115. How to Use Your Time Well
It’s the new year, and you know what that means…
Lots of pressure to magically be an entirely different person who does everything perfectly.
Sigh.
That will not be happening (obviously).
And you know what?
It’s totally ok that it won’t.
And you can still get lots of things accomplished and have a year that blows your mind.
You don’t have to magically transform into a new you.
But you may need some new tools, and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you on today’s podcast.
It’s all about how to use your time well in 2023.
No magical transformation required.
Listen in to find out how.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How to get back on track after taking a break.
Why time is a construct.
A deep dive into two ways of thinking about time.
Why someone else’s thought might not work for you.
What using your time well looks like.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about using your time well.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. Happy, happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a glorious day. Welcome to 2023, so exciting. Still feels like the future, but here we are. I wanted to, before we dive into our topic I wanted to tell y’all that I have been meaning to sit down and record a podcast all week.
I know you always get them at the same time, but I just wanted to give you some behind the scenes view of what’s going on, or a behind the scenes view of what’s going on. Which is that when I record a podcast on my weekly cadence, I’m pretty good about it. And I’m like, oh yeah, sitting down to have a conversation with my people, tell them amazing interesting stuff that’s going to help them have a much better experience in their career and a much better experience in their life.
But sometimes I get off of that cadence and then I notice that sometimes I avoid sitting down to do my podcast. And it’s interesting because what comes up for me is that it can feel kind of vulnerable. It can feel weird. I’m like, oh, I got to sit on the floor in the spare bedroom, that’s where I record podcasts, y’all, no judgment, and talk to an empty room about ideas and concepts.
And that can feel kind of daunting. Kind of like who am I to sit on the floor and talk about ideas and concepts? And there’s part of my brain that sometimes doesn’t want to. And I’m sharing that with y’all because I am pretty sure that y’all are having similar experiences about something you want to do in your life.
And maybe it’s something that when you get into the habit of doing it, it’s easy to keep the habit up, like me and podcasting. But then sometimes if you take a little break for whatever reason, like maybe you had a holiday or maybe you had a disruption to your schedule, or maybe something else. Like if it’s a habit like running, maybe you hurt your knee a little bit and you take some time off, getting started again can feel hard and scary and vulnerable.
And it can feel that way even if it’s something you have a lot of experience doing, a lot of practice doing, something that makes total sense for you to do. I’ve been podcasting for over two years, I have over 100 podcasts. I know how to record a podcast and I’ve helped dozens and dozens and dozens of clients in my own business and hundreds, probably thousands in Kara Loewentheil’s business when I used to be a Clutch coach.
I know how to coach people. I know how to add value. I know how to explain and teach things that will help my clients. And by clients, that includes you, whether you ever come work with me in one of my programs or not, you’re my client because you’ve listened to my podcast. So I know how to help you have a better experience at work and in your life. I know how to help you have less work stress. I know how to help you have better relationships at work and everywhere else.
I know how to do all these things and yet sometimes when I sit down to record a podcast, especially if it’s been more than seven days since I’ve recorded one, my brain absolutely is like losing it’s shit, going like, “No, it’ll be embarrassing, you won’t have anything to say, you’ll say something silly.” Like whatever my brain is saying.
And I know y’all are experiencing that too, so I just want to model that at every level that’s normal. So if you’re having thoughts like that, it doesn’t mean anything about you, it doesn’t mean anything about your capability. And also if you’re having thoughts like that you can overcome them. And guess what? It’s not actually that hard.
So for me with the podcasting, I need to remember why I’m doing it, which is I’m doing it for all of you. I’m doing it because I believe deeply in the power of coaching and I want there to be a free resource. Working with me in my programs costs money, and I believe it’s extremely worth the money it costs and much, much more. I believe it pays dividends, and that’s what my clients continue to tell me for months and years on end after they’ve worked with me.
And also, I know that in this world we’re not all in the same kind of financial situations, and I know that we don’t all have the same access to money and to credit and to things like that. And I want my work to be able to help people at every level. So it really matters deeply to me to put out a free resource like the podcast. And so that’s why I do this. And when I can tap into that why, it is helpful for me in overcoming the resistance that I have to sitting down and recording a podcast.
Another thing that’s helpful is remembering who I am and what my credentials are. And I’m obviously not perfect, I tell y’all about that all the time, but I do have a lot to teach, right? I have a lot that I know can be helpful. And that’s also useful in getting me to sit down and record the podcast.
And then beyond that, it’s also just like I can appreciate the parts of me that don’t want to. And I can appreciate that it feels maybe scary, or it feels hard, or like I said before, it feels vulnerable. And I can appreciate those. So it’s not just about buckling down or forcing yourself, it’s also about having tenderness for the parts of you that feel scared. And then just still reminding them like, yeah, it’s totally okay to feel scared, and we’re going to do it anyways and we can.
And then the final piece is just getting started. So when I, in my life, put things off, often the longer I put them off, the more I want to put them off. And when I know that, then it’s just such a helpful thing for me to think about is like, oh, it’ll feel so much better if I just get back to it. And I’m going to remind myself of my why, I’m going to remind myself who the fuck I am. I’m going to remind myself about my credentials. I’m going to remind myself that it’s not that hard to just get started.
And I’m going to remind myself that it’s okay and makes sense if I feel scared, nervous, anxious, vulnerable, any of those things. And I can treat those emotions with tenderness. Because I think a lot of us when we feel scared or vulnerable, then we belittle ourselves about that, like oh, you shouldn’t feel scared.
I just disagree with that. I’m like, yeah, it makes total sense that you would feel scared, like you’re recording a podcast that like hundreds or thousands, I don’t know how many of you there are, but like hundreds or thousands of people are going to listen to, and that is going to exist for as long as like the podcast exists, which is probably a long time.
And I could see why that would feel scary, but it’s not so scary that we can’t do it. And so this is for all of y’all as well. Like if there’s been something that you used to do that you want to get back to doing that you’ve been putting off, and now it’s the new year so you’re like, oh, maybe it’s the right time to start doing this again, this is what you can do.
You can circle back to like what’s your why? Why would you even do that? Is there even a good reason? If there’s not a good reason, maybe you don’t ever need to circle back to it. If there is a good reason, great, now you know what it is and then you can remember who the fuck you are.
So like I’m Kori fucking Linn and you’re whatever your first name is fucking last name. Like you’re so much more of a badass than you even know, and your badassery is irrelevant to your ability to do this thing that you used to do. So don’t forget who you are, and don’t forget what you’ve accomplished, and don’t forget what you’re capable of.
And I realize that it doesn’t always feel like we’ve accomplished that much or that we’re capable of that much. So maybe if that’s where you are, take a moment to remember what you have accomplished, what you are capable of, what you have done, especially as it relates to whatever you’re trying to restart doing.
And then you can look at whatever feelings are sort of in the way and treat them with love and tenderness and respect that like yeah, of course you’re scared, of course you’re nervous, of course it feels vulnerable. And we can do it and we’re going to do it together. And by together I mean you and you, you and the feeling. By together on my side I mean me and me, me and my feeling.
And then, of course, just remember that our brain likes to act like getting started is super hard, but it’s actually super easy. It’s just one decision and then we just start taking action. And then we take action and do it and then take another action, take another action, take another action. It’s not actually that much harder to come sit here and record a podcast than it is to sit on my couch and scroll TikToks.
Don’t worry, I still have plenty of time to do that and I do a lot of it. But it’s not actually that much harder to sit down and do this. It’s just one decision and then decision, decision, decision, like follow through, follow through, follow through the same way I can swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe on TikTok.
Okay, so that’s just my little preamble about like how to get back to things when you’ve taken a little break, whether you took a little break on purpose, or whether you took a little break, like me this week, where I don’t remember something happened that like I prioritized doing something else instead of recording the podcast. And then I sat down to record a podcast and my computer wasn’t working properly.
And then I think yesterday I just decided I didn’t want to, which is also fine, right? Like just because I decided I didn’t want to didn’t mean I was never coming back. Because here I am today and I’m doing it and it’s going to get done and it’s going to be great.
So it can be like that for you too. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve tried to rebuild the habit and then not done it. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you used to do it, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. I believe in you, so do it. All right? Okay.
So now I want to talk about a specific useful thought that one of my SAF clients came up with that I absolutely love. And it may be a thought that you want to absorb and start using and upload to your brain. Or it may just inspire you to think of something else that might be more fun for you.
So we were talking about time and about how there’s always more stuff to do, stuff we want to do, than time we have. And, of course, time is also a construct. And if that sounds like new information to you, basically what that means is time is made up, time is something that humans made up. It doesn’t really exist, it’s just like us choosing to measure something.
And there are a lot of different ideas about time, like different laws, like I think one is called Parkinson’s Law, which is the idea that a task will stretch to fill as much time as you give it. And then there’s this other law, I always forget the name of it, I always call it Pareto’s law, but I think that's actually not its name.
Anyways, the idea is that like 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your work. So that’s not exactly about time, that’s more about work. But basically, I think it’s kind of about time because it’s like, oh, if you want to get time back without cutting your results, you have to figure out which of the things you’re doing are actually creating the results, and then cut out all the other stuff you were doing that wasn’t creating the results.
And in the coaching industry there's a lot of ideas about how you can control your time, and get the most out of your time, and use your time well, and create more time. And some of these ideas are really fun and spectacular and may spark like really interesting ideas in your brain. And some of them you may have a lot of resistance to.
I think a lot of people have a lot of resistance to the idea that they can have as much time as they want or that they create time. I think those ideas sound really good, but people don’t always know how to engage with them.
For me, one of my most useful thoughts is like I always have enough time to get the important things done. And what that does for me is it really invites me to consider what is actually important and what’s not. And what’s faux important, right? Like what’s pretending it’s super important, but when I dig in, like we were talking about earlier, when I dig into the why is it actually super important or is it just acting like it is?
And, of course, for so much of this, a lot of what we’re choosing to do with our time is what we were socialized to do with our time, right? Growing up, we might have been taught that we have to do things a certain way. Or like our house has to be a certain way to be presentable. Or we have to do certain things on certain days of the week. Or we have to like to send presents to certain people at certain times of the year.
Like there are all these things that we’re taught about what we have to do to be a good person, what we have to do to lead a good life. And so as you’re working on your relationship to time, and maybe like probably that’s related to your relationship to being busy, because for a lot of people currently, they feel super fucking busy.
And a lot of us are super fucking busy, but I think what I see with that is like we’re super fucking busy because we’re trying to live up to everyone’s standards and in a culture where there’s always going to be more that we could be doing than that we can do, right? And we’ve talked about this in some of the other podcasts.
But I want to circle back to what my client told me, in which my client decided that these other thoughts about time that sound like really beneficial, weren’t landing for them and so they weren’t going to use them. And this is a really important part of coaching and thought work. Just because a thought sounds good to someone else doesn’t mean it’s going to be useful for you.
When you’re changing your thoughts, you have to change them to thoughts that are useful for you. If you change them to thoughts that are useful for someone else, that’s not necessarily helpful. And it might actually make you feel really shitty because you’re thinking that the thought should be really helping, and it’s not really helping.
Okay, so the thought that my client came up with was I use my time well. I use my time well. And I wanted to offer this thought to you because it probably is like what you want to be thinking, but probably not what you have been thinking about yourself.
And you may be looking at me wild eyed like, Kori, how could I possibly start thinking I use my time well? And I think that’s a great question. And you probably meant it as rhetorical, but we’re actually going to answer it.
Okay, so this is where I want to get into the idea that thoughts create feelings, and feelings create actions, and actions create results in our lives. And we’ve talked about this before from time to time. This kind of cause and effect cycle is taught in a coaching tool that I use in my program called the model. If you’ve done other coaching programs you may already be familiar with it. If you’re not already familiar with it, that’s okay.
What I just want you to think about right this minute is that when we have a thought in our head, it creates a feeling in our body. And then from that feeling, create actions, and we also create inactions. And then the collection of the thought, the feeling, the actions and the inaction creates a result in our life.
So what I see with so many people is they have the thought, “I don’t have enough time.” And when they have the thought I don’t have enough time, they feel a feeling in their body. Now, this may vary by person to person, not everyone’s going to have the same feeling about the same thought. But let’s just take a guess that when someone thinks I don’t have enough time, they’re going to feel stressed.
And when people feel stressed, what do they do? How do they act? What do they not do, right? What are their inactions? So the person having the thought, “I don’t have enough time,” they feel stressed. And what I see over and over and over and over again in my business is that when people feel stressed, one of two things tends to happen. Either they rush and try to do things as fast as they can, or, and I actually see this a lot more, they avoid the thing.
When they feel stressed, they avoid the task they’re supposed to be doing. So let’s take these one by one. If you’re thinking, “I don’t have enough time,” and you feel stressed and then you’re like, like this actually still happens to me. I’m like four and a half years into my coaching business and sometimes I’m thinking like, ah. Like I don’t think I have the thought I don’t have enough time, but I have another thought that creates stress.
And then what I do is I open up my phone and I scroll on TikTok, or I scroll on Instagram, or I check my email even though it’s not a time that I’ve set aside to check my email, it’s not email answering time. And I’m not even checking the email to answer it, I’m just checking it to do something. Maybe you too have experienced this, right?
And so then what I’m not doing, right, so there’s the action, open the phone, scroll, check all the little things. And what I’m not doing is figuring out what’s most important and doing it. I’m not negotiating deadlines. I’m not having conversations with other smart people about what I can do and how I can get things done. I’m not streamlining my to-do list. I’m not doing anything that’s usefully pushing me towards my goal. And what am I doing? I’m scrolling social media, right?
And so the thought, I don’t have enough time. Okay, it’s a feeling of stress. The feeling of stress creates me getting online and to social media or checking my email when it’s not time to do so. And not even answering emails, just checking them and looking at them. And then the result is I don’t have enough time to do the thing.
But it’s not because there’s not enough time in existence. It’s not because there’s not enough time in my life. It’s because I’m taking the time I do have and I’m using it to do something else. And so when I spend that time elsewhere, then of course I don’t have time to do the thing. Not because I don’t have time to do the thing, but because that’s not how I’ve used the time I do have.
Okay, now let’s look at the other example. The thought “I don’t have enough time” could create the feeling of stress. And maybe for you, instead of creating the action of avoiding by doing something else, maybe it creates the action of rushing.
So here’s what I see when I see people rush, they start trying to work on something right away, but they don’t take time, again, what they’re not doing is they’re not taking time to prioritize. They’re not taking time to ask what their why is. They’re not taking time to ask what really matters. They’re not taking time to circle back with their boss and be like I have six things to do and enough time to do four. Here are the four I think it should be, do you agree? Do you not agree?
That’s actually something I did a lot when I worked in corporate, is I would take the tasks I had and then I would prioritize them in what I thought made sense. And then I would check in with my boss to find out what he thought to see like, you know, I’m showing him that I took the initiative to organize my tasks and then to prioritize them.
And then I’m checking in with him because he’s in meetings I’m not in and he has like visibility and like strategic whatever, whatever that I didn’t have. And so I was checking my prioritization by him to find out if I had missed anything so that I wouldn’t get an unpleasant surprise later.
And so when people think I don’t have enough time, that’s often something I’m seeing them not do. That’s an inaction, right? The action is usually that they start working, but often they don’t start working on the thing that matters most because when they think I don’t have enough time and they feel that feeling of stress, they’re not like thinking clearly. They’re not thinking with their prefrontal cortex. They’re reacting, like in a stress response and working from that place of being stressed, right?
So what this also looks like is sometimes people do their work really fast and then the work actually isn’t as good as work that they could have done. And so then they end up having to do it later, which is another way that it seems like they don’t have enough time, but it’s because of the way we used the time, right?
Or they don’t redo it later, but it just has a bunch of mistakes in it. Or they do like whatever is first on their to-do list, not the thing that matters most. Or, and I see this a lot, they end up doing a lot of work that actually shouldn’t even be their work because when they’re thinking I don’t have enough time and they’re feeling stressed, they’re not looking strategically at like, okay, what would it make sense to delegate? What would it make sense to just not do?
They’re just trying to like rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, or like run away, actually. Sometimes people are trying to run away from the feeling. And so like in the other model that we first looked at, they might try to run away from the feeling of stress by avoiding, by scrolling social media or opening their email like I do sometimes or whatever. And this one they may try to run away through doing, but again, not thoughtful doing, not strategic doing.
And I think this is part of what people don’t want to admit to themselves, is that working from that headspace of I don’t have enough time isn’t effective. Because I think a lot of people feel really stressed out by how many demands are on their life and how many demands are on their time. And they may even feel attacked or insulted when I’m saying that people aren’t strategic and they aren’t doing their best work.
And I want to be really clear, it’s not an attack, it’s not an insult. I see you suffering, and I want to help you alleviate that suffering. I see you feeling overwhelmed and I want to help you get out from under that overwhelm. I see you feeling stressed and I want to help you create a life where you do a lot of work and get a lot of shit done, if that’s what matters to you, but in a way that feels calmer and more relaxed and where you feel a lot more like delight and confidence and where you can actually enjoy your work.
So this is not an attack at all on you, this is just me looking from the side going like, I just think there’s a better way that you would enjoy more. But the thing is, if you really deeply, deeply are attached to this idea that you don’t have enough time, you may feel threatened by me coming in and saying there’s a better way.
That may feel like your way of life is being attacked. It may feel like your identity is being attacked. It may feel like your intelligence is being attacked. It may feel like I just don’t fucking get it. Like I’m just, you know, a life coach and I don’t understand what it’s like to actually work in that fast paced environment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But I have worked in many fast paced environments, and I’ve also coached people at every level from individual contributor to managers, senior managers, VPs, SVPs, CEOs, and I’ve seen this play out again and again and again.
So if you feel defensive, what I want you to know is that’s okay, I get it, I feel defensive a lot too. I’ve had to coach myself so much on feeling defensive over the years, about coaching from other people, about coaching from myself, about all kinds of things. So you’re in good company here.
And also, what I really want to impress upon you is that there is a better way and you can have access to it. And as we talked about in a recent episode, and I kind of was talking about this a little earlier, it may feel really vulnerable to you. It may feel really extremely, excruciatingly vulnerable to believe that there’s a better way. You may feel like I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes, to use a cliché, or something like that because it’s so alien from your current experience.
But what I’m trying to show you by walking you through the models is when this happens, it’s not because you’re a bad person, it’s not because you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s not because you want to be busy on a conscious level or because you want to use your time badly. It’s because when we have the thought, “I don’t have enough time” and we feel the feeling stress, these are the actions that flow from that.
And those actions would flow from that for many, many people, not just you. It’s not a youth thing, it’s about a pattern. And it’s about understanding that that thought creates that feeling, creates that action, and those inactions and that’s a pattern. And then if we want to change the pattern, we need to change the thought, not just our actions.
And if we want to change that pattern, the way to change that pattern is by learning to think differently, because when we think differently, we feel differently. And when we feel differently we have access to a different set of actions and inactions.
Now, you can sometimes also get all the way to the feeling line of stress and then interrupt that. Usually when we interrupt that though, we’re interrupting it with a new thought that helps us get into a more useful pattern. Before we talk about the new thought, which I’ve actually already told you, let’s complete this model, though.
So the thought is, I don’t have enough time. The feeling is stressed, and the action is do a bunch of work but non strategically, right? And the inaction is we don’t talk to our peers, or our supervisor, or our direct reports about what could be pushed and what needs to be done. We don’t prioritize. We don’t think about our why. We don’t think about what really matters most. We don’t ask for help.
I see this a lot where people are so extremely busy and they have resources that they could delegate to or ask for help from. But they don’t do that because it’s like they think they don’t have time for that even. But then that creates even more of them not having time because then no one else can even do the work because we never took the time to train anyone because we didn’t have time to, right?
So sometimes it is like an investment of our time up front to get some of our time back later. But what I mostly want you to see is how when you think this thought and feel this feeling, it creates all these actions and inactions. And you can test this out for yourself, you can think about what is my most painful thought about time, and what do I feel in my body when I think that? And then what do I do and not do? What actions and inactions are created by that?
Okay, so what’s the result, like of that model? The result is you don’t have enough time. But the only reason you don’t have enough time is because you are thinking you don’t. And the way you act when you think you don’t results in you working in a way that makes the time you do have not enough.
And a lot of times what I see is we’re making the time we do have not enough because we’re not prioritizing. Or we’re making the time we do have not enough because we’re trying to be a perfectionist and do everything perfectly. Or we’re making the time we do have not enough because we’re not willing to push back on deadlines, we’re not willing to push back on stakeholders, we’re not willing to make tough choices.
But guess what? Things get left behind anyways. If you have more to do than you have time, something’s not going to get done. And if you’re not strategic about what that thing is, then it’s still going to be something not getting done. But you’re like not even picking what matters least, it's sort of just like leaving it up to like whatever the last thing on your to-do list is.
And I see this happen a lot where people do continue to succeed and achieve at work. But what gets left undone is their relationship with their significant other. What gets left undone is their relationship with their kids. What gets left undone is like their hobbies. What gets left undone is their side hustle. What gets left in done is, you know, their health, their movement routines, all these other things.
And they keep thinking, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough time to do everything. And they keep feeling stressed and they keep creating more and more of what they don’t want.
Okay, so this is where we’re going to circle back to that thought that my client told me worked for them, which is I use my time well. Can’t you just feel your body relax when you think I use my time well? And if you don’t feel your body relax and you feel it tense up, you might need to try a variation. You might try it’s possible I could use my time well. Or I’m becoming a person who uses my time well. Or maybe one day I can be a person who uses my time well.
These are called modifications, and when a new thought is too far away from our old thought, sometimes we need to modify it like a little stair step to be able to get to a place where we could believe it. But let’s just pretend for a minute that you did believe that thought I use my time well and you just never thought it.
So this happens a lot where there’s a thought that’s more useful, but it’s never occurred to you to think it. And then you’ll hear someone like me say it and you’ll be like, “Oh shit.” So try it on in your body and let’s pretend it works. And so the thought is, I use my time well. And for my client, they already believed this.
I don’t think they actually had to like ladder up or like stair step up or practice the thought over and over again to believe it. It just had to occur to them that they could choose this thought instead of there’s not enough time or I don’t have enough time.
Okay, so when they think the thought, I use my time well, I’m not exactly sure 100% which feeling they have, but when I think that I feel confident. And when I feel confident, what do I do? I’m like, oh, well, I use my time well and I feel confident about that. So then I figure out how to use my time well, right?
So if I have five minutes, or 45 minutes, or four days, or six weeks, or 10 years, when I think the thought I use my time well and I feel confident, then I take that time and I use it well. And that’s like a very high level. So if we want to really drill into this, probably for me it would look like looking at the list of things that I needed to do and making strategic choices about what matters most and making choices about what to cut or let go of.
For me, I use my time well would also mean calendaring lots of time for rest, lots of time to connect with my loved ones. Lots of time for space for thinking, lots of time for walks. And then I use my time well at work would be figuring out what actually creates the most results. So like circling all the way back to I called it Pareto’s law, I don’t know if that’s what it’s actually called. Whatever it’s called, the idea that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts.
So if I believe I use my time well, then I’m going to be like, cool, cool, cool, what would be the best use of my time? What’s going to give me the most results for the least amount of activity? How do I do the best job at this in the shortest amount of time so that I don’t have to redo it? And often for me, that means focusing on something.
When I believe I use my time well, one of my actions is like I don’t try to do 68 things at once. I’m like, okay, I’m going to write this Instagram post. And I just focus on it, and I just write it, and then it’s done and then I post it. And if it has a typo in it and someone tells me about it, I just go later and I fix it, right? So it’s not agonizing over everything. It’s not thinking about like, well what would be the most useful?
So I guess one part of this also is like inside of the idea I use my time well, is my willingness to make decisions. A lot of us spend so much time agonizing over decisions, and I’m here to tell you like I get that because I’ve agonized a lot too. But agonizing often doesn’t help things. And when we believe I use my time well and we feel confident and we can just confidently make decisions, then things move forward and we get shit done.
And guess what? I use my time well isn’t about being a perfectionist, it’s not about using my time perfectly. It’s about trusting that I use my time well enough and that I can also learn. Sometimes I’m going to use my time and it’s not going to be the best way I could have used it. And then I can learn and evaluate and that doesn’t have to threaten my idea I use my time well. I can become a person who uses my time even better, right?
So any new thought we’re thinking, it’s so important that you don’t use it as like a perfectionist bludgeon to beat yourself with. It’s about like I move in this direction and everything is taking me in this direction. And part of going in this direction is learning how to go in this direction well. Failures are part of our path, they don’t mean we’ve fallen off of it.
So what’s the result? When I think I use my time well and I feel confident, and then I look at my to-do list and I prioritize, and I strategize, and I talk to other people about what I can do and not do and what I can let fall off. And I make decisions about not being willing to sacrifice the quality of something just so I can try to fit more things in when I can’t actually fit more things in. And I make decisions, and I focus and I just get shit done. The result is I use my time well. My time is well used.
Not because I’m amazing, although let’s be honest, I am amazing. I use my time well because of that thought pattern. When we think I use my time well and we feel confident, then we will use our time well. And we’ll be like, oh, I have two hours? I use my time well, so what is a good use of this time?
And so like what my client was saying is like if they have a block of two hours, now they think, oh, I use my time well. So then they’re thinking what’s a good use of this time? And they’re focused on using their time well, and getting done, what is going to matter most in that block of time that they have.
And again, it doesn’t mean everything gets done. Part of this work is about realizing that we’ve been socialized to do more than could possibly ever be done. We’ve been socialized to hold standards for ourselves that are impossible to meet. And so using our time well doesn’t mean we’re going to meet all those magical, weird, impossible standards that we were taught as a kid.
Using our time well means that we are going to decide what it means for time to be well used. And then we are going to do that and we’re going to be confident in our choices. And we’re going to evaluate when we have fuck ups and we’re going to iterate and we’re going to keep going. And that’s how you use your time well.
To use your time well, you’ve got to believe that you can. If you always believe there’s never enough time, that’s what you’re going to create for yourself. Not because there isn’t as much time or isn’t enough, but just because of the way that we feel and the way that we act when we think that thought.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all today. And if you thought this was really cool and loved this breakdown of like this thought creates this feeling, creates these actions and inactions, creates these results, That’s exactly the work that we do in Satisfied As Fuck. And we do it about all kinds of stuff, everything that’s going to help you have a more satisfying life and career.
So we’re going to talk about time, we’re going to talk about relationships, we’re going to talk about money, we’re going to talk about body. We’re going to talk about everything and anything you want to talk about. So come sign up for a consult and let’s have a conversation about if you’re a good fit for the next round because I would love to have those conversations with you and help you get more of what you want out of life by changing your thoughts.
All right, thanks y’all. Have a great week.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. Happy, happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a glorious day. Welcome to 2023, so exciting. Still feels like the future, but here we are. I wanted to, before we dive into our topic I wanted to tell y’all that I have been meaning to sit down and record a podcast all week.
I know you always get them at the same time, but I just wanted to give you some behind the scenes view of what’s going on, or a behind the scenes view of what’s going on. Which is that when I record a podcast on my weekly cadence, I’m pretty good about it. And I’m like, oh yeah, sitting down to have a conversation with my people, tell them amazing interesting stuff that’s going to help them have a much better experience in their career and a much better experience in their life.
But sometimes I get off of that cadence and then I notice that sometimes I avoid sitting down to do my podcast. And it’s interesting because what comes up for me is that it can feel kind of vulnerable. It can feel weird. I’m like, oh, I got to sit on the floor in the spare bedroom, that’s where I record podcasts, y’all, no judgment, and talk to an empty room about ideas and concepts.
And that can feel kind of daunting. Kind of like who am I to sit on the floor and talk about ideas and concepts? And there’s part of my brain that sometimes doesn’t want to. And I’m sharing that with y’all because I am pretty sure that y’all are having similar experiences about something you want to do in your life.
And maybe it’s something that when you get into the habit of doing it, it’s easy to keep the habit up, like me and podcasting. But then sometimes if you take a little break for whatever reason, like maybe you had a holiday or maybe you had a disruption to your schedule, or maybe something else. Like if it’s a habit like running, maybe you hurt your knee a little bit and you take some time off, getting started again can feel hard and scary and vulnerable.
And it can feel that way even if it’s something you have a lot of experience doing, a lot of practice doing, something that makes total sense for you to do. I’ve been podcasting for over two years, I have over 100 podcasts. I know how to record a podcast and I’ve helped dozens and dozens and dozens of clients in my own business and hundreds, probably thousands in Kara Loewentheil’s business when I used to be a Clutch coach.
I know how to coach people. I know how to add value. I know how to explain and teach things that will help my clients. And by clients, that includes you, whether you ever come work with me in one of my programs or not, you’re my client because you’ve listened to my podcast. So I know how to help you have a better experience at work and in your life. I know how to help you have less work stress. I know how to help you have better relationships at work and everywhere else.
I know how to do all these things and yet sometimes when I sit down to record a podcast, especially if it’s been more than seven days since I’ve recorded one, my brain absolutely is like losing it’s shit, going like, “No, it’ll be embarrassing, you won’t have anything to say, you’ll say something silly.” Like whatever my brain is saying.
And I know y’all are experiencing that too, so I just want to model that at every level that’s normal. So if you’re having thoughts like that, it doesn’t mean anything about you, it doesn’t mean anything about your capability. And also if you’re having thoughts like that you can overcome them. And guess what? It’s not actually that hard.
So for me with the podcasting, I need to remember why I’m doing it, which is I’m doing it for all of you. I’m doing it because I believe deeply in the power of coaching and I want there to be a free resource. Working with me in my programs costs money, and I believe it’s extremely worth the money it costs and much, much more. I believe it pays dividends, and that’s what my clients continue to tell me for months and years on end after they’ve worked with me.
And also, I know that in this world we’re not all in the same kind of financial situations, and I know that we don’t all have the same access to money and to credit and to things like that. And I want my work to be able to help people at every level. So it really matters deeply to me to put out a free resource like the podcast. And so that’s why I do this. And when I can tap into that why, it is helpful for me in overcoming the resistance that I have to sitting down and recording a podcast.
Another thing that’s helpful is remembering who I am and what my credentials are. And I’m obviously not perfect, I tell y’all about that all the time, but I do have a lot to teach, right? I have a lot that I know can be helpful. And that’s also useful in getting me to sit down and record the podcast.
And then beyond that, it’s also just like I can appreciate the parts of me that don’t want to. And I can appreciate that it feels maybe scary, or it feels hard, or like I said before, it feels vulnerable. And I can appreciate those. So it’s not just about buckling down or forcing yourself, it’s also about having tenderness for the parts of you that feel scared. And then just still reminding them like, yeah, it’s totally okay to feel scared, and we’re going to do it anyways and we can.
And then the final piece is just getting started. So when I, in my life, put things off, often the longer I put them off, the more I want to put them off. And when I know that, then it’s just such a helpful thing for me to think about is like, oh, it’ll feel so much better if I just get back to it. And I’m going to remind myself of my why, I’m going to remind myself who the fuck I am. I’m going to remind myself about my credentials. I’m going to remind myself that it’s not that hard to just get started.
And I’m going to remind myself that it’s okay and makes sense if I feel scared, nervous, anxious, vulnerable, any of those things. And I can treat those emotions with tenderness. Because I think a lot of us when we feel scared or vulnerable, then we belittle ourselves about that, like oh, you shouldn’t feel scared.
I just disagree with that. I’m like, yeah, it makes total sense that you would feel scared, like you’re recording a podcast that like hundreds or thousands, I don’t know how many of you there are, but like hundreds or thousands of people are going to listen to, and that is going to exist for as long as like the podcast exists, which is probably a long time.
And I could see why that would feel scary, but it’s not so scary that we can’t do it. And so this is for all of y’all as well. Like if there’s been something that you used to do that you want to get back to doing that you’ve been putting off, and now it’s the new year so you’re like, oh, maybe it’s the right time to start doing this again, this is what you can do.
You can circle back to like what’s your why? Why would you even do that? Is there even a good reason? If there’s not a good reason, maybe you don’t ever need to circle back to it. If there is a good reason, great, now you know what it is and then you can remember who the fuck you are.
So like I’m Kori fucking Linn and you’re whatever your first name is fucking last name. Like you’re so much more of a badass than you even know, and your badassery is irrelevant to your ability to do this thing that you used to do. So don’t forget who you are, and don’t forget what you’ve accomplished, and don’t forget what you’re capable of.
And I realize that it doesn’t always feel like we’ve accomplished that much or that we’re capable of that much. So maybe if that’s where you are, take a moment to remember what you have accomplished, what you are capable of, what you have done, especially as it relates to whatever you’re trying to restart doing.
And then you can look at whatever feelings are sort of in the way and treat them with love and tenderness and respect that like yeah, of course you’re scared, of course you’re nervous, of course it feels vulnerable. And we can do it and we’re going to do it together. And by together I mean you and you, you and the feeling. By together on my side I mean me and me, me and my feeling.
And then, of course, just remember that our brain likes to act like getting started is super hard, but it’s actually super easy. It’s just one decision and then we just start taking action. And then we take action and do it and then take another action, take another action, take another action. It’s not actually that much harder to come sit here and record a podcast than it is to sit on my couch and scroll TikToks.
Don’t worry, I still have plenty of time to do that and I do a lot of it. But it’s not actually that much harder to sit down and do this. It’s just one decision and then decision, decision, decision, like follow through, follow through, follow through the same way I can swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe on TikTok.
Okay, so that’s just my little preamble about like how to get back to things when you’ve taken a little break, whether you took a little break on purpose, or whether you took a little break, like me this week, where I don’t remember something happened that like I prioritized doing something else instead of recording the podcast. And then I sat down to record a podcast and my computer wasn’t working properly.
And then I think yesterday I just decided I didn’t want to, which is also fine, right? Like just because I decided I didn’t want to didn’t mean I was never coming back. Because here I am today and I’m doing it and it’s going to get done and it’s going to be great.
So it can be like that for you too. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve tried to rebuild the habit and then not done it. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you used to do it, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. I believe in you, so do it. All right? Okay.
So now I want to talk about a specific useful thought that one of my SAF clients came up with that I absolutely love. And it may be a thought that you want to absorb and start using and upload to your brain. Or it may just inspire you to think of something else that might be more fun for you.
So we were talking about time and about how there’s always more stuff to do, stuff we want to do, than time we have. And, of course, time is also a construct. And if that sounds like new information to you, basically what that means is time is made up, time is something that humans made up. It doesn’t really exist, it’s just like us choosing to measure something.
And there are a lot of different ideas about time, like different laws, like I think one is called Parkinson’s Law, which is the idea that a task will stretch to fill as much time as you give it. And then there’s this other law, I always forget the name of it, I always call it Pareto’s law, but I think that's actually not its name.
Anyways, the idea is that like 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your work. So that’s not exactly about time, that’s more about work. But basically, I think it’s kind of about time because it’s like, oh, if you want to get time back without cutting your results, you have to figure out which of the things you’re doing are actually creating the results, and then cut out all the other stuff you were doing that wasn’t creating the results.
And in the coaching industry there's a lot of ideas about how you can control your time, and get the most out of your time, and use your time well, and create more time. And some of these ideas are really fun and spectacular and may spark like really interesting ideas in your brain. And some of them you may have a lot of resistance to.
I think a lot of people have a lot of resistance to the idea that they can have as much time as they want or that they create time. I think those ideas sound really good, but people don’t always know how to engage with them.
For me, one of my most useful thoughts is like I always have enough time to get the important things done. And what that does for me is it really invites me to consider what is actually important and what’s not. And what’s faux important, right? Like what’s pretending it’s super important, but when I dig in, like we were talking about earlier, when I dig into the why is it actually super important or is it just acting like it is?
And, of course, for so much of this, a lot of what we’re choosing to do with our time is what we were socialized to do with our time, right? Growing up, we might have been taught that we have to do things a certain way. Or like our house has to be a certain way to be presentable. Or we have to do certain things on certain days of the week. Or we have to like to send presents to certain people at certain times of the year.
Like there are all these things that we’re taught about what we have to do to be a good person, what we have to do to lead a good life. And so as you’re working on your relationship to time, and maybe like probably that’s related to your relationship to being busy, because for a lot of people currently, they feel super fucking busy.
And a lot of us are super fucking busy, but I think what I see with that is like we’re super fucking busy because we’re trying to live up to everyone’s standards and in a culture where there’s always going to be more that we could be doing than that we can do, right? And we’ve talked about this in some of the other podcasts.
But I want to circle back to what my client told me, in which my client decided that these other thoughts about time that sound like really beneficial, weren’t landing for them and so they weren’t going to use them. And this is a really important part of coaching and thought work. Just because a thought sounds good to someone else doesn’t mean it’s going to be useful for you.
When you’re changing your thoughts, you have to change them to thoughts that are useful for you. If you change them to thoughts that are useful for someone else, that’s not necessarily helpful. And it might actually make you feel really shitty because you’re thinking that the thought should be really helping, and it’s not really helping.
Okay, so the thought that my client came up with was I use my time well. I use my time well. And I wanted to offer this thought to you because it probably is like what you want to be thinking, but probably not what you have been thinking about yourself.
And you may be looking at me wild eyed like, Kori, how could I possibly start thinking I use my time well? And I think that’s a great question. And you probably meant it as rhetorical, but we’re actually going to answer it.
Okay, so this is where I want to get into the idea that thoughts create feelings, and feelings create actions, and actions create results in our lives. And we’ve talked about this before from time to time. This kind of cause and effect cycle is taught in a coaching tool that I use in my program called the model. If you’ve done other coaching programs you may already be familiar with it. If you’re not already familiar with it, that’s okay.
What I just want you to think about right this minute is that when we have a thought in our head, it creates a feeling in our body. And then from that feeling, create actions, and we also create inactions. And then the collection of the thought, the feeling, the actions and the inaction creates a result in our life.
So what I see with so many people is they have the thought, “I don’t have enough time.” And when they have the thought I don’t have enough time, they feel a feeling in their body. Now, this may vary by person to person, not everyone’s going to have the same feeling about the same thought. But let’s just take a guess that when someone thinks I don’t have enough time, they’re going to feel stressed.
And when people feel stressed, what do they do? How do they act? What do they not do, right? What are their inactions? So the person having the thought, “I don’t have enough time,” they feel stressed. And what I see over and over and over and over again in my business is that when people feel stressed, one of two things tends to happen. Either they rush and try to do things as fast as they can, or, and I actually see this a lot more, they avoid the thing.
When they feel stressed, they avoid the task they’re supposed to be doing. So let’s take these one by one. If you’re thinking, “I don’t have enough time,” and you feel stressed and then you’re like, like this actually still happens to me. I’m like four and a half years into my coaching business and sometimes I’m thinking like, ah. Like I don’t think I have the thought I don’t have enough time, but I have another thought that creates stress.
And then what I do is I open up my phone and I scroll on TikTok, or I scroll on Instagram, or I check my email even though it’s not a time that I’ve set aside to check my email, it’s not email answering time. And I’m not even checking the email to answer it, I’m just checking it to do something. Maybe you too have experienced this, right?
And so then what I’m not doing, right, so there’s the action, open the phone, scroll, check all the little things. And what I’m not doing is figuring out what’s most important and doing it. I’m not negotiating deadlines. I’m not having conversations with other smart people about what I can do and how I can get things done. I’m not streamlining my to-do list. I’m not doing anything that’s usefully pushing me towards my goal. And what am I doing? I’m scrolling social media, right?
And so the thought, I don’t have enough time. Okay, it’s a feeling of stress. The feeling of stress creates me getting online and to social media or checking my email when it’s not time to do so. And not even answering emails, just checking them and looking at them. And then the result is I don’t have enough time to do the thing.
But it’s not because there’s not enough time in existence. It’s not because there’s not enough time in my life. It’s because I’m taking the time I do have and I’m using it to do something else. And so when I spend that time elsewhere, then of course I don’t have time to do the thing. Not because I don’t have time to do the thing, but because that’s not how I’ve used the time I do have.
Okay, now let’s look at the other example. The thought “I don’t have enough time” could create the feeling of stress. And maybe for you, instead of creating the action of avoiding by doing something else, maybe it creates the action of rushing.
So here’s what I see when I see people rush, they start trying to work on something right away, but they don’t take time, again, what they’re not doing is they’re not taking time to prioritize. They’re not taking time to ask what their why is. They’re not taking time to ask what really matters. They’re not taking time to circle back with their boss and be like I have six things to do and enough time to do four. Here are the four I think it should be, do you agree? Do you not agree?
That’s actually something I did a lot when I worked in corporate, is I would take the tasks I had and then I would prioritize them in what I thought made sense. And then I would check in with my boss to find out what he thought to see like, you know, I’m showing him that I took the initiative to organize my tasks and then to prioritize them.
And then I’m checking in with him because he’s in meetings I’m not in and he has like visibility and like strategic whatever, whatever that I didn’t have. And so I was checking my prioritization by him to find out if I had missed anything so that I wouldn’t get an unpleasant surprise later.
And so when people think I don’t have enough time, that’s often something I’m seeing them not do. That’s an inaction, right? The action is usually that they start working, but often they don’t start working on the thing that matters most because when they think I don’t have enough time and they feel that feeling of stress, they’re not like thinking clearly. They’re not thinking with their prefrontal cortex. They’re reacting, like in a stress response and working from that place of being stressed, right?
So what this also looks like is sometimes people do their work really fast and then the work actually isn’t as good as work that they could have done. And so then they end up having to do it later, which is another way that it seems like they don’t have enough time, but it’s because of the way we used the time, right?
Or they don’t redo it later, but it just has a bunch of mistakes in it. Or they do like whatever is first on their to-do list, not the thing that matters most. Or, and I see this a lot, they end up doing a lot of work that actually shouldn’t even be their work because when they’re thinking I don’t have enough time and they’re feeling stressed, they’re not looking strategically at like, okay, what would it make sense to delegate? What would it make sense to just not do?
They’re just trying to like rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, or like run away, actually. Sometimes people are trying to run away from the feeling. And so like in the other model that we first looked at, they might try to run away from the feeling of stress by avoiding, by scrolling social media or opening their email like I do sometimes or whatever. And this one they may try to run away through doing, but again, not thoughtful doing, not strategic doing.
And I think this is part of what people don’t want to admit to themselves, is that working from that headspace of I don’t have enough time isn’t effective. Because I think a lot of people feel really stressed out by how many demands are on their life and how many demands are on their time. And they may even feel attacked or insulted when I’m saying that people aren’t strategic and they aren’t doing their best work.
And I want to be really clear, it’s not an attack, it’s not an insult. I see you suffering, and I want to help you alleviate that suffering. I see you feeling overwhelmed and I want to help you get out from under that overwhelm. I see you feeling stressed and I want to help you create a life where you do a lot of work and get a lot of shit done, if that’s what matters to you, but in a way that feels calmer and more relaxed and where you feel a lot more like delight and confidence and where you can actually enjoy your work.
So this is not an attack at all on you, this is just me looking from the side going like, I just think there’s a better way that you would enjoy more. But the thing is, if you really deeply, deeply are attached to this idea that you don’t have enough time, you may feel threatened by me coming in and saying there’s a better way.
That may feel like your way of life is being attacked. It may feel like your identity is being attacked. It may feel like your intelligence is being attacked. It may feel like I just don’t fucking get it. Like I’m just, you know, a life coach and I don’t understand what it’s like to actually work in that fast paced environment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But I have worked in many fast paced environments, and I’ve also coached people at every level from individual contributor to managers, senior managers, VPs, SVPs, CEOs, and I’ve seen this play out again and again and again.
So if you feel defensive, what I want you to know is that’s okay, I get it, I feel defensive a lot too. I’ve had to coach myself so much on feeling defensive over the years, about coaching from other people, about coaching from myself, about all kinds of things. So you’re in good company here.
And also, what I really want to impress upon you is that there is a better way and you can have access to it. And as we talked about in a recent episode, and I kind of was talking about this a little earlier, it may feel really vulnerable to you. It may feel really extremely, excruciatingly vulnerable to believe that there’s a better way. You may feel like I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes, to use a cliché, or something like that because it’s so alien from your current experience.
But what I’m trying to show you by walking you through the models is when this happens, it’s not because you’re a bad person, it’s not because you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s not because you want to be busy on a conscious level or because you want to use your time badly. It’s because when we have the thought, “I don’t have enough time” and we feel the feeling stress, these are the actions that flow from that.
And those actions would flow from that for many, many people, not just you. It’s not a youth thing, it’s about a pattern. And it’s about understanding that that thought creates that feeling, creates that action, and those inactions and that’s a pattern. And then if we want to change the pattern, we need to change the thought, not just our actions.
And if we want to change that pattern, the way to change that pattern is by learning to think differently, because when we think differently, we feel differently. And when we feel differently we have access to a different set of actions and inactions.
Now, you can sometimes also get all the way to the feeling line of stress and then interrupt that. Usually when we interrupt that though, we’re interrupting it with a new thought that helps us get into a more useful pattern. Before we talk about the new thought, which I’ve actually already told you, let’s complete this model, though.
So the thought is, I don’t have enough time. The feeling is stressed, and the action is do a bunch of work but non strategically, right? And the inaction is we don’t talk to our peers, or our supervisor, or our direct reports about what could be pushed and what needs to be done. We don’t prioritize. We don’t think about our why. We don’t think about what really matters most. We don’t ask for help.
I see this a lot where people are so extremely busy and they have resources that they could delegate to or ask for help from. But they don’t do that because it’s like they think they don’t have time for that even. But then that creates even more of them not having time because then no one else can even do the work because we never took the time to train anyone because we didn’t have time to, right?
So sometimes it is like an investment of our time up front to get some of our time back later. But what I mostly want you to see is how when you think this thought and feel this feeling, it creates all these actions and inactions. And you can test this out for yourself, you can think about what is my most painful thought about time, and what do I feel in my body when I think that? And then what do I do and not do? What actions and inactions are created by that?
Okay, so what’s the result, like of that model? The result is you don’t have enough time. But the only reason you don’t have enough time is because you are thinking you don’t. And the way you act when you think you don’t results in you working in a way that makes the time you do have not enough.
And a lot of times what I see is we’re making the time we do have not enough because we’re not prioritizing. Or we’re making the time we do have not enough because we’re trying to be a perfectionist and do everything perfectly. Or we’re making the time we do have not enough because we’re not willing to push back on deadlines, we’re not willing to push back on stakeholders, we’re not willing to make tough choices.
But guess what? Things get left behind anyways. If you have more to do than you have time, something’s not going to get done. And if you’re not strategic about what that thing is, then it’s still going to be something not getting done. But you’re like not even picking what matters least, it's sort of just like leaving it up to like whatever the last thing on your to-do list is.
And I see this happen a lot where people do continue to succeed and achieve at work. But what gets left undone is their relationship with their significant other. What gets left undone is their relationship with their kids. What gets left undone is like their hobbies. What gets left undone is their side hustle. What gets left in done is, you know, their health, their movement routines, all these other things.
And they keep thinking, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough time to do everything. And they keep feeling stressed and they keep creating more and more of what they don’t want.
Okay, so this is where we’re going to circle back to that thought that my client told me worked for them, which is I use my time well. Can’t you just feel your body relax when you think I use my time well? And if you don’t feel your body relax and you feel it tense up, you might need to try a variation. You might try it’s possible I could use my time well. Or I’m becoming a person who uses my time well. Or maybe one day I can be a person who uses my time well.
These are called modifications, and when a new thought is too far away from our old thought, sometimes we need to modify it like a little stair step to be able to get to a place where we could believe it. But let’s just pretend for a minute that you did believe that thought I use my time well and you just never thought it.
So this happens a lot where there’s a thought that’s more useful, but it’s never occurred to you to think it. And then you’ll hear someone like me say it and you’ll be like, “Oh shit.” So try it on in your body and let’s pretend it works. And so the thought is, I use my time well. And for my client, they already believed this.
I don’t think they actually had to like ladder up or like stair step up or practice the thought over and over again to believe it. It just had to occur to them that they could choose this thought instead of there’s not enough time or I don’t have enough time.
Okay, so when they think the thought, I use my time well, I’m not exactly sure 100% which feeling they have, but when I think that I feel confident. And when I feel confident, what do I do? I’m like, oh, well, I use my time well and I feel confident about that. So then I figure out how to use my time well, right?
So if I have five minutes, or 45 minutes, or four days, or six weeks, or 10 years, when I think the thought I use my time well and I feel confident, then I take that time and I use it well. And that’s like a very high level. So if we want to really drill into this, probably for me it would look like looking at the list of things that I needed to do and making strategic choices about what matters most and making choices about what to cut or let go of.
For me, I use my time well would also mean calendaring lots of time for rest, lots of time to connect with my loved ones. Lots of time for space for thinking, lots of time for walks. And then I use my time well at work would be figuring out what actually creates the most results. So like circling all the way back to I called it Pareto’s law, I don’t know if that’s what it’s actually called. Whatever it’s called, the idea that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts.
So if I believe I use my time well, then I’m going to be like, cool, cool, cool, what would be the best use of my time? What’s going to give me the most results for the least amount of activity? How do I do the best job at this in the shortest amount of time so that I don’t have to redo it? And often for me, that means focusing on something.
When I believe I use my time well, one of my actions is like I don’t try to do 68 things at once. I’m like, okay, I’m going to write this Instagram post. And I just focus on it, and I just write it, and then it’s done and then I post it. And if it has a typo in it and someone tells me about it, I just go later and I fix it, right? So it’s not agonizing over everything. It’s not thinking about like, well what would be the most useful?
So I guess one part of this also is like inside of the idea I use my time well, is my willingness to make decisions. A lot of us spend so much time agonizing over decisions, and I’m here to tell you like I get that because I’ve agonized a lot too. But agonizing often doesn’t help things. And when we believe I use my time well and we feel confident and we can just confidently make decisions, then things move forward and we get shit done.
And guess what? I use my time well isn’t about being a perfectionist, it’s not about using my time perfectly. It’s about trusting that I use my time well enough and that I can also learn. Sometimes I’m going to use my time and it’s not going to be the best way I could have used it. And then I can learn and evaluate and that doesn’t have to threaten my idea I use my time well. I can become a person who uses my time even better, right?
So any new thought we’re thinking, it’s so important that you don’t use it as like a perfectionist bludgeon to beat yourself with. It’s about like I move in this direction and everything is taking me in this direction. And part of going in this direction is learning how to go in this direction well. Failures are part of our path, they don’t mean we’ve fallen off of it.
So what’s the result? When I think I use my time well and I feel confident, and then I look at my to-do list and I prioritize, and I strategize, and I talk to other people about what I can do and not do and what I can let fall off. And I make decisions about not being willing to sacrifice the quality of something just so I can try to fit more things in when I can’t actually fit more things in. And I make decisions, and I focus and I just get shit done. The result is I use my time well. My time is well used.
Not because I’m amazing, although let’s be honest, I am amazing. I use my time well because of that thought pattern. When we think I use my time well and we feel confident, then we will use our time well. And we’ll be like, oh, I have two hours? I use my time well, so what is a good use of this time?
And so like what my client was saying is like if they have a block of two hours, now they think, oh, I use my time well. So then they’re thinking what’s a good use of this time? And they’re focused on using their time well, and getting done, what is going to matter most in that block of time that they have.
And again, it doesn’t mean everything gets done. Part of this work is about realizing that we’ve been socialized to do more than could possibly ever be done. We’ve been socialized to hold standards for ourselves that are impossible to meet. And so using our time well doesn’t mean we’re going to meet all those magical, weird, impossible standards that we were taught as a kid.
Using our time well means that we are going to decide what it means for time to be well used. And then we are going to do that and we’re going to be confident in our choices. And we’re going to evaluate when we have fuck ups and we’re going to iterate and we’re going to keep going. And that’s how you use your time well.
To use your time well, you’ve got to believe that you can. If you always believe there’s never enough time, that’s what you’re going to create for yourself. Not because there isn’t as much time or isn’t enough, but just because of the way that we feel and the way that we act when we think that thought.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all today. And if you thought this was really cool and loved this breakdown of like this thought creates this feeling, creates these actions and inactions, creates these results, That’s exactly the work that we do in Satisfied As Fuck. And we do it about all kinds of stuff, everything that’s going to help you have a more satisfying life and career.
So we’re going to talk about time, we’re going to talk about relationships, we’re going to talk about money, we’re going to talk about body. We’re going to talk about everything and anything you want to talk about. So come sign up for a consult and let’s have a conversation about if you’re a good fit for the next round because I would love to have those conversations with you and help you get more of what you want out of life by changing your thoughts.
All right, thanks y’all. Have a great week.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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