Ep. 189 - Best Hits - 4 Secrets to Taking Control of Your Time
Are you tired of constantly feeling like you're racing against the clock, with your schedule dictating your life? Tune in as I share practical steps to reclaim ownership of your time. Learn how to prioritize your needs and desires, breaking free from the grip of others' expectations. Take charge of your schedule and empower yourself to live life on your own terms.
Topics
Understanding Overwhelm
Recognizing Unhelpful Thoughts
Shifting mindset from obligation to choice
Viewing tasks from a neutral perspective
Addressing Perfectionism and People-Pleasing
Links
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Transcript
[AUTO-GENERATED]
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the self growth nerds podcast. I'm your host Marie, a courage coach, creative soul, and adventure seeker. Since through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, I'm on a mission to help you embrace your most confident self so you can achieve your dreams too. If you're eager for deep conversations, big questions, and meaningful connections, join me on the quest to discovering how we can create a more magical and memorable life. Hello, nerds. How are you? I'm doing okay, except I have a hard time talking because I got my wisdom teeth removed this week. I was told it would be, a week to heal, but I just sort of decided for me it's just gonna take 2 days, and on the 3rd day I'll be able to record this kick ass episode I've prepared for my listeners no problem. Turns out though, it really hurts every time I open my mouth.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:01:09]:
So plans have changed, and instead, I've decided we're going to revisit an episode that I need to hear, that I'm sure lots of you need to hear as well. It was first published almost 2 years ago. It's called The 4 Secrets to Taking Control of Your Time. This is perfect for the moments in life where you feel like your schedule is the boss, where you're being pulled in all kinds of directions and you feel like you're not the driver anymore, and you wanna regain some power over what you decide to do with your precious minutes, hours, and days so that you feel like your life is yours, and you're not just on autopilot like a robot or running around like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Alright. I'm gonna stop talking for now. I'm gonna go rest, and I will be back with you next week with a brand new episode. I cannot wait.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:02:09]:
I wish you all a beautiful week, and I will talk to you soon. Bye. Today, we are talking about time management and how to get out of a place where you feel like you're a slave to your schedule. You know the feeling when you're being pulled in all kinds of directions, like you wake up in the morning and there's already so many things on your to do list but people keep making requests, like the demands keep piling up. A new email here and another email there, someone calls you can you do this one little thing for me? Can you do that? Oh can you fix the typo there? And then suddenly like some somebody rings your doorbell, it's like the delivery man, and you just wanna punch them in the face for disturbing you because you're just trying to get some work done for like an hour straight without distraction, and you can't even get an hour without someone asking something out of you, even if it's just like a signature for the, delivery you were waiting for. Right now waiting for skin care products from Glossier, and it's taking a while. So that's that's at the forefront of my mind. I cannot wait.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:03:27]:
Or you know those days where, like, you can't even get out of bed because you think, oh my god. I have so much going on. I don't have the time. And notice how interesting it is that when you tell yourself, oh my god. I have so much going on. It often leads you to feeling so overwhelmed that you don't do anything. So you think you don't have time for all of these things, but thinking that you don't have time leads you to wasting time not doing anything, just swimming in a pool of overwhelm. So funny our brains work.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:04:04]:
Okay. So raise your hand if you've been in that situation or if you are in that situation every day, if you recognize yourself in this description. So if this happens to you, you have slipped into being the victim of your schedule. And that's okay. We don't need to blame, but you do need to take responsibility because it's not useful to put the fault on anyone else. So let's have a look at what you can control. Okay? So that you no longer feel like you're being driven by your schedule and by everyone around you and their expectations of you. The good news here is that I have a solution for you, 4 steps to taking the control back over your schedule, over your time.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:04:59]:
Okay? Because your time, my friends, is your most precious resource. It's much more precious than money in my opinion. So step 1 to taking the control back is to realize that when you tell yourself I have too much on my plate it's not useful. It's also not a fact. Let's say we put Obama in your shoes. What would they say about your to do list? They might say, I can totally get this done. Or let's say we put a mom of 4 kids in your shoes. She might go, oh, easy peasy.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:37]:
I'll figure it out. And I'm not telling you this in the in the sense that these people are better than you. What I'm saying is that you would put a different brain in your circumstance, a different person in your circumstance, and they might have a different outlook on the number of tasks you have to do in the amount of time. And I'm also not telling you that to diminish what you're going through. I am telling you that so that you can take your power back. When you realize that the sentence I have too much on my plate is a belief rather than a fact, it gives you some wiggle room, some space to play around and breathe. Step 2 is getting rid of the have to's in your mind. I have to do this.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:06:25]:
I have to do that. I have to do this. I have to do that. There's nothing, literally nothing that you have to do. You don't even have to take care of your kids. Okay? And this sounds radical, but bear with me. There's nothing that you have to do if you don't take care of your kids. Yes, something bad might happen.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:06:44]:
Yes, you might go to jail, but it's not a have to. Because what happens when you tell yourself I have to, is that you're being a dictator to yourself. You are putting yourself in the position of a slave. And again, that takes all of your power away. So you don't have to take care of your kids. You choose to take care of your kids. You don't have to go to work. You choose to go to work.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:07:11]:
And if one of you feels resistant like, but Marie, that's not true. Like, I have to go to work, otherwise I'm gonna lose my job and I'm not going to be able to pay my bills. You still choose to go to work because you care about getting the paycheck that allows you to pay your bills. Just this shift in thinking, telling yourself that you choose to do everything that you do, opens up the possibility of a different choice. If you realize that everything you do in a given day, something that you choose to do, it shows you that you can choose otherwise. If you keep telling yourself that you have to, you're blocking the possibility of other choices from your view. That was step 2. Step 3.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:07:59]:
You gotta zoom out and look at your schedule from the outside. Look at all of your to dos and your tasks from above. As if you are a robot or like an AI, we keep hearing about AI these days, looking at a number of tasks on the floor and they have to insert those tasks in like a a puzzle that represents your calendar or the number of hours you have in a given day. So the robot would think 11 tasks, 16 hours of awake time and just take the tasks and place them in a slot in the calendar. The this ability to be neutral and specific gives you power because vague terms like too much, too much on my plate, I have too much going on are overwhelming and overwhelm is paralyzing. So we're gonna do like the robot. I wanna know how many things are on your plate instead of too much. Replace too much by an actual number.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:09:10]:
So make a list of what you have to do and start with the 5 most important at the top. What are your top five priorities? And it helps to write down why they're your priorities. So, maybe they they don't necessarily bring you joy in the moment, but they're important to you because they're gonna serve you in the future. So, your top five priorities and then write the other things you have to do after that. See if you can categorize them. For example, I always cat I put all of my admin tasks together in like a cluster of admin tasks. You know those little things that take like 3 to 5 minutes and you can do them at your computer? Put them in a cluster together. Your out of the house tasks that you can do when you're going to run errands.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:10:01]:
See what the categories are, the kind of tasks that use the same like, area of your brain. And then next to each category or each task, write down the amount of time you need. Like, take a guess, your best guess. Write down the amount of time you need for each of them and then you place them in your calendar, in your week. Instead of being the victim of your to do list, you take control. You sit in the control room and you make decisions. Make sure your appointments are in there. Make sure you have time to, you know, have lunch have dinner have time to walk over to the place at these things and then with the time you have available you're gonna have a very specific number of hours in each day.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:10:54]:
Okay. That day I have 3 hours available. What can I place? Which task or tasks can I place in this 3 hour block? You have your list with times next to them. So it is just a puzzle, it's very neutral, a neutral puzzle that an AI could do and every time I do this, I realize, oh, it's not that bad This is actually doable. And you might realize actually this is quote unquote too much. Like the the robot would literally give you an error message, impossible to place 24 hours of work in 10 hour day. Impossible. Beep beep.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:11:40]:
And then you'll have to take action accordingly, but I found that most of the time it's not the case. Okay? So it's just mats. Or brain, earth, funny, they love to turn math into drama. You have to bring yourself back to a place of neutrality where you just look at numbers. I remember this moment with a client of mine when she was seeing the workload coming in a season at her workplace, like a busy season at her workplace, and she was telling me I can't do this, I can't do this, this is too much. And so we looked at the number of hours that this work would require versus the number of hours that she wanted to give to that work and it just didn't work. It didn't compute. If she was gonna get that work done, that it would bleed into her personal time.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:12:31]:
So she could do the work. She had done the work before, but looking at those numbers with a clear calm mind allowed her to see, actually, it's not that I cannot do it. I can, but I don't want to. This is the number of hours I'm willing to give to that work and it just doesn't fit in. So that does not work for me. From there, she was able to make an empowered decision, versus if she just kept telling herself I can't do this, this is too much, this is too much, this is too much. She would have stayed in overwhelm and exhausted herself. Okay? So that was step 3.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:13:12]:
Step 4, the last one. I want you to get curious about your perfectionism and people pleasing tendencies. I don't want you to fix them. I I just want you to observe. Okay? Notice the moments where you take like 2 hours to write an email, and you're editing every little words. What's your body feeling like when you're doing that? That is your sign. Like when you feel this way in your body, you've entered perfectionism and people pleasing. Notice the moments where you're maybe staying longer that you need to in a meeting or in a call with someone because you don't wanna be rude, because you don't wanna seem unprofessional, because you don't wanna be too direct.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:14:00]:
When you do this, you're unconsciously trying to get your personal worth from what other people think of you. This email has to be perfect, otherwise they're gonna think I'm sloppy. If they think I'm professional, then I will feel good about myself. That is the underlying unconscious belief. You know those moments where you don't, you're not too sure how to hang up the phone so you might ask like extra questions, then you don't really need to ask like, oh, by the way, how are your kids? Just because you want the other person to think that you're nice. Again, the unconscious belief there is, okay, if they think that I'm nice, if they hang up the phone and they think, oh, she's nice, she spent a lot of time with me, I'm gonna then I'm gonna feel good about myself. You're tying your worth to what other people think about you, and that is the best way to drain yourself, to make yourself feel like a slave, to try to manipulate everything that you do, so that everyone around you has good thoughts about you in their mind. You gotta be willing to send an imperfect email.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:09]:
You gotta be willing to hang up the phone and let people think whatever they're going to think. They might think, oh, I'm glad this this call was short. They're so professional. Or they might think, oh, that was rude and they didn't ask me about my kids. You gotta be willing to let them be wrong about you and think whatever they want to think based on the mood that they're in that day. You gotta be willing to risk disappointing the people that give too much. You know people that do a bunch of extra work that they're not paid to do just because they want to be liked, they're going to be angry when you don't, when you set boundaries. They're gonna judge you because they wouldn't allow themselves to do that.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:55]:
So you gotta be willing for them to judge you and give you weird looks. For example, I received a call a few years ago. Someone was asking me to do this little thing for a contract that I'd already been paid for, write a little text, I think it was like a BO about me or something like that. I'd already been paid and I'd completed my tasks for that contract and that was an extra one. And so instead of saying sure, I'll do it. That'll only take me 15 minutes. I paused and I asked the person, what's your budget? So before, the me before would have thought, oh no, they're gonna think I'm being greedy. I want them to think I'm nice.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:16:33]:
I'm just gonna do it for free. It's gonna be easier for them and they're gonna think I'm nice. But now that I see my time as sacred, and that's also how you need to see your time if you don't wanna be a slave to it, now that I see my time as sacred and I treat it as such, I don't care if people think I'm not being nice. My time has value. I have been paid. This is an extra task. I understand that you need this and I'm going to be happy to help you. And what's your budget? This is uncomfortable at first.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:17:08]:
But the more willing you are to be uncomfortable, the more free you are going to be. I remember also working with a super successful person in Manhattan, and, for an illustration contract. And their emails were so short, I was not used to it. They were, like, 4 words long. If they needed, like, me to edit something in the illustration, it was just a question. No hello. No thank you. And at first I was like, oh my god.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:17:38]:
But at the same time envious, like, looking up to them. It's amazing that they allow themselves to be so direct. They don't waste time with nice like, little niceties. And like, I don't know what it's like for you and your siblings, but when I'm on the phone with my sister, when we wanna hang up, we just say: Okay. Let's just hang up. Okay. I need to poop. Okay.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:17:58]:
I need to do this other thing. Let's just hang up. And there's no, again, like, oh, who's gonna hang up first? And I don't wanna seem direct. We are simply straightforward. Straightforwardness without mind drama is going to save you so much trouble. Yes. It's uncomfortable at first. Eventually, you get used to it, people get used to it, and you, start attracting people to you and clients to you and colleagues to you that are in alignment with this way of being.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:28]:
That way of being is not people pleasing, it's honesty. Honest relationships. Okay? And you can have honest relationships while also being considerate. Like while also saying please and thank you. While also treating others like humans. But it's very different from people pleasing. People pleasing is dishonest. People pleasers are liars.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:50]:
Okay? And I put myself in that bunch. I people please too, less than I used to. A lot less than I used to, and I notice it when I do it. You're being fake. You're being what you think other people need you to be instead of advocating for your desires and your needs in an honest, vulnerable, transparent way. So that's it for today. The 4 steps. The first one is to realize that when you have thoughts in your mind like I have too much going on or I have too much on my plate, they're just sentences in your brain and they're not fact.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:19:26]:
Step 2 is getting rid of the have to's and taking your power back by saying you choose to or you want to and knowing your reasons. This is gonna allow you to make different choices if it comes to it. You decide that you want something else. Gives you it opens up the possibilities. Step 3 was looking at your tasks and your schedule like a robot with numbers. Put numbers. Replace too much with a number. How many tasks do you have to do and how many hours do you have? It's math.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:19:59]:
It's not drama. And lastly, step 4, get curious and observe when you're falling into perfectionism and people pleasing. What does it feel like in your body? And just make a list of all the moments in a day where you do something that goes against what you want or need just so that other people can be pleased with you, so that you and and that makes you feel good. You can learn to feel good without depending on other people being pleased with you. That is what I teach my clients. Alright? Have a beautiful week, my friends. Bye. Hey.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:20:42]:
If you love what you're hearing on the self growth nerds podcast and you want individual help finding a new direction for your life and developing the courage to make your dreams a reality, you have to check out how we can work together on selfgrowthnerds.com or message me on Instagram at selfgrowthnerds. My clients say they would have needed that support years ago. So if you're tired of feeling like you're wasting your life, don't wait. Get in touch now, and I cannot wait to meet you.