208 - 5 Time Management Tools
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Okay, confession. I am a major time management junkie and I love it. I love planning. I love buying my new calendar for the year and getting my favorite pens and highlighters and making a plan and writing an appointments and making lists. I love managing stuff. I love managing my time. And today I'm gonna share with you five of my favorite time management tools that have really helped me through the years because we all have 24 hours in a day, but it all comes down to how we manage our time.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
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5 Time Management Tools
All right, let's talk about time management. Y'all, time management is, it's just a beast and I feel like there are so many different methods that we can choose to try and, and what works for me may or may not work for you. But I am here to say there are a few things that just really work for me and that's what I am excited to share with you today.
Some of them are, are longer commitments where you, you really have to like track your time and it those man that, I'll get to that in a minute, but the benefits of doing that exercise, it's massive. It can really change your perspective on a lot of things in life. And some of them are just very, very simple, like 30 minutes setting a timer.
So we're gonna go through my favorite five time management tools. But before we get to the tools, I wanna share with you four things that I read about in the book Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend. I believe I read this book several years ago and there's a chapter in this book all about time boundaries. And it blew my mind, and this is when I discovered I actually am really bad with managing my time, like really bad.
And there were four things that these time management problems often stem from. And it's not necessarily that we're we're bad at managing our time, it comes from like a deeper issue.
4 Time Management Problems
1. Omnipotence complex where they have unrealistic, somewhat grandiose expectations of what they can accomplish in any given time.
This is still me. I feel like, yeah, I can do that. Sure, I can do that. Doesn't matter. I have like 20 things already planned for today. I can absolutely fit that in. It's this omnipotence feeling where like, I am all powerful. Is that what that means? Omnipotence? I can, I can do it, I can do this.
2. Over-responsibility for the feelings of others.
They think that leaving a party too early or saying I need, I need to get off this phone call that it's gonna cause problems, it's gonna hurt feelings, it's gonna cause the host of the party to feel abandoned or that you're gonna hurt your friends' feelings. You're taking over responsibility for the feelings of others. I also do that. I've gotten better at all these things I'll say, but these are the things that, like I checked off every single box when I read this book and was like, I need some help.
3. Lack of realistic anxiety.
So what that means is you live so much in the present, you really don't plan ahead for the time that you need to. Like if you don't plan ahead and consider traffic, you don't plan ahead for parking the car. Like you plan just enough time to literally drive to the place and arrive.
You don't plan ahead for the amount of time that it takes you to get dressed and ready for an outing. Say, oh, I can get ready in like three minutes. I still do these things. But you just don't have the realistic like understanding of, okay, we, we need to plan for that. And then it, it really like results in some anxiety because you have not planned ahead for these things that are definitely gonna be happening and you like change it in your mind to believe those things probably won't happen even though it happens every single time.
4. Rationalization.
They minimize the distress and inconvenience that others must put up with because of their lateness and they think, oh, they're my friends. They'll understand if I, if I'm running a little bit late or if I do this like, it's fine, it's fine. They'll, they'll understand. I feel like I don't do this one as much, but there are certainly times where I do it.
If any of those ring true with you, then I think this episode's hopefully gonna be a little bit helpful for you if for nothing else, just for you to realize that maybe this is a struggle and to plan ahead a little bit more. I mean the first step is just realizing that there's a problem, right?
So I love this quote from the book Boundaries. It says, “The person with undeveloped time, self boundaries ends up frustrating not only others but himself. He ends the day without the sense that a desire realized is sweet to the soul, which is Proverbs 13:19. Instead he's left with unrealized desires, half-baked projects and the realization that tomorrow will begin with him running behind schedule.”
Oh, anybody else identify with that as much as me? So after I read that book, I decided to do a few things and it's been years since I've done this first one, but I'll never forget how it changed my life and I think that I'd like to try it again, but they give some tips and tricks in the books. But these are also things that I've just done in my years working in my years as a mom. And I just wanna share 'em with you, hopefully making your days a little bit easier as you manage your time a little bit more wisely.
5 Time Management Tools
1. Track your time.
And I encourage you to do this for a month. If you can't swing a month, at least a week, but a month, there's never like a perfect week. I talked about that in my ideal week exercise. Every week has its own thing that's like this is making this week unique and unto itself. So if you can do it for a month, it gives you a much better picture of how you manage time in your life as a whole.
When I read the book 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam, she talks a lot about tracking her time and how it had such a profound impact on her.
And these are some of the ways that when I did this, I was working. I don't even, I don't think that I had kids yet. I was working a ton at the time and I was telling everybody things like I work 60 hours a week, I'm shooting weddings, I'm working all the time, I don't have any time for friends, I don't have time for exercise. My life is work. That was what I was believing.
Well then I tracked my time and here are some of my takeaways. I thought I was working 60 hours a week. I was actually working about 35 to 40 hours a week. I thought I didn't have any time with my friends, but I actually tracked several times where I was spending with my friends and I realized we actually eat dinner with friends more than I thought we did.
I was not exercising nearly enough. I really wanted to spend more hours sleeping because you track your sleep in this exercise too. But my biggest takeaway was I wanna spend less hours driving. Like I did not bundle my errands wisely at all. So I would just go out and do errands whenever I needed to, back when I didn't have any kids. That was like a thing that I did. I would just go out when I needed to go out. Doesn't happen anymore like that at all. But I really wanted to be more intentional with my driving and I wanted to be intentional with how I spent my leisure time. Like less social media, more bubble baths and good books, right? Like just thinking through how I spent my time. So that's my first encouragement to you.
If you don't know how to track your time, I really encourage you to do it with pen and paper. And I'm gonna actually upload a time tracking sheet for you on the show notes here that you can click on and download and use to track your time if you choose to do this. But what this can do for you, it can show your brain how you're actually living your life versus how you think your living your life.
And most likely there's a difference. That's kind of scary to think about, but it's true. So I just encourage you to do it and it just makes you more intentional. Like it shows you some weaknesses, it shows you some strengths. It definitely will make you more intentional about how you're spending your time. So that's my first time management tool for you is just a worksheet where you can track your time for a month and let it be a mirror back to you for your life.
2. Mapping out your ideal week.
And if you listen to every episode, you caught this episode a few weeks back, so we can move right along to tool number three. But if you did not listen to that episode, go back to listen to episode 204. It's only like four or five episodes behind or you can go to nancyray.com/idealweek where you can also print off a place where you can map out your ideal week.
And a couple points—no week is ideal. Every week has its thing that will make it not a normal week, and that's okay. It's just a track for you to run on. Like what would make if, if I could live a certain way, what would that look like? Like how would my mornings look, my evenings, our Sabbaths, our work time, our family time, what would it all look like? And you write that down so you have a guide for your life and it's really, I think it's very inspiring and very fun to do.
So episode 204 and nancyray.com/idealweek to learn more about that.
3. Making something that feels overwhelming, like an overwhelming task, make it simple and fun with a timer.
So I love the time timer. I use it with my kids all the time because it's really helpful to have a visual. So it like has this like red face to it and you just turn that time timer and it can show you how much time. And then the red like slowly disappears as you're working.
So whether it is cleaning the kitchen when it's really messy, that feels overwhelming. Folding like three loads of laundry, that's really overwhelming. Or my favorite thing to do this with is my emails. I will only give myself 30 minutes or an hour to do as many emails as possible. I call it the email ninja.
I time myself, I make a game out of it. I write down how many emails I delete and get outta my inbox and respond to. And it's great. So that's one of my favorite time management tools is instead of letting things feel overwhelming, you manage it by turning it into a game with a timer and seeing what you can.
And when that timer goes off, you're done. You're done. You move on.
4. Time block your days.
So time blocking is something people talk about all the time, but it's basically the concept of like batching your time or doing things like altogether so that you can be effective and focused and you're not distracted. And that's the biggest thing right now in our lives is that we are constantly distracted by our phones and by other things we need to do.
That's very, very, very difficult to finish a task. But if you can look at your day and decide to block off your day, like these two hours I'm giving to this project, I'm gonna put my phone in the other room, it will change your life. I'm not kidding. It's amazing how much I can get done in such a small amount of time if I'm focused and I make sure that the distractions have been left to the side or put to the side.
5. Plan for downtime.
Actually write into your calendar the ways that you are going to rest and recharge. Because time management is not just about how much you can get done. Time management is about the life that you wanna live.
And our brains and our bodies and our hearts and our souls are more healthy and happy when we plan for rest. And I really try. I mean we, we endeavor every week. We don't do it perfectly, but we endeavor every week to have a day completely off like a just a day of sleeping in, watching tv, going on a hike, reading books. It's hard. It's hard to do, but it's like the healthiest and best thing that we've done with our calendars and with our time in a long time.
Even I have a friend every Friday, she works, she's an entrepreneur, she works for herself every Friday. She just has time to dream. She just plans time into her schedule to dream and to brainstorm and to just kind of be the visionary for her, for her work and her products and her business. And I love that. I just plan time to let your brain just kind of do its thing. And I think that's probably one of the best time management tools that I can give to you.
Okay, so just a quick reminder. It's the last week you can apply to be part of the Mastermind.
Go do that if you want to or just go check out patreon.com/workandplay to learn more about how you can be more involved in this podcast, support this podcast, and yeah, be part of the Work and Play community.
Thanks so much for listening to episode 208 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray. You can find the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/208, or you can find me at NancyRay.com. I've got a blog. I'm on Instagram @nancyray. You can always connect with me there.
Laura Vanderkem said,
“You don't build the life you want by saving time. You build the life you want and the time saves itself. You can choose how to spend your 168 hours and you have more time than you think”.
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
