What’s Really Stealing Your Time and How to Take It Back
What’s Really Stealing Your Time and How to Take It Back
Most people believe they are overwhelmed because they do not have enough time. They tell themselves they are too busy, too stretched, too behind, or too overloaded to get ahead. But the truth is that most time problems are not time problems. They are clarity problems. The issue is not the number of hours you have. It is the decisions you have not made, the boundaries you have not set, and the awareness you have not created.
If you keep saying that you do not have time, it will keep being true for you. Not because of your schedule, but because of the way you see your time. In this article, I want to show you what is truly stealing your hours, your energy, and your mental space, and how you can begin to take it back in simple, powerful, and life changing ways.
You Are Not Out of Time. You Are Out of Clarity.
When people say they do not have time, what they actually mean is that they do not have clarity. Time problems almost always show up when priorities are fuzzy, when decisions are open ended, or when mental clutter is high. Without clarity, everything feels urgent. Everything feels important. Everything feels like a fire to put out. That level of internal noise creates overwhelm long before your calendar does.
Clarity gives your hours structure. Clarity gives your brain direction. Clarity gives your tasks meaning. Without it, you will always feel rushed, scattered, and behind, even if you technically have time available. This is why the shift begins with getting honest about where your time is going and why.
Your Unmade Decisions Are Stealing Your Time
One of the biggest drains on your time is not the tasks you have to do. It is the decisions you keep postponing. Every unmade decision hangs like a little cloud over your mind. It occupies space. It pulls your attention. It steals your focus every time it floats back into your awareness.
Unmade decisions pile up until they feel like a mental hurricane. You feel overwhelmed, not because you have too much to do, but because you are carrying too many open loops. This is what creates that constant feeling of pressure, even when nothing dramatic is happening in your schedule.
The solution is not to get more hours. The solution is to start closing those loops. Make the decisions you have been avoiding. Choose. Move. Decide. Even a single decision can clear the fog and open up far more emotional space than you expect.
Mental Load Is More Exhausting Than Your To Do List
The invisible work happening in your mind is far more draining than the visible work on your calendar. Thinking about the thing usually takes longer than doing the thing. Worrying about the task drains more energy than the task itself. Delaying a decision eats up more mental bandwidth than the decision ever deserved.
Your goal is not to empty your task list. Your goal is to reduce the number of things you are carrying in your head. A clear mind creates a clear day. Once you understand this, you stop treating productivity like a race and start treating it like a practice of clarity and intention.
A 24 Hour Audit Will Change Everything
If you want to take your time back, start with one simple tool. A 24 hour audit. For one day, write down exactly how you spend each hour. Do not judge it. Do not fix it. Do not shame yourself for what you see. Just observe it.
Awareness removes the mystery. When you see your time in black and white, you stop telling yourself stories about where it went. You stop guessing. You stop hoping you used your hours well. You can see the patterns, the habits, the distractions, and the invisible drains that you would not have noticed before.
This one simple exercise gives you the information you need to make better decisions about your time. It shows you what matters and what does not. It gives you the power to choose differently.
You Can Make Decisions in Advance
One of the best ways to reduce overwhelm is to make as many decisions in advance as possible. Your future self should not have to negotiate with your present self every hour of the day. Decide what your morning routine looks like. Decide when you work. Decide what gets your attention and what does not. Decide what you are available for. Decide what you are no longer going to tolerate.
When you make decisions in advance, you remove confusion. You remove hesitation. You remove the extra energy you waste going back and forth. This is how you take your time back without adding more to your schedule.
Boundaries Protect Your Time Better Than Planning
Planning is helpful, but planning alone is not enough if you do not have boundaries. You can calendar your perfect day, but if you let every request, notification, or distraction pull you off track, your schedule means nothing.
Boundaries are the structure that protect your clarity. They are the commitments you make to yourself that keep your time aligned with your priorities. When you protect your attention, you protect your hours. When you protect your hours, you protect your progress.
You Take Your Time Back One Choice at a Time
Taking your time back does not require a complete overhaul. It starts with small, practical choices that you can make every day. The first step is noticing where your time actually goes.
Once you have that awareness, you can start making the decisions you have been putting off and reduce the mental load that has been weighing you down.
You can also begin setting boundaries that support the kind of life you want. When you shift from reacting to everything around you to being intentional about what gets your attention, you create space for clarity. Over time, these small choices change how you relate to your schedule. You stop feeling like you are chasing time and start feeling like you are leading it.
Your time is not gone. What has been missing is clarity, and clarity is something you can rebuild starting today.
Chapter List:
00:00 What “I Don’t Have Time” Really Means
01:12 Why You Feel Overwhelmed Even When You Are Busy
02:33 The Truth About Time and Clarity
03:58 How Unmade Decisions Drain Your Energy
05:21 Why Mental Clutter Steals More Time Than Tasks
06:44 How to Reclaim Time by Making Faster Decisions
08:16 The Power of Simplicity in Your Schedule
09:47 Understanding Your Real Priorities
11:10 How to Stop Overthinking and Start Moving
12:42 How to Take Your Time Back Starting Today
Full Transcript:
Amanda Kaufman (00:00)
if you feel like you are always completely overwhelmed by all the things to do and my God, I can't do it. your energy and your attention is going into your lack of capacity, friend, there's some decisions you have to make,
Well, hello and good morning. Welcome to our next episode of the training for the coaches plaza.
If you're looking for the full recording, make sure that you join us in Clients Over Chaos, which is our free group, and make sure you invite your friends. It's next number five clients.com. That's next five clients.com. And if you're watching this on the gram, head over to my link in bio and you will jump right to it at my link. Okey dokey. Today, we are going to give you the gift that so many of my clients are.
desperate for which is your time. If you want more time to work on your business, work out, connect with people that you really love, to do the things that you keep meaning to do but you aren't doing because you're always out of time, then this is the session for you because time is not just about hours, it's also about
your energy, it's about your attention, it's about boundaries. We're going to talk about all those things today. And in this episode, we're going to reveal what is actually draining your time. It's not your calendar. And we're going to show you some simple ways that you can reclaim focus and flow. So show an F in the chat if that is so exciting for you today. We're going to let's see, what are we going to cover? I got my little notes here.
We're gonna talk about the phrase, I don't have time. We're gonna start with that. And then we're gonna talk about the three biggest time thieves that show up when you are a coach or when you are building a service-based business like coaching. We're gonna talk about the real elephant in the time management room. And you do not wanna miss this, okay? Because when I figured this thing out,
I was like, literal life changer, okay? Actual life changer. So I'm gonna keep that a little secret for a sec. But shout out number three, if you're excited to hear, well, what is that? We're going to learn how to reclaim that time. And I call this the time reclaim method so that your schedule actually matches your priorities. Okay? And then we're gonna talk about how to use small tweaks in focus
to be able to create more of your desired outcome. So if that all sounds like a good flight plan for today, Shout out to Y in the chat and let's get this party starty. Okay, so I hear it all the time. Amanda, I don't have time. Amanda, now's not a good time. Amanda, the time got away from me. I have a version of that one and I'm just so curious for you, like when you find yourself uttering words about time, how do you talk about it?
Right? Are you talking about the scarcity of the time that you have? Are you talking about the overwhelm of so many things already demanding your time? Like what, how's it actually come up for you? I love my coffee super far away from me. That was rude. Okay. So here's the real truth about this. All of those phrases, right? So much to do, so little time. That's another one that I hear all the time. So much to do, so little time. And you know,
Time and productivity was my gateway into personal growth and development as a bigger topic. just to give you a little bit context, at the time I was still working in corporate America, we were about to welcome my son Alden, who's now 12. And I was so worried, hi, Mollee, I'm glad you're here. I was so worried about not having enough time to do it all.
I felt so much pressure to do it all, to be it all, to have all of it all the time. And so I often said those things, I don't have time. Another thing I used to say all the time was like, I'm so busy, I'm just too busy. Show it to be in the chat if you either complain about the time or you complain about how busy you are. So that was me too, is I was like, oh my God, I was like a...
busy, right? And I was carrying it around like this busy badge of honor. And I'm so grateful for that because it led me to buying books about time. I wanted to understand time better. So a couple of books that really helped me. One was Getting Things Done by David Allen. It's a system for how to manage all of the tasks that you have in a way that is organized and likely to be completed.
Right? So getting things done. Another one that was really awesome was by a lady named Laura Vanderkam. And she wrote two books that had a big impact on me when it came to time. The first one was What Successful People Do Before Breakfast. What Successful People Do Before Breakfast. And this actually really, really fascinated me. It was a very short read. I want to say it's less than 120 pages, might even be 60 pages. I don't know. It was like pretty short.
And then the other book that she wrote that really shifted things for me was 168 hours. You have more time than you think. So if you want to look those up, it's Laura Vanderkam. And if you need to revisit anything that we're talking about today, just keep in mind I'm recording it for the Clients Over Chaos Free Community. So you can go grab that at next number five clients.com. It'll be available in the announcements area right after we finish today. So.
Laura Vanderkam. Here's what I learned from my reading is that human beings, right, and this is by the way pre, you know, social media, prolific social media, I had social media, but we didn't have it the way that we have it now. And it was before we started really having a bigger conversation around neurodiversity and ADHD. There's like,
so much misinformation on what ADHD is and all that on the internet. I think when like that conversation entered the chat, a lot of people started to adopt the belief that they could not manage their time and they could, that for them, the pleasure or the benefit of a job well done in the time you had was just like, well, I can't do that. I don't have the capacity to do that.
And I just, you know, I'm not an ist of any kind. I'm not a psychiatrist, psychologist or a therapist. I am simply a mother entrepreneur who has done a lot in the time that the in the short time that I've had. And I want to just share with you some perspectives. And by the way, it has been very suggested by professionals that the ADHD may be very, very strong with this one. So I mean, I guess my line in the sand on the whole neurotypical
Versus non-neurotypical first of all, I don't actually know too many people who call themselves neurotypical It and second of all Mike stand or my line in the sand is to say like hey You may have like ways that your brain work differently. Like I don't know that I don't know anything about that What I do suspect though is that there's a way for you to personally be successful
There's a way for you personally to be successful. So maybe there are accommodations for how your mind works that will help you get into the behaviors and the rhythms that will help you with your focus and your flow. A common misconception around the whole ADHD conversation, again, I'm not a trained expert counselor or anything like that, just a person who has done a lot of things and had a lot of challenge with this area of focus is that
It's not that you cannot focus, it's that the focus is, the switch for your focus doesn't work so good. Right? So you can actually have something called hyper focus. And that has been my unique way of getting around the fact that I easily distract and that I jump from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. And by the way,
In today's world, I think your ability or capacity to have a broad set of interests and be able to pursue those interests is actually a very good thing. Okay, so learn why I don't have time actually means this. When you say you don't have time, what it means is you don't have clarity. That's it.
So what I learned from the books is our brain, whether it's neurotypical, neuro-spice, whatever, human brains, do not have built in them very good time awareness. We're not wired for it. And if you need further proof, check out the fact that practically every device that has power going through it has a clock on it. Have you ever noticed that? There's a clock on your stove, there's a clock on your microwave, there's a clock probably on your wrist.
there's a clock on your computer, there's a clock on your phone, it's like the most prominent thing when your phone is locked, right, is the clock. Why? Because we suck at the perception of time. We really do. And if you need further evidence, you've probably had the experience where you lost track of time because you were so absorbed in what you were doing. And you've probably also had the experience where time moved so slowly. You're sitting in a government waiting room.
for paperwork to be processed or something like that. And it's just like watching paint dry and it's like the most agonizing, it could have been 10 minutes, but it's like this really terribly not stimulated experience. our perception of that time, it slows right down, right? So when we say the words, I don't have time, it usually means I don't have clarity.
And to get even more specific, I don't have clarity about what time it is or how much time has passed or what my intention was with my time in the first place or how much time something actually takes to complete. All of those things are actually clarity issues more so than a wiring issue. Does that make sense, you guys? I really wanted to drive this part home because if there's one thing I hear the most in my practice, it's this...
frustration that people have about time escaping them and running out of time and I'm like look to quote the stoics it is what it is your brain already doesn't do great with the perception of time so stop being upset about that right let's accept it and let's put interventions in place so
Top three time thieves in most coaching and services businesses are as follows. Number one, number one biggest time thief is a lack of intention. Right? So let me put it to you this way. Every single Monday, I am here recording a live stream. It is on my calendar. I know that it's coming. I have planned for it. I even took the time to plan what the topics are.
know, week over week over week for 16 weeks, right? I took the time to set an intention that at this time, I am going to do this presentation about time. And I'm going to broadcast it into the clients over chaos community. And I'm going to broadcast it on my Instagram. And I set intention, clear intention. And I have had a clear intention about recording content at least weekly for like seven years.
Seven years, okay. Now the format's changed, the focus has changed, like the details have somewhat changed, but the one detail that has not ever changed was the intention to release new, unique content every single week. And there have been seasons where I've like upped that frequency. So right now my podcast, my show, we're releasing three times a week. But the thing is, is there's intention
around that schedule. And when I sit down with my clients, especially the ones that enroll in my systems based program, the Experts Network, the first thing I say is, let's do a weekly review, right? Shout W in the chat if you've ever heard me, you know, rant on about a weekly review process. And the reason that this is so critically important is because it helps you set intention for the week ahead. So the weekly review that I teach inside the Experts Network,
is it's basically releasing last week and leaving it behind and it's setting intention for this week. So the first thing you can actually do that's really actionable against the time thief is for real, for real though, take 15 minutes to review last week and set an intention for this week. Now when you set intention, it's one thing to set the intention.
of like, well, I want to finish this course or I want to finish this video or I want to finish this thing I'm setting up in my business, this new process that I'm setting up in my business. That's great, right? But it's incomplete. That's not a full intention. OK, and this took me a super long time because who here has ever had that experience where you make a promise or a commitment to yourself that something will happen and then the week goes by and it doesn't happen, right? Go to P in the chat if you've ever made that promise to yourself.
You broke that promise to yourself and you kind of feel a little shitty about it, right? Yeah. Lynn's like, I would never do that. I would never do that. LOL. Yeah, no, I hear you. know that you, I call it because I felt it, right? And for me, when it comes to intention setting, it's the commitment, but then it's followed with the plan, right? So it's got a deadline.
It's got a time allocation to actually do the thing. That's an intention. It's knowing that you've got this plan to effectively complete that task. And for most people, the big time thief is they just never actually blocked an appointment. Right? And if you're like me, you probably have a pretty easy time receiving appointments from other people.
Right? I, this is, just speaking for me. So you tell me if this is the same or not. Um, but for me, I, I hate letting other people down, right? I'm I'm a recovering people pleaser. I'm now in this phase of life where I love seeing people pleased, but I'm not going to compromise my ability to keep going and building sustainability, uh, just to make somebody else happy. Right? So
Which is, by the way, still a battle. Like, it's not like one day I woke up and I'm like, I am no longer a people pleaser, right? More so, I woke up one day and I realized I needed better boundaries, right? Which we'll talk about in a bit. But if you're like me, you probably are like, you get the invitation to come to a call or you get the invitation to go to a training or you get the invitation and you're just excited to be thought of. And so you're like, yes!
Right? you just pile it higher and deeper in your commitments. So, you know, I think what I will tell you about, excuse me, the lack of intention, the lack of plan, is that you need to treat appointments with yourself with higher regard than the appointments with other people. You can let other people be disappointed that their plan for your time didn't work out.
I'm spicy on a Monday. But seriously, if it's important enough to them, then y'all can work together. You can collaborate on making something that actually works. So for example, I used to do coaching on the weekends and I used to take sales calls late on Fridays and things like that. I no longer do that. I am unavailable for those types of appointments because too many people have broken those appointments to favor their weekend plans or their preferences.
while I'm sitting there waiting on the line. And like, that sucks, I hated it, it pissed me off, so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna have a boundary where I don't do weekend calls and I don't do late Friday afternoon calls, and I'm gonna have a boundary about how far in advance somebody can book a call with me, because I just noticed that people who booked super far in advance, it wasn't because they were so busy or they couldn't accommodate, it's that...
the reason we were talking wasn't compelling enough for them to prioritize it in the nearer term. You know what I'm saying, right? So, yeah, so I set those boundaries. But then I set up a scheduler, right? So with the scheduler, meant that there were ranges of times and appointments that people could choose. And so I call that flexibility in a frame, right? So I set the frame of like, here's the hours of which I'm going to be available.
There's many different options within that frame. So there's flexibility, but I am not going to run around and accommodate other people's calendars because I'm desperate to please them. That's not a good vibe, right? And I don't recommend that for anybody, especially not a coach, especially not somebody who's hold, you your job is to hold space for other people. Part of that is to...
have a high standard of what respect for each other's time actually looks like. So flexibility in a frame, right? I showed Neff in the chat, I it was a super cool idea. Same thing with my kids, you know, like I work from home. So my kids have certain things they like to do on my phone and they'll ask and all that kind of thing. But the freedom in the frame is like, hey dude, do not ask me before 5 p.m. Like the answer is an automatic no before 5 p.m. If you want to ask me after 5 p.m.
The answer is like maybe, like we'll see, we'll evaluate, but the answer is a definite category no before 5 p.m. And so that's a good example of the boundaries. So intention, be really intentional about your time. Yes, flexibility within frames, so within the boundaries, right? The second really big time thief for coaching and services businesses is your marketing.
Right, so the untargeted marketing is going to be exhausting and ineffective. Well, saying it again, untargeted marketing is gonna be exhausting and ineffective. And here's how that might look. If you go to sit down and write a post and you have no idea what to say, you probably are not targeted enough, right? If you know exactly who you're talking to, exactly who you're calling in as your ideal client,
then you're gonna pick up that conversation as if you guys are like best friends, right? And you'll be able to spark that conversation super, super easily because you really, really target it. So the second big time thief is just like one feeling super lost about what to say, but then number two is just like building a bunch of marketing that doesn't bring you any business, right? And that's the second really big time thief. And that's a huge focus of what we do inside of the Experts Network.
I've got a new mastermind that's coming out in the new year and we're gonna be completely focused on the targeted, intentional running of the business, right? Using like metrics and stuff and targets and things because that is the second biggest time thief. The third biggest time thief is simply not working on your business priorities that actually bring you clients.
or actually serve the clients you have with delight. So this is the person who's running laundry while they're trying to also build their business. Nope. If you're trying, like I heard something recently that I really loved, which is be where your feet are. So if your feet are in laundry mode, do the laundry and don't kid yourself that you're actually building the business. Same thing with socializing.
So if you're just hanging out with a friend, catching up on the news, sharing your news, that feels amazing. It feels so good. And you should do it. You need to develop friendships. But if you're doing it and it's in the guise of building a business, but you're not actually implementing a new process, actioning a new task, pulling the trigger on something, making asks of people, having conversations, planning for conversations, if you're not doing any of those activities, then call it what it is. It's a friend catch up call.
And for me, I actually have a bit of a cap. I'm like, you know, I'm gonna spend about two hours with my friends in casual catch up a week. That's it. That's it. Because I don't, one, need a whole lot more than that. And two, I've got so many other priorities and intentions. And again, it's just this clarity of like, what am I doing to secure a client? And what am I doing to delight the clients I have? That's it, right? Keeping it nice and simple. Okay.
I promise you secret number three that makes the biggest difference to your success in claiming your time back. And it's so counterintuitive because it has nothing to do with your calendar. You guys ready for it? Give me a D for the drum roll. Right? Drum roll, please. Here we go. Secret number three. The biggest thing is your unmade decisions. Your unmade decisions.
So I think of like your mental load as being like this little cloud that is surrounding your mind. And if you feel like you are always completely overwhelmed by all the things to do and my God, I can't do it. your energy and your attention is going into your lack of capacity, friend, there's some decisions you have to make,
right? It feels like a hurricane some days. Yeah, I know, I get it. And then been there.
Here's the skill, make the dang decision. So if you've ever sat down with somebody who you were going to lunch with and you're at the same lunch place you all have been to like a million times and they're looking at the menu and they can't decide what to have and they spend like 20 minutes just staring at the same thing over and over again. That is somebody who wastes a ton of time.
a ton of time. You can make decisions in advance and you can make decisions about some of these things. I'm going to give you some things to clear the cloud. So where have you hedged on going all in? Where have you stopped yourself from going all in? Right. So this is usually going to show up in the form of, I don't know if it's going to work. So I want to think about it some more. Right? No.
Are you in or are you out? And if you're out, that's okay. If you're in, then go in. Do the thing, be there. Do the thing, take the risk. Another form of indecision cloud is what decisions are you contemplating that are completely unnecessary? So for example, I used to really...
Think a lot in the future with my business and I'd be like, my god, what if I get overwhelmed? What if I run out of time to do consult? What if I have too many clients and I get burned out? What if what if what if what if what I was a queen of what if but you know what most of your what ifs are not even decisions because they're not real that's not your real context and That's your emotions say like trying to warn you of something that might happen in the future But that's not the same thing as actually facing it
Whenever I find myself in what if thinking and worry thinking, I like to slow that down just a bit so I can speed up, just slow down to speed up and go, OK, how likely is this? And if I have no idea how likely something is, I might do a little bit of research, especially now you can use perplexity.com to like find statistics and find find some details to kind of give you an idea or an appreciation of how realistic this nightmare is.
And if it's a realistic thing, it's a high risk, high impact thing, or high likelihood, high impact thing, then the decision is what do I want to do to mitigate that? Right? What do I want to do to mitigate that possibility? If it's a low impact, meaning you can recover from it pretty quickly, or a really low likelihood, then make the decision not to worry about it. Right?
That's what I mean. When you clear the decisions, you start to really realize your mind, your focus is being preoccupied with things that are not the thing. What is it that Les Brown says? Keep the main thing the main thing, right? So the decision to not make a decision about something is really, really powerful, but it is that clear cutaway of other possibilities.
Another unmade decision might be about how you are prioritizing things. So, I mean, if you had all the resources, all the time, all the money, all the team in the world, and I often ask this question, like you snap your fingers and you have everything available to you, what do you do next? Again, most people don't have any clarity about that. So a really helpful decision to just reduce your mental load is to say, what is authentically my top priority?
It's number one. It wins over everything. What is authentically my number two priority? And I'm using the word authentically here because you boo are the only one that can decide what your true value system is. And if you find yourself continuing to break promises with yourself, it raises a coachy question of like, how are your goals misaligned with your value system? What is it that you
Value more that's taking more of your attention and more of your time by default If you can get that raised up into clarity, then you can examine your goals You can examine your intentions and you can say huh do what is this a map? it's often a matter of like a small tweak in approach a small change in The perspective as you approach this thing, maybe even a small attitude adjustment. It could sometimes be that small
But sometimes when I'm coaching with somebody, it's revealed that the goal was never theirs. I'm gonna say that again, the goal was never theirs. What does that mean? It means it's a goal they thought they should have. And why do we have goals that we think we should have? Couple reasons, one, keeping up with the Joneses, right? Like we wanna keep up with and have high status with our community and with people that we respect. So it could be.
that we received the goal because other people said it was a valuable goal, not because we personally have the value system that supports that goal. Is that making sense, y'all? Show the why in the chat. If it's making sense, then maybe your goal is not your goal yet. And again, it could be a tweak, but sometimes people work towards goals because they think it's gonna make other people happy. It's the people pleaser again.
The second reason why we work on goals that are not really our own is because we have another goal that is really important to us. And we think that this particular path is the best way to that goal. And this again is why coaching is so powerful because if I was to sit down and actually coach with you one-on-one, we could reveal the goal behind the goal.
Because sometimes when people set a goal, what they're actually saying is, here's my plan. And plans change. Plans change. So for example, I love knowing when my clients are money motivated. Because it's like, well, what is motivating you to want more money? And they want more money because they want to repair some financial situation or because they have some other ambition of what they are going to do with the money. And it's like, that's the goal behind the goal.
So if you think that a coaching business is the best way to serve that goal, maybe it's not. Maybe a job is a better way to serve that goal. That's happened many times with people that I've worked with because their goal wasn't really to have a business of their own. Their goal wasn't really to coach other people. It was they wanted to feel more valued by people around them, right? And they thought that showing up really coachy would make other people value them.
and the capital T truth is that's just one way, I guess, to win that affection, to win that love, to win that validation. But that's not like building the business shouldn't be the goal if it's just about making other people appreciate you. Can you guys track on all of this, right? If you want validation, get a puppy. That's a great plan.
Okay, so how are unmade decisions quietly wasting your hours every week? Basically, you're serving so many masters in your mind that you don't have the clarity about what you want to actually pursue. And the big solve for that, no kidding, work with a real coach. Ask the questions of a real coach, an experienced coach, right? Cool, so in terms of reclaiming your time, I'm gonna share with those in clients over chaos my, let's see if I can find my...
link here, the capacity toolkit, which has my 5D capacity map. So when it comes to reclaiming your time, I love to combine a couple of things. I like to stop, drop everything onto a page and roll with the next best action. So the link I just dropped inside of the clients over chaos chat, and I'm going to put it over here too, because we've got we're testing out the live streaming capability in the group itself.
But that link is gonna take you to a couple of things. One, you're gonna get access to my Time Alchemy Toolkit course. And two, you're gonna get access to my Capacity Map tool, which teaches you how to use the 5D method. So the time reclaim method is basically to stop and assess, not how do you spend time at first, but first assess your desires.
What is it that you want to create, do, achieve, become in the world? So you just start with the goal. You start with the end in mind. Then before you do anything else, what are the big moves? What are the big things that we need to do to create that reality? So is it developing a skill? Is it making a new choice or a decision? Is there an action that we can take?
What are the things that are going to help realize that goal, realize that outcome? And then from there, we can do an assessment of like, okay, so far I spend my time on this, this, this, and this. So then my friend, it's about trade-offs. It's making trade-offs. You're trading low value, low reward, low alignment tasks for higher value, high reward, high value tasks.
And again, you're the only one that discerns the value. You're the one who knows what's the most important thing in your life. So time reclamation is really actually about trading. It's swapping that old thing that doesn't serve as well for something that serves better. And this is where people get super tripped up is because often they're doing good things with their time.
Like they evaluate their time and they evaluate what they're doing with their time and they go, well, that's a good thing. So I should keep the thing because it's good. But is it great? Right. So the harder trade offs are actually the ones where you are trading a good thing for an excellent thing. You're trading a good thing for a really great thing. You know, it's very, I think there's probably a lot of time that you could pull back from.
For example, a swap on social media time, right? If you're doom scrolling for hours a day, that's a really easy place to find more time. Same with watching TV. That's a pretty easy place to pull time from. But then after you've done the easy thing, the harder thing is to say, doing that would be good, but doing this will be way better.
And it's those trade-offs that people typically aren't making because again, it's not that you don't have time is that you don't have clarity. So trade in the chat if you're hearing me super loud and clear. Okay. Last big idea is small tweaks in focus will save you so much time. It's going to unlock so many hours of wasted productivity of needing to hire other people to do the work of needing to
delay on and defer on your goals, right?
Being really clear about what matters right now in your life and your business is absolutely critical because most people are either living way in the past, right? Stuck in the past of who they used to be, what happened, the mistakes made, all those problems, or they're stuck in the future and they're stuck in the possibilities, even daydreaming, right? Like they're just, they're stuck in this future focus that's like things will be different someday.
This is going to change someday or it could be anxious. It could be like this bad thing could happen or that bad thing could happen and you're just playing all these different versions of the future, but you're not where your feet are. So I have in my office a little reminder by the Dalai Lama and I'm going to read it to you right now. There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow. So today is the right day to love.
believe, do, and mostly live. So what it's saying is that your presence in the moment, your acceptance of your current moment allows you to decide what to do with this moment. And I think there's a really big opportunity here for most of us. How often are you truly present?
How often are you truly focused? Something as simple as closing a few tabs. Something as simple as learning to regulate where you focus your eye so that you're not trying to take in too much all at once. Something as simple as saying upfront, here's my intention, this is what good looks like, and letting yourself be present to that moment, right?
Lynn, close those effing tabs. Why do you have the tabs open, right? And this is again a clarity thing. You know, I used to keep tabs open all the time because I kept telling myself the hashtag lie that I was gonna get back to it in the future or that I would lose it somehow. So the missing habit there is to grab the link and pop it on your calendar into the time slot that you need or to use bookmarks so that you can close things.
and feel the comfort of knowing that you're not gonna lose the information that you need, right? So that, again, it takes training, it takes adjustment, but you know what happens is you end up with almost a brand new computer because you're not making your computer keep all those different pages refreshed for you at all times, which is really, really demanding on your CPU, but it's also super demanding on your brain, right? So little tweaks to focus, another one.
When you go into a meeting, what do you want to take away from it? Right? This is the tiny little focus tweak. But if we have a tiny little focus tweak of when you go into a meeting or you go into a conversation or an interaction, even if it's social, with this positive intention, this positive forward moving intention, it changes the questions you ask. It changes your listening.
It changes your activation in that relationship. And when people feel your activation and your energy, they respond more positively. They're more likely to want to keep promises to you. They're more likely to want to make sure your life is easy because you're actually a pleasure to be around. But it starts with you having an actual intention. So many people come to meetings and it's like they're dead weight. just trying, like everybody's trying to be a fly on the wall. And I'm like, why are you even here?
I don't know, right? And it's like, okay, well, you I don't know, kind of presence is gonna get, I don't know, kind of results. You know what I mean? So that's like a teeny tiny little thing. Last thing is if you have a personal growth and development practice around journaling and closing out your day, that makes a huge, huge, huge, huge difference. So I'm gonna share as well in Clients Over Chaos, my link to the app Growth Day.
It does such a great job of like helping you really focus your day on positive intent, positive ideas, mindfulness, picking a few things that you're gonna really focus on today. It is awesome, I totally agree. But it's a huge productivity hack because you're more present in your day when you make personal growth and development a part of your day. Now, here's the big insight.
If you keep saying, I'm too busy, I don't have time, that will continue to be true for you. Because it's your truth, right? Like that's your experience. You cannot create more time, but you can make better use of the time that you have. So once you start seeing time as an energy, not just the hours, and you stop trying to squeeze more in or compress your sleep or do the things that we do to try to artificially manufacture more time,
and you start creating space with intention for what matters, it's going to make a massive, massive difference. Now, here's the final thing to leave you with. Do a 24-hour audit. So just for one day, write down how you actually spend each hour. And if you like, you can make this like 15-minute increments. I once did this at five-minute increments because...
I was so blown away. did it for five minute increments for three weeks because the first week that I did it, I couldn't even believe how much time I was spending on social media, how much time I was spending in dead space, know, an unproductive time. I couldn't believe it. So I did it for another week and it was like the same mix. And I'm like, what the heck? Because I thought maybe it was just a special week. I was particularly exhausted that week. Then I did it for a third week. And guess what? My time allocation stayed about the same. Three weeks in a row.
So if you want change, I think the first thing is to accept the reality of how you are actually spending that time. And I would say just get started with the awareness, not the judgment, but the awareness of your default way that you spend time. And once you see where your time really goes, you begin to be empowered with making new decisions for that time. So if this episode helped you see your capacity differently,
Make sure you share it with somebody who is also too busy. And you can invite them to join us directly in Clients Over Chaos, which is our free community for coaches and experts who are seeking their first or next five clients. And they can join us at next number five clients.com. Thank you so much for joining me today. And for this week, we have Thanksgiving week coming up.
looking at all the Black Friday sales, all that kind of thing, make sure you take time for you. Set intention, all right? Thank you so much. Grateful for you, grateful for your time, grateful to spend time together today, and I will see you in Clients Over Chaos, and yeah, peace, take care.
