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What’s Your Relationship With Time?

Jul 26, 2021

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What’s Your Relationship With Time?

 

What’s your relationship with time like?

 

Are you in a committed relationship...or is it complicated?

 

When people first start out in business, time is one of the biggest reasons I see getting in the way. 

The funny thing with time is, the more you say you don’t have enough of it, the more that’s going to be true.

 

The more you train your brain to send you all the evidence that’s true, the more you’ll create things to do for yourself that you might not need to.

 

I’m a big believer that time bends to our will.  If it’s in the diary you find a way to make it happen.

 

We’re often really blissfully unaware in all the ways that we unconsciously ‘waste’ time.

 

But I also see a lot of people thinking they can’t TAKE time.  Particularly for themselves.  This doesn’t do us any good.

 

Especially if the whole reason we started a business in the first place is more freedom!

 

So what do we do about this?

 

First of all we analyse how we’re spending our time.  Be more consciously aware of what you’re doing with it throughout the day.  A good way to do this is to track it.

 

Second, we start blocking it.  How long do we spend every day on email, or on social media, client work, our own business work, creating content. You can time block anything...including time for procrastination! 

 

Next, we look at batching.  Batching is essentially putting the same or similar tasks together.  This could be social media content, writing emails, creating content, errands.  Whatever you do every day or week that could actually be done together while you’re in the ‘zone’.  This was a game changer for me when I started my business alongside my job.  Batching things and scheduling things meant that my business could run even if it wasn’t me specifically doing that thing at that time.

 

We start looking at what we can delegate. This is a biggie.  I don’t just mean in your business, I mean in your life.  What can you delegate?  Social media scheduling?  Design work?  Editing?  The shopping?  The cleaning?  The gardening?  All those things where you’re like ooooooooh I need to do that thing and I don’t wanna! All those things you kind of wish you didn’t have to do but are necessary.  They just don’t necessarily have to be done by YOU! My VA when I started was a life saver.  So many things just wouldn’t have been done without her.

 

My favourite way of looking at this is based on the big leap by Gay Hendricks.  In there he speaks about a lawyer client of his who was battling with setting up a printer (or something like that, I can’t quite remember!) He spent days getting stressed out about it and Gay asks ‘what’s your hourly rate?  It was somewhere in the region of $350.  Then he asked ‘if you add that up how much have you ‘spent’ on this task?’...The lawyer did that terrifying maths and went and paid the kid next door a few dollars and it was done within minutes. 

 

The point is, you shouldn’t be doing things that are outside your zone of genius ideally.  The first things you outsource are the things in your zone of incompetence.  We all have one.  Mines tech. 

 

Then as soon as you can outsource things in your zone of competence.  Those things you can do but someone else can do just as well as you.

 

Then you spend your time in your zone of genius.  Where you are the absolute BEST person for the job.

 

Next we get conscious and honest with ourselves when it comes to time.  So many of us grew up feeling like if we had time for things, that meant we weren’t successful.  Many of us grew up believing success meant no time! 

 

So many of us feel validated by being ‘busy’, so even if we don’t have to be, we will create it.  

 

Those busy being busy tasks come out to play.

 

So if that unconscious programme is running, why on earth would you want to find time? Wouldn’t that look like or mean you’re not successful? It’s SO important to pick this stuff out. 

 

What did you grow up seeing, hearing, modelling around time?  Was everyone around you busy?

 

Did they have time for you?

 

Did they have time for themselves?

 

Did they have time to do the things they loved?

 

That doesn’t have to be your story. 

 

The reality of time is we always find the time for the things that are the most important to us.  Consciously or unconsciously.  That’s closer to the truth, right.  Sometimes ‘I don’t have time’ is actually just ‘it’s not a priority’.

 

The important thing here is that we recognise that hustle culture is something that has been created and isn’t something to be glorified.

 

Burnout isn’t something to be glorified.

 

Not feeling able to spend time with our friends and family isn’t something to be glorified.

 

Feeling gui;ty about spending time on yourself isn’t something to be glorified.

 

So is it time to clear up your relationship to time yet?

 

Fx