Episode 34: The Power of 15 Minutes: How Working Moms Can Make Progress with Little Time
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
In today’s episode, I'm teaching you how to make the most of those 15-minute windows of time in your busy schedule. Because let's be honest, as working moms it's almost impossible to find long, uninterrupted chunks of time. But what if you could harness those small pockets of time to make meaningful progress on your bigger projects? Those small time-blocks are powerful if you learn the skill of how to use them.
I'm teaching my 4 A method in this episode to help you learn the skill of leveraging the time that you have. You'll start making progress on those projects and goals that have been sitting dormant, waiting for more time. And you'll start taking action and see your progress and results compound 15 minutes at a time.
The skill of being able to do deep work in short blocks of time and the 4 A Method are what we're learning inside my group program for busy, working moms - Beyond Balance. The next cohort starts in May. Click here to apply to join.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
00:17 When your schedule is so full and there's just no time
01:23 The options for when to get your actual work done
02:51 Doing 'Deep Work' and its challenges, especially for working parents
07:02 Learning the skill of working in short bursts of time
10:13 The Four A method: how to leverage 15-minutes for your bigger projects
16:32 Overcoming challenges - interruptions and the messy middle
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Hey, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we are talking about the power of 15 minutes or the power of those small chunks of time. This came up recently in a coaching session. And this client in particular has been feeling frustrated, maybe you can relate to this as well, with just the sheer number of meetings, the volume of meetings on her calendar, you know, those days where you're just You have maybe small increments of time in between, maybe 30 minutes here if you're lucky an hour in between sessions and for this client and she's so not alone, just feeling really frustrated with how little time she has to actually do the work,
the work that she is required to do, the work that supports her annual goals, what's in her job description outside of the meetings, and we were talking about options. There are always options. So. You have a very busy schedule. Your days are really full. What are you going to do? What could you do to make progress on these bigger projects?
Well, certainly an option is always to work outside of work hours. We have to use our work hours for our meetings. So we are left with no choice but to log on after the kids go to bed or to pick up time on the weekend. Certainly an option. And one that I. Could do a whole other episode on. I have many clients that choose that.
And again, there's no right or wrong way to do it, as long as you are intentionally choosing that. But another option, and one that I think is easy to overlook because of the stories that we tell ourselves about how much time is required or how progress is made on these bigger projects, the actual work that we need to do.
The option is. to learn to leverage those small chunks of time.
As working moms, and especially in this work culture that we have right now, that we are experiencing right now, it is so rare to have a large chunk of uninterrupted time. whether that's at work or at home. It is so rare. And if we do have it, we have to really fight for it. We have to guard it so fiercely because someone always wants a piece of that large chunk of time.
Oh, you're available. You have time. There's nothing on the calendar. Let's do this instead. I read Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. I think last year, maybe I'll link to it in the show notes, which you can always find at the mother nurture. com forward slash podcast. If you're not familiar with Cal Newport or his work, love some of it.
Don't love other pieces of it, but I like to read other people's ideas and take what works for me. And I do love the idea of deep work. I love that phrase, deep work. It just feels. so satisfying to me to think about deep work. And I think if you want to feel like you have purpose or to feel fulfilled in your work, deep work, in my opinion, is a critical component of that.
Just having the space for your brain to really sink into something so much that you can be creative and play and come up with solutions and new ideas. I think deep work is what creates so much brilliant thought leadership in the world, too. And at first, I admit that when I picked up this book, I thought, yeah, right.
Like. It's written by a male. It's called Deep Work. This is not going to be for me. I've got three young kids. I have a house. I have a partner. I have a job. I have all of these things. This was not written for parents, even though I believe Cal Newport is a parent, but I thought this is not written for parents, let alone busy working parents.
And there were aspects of the book I will Say right up front that were not realistic. I loved the idea of them, but they were not realistic for me, for my life, and I'm guessing probably for you and your life as well. Until there was one section of the book where he gave an example, and I think the example was of a parent who was working, I want to say maybe toward a PhD.
Don't quote me on that. Like I said, it's been over a year and I read over 100 books a year, so sometimes they blur together. But let's just go with that, right? This parent is working toward their PhD and working on their dissertation. And while, yes, hours of uninterrupted time to work on a dissertation would have been great, for this person in this example, it was not possible.
I've not written a dissertation, but I can only imagine, for those of you who have, I am in awe of you. And so, in this example in the book, This person ended up doing shorter bursts of time. I think maybe they were an hour at a time and did them in the morning before everyone else in the family was awake.
And I thought, yes, that, that I can get behind, that I can see for someone with kids and work and the responsibilities of life, that hours or weekends away to really focus on this one big project is just not going to happen. But an hour a day? Okay. But then my next thought immediately after was, Even an hour can feel like a stretch, for me, for you, for some of us, for at least some of the time.
There can be weeks where having an hour to focus is such a long shot. But the question I challenge you with today is are you willing to wait? Are you willing to wait for that larger chunk of time? Maybe you're just waiting for an hour.
Maybe you're waiting for multiple hours, an afternoon, a full day when you can really focus.
Are you willing to put off this project, this thing that you want to do or that you need to do until you have that large chunk of time? Or do you want to learn the skill of working and focusing in smaller chunks of time? It is a skill. It is a skill. I want to recognize that right off the bat, because what I'm talking about is not just filling a small chunk of time, like not just filling 15 minutes.
We can all do that. I bet you are amazing at that. Ask any mom to use 15 minutes. effectively and watch what she does, right? We can call the doctor's office, reply to that email, sign up to bring in snacks at school and navigate five different text message threads all before that 15 minute timer is up. It is so true that moms, and I know I'm making generalizations, but come at me, moms can get more done in 15 minutes than it would take others to do in a day.
But what we're talking about here is not filling that small chunk of time, that 15 minute time block with what I like to call snack sized to dos. Tell me you're a mom without telling me you're a mom when you have snacks on the brain. Everybody just always wants snacks all the time, but snack sized to dos, right?
Replying to text messages, calling the doctor's office, making that purchase online. To me, those are small tasks. Those are quick. Those are fast. They're somewhat easy. They don't take a ton of brain power.
The skill that I am talking about here is dropping into a project, dropping into something that does take some brain power, some thought, some creativity. This is about working on that grant proposal, creating, your curriculum for the class that you're teaching this semester, reviewing data, putting together that presentation or that pitch deck, writing that article, or even at home, like sorting through kids clothes, or gathering your tax paperwork, or painting a room in your house.
This is not just emptying the dishwasher. This is not just folding a load of laundry. This is something that does take time, that if we didn't have all of the constraints and commitments of the rest of our work and life and family, would take us a day or a week or several large chunks of time spread over time.
I think we can all agree that these are deep work projects. They require setup. They require thinking. They require doing. for longer periods of time. But again, if we don't do these things until we have the time, if we hold our progress hostage until we have the time, when will they ever get done? How will they ever get done?
I truly want to know. In my experience, again, I got three kids, dual income household, house to take care of. My kids are in sports and other things. I don't know. I don't know how it gets done. So if I were to help you develop this skill to learn how to drop in to a 15 or 30 minute block of time on your calendar and get something moving on this bigger deep work project, this is how I would teach you.
I can't believe I'm giving this away, but here we go. Here we go. It's four A's, so it's hopefully easy to remember. Accept. Assist. Act. Again. Alright, let's walk through what these four A's stand for in learning the skill of really leveraging the power of 15 minutes or any small block of time that you have.
So, the first step is to accept. Stop waiting for the large chunk of time. this is where we have to really confront this belief, we have to confront our reality. That we are not going to have those large chunks of time like we used to. Those large chunks of time, large blocks of uninterrupted, deep work time, it's not coming to save us.
We have to save ourselves. So accepting the reality of your situation and choosing to not wait. Then it's assist.
I'm going to reference another book here. It's a great one called Uptime. A client of mine recommended it, written by one of Google's in house coaches. And one of the chapters she wrote about Acting like your own assistant, acting like your own assistant, preparing whatever you need to make doing the thing easier.
If we think about an assistant who knows that this contract needs to be signed, the assistant might print out the contract, put a little, you know, those sticky flags that are like, sign here, and a pen out on. Their CEO's desk. So it's there and all the CEO has to do is sit down and sign. The example in the book actually was related to painting.
Like if you need to paint something or patch something, maybe your assistant gets the paint can and the stirrer and the brush out and puts it two feet in front of the space where you need to do the little patch painting job. So all you have to do then is. Show up to that spot, open up the paint can, and get started.
The prep work has been done for you. So this is a really important step. Being able to drop in and leverage a 15 minute time block is to assist yourself. Set your future self up to be successful with those short bursts of time. So maybe this looks like maybe in 15 minute blocks of time, one after the other, as you find them, you break down your larger project into very minuscule, tiny subtasks, so that when you have 15 minutes, you're just going to the next subtask and checking it off.
It could look like creating a mini project plan. It could look like setting out the supplies that you need. Another one that I really love to assist my future self is to, whenever I wrap up 15 minute or 30 minute block of time of working on something, I'll leave myself a note in the document, in my notebook, on a post it, whatever makes sense for what you're doing, of where I left off.
This is where you left off and this is the next thing you need to do so that when you pick up, when that 15 minutes starts, you're not spending 10 of the 15 figuring out where you left off or what you should be doing next, you already know.
Okay, the third step then is to act. So often we overthink things. how would I do that? How would that work? I can't get anything done in 15 minutes. We tell ourselves all of these stories about what this project requires. I have to get into my flow. I have to, all of these things.
And I, I get that. I really do. I mean, sure, in an ideal world. I would have a hot mug of tea, I would have a candle burning, I would have the perfect background coffeehouse playlist playing, and I would sit down and I would just have hours of uninterrupted time to write. I would choose all of the topics for the rest of, the podcast to come in the next six months.
But that is not my reality. And so When I sit down, I just want to act. I want to take action and see what can I do in 15 minutes. Let me amaze myself. Let me blow my own mind with what I could do in 15 minutes. Will it feel short? Maybe. Will I wish I could have done more? Probably, if I'm really loving it.
But in that moment where you're like, oh, My time is up. I want to keep working on this thing. That is when you make a note to yourself. Use that energy to think of where you would go if you had more time, what you would do if you had more time and write a quick note. All right, here's where my thought process was going.
Pick up here. Leave yourself a voice memo. Record what's coming up for you right now. If you were to keep working, what would you do? Just get in and take action. Be amazed. And then the fourth A is again, do it again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Every 15 minute increment counts. Every 30 minute increment counts.
Watch your progress start to compound. Watch it build.
Affirm for yourself that you are making progress. Sure, 15 minutes is small. 30 minutes is small. But it's better than nothing. 15 minutes is better than nothing. That one subtask that you did is better than nothing. One of the most common challenges or hurdles that my clients face when they start to practice this skill is being okay with the mess.
Being okay with being in the messy middle of a project. We don't have the satisfaction of having a long block of time to see something through from start to finish, and so it does mean that you are stepping away from things that are unfinished. A perfect example of this, I had a client recently who, As we all do with the season changes, needed to do a serious sorting of clothes for her boys.
She knew their closets were overflowing, lots of clothes that were too small, hand me downs that had gotten in there that maybe were still too big. It was this whole thing, right? But she kept waiting for a large chunk of time where she could just do the project from start to finish. And when we talked about applying these four as to this process of sorting clothes, the biggest challenge for her was being okay with the literal mess.
I think about when I have to sort, which I'm gonna be doing here soon for spring clothes, my three kids clothes, pulling things out of the basement, hand-me-downs from my older son to my youngest, from girl clothes that I get from friends. What do I do then with the things that are way too small that we're ready to pass on?
It's a clothing explosion in the hallway outside their rooms. And I just have to expect that. I expect that and I choose to be okay with that. That area outside their rooms is going to be a mess, honestly for me, for probably at least a week, maybe longer. Because the amount of time that I have to work on it is in very small increments.
And so this client, that was her challenge, was to be okay with the mess, to expect the mess for a few days. If you're painting a room, it's going to be messy in that area as the furniture is moved around. You've got tape on the walls, maybe painting supplies out, light switch plates and outlet covers off the wall, all sorts of things.
That presentation, that document, that sales deck, that grant, it's going to feel like you are in the messy middle for a while. Expect it. It's really only a problem when you decide that it's one, but if you expect that going into whatever project you're working on, it's going to be spread out over days or weeks or a month or more,
then when that is what actually happens, it's not a surprise and it's not a problem. The other challenge is the interruptions. And so again, with the expectations, can you expect that you will be interrupted?
The beauty of learning how to work in these small blocks of time is that the reality of working mom life is interruptions. We're interrupted at home by our kids, we're interrupted professionally by colleagues, or by other urgent issues that come across our desk. That is our life, that is the name of the game.
And so, a 15 minute block of time Or even a 30 minute block of time, there's a high chance that you won't be interrupted.
So it's another reason to really learn to leverage this. But when you're tackling, say, a project at home, and maybe you could have an hour, but, you know, the kids come in needing something, or the baby wakes up from a nap, You have this skill, so it's not a problem. If you got 30 minutes into the task, the project, the thing at home, and then you get interrupted, you can apply the skill of assisting to set yourself up for when you get time to return to it.
I had a client years ago who never wanted to start anything at home because She was always afraid that she would get halfway into it and then her baby would wake up or need her and so she would be interrupted and that made her feel so frustrated. But if you expect the interruptions and you trust that you can pick back up, that you know how to complete this project with small bursts of time because you've developed this skill, that's so powerful, it's so effective.
So just like any new skill, this does take practice. You will, because it's become your habit, want to keep waiting for more time. But can you challenge yourself to just start, to just take action, to accept, to assist yourself, to act, and then to do it again and again and again, until this becomes so natural for you that an hour or two hours would just feel so luxurious.
But you don't need that. You would love it. It would be great. You'd take full advantage of it. But your projects, your progress do not have to wait for that. Think of how good it will feel to be making progress on these bigger things that have been waiting for more time. You have time. It's just more spread out than it once was.
And you can still leverage that. There's so much you can do with that time if you want to. This skill of practicing leveraging our small blocks of time is something that you learn and Implement in my small group coaching program for working moms.
It's called beyond balance We're in the middle of a cohort right now, and I'm having a Such an amazing time with these women. It is the program to help working moms go from feeling constantly behind to feeling like you have plenty of time. If you're interested in joining the next cohort, you can apply by going to themothernurture.
com forward slash interest. And if you enjoyed this episode, if you learned something today with those four A's, please consider sharing it. with a friend, with a colleague, a teammate, a fellow working mom. I appreciate you so much being here, listening and sharing. All right. I will talk with you in the next episode and until then take care.
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