You Don't Need More Time

We all say it: “I just don’t have enough time.”
But what if time isn’t actually the problem?

In this episode of Trail Talks, we dive into our relationship with time — why it feels scarce, why we feel behind, and why productivity hacks alone don’t work. We explore the neuroscience behind time perception, how our brain processes urgency and focus, and why managing your mind matters more than managing your calendar.

We talk about:

• Why you can’t “create” more time — and what actually helps instead
• How your brain experiences time pressure and overwhelm
• The difference between being busy and being intentional
• Why clarity beats hustle every time
• Practical mindset shifts to stop feeling rushed and start feeling grounded

This episode isn’t about doing more — it’s about thinking differently so you can lead, live, and show up with purpose.

🎧 If time feels like it’s always slipping through your fingers, this one’s for you.

Transcript

Kelly 0:00

Hey everyone. Welcome back to Trail Talks, the podcast where we talk about growth, the messy, the beautiful, and everything in between. I'm your host, Kelly Kruger, founder of Kelly Michelle Coaching, where we focus on mindset, emotional intelligence, and leadership, all grounded in real life and real science. And joining me is my co-host and partner in Growth, founder of Leading People LLC Terrace to net. A leadership trainer and facilitator who brings insight, curiosity, and real world perspective to every episode. So wherever you're listening from today, we're glad you're here. And thank you for joining us on the Trail. I. Okay. All right. Here we are. Take two. We had some technical difficulties yesterday. I don't even know. This is what we're gonna talk about Sunday morning. Ego. Yes. Ego depletion. It was our first video. We were so excited to record video, throw it on YouTube and everything else. And, We, yeah, I don't know, just didn't work. I don't even know technical difficulties. Yeah, we tried to. Watch it back and it was all jumbled. So we're gonna give it a go here in Zoom and hopefully we can give our listeners some good content here. We're not giving up. No, we're not giving up. It's take two. This one will be even better. We had some practice and we are talking about. Time.

1:22

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 1:22

So a few weeks as we approached 2026 and welcoming 2026, we talked about goals, what a goal is, why we need goals, why we should have goals so we don't drift, and we, go into, complacency and autopilot. And then last week I took the listeners through the journey of a goal, which was the gritty eight. The joy, the setbacks, the messy middle triumphs, what builds momentum, what destroys it, how we stay the course, and then who we became along the way. So we call that the gritty eight, and that's gonna lead into this week. In order to ride that journey to the goal and stay the course and keep the momentum, decisions are gonna have to be made. And yeah, and some of those decisions that we're gonna have to make. About Time management. Do you have enough time? Tara? Do you have enough time? Gosh. Oh, how are you with your time? I feel like it, oh, yeah. Scattered all over the place. I never feel like I have enough time, but we all have the same 24 hours in a day, but we can't say that. It's just all about being more intentional with your time. Yes. Our system, one of the brain, which we're gonna talk about in a few minutes. It leads us to, to believe that we don't have enough time and we need more of it. But when we think about it, the problem isn't, we don't have enough time. It's how we allocate our time and how we spend it. And this is linked to. Cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the, how we feel, and how we think leads to How we feel leads to our actions, leads to our results. It aligns with the life coaching model. Circumstances lead to thoughts. Thoughts lead to feelings. Feelings lead to actions. Actions lead to results.

3:09

Well,

Kelly 3:10

The life coaching model. CTF a r. Yeah. We always bring that in and it fits into everything. It seems like it's, if you're not listeners, if you are not using the model in any area of your life, a and every day, I don't even know how you're surviving right now, because everything is based on your mindset and what you're thinking. What you're thinking leads to How you feel leads to how you act, and that goes back to decision making and time. So it's linked to, Cognitive behavioral therapy, the life coaching model. Also emotional intelligence. When you read about emotional intelligence and strengthening it, Five realms of, the EQI 2.0 model. Self perception, self-expression, interpersonal decision making, and stress management. And this directly ties to, Self perception, which is really self-actualization, is a part of that, which is goal setting. How do we feel about ourselves and how do we set goals? And then also, Decision making and stress management. I mean, If we're not managing our time properly, We're spending all day making micro decisions, Which we lead to, Decision fatigue. And then that also stresses us out. I was gonna say, it causes stress, doesn't it? Yeah. Like you said before, it's about awareness and control. It's not about not having enough time. A lot of times we don't even realize where most of our time is going. Like doom scrolling and, oh God.

4:35

Well,

Kelly 4:35

I'm gonna tell this story again because it's caught in our take one that I woke up yesterday and yes, I picked my phone up right away. When I woke up, I am that person. I am not perfect. I'm human. I did sleep in and I had the notification, that shows you your screen time per the week. And it showed eight hours and something. And I had not had coffee. Like literally I just opened up my eyes like a minute before that and I thought. Oh, good job, Kel. That's An hour and a half a day. No. That's eight hours a day. That was like eight and a half hours a day. I had my screen time and yes, it could be a full-time job. I could lie to you. I was on vacation. I could lie to you and say that I was working. I was, Emailing and Working business stuff. I was emailing and, paying bills and, doing kind of productive things. But I was not. It's a true example of when you don't plan your time accordingly, which I did not. Then I. Use my system one, and I just go back to my habits, which is autopilot. And that autopilot says auto, Netflix, Kelly Auto TikTok, all that Doom scrolling. Yeah. And auto refrigerator. And I just keep going back to my screen, even though, why am I checking my emails? What am I really getting here? When I get my Amazon packages in, oh yeah, I got four. Amazon. There you go. Like, where's it at? So you were shopping Doom, scrolling, Netflixing, only checking your email for Amazon. I mean, yeah, vacation. But I had temporary shame. It was okay. That is not the norm for me. That is not the norm. And if anything, it made me more aware of how much I was on autopilot for the last couple weeks And I want to allocate my time a little bit smarter.

6:35

So,

Kelly 6:36

yeah. And I, but I think we forgot to mention about time not being a renewable source. Oh, yes. Money. You can always get money back. Like you're always gonna get money back. Great money renewable. Yep. Yep. Money, renewable energy, renewable time, not hour spent. You don't get it back. So spend it wisely. Put them eight hours a day back. You don't, I don't get it back. I had that dopamine hit though. I had a cheap dopamine hit. Yeah. Yeah. We don't get it back. So it's about spending it wisely so That's the problem. The problem is, That we say we don't have enough time, that we are overwhelmed, that we're mentally exhausted, that we're scattered. But that isn't the problem. The problem is, We're lacking awareness and control over how we're spending that very important resource. And yeah, one of the tools we would love to give you. Greatest answer of all would be, to give you more time, but we cannot, we get 24 hours, 365 and every four years that we don't even keep track of. We get a leap year. I don't even know when the next leap year is to No, I have no idea. No, it's every four years though, right? Is it every four years? We get an extra day? I have no idea. It always randomly, pleasantly surprises me. I'm just like, oh, look. An extra day. Great. But you know, that's how I operate anyways. Yes, we should really Look up when the next leap year is. And that day it's in February, right? It's like February. February, yeah. Like I wanna intentionally do something that day. I wanna take advantage of that day. Let's see. I'll look it up. It's like I'm cheating, like I get an extra 24 hours. What am I gonna do? Yes. Yes. And for our listeners and so for our listeners, Tara and I are Very different. Yeah. And she said it yesterday in an intake one, which was, I'm type A, she's type B she is the live in the moment. Carefree can operate so strong and well in chaos and figures things out and, I like to plan and I like to have a structure and consistency and strategy. And that, for me though, It's because, And maybe that started years ago in a couple of my jobs, when things were very chaotic and I didn't handle it well. I didn't show up well. So that for me is the more decisions I can eliminate in my day, then the better off I am. Any friction I can remove in my environment Would help me. So then I can use that energy toward unforeseen things and chaos. But anyway, so We can't give you more time, but We can. Give you some neuroscience behind all of this and how we look at it. I think the first thing that we wanted to talk about, which, In all of this is yes, we do offer our opinions and stories. But what we share with you with the neurosciences backed by research and neuroscience and psychologists, and the first one we're gonna talk about is, Why time feels scarce. Why do we look at time the way we do? And it was Roy Baumeister social psychologist, wrote the book, willpower in 2011. And there's this, there's still an ongoing debate about willpower and if it is finite and how you strengthen it. It's exactly what I talked about, that if I can remove the friction in my environment and plan as much as I can, then that saves me from having to make so many micro decisions throughout the day. One way to strengthen your willpower, because some of your decisions may be at the end of the day, Like right now, Tara and I are recording at what, it's almost nine o'clock, I think. Nine, yeah. Yes. It's exactly nine o'clock. You guys are watching this. Hopefully the video. I'm drinking something that is I'm trying to trick my brain into thinking I'm drinking a Celsius Energies drink right now. Because I am mentally fatigued from the day. This is great. You get a Walmart Rainbow Fusion and like sparkly water. And it's doing the trick. I feel very awake. I think I'm drinking a Celsius. But, Any decisions that you make throughout the day, If it's, you know, how long you're gonna study or decisions you're making at work or when you go to the gym, you're drawing from that same. Mental energy reserve that you have.

11:04

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 11:05

So the more decisions you make throughout the day, the more tired you're gonna feel toward the end of the day decision and start. Yeah. Decision exhaustion. Yeah. And you're gonna start losing that willpower. So how do you strengthen that willpower. It, you build better habits. How do you build better habits? You make better decisions. One of those decisions is, hey, if I wanna build a better habit or a healthy habit, or start achieving these goals that I continue to set for myself, then I want to allocate the proper time to it and dedication. Then my willpower does become stronger and I can become more alert throughout the day.

11:47

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 11:48

Yeah. Even though I work really well under stressful situations and I don't like to plan whatsoever, I planning actually stresses me out. There are things in my life that have to be in order. My son's schedule. It's On the refrigerator.'cause I don't wanna stress him out because I'm crazy, you know? Or I am scattered. I can work well Under that pressure. And I know other people cannot or don't like to anyways, so I try not to put it on others. But planning stresses me out. I do notice that if I do have to make a lot of micro decisions throughout the day, my job, you never know what my day's gonna consist of. I can plan as much as I can plan so that I can prepare for the random things that pop up every day. It's really. There's no day to day, what do you do? It's different every single day.

12:34

So,

Kelly 12:35

yeah.

12:35

So,

Kelly 12:36

but I do notice that when things like that happen, And I make those micro decisions that at the end of the day I am exhausted mentally, and that I just want to not think, I want to doom scroll. I want to, I don't know, read a book or whatever that looks like for me that day. Sometimes I go to a fancy restaurant, I sit by myself. And I will eat and I will doom scroll. Yeah.'cause I still recharge around people. Yeah. So I can't just be at home doing that. So I'm not thinking, I'm not talking to anybody, but I'm out here amongst the crowd because I'm mentally fatigued. So that's what I noticed that I do now, whenever I've had to make a lot of micro decisions throughout my day. Yeah. I mean, I mean there's so much self-awareness in that.

13:20

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 13:21

Like For our listeners, We want you to reflect and think about, when do you feel fatigued, mentally fatigued from decision exhaustion throughout the day. Is that in the evening? Is that halfway through the day? Start reflecting on that and why that is. And do you feel like you had a busy day or do you feel like you had a productive day?'cause those are two very different things. Do you feel. Exhausted and tired versus productive and accomplished. Like satisfied. Yeah. I notice when I'm productive versus busy because I always feel better. I get that dopamine spike.

13:58

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 13:58

Oh, I had a really productive day and I actually accomplished all the things on my list. Yeah. Versus when I'm busy, like I'm a busy body around the house, I'm constantly doing something. I don't sit down washing the dishes. I'm doing something at all times. But that's not necessarily productive because I probably could have did a room a day or created that habit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's all what your priorities are. And it's about what you want. What do you want in your results?, What is your desired outcome? And everybody has desired outcomes.

14:31

So,

Kelly 14:32

another one is Daniel Kahneman. We actually talked about Daniel Kahneman. He was the author of, Thinking Fast and Slow, In our C word in our Change, Episode and. So for this one, we're gonna talk about two modes of the brain that he mentions. And it's system one and system two. System one is the part of your brain that is fast, automatic, and emotional. That's your autopilot. So when you are making all those micro decisions And you're just reacting, that's the auto, that's the, Hey, I'm gonna go to the fridge'cause I'm bored. I'm gonna turn on Netflix, I'm gonna auto scroll. That's system one. What you want is system two, which is slow, effortful, and intentional. That's where you plan, that's where you prioritize. That's where you focus. That's where you get to say, this is what matters to me today. This is my priority and I'm choosing to do this now. Even if it's 15 minutes, 25 minutes, this is what I'm gonna focus on for 25 minutes. So that's where you intentionally plan out that time and allocate that time according to, your priorities. When you're tired and you don't want to plan ahead, You're operating on system one, which is autopilot. That system will take over your brain, and that's where you're probably gonna have that cheap dopamine.

15:58

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 15:59

You know, those unhealthy habits will start being built. Yeah. So When cognitive load is high, the brain wants to avoid effort, it wants to go right to the system one, it's gonna go right to shortcuts. Brain shortcuts, like how our brain automatically wired to take shortcuts.

16:16

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 16:17

Which is the autopilot living. Yeah. So for our listeners, think about what your brain tends to reach for when you're overloaded. For me, if I'm overloaded. I doom scroll or I turn on the TV, or I open up the refrigerator. I don't do, what I probably should do is yeah, go for a walk, you know, movement. Have some movement in your life. So it's about. Using that system too, and then having the self-awareness that, hey, I'm making a bunch of micro decisions. I'm tired. I need to start planning better. Yeah. I know that when I was out of the job. For a little while when I got laid off and I had to Fill my day with stuff, which was extremely hard. I'm like, what do people without jobs do? This is crazy. But, I definitely had to plan out my day, hour for hour block for block, which we will talk about later. Yeah. But that definitely helped me from being brain fatigue, Overloaded and, I was way more productive. I built an entire business during that time. You were productive and you had more willpower than you probably did when you were making all those other decisions. And just reacting, putting out fires all day.

17:32

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 17:33

Yeah. The next thing I wanna talk about is the habit loop and dopamine. Charles Duhig, The power of habit. There's this concept, Three things. It's a Q is the first thing, and that is the trigger. It's a feeling that you have. And this goes back to cognitive behavioral therapy and the life coaching model. So the cue is the trigger. That's how you feel. Maybe you feel stressed, maybe you are bored, maybe you are tired. So just put a feeling in there. And then the routine, this is where you choose, this is your action. As I said before, all thoughts lead to feelings. All feelings lead to actions. Actions lead to results. So number two is the routine. This is what you do based on that cue, that trigger. So that could be, all right,

18:20

well

Kelly 18:20

I'm gonna have a snack. I'm gonna, scroll, I'm gonna watch Netflix and anything else, and I'm just gonna be very sedentary. You can ruminate, you can overthink, you can avoid, it just puts something in there. And then the third part of it is the reward. That is your result. And that just'cause I say reward, doesn't mean it's gonna be like a positive thing. It's whatever reward you're getting from that routine, you just did that action. That's your payoff. So do you feel relieved? After all of that, do you feel comfortable, whatever that result is. If the trigger was you felt bored or stressed or tired, and your routine was not a healthy action, especially when you're working toward your goal, then your result was you didn't really get where you wanted to go. Instead, you avoided it.

19:17

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 19:18

And Then we talked about task switching also, which creates attention residue. Yes. Can we multitask? No, we timeshare. Okay. Yeah. Explain that. So multitasking is not a thing. Your brain cannot multitask it timeshare. So if you have multiple things to do, you're actually being less productive. So working on one thing, jumping to another, and they don't even go hand in hand or match, but they're, You're not batching your time, which we'll talk about that too, but Yeah, we can't multitask. You're being less productive, you're getting less things done and you're making more errors when you try to do that. Yeah, and we do this at work and sometimes we're even guilty of it when we do drive-bys to our employees, to our team members. Oh, yeah. And they're working on something and you're like, oh, hey, by the way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You are taking their attention away from their task. And honestly, They're giving you their attention, but part of their attention is still on the previous task. You just can't go back and forth like that. The brain is not built for that. So your attention is somewhere else. You're given your time and your attention to multiple things, which is impossible really. Yeah. I always thought I was a great multitasker. When someone comes in my office, I stop what I'm doing, I help them, I take care of it, and then I go back to what I was doing, but. I realize I am less productive. My attention is no longer on one of the things that I was doing. So I now reverted my attention from whatever task I was doing to this new task. Then I forgot about the old task and I gotta go back. Unless again, the tasks are similar. Nature. Yeah. Then you bring 10 times here. Yeah, I thought I read somewhere for us to focus, it takes what, 20 to 30 minutes and then we start to lose focus. Is that right? 20 to 40 minutes we start to lose focus. And then once our attention is drawn away for maybe our boss doing a drive by or, oh boy, we just got an email that comes in, we gotta respond to it. Or, oh, I gotta answer the phone. It takes our attention away. We can't give that attention back for another 20 minutes. 20 to 25. Yeah. 20 to 25 minutes. You can't give your attention back to the original task you were doing. You know, I seen this one thing, I know we're giving tools later, but now that we're talking about, Yeah, the drive-bys and whatnot. This, Company, I think it was the company who made the five voices brought this up when I was in a class. Basically on your door, you put where you're at with something like, you can come in and bother me now, or now's not a good time. And you put that on your door so that people know not to do the drive box. That's good. And they have higher productivity from their employees by doing that. Yeah. That's a great idea.

22:06

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 22:07

Or Some people that work in a collaborative space. I wonder if it's just the team agrees that maybe between the hours of eight and 10 or, nine to 11, it is individual work time and you just do your self-paced work And that's it. And then you're available for Yeah. Collaborative work or customers. Yeah, like I told you I got fired. On my first day of being my manager's secretary, so I'm the corporate training manager. The, I, so I'll give the story again. Obviously we, they wouldn't get to hear it. Corporate training manager, secretary quit. So my vice president needed a new one. I'm like,

22:47

well,

Kelly 22:47

I think I can Run your schedule. No big deal. I was really bad at it. One, because I think everyone could multitask and you know, my. Screen is everywhere scattered. So she was time blocking On her schedule and I was setting up the interviews, and she time blocked something off in the morning.

23:04

Well,

Kelly 23:04

The lady could only come in at that time and you need a secretary. So move that to another time in my mind. So I scheduled the interview during her blocked off time and she was like, you're fired. I'm like, for what? She's I clearly have it blocked off on my calendar. And you scheduled an interview. I said, yeah, but you were just working on your computer. Why can't you stop that and do the interview? It was a valuable lesson. I understand why now, but back then I was like, I Didn't understand that. Yeah, E executives. That's such a good point.'cause we haven't been at that level sometimes, it just depends on what our assignments are. I remember even a one directors, they are so busy, When I worked in the FSS, active duty FSS, they run all the stuff on the base. The FSS director even They have to be so intentional about Every single hour on their calendar because they have so many meetings. Yeah. And I remember all of them they had personal time blocked off on their calendar because they need that 30 minutes just to breathe. Yeah.'cause then they're run into meetings and all day. Think about it. I mean, They're making a lot of decisions throughout the day.

24:07

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 24:07

You know, Those executives are like C-level, suite executives. They're making a lot of decisions. They're running from meeting to meeting high level decisions. So that time blocking And that intentional time blocking is so important for them. Yeah. And for their own wellbeing. I know some jobs I've been in where, My day Was chaotic and I would go home And I would feel it, like I would just lay on my bed and just lay there for 30 minutes because I had nothing. I had nothing at the end of the day. So anyway, Let's hop on the detour. Detour. All right, we'll take a detour during take one. We talked about New Year's. You know what our favorite New Year's was? Memorable. Yeah. Memorable New Year's. I'll go first. Okay. I don't really do anything For New Year's. Jordan and I were here and I watched, the fireworks on, The shows early.

25:05

So,

Kelly 25:06

fireworks in, Malaysia and united Arab Emirates, you know, all those like global fireworks. So that's what I was watching and it was all amazing, Knowing I would be in bed by 10 o'clock, but I do remember. I will say it's the most memorable, probably not the most fun,'cause I was sick, but I think it was, I must have been 22 or 23. And my older brother, Todd, myself, my cousin Jill, you know Jill, she was on the holiday special, And her friend who, Jill, We We decided to drive to New York City.

25:44

So.

Kelly 25:45

Natural. We were all living in Buffalo at the time, and believe it or not, for as long as I was in Buffalo, what 25 was when I moved away, when I was 25, I had only been to New York City once and to this day I've still only been there once. I would love to go back, not for New Year's and yeah, would love to go back in the summertime or when it's nice, but We decided for New Year's Eve we're gonna go to New York City and watch the ball drop. So we all hopped in the car, we stop in Boston. The first night It was a quick trip. We were only gonna do Two or three nights. God bless you. So we stopped in Boston because we said we gotta go to the original Cheers. We gotta go have dinner at Cheers. So we went. It was cool. I mean, you know, it was all right. It was the experience, I could say that I've been to Cheers. Yeah. And that night I started getting sick. Jill shared a room with her buddy and then Todd and I shared a room and he snored so loud. I'm sorry Todd, but He knows this and I love him. He's my brother. And I could not sleep'cause he was snoring so loud. And when I don't sleep, I get sick. Yeah. And we're gonna talk about sleep and we'll do an episode on sleep. And how important it's I got sick, so the next day didn't, I started feeling a little bit worse. It was the day before New Year's Eve, and we just went to a bar hung out in New York City. That was it, low key. And then the next day was New Year's Eve and, I could barely swallow, it hurt so bad, my throat hurt, and I was so sick I couldn't enjoy myself. So Todd went. With his old fashioned camcorder. He went To see the ball drop and had a great old time. And then my cousin, her buddy, and I just went to This party at a bar and I was just sipping on some dark liquor. My hot party. No, it was like the syrup tasted liquor. What was that? Syrup tasted liquor that I forgot. Somebody knows it. Anyway, I used to sip that stuff. And That's all I did. So I would say most memorable because of the tie to New York City and watching the ball drop. Yeah. Which I'm sure is not as special. Or it was special back then and definitely not. A special thing right now. I mean, I, in my opinion, yeah. I don't know. Everyone I know from New York and New Jersey, they're like. Yeah, we don't go down there. Yeah, I, yeah, I mean, Back in the day It was the thing to do. Yeah. It was a big thing, but Now It's definitely not. I didn't even watch it,

28:16

so,

Kelly 28:17

I was up just, I didn't go to bed at 10. I was up till midnight, but I definitely didn't Turn it on the TV though. Didn't care that much. But my most memorable is when I talked one of my Type A friends into planning a trip to Costa Rica last minute for New Year's. It was a week, maybe less than a week prior to leaving. And she did it. She booked it. She was ready to go. I'm like, all

28:40

right. Well,

Kelly 28:41

new Year's Eve comes along. We're leaving on New Year's Day, I think it was or something, and I made us miss our flight. I was sleeping so good, and she calls me. She's blowing my phone up. Where are you? Oh, you slept 10? Slept? Oh yeah. Oh my. I would be so stressed if I was her. I told her, I said, why didn't you just go without me? Get on the plane. You're already here. She goes, who wasn't going by myself? I said, oh, I would've left you girl. But, And You would've figured out how to get there a few hours later, like you would've figured it out.

29:08

Well,

Kelly 29:09

we did. Yeah. So he, so wait, I get there. She's freaking out. They're like,

29:13

well,

Kelly 29:13

we can't check your bags. You gotta take'em with you through the scanner and everything. Because your plane is pretty much probably gone, but just run through and see. So we ran through, took our huge bags to the scanners and I have a video of the flight said, flight closed. And Vanessa's just standing there like this, What the heck? I said, Vanessa, there's gotta be more flights that leave to Costa Rica. No worries. Let's go talk to these people. Sure enough, they had another fight. Two hours later we got to Costa Rica. Everything was fine and it was fun. And then on the way back, because of my lack of time management and planning. I had drilled the next day and we didn't have enough time to get through customs. And so we missed our connecting flight in Fort Lauderdale back to Tampa. I said,

29:55

well,

Kelly 29:56

and that was the last flight of the night. And so I said, Vanessa, I have drill. Tomorrow I will beat awol. We are getting in this rental car and we're driving back to Tampa. So we drove four and a half hours back to Tampa. That's nice. Oh my god. It all worked out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you figured it out. Yeah. You know, they always say Type B things always seem to work out for them. That's hilarious. Oh my God. But it was, Costa Rico was beautiful,

30:20

so.

Kelly 30:21

Yeah, my brother Corey goes every couple of years. He's gone a few times and they just rave about it. I would love to go. Yeah. I have to go back because we, There's two sides of Costa Rica. One is the rainforest side and the beach. We chose not to go to the beach'cause we live here in Florida, so we're like, oh, we'll just go to the rainforest. We wanted to stay in a tree house and Have the full experience. So we did that. But, After seeing other people's pictures of Costa Rica, I definitely will go back to go to the beach. It's beautiful. Yeah. Looks beautiful. Anyway, I'm gonna get there one day. Vanessa and I talked about that yesterday that, type B you don't like the agenda for the traveling. And I, I do for vacations, but I do, but you travel a lot. I don't like, I don't take many vacation trips, so when I do, I need to make sure that I see what I wanna see, go where I wanna go, and eat what I want to eat. Yeah. No, I agree. I always have a broad agenda, like three things Yeah. That I must do outside of that, wherever the wind blows. That's fine. Yeah. No, that's awesome. Yeah. All right let's get back on the trail. All right, give them some tools. Let's give'em some tools. Let's start with, Time audit. So before you start applying the tools, we wanna challenge you to do a three day time audit. And look, you get that one once a week where you get the notification on your phone that says what your screen time is. That's one part of your time audit. But. Three days, do a time on it. Look at where you're allocating your time. We are not saying lose sleep over this stuff. I mean No. Oh yeah. Seven to nine hours. Like you gotta have your sleep and we're gonna have an episode or maybe even two or three all about sleep. Where do you find that, when you say you don't have enough time, is that on the weekends? Is that in the evenings? You know, it just depends on what your schedule is And, What your work hours are, what your shifts are. But we wanna challenge you to start before you actually use the tools, To do a three day time audit and look at where you're allocating all of your time, and then hop into the tools, which the first one, Tara's gonna talk about, time blocking. Yeah, time blocking. So in my book, which will show, because the workbook in my little workbook here that you can buy on Amazon, I talk about how your brain time shares and time blocking and it even gives you an example. So basically all it Is 25 minutes working on a task. You wanna block off that on your schedule. You can color code it, whatever works for you. You wanna block that off on your schedule. You got 25 minutes to do this, 25 minutes to do that. And you wanna put in those 10 to 15 minute breaks, like we said, right? However people time block. But what we do incorrectly when we time block is we don't time batch. Adding like things so that you're not doing that multitasking per se, that your brain can't do anyways.

33:23

So.

Kelly 33:24

Time blocking like things and taking that 10 to 15 minute break for your attention span. Yeah, I like that. Where you try to keep similar things together. The other thing that I have here in the book is day theming, which we'll talk about the start of the week check-in, but day theming and time boxing setting limit on how much time you'll dedicate to that specific task. Task batching is grouping together similar tasks, and then day theming is dedicating each day to something. Yeah. Whether that goes towards your goals or, yeah, I like that day. Theming. Yeah, I do. Sounds like a fun thing to do.

34:00

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 34:01

Yeah, that, that kind of goes with The highlight of a day that regardless of what you're doing throughout the day. What's your theme for the day? What's that big highlight that you wanna accomplish? So that way you still keep the big thing. The big thing, the main thing. The main thing.

34:15

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 34:15

And this is You gotta think about when you start doing your time blocking, Think about your non-negotiables, what is non-negotiable and that tells you what your priorities are. When we talk about. Batching and The 20 to 25 minutes, we keep saying 25 minutes. That's a constant thing. It's a thing, yeah. 25 minutes. And one of the tools that we want to show our listeners and talk about that will help you with all that batching and blocking is the Pomodoro technique. Yep. It was in the 1980s. There was a student, Italian student, Francisco Cillo, I think the name was Italian student, Having trouble focusing on his studies. So he used His kitchen timer, which was in the shape of a tomato. So Pomodoro is tomato and Italian, and he would set the kitchen timer, For 20, 25 minutes. So he could just solely focus on that one task of studying and not be distracted And not be doing anything else. Just focused on that 25 minutes. So there was a start and an end time. Very structured and our brain likes that. Our brain likes structure. And There is research that says that we tend to remember the first and last of things. So when we say a Pomodoro, We say a Pomodoro is 25 minutes. So when you wanna do a task that you think is gonna be 25 minutes, or you wanna dedicate 25 minutes. 25 minutes is one Pomodoro studying for two or three hours at a time. Research says Is not as helpful.

35:59

Right.

Kelly 35:59

Cause our brains just can't memorize that. It, they don't work like that. It's better to do a shorter focused end start and end time. So if you, if we remember the first and last of things, then when you start batching it into 10, 15 minute, 20 minute increments. And then take a five minute break in between. You're gonna remember more first and more, less. It's gonna help you when you study.

36:30

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 36:31

Jim Quick, KWIK. Quick Brain actually talks about it in his book, limitless best book I've ever read. I love it. It's all about brain hacks, time hacks, all of that. And he talks about the Pomodoro technique and that's how I learned about it. And on Amazon for all you Amazon lovers out there, There are Pomodoro timers and you could just. Type in Pomodoro timer, and there's So many different colors and shapes and it, they're so fun. But what you do is you turn it on and then there's all The time length. So there's 10 minutes, five minutes, three minutes, 60, 30, 25, and so on and so forth. People use Alexa, people use Siri, people use their phone. I like these. They're fun. They even have'em for kids. So a Pomodoro is 25 minutes. Take a break for five minutes, It gets you away from that task. Go for a walk, and then you go back and you do another 25 minutes. You do that four times and then after your fourth time, you take about a 15 to 30 minute break. You take a longer break to reset a little bit. And it just depends what task you're doing. It could be five minutes. It could be five and five. It could be 10 and five. I found this most helpful when I was in school recently. Especially taking two classes at a time, so working two class at a time, everything else. And, There were many days where I'm like, oh my God, I have a lot to do. How am I gonna do it? And okay,

37:52

well

Kelly 37:53

I'm in control of this. What I'm in control of is how I'm gonna allocate my time to everything to make sure I'm taking care of my priorities. So I would set the timers and it worked. So definitely a Great tool. And highly recommend you purchase. Yeah, I knew about the Pomodoro technique, but I had no clue where it came from or the history behind it. But yeah, it's definitely very helpful. I love it. Clearly you could tell I love it. Yeah, I know. I got a little passionate. That's all right. You can love it. It's an Italian, it's an Italian thing. Anytime I hear Italian, I'm like, oh, I love Italy, Italian. I've gotta remember this now. Oh boy. Let's talk about lasagna. All right. Next tool is, monday hour one. That's the life coach school tool. Where. And you could do it Sunday too. And that's where you look at your calendar for the week and you start all that time blocking. You take that first hour Monday and It's one hour

38:51

mm-hmm.

Kelly 38:51

Of setting your week and knowing, okay, What am I in control of now? Where can I reduce that friction in my environment? I like meal prepping because I don't like to think about what I'm gonna have every day. I mean, I do love to think about food, But the less decisions about food, Oh, am I gonna cook? What am I gonna do? Am I gonna go out? Am I gonna get Uber Eats? You know, where am I gonna get it from? I don't wanna make those decisions. So I just do my food prep Sunday and it's One hour of food prep. Obviously when you have kids, it's a little bit more, but, That. Saves me from making those decisions throughout the week. Yeah. I like the food prep too, because of course my son has homework, he has something.

39:31

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 39:31

A project he has, and here I am trying to cook and help him with this project. It's too much. So I like to at least meal prep for me. Yeah. And then, because obviously he's not gonna wanna eat the same thing every day, but. I'm probably not healthy for him. But, Yeah, that one hour, I remember talking to a lady that's always all over the place and never says no, and I told her about time blocking. I was telling her about The hour one and she always was saying,

39:54

well,

Kelly 39:54

I feel like if I have to sit down and time block, I don't have time to do that either. I'm like, okay, you have one hour somewhere that you can sit down and time block and work your calendar as much as you can. Not saying every little detail. But she ended up doing it and She said she's a lot more productive and that she was so glad that I told her about it'cause she just didn't think she even had time to time block. Oh my God. So good. Yeah. I gotta have, Tiffany on here. She's one of my team members at the PDC at professional development. I gotta have her on here.'cause She has so many programs and, She's so organized with her time,

40:31

so,

Kelly 40:31

she's a beast. So I gotta have her on here. But yeah, I mean, it does help and, yeah. Yeah, really, You can't find one hour Or 30 minutes to, to set your calendar. I don't, even if it's, Two or three days, I sounds like you're not being intentional with your time if that's the case.

40:50

Right.

Kelly 40:50

That's what it really goes back to. You're not being intentional with your time. You're making micro decisions because you feel overwhelmed and stressed and that you don't have the time to set aside to do the time blocking. Yeah. It all goes back to what we were talking about. I have another tool, Oh, for those type B people like me, Who make micro decisions all the time. We need you. You know, we work well under stress,

41:14

so,

Kelly 41:15

but, One of the things that I seen when I was looking into that was that type B people experience time differently. So minutes are longer to us. We feel like we don't have any, urgency, things just tend to work out for us, It's a myth that we have a mental of not caring, but that's not the truth. It is just that we perceive time differently than type A. And they said instead of doing time blocks, do energy blocks. So like in the morning, if I'm more creative, then I'll make sure I schedule all the things that need creativity for in the morning. So I schedule energy blocks instead of time blocks because I perceive time differently. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That's what, I'm not getting too loud tonight. Yeah. I thought that was really interesting. Is that where your flow is, in the morning? Oh yeah. Mornings I'm good to go. Evenings, I wanna relax. And then the other thing is the start of the week check-in. So we have that, we talked about day theming.

42:16

Well

Kelly 42:17

then in my book I also talk about the start of the week check-in. So My number one priority this week will be so that you can make time for that, for whatever your priority is. And that kind of ties back into, Creating those goals, the tiering of the goals. 10, 5, 3, 1. What are you doing right now? What are you doing this week? That can meet that one year goal, that five year goal, that 10 year goal. Yeah. Oh my God, I like that. See, I'm learning some new tools here. All right. We covered some good ground today. If you are working on your goals, It's definitely gonna challenge you to do a time audit If you're looking at time a little bit different. And use it more intentionally to help you make decisions, reduce friction in your environment, and just be more productive And really Feel better at the end of the day. All right. As we wrap up today's conversation on time, here's what I hope you take with you. Time itself isn't the problem. How we think about time is when we understand how our brains experience time, our attention, our habits, and our expectations. We stop trying to control every minute and start choosing how we show up in them. If today's episode gave you a new way to look at your time, let that awareness carry you into the week ahead. Thanks. See ya. See ya.

43:35

If today's conversation resonated with you, you don't have to walk your journey alone. I offer emotional intelligence assessments with personalized coaching, one-on-one, mindset coaching and leadership development for teams and organizations. You can explore all of that@kellymichellecoaching.com. Linked in the show notes, and I'll leave you with this. Awareness is powerful, but support is transformational.