Time Management

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This is Stephanie Maas, partner with Thinking Ahead Search Firm.

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So I'm actually gonna open with a story.

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There was a woman named Clara, and Clara began her day like any other day.

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Clara begins her morning like any other morning, up at 4:30, gets into action with a hyper-efficient mix of cortisol and her cup of coffee.

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Her thought process was, "Hey, I don't just have it all.

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I'm super efficient.

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I optimize it all.

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I am kinda like the queen bee when it comes to having it all, getting it all," all these different things.

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15, she's got sourdough bread rising in the kitchen, load of laundry in the dryer.

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She also works from home.

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She's got an AI-generated meal plan for the week.

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Her groceries are on order.

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She'll go pick them up on a break.

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She's doing all of this while also listening to, uh, a podcast where she's learning how to speak Mandarin, all while doing a plank.

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So she is just firing on all cylinders.

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8:00 a.m., she's at her desk.

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She's answering emails, fielding calls, working with her team, doing all the things.

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An hour and a half, two hours into it, she's made her first 10 calls of the day.

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She solved some problems for some other folks.

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Her alarm starts going off.

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Clothes need to be switched from washer to the dryer.

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Sourdough needs to be done.

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Groceries need to pick up.

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Then she gets into a series of Teams calls where she's trying to serve everybody and their brother.

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A couple hours into her series of Teams calls, it's a super weird phenomenon, but there is literally this popping sound.

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Clara's head falls, and she goes dead.

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Eventually is found by family, rushed to the hospital.

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God bless her, Clara's head exploded.

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So We are going to focus on how not to be Clara today.

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The moral of our entire story of today is not to be a Clara, and we are going to try and accomplish that through time management.

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It was probably gonna be me a year or two ago if I didn't make some changes.

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So let's talk about that.

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The secret to doing it all, there is no secret, because you can't do it all, at least not at the same time.

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There is no secret, but there are a lot of ways to get a lot done and to do it all at the right time with joy.

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First and foremost, one of the foundations of managing your time is through principle-based living.

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You really have to know what's important to you and why to live in a principle-based way.

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With that being said, there is a science, if you will, to figuring out, hey, what are my principles?

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The first thing I'm gonna suggest is know your roles.

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Just figure out all the different things that you do.

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These are your roles within your career of choice.

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These are your roles outside of work.

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Then once you've kind of written those out Prioritize them.

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Not just know what your roles are, but what, what's their time requirements?

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Some things have a daily requirement.

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If you are in any kind of a significant relationship, I hope to high heaven that's part of your daily.

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If you are, you know, a parent or a caretaker, that's probably a daily commitment you have to make.

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Some things might be a monthly commitment or a quarterly commitment or, you know, a twice-a-year type of thing.

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Doesn't matter, but again, what we need to do is go back, look at all the roles we play, and then assign the time requirement to them, and this should also be reflective of your priorities.

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So for example, taking care of yourself should absolutely be a priority.

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For me, it has to be for my mental health, and that's a daily commitment.

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So that takes a… You know, it doesn't need to be a four-hour block every single day, but it probably needs to be a 30-minute to an hour, and that's very important to me.

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Same thing with being a parent.

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That's a daily commitment.

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Now, two out of my three kids need very little at this point.

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One of my kids is still very high touch.

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Um, being a producer at my job, that's one of the things I've really had to work with this last year and a half, is really get super committed.

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What did I need to produce to meet my obligations, and what kind of time would that require?

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And then being super committed as it relates to my goals.

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Now, what I do know is I need to produce a certain amount just to make ends meet, produce a certain amoun- amount to have some fun, and then anything after that is gravy.

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So I balance my time in a producer role accordingly.

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Look, if you run out of time, you're not doing it right, 'cause the idea is you can't do it all at the same time.

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But if we focus on living your priorities, then, and, and living in a principle-based way, you actually can.

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So this is another step for how you prioritize.

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When I look at my day and I'm planned out to the best of my ability And something gets me off track, this is a great thing to reference.

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Is it getting me off track because it's important and urgent?

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Or is it getting me off track because it's really a distraction and I'm letting it because it feels good to go do those things, but it doesn't actually line up with my principles or my priorities?

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So now let's say we've taken the time, we've identified our roles, we've put some, you know, hey, this is kinda time that it takes to be effective at these things.

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Next thing you gotta do is organize your time.

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I cannot emphasize enough the value of being well-planned.

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I am planned to the nth degree.

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I have to be.

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When it comes to planning your time, let me suggest the same.

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Any time that you're not well-planned, you are taking a step or two away from principle-based living.

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Now, we're gonna talk about perfection in a minute, but let me just go ahead and say here that this is not about perfection.

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This is about putting forth our best effort in a way that we can accomplish all the things that we want to accomplish in a timely manner.

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As you go about planning and organizing your time, and yes, for me personally, I do this both professionally and personally, we all have tremendous asks on our time outside of work One of the things I discovered a couple years ago that's helped tremendously is outsourcing and/or delegating.

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This came from looking at all the things that I have to do to be successful in all the ways that I want, and figuring out what is the best and highest use of my time.

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We did an exercise where you figured out what your hourly rate was, and then you said, "Okay, is this activity one that fits that per hour cost?" And if not, you go give it to somebody who's cheaper.

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Delegation, I don't need to run everything.

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This is not a my team, it's an our team.

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Let's all share in the work because at the end of the day, quite frankly, the team was better with everybody participating and owning it than just one person running it.

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So that helped tremendously.

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So outsource and delegate.

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And anything that has to be done, constantly asking yourself, "Am I the best person to be doing this?

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And is this a, you know, $150 an hour task?

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And if not, then who?

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How can I get this done?" Eliminate distractions.

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You know yourself.

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You know what pulls you away.

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You know what your distractions are.

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And if you don't, or if you haven't been super disciplined to observing them, that's a great thing to do for the next 30 days is, "Hey, I'm so well-planned, what's pulling me off?" I am a recovering people pleaser.

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Sometimes my distractions are coming from a good place, but I have to remind myself, what's that quote?

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That the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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I'm stretched too thin.

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I'm trying to do too much.

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I'm overthinking.

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I'm doing all these things.

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Well, that leads to my personal hell, which is not living a principle-based life.

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So I might have good intentions, but I need to check, hey, is doing what I'm about to do in the way I'm about to do it, does that serve the way I wanna live?

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I know this sounds super philosophical, but I don't mean it that way.

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I just mean it in the sense of like, we gotta be real with ourselves, and we gotta look at what's going on.

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Accountability.

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Someone to lovingly say, "Hey, how are we doing? It seems like we've missed the mark on this one." Next one, it's the 80/20 rule.

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We're not robots.

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You follow this 80% of the time.

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You've gotta give yourself some grace.

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Anything more than, you know, having a 20% buffer, again, it starts to pull you too far off.

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But life happens.

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We're not perfect, and we don't wanna live robotically.

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Sometimes I just don't feel like it.

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I just don't, and I know I should, whatever, but I just don't feel it, but I just don't make it a habit, and that's the grace that I have built in.

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And I know we opened the story about Clara and her head exploding, but truly, a couple years ago, that was the path that I was on.

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I just felt every day like my brain was leaking out my ears.

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I wasn't happy with how I felt at the end of the day, and I was big time struggling.

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So I'm allowed to not feel like doing something 20% of the time and letting myself off the hook.

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But what you have to do is be so protective of your time.

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We are running a business.

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That is our reality.

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We are the guardian of our time.

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There's one thing all humans have in common, and only one thing all humans have in common, and it's we all have 24 hours in a day.

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So what you do with your 24 hours, we live in a way that we get to choose.

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Not everybody does, but we do.

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So we have tremendous power to use our time wisely.

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And I just want to remind us all that we are the only one of us.

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When we get full or when we have lots of asks on our time, whether it be at work or non-work life, it's so easy to neglect us first.

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But that's actually the opposite of what we need to do because nobody can do the things that we can do.

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Nobody can be me.

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For most of us, there's no unplug.

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We can't.

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We have too many responsibilities.

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We can't disappear.

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But there are ways to dim and to say, "Hey, I need to take 15 minutes to go recharge or reset," or, you know, "I need to take this walk." I just do.

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Whatever the case may be.

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The goal is to be the best that we can be in all the ways that are super important to us.