UNcomplicating Business for Teachers, Helpers, and Givers

How to Get More Time

June 14, 2022 Sara Torpey Season 1 Episode 74
UNcomplicating Business for Teachers, Helpers, and Givers
How to Get More Time
Show Notes Transcript

Do you CONSTANTLY wish you had more time? Do you feel like you're being pulled in a million directions and are constantly stressed as a result? 

You're not alone.

This week on the podcast I'm sharing a simple process for getting MORE time, from the inside out (yep, we're talking mindset!).

Listen on to get MORE time in your life, all by changing how you THINK about time. 

Sign up for UNcomplicated Time: https://sendfox.com/lp/3l5eyl

Book a free 1:1 coaching consult: https://calendly.com/torpeycoaching/letstalkcoaching

Welcome, welcome to another episode of Teachers in Business. I am Sara Torpey. I am your hostess with the mostest here at this party. And today we are going to talk about time. If you are connected to me in any of the other platforms that I live and work on, particularly Facebook, you are probably well aware that time is sort of what I'm talking about right now. It is the drumbeat of my current existence, I think because, you know, like you, I you, I have lots of thoughts about time. And I have learned over my time as a business owner in the past five years, to really change my relationship with time. And I think that that's made such a huge difference in how I work and function as a business owner. And I really feel passionate about helping my clients and the people in my Facebook group and just the people in my feed with not feeling so pressed all the time. So, you know, today we're going to talk about how to get more time. And I think the idea is that, first, it's possible to change how we see time and how we think about it. And when we do, change how we see and relate to time, what we actually win is more of it, we win more control over time, we win more accomplishing we when less feeling stressed, and like you're chasing and like you're behind, I always think of it like like your life is a boat. And you could be standing on the boat in the captain's spot driving, or you could be swimming behind it waving your arms going wait for me, my goal for my clients and for myself is to be more captain of the boat and less swimming behind it. panicked about it leaving me. So here's the thing. Today I want to talk about time. And recently what I did over email is I created an email series called uncomplicated time. So if what we talk about today is something you actually want to practice. And you want to jump in and really look at how it worked for you. It were how it could be for you. If you really want to jump in and do this work about simplifying and uncomplicated time for yourself. The best thing that you can do is sign up for this email series. It's seven emails, it's free. My coaches mad at me because she said she was charged for it after she went through it. But it is what it is, I would much rather give it away and have you get the good from it. Theoretically, in a million years, when I get time to do it, I'm going to change it into like a course I'm going to teach but Well, I'm not there. So for now, you could get it well, it's good and free. But I'm going to take you today through sort of the high level version of this so you know how it works and what you would be getting yourself into in the uncomplicated time series. I think there are a couple of important steps here.

 

The first one is that as a person as a human, the first thing we have to shift to change our relationship with time is the idea that it is possible to change our relationship with time. If you think time just is what it is. And we're stuck, we never have enough we're always behind. If that's just what you think is like a default setting, then this is going to be really hard work to do. It's that like fixed mindset around time. And we all have some of it where it's like I can't get any more time in the time I have. That's true to a degree. But actually like we have more control of our time and how it's used and what we get from it than I think we realize. So the first step in this is really deciding to believe on purpose that you can adjust your relationship with time that you can think differently about how it works, and that that can change everything else. What's really interesting about changing thinking related to time in particular, and I think actually, the other thing that this is, this applies to in exactly the same way as money is that changing thoughts about time and money, have ripple effects in every part of your life. Like it's going to change how you run your business, how you work in a classroom, how you go to work and back, how you relate to your family, how you sleep, how you eat, like all these things are impacted by your thoughts about time by your thoughts about money, so it would work. If you want to think about more money to it's going to work the same way. But the first thing you have to believe is that this kind of changes possible. So that's where we start assuming now that you think this kind of change is possible. Your first job is to figure out what the drumbeat in your brain is. So for me, it is always that I am behind like my brain, if if I start to get overwhelmed, my brain is like you're behind, you're behind, you're behind, you're behind, you're behind like, that is the crazy squirrel sign that happens in my brain, that is the neon lights full of like, you're never going to caught up, you're always going to be behind, you're never going to reach your goal bla bla bla bla bla. It's different for everybody. I had a client who was going through this email series, tell me this week that hers is functionally that time is a limited resource, and she doesn't use hers. Well. I had another person who's been going through the challenge, email me this past week and say she didn't realize how often she was telling herself she was behind. But she didn't actually expect that to be her biggest drama, but it was. And then I had another a colleague, actually, who decided to do it, reach out and tell me that her biggest story for herself is about time is that she doesn't use it. Well. It's not so much that she's behind, but she tells herself she chose wrong. And that's a terrible way to feel all the time. Like you feel guilty no matter what you choose. If you're constantly telling yourself, you're choosing wrong, like that sucks. So your job initially is to find your biggest drama, like find the thing that is, you know, really loud. And and here's the thing, if you've gone through this process, and you found the biggest drama, find the next one, or switch the model and start thinking about money. Because there's always another version of this lurking like, I have been doing this work on thinking about time, differently for a couple of years now, like almost three. And I sat down at my desk this morning and realized that I have this drumbeat, drama thought that my workday shouldn't be seven hours. And when it's not, I tell myself, I'm doing it wrong. Which is ridiculous, quite honestly, because I don't need to be at my desk for seven hours every day to get done what I need to get done. That's not the business I have run or want. And the fact that I'm making myself feel guilty when I don't do that is bananas, quite honestly. So find your biggest drama. Your next task is to choose something else to think truly like It is that simple. So if your biggest drama is that you're behind, like me, my alternate what I think of as an instead thought is we wait, I always accomplish what matters, I always have time to do what matters. Right? I prioritize what matters, it's some version of that. It's some alternate that you can think that you actually believe. So like for my client that doesn't think she uses time well wife, my colleague actually, you know, for her, it's I choose how to use my time. Like she's intentional with it. Her response to her drama is no no, my decision about how to use my time is intentional. And that takes the layer of guilt off. It's like no, no, I chose this. So for you, it's what what do you want the new thing to be? The fourth step of this, so you have to believe it's possible. You find your drama, you choose something new. And then what you do is practice. So for me, the way I think about this is I always think about it like a visual, I always tell my college students that I teach, there are things in algebra, that when they happen, it should raise a little red flag in your brain. Like when you go when you solve an equation and you plug the answer back in and it doesn't work out, that's a problem. Or when you get to the end of an equation, you get two equals to zero that should tell you either to recheck or that it's like an equation that's impossible. Like there's all these kinds of little flags for you. You want to raise a flag whenever you hear that drama thought. And it is hard initially. But your job is to start to notice it and listen for it. This is how we practice it's just like oh, wait, I heard myself tell myself that I'm behind. Now what? So when you hear yourself, think like, oh wait, I am practicing thinking something different. Here's the alternative. And you literally just practice. Like it's not going to work every time. But what you're practicing doing is catching it sooner. So like for me sometimes when I'm feeling very behind I start to get very scattered. I'll do like a third of something a third of something a third of something like I can't settle. And I'll then I'll start to hear myself telling myself I'm behind. And it's like all narratives. So sometimes it takes a little while. But the idea here is we're going to shorten the window that it takes you to notice if it's taking two weeks now, we just want it to take one week, if it's taking two days, let's make it one day, if it's taking two hours, let's make it one. If it's taking 10 minutes, let's make it five. But like practice, and then, as a part of practice, be nice to yourself. Because honestly, change like this is hard. Because what you're doing is like, think about how many years you've been alive, that you've been telling yourself, you're behind is your, like counter programming for me 43 years of life of society telling me that I'm late for my success of, you know, feeling like I wasn't getting my paper turned in on time, right where I always started in my assignments on time. So part of what to remember is to remember here is like this is a process that really does simplify time and how you think about it and change it very quickly. But also, it's a lifetime pursuit, like you're not going to fix quote, unquote, you're thinking about time, you're going to make small incremental changes, and you're just going to keep adjusting. So like if you miss it, and you're like, Hi, I'm behind, I feel so behind. And then you notice it's like, Oh, yep, there I am practicing again, like, it's a lot of what they teach in mindfulness, where like the one teacher I listen to in my app all the time will say, you know, if you get lost in a train of thought, and you notice, you just begin again, that's what this is, you begin again. So change the decide you can change the relationship, find the drama, choose something different practice and be nice to yourself about it. And then one of the last steps is to think about how the thought of being behind comes out of your mouth and in life with other people. So like, for me, I am a mom of elementary school kids, like moms of elementary school kids like to commiserate on how busy we are, and how pressed for time and how we don't get enough done and all of these things. And I have had to figure out like to navigate, how to change my thinking about time, and also not let come out of my mouth. The things that make me feel overwhelmed just because I said them or I was in a conversation about them with other people because I wanted to relate to them. So like, I have stopped using the word behind when I think about my time, I just have started saying to people like yep, we figure it out. Like it's not always easy. Sometimes it's complicated, and we figure it out. So, you know, what do you want to say differently in conversation with other people, like where you catch yourself saying that thing? And it's like the socially acceptable thing, right? You commiserate over time? But how do you want to shift your language so that you can still relate to the people around you? But also not, you know, put thoughts in your head that you don't want, right? Like, how do you make that shift and to be really intentional about it. And then, once again, you practice like, that's the key here. We practice, like, nobody's perfect. It's not going to work right out of the gate all the time. But you're just going to try little by little I, you know, it's funny when I was putting together this uncomplicated time series. I know, it's simple and straightforward. And I was thinking to myself, like, I wonder what kind of results people will get right out of the gate, right? Like, is it going to help right away? Or is it going to be incremental process or progress over time? And like I, I know, for me, it's a little bit of both. But actually, now that I've seen the feedback from the people who are doing this little series, I think it's true, like so what's going to happen is you're going to feel better quickly. And you're going to feel incrementally better over time, like less scattered today, and knowing there's an alternative way to think about this as lovely, and also less scattered long term and having an alternate way to think about this is lovely. So it is both an immediate process and a day to day one. It's a short term and long term. And that's, you know, useful to keep in mind so like you'll feel better. You know, I had a client email me who was like, You know what, today I caught myself. And it was like, yeah, yes, today I caught myself in this thought that but I just don't want any more. That was like, yay. Okay, there it is. That's why we do this. And, and she's still going to need to practice. So that's okay. So for you, if you want to do this work, you can use what you just heard in this podcast to do it. Or you can come sign up for the email series. While it's still free, totally fine, you can come in to my Facebook group and talk to us about it. It's called teachers and business just like this podcast, or you can send me a message. And we can do it together like this is a lot of what I do with coaching, like I have a couple of clients, we're really we focus on time. And both the mindset and the processes of controlling your time of making the most of your time so that you're accomplishing without being like frenetic, of taking things off your To Do lists that don't belong of like the real concrete things that give you control and give you time back. But also the mindset processes and we do it you know, when I do it one on one with people, it makes a huge difference because it is just for them. So it ends up like reaching and tentacles into all the parts of their lives, which is lovely, actually. So if you want to do this work and get more time in the way that works for you the fastest way possible, the fastest way to do it is coaching. So you are welcome to have the free offering which is the uncomplicated time series but you're welcome to calm pay for coaching and in really get to work on this. And I will tell you, that is what made a world of difference for me, like I'm not even sure it would have occurred to me to do this work without coaching, but I am thankful every day that I did. Because it really and I have a friend who I've known a long time, who has told me that since I've started doing that work, she sees the difference in me all the time. Like it's just I'm a different human now. I relate to the world differently. I don't feel nearly as panicked nearly as often almost ever, like a don't do a lot of overwhelm. It really does change everything it is worth the work, which is why I am like drum beating this on the podcast and in my group and in my freebie and in my feed. Because it is something that I want you to have to it makes that much of a difference. So try it. If you want the link to the email series, it's in the transcript. And if you have questions, come into Facebook, send me a message come into LinkedIn send me a message, send me an email at sara@torpeycoaching.com or come to my website and book a time for us to talk about coaching. And with that, I will see you next week. Have a great week.