Balance Foundations: Take back control of your time

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In this week's episode, we're uncovering the secret to controlling your time and gaining back hours in your week. It's not just about time management—it's about learning to say yes to what matters most and no to everything else. If you're tired of feeling overwhelmed and want to reclaim your time, you won't want to miss this episode. Let's get to it!  

Topics in this episode: 

  • Controlling your time to find better balance. 

  • How to focus on what really matters. 

  • Six-step process to handle the thoughts that mess with your time. 

  • How you can get back 5-7 hours each week. 

 Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Time is the biggest excuse that I hear from working moms on why they can't have the life that they want. 

There just simply isn't enough time to get all the things done that you want to. And yet the amount of hours in the day is something you don't ever have control over. 

Instead, you control how you spend that time.

You control what you say yes to and what you say no to. 

In today's episode, we're continuing our series on the foundations of work life balance and what it takes to create a life that feels balanced. And we're diving into the third c control. 

But controlling your time is not what you think. You actually know how to control your time. You know how to focus on your priorities, get things done that you want to get done. 

There's actually something else that's getting in the way of you being able to control your time schedule and priorities. And I'm going to let you in on that secret right here in today's episode. 

So much of what it takes to create a life that feels balanced and calm and controlled is right here in this episode. So you're not going to want to miss it. 

You ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom. I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it. 

All right, working moms, thank you for joining me here today and spending 20 of your precious minutes with me. 

You know, I don't take that lightly. Like, I know that you are very busy with lots of competing priorities and there's almost no time for you in your schedule. So the fact that you would choose to spend a little bit of your self care time, just time that you have just for you, with me, that means the world to me. 

And I've heard from a number of you over the past several weeks, particularly as we have jumped into this series on balance foundations. 

Some of you have emailed me. I've heard from some old clients that have wanted to connect. Some of you have reached out and booked that free breakthrough call because you just want to stop talking about the process and actually implement the process before the year is out. So excited to be connecting with you as well. 

But what I have heard just overall is just how meaningful this series has been. The reminders around the foundation of balance and how to create balance has just brought perspective. 

And I love that. That's exactly why I wanted to do this series, because every once in a while, you have to zoom out and look at the bigger picture, right? 

You have to remember when you're going from imbalance, where work is the number one priority over everything else, and where you're actually trying to get to a state of balance where you are actually at the top of your list without sacrificing, you know, your success at work. 

Like, you have to zoom out and remember that there's a path from here to there, right, or from where you are in that journey. And so when we zoom out, we look at all of the steps you've taken, we look at all of the progress you've made, and then we look at what's ahead and strategize, if you will, for what's ahead. 

So I know that this series has been really helpful for many of you to just remember to zoom back out and see the bigger picture of where you have been and where you're going. 

Now. This has been a series, right, about the foundations of what it takes to create a life that feels balanced. 

What balance is. 

And in the first episode of this series, we talked about what balance is and what it's not, right? You have to have a really clear understanding of your destination, of what exactly, when we say work life balance, or when we say a balanced life, what does that mean? You have to know that. So that was episode number one. 

The 3 C’s - Clarity.

And then in the next episode, we started breaking down my three step process. I call this the three C's. And the first one is clarity. 

The first thing that you have to do is define what it is you want. Like, you have to define your priorities. You have to define that balanced life, those non negotiables. You have to know what those are and what it even takes for you to prioritize them if you ever are actually going to do the hard thing of creating that life and actually following through with your boundaries and all those things. 

The 3 C’s - Confidence. 

The second c is confidence. And I know that's sort of a, cliche word, but what I mean by that is that you have to have an unshakable view of yourself. 

No matter what anyone else thinks of your priorities, or no matter if somebody pushes back or is disappointed or bummed or is upset because you're no longer available to them at every moment of the day. Right. You still have to know that you are amazing and valuable at both your job and just as a human being. 

The 3 C’s - Control.

Now, the third c. We're going to dive into that here today. It's control. 

Now, I'm actually going to break this up into two episodes, because there's two parts of control that are really essential in a life that feels balanced, and they each deserve their own time. They each deserve their own episode. 

Controlling your time. 

So the first we're going to talk about here today, and it is controlling your time. 

Time is a very, very important concept when it comes to creating a life that feels balanced, because it is the thing that everyone points to as the problem. Right. There just simply isn't enough time to get all the things done that you want to get done and to do all the things that you want to do. 

The number 1 excuse…

It's the number one excuse that we have for not living the life that we want and living a life where productivity comes first. Right? And yet, time doesn't change. There are still only 24 hours in the day, except that one time every four years when there's 25. 

So it's not about not having enough time. It's about not controlling how you're using your time. 

It's about not effectively choosing what you say yes to and what you say no to. 

A balanced life is an edited life. 

I've said this before on the podcast, but a balanced life is a life that you have ruthlessly edited. 

It is a life where you have zoomed in on all of the things and the way of being that is absolutely most important to you, and you have learned to just simply let go of the rest. 

Amazingly, or maybe not so amazingly, when you actually learn how to control your time and, kind of ruthlessly edit your life, you actually get more done. You are more effective with how you use your time. 

I have a client that I'm coaching right now who has learned to really curb a lot of her perfectionism through our coaching together. 

She's always sort of been one of those people that needs to get her presentation exactly right. Her deck has to look perfect. She has to feel 100%, if not 110%, prepared for all meetings, all calls, all projects. 

But since we started working together, and I have essentially been pushing back and not letting her prepare or perfect as much as she wants, she's actually been able to get more things done. 

She spends more time on her strategic initiatives that her boss and her company actually want her to focus on. 

She schedules in more fun activities with her family on the weekend. And since she doesn't work as much, she has found that she has about an I average of five to seven additional hours in her week. 

Imagine that. Five to seven additional hours in her week to spend with her kids, to spend working out, to spend sleeping. I mean, all because she has learned how to actually control her time and stop saying that she didn't have enough of it. 

I have another client who also has told me that she has been working about 5 hours less since we started working together. And she's been using that time to have more dinners with her sons who are the of teenage years. And she actually took up a hobby, she joined some pottery classes, and she had some other kind of grand plans to do some other activities once her pottery class was over. 

All because she learned how to control her time and stop using the excuse, I don't have enough of it. 

Now, here's the thing. I could give you story after story after story about my clients and how coaching has helped them change their relationship to time and feel more in control of it. 

The thing is, though, you actually already know how to do this. You already have experiences in your life where you have been able to control your time. 

Let's just say as an example, okay, you get an email from your boss who is requesting that you deliver on something by the end of the day today that you had no idea you were supposed to deliver on. Right. 

It's kind of like a last minute request, but you have your son's soccer game tonight, and you don't want to miss that. 

So you essentially have between now when you receive the email and when you need to leave the office later today in order to get it done. What do you do now? 

Of course, this is a hypothetical, but it is a reality for many of us, right. We all have had this experience at some point when there is a deadline and there just isn't the option to work more hours in order to get it done. 

And so you have to figure out how to deliver on it within a constrained amount of time. 

So what do you do? 

  • You shut down your email. 

  • You go on do not disturb. 

  • You let your team know that you're completely unavailable. 

  • You cancel meetings if you don't 100% have to be in them. 

Whenever you sort of feel stuck, you just have to guess and move on, or you just have to push through that feeling of stuckness because there just isn't time to go ask somebody else's opinion or to kind of perfect it in any way. 

Any other tasks that you plan to do for today? Well, you just push them off or you delegate them. Right. That's truly it. The hard part is not what you need to do, because everybody really knows actually how to be productive with your time. You can read 100 different productivity books and they're all going to sort of say the same thing, right? You need to delegate more. 

You need to say no to more things. 

You need to simplify your priorities. 

You need to hold to your boundaries. 

You need to take on not as much at work that's not yours. 

You need to protect your downtime so that you feel rested. 

You have to protect your head's downtime, the time that you just focus on getting your stuff done. 

You need to be clear on what your priorities are and the tasks that need to get done each and every day. 

So you're hyper focused. All productivity books would talk about these things on how to be more efficient with your time. These are the common things that we all know we need to do. 

This is not the hard part. 

The hardest part of actually being more productive with your time and staying focused is handling all of the thoughts and the emotions that come when you have to take those actions. 

It is hard to say no.

Because I guarantee when you say no more, and when you put a hard stop to the end of your workday and you tell your team you're not logging back on tonight, and when you push back, you tell someone you're not going to be at that meeting, or when you delegate to someone that isn't maybe quite as experienced as you like them to be, I guarantee that you are going to feel like you're disappointing people, like you're letting people down, like you're less than and not enough. You're going to feel guilty. Right? 

And along with those emotions are going to be thoughts like I should be able to get more done. I have to prove myself. They're going to think I'm not a team player. They're going to think that I don't care about work enough. They're going to think that I'm not a good manager. They're going to think, no, fill in the blank. 

I guarantee those are the thoughts and the emotions that are going to come up for you. 

Those big emotions and thoughts are actually what's getting in the way of you being able to be completely in control of your time and your priorities.

And it's preventing you from gaining back those five to seven to 10 hours in your work week that you could otherwise be spending. Doing something that brings you joy and something that is outside of the work realm along with those emotions are then, of course, going to be thoughts like, I should be able to get more done. I have to prove myself. They're going to think I'm not a team player. They're going to think that I don't care enough. They're going to think I'm not a good manager. They're going to think whatever it is, like, fill in the blank. 

I guarantee that you're going to think it. And it's these big emotions and these big thoughts that are the actual thing that need to be dealt with if you're going to learn how to, control your time and get back those five to 10 hours in your work week. 

The 3 C’s.

Now, before I dive into talking about how to handle those thoughts and emotions, let me make a connection for this in the three step process, right, the 3 C's, clarity, confidence and control. 

1: Clarity.

Now, the first step is clarity. And that has to be the first step, because you, you need to decide, right? you need to be crystal clear on exactly what your priorities and non negotiables are if you're ever actually going to protect them, if you're ever actually going to put them first, right? 

Are you going to make it home for dinner every night? Are you going to be the one that takes your kid to soccer practice? Are you going to make every soccer game? Do you want to attend field trips this school year? Do you want uninterrupted time from the moment that you get home to the moment your kids go to sleep? Do you want that to feel like sacred time, right, where there's no work? 

Or maybe your priorities are to have more fun in your life and at least have one activity that's just for you every single week, maybe that's your non negotiable. If you don't decide what your priorities are and go through the a process of some type of getting clear, writing those down, your brain's going to have no idea what it's trying to protect, right? 

It's going to have no idea what the boundary needs to be around. And believe me, it's always going to sound very convincing when it wants to compromise on your priorities, right. 

It's going to be so much easier to just work late or log back on or stay available or answer a message or do any of the things that you don't want to do that compromise on your, on your priorities. 

It's going to be really easy to do those things if your brain doesn't feel committed and clear on what those priorities are, right? So that's why clarity is really the first step. 

2: Confidence.

The second step is confidence and the reason for that is that when you go about the process of actually figuring out how to protect the things that are most important to you, those priorities, those non negotiables, when you actually kind of reverse engineer that and think about what you will really need to do in order to make that happen for you, in order to, for example, make it home for dinner every night at 05:00 if that's your priorities, you're going to have to come up with a list of ways to make that happen. 

Likely, you're going to have to delegate more. You're going to maybe have to have less meetings in your calendar so that you could be more productive in your day. But your brain is going to, for sure, at 05:00 when you go to leave work, for sure, it's going to think that you are not good enough and that you shouldn't be leaving and that you're terrible at your job. 

It's going to look at all of your male counterparts who don't leave the office at 05:00 to be with their family, and you're going to think to yourself, I'm not committed to this job. I'm not valuable. I shouldn't be here. Right. 

Your brain is going to have all these negative thoughts about you. But when your view of yourself is unshakeable, that's what confidence is. 

Remember, that's how I described it. When your view of yourself is unshakable, when you are feeling confident in who you are, no matter what anyone else thinks or what anyone else does, when your brain is able to be that confident, then those thoughts, those negative thoughts about yourself are able to just kind of roll off your back. Right? They're able to pass by your brain with so much more ease. 

We can't have your brain freaking out with all of those thoughts, all of the not good enough thoughts and shouting at you when you're going about trying to hold to your boundaries and hold to those priorities that you have. Right? So that's why it's number two. 

3: Control.

So then we come to the third c, the third step in the process, and that's control. If you've done the first two steps, well, then this step is going to be infinitely easier, I promise. So let's briefly talk about how to actually handle those big emotions and thoughts that come up when you go about attempting to, or when you go about the process, really of protecting the things that matter most to you. Another word we can use to describe that is just simply boundaries. 

Okay. now I've actually done an entire podcast episode on this. It's called pivoting. Okay, so I'm going to make sure I link to that as well. But there are six steps to pivoting. 

Essentially what I teach my clients to do is the moment that they notice the urge to compromise on their priorities, compromise on their boundaries, to not halter their boundaries. The moment that they notice the urge, right. The moment they start to feel that anxiety or that overwhelm or that not enoughness kind of well up in their body. Maybe it's the not enoughness, right? And they're saying things like, I can't leave the office now. There's too much to do. 

I told my client I get back to them today. What are they going to think if I don't? The moment they notice their brain is stuck, and I didn't do enough today. I should have done more. I could have done more. I'm terrible at my job. Whatever it sounds like in your brain, those big, negative thoughts. The moment my client hears those thoughts and notices the feelings, they walk through these six pivoting steps to make sure that they follow through that, essentially, they don't listen to those big emotions and those negative thoughts, and instead, they follow through with the things that matter most to them. 

Anyway, I have one client right now who's gotten really good actually following the six step pivot steps, so much so that they've just become really natural to her. Right. 

The circumstances that tend to really trigger her, that would have her compromise on her boundaries and so forth, she just is less triggered than she used to be then. 

One of the big ones for her, though, was whenever she would have a meeting with her boss. Meetings with her boss tended to have her spinning, so much so that she just couldn't shut down her work brain when she would get home. 

Those days, she would tend to come home feeling way more exhausted and felt like she couldn't even be present with her family. And so learning how to handle this triggering moment, these meetings with her boss, was a really important part of her plan, as we discussed, maintaining balance and calm and control kind of moving forward, because meetings with her boss tended to bring up all of these big emotions and negative thoughts. 

So I taught my client the six step pivot process that I will walk you through here in a moment. So that the moment that her brain starts to freak out, right. And she felt her heart beating really, really fast, and her body started to feel anxious. 

And I think she talked about having, like, the butterflies in her stomach the moment she noticed that she had a process to handle those big feelings and thoughts. So the emotions and the thoughts would come and they'd go with ease. T

he process does not take long, 30 seconds to a couple of minutes usually. But here it is. In brief, here are the six steps. 

Notice the emotions

The first one is to stop and notice the big thoughts and the emotions. 

Label the emotions

Number two is you need to label them. Just say what they are. 

Normalize the emotions

The third step is to normalize what you're feeling and thinking so that you stay out of self judgment. When you are living in self judgment, it is infinitely harder in order to follow through with your priorities in there and your boundaries and to feel good about yourself. Like, self judgment kind of kills all balance and happiness, if you will. 

So step three is to normalize what you're feeling. Stay out of self judgment. It's totally normal for those big feelings and those big thoughts to come up. Step number four is to then feel your feelings. This is the key moment, and this is the moment that most of my clients like to skip over, and I always have to remind them to come back to it. But it looks like breathing in, breathing deep, letting your heart beat a little faster, or that flutter in your stomach, that kind of experience, let it get a little bit more intense until it releases. 

Feel your feelings

That's step number four. That's actually the process of feeling your feelings. 

Remember your priorities

Step number five is to then remind yourself of your priorities and why they're important to you. This is the moment where you say, I know it's really hard to leave the office right now. It's 05:00. I barely got anything done that I wanted to get done today. And having dinner with my kids tonight and my family is infinitely more important than checking one more thing off the list, because they're the most important thing to me because I'm replaceable at work, but I'm not replaceable as a mom because I want to have everyday memories with my kids. And this is what gets me through the rest of my days, because I want to be a mom that's really present. I want my kids to know that they're the number one priority, whatever it is you bring up for you, what your priority is and why in this moment. 

And then the last step is to take an immediate kind of action step that supports your non negotiable or your priority, whatever it is, whatever that's looking to be compromised in that moment, you take an immediate step to kind of counter that. Right. 

Those are the six steps. This is the process. It almost feels magical. It sounds simple, and it is simple. It only takes 30 seconds to a couple of minutes, but it brings almost instant calm and control. It brings this freedom in just a matter of a couple of moments. 

My clients just simply get better and better at following these six steps, so it just starts to become a natural way of processing things. 

They notice those big emotions and feelings that would have them compromise on their priorities. They go through the six steps 30 seconds to a couple of minutes later, they feel better. They recommit back into the priorities and why those priorities are important. 

Sometimes you got to go through this process multiple times a day. For me, 5-10 times a day. There's been times that I've had to do that in order to, like, get myself through big, big moments where I would often compromise on my priorities. But you just simply get better and better and better. 

Controlling your time is easy, right? You could read any productivity book out there. You can learn the tips and the hacks on what you need to do to be more efficient and be more focused with your time. 

The challenge is not how to control your time, it’s dealing with all of the emotions and thoughts that come with it. 

I've gotten so good at coaching women through the pivoting process that if for some reason it's not working for them or it wouldn't work for you, I always know exactly what they need to do in order to tweak it and get right back on track. 

Very busy, overwhelmed, and on the verge of burnout - working moms come to me thinking their circumstances are different. They tell me they're busy. They tell me their job is more demanding, that their family situation is more unique. 

But in the end, it is not the circumstance that dictates if you get to live the life that you want, it is you. 

You are in control of your yes. And you know you are in control of how you spend your time and what makes it into your calendar and what you prioritize. The only thing that ever stands in your way of having the life and prioritizing in the way that you want is a big feeling. 

And I could teach you exactly how to overcome those thoughts and feelings and have the exact life that you want. 

I am your coach.

If you are ready to gain back those five to 7 hours that you could be spending with your family, with your kids, or maybe take up a hobby or get committed back in. Back into working out whatever it is you would do with those five to 7 hours. If you're ready to take them back, then I am your coach. 

Schedule that free breakthrough call where I will walk you through this exact process for creating a life that you will never regret. 

You can go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com. That is my website, to learn more about the coaching that I do. Schedule that free call. 

All right, working moms, next week we're going to talk about the second part of control that is all about controlling your energy. 

You cannot feel exhausted and burned out all the time if you want to have a life that feels balanced. 

So next week we're going to be talking about how to close up those energy leaks and how to fill up your cups so that you're not always operating on empty. 

But until then, working moms, let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson