Ep #50: 3 Tips to Lead Your Time

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 50.

Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with weight for good. Here’s your host, Fortune 100 executive and Certified Life Coach, Shannan Christiansen.

Hello loves. So happy and excited to be back with you. I am excited about today’s show. 50 episodes. I just can’t believe it. I want to cue the confetti. So I have a very special bonus at the end of today’s episode, so you for sure want to listen until the end.

Every 25 episodes, I like to talk about something that is a bonus to weight loss. In episode number 25 of the show, I talked about having better relationships, and today, I am going to share all my secrets, I mean some of them, on time leadership.

But as always, I want to give a listener shout-out. This is where I read a review of the podcast every week and this week’s listener shout-out is to Guadalupe. She wrote, “I’m Lupe from Denver, Colorado. Thanks for the podcast. It only gives me hope and excitement for a great start tomorrow.”

Thank you so much, Lupe. I love these reviews. I love that you ladies are listening. If you are loving the show, please rate and review it. I would so appreciate it. Also, subscribe to the show so every Wednesday and Friday, the show is just waiting for you wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ladies often ask me how I do it. Shannan, they say, how do you do everything that you do? How are you a busy executive, run your own company, support all your ladies, have a family, and still find time to take care of yourself? Well my loves, I learned many years ago how to lead my time instead of it dragging me around the block.

So let’s step back just a moment. In my early 20s, ladies, I was a mess. I did not like to plan. I always showed up late, I was disorganized from my work to my car, I mean, I just was very disorganized. And I thought that planning was handcuffs. I thought that by not planning, I was free.

But I was a new leader at the time. I had people who reported to me, who needed me. I remember falling short, forgetting things, not following up on things that my people needed, waiting until the very last minute to get administrative work done, and it left me feeling tired, overwhelmed, and for sure, not free.

What I learned was by being disorganized, I was actually less free. I had more negative emotion. So fast forward and I have been teaching time leadership in my day job for about 12, maybe 15 years. Somewhere in that range. I started to study it, research it. I started to look for all of the best ways to manage my time and energy.

We have this belief that if we plan, that it will take too much time. And we feel so busy already that we feel like we just don’t have the time to plan. But I’m going to challenge that. I believe – and I’m going to say a double negative, so I know it’s not proper English, but I’m going to do it.

I believe we do not not have the time to plan. That if we do not plan, what ends up happening is that we actually start to do things that are not important. And we start to feel a lot of negative emotion like overwhelmed, busy, almost the feeling and I know loves, you’ve felt this before, the feeling like you’re drowning.

We all get 168 hours in a week. And you know, busy is just a lie that we tell ourselves. Every one of you and me, we get to decide what we are going to do with our 168 hours. I know we tell ourselves that other people own our time or I have to do this or I have to do that, but I am just here to tell you love, that it’s always your decision. It always has been, and it always will be.

So I’m going to share three tips with you that really helped me and that I still use to this day. If you’re in Transform, if you’re one of my Transform bosses, go to the bonus area of the membership site. The full course on time leadership and the workbook are in there, so you can take the full course with the workbook, so you can become a boss of your own time.

So the first tip that I want to share with you ladies is how to stop procrastinating. And I want to ask you first, I want you to really think about this. Do you procrastinate? Do you find that you have something on your “to-do list” and you keep pushing it to the next day, the next week?

I find that procrastination comes when we have something to do and it feels too big. It feels overwhelming. A trick is to break down all of the tasks in that big to-do into one-step action steps. So a really silly example. Let’s say you were going to cook a meal. And let’s just say you were going to make lasagna.

And you wrote down make lasagna on your to-do list. But there are a few action steps. You have to make sure you have the ingredients, you have to shop, you have to cook the meat, you have to boil the noodles, you have to put it together. Some of you ladies will make your own sauce. And then you have to bake it.

You could probably even add a few extra steps in there. So when you look at your to-do list and it says make lasagna, your brain knows that there are like, five to eight steps. So it immediately starts to feel overwhelmed. When you write it down in steps, then you can do them when you have time, or you can group small action, one step action items together.

Example, you might brown up the meat but also add extra meat so you can add it to another meal like vegetable soup, vegetable beef soup. I like to add it to a salad. So when you break it down to the different steps, you then – it can save you time in other things that you have to do.

And also, when you write things down in simple one-action steps, you’re more likely to do it. Let’s say you have an extra five minutes; you can mark something down off of your action list. But if it’s a big project, you will just keep putting it off.

The second tip is getting everything out of your head. We rely way too much on our short-term memory and it is exhausted. It cannot hold one more thing in there. When you write it down, you get it out of your head. Your brain is not looping. Don’t forget, Shannan, don’t forget, Shannan.

I mean, you’ve been to Target, right? Where you are walking down the aisles and everything in your cart is everything but what you came to Target for and you can’t remember the one thing that you came to Target for? I know loves, I have been there so many times. But now I write everything down.

I try not to keep anything in my head. If I’m feeling super exhausted, it is usually a trigger that I have too much in my head and I need to brain dump it out on paper.

So the third tip is once you have everything out on paper, a few times a week, take all of your action steps and then put them on your calendar. Schedule them. Schedule when you’re actually going to do them. And then love, when the time comes up, just do it.

Now, your brain, Lizzy, will tell you that you don’t want to do it. And I just challenge you to do it anyway. I schedule my fun, I schedule rest. Don’t forget that too. When you start to schedule everything and you start to plan, you will start to see and feel this freedom.

And I tell you, the feeling is so good. Instead of trying to keep everything in your brain, instead of pushing things off because you’re procrastinating, you’re actually getting things done and you’re starting to feel better.

I am very committed. If I am going to do something, I do it. I do not put it off. It is a rarity that I don’t do something that is on my calendar. This is honestly how I get everything done. And it allows me to prioritize what is important.

These three tips are life savers to me. They help me make sure that I’m not letting people down, especially myself. So just to recap, number one, take your projects, your multi-action steps, your to-dos, and put them in singular action steps.

Number two, get everything out of your head. Write it all down on paper or I know some of you love to put it in your phone, like in notes. And number three, calendar all your action steps, and then when it is time, get it done.

And I have one bonus tip that is for sure a life saver. If it takes less than three minutes to get it done, just do it. Don’t waste brain energy deciding when or if you should do it. Just do it. I tell you; it saves so much time. There’s no decision, there’s no putting it off. Three minutes or less, I just get it done.

So to celebrate our 50th episode, I’m going to do a drawing. When you leave a written review on iTunes, you will be entered into a drawing. I’m going to give away two $150 gift cards to Amazon. Now to be entered, you must leave a written review on iTunes, also known as Apple Podcasts. And then you must email me at shannan@bflycoaching.com with the title of your review.

And I know ladies, but it has to be on Apple. So if you have an iOS device, super easy like a Mac or an iPhone. Now, if you don’t, you still can download the iTunes app on a Windows computer and leave a review. So my loves, so exciting. I cannot wait to see all of the reviews.

I want to take a moment. This is our 50th episode and just thank all of you who continue to listen to the show every week. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it and I want to give a special shout-out to Digital Freedom Productions, to Pavel and Angela and team. Thank you so much for all that you do for this show.

So my loves, see you next week. I am going to share my routine and some simple ways I set myself up for success. Alright, bye my loves.

If you loved listening to this podcast, I would love to have you come check out Transform weight loss program. It is my monthly coaching program where we take this work to a whole new level and ladies learn how to lose weight for good in a way that they can always do. Join me over at bflycoaching.com/join. I’d love to have you join me in Transform weight loss program.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come over to bflycoaching.com. That’s B – F – L – Y coaching dot com. See you next week!