146. Solid Time Management Is NOT About Doing It All Perfectly Right Now
episode
The Bright Method Podcast: Realistic Time Management and Productivity for Working Women & Working Moms
18 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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What is the Bright Method podcast and who is Kelly Nolan?
Welcome to the Bright Method podcast, where we'll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I'm Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let's get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what's on tap tomorrow. All right, let's dig in. Hey, hey. All right, today we are gonna talk about something really important, really, really important. I'm excited to dig into it. And that is that being behind often is good time management. And every now and then I have to remind myself of this.
It's really fun to see the progression I've made on this myself because it's not something that I naturally knew. And if anything, whether it's natural, whether I'd been programmed this way, who knows? It was very much not how I felt. I think some stories will help bring this to life because I think I can say that in theory, but it's not until we feel it and hear it played out that it makes sense. So first story was years ago. I remember this still clearly. I sat down to email a contractor about a home repair issue and I realized it had been a week since he had emailed me. Like he'd been waiting on my response for a week. And immediately I had that familiar reaction of like, ugh, like Kelly, really?
Like I teach time management. I should have responded sooner. All that stuff. But thankfully, I then stopped myself because the reality was that contractor email really wasn't a priority. It was not a priority in the context of everything else in my life, from kids to clients to work projects to family responsibilities. In addition, not only did it rank against all those other things, that email sitting there for a week had no meaningful negative impact on anything at on him, on me, on any situation. It just was making me think that I should be able to respond quicker. But in reality, like it was fine. And again, zooming back out to the broader things that I had been focusing on, my focus on those things instead of this email that had no negative impact by waiting was very solid time management.
And what's hard is somewhere along the line, I think we assume that being good at managing our time, our tasks, projects, to-dos, all of it, being good at that means getting everything done right away. And that is impossible. I don't mean difficult, like it's difficult. It is impossible. Because there are always going to be more emails, more requests, more opportunities, more projects, more things you could do, more meals, more laundry, all the things.
There is also no invisible but there capacity of workload that the universe is aware of for you.
And when it is full, like reasonably full, the requests stop coming.
Why does Kelly say 'being behind' can be good time management?
That doesn't happen, right? They just keep coming. The, and I say that because past me, past overwhelmed me in some ways thought, well, my bosses at work wouldn't ask me this if it weren't reasonable. When my bosses had no idea like what was on my plate, much less what was reasonable and whether that like reasonable metric had been reached. The requests will keep coming. The bids for your time will keep coming. And so the goal cannot be get everything done, much less get everything done right away because it won't fit. So if you assume that, which I hope you do, because that's just reality. You can fight against it if you want, but reality will win. If you assume that, letting an email sit that really doesn't matter for a while is good time management when you look at what you were doing.
Another example, a friend of mine has a fascinating job. And because of her work, people constantly reach out to her for informational interviews. You know, students, colleagues, people interested in her field, they just reach out and understandably want an informational interview. And she told me that she just stopped responding to some of the requests.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from The Bright Method Podcast: Realistic Time Management and Productivity for Working Women & Working Moms
147. Things to Calendar for an Ever-Different Schedule (e.g., shift work)
145. Push Back βΒ And Let the Wrong People Leave; "You're Going to Disappoint People, and It's Still Worth It."
144. Follow Through on Your Commitments βΒ But Maybe Not Always
143. Getting Out of the House in the AM
142. Weβre Back! & The Case for Reviewing Your Week Every Week