What's REALLY Behind Time "Management"

It’s everywhere: the lie that better managing your time will solve all your problems. While well-intentioned and appealing, this false belief actually masks a much deeper issue that no one is talking about.

In this episode, I pull back the curtain on what’s really behind your desire to “manage” your time. Contrary to popular opinion, a fixation with time management actually signals a subconscious belief that you have to earn your worth by always having lots to show for your time.    

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• How experts mislead you into thinking a better time management system will improve your life
• The REAL reason you feel so compelled to manage your time
• How the drive to be productive and maximize your time stems from deep childhood wounds you don’t even realize you have
• Why your nervous system feels unsafe unless you have a lot to show for your time
• Why it’s essential for moms to realize and resolve this false belief so they DON’T unknowingly pass it on to their kids

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

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HOMEWORK:

Your homework for this episode is to reflect on why you feel such a strong desire to manage your time. What does the thought of not being able to control your time make you feel, or fear? DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity or email me to let me know what comes up for you.  

COMING UP NEXT:

 Join me back next episode to continue unpacking the many hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy.

CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Transcript

0:00

Oh my goodness, I feel so strongly about this. I just continue to see this same belief, false belief, over and over and over, and I feel so called to speak out against it. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. I made the mistake of opening Instagram while I was stopped at a red light today driving home from work. That algorithm just knows you so well, doesn't it? The first thing in my feed was a reel from someone that I personally know and really admire. She is a great person and another productivity coach. And the reel was her appealing to overwhelmed women and saying that the solution is to manage your time. It was an invitation to see the ways in which you're not using your time well and then fix the problem and life will be great. I couldn't help but notice that she was so beautifully dressed and her makeup was done so perfectly and her background looked incredible. Everything was just so. And for a split second, I found my inner perfectionist so triggered because Her portrayal in this reel is nothing like my real day-to-day life, but it's what I wanted, right? It's what the deepest part of me is tempted to want because it plays on the deeper issues that I'm realizing I have and that you may very well have too. She's an incredibly successful coach and public speaker and I'm so in awe of her. I don't see her as a competitor. I wish her no ill will whatsoever. I just really caught myself looking at this reel and then feeling so passionate about an opposite message. This is a real rant, not against her, but against the larger message we are given that you just need to manage your time and everything will work out. All your problems will be solved, or even any of your problems will be solved. This is so not a call out on any person or a criticism of her beautiful business or anything like that. But it honestly brought tears to my eyes because I just wish that my former self knew then what I know now. I was that person, spouting this same advice and really trying to appeal to women to better manage your time, to get it all done, to balance your life. The underlying assumption is that then all your problems will go away, life will be wonderful, and you will feel good. Does it feel good to be productive? 100% yes. But there's so much more if you peel back the layers here. There's so much more going on than you realize. Sweet friend, the reason you're so determined to manage your time is actually because your brain was led to believe that you always have to have something to show for it. If you are a high-achieving, high-performing woman, then you have very likely internalized this belief. You somehow acquired this message and it got wired into your brain from such an early age. It might have been because of very benign reasons like your parents or your teachers praising you for doing a great job. It got you attention and it really made you feel good. Your brain released not just dopamine from the hit of the praise, but oxytocin from the relational aspect of feeling connection to the adults that you wanted to please. When you saw how pleased they were with the good work you did, you knew how to then get more of that feeling in the future. And it was to do great things, to use your time to produce something that would help you get that same result. It's also everywhere in our culture when we think about consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses and maximizing how much you can buy to live this great life. I mean, of course it takes money, so you've got to work to earn the money and you just don't realize how you equate the financial resources that you want or need to afford your lifestyle with the actual hours of your life and your life's energy. that it takes to earn that money. There's so many dimensions here. Truly, I just invite you to explore the idea that your desire to control your life and manage your time and balance it all might actually come from what we would call a wound. That's not to pile guilt. I know personally how threatening even that word, let alone the whole concept of having a wound and having a trauma response from that wound, how that can feel to your brain, right? It is threatening to think that something is wrong with you or you assume something is wrong with you when you open yourself to the possibility that Your current actions and beliefs are actually the product of a harmful experience where you were wounded. I know that hearing that might immediately feel false to you. And that's so normal, I would have resisted this myself. But as I've dug deeper and gone on this very profound personal journey, I just look back with so much compassion on my former self. And I have so much love for all of these well-intentioned self-help experts and influencers and other productivity coaches that are still saying this message. they're still telling you that the solution to your problems is that you need to better manage your time, right? Even the people that mean it in such a good way, like you don't want to be wasting your life away at a job you hate or doing projects that aren't actually moving your personal success needle forward. You don't want to be so caught up in the daily household tasks that you're missing your kid's childhood right in front of your eyes. It's so true. But the message they still give is that the solution is to organize your schedule a certain way. and to find the system that is going to schedule in all the things you want to do so that you are really using every minute of every day in the most efficient, effective way. And the subliminal underlying message here is really that it makes you think you're worth is somehow tied to what you do, to your productivity, to how neat your house is and how organized everything flows. But it's not. I was that person that really latched onto the idea of productivity and time management And as I've shared before, I will continue to share so much more in other episodes. I never even had to really think about managing my time before I had kids. There was just so much of it to go around and I could use it however I wanted. And I was so productive and efficient that I didn't know anything but achieving and performing and being praised for doing so great at that. Then I had kids. and everything fell apart. So I spent years looking for the perfect planner and watching all of these self-help videos and learning about the Pomodoro time management method and then starting a YouTube channel where I was sharing all of these productivity tips. Tips on prioritizing your to-do list and how to better categorize your tasks so that you can batch them and be the most effective, productive person possible in your short work windows. What I didn't know at the time is that underneath that compulsion was a deep worry that if I didn't have something, or let's be real, lots of things, to show for my time, I wasn't good enough. I wouldn't get praised. Maybe I would get criticized. But one way or another, it was because my nervous system didn't think it was safe to just be. I had to be doing. I couldn't just enjoy my time. I had to be maximizing it. Does this feel familiar? Do you feel this same compulsion running through your veins? What would it feel like to relax your tight grip and stop trying to control and plan every little thing? Because if it hasn't happened to you yet, and I pray it doesn't, but life sure lifed for me. And despite my efforts to control, despite my best laid plans, some new challenge or unexpected tragedy would come up and completely derail them. And it would send me into this spiral of not being able to experience my grief or rationally problem-solve in the moment for that particular crisis because all my emotional brain could think about was how I was falling behind and that that would mean some existential threat to who I was as a person, to my value, to my worth. It's really, at its root, a control problem. And the reason we seek control is not because we are, you know, evil or conspiring or anything wrong with us. What you don't realize is that that desire to control and that compulsion to manage your time is how you adapted to your stressful situations. It's how your nervous system learned to feel safe. Something in your early life experience told your brain and your body that that was the only way to be safe. Things might have felt so out of control around you that it became your protective output. So sweet friend, I just, I just want you to know that it's safe to be. It's safe to be still. It's safe to lose yourself in the moment without being hypervigilant about where every minute is going and whether you're being productive and whether you're crossing off tasks on your to-do list or what you're going to have to show for your time, whether anyone notices or what they will think one way or the other. Now, when I even hear the phrase time management, My skin prickles because it just feels so hollow and painful now that this deep, deep personal wound has been exposed. But in my years of working with one-on-one clients, I also know that I am not the only one that internalized this message as a young girl and that that message had been compounded as you reached adulthood and were successful before having kids. Again, I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus. I am not telling you not to listen to other influences or time management experts. I just want to open the conversation about whether that need to manage your time is maybe masking for something else deep underneath. This is such a critical message for moms to get because it also then affects how you are parenting your children and the message or the model that you are sending to them. Because how your children see you thinking about time and using time is going to infiltrate their sweet brains If you are thinking that you've got to manage every moment and live out the perfect time management system, right? Organize every minute of every day, then they are going to feel that they too have to perform. They're going to feel restricted and constricted. And you're going to see that they lose that beautiful innocence of childhood I'm not trying to scare you and run to the worst case scenario or make you think that you're messing up your kids. This is just such a gentle plea to consider what your kids might be observing the same way that you observed the adults around you when you were little and how that gets so naturally wired into our brains. And it affects what we believe and how we interpret the world around us. And again, what actions we take in response to those beliefs and perceptions. It's so powerful. What if you could be like your sweet children? who jump in the puddles and pick the wild dandelions and leave their dishes on the table and just play with the bubbles in the bath or beg for one more story after one more story as you're trying to put them to bed. They have no concept of time. They don't see it as this finite, zero-sum resource that we've been led to believe it is. Obviously, The hours of our life are ticking away, and life is so short and precious. But do you see the fear behind that tone? I didn't. For so many years, I really thought that the best thing I could do, not just for myself, but even for my family, was manage my time. Now, I just see it in such a different light. And I hope that maybe you will too, that this will help you to rethink how you ever came to think that managing your time was the answer. Because I believe it's something entirely different. These are precisely the things that I love helping my one-on-one clients with. Don't forget that you can always schedule a free consultation with me, link in the show notes, and it would be my great joy to talk to you and hear your story and offer ways that you could really feel better about your life by getting to the heart of why the things you've tried aren't working and what actually would. Your homework for this episode is to reflect on why you think you feel such a strong desire to manage your time. And what does the thought of not being able to control your time make you feel or fear? Whatever your answers are, it's okay. It's just information. It is just objective, neutral data. I, again, I have so much compassion for my former self and that's what I want you to have for your current self or any past version that has just been trying to keep you safe by thinking that the way to do that was to take control of your time. Time is so important and we do just have this one life to live. Absolutely. But I want you to get so crystal clear on the driver of that desire to manage your time. Is it coming from a place of peace and security and safety and a real ambition to use your God-given gifts and talents to serve the world, to live out your calling? Or does it come from fear? from obligation, from a sense of abandonment that you were maybe not given the love and belonging you craved as a child whenever you weren't showing great things for your time. Again, we're going to talk so much more about this in future episodes. It is precisely what the More Time for Mom show is about. I am so passionate about shouting this message from the rooftop that you are not what you do and how you use your time means nothing about how incredible you are. I sincerely, sincerely hope that this was helpful for you. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, so take a screenshot of this episode, share it on social media, tag me at Solutions for Simplicity on Instagram, and then join me back for another episode next Tuesday where we will continue to unpack the many hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.