Bloom Your Mind

Ep 120: Be a Time Whisperer

• Marie McDonald

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When I thought of time management, I used to feel and think… ’Blahhh.’

‘That is NOT sexy.’

‘I am not wasting my time on that. I want to be here in the present.’

‘It’s so boring. It’ll melt my face off. I just won’t do it.’ 

Ironically, all of those things proved to be the opposite of what’s true. 

As I became a time whisperer…I had time to do sexy stuff, like take care of myself and literally actually have time for a sex life. I had WAY more time to do the things that brought me joy. I became WAY more present for my life, and now? 

I actually love planning out my week. I legit look forward to it now because I love all the stuff I’m putting in my calendar. 

Just right now, the people I’m working with who are focused on time whispering range from a Family Medicine Doctor to the Director of a school. They are stay-at-home parents and C-level executive teams. They are musicians and sales managers. ALL of them have found freedom, joy and success from the skills they’re building in time management, and that’s just the handful that I’m currently supporting with this. I’ve literally helped hundreds of others make friends with their calendars, their lists, and start falling in love with the time they have and how they spend it.  

But let’s get real. Being an excellent time manager does not sound sexy.

So, let’s be time whisperers. Let’s you and I develop the grace and decisiveness, the follow-through and the systems to make time our bestie. 

In today’s episode, you’ll learn: 

  • How being a time whisperer gives you a mind like water 
  • Three productivity theorists whose books you can order right now to do a deep dive 
  • How using your calendar can be like appreciating really great art 
  • How to know what to do no matter where you are but still feel totally free 
  • The one hour a week that is more important to your life than any other period of time
  • The three levels of time whispering skill you can build and how to learn them

Mentioned in this episode: 

How to connect with Marie:

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 120 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. It's exciting, right? I know I love all the numbers, but I feel like a special topic is in order for episode 120, and I have the best topic for you today. Now, this is funny because some of you are going to get really excited about this topic and others will turn off the episode when you hear it. But before I tell you what it is, you probably already know because of the title. But just listen.

Speaker 1:

I used to feel like this topic was blah. No, not for me. I used to feel like this topic was not sexy, that it was wasting my time because I want to be here in the present. This topic of time management, I used to just think, was the pits. What's really ironic, y'all, is that the experience that I had is mirrored over and over and over again, and all these people that I coach when folks need time management, help folks that I'm coaching on making their idea into a real thing, whether they're in an organization or they're out on their own, and I'm going to tell you examples of this. The irony is that I used to think this is not sexy and literally it gave me time for a sex life, but also like, gave me time to move, gracefully take care of my body, spend time with my partner all the sexy stuff. I used to think I'm not wasting my time on that, I'm going to be here in the present moment. It actually developing skill and time management, stopped me from wasting time and allowed me to be present in the present moment. I also used to think it was such a drag that I could not like force myself to sit down and manage my calendar and my schedule and all my to-do lists. And now I love it because of what it has given me People that I'm working with even just right now right, not all of the people that I've worked with over time, but just even right now these are the people who are getting a ton out of the work that I've worked with over time, but just even right now these are the people who are getting a ton out of the work that we've done on time management lately. Some of these folks are in the bloom room and some are one-on-one clients or organizational clients.

Speaker 1:

But I serve, I coach the director of a school and she sews in her off time. She has a child, she has a very full life and once she started using these time management tools, she just was so effusive about what it gave her in her life, the amount of time it gave her back. When she sat down and used these tools, she said I'm doing sewing projects again and I haven't done that in years and it felt so good to her. So this is the director of a school. Now there's a musician that I'm working with. He's an artist who likes to be free and flowy, right. He's, you know, designing a music theory course, collaborating with a bunch of amazing artists to write an album, also teaching guitar lessons, and he loves the time management stuff because it gives him so much time to be creative and it gives him like he doesn't worry about whether or not it's going to happen. He can relax at the end of the day because he knows he's got time planned to do what he wants.

Speaker 1:

I work with a family medicine doctor who is loving the color coding that I taught him to do with his calendar. I work with a stay-at-home parent who teaches her three kids homeschool while traveling the world. These time management tools around prioritization are everything to her. We keep reworking them and applying them in different ways and she gets more and more and more out of them. I work with a functional mushroom industry sales manager and he uses these time management tools all the time. So I'm just saying, no matter who you are, these are applicable to everybody. Okay, to organize the things you've got in front of you, no matter how complex they are or if they're very simple and you don't have a lot of complexity in your life right now, and literally I've coached hundreds of others. So today I'm going to give you the broad strokes of the time management tools that I teach and I'm working on a course right now that's going to be available for you to take if you want more on time management, so you can get my coaching and you can get support and you can do a deep dive on time project management, getting making your idea into a real thing by actually planning the steps that it takes. It'll be free to everybody. That's already in the Bloom Room, but it's also going to be available to you, just if you like.

Speaker 1:

Start hearing this and you say this is a good intro, but I need more. It is coming. So my time management process that I teach is based on multiple things. It's based on lots of books that I've read over time on productivity theory, but also on the concepts that I've developed, because they work for me and they work for my clients. So I'm not going to do a super deep dive, but if you want a couple of book recommendations here, I'd recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen, number one and Essentialism by Greg McCown, and then, if you want to read ahead of me, the next book that I'm going to read is Deep Work by Cal Newport, so you can read ahead and then tell me how it is. So those I know some of my listeners love book recs, so those are book recs. But you know this time management, these tools just create freedom, ease, flow.

Speaker 1:

And let me tell you my favorite metaphor for this. This comes from David Allen in the book Getting Things Done, and you know I love a good metaphor. So here's this. He says that we can have a mind like water. So let's all visualize this like the still water on the top of a pond, and when we throw a pebble into the pond, we want to have a mind that's so still that it doesn't overreact or underreact to the size of the thing that's asking for its attention. So if it's a small pebble and we throw it in, the ripples that get created are kind of small. If it's a large rock that's thrown into the pond, the surface of the water responds more actively with bigger ripples. What David Allen says and I love this is that when we don't have a system that we trust to manage our time, we overreact or underreact, or both or somewhere in the middle, to the things that are asking for our attention. So maybe a small rock gets thrown into the pond and we overreact, we make big ripples.

Speaker 1:

Is that you so like something pops up, the yard needs to get raked, or someone asks you to help them fix their printer, or you get an email asking for something and you handle it right away. You drop what you're doing and you forget the plan you had and you drop the important thing you were focused on in favor of the urgent thing in front of you, overreacting to something that's not actually that important. Or maybe you underreact. Is that you? That might be you if you've got a bill that needs to be paid, a water leak or a tooth pain that really needs to get looked at and dealt with, but it's overwhelming to even think about, with all of the other things you've got going on, so you just defer it until it becomes a big problem.

Speaker 1:

So remember that our time and our attention these are our most precious resources. We have a finite number of moments that we are living in our life and the way that we spend them is ultimately the most important thing. So when we manage our time well and we develop skill in this area, we know that we're dedicating these precious moments of our life to the things that are most important to us and that we have sovereignty. We're in the driver's seat. We're always making the decisions that are in line with how we want to spend these moments of our life. But in order to do that, we've got to have a system that we trust to hold all of the details of our life, so that we can have a mind, like water, that reacts in proportion to the stimulus asking for our attention. So I teach this kind of skill on different levels for different folks. I teach basic skills and tools as an intro and then I teach a level deeper, like a mid-range, for folks that want a little more robust set of tools Maybe they're tracking more details. And then a third deep, deep level for folks that have more complicated projects or businesses they're running that have multiple steps and maybe multiple collaborators and maybe even budgets or P&Ls. So we've got lots of steps and today I'm going to share the broad strokes with you, the simple steps you can always reach out to find out and learn more.

Speaker 1:

There are three tools that I recommend for time management. There are your calendar, your weekly review and your lists. So let's talk about what these are. The first and most important tool I would say is your calendar. I put everything in my calendar, and the reason this is so important as a system that you trust is because when something is in your calendar and your week is already planned, you've prioritized it. One time You've spent the time looking at everything that's important to you, you've planned your week ahead of time, and what that means is that you don't have to waste time reprioritizing over and over and over and over again. You look one time, you prioritize everything and then all you have to do is the thing in front of you my calendar and the way that I teach to use a calendar has a few different important components. The first one is to color code it.

Speaker 1:

My calendar has like eight different colors. There's exercise, which is like a bright green. There's love, which is like time with my husband and my close friends that fill my heart. That's red. I have time with my kids, which is like an indigo. I have time with my clients, which is like a rose colored. I have thought work time like deep focus time, which is a yellow. I have time when I'm out and about, which is like a light blue. I have time when I meet with my other side of my business, my business partner, and that's purple. I have volunteer time, which is like a gray color for all my volunteer work. I'm probably forgetting some things, but I have all of these different colors and what happens is when I look at my calendar. I am a visual person, but this works for all different people.

Speaker 1:

When you look at it, you can tell if you're in balance in two ways. First of all, I know I need to exercise every day. If I don't see green that dark green on a day, then I know that I need to get some on there. If I don't see that red color of love on my week a few different times, I know that I'm not going to refill my cup right. My week is not regenerative enough, it's not gonna give me enough back because I give a lot of energy and love out. So I need to make sure that there's some red on my calendar, like multiple reds on my calendar, so that I know I'm getting that love back somehow. I know I want tons of time with my kids on there and it shows me when there's too much. If I've got like half my week is indigo, I know I'm a little out of balance and maybe I need to ask for some support.

Speaker 1:

It also shows me at a glance if I need to like be glamming on a day. If I have like a public speaking event or all clients all day and I'm leading groups and workshops, I need to like glam it up a little bit. I need to look my best. I like to look my best every day, but some days my best is, like you know, different. It's not my maxed out, glammed up self, right, it's my best for that day, which might be a little more casual. So that color coding helps me understand what type of day it is. It helps me understand my balance and it just shows me the flow of the week. Now the second element of this is that it matches my priority list. You can listen to three priority tricks.

Speaker 1:

I think it's called a few episodes ago that shares a few different ways to use priority lists. These are all things that I've just created, where you come up with your top five priorities for your week. My number one is always mental and physical wellbeing. So I look at my week and I better have enough red for love, green for exercise, light green for other self-care actions, which might be like a sauna or a facial or something like that. Some weeks there is none. Hopefully, every week I can get something in that is a long walk or something that just feels like self-care above exercise, and orange, which for me is support for me. So that would be me seeing having a coach or a financial planner or a therapist or somebody that's supporting me, because I support a lot of people all the time. So I like to have some orange somewhere that might be a group coaching program that is supporting me that I'm not running.

Speaker 1:

So my priority list is that first.

Speaker 1:

So I better see all of that.

Speaker 1:

And then second is my family. So then I check for Max and the kids. And then third is my contribution. So I look at my calendar and the third most important thing is all my clients that I coach, the bloom room, the moxie mastermind and my volunteerism. And then I have my other priorities and they kind of switch around. Sometimes friends and family, adventure, nature, creativity my last two switch out, but by looking at my calendar I can see if I'm in line with my priorities.

Speaker 1:

The other most important things about your calendar because I said I would not do a deep dive so I'm going to move right on is to plan enough time for everything more than you think you need, with buffers and with travel time. The most successful people plan their travel time and anticipate that there's gonna be traffic, there's gonna be a road closed, so plan your time accordingly and plan blocks of time in your calendar by result. So I don't just plan blocks in my calendar to work on email or work on marketing. I plan a chunk in my calendar to write three emails or to work on website copy for my about me page. By the end of that hour I will have a draft of my copy for the about me page done or I will have three emails written. By the end of that hour I will have groceries bought and put away, or whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

I plan my calendar by the results first and just make sure that you plan self-care first Exercise, friend time, non-work hours, sleep, doctor appointments, that sauna I might get in, or time to complete your stress cycles. You can learn about that on the stress cycles episode, where you get to walk around, take a break, take a little dance party, take a bath and after that you plan your recurring events, like your work hours. You're picking up your kids, if you have them, meetings, family meetings, recording a podcast, writing a weekly email, prepping for the bloom room those are things for me Doing the weekly maker's market at the school. So first we do our self-care, then we do our recurring events and then we go to our second tool to complete the rest of our week. Our second tool is our weekly review, the rest of our week. Our second tool is our weekly review. So we just covered our first tool, which is our calendar, color-coded, tricked out self-love first. Our second tool is the weekly review, and this is two tools out of three.

Speaker 1:

The weekly review is based on the thought leader, david Allen, who wrote the book that I mentioned, getting Things Done. This is one hour every week where you plan the work instead of do the work. That is so important. If there's one thing that I see people fail at when they're iterating on getting better at managing their time, it's they start doing the work during the weekly review. Most important rule is you can't do the work. You got to plan the work.

Speaker 1:

The weekly review is a list of all of the areas of your responsibility for work and life. Every week, you have one hour at the beginning of your week where you're planning the work instead of doing it, or planning your week instead of actually getting things done. You go down that checklist every week and make sure you've thought of everything you need to do and scheduled time to do it. That's what your weekly review is. That's it. You don't do anything. You just go down your list of all the things that you know need to happen in the week and you plan them out.

Speaker 1:

My weekly review is a Google spreadsheet and every row is a different thing that I'm responsible for and every column is a date of a Monday. So every Monday, I do my weekly review for one hour and I just go down and check off all the things I'm responsible for. So, on those rows, all the things I'm responsible for are exercise, kid time, self-care time, max time, friend time, holidays coming up, birthdays coming up all those life things. Next are all the things that are recurring that I have to do. I need to get time scheduled with my coach doctor's appointments, hair appointments, scheduling time with anybody that's treating the kids, anything for the house all of those recurring things, and then everything else that I'm responsible for. I'm on a board of trustees. What do I need to do for that? Anything this week.

Speaker 1:

My financial review I need to plan time to do my finances each week. My plants in my garden, in my house. What needs to happen there this week? When am I going to plan my meals and shop for groceries? Then all my business stuff for my huge passion, which is the bloom room and my coaching. When am I going to go into the Facebook group and respond to all my bloom room people? When am I going to prepare for all my clients that I see? Are they all scheduled? Do any of them need anything?

Speaker 1:

Do I have a podcast planned for this week? When am I going to record it? When am I going to edit it? Do I have a podcast planned for this week? When am I going to record it? When am I going to edit it? Do I have a strategic planning time set aside for my business? Is there any traveling I'm doing this week that I need to plan for? Every single thing that I'm responsible for is a row on this spreadsheet, and by going through it every single week, I have a mind like water, because I know that I've got everything that I need to account for this week planned for. If I'm on snacks for the baseball league, I have planned to go pick up the snacks and I've planned to bring the snacks and then I bring them, and I never have to worry or stress about forgetting things. That's our second tool. There's our calendar is our first tool. The weekly review is our second tool, which you can read more about if you search David Allen or you get his book Getting Things Done.

Speaker 1:

The last of the tools is your lists. These are things that I like to use for holding reminders when we need them. These are the buckets that you can use to capture things anytime anywhere out in the world. I use a Google Tasks list, but people use all different kinds of things. You can use a written list, you can use anything that works for you. You can write them down anytime, anywhere, or input them and then they're ready for you to pull up when you need them, either because you're looking for the list, you're in a place and you have some time and need ideas for what to do at that place. Or, number three, you've actually scheduled time on the calendar to do something and now you need your list. So let's look at all three of those options real quickly.

Speaker 1:

First, let's say you're looking for the list. This might be a list of gift ideas. I have a list for gift ideas. I have a list for gift ideas. I have a list for vacations I want to take or places I want to travel. List for books I want to read. List for recipes I want to try. These are the types of lists that I have Podcasts, books like movies, shows, all these things that I want to remember and I want a place to hold them when I'm out and about.

Speaker 1:

Or maybe it's option two when you're out and about and you're actually somewhere and you need your list to remember what was I going to do when I was in this place. Maybe you're out and about and you're looking at your errands list. Maybe it's a list for home improvement projects, because you've got a weekend, half day, and you're like I know there's stuff I need to do around the house. What was it? Again? You look at your home improvement project list. Maybe things that you thought of to do while you're at your kid's soccer game or at a meeting or waiting for something at the doctor's office. Or maybe things I want to help my parents with at their house. Maybe clothes I want when I'm out shopping for clothes. These are lists you can pull up when you're actually in the place and need to remember all those things you thought of randomly in the middle of the night in the shower or in the middle of a meeting.

Speaker 1:

And option three you have scheduled time already in your calendar and now you need your list to remember what to do. So let's say I have scheduled time to work on the garden and I need to know what was I going to do. I was going to work on my house and my garden and I have a list of the plants that need repotting. Or I have scheduled time to have a meeting with my husband about the week. What are all the things I wanted to talk to him about? I'll pull up that list. What are all the things I wanted to talk to him about? I'll pull up that list. So these are the lists and the different ways that they come in handy.

Speaker 1:

And lastly, I have a list that I highly recommend, called the waiting for list. This is a list that captures anything that you have put out into the world that you're waiting to come back to you. So if you send an email, you send a text that is important and you want to remember to follow back up on it. You send a piece of mail, you order something, you're waiting for some response, but you don't want to have to hold that in your head, because then you won't have a mind like water. You put those things on your waiting for list and then you can review it whenever you want and just think oh yeah, I can follow back up on that and that and that it hasn't boomeranged back to me. I'm waiting for that thing and I can check back up on it.

Speaker 1:

So I told you I wasn't going to do a deep dive, so I'm going to stop there with these three ways to keep your mind like water and your calendar flowing and you as present in these beautiful moments of your life that you have to spend in the ways that you most want to spend them. You've got your calendar, your weekly review and your lists, and I'm going to stop right there. That's what I've got for you this week and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you've got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the bloom room, thank you.