EP 274 — Time Management Tips for Women Over 50 | How To Make Time For Your Coaching Business
Time management for women over 50 is one of the biggest challenges when growing a coaching business... especially when you’re juggling life, family, and maybe even a full-time job. The good news is, you don’t need more time - you need a better system! If you’re ready to master time management as a female coach over 50, this episode will help you make the most of your time so that you can build the business you’re dreaming of, without burning out!
Debbie Shadid is joined by Megan Sumrell, a former corporate tech executive that took her 20+ year career in systems and processes and applied it to one of her favorite things…time management and productivity. As the CEO and Founder of The Pink Bee, she is on a mission to bring Work+Life Harmony into homes all over the world. She is the creator of the TOP Program and TOP Planner, a program and planner that teaches her proprietary feminine planning system to get women out of overwhelm and back in control of their lives.
In this video, we’re talking about realistic time management tips for women coaches over 50 to help you grow your coaching business AND your life. If you want to make time for your coaching business while balancing your life, or even a full-time job, this video is for you.In this video, you'll learn:
Why most time management advice doesn’t work for women coaches over 50 (and what actually does!)
How to set up a realistic weekly schedule that works even if you’re still working full time
A feminine time planning method that helps you stay consistent without burning out
How to build a coaching business with limited time using simple routines
The #1 mindset shift that helps women over 50 stop feeling behind and start feeling in control
Why over-planning kills momentum (and what to do instead)
Megan Sumrell’s TOP productivity framework designed for female entrepreneurs
... and so much more!
You don’t need more hours in the day. You need a plan that honors your life AND your coaching business goals! If you’re a woman coach over 50 ready to build your business your way, this episode will help you plan smarter, feel better, and take confident action.
Be sure to subscribe for more weekly episodes on time management, mindset, and coaching business growth for women 50+!
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz6RS8kQGMLJqJrK9uKdjtg
Connect with Megan Sumrell:
Website: www.megansumrell.com
Podcast: https://www.megansumrell.com/podcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/megansumrell/
Email: megan@megansumrell.com
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and forward this to a coach who is building and growing their coaching business. CLICK HERE TO LEAVE A REVIEW
Don’t forget to connect with me on social media: Instagram | Facebook
Transcript
So today I wanna introduce you to our guest, Megan Summerall. Megan, tell us a little bit about what you've done And how you came to be a time management expert.
Well, I will tell you, when I was in third grade and your teacher asked, what do you wanna be when you grow up?
Time management expert was not what I was saying at that stage of life. so I have spent over, 20 years in the corporate software space, where essentially my job was to go into kind of chaotic new software organizations and rebuild their processes and procedures from the ground up to help them really optimize and streamline and improve the overall quality of what they were doing.
And I bring that up only 'cause it kind of ties into the time management approach that I have taken specifically for women. So over the course of my career, I got a ton of like really nerdy certifications. went through a ton of courses all around, kind of process improvement, efficiencies, et cetera.
And I loved what I did. I never thought I would leave that. but I got married a little later in life, started a family later in life. When my daughter was about two, I remember it was a Friday afternoon where I'd gotten up early to get my work done so we could go to the park in the afternoon, you know, did all the things packed, the snacks, the night before, all that.
and I was pushing her on the swings at the park, and the woman next to me just started talking to me. And over the course of conversation, she asked, what do you do for fun? And I realized I didn't have an answer, and I didn't even realize my life had gotten to a point. Or I couldn't answer a question, that is a pretty easy question that most people should be able to answer.
so that kind of led me on a journey to going like, what happened? How did my life go from, you know, single Megan who had every weekend to do fun things? I had tons of hobbies to suddenly here I was. Not being able to answer that question, and the real root of it came when I looked at my calendar and the planning system I'd been using for over 20 years.
If there's any other Franklin Covey lovers out there, and I realized my calendar did not show any room for myself. What was in my calendar was me being in service to every role that I played, whether it was for work, for home, for my parents, for motherhood. And so that kind of launched me on this journey to say, Hey, you do this for a living.
How about you apply everything you've learned to software teams, to managing everything I was juggling in my life to say, how do I create. Ultimately a calendar that I can get excited about that ensures I'm getting the most important things done, but most importantly, still has time for myself.
When I read your story, Megan, I thought, wow, you just really described and put into words.
Exactly what so many people that I know feel, and they're like, I don't even know what my hobbies would be. Or they have that someday mentality, like someday, when I retire, when I'm not working, like I'm gonna clean out the attic that's on my list. [00:03:00] Someday you know? they live their life like that.
And that sounds exactly like what you're
talking about. A hundred percent. And I think women in particular, we experience this more than our male counterparts. and one of the key reasons why is we actually like the female brain. the part of your brain that manages the emotional center is physically larger than the males brain. And so even if we're not in the trenches with young kids anymore, so much of our thought, so much of, you know, what we lay around and think about. So much of what is silently distracting us, I believe, really ties into this emotional caregiving. People call it the mental load, whatever it may be. And we think that that's gonna go away when our kids grow up.
But it doesn't. It just shifts into different things that we are constantly thinking about, worrying about caring about.
That's so beautiful because it justifies how people feel. And that's another connection point that I had with you. I thought, well, that describes really, like there's nothing wrong with you as a woman and all that you have.
There's nothing really wrong. I think so many women that I work with, particularly coaches, they are learning all these new skills and they say, well, I have A-A-D-H-D. Like, I can't remember anything like I have. And it's like. Actually, I think if we raised our hands on this coaching call, every single person would agree that they're overwhelmed.
They can't remember, you know, this thing right here contributes to it, so. How do you help people, and especially
for women, you know, as we approach our late forties, sometimes even early forties into 50, a lot of the things that I hear women saying, oh, I think I've got a DHD. I'm like, well, you don't develop it in your forties or fifties, but a lot of the things that we think is A DHD is actually a symptom of menopause.
Oh yeah. So coupled with the fact now we're entering menopause, which I'm in. Full menopause now, like, yeah, but it's real. It is real that you are more distracted. It is real that you hit decision fatigue more. Like all of those things are real. There's nothing wrong with you. So what we need to do is say, okay, well, given that this is my reality.
How do I build a calendar or a schedule or manage my time in a way that acknowledges it, honors it, but still allows me to get the things done that are important for me to get done.
Oh my goodness. And then how do you decide? What to put on, and we'll talk about your system particularly, but how do you decide like what is the priority and what's not?
And then I think also like let go of the guilt that comes with that. That's like, okay, well I'm not gonna get to that this week. I don't know. I've gotten good at that because it's like I can't only do so many things and what's important we'll get done and the rest is I deem not that important. So yeah.
What's your advice on that? So prioritization is probably one of the questions that comes up most with students who, they're like, I just, but everything's urgent. Everything's important. And so they'll come to me and say, well, help me prioritize. I'm like, but I can't. Right. I can't define for anyone what is most important to them, but I love to use the analogy of finances a lot with time because there's so much similarity there and it's easy to understand it with finances 'cause it's tangible, right? We can see the money, but our time is so fluid. So if you were to go to the grocery store with a hundred dollars in your pocket, or maybe in today's world, I should say a thousand if you're doing actual grocery shopping, but let's say you had a hundred dollars in your pocket as you were going around and deciding like, okay, what food do I need for the week?
What people choose to put in their grocery cart is gonna be very different because your priorities for nutrition and foods might be different than mine, or what people in your home like to eat are gonna look very different, right? So there's no one right way to do it. But when we think of that kind of time budget. Our ultimate goal is to not live in time debt where you are constantly overcommitting, overscheduling and thinking that you're going to get 32 hours of stuff done and maybe the six that you had available for the day. And so the best thing that you can do to help with your priorities is first, understand with great clarity how much time do I honestly have this week that I want to spend? Yeah. Let's say on my coaching business, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it's always way less than what you think because Yeah. Chances are you're not running your, your calendar is not set up in a way to show you the real time budget Yes. That you have. So once we master that skill of being able to say, okay, this is what I really have. Maybe I really only have nine hours. Yeah, right. Once you know that, and then the second part is once you then can see, and here's everything competing for that nine hours and what each one of those costs. In terms of how much time would each one of those take?
Once you can see that the act of prioritizing suddenly looks very different, right? Just as you're walking through a grocery store, if you know you have a hundred dollars and you're seeing the price tag of everything, it's gonna make it a lot easier for you to prioritize. What's going in your cart versus just going, well, this sounds good and let's just see how much it costs when I get to the register and see if I have enough money.
Right? None of us would wanna be in that situation. So the art of prioritizing is going to be very specific to each person, because what's important to you might be different than what's important to me. Or the platform you've chosen to promote your business on might be a different platform that I'm focusing on growing my business on.
But when we understand, here's your budget and here's the cost of everything competing for that time, it allows us to prioritize better and then not have that guilt, right? I'm not gonna feel guilty about not doing something that is physically impossible for me to do because I simply don't have the time to do it.
So the other thing that I find when I talk to coaches about their schedule like is, first of all, let's actually audit and see what you're actually doing with your time. Because things like our coaching calls, somehow they don't count or like the time that they're watching,let's say learning how to use Canva, they're not actually counting that time.
And I'm like, no, wait a minute. If you do have nine hours to work on your business and you're with me one hour and you're working on a training two. Now we have like less hours actually to do your work. And they're like, oh, I'm like, count every hour that you're actually doing something.
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And that's the stuff that,
The coaching call with you is probably showing up on their calendar, right? It's a set date and time, and there's an appointment, but there is so much stuff most people operate this way. They have their calendar, which has appointments on it, right? And the definition of an appointment to most people is something that you have accountability with someone else, right?
Here's my coaching call at this time. Here's my dentist appointment at this time, right? And so it's usually only involving somebody else and it's something you're thinking, I can't reschedule it. You know, there will be a negative consequence if I don't go. So they have that on their calendar and that's what they're looking at to see how much free time do I have.
So it looks like you've got a ton. Yeah. Then separately, somewhere else, they've got some ridiculously long list their task list or their to-do list and they're like, okay, well as I have availability on my calendar each day when I'm not in it traditional appointment. I'll just go look at that list and just start knocking things off, and this is what leads to perpetual overwhelm, overcommitment underestimating because every single time you have availability on your calendar.
Not only are you looking at the list, but a million other distractions are coming in. The thing that popped up this morning, the, oh yeah, I gotta, there's stuff you're spending time on that doesn't show up on your list. Yes. I gotta go check my email. I'm gonna go do some research. I'm gonna go watch the next video in the course that I'm taking.
So they don't have a realistic view of where the bulk of their time is going. And then this to-do list isn't prioritized. You've put no thought to how long these things are supposed to take. Yes, exactly. So you're stuck in what I call this just in time living. Every minute of every day is, okay, what's next? What's next? Which creates anxiety, it creates overwhelm, and it creates massive decision fatigue by about noon every day. 'cause you're constantly asking yourself. What's next? And then making a really hard decision, which is why so many people by like one or two in the afternoon, they're tapped out. It's not because they've been super creative or working really hard, they've hit decision fatigue.
'cause they've been making micro decisions all day long about how they're spending their time.
So one of the things that I think is unique about our coaching end. It fits what you're talking about is I say to people, I will tell you what to do. If there's ever a moment when you're not sure and you have two hours and you're spinning around, reach out to us.
I will tell you based on where you are, what to do. Because they can't decide like, what should I do? And then they just walk out of their office and they do nothing.
Or they spiral into the least the thing that maybe is fun, but is, yeah, revenue producing or growing their business or anything like that.
And so we end up in almost like research paralysis. Oh yeah. Lemme just research it for another two hours. or let me get on social media to get inspiration for content I wanna create. And that's never gonna be a good use of time.
Yeah. one more thing I'll just point out that I am always onto clients about is.
Putting the correct amount of time on your calendar for something. I was guilty of this. I would say like, I blocked out everything. Write your weekly email. Okay. All that stuff. But I never put enough time like writing an email. You're like, well that takes 10 minutes.
Okay. And I would block off 30 minutes. No, it doesn't take that much time for you and I today. Okay. But it takes, you know, the time to write it, to review it, to put it in flow desk, to double check it, to send it to yourself, to check the link. I mean, for people that are new coaches, it might take two hours to do one short email.
How do you help people manage that. What's the time audit process that you recommend? There's a
couple strategies here, and I think first it's important to understand there's ultimately, especially when you're building a business, there's two types of tasks that you're gonna be doing. It's either one that I call a recurring task, the thing that you've decided, I am going to do this on a consistent cadence because I believe it's going to help grow my business.
So maybe writing your newsletter for the week, or planning your social media content, right? Those things that are rinse and repeat for business versus your project or your one-time tasks, right? So you know, some things that are one-time tasks might be, all right, I need to learn Canva and build my templates. Once they're there, it's done. This is not something you're doing on rinse and repeat.
Yeah.
So with the recurring tasks, and it sounds so obvious, but nobody does it. When you're doing them for the first time, you've gotta time yourself. You need to honestly track how long does it take? And then I have people create their list of these are my recurring tasks, and we divide them into, it's something you're either doing daily, weekly, or monthly.
And so if you're sitting down for the first time, you're like, okay, I'm gonna do my newsletter. Yeah. Actually look at what time am I starting this? And then when was it done? And maybe it's in your mind, you're like, I'm gonna knock that out in 15 minutes. Yeah. And by the time you're done, you're like, you know what?
That actually took 45.
Yeah. Well
then next two, writing your newsletter, you're gonna write down 45 minutes. So then next week when you're creating your plan for the week and you're like, okay, what day am I gonna work on that newsletter? You're actually gonna block off and create an appointment with yourself called Write Newsletter, and you're gonna plan it to take 45 minutes.
Now, over time, if you start to notice, it's taking me less than what I'm planning, right? Because maybe you start to get some good muscle memory or find different ways of making it go quicker. Well then you can go in and update but I'd much rather you have more time protected for it and not need it then not have enough.
But most people never take the time to actually like time themselves to see how long it takes. And then we go by gut and our gut is always gonna tell us it takes less time. So I even today, you know, like you, I have a podcast in my head. I'm like, well, my podcast episodes are always 30 minutes or less. So what do I instinctively wanna block off on my calendar for a podcast?
30 minutes. Yeah. Guess what? We're gonna be here longer than that. Right? I mean, there's the research, yeah, there's the, you know, getting the script in place. Then there's the recording, the intro. Then all of a sudden the dog barked and you have to stop. Like, I know that I really need to [00:16:00] plan however long the episode is.
I gotta plan for double that amount of time. So on my little checklist, it has, you know, podcast. Block an hour. Yeah. And maybe it's done less, but now I know I'm never gonna be stuck trying to play catch up because I've written down how long these things take. And especially with those recurring ones over time with a business, it's important for you to know.
How much of your time is already spoken for at the start of the week with the consistent stuff that you know, you want or need to do to keep your business going so that then you can say, okay, then how much time do I really have available for that project work or the new thing that I'm working on?
So that you are planning your time accordingly and you're being realistic with yourself.
Megan, I even have a, pricing formula that I help people with, and I say, once we figure out how many hours you have available for your entire work, that's like time with me, time learning, [00:17:00] time doing, time coaching, consultations, all that.
and also how many weeks of vacation are you gonna take? Like look at the whole thing holistically and see how many hours you're gonna work, how many weeks you're gonna be off. We actually figure out their coaching price. Awesome. Like for their services based on the total hours that they actually have to work.
So they know, oh, by the hour I make this much because like working on your business. Is an hour of work, not just the coaching time. Right. That's what people in our space, that's what they do. They count just the hour. I'm just gonna coach that one hour and
coaching, and I love that you're doing that.
'cause I think. So many women, especially coaches, are so undervaluing. Yeah. What they do, but they're charging because all that, to your point, they're like, okay, well if I have eight people I'm coaching right now. At one hour a week, I'm working eight hours a week. Yeah. No you are not. and so we undervalue ourselves.
And then also when you know that time, how much an hour of your time is worth in your business. Now making decisions on what you're prioritizing and how you're spending it looks very different, right? Yeah. So if you know your time is worth $200 an hour and you're working on a task that you're like, yeah, I can outsource that.
I'm be doing this. Am I? Yeah, I'm not gonna be doing this. Or I could pay someone 15 bucks an hour. To do that for me, that is a game changer in feeling a lot more confident in saying, where can I get a virtual assistant and maybe outsource some stuff when I know what an hour of my time is worth.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, Megan, we could talk forever about all of these ideas. I love this, but like if you were gonna give a small business owner or a woman that's kind of like our ideal client, somebody who's either they're still working a corporate job and they're doing this on the side, or they have left their corporate job or their kids have left, you know, their empty nesters and they're like, what do I do now?
And they're just starting out. How do they figure out, like what would be, five things that they could do that would really help 'em with time management?
Okay, great question. So first, if you are using any paper planner or any digital planning system, that is a daily planning approach, right where you wake up, you make your list for the day, you identify your top three, you're supposed to magically focus on those and then get a stop, throw it away.
Get rid of it. Daily planning is going to keep you stuck in overwhelm reactivity and that kind of emergent just in time living. So transitioning from this idea of daily planning to weekly planning is the absolute number one place to start. And with your weekly plan, and again, you can do it digitally if you like a, you know, Google Orical or whatever, or.
I still, even though I'm a techie at heart, I still use a paper planner. There are so many neuroscience reasons behind why creating your plan pen to paper will 100% increase your likelihood of actually following your plan, which is why I still do paper. I think the latest, I get the exact percentages off, but it was something like instead of a 33% chance, it jumps up to like 67% when you do it on paper.
Wow. and so if you are. making that transition to weekly planning, it needs to be a planner that actually has each day in a column with the times on it. 'cause a lot of people say, oh, I'm weekly planning. I'm like, show me your planner. And it's one of those where it's just an empty rectangle for each day.
Yeah. I'm like, all you're doing is writing a to-do list. Yeah. And a task list is not a plan. So start to embrace this idea of, okay, I'm gonna be looking at seven days at a time, and you can decide when you do it right, you may be in a season of life where you plan, you know, Wednesday to Tuesday or Monday, like there's no right window of time.
Now, once you get your planner is the second part is starting to learn to create appointments with yourself, right? Instead of, I've got the appointments on my calendar for my coaching time, or my taking care of my parents or my grandkids, or whatever you're gonna put all that in there.
But now the first place to start is look at that recurring stuff. That you need to do for your business every week, right? That list of recurring tasks, and you're gonna learn how long those take. And then you're gonna look at the realities of your week and decide for yourself when, meaning what day, and at what time am I gonna work on these things?
And you're actually going to create the appoint in your calendar with yourself with the specificity of that. And I like to start people with just that, your current commitments, obligations to other, and then what are those recurring things? Because just learning how to put that into your calendar and I code them different colors.
It already starts to create incredible awareness of, oh, here's how much time I actually have. And once you master just those two, then we move on to what I call my basic weekly planning process, which is five steps, and then eventually the advanced one, which is 10 steps. Most people freak out when they hear that.
They're like, I'm already overwhelmed. 10 steps. I do it in 15 minutes or less every weekend for the upcoming week, because once you get those planning inputs. The list of recurring tasks, your prioritized list of projects that you're working on, right? Once all that is built and centralized, then it just becomes, it's almost like a puzzle each week of going, okay, how am I moving these things around?
Where am I placing this stuff? Because I think one of the biggest traps we fall in that, unfortunately a lot of productivity experts teach, which it's always men, is this concept of creating the perfect week, they call it, where you build a schedule for yourself that looks the same week after week after week.
So every Monday from nine to 11, you're doing this. Then from 11 to 12 you're doing, and so they're always coaching you to build this perfect ideal week that you rinse and repeat. Outside of maybe a corporate setting, I don't know many women where they could afford the luxury to do that. My Monday, this Monday will look nothing like next Monday.
you know, maybe I'm taking a parent to a doctor's appointment. Maybe it's my day to have the grandkids. Maybe it's, you knows, a school play for my daughter or my grandchild that I'm wanting to go to. So letting go of this. I have to create a schedule that will work for me every single week and instead embracing, no, I've got uncertainty in my life.
I'm at a stage of life where I want some time freedom. So instead, I'm gonna give myself permission to create what my plan is going to look like every week. And it gets to be uniquely mine, is so much more freeing than trying to shove a [00:24:00] square peg into a round hole.
So this is not about scheduling like.
From eight in the morning until eight at night, every. Because you're saying people are gonna just individually decide like, okay, I want to schedule my laundry on Tuesday from two to four if you want to. Some people, yeah. Yeah. Some people aren't gonna do that because they'll do the laundry whenever,
you know?
Yeah. Like
I don't put laundry time on my calendar.
Right. Just kind of 'cause I'm at home. It just kind of fits in when it fits in.
Right.
and no, I do not have every minute of my calendar blocked. There's a lot of white space on there, but white space is my definition of true white space, meaning. When I have an open afternoon, it means I get to do whatever I want.
Guilt free.
Yeah.
And stress free. Because my plan for the week is showing me how the things that I said really needed to get done. It's showing me how that's happening. So, you know, it's Tuesday here. Well, yesterday afternoon I had a completely open afternoon. 'cause we're summer break. I still have a daughter at home.
and so we were on a day where it was gonna be our afternoon to do whatever we felt like doing while she wanted to go to the pool for the afternoon. I didn't bring a laptop, I didn't bring work. And while we were there, I wasn't stressing out about what wasn't getting done because before we left, of course I get a little anxious like, oh God, it's Monday.
Right? Well, I just went and looked at my plan for the week and I was like, no, Megan, you've got everything in your calendar that you've said was important. This week you can see the plan for doing it. Let it go and go be fully present. Guilt-free. Stress-free, and this is what planning gives us. That's why I say structure creates freedom.
The plan isn't there to force you into a robotic lifestyle. It's to allow you to live your life fully in the moment of whatever you're doing without the stress or overwhelm of not knowing how everything's gonna get done.
Okay, so I have to ask the wild card question about ai. maybe your clients are asking you the same thing.
Where would AI fit in? Because of course we all see the same stuff on. Instagram or whatever, like this prompt will tell you, which I haven't tried any of it, but I'm just curious, since this is your business, where does AI fit into this? yeah, so
I am a huge AI fan when it's done right. Mm-hmm. Now, I will say I have tested, I get contacted a lot by people that have built AI planning, like calendaring software to have me test it.
I've tested a lot of AI planning tools. so there's different types of ai. If you're using a tool or a piece of software that's powered by ai that is making decisions for you and you haven't programmed it, what your rules are.
Yeah,
you probably aren't gonna like it.
And that's a problem with all these planning tools is you're inputting everything. Competing for your time. It's looking at your calendar and it's prioritizing for you. It's making decision like it's making all these decisions that aren't right. So I have yet to find a tool to support you in building your plan for the week that I would say to use.
Now, that said leveraging large language models such as Chat, GPT, or Claude. Those are kind of the two bigger ones that a lot of people are using. when you know how to use them the right way, meaning, you know how to prompt it correctly and or you know how to build your own custom projects with them.
I firmly believe if you're running a business. those who are embracing it are going to get farther a lot faster than those who aren't. So, Yeah, I think if you're in business and you are especially doing rinse and repeat things or you're creating documentation or content embracing AI and learning how to use it the right way, where you are programming it with your information and then you know how to query it the right way, I think it's a must have.
I've been investing a lot of time in learning it myself. And I only work 20 to 25 hours a week, and we run a seven figure business here. and I've already shaved off four and a half hours every week, which is, already 25% of a time savings for me. And it's only growing. I,
so Fantastic.
Okay. Tell me, what people would do to work with you, how they would connect with you, how can you support coaches in helping them manage their time better?
I always tell people a great place to kind of learn a little bit more about my proprietary planning system, which is called the Top Program, time Management, organization, and Productivity.
is I've got a free app in the app store, both Google Play and Apple, and it's just called the pink b. All one word, and when you download it and just, you know, put in, create a email and log in, I have two free mini courses in there for you. And so it's gonna introduce you to the four levels of planning, along with a bunch of other great little mini trainings in there.
And I like to start people there. That way it gives them a flavor to see how do I teach? Right? And is there a connection? There is the way I explain things work for you and it's totally risk free 'cause you're not investing any money in it. but then it's just right there on your phone. They're short.
You can pop in and just watch a quick 10 minute video. so that's typically where I send people. But obviously if you're listening to this, you're also a podcast lover. you can also come check out the Work Life Harmony podcast. that is all teaching time management, organization, and productivity for women.
Yeah, I've listened to that too, so that's awesome. I have, something that I talk to people about it's called Take Five. If you're interested, you can, if. The word take five, and I'll send it to you. It is, just five minutes of mindset in the morning. Five questions, takes five minutes. And one of the questions that I have people I suggest that they ask themselves is, what is gonna get in the way of what it is I have today? It's like, identifying it right then. And I always even tell people it's like I didn't sleep good last night or you know, I have sick kid at home or I So that you like almost are like defensively looking at your [00:30:00] day to see what could go wrong.
How would that fit into what you're talking about?
I love that. So I call this a lot of times the planning for uncertainty. Something's gonna happen that's gonna derail the plan that you've made out. And there's a very specific thing I teach on how to calculate what your uncertainty budget is.
But at the start of any day, if you've got your plan for the week and you're sitting down and doing that, take five in the morning and all, you know, it may be a, I was up with hot flashes all night last night. Yes. Crappy night sleep. I am not feeling it today. Well, then I would say, great. Now go look at what you built for your plan.
Mm-hmm.
And look at it with that lens and say, is this realistic? Yeah. Can I really achieve this based on that? And if the answer is no in that moment. Replan, take the stuff that you were thinking you were gonna do today. Look at what the rest of your week looks like and either move it to somewhere else or choose to say, I'm gonna let this go.
Yes. And it'll
be there waiting for me next week when I come back. because, [00:31:00] recognizing it is great, but then, okay, now what am I gonna do with that information? And then guess what that replan means don't beat yourself up all day. You had a really bad night's sleep.
Yeah, it
happens. The worst thing you could do is enforce yourself to try and do these things that are probably gonna take even longer.
Yeah. And
won't be the same quality that they would've been if you'd approached it with a, you know, normal night's sleep or whatever the situation may be.
And I find that sometimes when I look at my calendar like that, probably not as much today 'cause I think I've gotten pretty good at time management too, but.
I used to look at my calendar and I'd feel overwhelmed and I would say, wait a minute, what on this calendar is even like, nonsense that I could just totally take off? That's interesting. When you have a week like that and you look at your calendar, it's planned and you're like, wait a minute. So often we put things on there we don't even like have to do.
They aren't even that important.
this is why I love the task list is not a plan by the actual writing in your calendar when you're doing it. You could have a [00:32:00] task list full of non-important low hanging fruit, but the art of then saying when specifically and how long and turning it into appointment, that step alone will help you get rid of a lot of crap on your list.
'cause now you're like, God, that is gonna take 45 minutes. Do I really need to be doing that this week? Whereas otherwise, you just leave it on that task list and then rewrite it the next day and you just keep carrying it over day after day after day, 'cause you keep doing that. Oh, I'll get to that later, I'll get to that later.
Whereas if you're looking at it at how long does this take, and here's everything else I'm doing, that can be a step to really help you guilt free, just let go of some stuff.
So good. Okay. Here's my advice. Take what Megan's told us and also take what I mentioned to you about what your hour, your earnings per hour are.
Put those two things together. I'm gonna bet that your plan for next week will be a lot better when you think about those two things together. So [00:33:00] Megan, anything else you wanna talk about before we wrap things up?
You know, I think a message that women just really need to hear today, and especially if you're listening to this and you are transitioning out of maybe a corporate job into something else.
we live in an environment where subtly our worth seems to be dictated by our productivity, right? We get all those messages where the more you do, the more worthy you are. The harder you work, the more external success you have, the more worthy you are. And I see women who are transitioning into a season of life where maybe they're leaving a corporate thing behind and they're really struggling with their sense of purpose and self-worth.
And so the way we compensate for that is by overscheduling and overcommitting. 'cause if I'm in motion that I must be being productive, therefore I am worthy. And so I just think it's really important for women in particular to really embrace and know and believe that your worth is not connected to somebody else's perception of your productivity, period.
You get to define how you spend your time and what it looks like, and that has zero correlation to your worthiness.
Oh geez. I feel like I need to say amen. That's so good. Yeah. And you get to decide how you wanna do your day. So yesterday I played with my grandkids in the afternoon 'cause they were here and then I worked last night late because that's the way I decided to do my day.
so much freedom in that. Thank you so much for giving me your precious time and for sharing your insights. My pleasure. okay. The pink bee. Over and get on that app and get those, you said two free courses, which is so generous. Thank you so much for that. for everybody else, you can comment the word, take five wherever you're listening, and we'll send you our quick little mindset work that you can do every day.
And I think combined with what you're talking about, it would be awesome. So you guys go have a beautiful day and thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate you.
Oh, thank you.
