The Abundant Practitioner Podcast By Dr Tilean
Welcome to our podcast channel. I'm Dr. Tilean, a Chartered Psychologist and Behaviour Change Expert turned Business Mentor for Practitioners, Coaches and Consultants who want to start and scale their own purpose-led business so they can live a soul-nourished and profitable life without compromise!
The Abundant Practitioner Podcast By Dr Tilean
Ep 55: Innovative Time Management Tips to Help Balance Life's Demands
What if you could transform your relationship with time, making it your greatest ally instead of your biggest stressor? This episode promises to reshape how you see and manage your 168 hours each week. We begin by reflecting on our personal narratives and attitudes towards time, revealing whether we view it as a friend or foe. Through an engaging exercise of writing a letter to time, we'll uncover and reshape our true thoughts and emotions about this precious resource. Dive into practical strategies for allocating time wisely across self-care, relationships, and career goals, ensuring a balanced and fulfilling life.
Learn how to redefine time management in ways that align with the different seasons of your life. Building a business? Navigating personal changes? Balancing relationships? Setting boundaries and prioritising activities are essential, and we offer actionable advice on how to rewrite the rules around work schedules, exercise, and routines. Discover how to maintain a balance between your success zone, power zone, and play zone, preventing burnout and sustaining your energy and motivation with joyful activities and self-care practices.
Optimising your time for personal growth is about more than just efficiency—it's about making meaningful adjustments based on a thorough audit of how you spend your week. We share strategies for categorising tasks into Lower, Outsource, Void, and Expand, emphasising the non-delegable importance of self-care activities like eating, drinking water, and meditation. By integrating learning and business activities into daily routines, and setting clear boundaries, you’ll learn to manage multiple responsibilities with ease. Align your professional goals, family commitments, spiritual practices, and social life with your true priorities to create a fulfilling and organised schedule.
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Welcome to our podcast, designed for psychologists, therapists and counsellors who want to take their business online and live a soul nourished and profitable life without compromise. If you want to know the secrets used by practitioners just like you to navigate the global e-learning market successfully, then you're in the right place. I'm Dr Talib, chartered Psychologist, business Mentor and your host, and welcome to the Abundant Practitioner Podcast. Time right. That time does matter, right? Time is, I think, one of the most precious resources that we all have, right? We all have this, this beautiful, amazing gift of time, yet none of us know how long our time on this side will be right, and how we utilize the time that we have each week. Right, we all have that 168 hours each week. How we utilize that, um matters not just on how much hours we spend here and we spend here and we spend here, but it's also our attitude, our thought process, our energy, our thinking um, our narratives, our stories, our scripts that also contribute to how that time is distributed and how that's managed and how you feel around time, whether you feel times of abundance and it's working for you, or whether it feels like time. There's never enough time for me, right, and I think that's a really important starting point that everybody can kind of lean into thinking about. What are the words and phrases and statements I say or I tend to lean towards whenever there is a conversation around time, right? Whenever there is a conversation that I'm in or an ask of me or something comes up, how do I, where do I feel in my body? How do I feel what comes up? Right? Is it why me, oh my god, I don't have enough time? There's never enough time, right? You know, like, what are the kind of things that automatically have tended to come up when you are in this conundrum of time, right? And? And really, looking at that, because every single person here has the same allocated amount of time, right, 168 hours, yeah, god didn't give you more than me, right? Or me more than you, or anything like that. We all have that same like amount of time, yet we all have different lives, right. We all have different lives, right, we all have different lives. We all have different roles and responsibilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, needs and and desires that are going to need to be managed within that time, but it is really important to recognize how do I speak, how do I lean into time, what is my energy around time, right, what is? What do I think about it? Because there may also, as I talk about this, right, there may also need to be a rewrite for you in terms of your own personal personal connection with time. What does time mean for you now? What does time mean for you moving forward? Right, I'm really looking at that at that, okay. So I think that's very, very important in terms of understanding what's our current relationship with time.
Speaker 1:You know, a really beautiful exercise that you can do actually is, um, writing a letter to time, right, writing a letter to time as if time is a person, right, and that can also help you highlight as to what you think about time. You know what's your letter. Say there, dear time, you seem to always be running away from me, right, you know, everybody wants to, wants to take, take you, right, you know what's. What is it there, right? Or is time there? Time? You're always serving me. You're always giving me, right. You're always blessing me. Yeah, you're always working me. You're always giving me, right, you're always blessing me. Yeah, you're always working for me, right, you know?
Speaker 1:So I think that's a really can be quite an interesting exercise to do, where you kind of personify time and see, like, what is your relationship like with time right now, right, um, what is it? What has it been like? And you can even look at that letter and do a kind of creative writing exercise in terms of moving that forward, in terms of what would you like your relationship to be like, moving forward, right, what would your attitude to it like to be and what would you like it to be for you? So it's a really, really beautiful exercise that can kind of give you an insight in terms of what's the relationship dynamic that you have been utilizing when it comes to time. Yeah, you know what I mean Exactly, right? So it's really important to kind of just explore what is the relationship like? Yeah, what is the relationship like when it comes to time. You know, how are you doing, what are you doing? How are you utilizing, how are you respecting it or not respecting it? Right, you know? Do you One of the things that came up earlier in terms of what?
Speaker 1:What do you allow to your time to be used for, right? What don't you allow your time to be used for? What feels uncomfortable to use your time for? Uncomfortable to use your time for? Does it feel uncomfortable to allocate time for self-love, for self-care, for relationships, right? Certain areas of your life that you can lean into and think about your relationship with time in terms of your career, like how you work when it comes to your sole success, that business, that is really all you know, that purpose-driven mission, your god-driven mission, like your, your light and your love. What's your relationship with time when it comes to um and giving to that? There also may be other elements of your career. Maybe sometimes people are doing that alongside a traditional practice, alongside a job or alongside other career demands, right, so you might want to categorize those differently.
Speaker 1:If you are doing a few different things, right, or maybe you're like me, you you are, you know you're running your business full-time or you're doing something full-time even within that, there may be certain things within that different elements of like. When I'm doing this right, time is just. I just love the way I utilize my time when I'm with my clients or when I'm talking with people that I'm just helping and I just love it. Right. I could be there all day, but I don't. I'm bound, read and whatever, right, um, but when I'm bound, read and whatever, right. But when I'm doing, you know, when I'm meeting with I don't know, like something to do with spreadsheets or something you know like, oh, I don't want to do that, or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So you could think about, even if you're doing something full time, what your relationship is like with time, with certain different segments of your work as well. Think about when it comes to your relationship is like with time in certain different segments of your work as well. Think about when it comes to your relationship with time and your well-being, right, how you look after yourself, whether that's in terms of eating, nourishing yourself, movement, walking, right? What's your relationship around time and the narratives and stories that you're telling yourself around time when it comes to those things? Is there not enough time to take a walk? Is there not enough time to go to the gym? Right? Someone mentioned before you know, speaking of their clients, like they're not enough time to go and be the sauna. Everything else is competing. What is that relationship and narrative coming up around that? Right?
Speaker 1:What about, like again, even expanding that into mental well-being, thinking about meditation, if that's something that you guys do and take time into meditation or silence or prayer or whatever that may be journaling, right? That peace time. Do you create time for that, right? I can't remember. There's like some sort of um, I don't know if it's like a quote or something, but I feel like they say like, if you're, if you're busy, you know um, meditate for an hour. If you're not, meditate for 10 minutes, right, you know what I mean. Right, like what's your, you probably need it more as well to tend to the things like your well-being, right, your um, your mental well-being, your physical well-being okay, because if you mental well-being, your physical well-being okay, because if you don't, you enter what's called an exhaustion funnel. Right, this is one of the things I teach about in the academy. It's not just about business principles and how to put your business together. We've got to look after you as you build a business so that you can have soul nourishing success, right?
Speaker 1:Think about your relationship and time in terms of when it comes to money and finances, right?
Speaker 1:What, like, do you spend time looking at that or do you not have time? You don't have time to open the, open the bills. You don't have time to look at anything related to money or finances. There's just not time for that, right? Or do you make time for a beautiful. You know meeting with money and finances and you make time for those things. Do you make time for, for those things in that that really matter in the home, right? Do you make time to tend to the garden? Do you make time to tend to your children? Do you make time to tend to your children? Do you make time to tend to your relationships? Do you make time to tend to the clothes or do they just get kind of lumped there in in a pile there?
Speaker 1:Right, and I'm going to talk about time in terms of it doesn't always all have to fall on you, but there's certain responsibilities that you need to take when it comes to these, these competing things on time, that you have to do that, right? Nobody can come and like do the meditation for you, yeah, right, nobody can come and sit and pray for you or do your journaling for you, right? They're things that you have to do. You cannot delegate that. You know what I mean. So there's things as well that, as you go through this, you can look at and be like this is a me thing. Right, I need to find time for this because no one else can do that for me. Right, nobody else can eat my food for me and I still get nourished, right, you know. So you know.
Speaker 1:It's about recognizing there's certain things, as you look down this list, that is like this is a me thing, right, me getting fresh air. I can't send out my child to get fresh air for me or my partner to get fresh air for me. I've got to do that for me, right? So there's going to be things that are me things and then there's going to be things that are things that you could delegate or you could gain support for it, so that those things still get, still get tended to as something that you value and appreciate and that matter to you.
Speaker 1:But maybe you don't need to be doing the thing. For example, like I said just now, in terms of like tending to the garden, maybe something like, okay, that really matters to me. That's a you know, I love spending time in my beautiful garden and I love that, right, but how do I find the time to do the gardening, right? Right, well, maybe you delegate and you have somebody to come and either do it or support you, right? Maybe there's certain aspects you do, but some of it is delegated, or you, you know, you delegate to the people, other people in the house, or you have a gardener coming in or something, right. So you can always like work things around, but there's some things with time that you have to do and if you're not doing it, it's not getting done.
Speaker 1:And if these are important things that matter, like looking after you, because you are your vessel to whatever you are delivering or looking after or nurturing, right, you will fall into an exhaustion funnel. Or nurturing right, you will fall into an exhaustion funnel. And so those things around your physical health, your wellbeing, your mental wellbeing, like your emotional health, all of those things, your spiritual health that is a you thing, right. And then there's things like your friends and family, you know, and your love life, your relationships Right, you know those things as well, and that therefore requires, as well, some certain boundaries around time and commitments. There's also things like you having fun and playing and enjoying the time that we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was reading. I can't even remember now, but I was reading the bible and I um the the other day and I think I did a little kind of clip on Instagram or something and I was talking about like how it's just like just enjoy the time, like be joyful with the time, otherwise you might as well just been born dead. Do you know what I mean? Like just so enjoying that, like enjoying the time that we have and so making sure there's joy and soul nourishment and replenishment in the time that we have. You know what is it to just be here and like plugging away, slugging away and not to just enjoy as well all these beautiful things that are around us, that God has created and all the things that you have also, you know, around you as well, right?
Speaker 1:So it's really important to recognize and understand your relationship with time and decide, make decisions of what parts of those relationships serve you and feel really beautiful and expansive and holding and loving, and what parts of those relationships with time have actually started to feel really contracting, restricting, right and not feeling fulfilling okay, and rewriting that and and living that out in a different way, because you can enjoy life now, not later, when you have your business, when you have X number of clients, when you reach revenue said revenue level, whatever right. You can enjoy life now, right, in different elements. And so it's about how do you utilize, okay, what is the season of life I'm in now and how am I going to distribute my time in this season and there's certain seasons where some things will need to be dug back to accommodate for right. So I remember very much as well in like this startup stage of my business, like, like really being like having to shift my relationship between being the person that spent a lot of time on the phone with friends or out with friends, you know, helping others, pouring out, you know, with family members, anyone got problem, who do they call Dr Talid, help me, help me. This is what's going on. Or my boyfriend did this, or my husband's done that, or my girlfriend's done this, or you know, what can I do here? Or I want to do this, or I want to do that and just pouring and pouring and pouring and pouring into all of these people's lives, right, oh, being there and going shopping here, or going for a drink here or going for dinner here.
Speaker 1:And it was like, ok, if I'm going to really look at my 168 hours for the week, right, how am I going to look at that and really be in the, in the space where I am being respectful of what this season of my life is now, what this season of my life requires now this season of my life requires me to build this business. That's what I've chosen, that's what I've decided, so I'm going to need to put boundaries on other things. I'm going to need to decide that, okay, I enjoy going out and meeting people. That is something that does fill me up, but I'm going to need to reduce that. Okay, I enjoy going out and meeting people. That is something that does fill me up, but I'm going to need to reduce that and I'm open to reducing that to. Okay, I'll go out, you know, a certain number of hours a week. Right, that's my, that's my quota. When that gets filled up, time's over, right? You know, like, let's, let's find another date in the diary when we can meet, because in this season in my life I'm building my business. I need time there, right, and so it's really being respectful in terms of what, the how the time shifts and changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, before, when I before I had, I've been in business. You know, I've got two children under five, and so I've been in business without children. I've been in business with children. I've been in business single. I've been in business in a relationship, right, so I've been in business with children. I've been in business single. I've been in business in a relationship, right. So I've been through all different seasons and shifts, um, and I feel like that led me to need to adjust my time and how I work as well, depending on what seasons I am in, depending on what serves me.
Speaker 1:And it's about recognizing, like, what are the rules that you've created around time? Do they work for you? Right, you know, in a season where I literally was single and you know, um, could you know, have no children or anything like it was just me and like family, friends and, you know, building my business and stuff, I could really rewrite the rules. I didn't have to necessarily work between the hours of Monday to Friday, nine to five Right, I could rewrite the rules. I could decide that actually I want to start a bit later and work more in the evening and I could rewrite the rules. Yeah, and when I, when I had a child, I could rewrite the rules and it required me to rewrite the rules of what the rules work for me. What rules do I want for my life that work for me when I've had a child? Right, what rules work for me and my life in this season, whilst I'm building business and maybe have work demands as well. So it's be okay to rewrite your rules as well, in terms of what the rules. You think the rules say about when you should be working, or you think the rules say about when you should do your exercise, for example, and rewrite the rules of what works for you. When do you want to exercise? Right, it could be at the time when somebody else says that that's the right time to do things. So I think that's the other thing as well. I would say, about time as well is recognizing that you get to write your rules around your time as well.
Speaker 1:I want everybody to really be aware of the exhaustion funnel and to be really mindful of not allowing yourselves to fall into it by taking out the very necessary things that serve you as a human being, as a person, as an individual, right like the things that really serve you and your, your, your, um, your power zone. We call it right in the academy. One of the things I do with my clients each week is I take them through this reset system. It's a weekly process where I say sit down and really look at. Okay, what do you want your focus to be when it comes to your business and your success zone this week, but what about your power zone? What's that going to be like this week? What habits do you want to ensure that you are attending to? What attitudes do you need to hold to ensure that you can be your best self? How are you going to play? What are the joyful moments? What about the play zone? Right, so power zone is how am I setting myself up for success?
Speaker 1:Sleeping, eating, hydrating, getting some connection with nature outside right, that is what's not going to help, like make you fall into that exhaustion funnel, is by making sure your power zone is there, which is going to give fuel to the fire when it comes to your success zone, right, um, and? And your play zone? Yeah, play is energy and joy is energy. So, making sure that that is also being fed through your week. You know, one of um one of our clients was saying the other day as well was like, oh, I'm gonna you remind me, I'm gonna go and like, shoot some hoop. Right, you know what I mean. Right, I'm gonna go and play. Right, I'm gonna go and do things that light me up. And it's really important to make sure that you're doing things that light you up, because that's feeding you energy. Feeding you energy. This really, really applies.
Speaker 1:Definitely there's different types of personalities, but if you are a personality of like, I'm all right to roll my sleeves up and get to work and and power through even more. So you've got to be very mindful every week that you're ensuring you're looking after your power zone, your like, your self-care, your self-health. Help right, your self-care and your play zone right. You've got to be really intentional, as well as those people that are the opposite of like hey, I'm all in flow and fun and feminine energy and vibration and I just lie back and everything falls. You've got to be again as well, looking at your time and being like am I doing the work that's required to get the results that I want right? We spoke about this earlier on in the academy as well. In terms of like, earlier this week we're talking about you know, if you want a uh x number of clients or if you want a business. Are you doing the actual tasks right? Are you getting frustrated because you're not doing the tasks? You know what I mean. Like is it not working or are you not working? Yeah, so it's really important to recognize am I actually doing the things that command the results that I want. But in that, am I looking after myself? Am I working also smarter, not harder, right?
Speaker 1:One of the things I'm going to talk about before I wrap up on this subject you might have heard me mention it before, but it's the acronym I use around time, which is called LOVES, l-o-v-e-s. I want you all to create a loving relationship around time, right, and so look at the things that you do in your life, right, do an audit. Right, do an audit of your time. You can even do one air by looking at the the week, a week ago, right, look back retrospectively. Or, if you're thinking like, oh, I'm not really sure, can't really remember, start auditing it over the next seven days.
Speaker 1:How much time do you spend sleeping, eating on your business, at work? Right, and it doesn't have to be to the minute. Right, but you just want a general idea of where do you distribute your time. What do you do with that? Right, so that you can make some decisions. Because, like I said, certain things that require that you need to do. You need to eat. No one cannot eat on your behalf. You need to drink the water. You need to get the fresh air. You need to look after yourself, do the meditation and stuff. No one can do that for you. So you want to look at your week and be like, where can I fit that in? Right, because only I can do that, and what other things matter that you need to do? Right, what really matters to you, that you want to do, that you want to spend time for.
Speaker 1:You know, like we have like this, this rule in our household, that time between like 5pm and like 8pm is like family time like nothing. You in our household, that time between like 5 pm and like 8 pm is like family time like nothing. You know what? Like that's family time. That is like us eating and laughing and talking and we're not got the demands of like the phones at us or whatever. You know what I mean. Like that's the rule we've decided to put in. It doesn't mean that you have to have that rule in your home. You know what I mean. So it's about making things work for you in your season of your life, right, and so you know really, looking at that, and when it comes to that L-O-V-E-S this is what it stands for.
Speaker 1:The L is for lower. There are certain things that you may be doing that. You need to lower the amount of time you are spending on it because it doesn't serve you and your season of life. Right now, like earlier when I mentioned, I decided to lower the number of the amount of time I would spend on the phone dealing with other people's problems and reduce that right. Like you know, it didn't mean that I shut everybody off. It was like, hey, I've got a couple of minutes, or hi, I'll speak to them in the hours that I've reserved for that time. Yeah, I became respectful of my time towards my business and building it. Right, I moved things around it. Okay, so this might be lowers. It might be lowers in terms of you know how much time you spend on Netflix or other things. You know what I mean. That might not necessarily be contributing to the season of where you're at right.
Speaker 1:The O is for outsource, right, like I mentioned earlier, there might be things that you really value, that mean a lot to you, that you want to tend to, but maybe you don't have to be tending to it. Maybe you don't have to be the person that is cooking the dinner, washing up, dealing with the shopping every single day, right, maybe that could be outsourced to somebody else in the home. That could be supportive. Maybe it could be outsourced to support that comes into the home. That could give you back time to be able to work on your business or whatever. That is right so there can be adjustments made, maybe even certain things the way you're doing. It could help you with your time right, instead of maybe walking up and down the shopping aisles deciding, you know which one of these 100 different types of you know vegetable oil should I choose from, or whatever it is right, or what am I picking. Maybe you do your online shopping and you create a list which has, like, saves your favorites, right. So when you need to top up, you do that.
Speaker 1:There's ways to make things work for you with the outsourcing or the delegating or the systemization of what's happening, and that's something that we teach there, right? You know, like one of our clients was mentioning earlier, right is about to run an event with over 300 people. Right, we taught a system approach to be able to gain those 300 people. Right, she was out there door knocking you know what I mean and saying come here, come here, right. So it's about recognizing like, how do I outsource or delegate or systemize in order to ensure that I have more time. That's what the O stands for.
Speaker 1:Void is just like, completely delete, like what I do here does not serve me. This could be something like scrolling on Facebook, right? Is it really helping you, you know? Like seeing everybody's cat weddings, blah, blah, blah. Right, you know what I mean. Like, maybe it gives you joy I don't know, that might come back to the joy part and you like it, but maybe there's a time limit that you give yourself on it. Maybe there's things that you utilize, like I utilize, which is the Chrome extension newsfeed eradicator. Whenever I go into Facebook, right, it just gives me a nice beautiful quote I see nothing, I do what I need to do and I leave. Right, if I want to pause the eradication because I do want to see, you know, cat videos or whatever, I can pause it for 10 minutes and have my fix, and then it will lock me out and give me another beautiful quote and remind me, like you know, go, go, live life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there are things that can help and support you to void out the things that might not be helpful. Yeah, um, so that would be important as well. One of those, you know that void piece? Yeah, the other thing is the E is expand. There may be things that you need to expand the amount of time you do spend on it, right? I just mentioned earlier that there are things that only you can do if you know you are not moving your body, right? No one can do that for you, right?
Speaker 1:So if that time when you do your time audit and you're like movement or meditation or whatever you know helps fill your cup, is zero, that's where the E comes in of, like, I'm going to choose to expand that. And what needs to void in order to make room for that? What needs to be outsourced in order to make room for that? Right? What needs to be systemized in order to make room for that? What needs to be lowered in order to make room for that? Ok, and then the S stands for stack. Yeah, it can also stand for stick as well. There might be things in your order that you look at. You're like I'm quite happy, quite happy with how much time I spend sleeping, right? Don't want to lower that, right, don't want to expand it, definitely don't want to void it out. Can't outsource my sleep, right? So I'm going to stick with it, right, but there might be things that you might stack as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the stack means in terms of, let's say, you want to make time for. This is something people use in the academy. They want to make time to listen to, maybe trainings, or listen to resource that's going to help them with their business. They may stack that in terms of their drive to work, for example. Right, they may stack and use their, turn their car into a library or turn their commute into a library resource. You know they might stack and stack when they are cooking, for example. You know they might have some headphones on and this and there. So there might be ways that you can stack time to work for you as well, so that you're able to fulfill the many things that you need. So those are things that I have implemented in my own life that has enabled me to really build a business from scratch.
Speaker 1:Right To, and also be able to invite a relationship into my life. Right To be able to invite also two beautiful, amazing, energetic young boys into my life. Right, and and to have my sanity and sleep and nourish myself and take walks and spend time in my mind. I spend a lot of time in my mom. I speak to my mom every day, you know, like you know my sister as well. We have a really connection. We've got a lot of family demands and stuff. I go to church every single Sunday. I'm there at church singing and praising and praying and worshiping. I have friends. I'm out tomorrow, tomorrow night, I'm out celebrating my friend's birthday and stuff. So enjoying life and living life has happened, though, by me being really respectful of time, putting in place boundaries, being OK to rewrite my rules around what time means for me, um, and just being really clear and intentional about what does god want for me in my life right now, and what does that mean in terms of how I'm going to manage my time. Okay,