Struggling with the relentless tick-tock of the clock? I've been there, and I'm sharing my battle scars from the time management wars to help you triumph over your own schedule. As Erin Olson, your entrepreneurial comrade, this week's Quality of Life podcast is a treasure trove of practical tips that will help you seize those extra minutes and wield them to elevate your business game. I'm laying it all out - the struggles, the triumphs, and my very own time tracker sheet, which you can snag from the show notes to revolutionize your daily grind.
Embark on a journey with me as we peel back the curtain on the real allocation of our most precious resource: time. By sharing my personal experiences and introducing you to the time tracker sheet, we'll illuminate the shadowy corners where minutes hide, waiting to be claimed. We're not just talking about finding time - we're strategizing on optimizing it, all while maintaining the freedom from someone else's clock. No magic tricks, just hard-earned insights that will help you steer your business toward uncharted territories of efficiency and success.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, and share it with someone who could benefit from what you heard. Also, head over to https://theerinolson.com/links and sign up for the email list, and you can get all the downloadable PDFs and tools! News: We finally have a YouTube channel! Visit us HERE: https://youtube.com/@theerinolson?si=xPNSU1-C7Yt9zXgD
Struggling with the relentless tick-tock of the clock? I've been there, and I'm sharing my battle scars from the time management wars to help you triumph over your own schedule. As Erin Olson, your entrepreneurial comrade, this week's Quality of Life podcast is a treasure trove of practical tips that will help you seize those extra minutes and wield them to elevate your business game. I'm laying it all out - the struggles, the triumphs, and my very own time tracker sheet, which you can snag from the show notes to revolutionize your daily grind.
Embark on a journey with me as we peel back the curtain on the real allocation of our most precious resource: time. By sharing my personal experiences and introducing you to the time tracker sheet, we'll illuminate the shadowy corners where minutes hide, waiting to be claimed. We're not just talking about finding time - we're strategizing on optimizing it, all while maintaining the freedom from someone else's clock. No magic tricks, just hard-earned insights that will help you steer your business toward uncharted territories of efficiency and success.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, and share it with someone who could benefit from what you heard. Also, head over to https://theerinolson.com/links and sign up for the email list, and you can get all the downloadable PDFs and tools! News: We finally have a YouTube channel! Visit us HERE: https://youtube.com/@theerinolson?si=xPNSU1-C7Yt9zXgD
See ya next week! Erin
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Quality of Life podcast. I'm Erin Olson, a wife, a mother and a serial entrepreneur. After starting three successful businesses, I've learned some hard lessons regarding the ins and the outs of starting and running a small business. My intention is to share my knowledge that I've learned from the School of Hard Knocks so you don't have to learn it the hard way like I did Each week, I hope, to guide you to the next level in your business or in the business that you're working. So let's go. Hey guys, thank you so much for coming back to the Quality of Life podcast, erin, here, to help guide you through this life.
Speaker 1:
We live as an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur. This week we are talking about something that is a very hot topic recently and probably for all time. We are talking about time management. Now I must, first and foremost, let you in on a little secret. I can be really, really good at this, but most of the time, this is something that I have got to work super hard on and be super intentional with. Time management is just not something that comes easy to anyone, including me. It is a muscle that must be flexed and stretched over and over again, just like your biceps in the gym. I have got to let you know that time management is something that can make or break your business for sure. But if you're anything like me, I have a hard time working on anybody else's schedule. Just ask my husband. I am a person who has always thought that I either had more time than I thought I did, or that I think things will take way less time than they actually do. Once again, ask my husband. I doubt that I am alone here. So let's talk about how to find more time in your schedule, and then let's talk about how to make the best use of your time that you do have. You still don't have to be on someone else's schedule, but you do have to be respectful of the deadlines that you agree to.
Speaker 1:
So let's start First. How do we find more time in the day? Well, we track our time Just like a budget. You have got to find out where you are already spending your time or your money. This can seem like a daunting task, but it is so worth it. I did this recently in my life and found some extra time where I spent looking through emails, and another chunk I found was when I'm driving. No, I am not talking about driving faster, but I do have time while I drive that could be used better, like listening to audiobooks or podcasts that help me in other areas of my life. There are minutes that you have here and there that can be stacked together to make time for other, more important things.
Speaker 1:
Remember back in the day when your computer would start to slow down and get really sluggish and wouldn't respond quickly or even save your work, and in some cases it would even crash. That's kind of like our lives, or maybe just mine. Well, what did you do when this happened? You restarted it, you unplugged it or you defragmented it. All of these tactics are really relevant to time management, but before we apply them, we have got to get a clear picture of where our time is being spent. Years ago, to help myself and the people that I worked with, I made a time tracker sheet to help us to see how we spend our days. It not only helped us to prioritize, but it also helped us to see what did our jobs actually entail. I'm going to add this worksheet to the show notes for you to use as well. So here's how to use this time tracker tool to its full potential.
Speaker 1:
Just keep track of what you do for a week. I strongly urge you to keep track in real time. Don't try to remember what you did at the end of the day, because you won't remember the minutes and at the end of the day, if you're like me, you're going to be just too dang tired. Do this for a week and here's a super important key to this exercise. Do it without judgment or trying to act better or different. Just be as normal as you can and keep track of how your week goes. You might be surprised to see where your time goes. I mean, you might actually spend 45 minutes driving home from work on Wednesdays and Fridays and only 25 minutes the rest of the week. Who knows? You might spend an extra 25 minutes in the bathroom scrolling on your phone, or maybe that quick walk to get coffee from the break room turned into a dozen conversations that took 40 minutes.
Speaker 1:
The point of this exercise is to be honest and see if there are any places that you could be a little bit more aware of the time that you are spending or places where you can stack your to-dos. You will also see where you are most productive, which can really help you become more efficient in our next part of this episode. So go and print out the PDF and find out what you prioritize and what you spend the bulk of your time doing on the daily. You will see what really matters and then you can make sure you put that into your most productive times during the day. Are you, by chance, a creator? Well, I don't know about you, but I am the most creative around 10 am, probably after my coffee starts to wear down a little bit. So I try to block time around 10 am to make my content and write my podcast scripts. This is super important and you will only really know what the trends and patterns are if you track it. So track it and don't beat yourself up if you find a lot of time spent on things that really don't move the needle.
Speaker 1:
I cannot express how useful this tool is, and it's not a one and done kind of thing. I probably do it quarterly. It's like auditing your books to see where your money is going. Okay, so now that you have tracked your time, what do you do with the information? It is time to defragment. Wait, wait, wait, wait. If you're not the techie type, you might have no idea what I'm talking about. Taking your computer. From my point of view which is not techie at all is taking all of the files and programs and putting them in the most useful order on your computer. So in your life, in essence, you are taking all of the like activities and putting them together and putting your to-dos in order of importance. This is how we take the info from your time tracker and make it work for you. Take a few minutes and look over where you spend most of your time. Notice any trends or schedules that reoccur.
Speaker 1:
Are there times when you started a project but got distracted by something else and then had to come back to it later? Well, I don't know if this scene has ever played out in your home, but this is something that happens to me quite often. I start tidying up the kitchen on a Saturday morning and as I wipe down the counters I smell the rig that has gotten that icky, stinky smell. So I toss it in the washer and go to grab more clothes that need to be washed. Then I notice that my closet is in need of some organizing. So I start refolding my sweaters on my shelf and pretty soon I'm trying on clothes to see if I should donate them and I have just lost three hours of my Saturday when all I wanted to do was tidy up my kitchen.
Speaker 1:
That is how my mind works, remembering all the things I want to do while I am in the middle of doing something else. Well, remember that notebook that I keep telling you all about. This is super helpful in these situations. It allows you to not lose your momentum and your focus, but also not to forget the things that popped into your mind that you should do or want to do. So just use your phone notes or keep that small notebook to write down those things and schedule time to look at them later. It really helps you keep the thing that you're working on at the front of your to-dos.
Speaker 1:
Distraction is the number one time sucker. I know that we all think that we are really good at multitasking, but Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner from Stanford University proved in 2006 that individuals who frequently multitasked tended to perform worse on tasks requiring longer attention and task switching abilities compared to those that focused on one task at a time. So stop trying to do it. We are not good at it as humans, no matter how much we tell ourselves we are. Focus on the task at hand and write down your distractions. Alright, now grab that time tracker that you filled out from last week and I want you to put a number one through five on the things that you spend time doing, one being the most important things you know, the things that really move the needle or are non-negotiable, like picking the kids up from school, and a five on the least important things. If you have things that don't even make the top five, highlight them and then you can see where time could be better spent. Now I want to make a note here rest and mental breaks are number ones in my schedule. One of the most important things on my calendar is scheduling time to spend with my family, and another one is scheduling downtime.
Speaker 1:
As an entrepreneur, there are so many things that pull at your attention, but here is something that really helped me. There's a book out there by Liz Need, a Minnesota gal, called the 1440 principle how to stop wasting time and to make the most of your life. I saw her speak at women's luncheon and it really helped me to visualize each minute as finite. You know we get 1,440 minutes every day and that's it. She helps you to look at each minute to make sure that it is spent in a way that is worthy. I highly recommend the book and I will put it in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:
Here's the deal. There is no hard and fast way to manage your time better, but if you look at your time like money and budget it where it is spent the wisest, you will reap the hugest benefits. Dave Ramsey, the king of budgeting, says that if you spend time planning where your money goes, you'll spend much less time wondering where it went. And it's pretty much the same with time. The Bible even touches on this in a few verses. Psalm 90, verse 12, says teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom, and Ephesians, chapter 5, verses 15 through 17, says so. Then be careful how you live. Do not be unwise, but wise, making the best use of your time, because the times are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish and understand what the Lord's will is.
Speaker 1:
So treat your schedule like a budget and be a good steward of the time that you have. Print out an extra time tracker for the next week and fill it in the way that you would like to see you spend your time, or just the way that would make the most sense of your time and your to-dos. Don't forget to schedule things like sleep, meals and, for heaven's sake, schedule some breaks. Leave a cushion for emergencies and things that you may have forgot, but try to make a weekly task. In the same time. Blocks for things like checking your email, returning phone calls. You know, when I was a full-time ferrier that's a person who trims horses feet. By the way I scheduled time every Sunday night to send a message to all of my clients that week to remind them of their upcoming appointments. I also scheduled time daily to return phone calls in the afternoon, when my clients were most likely to answer the phone. I also scheduled time every week to go through my mileage and expenses so that I never forgot what they were for. I mean, I'm sure you can relate. That made the bookkeeping part of my business way easier.
Speaker 1:
Ultimately, you are in control of your time and schedule. No matter how busy it is, you are the one that controls it. So if you spend a little more time this week tracking and a little time planning the next week, maybe you will be better at telling yourself where to spend your time instead of wondering where it went. Well, guys, I hope this helps you to get a handle on your time and maybe even find you some extra time that you didn't even know you had. If you like this episode, would you please share it and rate it on the platform that you listen to it on? Well, guys, that's all I have for you this week and I will see you next week on the Quality of Life podcast. See ya. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out on the Quality of Life podcast Facebook and Instagram pages and our website, thearonsoncom, for downloads and more information. That is T-H-E-E-R-I-N-O-L-S-O-Ncom. Stay up to date by joining our email newsletter. Together, we can improve all of our quality of life.