Lots to Unpack There
We’re Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our 40s living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership, and everything in between. We’re navigating the “messy middle” of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone who just gets it makes the journey less hard.
Each week, we’ll share something real from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that as we process and reflect, it’ll inspire and help you do the same—wherever you are.
Lots to Unpack There
Unpack Snack: Outsourcing Time Anxiety
This episode is only available to subscribers.
Lots to Unpack There +
Exclusive access to premium content!Timers have revolutionized Jess's relationship with time and reduced the constant stress of time blindness that comes with her neurodivergence. Through various timer tools and intentional calendar management, she's created systems that allow her to function better while alleviating the shame that comes with chronic lateness.
• Experiencing time blindness as a neurodivergent person means getting deeply absorbed in tasks and losing track of time
• Multi-timed hexagonal timer allows for setting different time intervals for various tasks
• Visual timers provide clear indicators of remaining time, especially helpful for children
• Phone alarms serve as reliable reminders for daily transitions like school pickup
• Setting calendar appointments for departure times rather than arrival times ensures adequate travel time
• Using buffer time between meetings prevents back-to-back scheduling and allows for decompression
• Timers create a "safety net" by outsourcing time management stress to external mechanisms
• Alarms facilitate easier task-switching by providing clear signals to transition between activities
Want to support the podcast and help us keep creating content that matters? Here’s how you can get involved:
Join the Conversation: We want to hear from you! What resonates with you from this episode? How are you navigating your own journey? Connect with us on Instagram @lotstounpacktherepodcast or send us a message at unpack@riverdropcoaching.com.
Subscribe & Stay Connected: If you love what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review! Your support helps us reach more women who need a space like this. Let’s build this community together!
📬 Stay Inspired: Sign up for our Substack, where you’ll get fresh insights delivered straight to your inbox. Whether you choose a free or paid subscription, you’ll be the first to know what’s next: Substack
🎧 Bonus Content: Want exclusive access to behind-the-scenes moments and extra episodes? For as little as $3, you can support the show and enjoy bonus content that’s just for you: Support Us
Every bit of support helps us keep bringing real conversations from our hearts to your ears! Thank you for being part of the journey! 🙌
Jess and Lisa here to brighten your day. Quick chats and laughs. We're on our way. Got the scoop. You didn't expect Unpacked snacks. Short but perfect. Funny tidbits and moments. We share, stories so light they'll float in the air, tune in fast as the bite-sized flare. Unpacked snacks we're always prepared Good morning.
Speaker 2:Hello, you ready for a little unpacked snack? I'm ready, I'm ready. If you're ready, okay, what snack? So what I'm snacking on is the role of timers in my life, which might seem kind of strange, but I think we have talked a little bit about my neurodivergence and figuring out what exactly my neurodivergence is. And I'll just say, regardless of what the label is, one of the things that manifests for me is kind of this time blindness, where I just get really sucked in to something and it is not. I just lose time, or or like I'll be doing something and I'll say okay, I have five minutes to do this thing and I'll be working on it, and then all of a sudden, before I know it, I'm late, because five minutes is actually not that long of a time. But it's like this efficiency desire in my brain to maximize every spare moment.
Speaker 3:I think it's so funny that you call it efficiency, because it sounds like you could define it as the opposite of efficiency in some ways. So I love that you're classifying it in the efficiency framework, because it's you diving deep into something and squeezing every last bit out of that moment. And it's just such a different type of efficiency, but anyway, keep going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like the opposite of wasted time. If I have these moments, it's like, oh, but I could be filling that five minutes with something and, to be fair, I work really well on a deadline. I mean, I, I will bang out a 10 pound, 10 pounds 10 page paper.
Speaker 3:I thought you were going to say 10 pound baby.
Speaker 2:Me too, I will not be banging out a 10 pound baby, but I could bang out a 10 page paper. There you go Very quickly because it's because it's like something about the time pressure just like crystallizes the thinking process, or it. It's like it gives me access to this super highway in my brain that I, I'm sure, does not actually exist. I'm sure that this is just. You know, I'm a procrastinator and this is just how it shows up for me. Anyway, point is timers. Yes, I, when I first started coaching, I bought this little hexagonal multi-timed timer. It has different lengths of time on each side.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And so I can say, if I'm going to work on something for 60 minutes, I'll just set it down on its side and the 60 minute timer will start. And that's really cool.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's cool. You're going to have to link that, because I've never seen anything like that before.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it and I used it in my facilitation as well, but it's small and so that was kind of. The problem is that if I'm facilitating a large classroom of people, it's not large enough for them.
Speaker 3:You need like a big, like doomsday clock or something like that, which I also have.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is one of those like red thing, you know where you like draw it. The visual timer, the visual timer Right, and it never occurred to me that I could use this. I could get a smaller visual timer to just sit on my desk with the same thing, but like not the size of my laptop, which is how the other visual timer is and so I got a second timer that has the visual indicator and I love it. Right now, my girls use it for their screen time and that's really helpful for them, because then they can see visually how much time they have left, whereas watching the numbers countdown is less great.
Speaker 3:I also have a visual timer for my kids, but it's for getting ready and for bedtime, so they know how much time they have for those moments.
Speaker 2:Oh, I hadn't thought about applying it in that way, that's really smart.
Speaker 2:That's really smart, Thank you. And so I extended this timer thing because I'm realizing how helpful it is. I use my phone timer also all the time and it is so amazing. I just set an alarm on my phone. It goes off every school day for when I need to kind of stop, start the stopping process, I can snooze it once and then I really need to go get my kids from the bus and it is just the sense of relief. I think that's the unpacking is that I had no idea how much stress I feel about time.
Speaker 2:I mean we've talked about my relationship with time, did not realize how much it was stressing me until I started using timers. And then it was like all of a sudden I had a safety net.
Speaker 3:Yes, you're outsourcing the stress to a mechanism, which is literally the entire. Purpose of a mechanism is to create a repeatable option, to make something streamlined. But you're doing it very smartly, for your life, because you know this is something that is going to weigh on you, and you're taking that weight off and you're putting it into a mechanism that is going to work for you every single day, and you don't even have to do anything about it, it just is already there.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I found that it's really helpful in between client sessions or if I have a little bit of a longer break and I think, oh, I really want to eat my lunch or I really want to watch the show, but I know that when the episode ends is not the right length of time. I just set a timer and then I can detach my brain from this constant time ticking, because I hate being late. Yes, which it just oof. That's probably another unpacking thing, but I'm sure that some listeners will relate to that, because anybody who has time blindness. It's like anytime we're late, well, for me, the shame just kicks up of like oh I really I set my best intention to be here on time and I just can't and it sucks. And so the timers have really helped me with that in terms of actually leaving when I need to be leaving instead of losing those minutes or seconds. And the other thing I do related to time is in my calendar. I will put the appointment for when I need to leave.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have a very good structure for how you put things in your calendar, because you often have to travel for your appointments, for things that you do Not all the time. There's lots of appointments you take from your desk, but I've noticed you have a very good system for how you build in that time, because I don't often leave. I don't have that system and I really wish I had more of a system when it comes to when I put it in my calendar this is the time that I am departing, that I need to depart, in order to make it there on time, right, I always put the time of the appointment and then, usually the week of, I go in and kind of tinker with the appointments to make sure I have enough time. There have been many, many, many times I have gone back to tinker and there's already something blocking the time I need to be traveling Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is. It is my fear, especially when I'm managing multiple calendars, which is I mean?
Speaker 3:I think anyone with kids is going to manage multiple calendars we have to adult for ourselves and for them.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think I'm finally to the mostly integrated calendar space where I have that stuff. But it just, it's so helpful I'll put in the description. I'll say you know, hair appointment at one 30, you need to leave at 1245. Right, and then the appointment starts at 1240. So that my calendar management, you know, nothing's going to get booked within 15 minutes of that. So that I have the time and it's just yeah.
Speaker 3:Is there anything in your life currently where you could use some kind of timer or reminder or time assistance that you don't currently have? One that is still giving you stress, or do you feel like you have tackled all of those or most of those moments that come up in your day-to-day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've tackled most of those moments with just the ad hoc one being my cell phone timer. If I have longer than five minutes I will put a timer on because just having that auditory, the alarm has gone off my brain can task switch more easily. It's like I don't know, it's like the alarm goes off in my head almost of like, oh time to end this task, and I think that's the other thing. It's just really hard sometimes to task switch and so the alarm does that other thing too. I love that.
Speaker 3:I love that you found a mechanism for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's just. It's so nice to not have that pressure, and I think the other one that I put in recently was the auto buffering on my appointments, where it gives me time to decompress after each appointment and nothing else will get scheduled in between, so I never have back-to-backs anymore. I have at least 10 minutes between meetings. Now I don't know if Outlook does that no, for sure I don't think so. But there is this thing called Reclaim Rec. Sure, yeah, I don't think so. But there is this thing called reclaim reclaimai, and it does. It's free for Google calendars, but it they have an Outlook version.
Speaker 3:Like a web plugin or something like that, like a browser plugin.
Speaker 2:I yes Okay.
Speaker 3:We've, we've, we've gone to the extent of our technical knowledge. Yeah, exactly so thanks for unpacking that with me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, we've, we've we've gone to the extent of our technical knowledge. Yeah, we've hit it. Yeah, exactly so thanks for unpacking that snack with me, absolutely bye jess and lisa here to brighten your day.
Speaker 1:Quick chats and laughs. We're on our way. Got the scoop. You didn't expect Unpacked snacks short but perfect. Funny tidbits and moments. We share Stories so light they'll float in the air, tune in fast as the bite-sized flare. Unpacked snacks we're always prepared. We're always prepared.
