Episode 36 #1: Why You're Always Running Out of Time (and How to Fix it!) (Copy)
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
Welcome to the first in a four-part mini-series all about Why You're Always Running Out of Time and How to Fix It! If you’ve ever felt like there’s never enough time in the day, especially as a busy working mom, this series is for you.
In this episode, I'm showing you why simply checking your calendar isn't enough and how it might actually be contributing to that feeling of never having enough time. There is a big difference between scheduling appointments and truly planning your day. If you're a working mom juggling work, family, and self-care, you need to learn this. I'll walk you through a simple, four-step process that will help you feel in control of your time so you can stop feeling like you never have enough time and instead have the time that you need for the things that matter most.
Plus, get the details on an exciting free training that will teach you how to implement this strategy into your life today!
Plus, I'm hosting a free workshop on April 10th where I'm sharing the 4 steps to create more space in your working mom schedule. So, if you like this series, be sure to save your seat at themothernurture.com/class!
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
Register for my free, live class - Plenty of Time: 4 Steps to Create More Space in Your Working Mom Schedule
Enrollment for Beyond Balance is opening soon - learn more about my small group coaching program for working moms
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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.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I have something really special and exciting to share, which you may have noticed when you opened up your podcast. When you opened up wherever it is that you listen, I just dropped several episodes at once. I decided to record a mini series for you called Why You're Always Running Out of Time and How to fix it,
and I certainly could have recorded this as a single longer episode, but I thought it might be fun to give this a try and to deliver it to you as bite sized mini episodes, and then just release them all at once. So let's see how this goes. You can take me on some walks over the next few days. If that's how you like to listen, maybe bring me along as you are driving to and from the different things that you drive to and from.
You can listen to them one at a time, or if you want to just dive in and binge listen to them all at once, you can do that too. The world is your oyster, you get to choose. Side note, I will say the last option of binging is totally what I would do. It's why the way that they make shows these days is so dangerous for me because if it is there, I just wanna keep going and then I never sleep.
But the good news is about this series, there are no cliff hangers, so. You can just go into the next episode for more great info in each one. I'm super excited to share this series because one, I have so much to say about the topic of time and this feeling of always running out of never having enough and how working moms in particular feel this so acutely.
But I'm gonna try to make each of these episodes in the series. Maybe about 10 to 15 minutes. I wanna get in, get right to the point, give you the teaching, the main idea, and what you can walk away with. But when you put these four episodes together, it will really change the way that you think about your approach to time and how you use it each day.
I am doing this series as a part of my upcoming launch of my group program Beyond Balance. We are opening the doors to join the next round very soon, and if you go to the mother nurture.com forward slash class, I am teaching a brand new class on Thursday, April. 10th, it's called Plenty of Time, four Steps to Create More Space in Your Working Mom schedule.
This is brand new, it's a free class, and I'll be opening the doors for enrollment to Beyond Balance during that class and offering a very special bonus that will only be available for 72 hours. I'm teaching you the framework. That I use, that my clients use to create more space in your schedule without having to drastically change your life so that you can feel like you have enough time.
So again, go to the mother nurture.com/class to get signed up. If you have ever been curious about what it would be like to work with me as your coach, to have my eyes on your time and on your schedule to have me coaching you each week in this. Truly immersive experience. That is what we do in this group.
You'll wanna get signed up for the class so you get all of the details and you can send in your application, have a call with me to talk about if this is for you, if that's what you want. So that is what we're doing, and this series of the podcast is kicking off a lot of amazing content that I've been working on leading up to this class.
Alright, let's get into it.
So reason number one of why you are always running out of time
is that your calendar is not a plan. Your calendar is not a plan. It is the tool. That you use to schedule all of the things that you need to happen in your life. It is what tells you when that client meeting is happening or reminds you that it's your mother-in-law's birthday today. It tells you what time T-Ball is happening this weekend, when you need to be to the field, and what weekend you're going to be out of town so that you can schedule something else or not schedule something else.
Calendar management is a whole thing. If you have ever tried to organize a get together with friends or tried to find a time to meet with someone to discuss an upcoming project, you know it's work. It's why you know Microsoft nowadays lets us see our colleagues availability or why tools like Doodle polls exist and why so many places and service providers like me.
Have public calendars where you can just go and look at what I have available and schedule the time that works best for you. Keeping up with calendars, scheduling things is a job. And for many of my clients and listeners, syncing calendars within your family is a whole other thing. It's a whole other level.
Do you have a family calendar where everyone puts all of the family activities and checks that for availability, right? Can I go to that dance class tonight, or who's working late? Or we'll be out of town for a work trip that week and oh, don't forget, spirit Week at school. Newsflash, it's coming right up in December.
If you're listening to this in real time, mark my words. Or do you simply invite each other to different events? So everything is on your individual work calendars, or do you have maybe a paper calendar at home or something like the skylight that I've seen so many of you starting to use? There are so many ways to do it and there's no right way.
But what I need you to understand is that keeping track of appointments, meetings, events and commitments is not planning. It is a part of planning. It is one of the tools that you absolutely need when you go to plan. But so many of you think that just because you checked your calendar for the day or because you looked ahead at the coming week that you've planned,
and that is just not the case. You are missing critical steps in the process if all you do is just look at your calendar. If planning were simply calendar management, which I think most of us are already doing, you wouldn't be feeling like you were always running out of time. I think only unless you were consistently double booking yourself, would you feel like you were running out of time?
But for most of you, when you go to schedule something, you check your calendar first. I just called the pediatrician yesterday for an appointment for my daughter, and the first thing I did as the phone was ringing was open up my calendar. I wanted to be able to say yes or no to the different appointment times that they had available.
But the reason you feel like you're always running out of time isn't because of your calendar. It's because of what's not on your calendar. It's because of all of the non-scheduled things that you need to do. It's fitting in the household chores, the caretaking, the work tasks, the projects and deadlines.
Oh, and the things that you wanna do for yourself, like fitting in a workout or doing your skincare routine or something just purely for pleasure. But unless you are scheduling each and every one of those items on your calendar like an appointment. You're not actually planning and so you're getting to the end of your day having made it to all of , the appointments and events on your calendar, but still with all of the things that you want and need to do, and you feel like you ran out of time.
You tell yourself, you are just too busy today, or there just wasn't enough time. Planning. The way that I teach planning is about accounting for the things that you do in between the scheduled times on your calendar. This process consists of four repeatable steps, and this.
Process will serve you through all of the different seasons of life. As things change, as they will, it will serve you if you work full-time, if you work part-time at home, in the office, it will even serve you through a career transition, like taking a career pause, going through a job search, or reentering the workforce.
The only difference between any of those scenarios is that your calendar will look different in those different seasons, and your priorities will be different, but the process of planning is the same. And once you learn how to do it, you'll take it with you through all of those different seasons. The busy ones, the tough ones, the fun ones, and yes, even the easy seasons, they do exist.
They do exist. And with practice planning in this way will become so second nature that you'll find yourself as I often do, not even really thinking or worrying about time. Sure. I, I look at the clock to make sure I'm not gonna be late or miss something that I am scheduled or committed to do. But I don't say I just ran out of time, or I never have enough time.
The way that I teach planning is in these four simple steps. Here they are. It's about tracking your time. First, so that you are starting with an honest and realistic view of what fits into your days and weeks. Then it's about implementing smart systems to help you manage and keep track of tasks and projects and goals and ideas, so those things don't get lost and it's easy for you.
Then in step three to map out your priorities. To decide where, how, and when these things fit. This is planning. And then step four, once you've made those decisions, is to execute with confidence. It's to trust your plan and not second guess or wonder if you should be doing this or that you are using tools that fit with your life.
And you have a process that you can follow no matter what. It's such a simple process, really. I know sometimes when I say it out loud, I'm like, gosh, this is too easy. But it is the difference between feeling like you're always running out of time and feeling like you have the time that you need.
If this resonates with you, this is exactly what we're covering in detail in my live training, plenty of time. I'll walk you through the four steps that will help you create more space in your schedule. Save your spot at themothernurture.com/class, and I hope to see you there.
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