Stretched Too Thin? Take Control of Your Time in 3 Steps

[00:00:00] Is your to do list running your life? Because it's probably time to take back control. In this episode, we'll explore how to decide what really matters to you, let go of what doesn't, and actually find time to breathe and relax.

Welcome to Take Out Therapy, a podcast helping empathic executives learn stress reduction, self compassion, and emotional intelligence skills for more work life balance and inner peace.

I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist who helps high achievers break free from anxiety and overwhelm. If you're ready to stop overthinking, let go of people pleasing, and truly thrive, you're in the right place. And did you notice? Take Out Therapy has a brand new logo. It's Super fun. Check out the fresh look wherever you listen and let me know what you think of it.

Thanks for being here. Let's get to work. Okay, so here's the setup. You're constantly busy, yet you literally never feel caught up. [00:01:00] Prioritization sometimes feels impossible because everything in life feels so urgent. And even when you do get free time, does relaxing feel a little unnatural for you? Yeah, maybe so.

Today, let's shift the focus from doing more to doing what matters. I'll teach you how to delegate, prioritize, and create space for yourself.

Let me tell you about my own journey with learning to let go, focus, and actually slow down in hopes that it will help you do the same. When I started my private practice. I literally did everything myself as most therapists do I had to learn a lot of things along the way too, right?

When I, you go to school to be a therapist, you learn to be a therapist. You don't learn to run a business at all. So here I was doing everything, one woman show, marketing, client management, sending emails, creating content [00:02:00] online, scheduling, everybody doing all the billing and bookkeeping. Holy moly. At first it felt really necessary for me to be doing all this stuff, but over time, the long work days in my office, the guilt any time I wasn't working, and the very constant feeling of being behind completely drained me.

And then one day in a business training, I had a huge light bulb moment. I was spending time on things that actually didn't need to be done by me or done at all, really. And so I started asking myself three questions. One, am I doing this because I truly need to? Or, am I doing this because it's how I've always done this?

Two, can I delegate this? Even if it's not done exactly my way, can someone else help me with it? And then three, where am I saying [00:03:00] yes? be saying, hell no! Once I started really shifting these areas, everything changed for me. I started realizing that I was spending time doing tasks that I didn't need to be doing.

I got time back for myself. And more importantly, I started showing up in my life being present again instead of always being preoccupied with work, which is not fun at all to live like that. Why is it so hard for us, to really integrate this idea into our lives? I want to break down the real reasons that we all struggle to just let go and do things differently when it comes to work.

The thing is, is we try to do everything believing it's the only way to be successful. And to be honest, some of us were raised this way, right? Like, our parents were very direct about their [00:04:00] expectations of our performance. And for the first many years of life, there we are, we're in the education system, right?

Could you have a little more pressure to perform? So we just come on into adulthood and we just try to do everything. We micromanage, we overextend ourselves, and then we really resist delegating, letting go. And I think that's an acceptable learning outcome. It can be very easy to be burned out, only to end up burned out, right?

The problem that we've talked about on this podcast and one that we continue to explore is that our culture tends to tie self worth to productivity. We tell ourselves, Oh, I'll slow down later, you know, when I reach my goals or when things are stable or once I get going, but like later never comes.

And the thing is, is that our jobs work in general is really now designed to keep us engaged nonstop, right? Because [00:05:00] we've got notifications. Applications. We have things that people need from us. Expectations, deliverables. We've got the constant stream of emails and slacks and whatever. What if we could just work smarter, not harder?

If you could just. fully show up in your personal life without being like pulled back to work all the time. So today I want to help you brainstorm a little bit about some new solutions because this isn't about doing less or quitting but rather Really focusing in on what truly matters. So today let's talk about a three part framework that you can use when you conceptualize what balance looks like in your life.

And this I have used throughout the years of being in business I use this framework myself and it has helped me when I get out over my skis and I got way too [00:06:00] much going on and I start to get kind of overwhelmed. I just bring it right back to these three things.

Number one is delegation. What actually needs you? This delegation thing isn't a thinking exercise, it's actually a writing exercise. Make a list of everything you do, right? And when my kids were growing up We used to do this little game called keep or toss because, you know, little kids can like kind of hoard stuff.

Sometimes they don't want to get rid of their old shirts or old stuffies or old toys or things that they really care about, but that they don't need anymore and we can't use. And so we used to play this game called keep or toss. And I would hold the thing up and say, Keep or toss, and then the child would have to say keep or toss, right?

So this is the game that I want you to play with your life. Make a list of [00:07:00] all the stuff you do and sort it into drop or do. And then delegate as a third category. So you're going to talk about, I'm going to let this go. I'm going to give it to somebody else, or I'm just going to get it done.

Right? That makes things so much easier. Ask yourself, like, is this a necessary task that I need to do? Or is there somebody else that I could delegate this to? I hear from a lot of people in management and leadership positions, it's so hard to let things go because you want it done right. You don't want things screwed up and that makes sense.

But if you're not delegating, you're not taking on that desired trait of a leader, which is Not micromanaging and giving people autonomy to, like, get stuff done on their own, right? Hire smart people and then they'll let them do smart [00:08:00] things. There's a, time management expert named Laura Vanderkam, and she found that people overestimate how much time they need to spend on tasks, which is super interesting.

So she pointed out that tracking time that you spend on things is very revealing of opportunities where you can offload or eliminate tasks, often actually without sacrificing results, mostly frankly, without sacrificing results.

I'll give you an example from my business and I won't get on a rant, but I used to spend hours on social media. Creating posts. Everything was super unique. I thought it was really essential to my business to be doing that. And as it turns out, once I really looked into the data, I realized that it wasn't essential that I spend time doing this.

So I basically decided to spend half as much time doing it. And nothing changed, [00:09:00] right? I got that time back.

Okay, so now that we've done the delegation piece, we've played the drop it, delegate it, or just do it game. Now we want to prioritize the things that you do so that you're not spending too much time on things that don't matter much. Have you heard this rule? It's called the 80 20 rule, which basically they found that 20% of your efforts drive 80 percent of your results.

So it's something to think about, right? do you spend a ton of time like on emails? I find the emails are the biggest time suck in my business, right? And do emails in your business drive results? Because if not, Find another way to do the emails that takes less time. Right? Hire somebody to do them, delegate somebody else to do them that's a [00:10:00] good, quick writer.

Use the resources that are available to cut your reduction time in half, right? There's also the idea of prioritizing using the big three method, which is just this very easy way of starting your workday with three priorities.

Just three key priorities. It really simplifies the whole day. I started doing this recently instead of my Wacky whiteboard to do list. I now just start every day that I know I'm going to sit down at my desk and have time to work on takeout therapy. I start my day by choosing three high impact tasks and generally unless I have time I ignore the rest of it.

Okay, so now you've played the am I gonna do it, am I gonna drop it, or am I gonna give it to somebody else game. Right. You've prioritized what the tasks are that are left into a [00:11:00] way of dealing with them that makes more sense and creates more space for you. And now is the hard part. This is where I see a lot of people really struggle is that we are used to overworking and we're used to being super duper productive all the time.

And now we have to make room in our life. to just be present and chill out a little bit, and this causes discomfort and it makes people go back to overworking. So you want to try to make this really sustainable by creating really clear end of work ritual or habit that signal to your brain and your body, and actually your emotional body.

that you're done working for the day. So you kind of have to create this funny boundary there that's more tangible sometimes than other boundaries. And actually I'm going to do an episode next week about this [00:12:00] because I have some ideas for you on wind down rituals to end the workday, come into your life so that you can create this boundary and this And then what I would recommend is if you're the kind of person that's been like hustling for a while, you're going to be uncomfortable when you stop hustling.

And this is what always gets people. And what I would say is just put a little pause in there. Learn to do just short, short mindfulness sessions, mindful movement, breath work of any kind, three to five minute little sessions. Sesshes is perfect for just acknowledging yeah, it's kind of uncomfortable to come into my life and just try to chill out and to ease your body into the process along with you, right?

Because habit is habit is habit. And after all, you're just a human being and this machine runs on habit. Yeah. And so the other thing you want to do is [00:13:00] to create. Mindful time. And we have to create a lot of boundaries around this because the little square that you carry around in your pocket and your purse and all over your body all the time, like we're kind of into the phone, right?

It's a tool that we use in our life constantly. But what I would say is start with that in creating little times where you're just present and that's not part of things. So phone Free moments where you literally put that thing in another room and you just come into your life It doesn't matter if there's a bunch of people in your house, or it's just you in your house This is your life, my friend.

This is why you've worked so hard all this time. So it is good to have presence and just chill out a little bit and be like, okay, well, how's my life doing? Right? I used to check email all the time, which means I had my phone on me all the time. Just in case anybody needed [00:14:00] anything or anything was popping in the business, I could just boop, boop, boop right there.

Yeah, so that's just a distraction from life. So when I started putting my phone in another room for the evening or for an hour or for whatever, like there was an instant change in my presence and my connection. And actually I was forced to change my priorities during my work day.

So it all really goes together. Take back your time, my friend, you've worked hard, enjoy the life that you have spent time creating. So what I would say is hopefully I've given you some ideas about how to sort your tasks, how to prioritize your workday so that you're getting the things done that really need to get done and this will help you to sort your tasks.

And then at the end of the workday, create that separation and take [00:15:00] some time to learn to be present in your life. And this will become a practice and I'll help you a little bit more with it next week. I promise.

Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. I always really appreciate you being here, showing up and doing this work

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And remember, while this is a great educational resource, always get the level of support that you need for your situation. Head to TakeOutTherapy. com to check out my resources. And until next time, take really, really good care of yourself, friend. I'll see you soon.