In this episode, I'm talking about never having enough time for everything you need or want to do.
How a never-ending 'To-Do' list and flimsy boundaries can make you feel overwhelmed, stressed out and anxious,
And I’ll share with you how a few simple changes in how you make lists and what you think about saying YES or NO will help you get more done at work so you can be present and enjoy your time at home.
You can check out the BIG ROCKS video I mentioned HERE.
Help others find this resource so they can calm, confident, and have more fun by leaving a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review wherever you listen.
Find me on Instagram
Find me on Facebook
Schedule your consultation and let's talk coaching!
Thanks for listening!
In this episode, I'm talking about never having enough time for everything you need or want to do.
How a never-ending 'To-Do' list and flimsy boundaries can make you feel overwhelmed, stressed out and anxious,
And I’ll share with you how a few simple changes in how you make lists and what you think about saying YES or NO will help you get more done at work so you can be present and enjoy your time at home.
You can check out the BIG ROCKS video I mentioned HERE.
Help others find this resource so they can calm, confident, and have more fun by leaving a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review wherever you listen.
Find me on Instagram
Find me on Facebook
Schedule your consultation and let's talk coaching!
Thanks for listening!
Hey there, welcome to episode 82 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. It is great to be back this week to talk with all of you, whether you are listening on YouTube or any of the podcast platforms. I'm so grateful that you chose to spend your time here with me, and in this episode, we're going to talk about never having enough time and everything that you need to do to make sure that you've got not only time to get done what you think you need to get done, but to have time for yourself. And how, when you don't create that time and you don't manage your time, you can start to feel really overwhelmed, stressed out and anxious, and it all just goes downhill quickly, doesn't it? So, because we're going to talk about managing time, let's go ahead and get started and dive in now. I want to tell you a little bit about a client that I'm working with, but first let's talk about high achievers, because not only is this person a high achiever, but if you're listening, you might be one too. So when we're talking about people who are doing really big things and going for huge goals high achievers they often place a lot of pressure on themselves to perform and excel at everything they do. It's not just their job, it's their personal life. They want to be the best at their relationship and they want to be the best at having fun. They want to be best at all of these things and it makes them amazing, it makes them, you know, they have a lot of fun. Sometimes they're super exhausted, but it can also really be stressful, and when you are constantly stressed you tend to have a quick slip into feeling anxious. That overwhelming pressure to meet deadlines and not to just do a good job, but to exceed expectations maybe your own expectations, maybe your bosses or your partners, whatever that looks like for you; they're just juggling all these responsibilities at work, but also at home, trying to make everything come together, but they feel like they can't get their act together in either place and any free time that they have often ends up going to their partner or maybe their puppy or whatever else it is that has to happen at home. That, maybe, was like 'oh, I forgot that I needed to do this one thing,' so they always end up putting themselves second and not managing their time to the point where they're scheduling in free time for themselves because there's just not enough hours in the day. So I told you.
Megan Devito:I wanted to tell you about a client that I'm working with and I really want you to understand that. First of all, I asked her permission to share her story and I want you to understand that this person is amazing. She's in a high power position in this industry where she's super creative, brave beyond anything I could even describe to you like, the things that she's doing at work and in her personal life blow my mind. Every week she tells me, I'm like holy crap, this is something that I've never experienced. It's always fun for me to be able to hear what people are doing in their lives that hasn't been my experience. It's like that's one of the really fun parts of coaching is getting to hear, 'holy cow, you do that? That is really really cool.'
Megan Devito:But she came to me feeling anxious about not only her job but because of some really enormous steps that she's taken in the past five to seven years. She moved across the country from one coast to the other coast. She survived the pandemic after the move. So imagine moving from one side of the country to the other and then the pandemic starts, and remember when the pandemic was happening we couldn't travel, so it's not like she could just jump on a plane and go back home. So she's away from her family in a totally different culture because, if you're not from the States, the East Coast and the West Coast have pretty different cultures and different just ways of viewing life, I guess. But so she's in a different culture on the opposite side of the country. She can't get to her family and then she has to have major surgery in the middle of all of this. So she's adjusting to living in a new place with a new job, with new people and new ideas. And that's really when the anxiety started to build, because she knew what she wanted, she knew why she was there, but you got to admit, if all of that happens in the same time, that's a lot to handle. But there she was, she's totally doing it. She's building a life in this new place with her soulmate, learning who she is, climbing the corporate ladder like a boss and guys,
Megan Devito:she is tired. Like tired! Because that is a lot, and she's really stressed out Because, if that you know, we're talking about everything that's happened in the last five to seven years, piling up on top of it all the time, like one thing on top of the next thing. So she has this thought we're talking about last week, so we're getting on our coaching call - I talk with my clients for about an hour a week and we get on the call and I'm like, 'what do you want coached on this week'? And she said, 'I just feel so overwhelmed that I have to figure out what to do, like I can't get a break, I can't catch any free time'. So she's telling me that there's never enough time for all the things on her lists of what she has to do today or tomorrow or next week. And I was like hold up, what do you mean lists? Because I'm a huge list fan. I've talked about this before on previous episodes.
Megan Devito:I've written about it in emails that lists to me are powerful. Yet and I make my lists at night before bed. I make a list at night before bed about what I need to accomplish the next day and I keep it pretty short because I like to cross things off and if I leave myself some space I can just always write another thing on my list and cross it off later. But she's telling me she has multiple lists and when she looks at them she just knows there's no way that she's going to get it done. So she immediately feels overwhelmed by her list. And in my head I'm like yes, but lists are there to help guide you and to help make sure that you are being productive.
Megan Devito:But she's afraid, with all of these things on her list, that she's going to fall short of whatever expectations and that she has this really big thought that if I don't get this done, if I don't communicate everything clearly to everyone involved in all of these moving pieces of my job, I'm not going to get hired back. I'm not going to have my contract renewed. I'm not going to be able to stay here. So lots of thoughts that we're working through about what she wants to do and what comes next for her, because I told you that she's amazing and so creative and ambitious, but she's trying to figure it all out. But on the other side, outside of her job, she's also feeling really guilty because she has this amazing partner and this puppy that she wants to spend time with. She has new friends in her new place that she's living and she said I have these new friends. I don't even get to see them. We can't even find time to hang out because everybody is so busy and so overwhelmed with what they have to do. So she really was reacting like most of us, and especially how high achievers react when they feel overwhelmed.
Megan Devito:She pushed herself harder, she stayed extra hours, she didn't have that boundary up. So when she went home, if somebody texted or emailed her about work, she replied and I asked her. I said well, what are your working hours? When do you actually work? She said well, these are my hours, she said, but ideally, I would work these hours. So she was working about two to three hours a day longer than she wanted to work. I asked her about her schedule and what would be on it If this would be ideal.
Megan Devito:What would it take for your ideal to actually be your schedule? First of all, is that an option? Is it something where your employer or where you work, do you have set hours? Is it like yes, I am required to be in the office from 9 to 5, or from 8 to 4, whatever your hours are? If that's not written and these are working hours, you will be here this many hours. Don't leave early, you have to be there. Or is it something where I generally work these hours to get everything done that I need to get done and there's some leeway in there, because those are really two separate issues, aren't they? I don't want you to not be at work when you need to be there and get fired, but if there's flexibility and you can actually get things done and give yourself more space on that before you come in or before you have to leave, if that's really an option, we can create that together. We just need to decide how you want to make it work. So I said well, what would it take for you to be able to work these ideal hours?
Megan Devito:We had this conversation and she said well, I have these expectations and these deadlines, but there's too much that I have to do, because I'm always afraid that I'm going to forget what has to happen the next day. So I try to stay on top of it and to look ahead to make sure I'm getting that done. But next day was running into the next day and the next day, if that makes sense. So one of the things that she's been doing that, when we go back to this idea of making a list, I said, well, okay, so you make the list, and then how often do you look at your list? She said every day. Amazing, like that's great; we make a list, we look at it every day and we just check, check, check. So she pulls the list up on her phone and she said well, not every day. I said well, why are you not looking at it every day? She said because when I look at it there's just so much there. I said well, tell me again about this list and why you have lots of lists. She said, well, I have a list of what I think I need to do today, but then I also plan out, so I have a list for maybe tomorrow. This is what I could do tomorrow, and then maybe next week and next month and next year or next quarter, however that looks for her.
Megan Devito:I asked her a question and she paused for a while and this is pretty normal when I leave people lots of space to think, and I just sat there for a while, but it had been longer than normal pauses were and I said are you still there? Like I thought my phone disconnected and she goes yeah, I'm just looking at this and it's a mess. She said I have so many things on here that I've written twice or that I put down for this week and next week and next year, but then I also have notes on this list that I don't even know what they go with. So it was kind of just a catch all Like. I imagine it if you could put it instead of taking it off your phone and putting it onto paper, that it would look like a stack of sticky notes that were all just like stuck together and like a mess. And she's like this is a mess. I like it's as ridiculous I have to go through this. And then it got quiet again and I was like OK, so tell me really what's going on in here. And she had this, this messy list that she thought that she was checking. But when she realized that she wasn't, and why she wasn't because it felt so overwhelming I said, well, let's figure out how to make this less overwhelming for you. Let's really look at what we need to have on the list and what it would be like to just have one list and then maybe like a file for all the other things that you could add to your list each day. So just finding a different way to organize those ideas. And once she, you know, once we were at this point where she was looking at everything and trying to figure out how she wanted to basically take these lists and move them all to the side and then put them back together again.
Megan Devito:I said well, have you ever seen this video called Big Rocks or something like Big Rocks? It's an old video. I'm going to link it in the show notes. It's on YouTube - I think it is a Covey video. It's definitely from the 90s and you'll notice that as soon as you pull it up. You'll be like, wow, this is old, it's slightly creepy, but it's really, really a good video. And this video talks about how to prioritize things in your schedule. This is really important when you're feeling overwhelmed, because what can happen is what happened to her, where she just added more and more and more to her list, so her list was controlling her instead of her controlling her list. Now the Big Rocks video let's get back to that.
Megan Devito:The Big Rocks video are about taking the things that are the priorities, the non-negotiables in your life, and putting them on your schedule first. Those are your Big Rocks. So you take these priorities and by priorities I mean three to five things, certainly no more than five, and you put them into your schedule first and you make sure that you do those things in the day the way they need to be done. And maybe your priorities for Monday aren't the same as they are for Wednesday, but when you look at what you value, that's how you decide what those priorities are. So for her, it was her purpose, like, what is my purpose in life? Making sure I'm financially stable, making sure I have time with my partner, making sure I have time with my puppy and making sure that I have time with for myself. And those were her five.
Megan Devito:So we looked at those things and I said, okay, let's look at your daily schedule and what you have going right now and let's put those five things on there. How long do you think it'll take? So we know that work is going to take up a pretty big portion of the day. So that went on there first. I'm going to work my ideal hours. Let's just schedule it for that now and see how that goes. And then let's say, okay, I definitely want to spend time with my boyfriend and with my puppy, so we put those in the schedule. Maybe those two things can go together. How do you want to arrange those? Because when you're arranging these, you could put those things together. There's nothing that has to be separate. But let's get those on the schedule. Let's give you, let's make sure we schedule time for you to have time to yourself and for you to really be focusing on your purpose. And if your purpose is to be with your partner or to be present at work, maybe that purpose rock is really connected to the other ones and that's great. And once you have those things on your schedule, the other things that you have to do during the day, those kind of mundane human tasks like, 'oh my gosh, I have to clean the bathroom or I have to go to the grocery store,' Those start fitting into the cracks and you'll notice that when you have the big things in there first, you're leaving so much more space for all of those little things that you have to do, to get done, and you have more space for yourself on the end, because you've handled the big things, you are handling your list instead of your list handling you. That's part of it.
Megan Devito:The second part that we talked about was really setting boundaries and saying no when you have to say no, and saying yes when you need to say yes. So we need to ask ourselves the question what would it take to say no or to say yes to something and if your thought is, 'I have to say yes because I'm the only one that will do it', that's just a thought. That's not necessarily true. I used to see this a lot when I was teaching where I would, you know, a parent would say I guess I'll go on the field trip. Actually, this could have been me too, because even as a teacher, I am not a fan of going on field trips. Like it's just chaos and I have a lot of thoughts about it, but it's just not my favorite thing.
Megan Devito:But I always wanted to spend time with my kids, so I would volunteer. And there were other parents that would say I mean, if you absolutely need me, then put me down, I'll just do it. And I was like hold on a minute If you don't want to go, I have people on a waiting list that do want to go. You don't have to do it. But they would say, 'oh, I thought that nobody would go' and then I would be, you know, I didn't want you guys to be stuck.'
Megan Devito:So sometimes when we say no to something for example, if you were saying no to doing something at work or even something like your kids' field trip you're actually offering a gift to other people to be able to do something they do want to do. So when I would say no to volunteering for a field trip, I was giving a parent that wanted to go an opportunity to say yes. The same is true when you say no to picking up extra hours at work you think nobody else is going to cover, because you don't really want to do it. You'd rather go home. You're like I don't want to do this, but somebody has to do it. So I'll say yes, but I wonder if there's somebody else at your workplace that could really use the extra hours or the extra experience. Or maybe they're going through a breakup and they just don't want to go home yet. They just don't want to sit at home. They're like I just rather work for an extra hour. You're offering someone else an opportunity.
Megan Devito:If you can change your mindset around saying no instead of feeling like you have to people please is as 'oh, wait a second, this could actually benefit the person that's waiting for this' and, on the other hand, saying yes to the things that might scare you or that feel challenging, that are new experiences to help you feel less anxious, because we know the more that we try things that make us feel anxious, the more that we teach ourselves, to teach our brains that we're actually okay and you get to say yes to things that really fire you up. Maybe you got asked to volunteer for something at the church. I'm getting ready to go on Thursday evening to a church meeting that I've never done before with this really incredible group that we have in my town called Giving Gardens, and I'm so excited about it. Like I get to go figure out how we can make Giving Gardens a thing, maybe possibly in conjunction with the church. We'll see.
Megan Devito:I wanted to say yes to that. There are other things that I'm like absolutely not. Don't sign me up for that. I don't want to do that. It's not my thing. It's really okay to say no to things that don't light you up and to say yes to things that feel a little different and scary. I'm not sure how this is going to go. I'm not sure it's for me, but I'm going to find out.
Megan Devito:So that was another thing that I asked her on our call was, 'what would it take for you to hold your boundaries around your work schedule? To say, 'no when I go home my time is really for my boyfriend and the things that I need to do at home'. And I said so what would it take? And she said, 'well, I would have to stop feeling guilty about leaving work or feeling like I was going to miss something at work'. I said, 'okay, well, how do you feel when you say yes to work when you get home, if you bring your work home with you? How do you feel once you're at home?' And she said, 'well, then I feel guilty because I'm not spending time there, and then I feel kind of resentful because I don't have that time'. So I said, 'yeah, so we're just swapping one feeling for another. Which one can we look at and decide how can we change what you think about that?' 'How would it actually be beneficial for work to hold the boundary of saying work stays at work?' 'What if you're actually a better employee when you don't take work home with you?' Things for you to chew on, things that I offered for her to chew on, because when you can change what you think, it really affects the way that you behave. That's really what the beauty of coaching is.
Megan Devito:So we worked together to come up with what her big rocks were. We worked on boundaries and then we just talked about how are you gonna schedule in time for yourself and be mindful of what you're doing when you're looking at your list. Are you like, oh this is on my list, but I got distracted by this thing over here and then this person asked me for that. And for sure, there are gonna be times when you have to veer for your list because things are gonna come up. But if you can come back to the list and actually cross things off and remove them from the list when you're done, now you can see progress. And now that overwhelm shrinks because your list is shrinking and your brain says, okay, look at these things, we're moving off here. We're getting things done, and it starts to relax because it's not like the list keeps going. Then at the end of the day, you can reevaluate with all those other sticky notes that we put in that folder to say what do I want to put on my list for tomorrow? So that big pile that she had, that was going through all those other lists, gradually starts to shrink until we're on these are future projects. This is where I am now. That's really what we worked on and this is really how coaching can help you too, because what happens is she gets the accountability that she needs to say what did you put on your list today? We're going to talk about it next week.
Megan Devito:How did the list thing go? And what can I do to support you with this? What thoughts do you still have about, like, if you didn't hold your boundaries? What were you thinking when you didn't hold your boundaries? Let's talk about it and come up with what the truth is or what you would rather experience or do instead.
Megan Devito:If you want to make changes, to stop feeling overwhelmed which I'm guessing you do, because nobody likes that feeling you don't want to feel stressed and overwhelmed. It's not easy, because if it was, you would already be doing it. Sometimes we just have somebody - we have to have somebody that can look at what we're doing and ask us, 'tell me why you're doing that.' 'Tell me how it benefits you.' And I love this question like, how does this thing that you're doing, that you don't like to do, benefit you? And they'll say I don't know, it doesn't benefit me at all. And yes, it does, maybe not in a positive way. It's kind of like smoking. Why do we start doing something that doesn't benefit us? A lot of times it is to protect our feelings or our emotions, to make us fit in, to make us feel powerful.
Megan Devito:Whatever it is that you're doing when you have those bad habits maybe it's trash talking yourself it's still benefiting you and it's keeping you stuck Back to what I was saying, though, to begin with, is that's really one of the benefits of coaching is finding the thought that's keeping you doing that same habit over and over again, because once you change what you think about what's going to happen, it's easier to change that habit, even quitting smoking, even if you're addicted to nicotine. So it's kind of a roundabout story, but let's talk about how your habits are benefiting you now, and another way that coaching can really help you is to give you a different perspective on what might help, or to have somebody play devil's advocate for you, so that you can come up with other options that are going to serve you better than what you're already doing. So if I were to say 'well, what if none of that's true?' 'What if the opposite were true?' 'What if I said this to you? Then what would you do?'
Megan Devito:Because sometimes our brains just don't want to go there. We get stuck in the I don't know, and this is something I learned from my own coach a couple of years ago. She would ask me questions and I would just, it was almost like I could feel this wall go up and I'd be like I don't know. I don't know, because if I did know, I would already do it, and there are, of course, some things that you don't know. But a lot of times when you notice that back and forth feeling inside of you, where you almost tense up, it's your brain trying to protect you from having to admit something, feel an emotion and take an action that might make you feel scared. And that's where the I don't know gets really tricky.
Megan Devito:Because a lot of times I want to ask people what, if you did know how to solve this, what would you do? What would you do differently? What would you tell your best friend or your sister or your brother to do? Would you take your own advice? Why not? Why would you take your own advice? Why is it good advice? Maybe it's not good advice, but really having somebody to play devil's advocate so that you can look at what you're actually doing and Slowly start making those changes, one little decision at a time. And, of course, coaching with me is also going to help you learn how to calm your body down, because I have so often work with people who are anxious.
Megan Devito:Let's talk about what anxiety feels like in your body and how, when you feel that feeling, you're not allowed to believe anything that you think until you calm that feeling down so that you can think rationally and just notice that, oh, this is an anxious thought. I can feel the anxiety in my body and because it's an anxious thought, that means it may or may not be true. It's likely just a thought. That's keeping me safe. What do I want to choose on purpose? This keeps your brain from freaking out and it helps you make changes and make them stick, so that you don't go back to your old habits. So when you get to the bottom of why you're overwhelmed and what's causing you to stay stuck, then you finally get to make choices and start making the changes that you need to feel less stressed out and to have a lot more time for yourself. You get to be more productive and more efficient, because you're not always going down that rabbit hole of freaking out and feeling too much. The list is often a lot shorter than it was to begin with, but you get so much more done, including having more time for yourself, because you're gonna schedule that in and we talk about that.
Megan Devito:I talked about that with her. You get to improve that balance between being at home and being at work so that you're not dragging your home life to the office with you and then dragging the office back home with you. We just get to create those boundaries so you have better relationships with your partner, because you're not always thinking and talking about work. You can talk about what it is that you want to do on the weekend and you can schedule trips. That is one thing that she has been doing such a good job of and I'm so proud of her is that she said 'no, we are being very intentional on getting away with each other on the weekends'. I'm so proud of her for that. But they're communicating better, she's sleeping better and they both have more energy because they're not as stressed out all day long. Stress is an energy sucker, so when you start lowering your stress, you have so much more energy.
Megan Devito:They also have this such a better sense of well-being just across the board, like I feel like I can think more clearly and that I can really do what I love and to have purpose outside of my job, because they're saying yes to the things that they want to say yes to and no to the things that they don't want to do. And when those boundaries slip, we just find ways to bring them back into alignment again. So you start doing things like scheduling date nights or go cross country skiing, or go volunteer at the animal shelter, or whatever it is that you love that lights you up. You get to find all these new passions and create that really strong balance of, my life outside of my job is really my actual job, is actually my life and my job is just my job. So you get to create the life that you want that includes your job, of course. Let's talk about how you can work with me.
Megan Devito:You can go to Instagram or Facebook and find me at @coachm egand evito. You can find me on YouTube again Coach Megan Devito. Or you can go to LinkedIn and find me Just Megan Devito, without the coach in front of it. Of course, you could always go to my website. I send out a weekly email where I include a quick summary of everything we talked about on the podcast and some freebies that only go out to my email list and that's super easy. There's a pop-up on my website. You just fill that in and say I want to get your emails. I like them, I think they're great, and if you missed the podcast for the week, you can always see what's up on there and then you can go back and watch it again later.
Megan Devito:So thank you, guys for tuning into this episode.
Megan Devito:Thank you for watching and sharing.
Megan Devito:If you're on YouTube, please subscribe, leave a review. Make sure that you're getting all of this new content as it comes through. If you're listening somewhere else Spotify, iheartradio, itunes, wherever you listen again, leave the review and share this episode with somebody else. That is the best way for us to be able to knock out this is stress and anxiety epidemic that is taking over. You guys are helping people when you share this and you're helping bump these videos up, because the algorithms are crazy and I certainly don't certainly don't understand them so I appreciate your love and support. If I don't talk to you before on a consultation call, I will be back next week, take care. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel more relaxed, have more energy, more confidence and a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. Talk to you soon.