and you do that job absolutely immediately. 

Because when we’re blocking our time, we need to block our time for all of the things we need to.

When you’re running your own business, it’s not like working for somebody else. 

When you work for somebody else, you get on your bus, car, off you go. 

You go to the place of work. You work for the length of time, you do the jobs. 

There’s jobs you hate doing but they have to be done. 

You have to mop the floor or you have to do something that you hate doing.

You do it anyway, because it has to be done, and it’s part of your job allocation. 

Then at the end of the day, you get back on the bus or the car and you come home again. 

You may or may not have some extra work. 

If you’re a school teacher, you might have some marking to do, for example. 

But you have to go and do those things.

When we work for ourselves, there can be a few issues there, can’t there?

Even if we get on the bus, in the car, go to the place of work, we can still avoid stuff by doing other stuff: 

• Not only do we have to see clients, 
  • we have to do our paperwork
  • we have to pay our bills
  • we have to do everything 

For every 1 hour with a client for me, there’s 15 to 20 minutes of associated”blah” …, getting everything done – there’s scripts to be done – all of the other things – checking accounts, doing all the stuff. 

So how long is it – that extra time – that you need for each client?

For all of your paperwork?

For following up emails?

Then how can you make sure that you’re not working out of hours, and actually having a life? 

Remember you’ve got that bucket!

We only have a certain amount of empathy. 

We only have a certain amount of energy, and it’s in that bucket. 

If we’re scooping out that empathy – scooping it out – scooping it out -scooping it out – it’s going to get empty.

So how are we going to make sure that we have our boundaries in place? 

Setting Boundaries:

Our boundaries are using a calendar properly. 

Making sure that your calendar is set with total boundaries in it.

You’ve decided when you’re seeing people (and everything else you need to fit in).

So I’ve just given out the winners to the challenge, to the finding your flow and to the replay winners, right?

So I have sent an email to them just before I came on, I sent an email saying:

“Hey, congratulations. This has to be used by the end of March”

April I’m away, and then it would just get too far away and then I run out of time.

Then they’re saying:

“Well, can I fit in …? 

“Well no, actually you can’t”

So I’ve set my boundary. My boundary is the end of March. 

It has to be used before the end of March. 

So what are your boundaries? 

Do you have boundaries on all of your systems? 

So your calendar – does it have boundaries on it? 

It does.

If you are using Calendly, or Acuity, or any of those systems, then it totally has boundaries on it, because a person can only book in, when you’ve got it open.

If you are open the whole time, then clients will look at it and go:

“Hmm, I can get in any time – I don’t have to worry. That’s fine. I can leave it”

Whereas when we have very specific time availability, they can only come then, and they can only come in those times and it’s up to them:

“How sick am I really?”

“How much do I really want to see this Naturopath?”

Because the person that says to you:

“Oh, I don’t think I can come then – I’m not sure about that – and maybe then …” 

… Chances are they’ll cancel on you. 

We need those boundaries in place

and an electronic calendar is the very best way to do that!

You send them the link and they can book in on your times that are available.

You decide the times that are available. 

You Allocate Your Time:

• You decide:
  • I am going to work on my business (allocate time) 
  • I’m going to do my social media posts in advance (allocate time) 
  • I’m going to do these things ahead of time (allocate time) 

So you are going to sit there and you’re going to do that work in a specified time allocation. You are going to allocate that time.

When we allocate that time, we create boundaries for ourselves, and for the work itself. 

* Phone Boundaries:

My phone (out of hours) at 5:30 in the evening, the “focus” comes on. 

When my phone is on that focus, I can’t be contacted except by the people in my favourites.

I can ignore everything.

I can put everything on “off” basically. 

At night, only my favourites come through. 

It’s totally locked down. 

My boundaries are in place on my phone. 

I only have one number. 

I get asked this all the time:

“How many phone numbers do you have?”

A lot of people have two SIMs in their phone, so they can have a business number, and a home number.

I’ve had this number (and it was too expensive when I first started out, to get another SIM, to have another number, to have another phone) – so we had 1 phone, 1 number, and that is my business phone. 

It’s also my private number, but that’s fine because no unknown callers ever get through.

So I don’t have my client’s phone numbers in my phone.

The answer machine message is:

“Hi. Welcome to Highgate Proactive Health & Mentoring with Geraldine. I filter all my calls. So if you’d like me to call you back – and I’d love to call you back – please leave your message after the tone, or I will not return your call”.

So that just removes so much.

All of those people ringing you going:

“Hey, buy a website”

“Hey, you owe me money”

“Hey, it’s the tax office”

….. all of these rubbish phone calls – I just don’t get them. 

It’s freed up about 45 minutes of every single day. 

So we need to set boundaries on our phones. 

We need to set boundaries around games, and boundaries around social media.

As I said, I specify my Sunday evening Tik Tok. I specify when I’m going to be on it to myself. Does anyone else care that I’m only on there on a Sunday night? No. This is my life. This is when I have the time, the energy, the brain space to watch something.

If I’m always doing something for other people, then I will be even more exhausted. 

I started out with a breastfeeding baby, and a toddler, as a Naturopath. 

My son is now 22. My daughter’s 19. 

My life has changed significantly, but my boundaries are still in place because there’s only so much I’ve ever been able to do. I’m married, but my husband’s always away..

So I’m the one who’s had to do everything the whole time. 

So I’ve always had to have very strong boundaries, and those boundaries will make sure that that bucket doesn’t empty. 

To create that time …

We need to prioritise tasks

We need to prioritise our “off time”

We need to prioritise our health as well

Automation:

Automation is a really great tool, to make things help you.

In Strictly Education & Support (a Facebook Group), every Wednesday there’s a fun post that comes up, an interaction post. 

(I haven’t restarted them for this year -I just haven’t had time but ….. )

They come up on a Wednesday morning, but they’re automated.

I schedule them. 

I sit down and I really think about them. 

You can do 6 weeks in advance. 

So I sit down and I really think about:

“ What is going to be fun?” 

“What do I want to know about from people?”

For example, I want to see a picture of their office – I haven’t seen one of those for a while.

I want to find out what their name is if they type in something weird.

So I really think about that and it does take me time to think about what these things are going to be. 

So I have to give it time, and I have to be in the mood to think up all of those things.

Which is why I didn’t do it over the summer. I did just about no social media in the summer at all. I had my regular output of posts on social media to show that I still existed – but I don’t post those, my VA does.  So she checks in with me. A lot of those are now redone from the past. So if you were to scroll through to 3 years ago, you’ll see that a lot of the wording is the same today, because why reinvent the wheel?  We only have so much time in our lives.

We’re time blocking. 

We’re prepping.

We’re giving ourselves reward time. 

Can it be Done in Under 2 Minutes?:

We are doing immediately anything that can be done in under 2 minutes. 

In the morning I wake up, I get up, and then I will check my emails. 

What takes me under 2 minutes in the morning is going through and deleting all the rubbish.

That’s all I do first thing in the morning – I wake up and I’ll have 90 emails, and I’m like”

“Yeah right – in their dreams”

I just go through.

I follow a lot of people and every so often I’ll go:

“Actually, I’ll read his one today, or her one today, and I won’t delete that”. 

I go through, and I delete all the ones that I don’t want to unsubscribe from – because occasionally that will be the chosen email to read later.

So I generally go through in the morning and I delete about 30 emails, knowing there’s my favourites I’m going to read, and that there are the odd one that I’ve chosen, because I haven’t read any of theirs for a while. 

So I’ve already reduced the amount of work I’ve got coming up, and it’s something that can be done in under a minute.

I might choose to read one of the promotional emails from someone, but I will leave anything that I think is a direct message to me. 

So The Graduate Mastery Program is open –  so of course people who were in for the last 6 months last year, are coming back this year. So I’m getting a few emails from them.

So I haven’t opened them because I haven’t had time to properly reply to them yet. 

If I leave them unopened, then I have that number on my phone and I know I’ve got to go and open those because they are what I consider a real email. 

So when I’m working, I’m setting those boundaries around my time, but I’m also eliminating distractions.

Eliminating Distractions:

So when I sit here, my phone is on its front so that it doesn’t give me the notifications. 

My watch, which gives me notifications, is set to silent. 

I eliminate these distractions.

I minimise everything I can. 

My computer shouldn’t have notifications coming through (except for the odd update or issue). 

Generally my computer, no notifications ever, so I don’t see them coming up in the corner. The only thing I have coming up in the corner of my screen is my calendar, so I know I’ve got somebody I’m seeing next – something I’ve got to do.

I want to turn these things off.

I’m only going to go and look at emails – in the morning when I delete basically, and then when I sit down at my desk, I might look at emails then, but I give myself a specific time. 

So like today, I had VIP all the way through today until literally 30 minutes ago.

So I was working with her all day, so I haven’t checked my emails – I haven’t looked at anything. 

I have checked a Messenger chat because most of my groups have a Messenger chat.

I’m eliminating my distractions. 

I have to work. 

I’m busy, but I don’t want my bucket to be empty.

I’ve got to have that energy for everyone. 

I don’t want to burn out, so I have to set my times. 

Increasing Productivity:

When I want to increase my productivity – that is creating time, isn’t it? 

I’ve set my boundaries.

I’ve organised everything. 

I’ve done everything I can, 

But then suddenly I need time to create!

Creation time…

I went to a pottery class yesterday. The side of my hand is actually quite raw from rubbing on the wheel, but there you go. I didn’t do very well. Everything was a disaster, but it was the first time, and she did say it was going to be a disaster the first time. 

So I wanted to create time, because I wanted to create some artistic time for myself.

So I’ve started a pottery class on a Wednesday afternoon. I’ve had to carve out that time from other things. I’ve had to make decisions on what is not going to happen on a Wednesday – what I can move to other times of the day. I have to increase my productivity at other times to deal with this time that I’ve stopped.

So we have to remember that there’s a lot going on. 

My sister has just joined, and she is the most organised person I know. 

She knows she has limited time, she works full-time, she’s got young children. 

So she has to be absolutely on point for everything. Everything has to be organised.

She’s way more organised than me. 

• When we run our own business, we have to be on point because we’ve got all this extra stuff we have to do – we’ve got to do all of the things. 
• We’ve got to run this business on top of seeing people. 
• We’re not going to work and be coming home and be able to do stuff. 
• We’ve got all this extra stuff we have to do.

So sometimes I suggest to people when they’re starting out, that your artistic time happens in the evening. People say: 

“I’m so tired in the evening, and I sit down in front of TV”

Well, maybe you can sit down in front of TV 1 night a week, and 1 hour of that is actually on Canva. 1 hour of that is actually creation for something else and not Netflix.

If you can’t carve that time out – especially when you’ve got little ones – you’ve got toddlers who are no longer sleeping, so you don’t have that afternoon time – get the other stuff done – get the housework done, so that that time when they are in childcare, you’re not running around doing the other things. That’s done. 

Order online – do “pick up to the car” so that they bring it out to you, so you can have the kids in the car with you when you have to go to the supermarket.

Do the things that you can.

While you have the kids, get them doing the jobs with you as well, because they need to learn to do them. 

Then when you have that time away from the kids, you can specifically use it in your business.

You can specifically use it for seeing clients. 

So I’ve always had a late night Monday, and it’s always been booked solid. 

So I’ve always had 5, 6 clients on a Monday evening. 

I’d start about 1:30, 2:00, depending. I’d get 1 or 2 in before school pick up. 

Then there’d be the 1 child the parent would pick up a bit early from school, because then they skip the school traffic (the last half hour of school, who cares?) 

Then the ones who are after school and beyond. 

Then the 6:00 and 7:00 clients are business people. 

I’ve always run a Monday late night, and it’s always worked brilliantly.

I don’t want to work Saturday.

The kids want to go to sport – I want to go to their sport. 

Other people want to go to their kids’ sports, so they’re not free on a Saturday either. 

However a late night – late night Monday – who’s doing anything on a Monday?

So think about when your timings are

when you can work 

and how you can put it all together

Wrapping Up:

So that is today. That was the request that we had today. 

• Creating time … 
  • each of us is different
  • and creating our time is difficult
  • It’s not an easy thing to do, but really it’s about: 
• boundaries 
• organisation 
• automation and 
• elimination

Time management

delegation

automation

elimination 

are the things that we have to think about 

to create that time 

to be able to do what we need to do 

to build that business

So I hope you’ve had a good one. 

I look forward to catching you on the next one. See ya. 

Signing Off:

Thanks so much for joining me today. Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast, for the weekly episodes. If you’d like even more support and learning, then The Academy is for you. Here, you’ll find part 2 of the herbal discussions, more clinical learning, and case studies, to support your clients in practice. 

Bye for now.