The Triple Threat of Time Mastery: Part 3
So you’re well on your way to time mastery?
To-dos organized.
Priorities set.
Calendar scheduled.
You’re focused. You’re confident. The life you’ve been craving and dreaming of is within reach.
Now what?
Cue the dread. Cue the resistance. Cue the overwhelm.
Right on time!
The same perfectionism you used to successfully organize and start producing, now has you under attack.
It’s time to take action but suddenly your plan doesn’t look good enough. If it was the “right” plan, you’d feel motivated to take action. If it was the “right” plan, you wouldn’t be feeling any dread about taking action. Clearly, something must be wrong.
So you don’t act. Breaking trust with your commitment to yourself, leaving items undone, and the cycle of unmet goals begins.
Or you’re still believing that anything less than working 60-hour weeks isn’t enough. So you overbook yourself. If you put in just one more hour that presentation will be just right. If you put in just one more hour, you’ll prove to everyone what a hard worker you are.
So you overact. But on all the wrong things, leaving you longing for more downtime, activities with friends, or slow mornings sipping your coffee.
Time to clean up that brain. Time for some mindset work.
Organizing Your Goals and Priorities: CHECK!
Taking Action: CHECK!
Getting Your Mind Right: Let’s get to work!
Mindset
Mindset is all about your thoughts and your beliefs.
Thoughts and beliefs are essentially just the sentences that run through your mind.
We have thousands upon thousands of thoughts a day as we process the world around us. Some we’re conscious of, others we’re not.
Beliefs are those thoughts we have had so many times, they feel so true, we don’t even think to question them.
Thoughts and beliefs could be related to how you think about yourself and what you are or are not capable of. They could be about what other people may or may not be thinking about you.
Either way, they directly affect how you feel which impacts how you behave and, ultimately, creates the life you have.
So, regardless of how organized you are or how well you set yourself up for focused action, if your thoughts and beliefs aren’t aligned with the life you want to create, you’ll be dead in your tracks and self-sabotaging before you even get started.
A few mindset hacks can help you get over these hurdles.
Just start
This practice is for all those times when you just don’t wanna.
When you’ve scheduled ahead of time what you plan to accomplish but the calendar event pops up….and you don’t want to do it.
Your brain is probably pretty good at trying to convince you this is “a sign”. A sign that the lack of motivation and feeling of dread is a deep intuitive feeling to pay close attention to. There MUST be a reason why you’re not feeling pure motivation and excitement to break open that Word doc and crank out your presentation notes. Something must be wrong.
Maybe this task shouldn’t be your top priority.
Maybe you actually deserve some rest.
Maybe new projects have come up and you should shift your focus there.
Or maybe the dopamine hit of a “quick” Instagram scroll would just be a hell of a lot more fun.
Well, guess what?
You don’t have to want to do it.
That feeling of dread and “I don’t wannas” are completely expected. Nothing has gone wrong. It’s just your brain doing brain things.
Start anyway.
Commit to a 5-minute task to get you started. Open the document and give it a title. Track down all the documentation and old notes you’ll need to reference. And just start.
Once you start acting, even if it’s a seemingly teeny tiny task, you’ll start to get into a state of flow. And, before you know it, the task is complete.
Onto the next! (The “next” likely being another pre-scheduled task you’ll work really hard to find reasons to avoid. So re-read the above and start from the top!)
Think different thoughts
Sometimes the problem isn’t avoiding taking action.
Sometimes it’s taking way too much action…so much so that you forget to schedule for a life you actually want.
You’re productive in the wrong places and unfulfilled in so many others.
This is when it’s time for a little deep dive into understanding what’s going on in your brain. Time to take a step back and realize you do have a choice and you do have the ability to step out of this cycle.
Journal
The first step is to understand and examine what you might be thinking. Get curious.
My favorite tool for this is journaling.
Getting the contents of your brain down on paper helps you to step back just enough to be able to become an observer. You can observe the thoughts you’re thinking instead of just experiencing them.
From there, you can start to decide what thoughts you like. And which ones you might not want to keep around.
Check out this article for a deeper dive into all things journaling.
“Try on” new thoughts
Once you know what thoughts and beliefs might be getting in your way, it’s time to try practicing different ways of thinking to see how this impacts your behaviors.
This is beyond a “daily affirmation” practice. You aren’t just going to be repeating the same inspiring phrase over and over that doesn’t really resonate, hoping it sticks.
Instead, focus on “trying on” thoughts that you can actually believe.
Instead of jumping to: “You don’t have to work long hours to create success”, start with “It’s possible I can provide more value with less stress.”
Check out some examples of self-talk shifts to get you moving in the right direction.
Take control
Finally, admit that you may be the common denominator in feeling overworked yet continually not making progress.
It’s not the job.
It’s not your boss.
It’s not your coworkers.
You and your baggage of thoughts and beliefs you’ve drug around with you for years may just be what’s dragging you down.
You, and you alone, have created a life of overwhelm and dread, and unfulfilled desires.
So you, and you alone, are in control.
Practice those new thoughts and allow yourself to start to believe there could be a better way.
Stop waiting for your knight in shining armor to save you. Save your damn self! (And check out some extreme ownership tough love to see the power of this in practice.)
That’s it.
That’s all.
You now have all three pillars to successfully manage your time and empower yourself to build the life you want:
Organize your to-dos and proactively choose what you want to spend time on.
Set yourself up to successfully take action and get some sh*t done.
Be kind to yourself and avoid the BS thoughts that are getting in your way.
Like the three legs of a tripod, you need all three of these time management pillars to fully succeed. When one is missing, you’ll topple over.
But when each pillar is aligned and getting practice and attention, you can achieve anything you put your mind to.
You can decide exactly what you want your days and your weeks to look like.
Then you can create that reality.
Now go live a beautiful life, my friends!
(Missed Part 1 or Part 2 of this series? Be sure to check them out!)
Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed? Do you feel like there are always important tasks left undone, hanging over your head? It's time to take control of your productivity and prove to yourself you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.
Check out the 7 Days: Consider it Done! guide to transform the way you approach your to-do list.
Say goodbye to procrastination and unfulfilled goals and hello to a sense of control and reignited passion for life. Consider it done!
