Welcome back, everybody. It's Becky Williams. I'm so happy that you're here with me another week. You've stayed with us this long. Congratulations! I feel like we are close friends now. So this week, I want to talk to you actually about time and how we spend it. So I like to think of this as honoring your yes and your no, because if you're saying yes to something, ultimately you're saying no to something else and vice versa, right? 

So I want to talk to you today about seeing if you feel like your calendar is having you be overcommitted, or if your calendar has it just right, or if maybe you have some more room to add in other things, but you were nervous that you would be overcommitted and you're just not sure. So today, I want to talk to you about it so you can get a really good evaluation of what's happening with your time, where it's going, and if you're running it or it's running you. All right, so I know that for me, I often overcommit. I say yes to too many things, and a lot of times I do that because I either feel bad for saying no, I feel like I'm going to let somebody down, I feel like I owe it to them. All these different emotions come up for me when I'm committing to doing something. 

Sadly, saying yes to everyone ultimately leaves me and you burnt out, resentful a lot of times that people are using us, right? When we could have said no. So really we put ourselves in that place. But it's hard, especially depending on what your Enneagram number is if you have a really good relationship with boundaries, or if you're more like me and you kind of lack in that area but you're working on it. Okay, so let's go ahead and assess your calendar, assess your time, see where it's going. 

You're going to need a calendar for this. So grab your calendar and grab a piece of paper and something to write with. Okay. All right, so whenever I say the words weekly commitment, what comes to mind for you? Does it have to do with your personal life? Does it have to do with your business? Maybe it's both? What this week do you have to get done? Look at your calendar. Are your kids going to school? That's a non-negotiable. That has to go on the calendar. Do you work? That's going to have to go on the calendar. Do you have, let's say you babysit somebody and they're expecting you to do that. Is that a commitment? Yes. So write down the things that have to happen this week. 

Now on the piece of paper that you have, I want you to write down your top five priorities. If I said, “Hey, sweet, sprightly soul member, tell me what is it that are your top five things that are the most important to you? Name whatever those top five things are.” Don't think about it. Don't hesitate. Don't overthink is what I'm trying to say. Just write it down. Now I want you to open your calendar and make sure that you have it to whatever next week is going to be. I want you to look at your top five priorities and I want you to look at your calendar. If the activity that is on your calendar is in alignment with your priority, put a check mark. If it's not in alignment with your priority, scratch it out. Use a pencil if this is making you freak out and you're writing in your calendar, use a pencil, right? It's just to give you an idea of how your time is being spent. 

What emotions come up for you when I say to cancel across out appointments that don't line up with your priorities? Is it relief? Like, Oh, best, you know, fresh air because I've been given permission to let go of these things that are sucking up the time that I really want to spend with my family. I really want to spend working out. I really want to spend preparing food at home instead of going out to eat. Or is it feelings of guilt? Like I was talking about at the beginning. You feel guilty because you're not spending time with this person or you're not doing this for this charity or you're not doing this for whatever it is. Do you feel guilt and obligated to spend time with them? I want you to brainstorm the places in your calendar, the space that you've just created by marking off things that don't serve you. I want you to brainstorm what could be filled in those places instead and see how that new thing feels.  Does the new thing feel better than what you had on your calendar before? 

All right, now let's rework your calendar. If you say, Becky, listen, I hear what you're saying, but I'm a mom. I'm a wife. I work. I run my own business. I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. All of these things are important and I just feel like I don't have time. I don't have it. I don't know. I can't mark any things off of my calendar. I'm in this place too. All right, so it may not be that you're overcommitted. It just may be that you got a lot of stuff going on, right? 

Okay, so I want to talk to you about block scheduling. This is totally revamp everything that I've done because I too wear a lot of hats, right? So block scheduling for me, yes, you can have a block of time. That just makes sense, but inside your block of time, I want you to block or batch. It's also called batching. I want you to put things that are similar in the same block. Did you know that one hour of block to focus time is the same as 3.2 hours of interrupted work? Okay, when you switch from task to task that are different, it takes you 20 minutes for your brain to refocus. For some of us, it takes a little bit more than 20 minutes for your brain to refocus if it focuses at all, right?

So if you are switching between all these different things, it's actually gonna take your brain longer to refocus on whatever it is you're working on. So I want you to just try this out for one week. Spend your time doing tasks that are similar and see how your time goes. For example, if you on Mondays, let's see, I'm completely making this up. All right, Mondays, you go grocery shopping. You have your new plan from your membership site, you've logged on, you've printed out the shopping list, you've got it all to go. Monday, you do your shopping. Tuesday, you have to mail stuff off at the post office. Wednesday, you have to pick up treats for your child's class, or you have to go get your prescriptions at the pharmacy, whatever it is. 

Could you take time all on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, put all of those errands together and make that a block where you're outside of your house? So that on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, whatever day you're not doing those errands, you can do something inside your house. So that could be your cleaning, that could be organizing a bedroom. We talked about clearing the clutter a while back, right? Maybe it's that room that you want to get all the clothes out of it so that you can put your exercise equipment in it. Whatever it is, block that time with similar tasks so you can go seamlessly between each one. Does that make sense? 

So let's recap here. Saying yes to everything is going to deplete you. It just is. Even if it's all good things, it's going to deplete you because you're only one person. Second, this is pulling something from weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks back, but getting rid of physical clutter can create space for you to breathe and be creative. So if you are smothering in stuff, and your schedule is also smothering in stuff and in tasks and in things that don't align with your priorities, look at both of those because cleaning one or the other is going to help you to be enthusiastic about getting the other one done. I know that sounds silly, I understand. But like I've talked about before, how you do one thing is how you do everything. So create space in your calendar, and then that will motivate you to create space in your home. 

I'm telling you, it's a snowball effect, guys. Trust me, if you don't believe me, try it out and prove me wrong. If I'm wrong, send me a message and let me know, okay? But I'm telling you, this has worked for me, this has worked for my clients, this has worked for so many different people.

Honor your yes and your no on your calendar based off your top priorities. This is what's going to get you ahead and get you that more buying more time, so to say, because you're able to do more in a little bit of time. And then use time blocking so you don't feel like you're in and out of your house all day, up and down, doing all these different things that don't have anything to do with each other. 

Stay committed. I like to use timers, that's what helps me because time will pass me by and I won't even realize. Use time blocks. Schedule in breaks, schedule in your activities so that they make sense. Just write them all down, chunk them into time, put the ones that are similar together. Try this out and see how it works for you, okay? 

Hopefully it's going to help you and you can be like, email me and tell me or post in the Facebook group, man, this time blocking stuff really helped me to get more done and I feel more in alignment with my priorities. I'm here to help you. I'm here to support you. Reach out if you need us. I'll see you again next week for another video. Bye guys. Have a great week.