12. The Truth About Time Management

Hello!
I am super excited to be talking about this 
topic today:
Time Management. Now,
so many of you lovely women in STEM
think that you are terrible at time management and it is something 
that you need to get better at.
So if this is you continue listening because I have got some hard 
truths to be sharing with you about time management today.
But before I get started,
I wanted to tell you a little bit about my own story and challenges with time 
management.
Now,
I guess when I was growing up,
I was always of the slowest kid in the class.
I was always the last person to hand something in.
You know,
when you have at an English class and you're supposed to write something during the lesson 
and there would always be the quickest person. I remember there was this girl called 
Nicole,
and she was just so good at everything.
She was super efficient,
and she was always the first person to hand stuff in a class.
And I think that was something that she took real pride in because,
you know,
she always made sure that she was the first person and she always did a really good job of it.
And I always thought: I wish I could be like her.
I'm just so slow.
And I just grew up thinking I was just slow.
I just wasn't efficient at doing things,
you know,
That was just my identity.
Now when it got to,
I guess, fast forwarding over to career-stage Tiff,

I guess I held on to that belief that I was slow and 
inefficient at doing things.
And this kind of got worse and worse as my imposter syndrome grew.
So those of you who have listened to my episode on impostor syndrome will know a bit about 
this story.
And if you haven't yet are linked to that episode in the show notes.
And in this video here.
The other thing that I did because I thought I was slow was 
because I basically overcompensated at work 
so I would work longer hours because I just thought I was slower 
than everyone else.
So I had to catch up after hours and it started 
becoming this pattern where I would always work late.
And have you ever met those people at work who come into the office looking really 
tired with a massive coffee in their hands.
And they're just like,
you know,
oozing this tired mentality just so that people will ask them: Oh
my goodness!
Are you okay?
Are you tired?
You look like you need help or whatever.
I was that person.
I was that annoying person who you know,
if you met me or
bumped into me in the elevator on the way up to the office floors.
People would ask me: How are you?
And I was like,
Oh,
yes,
so busy or people will be like,
Oh,
did you get out too much last night? Oh,
yeah,
it was like working till 11 o'clock last night.
I wore busy as this badge of honour.
I just I guess in some ways I thought it made me seem 
important.
I allowed people to come to me for help because it kind of 
I guess,
in a weird way would boost my ego.
You know,
I was important enough that people would seek me out for help.
They would want me to work overtime because I'm so important.
And this is this mentality that I had because I just loved being needed.
I loved,
I guess,
the air of importance of being busy.
And I see this so much in corporate world.
So many people will go out there just telling everyone 
how busy they are or how little sleep they got.
And that's supposed to be a good thing.
Well,
I can tell you that was not a good thing.
I burnt out.
If you have listened to my story already,
I started bursting out
crying on the way to work one day.
And I'm not the type of person who cries a lot.
So this was massive for me.
I burst out crying and just, It was the first time that I had cried 
without,
like knowing it was going to come.
It just kind of came out of nowhere.
So,
look,
the truth about time management is that,
you know,
firstly,
time doesn't need to be managed.
It is you that needs to be managed 
as women in STEM
we often fall into this impostor syndrome.
The feeling that we're not enough or that we're not doing enough.
We need to do more.
We need to pack more into our day.
If only we had all the time management hacks so we could get more 
stuff done in the day. That that's what we often 
fall into.
But time doesn't need to be managed.
It happens without you doing anything.
It goes on and it is honestly your most valuable resource.
You can't create more of it.
You can't pay for more.
of it.
You just, that is the only resource that you cannot control.
So don't manage time.
Manage yourself.
What is it that you need to do to get more 
focused?
How can you spend your time more intentionally?
How can you be more purposeful with the time that you're 
spending? So many women
I speak
to
come to me
saying: I'm really disorganised.
My time management skills are so poor.
I see my colleagues doing way more stuff than me.
You know,
They're more successful than me
and it's because they're able to do things quicker and more efficiently.
So I guess in some ways this could be true.
Maybe someone is more, I don't know, they do things 
faster than you.
But they probably do things faster than you that
like, those
are the things that they're good at.
So what are you good at?
What can you do efficiently?
What do you love doing? When you love doing something,
you're also more likely to stay focused.
Oh hello
My dog's just come and said hello here.

So what are the things that you love doing and that you could stay 
focused on?
I think it's dinner time.
I might just go and feed her and come back.
I'm back!
The dogs happy,
we're all happy,
we're back.
So funny that I was just talking about focusing,
and then I got distracted.
But anyway,
I'm here now.
So I mentioned my first point being that time doesn't need to 
be managed,
but it's you that needs to be managed.
It's also other people in your life that need to be managed.
So you also need to manage other people's expectations.
If you're the type of person who says yes to a lot of things and 
you end up spending lots of time doing stuff for other people,
then you've got a boundaries issue.
You now need to teach... Because when you say yes to things all the 
time,
you're basically teaching people that they can come to you.
And that was me.
So,
you know,
I spoke before about how I loved being the person that people 
would come to for help.
And I did like that.
But it got to the point where I burnt out.
I wasn't able to help people anymore because I was just 
so stressed and things got really 
difficult.
So what about people in your 
life?
Are you teaching them that it's okay to come to you 
all the time?
I guess, you know it's okay for people to come to you for help.
But are you saying yes?
Every single time?
That's a question
I want you to ask yourself.
A lot of the women I coach have a massive issue with saying no to 
things,
and you might be in this boat as well.
I know that
I definitely used to be.
I used to be the yes-man or the yes-woman.
I'd say yes to everything.
And you know,
there's a time and place for that.
If you're I guess,
trying to learn something new or you put yourself into a new social 
situation.
i.e. moving countries.
When I moved to the UK for the first time,
I said yes,
to anything that came up because that was my aim.
I was just trying to get to know as many people as possible.
I wanted all the opportunities.
So there is a time in place for doing that.
But if that is not your intention,
but you're saying yes to everything, you have got to learn how to say 
no to cover that off super quickly.
Right now,
the way that I say no is I say I'm not 
able to do this.
But then I point them to a useful resource.
Or maybe someone else I know who might be able to help.
So that might help you as well.
But that's a whole other kettle of fish that we could open up another 
time.
So my first point, just to summarise, was that time doesn't need 
to be managed,
It's you
that needs to be managed.
And it is also other people in your life that you need 
to manage. My second point for 
today
is that urgent
does not equal important.
I'm going to say that again urgent doesn't equal important.
A
lot of the time we will put our urgent tasks 
first,
which I guess makes sense.
But if you think about it in this way,
urgent tasks are usually things that are not planned, right?
They might be things that have come up as an emergency.
They might be someone else's requests.
Other examples of urgent things.
When an email pops up and you feel like you have to reply to it straight away 
or you get a Whatsapp message when you hear that ping and you feel like you've got a reply.
These are all urgent things,
but there might not be important.
So urgent things are time
bound things that need to be done quickly.
Important things,
they might not have such strict time restraints
on them.
But if you don't do them,
you're not going to go in the direction that you want to go.
Now.
If we talk purely about career,
so many people and I've bean here myself will 
prioritise urgent things over important things.
So I used to check my email,
so every time an email came in,
I'd have that little pop up from Outlook saying you've got an email from this important 
person and you'll see
like the start of an angry message, right, from a client,
and you'll feel like you've got to stop what you're doing and go to that straight away.
The problem with that is that usually I would be working on something 
important,
something that aligned with my career goals and was something 
that I might have needed to get done for a client or for my boss.
So that little pop up of that email that was an 
urgent thing,
disrupting my important task.
Other examples of em-urgent, ah urgent things.
I've just made up a new word there.
Em-urgent! Love it.
Other examples of urgent things are,
I guess other colleagues coming up to you and saying,
Oh,
can you do this?
Or you might be invited to speak at an event which 
seems awesome.
But if you're already really,
really busy and you're packed out for the rest of the month and you just don't feel 
like you could do it,
if you use a chunk of your time to
then do
this talk that's been requested of you just because you couldn't say 
no,
then you're still prioritising urgent things over 
important things.
So I want you
to
really have a think about your tasks when, you know the next 
time request comes through,
whether it's from your boss and other colleague,
someone else in your industry,
someone who's like,
asked you to do something.
Just have a thing to yourself.
Is this urgent or important?
I guess the most important thing to do is to actually figure out what is important to you.
What are your priorities?
So this comes onto my third final point.
Successful people don't do more things. They 
do the things that are a priority for them.
They are clear on their priorities.
So successful people don't get more stuff done in the day
necessarily.
They are just really focused in on doing the stuff that is going to 
help them move in the direction that they want to move in.
So if something is not 
aligned with their life priorities or their career 
priorities,
they're probably not going to do it.
They're going to say no,
or they are just going to make it clear that that is not the type of thing that they 
do.
Do you know what's important to you?
What are your life priorities? Have you ever been through the 
exercise of writing down what your top six life 
priorities are? Common ones are things such as 
finance,
family,
friends.
They don't all start with F
I can assure you.
You know,
spirituality,
creativity,
maybe a specific hobby
someone is really,
really into.
What are your six priorities in life and where are you at with 
them?
Do you feel like you're a 10 out of 10 in all of them?
Probably not.
That's quite rare.
But if you are at the lower end of the scale,
why is that?
Is it because you're not prioritising the things that are important to 
you? That is probably very likely.
If you want to be successful,
you do not need to be taking on time management hacks.
What time management hacks
do
is basically help
you fit more tasks in your day,
but there's no point in fitting more tasks in your day if they are tasks that are 
not important.
So what I would like for you to do is to
actually be more intentional with your time.
Figure out what's important and only do those things.
Don't be spending your time on things that are not important to 
you.
Don't be spending time on things
just so you can
please other people.
Just so you can say you're that busy person that's important,
that has lost lots of sleep because they're so stressed with work. That's not 
helping anyone.
You might seem important.
You
might feel important at the time,
but I can assure you,
when you get to that point of burnout,
you'll be like,
What am I doing all of this for?
So those are the three things I wanted to share with you today so,
firstly,
That time doesn't need to be managed.
It happens anyway,
right?
It is you that needs to be managed,
and you also need to manage the expectations of people around you.
The second thing is that urgent doesn't equal 
important.
When you go about your weak your work week this week have a think about 
whether requests coming in urgent or if they're important,
and the third thing is to know what's important.
You actually know need to know what your priorities are.
So the third point was that successful people don't do more
things.
They're just more intentional.
They know what their priorities are.
They only work on things that are aligned with their priorities.
I guess I've got one final bonus thing
I would like to encourage you to do the next time you catch yourself
saying I don't have time for something.
I want you to have a think about whether it is that you don't have 
time or or if it's that you have chosen to not 
prioritise that thing.
I guess it's a bit of a trick question.
Of course it is because you have not prioritised that thing.
We all have the ability and responsibility to manage our 
own things that were doing during the day.
So if you're saying I don't have time to read that book or I 
don't have time to listen to that podcast,
then that's not actually true.
You do have time.
It's just that you've prioritise something else,
which is absolutely fine.
The time when it's not fine is when you've accidentally prioritised 
something that is not important.
For example,
spending half an hour everyday scrolling through social media,
I am definitely guilty of this myself.
But I guess just having that knowledge 
that you are responsible for your own tasks that you do every 
day.
That's power.
So it's not that I can't do something, it's that I won't do something.
I've chosen not to prioritise my time.
in order to do this,
I want to share with you a pretty 
shocking fact from this book 
I read recently called Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Foleo.
If you've never read it before,
have a go. She's just so much fun,
she writes in her own voice.
If you ever watched her videos or listen to our podcast,
it's super fun.
But basically there's this table in there that says 
that 30 minutes a day,
dickin' around on your phone or social media, guess how much that 
equates to in the year?
It equates to a whopping 182.5 
hours per year,
and that equates to 22 full eight hour work 
days.
So the next time you say I don't have time for something,
do you not have time for something or have you prioritised something 
else?
This has been a really eye opener for me because sometimes I feel like I've just not got 
enough time in the day to do stuff.
Or if only I had more time,
I'd know this skill or be able to develop this skill. When in fact,
based on this table
I've just read out,
I have plenty of time.
So I hope this has inspired you to be a bit more intentional with your 
time, to stop trying to fit more in your day.
But actually try and do less. Strip out the noise,
strip out the things that are not aligned with your life priorities. Things that are not 
important.
Stop doing them or find a way to reduce them.
If this is something that you struggle with especially saying no or knowing how to 
actually reduce some of those things,
come and chat to me.
Come and find me on Instagram where my handle is at... No,
What is it @tiffanydawson_ or you can find me 
on LinkedIn and I will link to all of those in the show notes.
It's been lovely to chat to you today and I cannot wait to see you next 
time.