Start in the Middle

Where Does All The Time Go?

• Kristi Ballard Falany • Episode 170

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Tired of feeling like time is constantly slipping through your fingers? Join me, Kristi Falany, as we take an honest look at the myriad decisions that may be steering you off course in your quest for a more intentional life. We'll explore a practical exercise from Bob Goff's "Undistracted" that could help you get a clearer picture of where your time is really going. Imagine marking up your typical Monday with slots for sleep, work, and other commitments to uncover hidden opportunities for focus and intention.

This episode challenges you to confront distractions that stem from emotional and mental clutter. Are you constantly caught up in people-pleasing, reliving past regrets, or getting tangled in misunderstandings? You'll gain fresh insights into aligning your daily decisions with your long-term goals. Armed with strategies inspired by Tony Robbins, we'll tackle procrastination head-on and examine if your current habits truly reflect the life you dream of leading.

We wrap things up by sharing techniques for boosting productivity, like setting the right mood with music or employing the Pomodoro method. Consider the powerful idea of setting a life countdown timer—a thought-provoking concept from "Undistracted" to inspire more meaningful interactions. We'll encourage you to conduct a thorough time inventory, helping you see your life in pie pieces that align with your vision. Together, we'll work to reignite your passion, one intentional decision at a time.

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Speaker 1:

Hello, hello, my friends. So if you have been listening to the podcast, you are smack dab in the middle of the five-day undistracted challenge that I did. So each day the topic could be used as a standalone topic. So, even though this podcast represents day three, do not worry, you do not have to listen to one and two in order to get what you need from day three, Although I do highly encourage you to go back and listen to the two prior. Day one represented getting real, how to be your true, authentic self in every relationship. Day two represents your vision. Do you know where you're going to be in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 years? Have you created a vision to curate the life that you want? So if you have not yet listened to those, I encourage you to listen to those, but this one is so, so important as well. Today I'm going to be talking to you about where your time truly goes. Now. Remember that I recorded this inside a five-day challenge that I did at the beginning of September, so there are going to be some visuals that you may not be able to create in your mind's eye, so my plan is to post a link inside the show notes so that you can actually go and watch the video if you choose to, and I hope that you do, because I would love for you to full on experience this idea of where in the heck our time goes. So here we go. Where did all the time go? I am so curious how many of you get to the end of your day and you're just throwing yourself on the bed thinking where the heck did this day go? Where did all the time go? Are you maybe thinking back to the past and thinking to yourself where did the last 50 something years go? Where did the last 40 something years go? Where did the last 30 something years go? I know, oftentimes, as a mom, I do this when I think about my adult children I used to be able to say my young adult children, but no, they are adults now and I often think about the times when they were little littles and cuddly and sweet and all that and sweet and all that, and I think about where did the time go? And so being undistracted and living an undistracted life will help us to answer that question. Okay, so let's go ahead and let's dig in.

Speaker 1:

So, if you follow me inside my Empowering Women's Coffee and Connection group. More than likely you saw these plates and you thought to yourself what is she doing? Now I know some people ask me oh, what are you crafting? What are you working on me? Oh, what are you crafting, what are you working on? This is what I was working on.

Speaker 1:

Did you even know that on the daily, we make 35,000 decisions, 35,000 decisions? As soon as you wake up, you decide am I going to get up, am I going to snooze? Am I going to turn off my alarm? Am I going to fall back asleep? Am I going to go ahead and get up? Do I brush my teeth before I start my coffee or do I just go grab the coffee? Okay, you see how that goes 35,000 decisions. And so when I saw this and I started thinking about all of those tiny, little, minuscule decisions that we make, my gosh, it's no wonder we are so distracted.

Speaker 1:

And so one of the practices that I researched and I discovered inside the book Undistracted. Remember, yesterday I told you that I did some research before I started this five-day challenge and this was one of the books that I was reading as part of my research. And so one of the things, one of the activities inside the book. That I wanted to do was create this and just see exactly where it was that my time was going, and so what I did was I took a typical Monday, just a typical Monday for me, okay, and I kind of shaded in all of my normal routine Monday time slots, okay, and so for me, right now, it looks like eight hours of sleep.

Speaker 1:

I'm generally in bed by 10 o'clock. Now, when I say by 10 o'clock, oftentimes I don't even close my eyes until I don't even know how long I sit down. I do my evening Bible study. I've been journaling at night as part of a new ritual, and so sometimes it's either between nine, 30 or 10, or 10 and 10 30. And so as I was doing this practice, it just happened to be 10 o'clock in bed, falling asleep and setting my alarm for six Okay, and so you'll notice that the black area is my eight hours of sleep, okay.

Speaker 1:

And then the green area is my morning routine, my morning time that I spend for myself, and this is a ritual that I have done for several, several years now to help set me up with intention for my day, and so this time I carve out just for me to spend some quiet time. During this time I do some journaling, I do some Bible study. I really set an intention for my day, okay, and on these little timeframes here I am estimating Okay, sometimes it might look like a morning workout, it might look like me getting ready for my day, showering, all of that business, but I gave myself two hours just to prove or just to go through this exercise. Okay, now I am in a season where I am needing to go to physical therapy. Physical therapy usually runs about an hour and 45, but you know it takes time to drive there and it takes time to get back. So I cut, I put in two hour time slot there, okay.

Speaker 1:

And then normally on a typical Monday, I generally have a client call between three and four. Okay, so these are decisions that I've already made. These are decisions on how I am going to spend this portion of my day. Okay, and these things really are my non-negotiables, my commitments, the things that I have either committed to myself or I've committed to my clients, okay. So let's look at it from a different perspective. So you'll notice that I've got more shaded on my time clock here. Okay, I've still got the same commitments, the same decisions that I've made, but these are the business commitments and the commitments that my husband and I have made, commitments and the commitments that my husband and I have made. So you'll notice that that white space is getting smaller.

Speaker 1:

So, on a typical Monday, the other decisions that I've made is my office work. What times am I going to designate to my office work? Because my business can't run on just one client, so I've got to do my office work on Monday as well. Okay, so that might look like doing consult calls. It might look like creating my social media. It might look like having conversations with potential clients. It might look like getting ready to record a podcast, maybe scripting the podcast or actually recording.

Speaker 1:

And after every single client call, I do what's called client session notes, because I like to send a note to my client saying hey, this is what we worked on today, these are the things that you had said you wanted to be accountable for for the next week, and so I take some time to type all that out. And then, generally on Monday evenings, my husband and I go to a life group. So, again, with the decisions that I have made on what I want my typical Monday to look like you can see that there's not a whole lot of downtime. Okay, that white space is space that I have not made a decision for. So on a typical Monday, there's not a whole lot of downtime. Okay, so let's go a step further. So, looking at this calendar, looking at this typical Monday of decisions that I've made, look at all these other potential distractions. All of these other things are what can inundate that time? And it can inundate that time whether it is colored in or whether it is white spaced.

Speaker 1:

Okay, how many text messages do we get throughout the day? Now, as part of my preparation for us doing this five-day challenge, you may have seen that post of my phone screen. Remember all of those red numbers? My girlfriend, angela, said that would drive me bonkers and that is exactly what that phone was designed for. That phone and those numbers are designed to hook you in, designed to make you think. I heard that ping, somebody messaged me. What do they need me for? Should I answer them, right?

Speaker 1:

And so when we see those numbers, those notification numbers, saying, oh hey, I had 15,000 emails and it's climbing because I've chosen not to care about that number, okay, I've chosen to not be distracted by that number. But I'm wondering how many of you, just like my friend Angela, see that number and go. I've got to clear it. I've got to answer it. I've got to delete the email. I've got to answer that Voxer message. I've got to. You know, see who, see who called, even though they don't even leave you a voicemail. Voice message, a voicemail, that's a voice message. A voicemail, that's what that's called. A voicemail, right? And so these are all of the distractions that can creep into, even those times that are colored okay.

Speaker 1:

Working from home makes it so hard to avoid those distractions. Yes, I put snacking on there, because how many times, especially if you are someone who works from home and has the ease of just going into the pantry how many times do you sit there and you think, oh, I'm bored, maybe I'll just go grab a snack? Right? When, really, what you want to be working on is writing that book? Or really, what you want to be working on is your social media marketing, okay. Or scripting your podcast. Reading for research Okay.

Speaker 1:

I know, for me, since I have really, really been studying this idea of living undistracted, I noticed that even when I'm waiting on the computer, you know how, like when you click the button and sometimes the internet's running a little bit slow and it does the spin, the spin, the spin. There have been times that I've picked up my phone during that short amount of time of the spinning as the pages are flipping from one thing to another. Where I have flipped up my phone to distract me, to find myself doing something right, we feel like we have to be doing something okay. Other areas of where, these colored zones where we've already made decisions, where distractions can creep in Shame, envy, comparison, that scrolling that we're doing to kind of move the time along, or the scrolling when we've got the white space on our calendar and we say, oh, I'm just going to get on social for a minute, right, how many times does that one, two or three minutes turn into 30 minutes of watching people ballroom dance or 30 minutes of watching videos my daughter sent me of French bulldogsdog.

Speaker 1:

So we've talked about distractions all week and we've talked about how thinking into the past and staying stuck there can be a distraction from where we truly want our vision for what we want to be, where we want to be in a week, in a year, in five years, can be a distraction. All of these areas where we are spending too much time in our thoughts, especially, like we talked about on Monday, about how hard it is to not show up as our authentic selves when we're thinking we've got to be people pleasing, we want to make sure that everyone likes us, we want to do all the things to make sure that we are staying on the beat on the trends and things like that that distract us from our true vision. And so I wonder because, again, when we think about things being a distraction we think about like, immediately our brain goes to you know the Netflixing, the scrolling on social, the you know text messages, back and forth, but we don't often think about the other conscious decisions that we're making. And you know, being in fear, being in worry, having, you know drama going on in our brain around, maybe misunderstandings or an argument that we had, those things are all distractions from where we truly want to be, which is living, living life in the present, living life on purpose, looking for and creating joy in our lives. Okay, so, looking at my little plate here, how much of this time is allocated for your decision? So, if you were to do a practice like this, how much time on any given Monday are the decisions that you've made. How much of them align with your vision, with those visuals that you have created in your mind of what you want to create in your life, where you want to be in your life? And so, when we think about this idea of making 35,000 decisions a day, how many of those decisions are in alignment and moving you forward with your vision?

Speaker 1:

I love this quote from the book Undistracted by Bob Goff. He says you'll know you're distracted if the sizes of your pie pieces don't match the shape of the life that you want. So if you were to do a practice just like this, and you were to take these paper plates and take any given Monday, any given Saturday, any given Tuesday, and you mapped out the decisions that you've consciously made for yourself, your appointments, your non-negotiables, right, would those pieces of pie match what you want the shape of your life to be? Such an interesting concept, such an interesting eye-opening idea. So let's talk about some hacks. I want to give you some hacks for some of the distractions that take away from our time, some of the distractions that cause us to spend or waste time that we don't want to waste.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I know I mentioned yesterday about procrastination. So, when you notice that you are procrastinating, when you notice that you are not doing something that you said you were going to do, you're putting it off, I want you to think about getting real and getting authentic and answer the question what is it that you're resisting? Okay, be brave with yourself, move forward with your vision and utilizing the time that you've allocated, versus procrastinating, okay. So what is it that you're trying to avoid? Remember, our brain automatically tries to avoid pain, tries to avoid things that are uncomfortable Okay. So what is it that you're trying to avoid by procrastinating? Another one? I learned this from Tony Robbins when I went to one of his big retreats get into state. Now, what that means is that get into the proper mindset to move yourself forward. Okay, get into the perfect state. Remember, your state is your state of being.

Speaker 1:

You know that, on almost every single call that you come on live with me, I always start with music and I also use music throughout my teachings, because when we listen to music, especially music that pumps us up, it takes us into a different state, it helps us to feel motivated, it helps us to feel excited. Okay, so use that as a hack to move the needle on your vision and staying undistracted. Okay, the Pomodoro method. If you have never tried this method before, it is so, so cool, it is so easy and, man, it gets me through those tasks where I really want to procrastinate. And so what you do is you take a timer. You take a timer and I'm going to skip to the next one where it says D&D put your phone on, do not disturb.

Speaker 1:

During your Pomodoro method. So you set your timer for 25 minutes and during that 25 minutes you work solely on the task at hand. Okay, so if I am working on writing my notes for a podcast and I know I want to knock it out today, I don't want to start doing a little bit of research and then saying, you know, and typing some things out and I'll come back to it tomorrow. I want to knock it out. So I'm going to set my timer for 25 minutes. I have got my blinders on and I am focused and I keep working on that thing until the timer goes off. A lot of times what happens is I notice that I've got the task finished before the timer goes. Beep, beep, beep. Okay, but if the timer goes off and I'm not quite yet finished.

Speaker 1:

I get myself back up, I take a little break, usually about five minutes, and I get myself into state. Okay, getting into state looks like a couple of different things. You can just get up out of your chair, right. You can make a motion. You can listen to music. You can leave the room and come back right. Changing any little thing about what you were doing at that time can help you to change state. All right, now research the Pomodoro method, because, um, they say that utilizing this in a three round and three rounds is usually the best to do it. Anytime after that, your brain wants to make the decision of we need to get up and move around a little bit longer. We need a little bit more distraction. Okay, so try it in three rounds If you have a task that you are working on that requires your undivided attention.

Speaker 1:

The other, the last thing and I kind of mentioned it already is start using the do not disturb on your phone. A lot of times during the day, when I have decisions made of tasks I want to get done and I'm in my office and I'm in work mode, I put my phone on do not disturb. Put my phone on do not disturb. I do that when you and I are on live calls like this, like what we would like we would do, like we've been doing inside the five day challenge, or when we are inside Coffee and Connections, because this is my time with you and I don't want my phone going off distracting me. Okay, so I want to hear from you, I want you in your post, your takeaway post, what are some of your hacks that you use to be undistracted and utilizing your white space or your workspace in a way that is going to help move the needle on your thoughts, on your vision.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this last thing that I want to leave you with figure out and this is so funny that it just makes me laugh anytime that I read this, but this is another hack. Okay, and I'd be curious if you actually did this figure out how much longer you think you're going to live and then set a timer to count down from then, okay, and see how it changes your days. Can you imagine that I'm 52. I don't even want to think about how much longer I could potentially live, but and I know this sounds a little bit funny, but I just had to bring it to you when I saw it inside the book Undistracted. I saw it inside the book Undistracted because what if we really did this?

Speaker 1:

Wouldn't your time spent inside every single one of your days look so differently? Wouldn't you get out and take a walk more? Wouldn't you see that as part of your daily routine instead of maybe just a luxury that you get to do every now and again? Wouldn't your time with your friends and family be so much richer? Say, for instance, if you had like I'm assuming that if we did like an hourglass type thing, it'd be like this ginormous hourglass type thing and you could see the sand seeping through. Man, I sure wouldn't be scrolling through social media versus having a conversation with my kids or sitting at a restaurant across the table from my husband, and the two of us aren't even engaged in a conversation with each other. So think about it this way If you knew how much time you had left, how would you do your days differently? How would your vision for your future and your action steps towards that look differently?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so today we're talking about time. We're talking about how you spend your time, talking about the types of things that distract us, the decisions that we make on the daily, that distract us from the vision that we have for our lives, the vision that we are trying to create through that thought process. So the work that I have for you tonight is I want you to do a time inventory and I want you to be brave. I want you to be truthful. I want you to be truthful and I want you to be unselfish when you think about how you spend your time. So here is what your PDF is going to look like. Going to look like Now.

Speaker 1:

You'll notice that my hope is that these time frames will work best for you as you go through this practice today and I would do this practice over several days, not just one day so you can truly get a bigger picture of the time that you are spending, truly get a bigger picture of the time that you are spending. But if you need to adjust the times a little bit, go ahead and do so, but what I want you to do is I want you to write down everything that you're doing. Yes, this is going to take some mindfulness. This is going to take some time. Going to take some mindfulness. This is going to take some time, but it's going to be an eye opener for the ways that you actually are being distracted in your day-to-day life. So, write down everything. Write down the time you ate breakfast, the time you brushed your teeth, if you checked your phone before the time that you before those two times everything.

Speaker 1:

Okay, write down everything and I want you to really pay close attention to where your time is going and then answer these two questions. And then answer these two questions when did I spend most of my time and did my time spent match with my vision? So if you think about, you know, the pie pieces, does the pie pieces that represents different chunks of time match with the way that I want my life to look? So I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I encourage you to truly create one of those time inventories. And again, don't just utilize it one day, do it over time and be sure to answer those two questions and be brutally honest with yourself.

Speaker 1:

Again, I thank you so much for tuning in to Start in the Middle and, hey, keep your eyes open for the next time I do one of these challenges. I would love to have you in there. Who is your life coach? I would love the opportunity to work with you as you are rediscovering the woman you were meant to be. Visit christyballardfelainicom for more information on how we can work together to ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time. Let's start in the middle together.