Behind the Scenes: Surprising Time Management Lessons from the Trenches
It’s official.
The She Boss Life blog launched ONE YEAR AGO!
52 weeks. 52 articles full of time management, productivity, and overwhelm-busting tips and tricks. Hopefully resulting in just a little less stress out there in the internet universe.
One year ago, my very first post chronicled the tales of my time management superpowers learned from a live-in home renovation.
It was the confidence I built during this renovation that made me realize I could do hard things. I could put my mind to something, try, fail, dust myself off, and try again until I had no choice but to succeed. It was the renovation that actually pushed me into solving my overworking problem.
So in honor of the one-year She Boss Life blogiversary, I decided to revisit a few more lessons learned from my renovation chaos.
Quick Recap
If you’re new here or never caught me on Zoom with the gentle background sounds of hammers and drills, here’s a refresher.
In July 2020, my husband and I bought a new house.
Well…”new” to us house.
It was a complete gut job.
We’re talking tearing out landscaping, ripping out walls, taking floors down to nothing but subfloor. We even nicknamed the place “Pet Piss Palace” in the early days as we tirelessly ripped through carpet soaked with years and years of…dog urine. Yuck!
All of this while we lived in the tiny 10x10 guest room (the only room with real floors for nearly the first full year.)
Work. Renovate. Sleep. Repeat. My friends, it wasn’t easy.
But, we had a vision. We had a goal. We were going to make this place a dream home.
We’ve come a long way with the scrapes, bruises, and Instagram-worthy after photos to show for it. But the biggest achievement of all was how much the project evolved me as a person. My confidence. My time management skills. My goal setting and drive. I’m a completely different person than that wanna be DIYer from 2020.
And, while I don’t think there are enough bribes in the world to convince me to do it again, I am so grateful for the experience.
So, without further ado, here are 3 MORE renovation learnings that have snuck into the rest of my life in a big way.
#1 Plans Change
I vividly remember the first “project plan” I put together as we prepared for the renovation and move-in.
I think it was a two-month schedule.
Replace the carpet. Throw a little paint on the walls. Then we could start adding accent walls in every room!
I was giddy. It was going to be beautiful. I couldn’t wait to start shopping for decor.
That cute little plan went out the window on…er…day one, I think.
When ripping out the urine-soaked carpet, we found an extra layer of particle board, some major water damage, and some questionable structural decisions from the 1978 construction crew.
As with any renovation project, I’d come to find out, it escalated from there. Leading to the only path forward: a complete gut job.
With every wall that came down and project that started, a new surprise came along with it.
Don’t tell 2020 me, who’s probably still overwhelmed and sobbing in the corner, but those plan changes were the best thing that could have happened.
The expanded timeline gave us room to breathe and think. To make better long-term decisions without the self-imposed rush triggered by unrealistic deadlines.
We got better at breaking down big projects into easy bite-sized steps and started to understand the unknowns to plan for.
We got laser-focused on the important priorities instead of getting caught up in the little unimportant minutia. (I’ve already forgotten about most of those little details that used to keep me up at night.)
Your first plan is rarely going to be your end plan.
But your end plan is SO much better with the results to prove it.
Two months turned into 3 ½ years and counting. We have one room left. The little guest bathroom (that used to be the nicest room in the house.) It’s already on its third iteration of a plan, so we’re right on track!
#2 Celebrate the Small Wins
Once I came to terms with the fact that we were in this for the long haul as Plan A turned into Plan B, C, D, E…I knew I’d need some help keeping up my motivation and momentum.
That’s when I learned the power of celebrating the small wins.
I saw it like this, sure, a world where we could make this house bright, shiny and new in just two months would be great. One big bang of celebration. But then, it’d just as quickly be back to business as usual.
Instead, with every hurdle we overcame and small victory we achieved, I got to celebrate.
Master bedroom flooring done? Woo hoo! Party.
First-floor baseboards installed? Alright! Time for a victory dance.
Every completed piece deserved its own celebration. And those small celebrations fueled my motivation which kept me going. The momentum that was needed project to project to keep making progress towards that end goal.
I knew we had a big journey ahead. And I still fantasized about fast-forwarding to that completed vision. But I know I would have missed out on building that determination and motivation muscle. A skill that I’ve taken to every other area of my life from intense project proposals at work to creating my first digital course to help other women build the confidence to tackle their overworking problems.
Big goals, tough journeys, but a path filled with celebrations along the way.
So bring on the next big goal. It’ll be a party!
#3 Make Time to Plan…Plan Time to Learn
Once you have your mind set on a project, it’s easy to default to jumping right in and going.
We don’t want to pause to think or to make a plan. That will just slow us down! When you’re plate is already full you can feel desperate to make any progress and just get something off your to-do list. So you just go.
This exact thinking hit me many many times throughout the renovation journey.
I knew the project that needed to be completed. Throw me at it. Grab the spackle. Grab the hammer. Let’s do this thing!
Forget the fact I’d never done it before and didn’t actually have any clue what I was doing. I’m smart and capable, I assumed I’d figure it out along the way. Gotta stick to that schedule, after all.
This refusal to pause to plan and research and learn led me to many hard lessons.
One particularly painful lesson was my attempt at finishing a whole house's worth of door casing.
I just needed to fill the nail holes and paint. Easy.
But, the first door…didn’t go so well. The fill wasn’t smooth. The sandpaper was too coarse. Something was clearly not right.
But I wanted this project off my to-do list. So I pushed through and kept going.
As my shoddy attempts got worse and worse, I moved forward with the paint. That had to make it look better. And if not the first coat…three more coats would definitely do the trick.
Friends…it was bad.
I was so committed to getting this project done, that I was unwilling to pause, research, and make a new plan. I was so overwhelmed at the thought of starting over that I just kept going. And I just made it worse.
I did complete the original project… Then spent the next 4 weeks sanding it all back down and redoing it…the right way.
Pausing to watch a few YouTube videos and readjust my plan would have slowed down my initial progress, sure. But it would have saved weeks on the back end. Weeks…and quite a few tears.
So if you’re overwhelmed just trying to get through your to-do list telling yourself there’s no time to plan, you’re wrong. It is the best investment you can make to build up your time bank.
Get a head start on your next project
Are you overwhelmed with your own looming project?
Maybe it’s not an entire house renovation. It could just be that thing you’ve been procrastinating for months, maybe even years.
It’s time to tackle it! One step at a time.
Check out the 7 Days: Consider it Done! Guide. Say goodbye to procrastination and unfinished projects. Then dial down the self-imposed pressure and perfectionism and enjoy the journey to done. You’re going to be a different person on the other end of those 7 days.
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