Differently: Stop living by default. Start living by design.
Differently is for when you need to get out of your head and back into your life.
Created and hosted by Carla Reeves, creator of The Differently Journal, her work is built on over 20 years of helping people use writing to navigate real life. Not as a habit to keep up with, but as a way to calm your mind, get clear, and move forward.
You are always writing your life, whether it’s in your mind or on paper.
It's time to take the pen back.
Turn overthinking and self doubt into clarity, confidence, creativity and momentum.
It's never too late to create your own playbook for maximizing your time and energy. It might require giving yourself permission to set down cookie cutter formulas and do differently. Becoming a master of your time is all about leaning into your natural rhythms, systems, and strengths.
On today's episode, Kathy DeCocq and I talk about focusing on the things you CAN control and trusting yourself enough to write your own time playbook. Get ready for actionable ideas like taking an inventory of what's working and not working and more.
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Thank you for listening!
SPEAKER_01
I'm Carla Reeves, and this is Differently, a podcast where we explore the ins and outs of what becomes possible when we're willing to think, do, and show up differently to the moments of our everyday lives. How much is your time really worth? We all have the same 24 hours a day. It's how you manage those hours that counts. If you're constantly battling the clock, you're going to love today's conversation. Kathy Diko is back, and we've put together a simple series to get to the root on how you can sustainably shift the way you spend your precious time. Together, we bring a holistic approach touching on the mindset, strategy, and action components that are so vital to true change. This is number three of four conversations. If you didn't hear the previous two, be sure to go back. We are exploring the real barriers to maximizing your time and showing you what you can do differently to finally make traction on the things that matter most. Today we talk about time rules. Yep, all the rules we've adopted, created, and incorporated over the years, maybe without even realizing it. How many of us are operating under rules that may or may not fit or even work any longer? Get ready to explore what's possible when you truly take a hundred percent responsibility for your time and invent ways to do time that actually work for you and how that brings velocity, ease, and joy. Remember, I told you that we had an exciting invitation. You're gonna hear it today. It's about midway. Don't miss it. Hey everyone, Kathy Dico and I are back to talk about this very important topic of time. And on one of our last sessions, the idea of permission came up, and Kathy brought it up, and uh it's such an important one. So take it away, Kathy. Take us on this permission journey. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I I find it just a common thread throughout all the folks that I talk to, whether they're clients or not. Uh, you know, everybody seems to have like this preconceived notion for how their day, their work day is supposed to go, how much they're supposed to be working, um, you know, what they're supposed to be doing in their business for their business to be successful. And I always find it so interesting to challenge very softly to just challenge and say, yeah, but who says? Like, why does it have to be that way? Why couldn't you know you only work six hours a day instead of ten? And then that seems to get their wheels kind of turning a little bit, and then they start thinking about, ooh, well, I could do things a little bit differently, and then I would really only have to work six hours a day. Awesome. It's it's now they've almost like somebody else just need to needed to tell them, like, it's okay, like you don't have to do the cookie cutter prescription recipe, however you want to think about it. You don't have to do that. It's whatever works best for you that you need to follow and kind of be in tune with. I don't know. What do you what do you encounter, Carla, when you're talking to folks on this?
SPEAKER_01
I get so excited just listening to you talk because I had this visual of like this the rule book of how to do time, how to do how to do business. I mean, I had a rule book and it was like work all the time, work hard, never take a break, don't take a lunch, sit while you eat lunch, you know, like every put everything else last on your list. I I don't know, it got created from you know, my upbringing, our culture, all of it, and permission to one, recognize that you actually have a rule book, I think is one step. And then two is like, what if you could get rid of that and rewrite it and update it and have a new beautiful rule book that I wouldn't even call it a rule book. We could call it something different, right? But it's it's a way to like, how do we thrive with time now? And how do we bring in all of our natural abilities and strengths and rhythms to create something that works far better? So that's what I do with my clients is giving them permission to think differently about how they're doing their life and how they're doing their time. And I just love the light bulb moment of like, whoa, I could do that. You mean like it could look that way? It could be that easy for real.
SPEAKER_00
I love that. For real. Yeah, it's awesome too, because then you can, you know, lean into your individual strengths. And you know, not everybody's a morning person, right? So who says you have to be up at five and doing whatever? Like, certainly not me. I am not, I'm not that person, but that works great for some people. Like, it's it's all about for me knowing yourself enough to know what your strengths are, and then leaning into those as best you can because that's what's going to make things so efficient and so easy for you uh throughout each of your work days. And then you'll be done with work, you'll be feeling productive, feeling excellent. Less time will have gone by than you know when you'd agonized over it and had that little uh monster on your shoulder saying, keep working, keep working, and you'll you'll have been more productive than you ever thought possible. And now you're gonna go have dinner with your family or go hang out with your friends or or work on your hobbies or whatever it is you do when you're not working, because that's just as important, if not more so.
SPEAKER_01
Hey, I wanted to pop in here on behalf of Kathy and I and give you a special invitation. We are so excited and truly want to get you back in the driver's seat of your time. We created Time Camp for that very reason. Time Camp is a four-week virtual, highly interactive workshop experience. It's not a time machine, but we've created the next best thing for you. Kathy and I are your camp coaches and they're to ensure that you get the mindset, tools, and strategies that will equip you to create more time for the important things and help you make the most of every minute. We've put a link in the show notes where you can get all the details and save your spot in Time Camp. There is limited seating. You will want to make your reservation soon. Okay, let's get back to talking time. Oh, it's so exciting. It's so it's so liberating to start to think about how you can do things differently. I mean, I am a morning person. We are the yin and the yang. I love that. Yeah, for sure. I am the morning person, but I have a client um who she does like a 10 p.m., she calls it her money hour, and she does activities that just really generate revenue, and she generates a lot of traction and action in her business and at that time of night. And so it is I it's permission and it's trusting yourself enough to say, this is how I want to do it. I know for years I didn't trust myself, and I tried to follow what other people were doing, thinking they had the perfect answer. And I I would end up with, you know, like kind of like you in the iPad, like this doesn't work. Um, you know, on a previous episode she talked about buying an iPad or some device or or technology that she hated from the get-go. And and um, so yeah, it's permission and trusting to just say, this does this doesn't feel good, this doesn't work for me, and figuring out what does um it's beautiful. And the ripple impact of that. Yeah, let's talk about, yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00
Well, I was I was just gonna say, like, what what I really enjoy and took me far too, you know, it took me a very long time to figure this out, but that's fine. I know it now. Is everybody is out there sharing their experience, sharing the way they achieved their success, right? And those, I mean, those folks exist in every industry across the globe, and that's their way of doing it. And what I had at first, I would try, you know, like you said, Carla, exactly the way they did it. And then it wouldn't work for me. And then I would get mad and frustrated and you know, lean back on old habits which weren't serving me either. And it took me a while, but I realized I can like formulate my own thing. So I can take what I like from what folks are sharing, you know, out there in the space. And then if I try it and it doesn't work, then I just go seek more information, or I try my own thing and and blend it all together. And I know for for some listeners that's probably hard to hear because you know, I I think some people just want a recipe. Just tell me how to do it. And it this is one of those things, Carla, and you know this too, with with working with your clients, and it's just like I can only give you so much, and then after that, you have to pay attention to what is best for you and mold that recipe into what you're going to utilize. And that's that's the part that I think some folks get a little like, ugh, like man, I just wish there was a silver bullet, and there just isn't one. But that's the beauty of it, is that every single individual is so dynamically different that you can create something if you're open to it and you give yourself the permission to do so, you can create something that is so perfect for you that work and running your business will be so much fun. You won't even use the word work or job anymore to describe it to people. And that's like that's what I aspire to do is to just say, like, I get to do this because I have leaned into my strengths, I've given myself permission to just toss that book that somebody else gave me that didn't work for me.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Well, and I was imagining, you know, going through a buffet and kind of picking out what you want, like seeing lots of great dishes and you know, kind of choosing like I want to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And yes, it can be uncomfortable, but ultimately it is a learning of, you know, let's try what, let's try and experiment and see what works, and we can try somebody else's prescription. Um, and then we have to be willing to trust ourselves to adjust it so that it works better for us. But I also had the thought of maybe there's people listening who are in a more, you and I are both entrepreneurs, kind of creating our the way our work looks. But for people who are in um corporate or in a job where their day is a little bit more structured for them, I think that it's possible to also leverage your thinking and leverage the things that you can control while there are things that you can't control to design your workday and life in a way that feels better. And I like to say, you know, inspire or encourage people or open the door for people to like, what if you could build a life that you didn't have to escape? Instead of having to go on vacation and kind of get away, what if your life you could design it in such a way that it feels better? And then vacation is just a bonus and a true refresher instead of just like a momentary escape and then coming back to reality, right? Um and so, yeah, what are your thoughts about that?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, I I definitely agree with you having been in the corporate space for 20 years. Um, you know, there are ways to define your day so that it works best for you. Um most companies, you know, have like core hours where most employees are at work and you know, meetings are expected to happen and things along those lines. Um and then, you know, like leaning into your energy. If you're a morning person, like you can get nothing says you you can't be online at 6 a.m. local time, chunking through some emails, sending out some some deliverables, you know, whatever your role is. Nothing says that you couldn't be doing something like that uh before everybody else hits their desk. And then you just have to communicate with folks, you have to share with them, you know, when am I going to be around, when am I not? Um, so that you have that open line where people, because in absence of that information, people will make up a story. And the the story tends to not be a positive one, like that's just I think human programming. Um, so you want to be open with folks, and then what that does is that frees you up then to do what you need to do to capitalize on your energy levels, you know, when you work the best. And you know, a lot of times it's just a frank conversation with your boss, and as long as your boss is on board and then you let some key people know, like, you know, hey, like then just try it out and see how it goes. But I think communication, especially in this virtual world that we're in, uh, is critically important. There are cases too where I mean you you can't change it. If I think about folks who are in like a retail space or you know, something like that where you physically go somewhere and you have to be on, you know, and in front of customers, something like that. You know, then I think about your, you know, trying to get the shifts that you, you know, work best towards your energy, uh, making sure you take your breaks and lunches on time, getting a chance to recharge yourself, you know, while you are in front of customers. There's there's ways to do that to where you can maximize yourself and your efficiency and your energy while you're at work, even if you know it's not as flexible as somebody, you know, like me who was sitting at a desk for 20 years.
SPEAKER_01
I think that's great. And I think what you're you know, this permission is also permission to communicate and use our voice and ask for what we want. All they can say is no. You know, I've had clients who just really just I'll give them permission to say, hey, why don't you ask for this? And they're like, oh my gosh, really? I I could ask for that. And more than often they get a yes. And it may be just part of that rule book can also be these assumptions that we make that we have to be available and we have to respond immediately. And like all of those are rules, too, that aren't always necessarily true. And so communicating powerfully before you go on vacation, so you can set healthy boundaries for yourself. Um, there's so many ways that we can communicate and ask for what we need, and yeah, so good.
SPEAKER_00
I like that quite a bit because um oftentimes we've got that narrative in our own head. And every time I've asked for something that I've needed, it's been fine. And that's in a corporate setting, that's in any setting. Like the the person that you're working for or working with, like they're also human and they also have those same needs. So, like, more times than not, they're gonna tell you, yes, or they're gonna say, Well, let's work on that a little bit. And so maybe you didn't get, you know, the 10 to 4 hours, maybe they have to be 11 to 3 or whatever, right? But you at least got something out of it that you would never have had if you'd never said anything. So, you know, knowing what you need and then speaking up for it, I think is one of the best bits of permission. And that, I mean, that applies in all of life, right? Even though we're just talking about work, but so true.
SPEAKER_01
So let's bring it all together for everybody in talking about um, you know, really giving ourselves permission to do things differently, giving ourselves permission to run with our natural rhythms and strengths, and giving ourselves permission to use our voice to create an existence that is more uh desirable and feels better. And so um, do you have an action or takeaway you want to share?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I feel like my actions are similar uh with with the other episodes, but you know, be aware of what's not working, right? That's the first thing. So if it doesn't feel right, if it's if you find yourself like really having to work up your energy or something to do something or to be somewhere, like those are some indicators that it's not working for you. And then, you know, figure out what it is that you do need and then go ask for it. And that can be in a variety of fashions.
SPEAKER_01
I love that. And mine are a little bit similar too, in that I would take an inventory and write down like what are the rules that you have when it comes to your work and your time and what you can ask for and what you can't ask for, and make a list of all those rules and ask yourself like, do are these working? Do I want to live by these anymore? Um, what new uh set of standards do I want to create for myself? And what would that look like? And what communication could I step into, or what action could I step into today that would make one small shift in that direction?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I love it. All right. Very nice. We'll see you next time. All right, thanks, Carla. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Differently. I hope it stirred your thinking, and I invite you to take one inspired action. If you want to get back in the driver's seat of your time, your inspired action this week might be to sign up for Time Camp. Camp starts soon. There are limited spots available. We've put a link in the show notes where you can find all the details. We're packing our bags and getting all of our gear ready for you.
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