Emma (00:01.614)
Hi, guys. So excited to be with you in a solo episode today. And in these solo episodes, I really want to dive into topics that come up a lot in my client containers that I see clients struggle with, that I've personally struggled with when it comes to being able to create feel-good, sustainable success. And one thing that comes up in pretty much every client container is the concept and topic of time.
feeling like we don't have enough of it, trying to figure out how to use it more effectively, trying to figure out how to manage our time and calendar. And so I wanted to use this solo episode today to dive into the top three time traps that I see my clients struggle with most often. And this applies whether it's clients who are trying to succeed more sustainably in corporate without burning out.
whether it's clients who are trying to build a side hustle on the side of a full-time job and trying to manage the time and the demands of both, or whether you're building a business of your own and all of the things you could focus on and all of the priorities you have. And this gets especially tricky when we're in a season of life with young kids, for example, where we're adding that full-time job on top of everything else.
So I wanted to take this episode to talk about why managing our time can feel so tricky and the biggest time traps that I see my clients struggle with. So the first trap that I want to talk about today is the everything is a priority trap. So when we're stuck in this trap, we have a never ending to do list. People ask us to do something and our default response is yes. And we just kind of subconsciously assume that
We're going to be able to find the time magically. And we take on more and more, and our plates are more than full. And we just expect ourselves to be able to get it all done. But inevitably, we never do. Our to-do list only gets longer. And we just feel more stressed and further behind. We'll work hard all week, and we'll be checking things off of our to-do list. And yet, we never get that sense of completion, of feeling like we did it, of that.
Emma (02:20.16)
relief. And that's actually really, really hard and draining on our nervous system. And this also gets, you know, especially tricky when we are trying to be everything to everyone. We're trying to be that boss bitch at work and we're trying to kill it. We also want, you know, to be that amazing mom and for our kids to eat organic food from scratch every day. And
And the core issue here is that we aren't acknowledging the fact, the inconvenient truth, that our capacity is limited, that our time is finite, that we can't just take on more and more and more and work better and faster and just be able to get it all done. That is a recipe for burnout. I've experienced it. I've worked and navigated clients through it. I promise you, it does not work.
Instead, what we actually need to acknowledge is that to be human is to have limits. We are not God. We can't do everything at once. We need to acknowledge that by saying yes to one thing, we are by default saying no to something else. And we have to get a lot wiser and a lot more intentional with our yeses and our nos. And doing this requires conscious prioritization.
Honestly, maybe more importantly than prioritization, conscious deprioritization. We need to give ourselves permission to not get some things done, to delete some things from our to-do list, to decide they are going to get removed because it's just simply not a priority or that something needs to wait. We have to actually understand what our capacity is in this season of life. Really get clear on how many hours do we really have free in our day to be productive?
and what actually deserves our focus and attention. We have to start by accepting that not everything can fit and that doesn't make us a failure. And when we start by accepting this fact that we have limits to what we can achieve and to what we can prioritize at any one time, it is only from that place that we can then more consciously decide what we choose to prioritize and what needs to wait or be dropped entirely. And so for me personally,
Emma (04:43.541)
I love to cook and, you know, in theory, I would have loved to be making my daughter's, you know, baby food from scratch. But the reality was that I am a business owner and a mother, and that wasn't something that was a high enough priority on my list to get and deserve my time. And so instead, I bought a direct to consumer brand, Little Spoon, and I
made peace with that trade-off and I knew I was still feeding my girls nutritious food, but I wasn't making it, right? And this is just one example from my personal life, but maybe some of you can relate to. Or this podcast is something I would have loved and had the idea to launch years ago. But the fact is that I only had so much capacity, especially with two babies, two young kids. And I chose, I consciously chose
to focus on building other things in the business first and getting those to a steady state before stacking something else on. It was only when I'd actually freed up enough capacity to be able to devote the time to do this well that I was able to prioritize the podcast. But it was so important to not make myself wrong about that and not expect
that I'd be able to do everything and build every building block in the business all at once, I had to deprioritize and say, not now. So if you always feel like you have too much on your plate and you just have that never-ending to-do list and you can never get through it all, and that's leading you to feel stressed or guilty or like there's never enough time, it starts with accepting that time is a finite resource and instead getting really, really intentional with how you choose to invest your time.
And the best way that I have found to do this and that works so well for my clients is to create a weekly recurring time block on your calendar for planning time. This is time set aside to be able to decide what gets to be prioritized. And so I like to put this on my Monday morning before I really jump into anything else for the week. And during this time, I look at my stated goals, my priorities for the month, for the quarter, for the year.
Emma (07:06.069)
And I look at my whole to-do list, and I look at my capacity for the week ahead. We're coming up on Thanksgiving. That is a reduced work week. That's going to look different than another week. So I look at my capacity, and then I consciously prioritize at the very beginning of the week what priorities I'm actually able to focus on and what needs to drop. And by doing this at the beginning of your week, you're able to make a conscious and intentional choice.
and resolve those trade-offs and make peace with them rather than getting to the end of your week and wishing you could have a redo because you didn't invest your time as wisely as you may have wished you would have. And so such an important part in being able to do this is also having a place where you can actually capture all of those various to-dos as they enter your head throughout the week and just park them somewhere.
So both that you don't waste a bunch of mental energy trying to not forget them, but also that you don't feel like you need to immediately execute on anything that enters your head the second that it does and distract you from your priorities. It's so important that you have a system that you go to every time. And this doesn't need to be fancy. Like it could literally be a note in your phone, where when an idea pops in your head, it just goes into the note.
And then on that weekly basis in that recurring planning block, you can look at all of those priorities and figure out what's actually important. For me, I like to use Asana as my task and project management system. But again, this can be so basic. It could be a Google Doc. It could be a note on your phone. Just have a system that you use consistently. So essentially, I will park everything there throughout the week. It does not get my attention when it comes into my head.
I make an agreement with myself that, okay, next Monday, if this is actually a priority, I will prioritize it then. So in that weekly planning time, I look at everything that I could do, everything that wants my attention, and I'll actually determine what the most important things to do that week are. And I'll also look at, what of this is a glass ball where if I drop it, it will shatter and I won't be able to put it back together?
Emma (09:24.757)
And what is a rubber ball where if I drop it, it will bounce back up. I can deal with it later. So for me, for example, between client sessions with my clients, all my clients get one-on-one access to me in Slack. And so we text and voice note and I support them there. And I have made a promise to my clients that I will get back to them within 24 hours. And so their trust in delivering and supporting my clients well is one of my top priorities in my business. And it always will be.
And so that is something that I'm always going to prioritize time for. And then things like recording this podcast or doing marketing or optimizing a system, everything else falls after that. And so when you think about priorities and prioritization, there can only be one number one priority and one number two priority. And so by looking at your to-do list and actually turning it into a prioritization list,
you're actually stack ranking and deciding what is most important. Two things cannot be in the number one slot. So to do this, I recommend essentially taking the top 20 % of your to-do list and keep taking the top 20 % of the top 20 % until you get to your most important thing to do. So for example, let's say there are 25 things on your to-do list that you could do. You take the top 20 % of that, that's five. You take the top 20 % of that five, you get to your one thing. And then,
schedule the time that you estimate it will take for you to complete that one thing into your calendar for the week ahead. And basically continue to do this until all of your time is consciously accounted for. And this will likely land at between three to five priorities, depending on how big they are. Sometimes it might only be one or two. And once you decide on your priorities, everything else must wait.
And so if you realize you're deprioritizing something, you may need to renegotiate or re-communicate a deadline. But the important thing is that you're making that choice upfront so that you don't feel guilty about it later. And by doing this and by shifting from just trying to move faster and to get through your entire to-do list to actually taking the time to slow down and to prioritize, oftentimes,
Emma (11:42.655)
It can feel like we are not being productive in that time because we're not actually, quote unquote, doing anything. But the reality is that this planning time, getting strategic, is what allows us to work smarter, not harder, and allows us to feel way less stressed. Because when we don't consciously prioritize our time and how we spend it, we end up feeling that low grade anxiety all the time, that we are not doing enough.
and we get trapped in urgency and scarcity. And it's this type of fight or flight mode where we are trying to outrun our to-do list. So when we instead slow down enough to consciously prioritize and bring our conscious strategic mind online, we're using our prefrontal cortex and we're getting really conscious rather than just operating on autopilot. And we just can't expect that we're going to prioritize and choose well.
without creating the space to slow down and to focus on prioritization and understanding what we actually want to focus on. It's kind of like the analogy I would give is that you can't be running a marathon and trying to play chess at the same time. And that's what we are subconsciously expecting of ourselves. We think, I can just run this marathon. I can just check one to-do list item after the next, but I'm not actually going to slow down.
to look at the bigger picture, to have that 30,000 foot overview, and to actually decide what matters. I'll just make the right choice in the moment. Well, newsflash, it doesn't actually work, right? You have to stop running long enough to be able to see the chessboard in front of you to be able to make the right next move. So first, we have to have this planning time so that we can get clear on what's important, and then we can act.
We can't just run faster and faster and just expect ourself to prioritize wisely. It's not a reasonable expectation. OK, so shifting out of the everything is a priority trap requires both a mindset shift that everything can't be a priority and that doesn't make you a failure. To acknowledge that your capacity is finite without making yourself wrong for that. And then there's also a strategy shift here, which is to actually devote time each week
Emma (14:03.872)
to this planning and prioritizing. And there's a strategy shift here to actually devote time each week to this planning and prioritizing rather than just executing and trying to move faster. Consciously decide what's most important to focus on in the week ahead. And when we do this, we can actually end our week and feel like we actually accomplished what we set out to do. We can get that relief, that dopamine hit, that feeling that we've done enough rather than
always feeling like we're behind no matter how much we cross off or achieve. When we don't consciously prioritize, we end up feeling like it's never enough rather than feeling like, okay, I did what I set out to do and I feel really good about the work that I did this week. This is so, so important for sustainable success. Okay, so now let's talk about the second trap I see so often with clients. And this I call the busy but not productive trap.
And so this is definitely related to the first one, but this is more about not holding time in your week for what actually matters and reacting and prioritizing the wrong things. So when we're in this trap, we are just constantly busy and in motion and reacting to the demands or the requests of others.
rather than really controlling and being intentional about our own calendar and managing our time. And so time passes and we're really, really busy, but when it comes to the next performance review or another quarter passes and we look at our business goals, we're not really sure what we have to show for it. Like, what did I actually do or accomplish? And that can feel really confronting because we're like, I'm working so hard, but then I'm not really sure.
what I can actually speak to or what I actually have to show for it, right? And so when we get really honest with ourselves here, very often when we're in this trap, all of our time goes to reading and responding to emails, to checking Slack, to joining random meetings, to organizing our thoughts or getting ready to get ready rather than actually getting shit done.
Emma (16:23.413)
We're really in reactive mode here, and we are just busy and filling our time, but we're not actually creating the space in our week, in our calendar, to focus on what actually matters. And Paul Graham, who is the co-founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Paul Graham, who's the co-founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, introduced this concept that I love of maker time versus manager time.
And so he talks about how makers are anyone who's responsible for actually doing and creating something that didn't previously exist. So that might be writing code or designing a new strategy or writing a pitch deck, like whatever it is, makers have responsibility to actually execute on things in order to hit their goals. Whereas managers are kind of like queen bees in the hive who just oversee all of the worker bees.
And they're not actually responsible for executing or creating. Rather, they're just providing feedback. They're challenging. They're unblocking others. And they're really just overseeing everyone else to be able to get the work done. And to be a maker, we actually need to have long, uninterrupted blocks of focus time in order to create something new or meaningfully move the ball forward. And Paul Graham talks about how makers
really work best in half-day increments or four hours at a time. Whereas to be a manager, we can deliver feedback in a half-hour or hour increments. We can just be in back-to-back meetings or responding to slacks and emails because we're just managing and unblocking others. But for most of us, for most of my clients in our careers, we are responsible both for being makers some of the time
and being manager some of the time. And for being managers, it doesn't mean that you have the actual position or title of a manager, but you're interfacing with others. You're getting back to others. You're collaborating and aligning. And that fits into manager time. The problem that happens is that most of us default to treating our calendar like a manager's calendar, where we look at everything in these one-hour blocks.
Emma (18:39.721)
And we just kind of expect ourselves to be able to do maker work in the 30 or 60 minute gaps we have between other commitments, right? So our like calendar is a free for all other people book. And then we kind of just expect ourselves to be able to be really productive around all of these other priorities. But the problem is that 30 or 60 minutes, it's hardly enough time to even get your head around a creative problem, much less start making any progress against it. And so what ends up happening is that
Others book out our time where they see fit. And then we have a 30-minute free block, and we end up going to our email inbox and responding to slacks and essentially being reactive all day long. And we kind of hope that we'll magically stumble upon a long-focused work block where we can make progress against our key priorities. But as you well know, that never really actually happens. Or very, very infrequently, right?
And so then we get to the end of another week where we were super busy, but we didn't actually move the needle. So to break out of the busy but not productive trap, we first need to acknowledge that creative work takes sustained, uninterrupted blocks of time where we can actually focus. And that until we actually block out meaningful time to work on something in our own calendar, and ideally that four-hour block, that half-day block,
we're actually just setting ourselves up to fail. So if we can first just acknowledge this truth, then we can get more strategic about how we manage our calendar. I am a really, really big fan of time blocking. You might hear that and be like, time blocking doesn't work for me or I hate time blocking. But I really believe that this is a key to success and almost all of the most successful people I know take control of their calendar and really block it out strategically.
In my own business, I aim to spend 50 % of my time being a maker and 50 % of my time being a manager. And in order to actually protect and create those sustained four-hour blocks for maker time, I have to group all of my manager time, all of my client calls, all of my slacks, all of my emails together. And I prefer to do this in the afternoon when I have less creative energy. So most of my week looks like
Emma (21:00.81)
a morning block for creativity for things like creating this podcast and an afternoon block to spend with my clients and responding to others' needs. And you may be thinking to yourself, 50 % of my time is impossible to block off for focused work. And look, depending on your role, that might be true. But if you have execution work on your plate, if you are not just a manager, if you are not just an air traffic controller who is delegating and directing others, it is
Critical that you preserve at least a couple of four-hour blocks in your week and hold really strong boundaries around this Do not treat these blocks as quote-unquote free time treat this like you would The most important meeting you have like it's a meeting with your board of directors. It is non-negotiable You have to be there everything else must wait and when you have one of these focus blocks turn off all your notifications and distractions
and really focus on the key priorities that you identified in your planning time. And this is how we actually shift from being busy to being productive, from being perpetually in motion, but not actually getting anything done, to moving the needle. So first, you have to acknowledge that creative strategic work requires these uninterrupted blocks of focused time. And next, you must block.
and create these recurring time blocks and hold strong boundaries around them so that you can actually get your key priorities done. Okay, so the final common time trap that I see clients fall into is what I like to call the paralyzing perfection trap. And here, even when you've carved out time to focus on the right priorities and you hold yourself to taking that time, you've held strong boundaries around those blocks,
What happens is that you hold yourself to such a high bar and you expect, you have such high expectations for what the output needs to look like that one of two things ends up happening. Either you get totally frozen and paralyzed, you feel like I can never hit that expectation or I don't know enough or I'm not good enough. And often what ends up happening is then we...
Emma (23:16.164)
opt to execute on things that we know how to do well, and we do the busy work, and we respond to the slack, and we fall back into the busy but not productive trap because it feels safe. I've worked with so many clients who know that in order to get promoted, they need to be doing more strategic work, but doing strategic work can feel dangerous. It can feel unknown. It can feel like they fail. so if they're stuck in this paralyzing perfection trap, oftentimes,
Subconsciously, they just keep putting off this type of strategic work because it feels like a threat. The other thing that can happen is that you actually do work on the key priority, but you never actually finish it, or it takes five times as long as it should, because you're over-rotating, and you're perfecting, and you're over-analyzing, and you're not actually even able to be creative, because at the same time, you're just trying to create.
You're being self-critical. You're in editor mode and creator mode at the same time. And it just really slows down your ability to get anything on the page or to actually complete something. Or you put the draft into ChatGBT 10 times, or you do 15 edits of the deck before sending it out for feedback. And when this happens and when we're trying to reach perfection, ultimately, our velocity and our output crashes.
Like it slows way, way down. And as a recovering perfectionist myself, this is something that I have struggled with so much and honestly, I continue to struggle with. And while having high standards isn't bad, when we expect perfection or excellence out of the gate, it really ends up having an adverse effect. Rather than just letting ourself, you know, get our thoughts on paper or getting a draft out there and sending out that imperfect draft for feedback or collaboration and
really using that to get to excellence faster, we end up just staying on the starting line, trying to perfect it, wasting tons of time. And often then when we do send it for feedback, the feedback is that we need to go in a new direction and then we just wasted so, so much time trying to get it to perfect when then we need to pivot. And really at the core of the paralyzing perfection trap is this subconscious belief that in order to be safe or worthy, we must be perfect.
Emma (25:38.564)
And this prevents us from actually getting the feedback necessary and the reps necessary to be able to learn and iterate and get to excellence faster. And when we struggle with paralyzing perfection, even when we have that four-hour block, we don't actually get anything meaningful done, and it becomes really demotivating. So to shift out of this, first, we must accept that perfection is an illusion.
And we really have to create safety around the fact that as humans, we are limited. We are imperfect. And we have to begin to see that the way to get to excellence isn't by trying to perfect, but instead it's about taking messy action and learning and iterating and getting feedback as we go until ultimately we arrive at success. And there's a study that I always think about in James Clear's amazing book, Atomic Habits.
And he talks about how there was this philosophy, there's the study in James Booker, there's a study in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, that I think about all the time. And he talks about a photography professor who at the start of the semester separated his class into two groups. So group A would be graded on the best photo that they submitted over the course of the semester. So they could submit as many photos as they liked, but ultimately,
he was only going to judge them on their best photo. Whereas group B would be graded on the volume of photos submitted. So the more photos they submitted, the higher grade they would get. And you know what ultimately happened and which group actually took the best photos? Group B. Because they weren't being perfectionistic. They were just out there taking lots and lots of photos. And as they did, they were learning about
light and composition and seeing what worked and what didn't and they were iterating. And so by the end of that semester, group B's photos were actually far better than group A who was stuck over rotating and overthinking and just trying to get the perfect single photo. So I think about this often and it's something that I've actually thought about a lot as I created this podcast because of course I want each episode to be valuable and thoughtful.
Emma (27:55.624)
and worthwhile. Like I know your time is such a commodity and it's so precious and I want to make listening to this podcast worth it for you. But at the same time, I know that in order to get this podcast to be truly great, I just have to start. And that, you know, what this podcast sounds like today will probably sound very different in a year from now. I may even look back at this episode and cringe a little bit, right? But that is how we learn. And I'm never going to get to great.
without just getting my reps in, without finishing, without getting it out there, without getting feedback, without learning, without iterating, and ultimately getting better. And so for the paralyzing perfection trap, we have to reduce the pressure that we put on ourselves. And we actually just have to set expectations that we feel like we can actually achieve. We need to let done be better than perfect. And so to do this, before we set out to work on any of our priorities,
I really encourage you to pause and ask yourself, what does done look like? What does success here look like? And check yourself by asking, would I hold this same expectation of someone else? Is this expectation appropriate for the stage or phase of this project? And when you learn to set realistic expectations for yourself, you can take off some of the pressure, and then you can actually be more creative, more productive, and learn so much more.
along the way and ultimately that is what drives superior results. So reducing the pressure, lowering the expectation is what actually allows us to achieve better over time. Okay, so those are the top three time traps that I see with my clients and that I have personally faced. So to recap, they're the everything is important trap, the busy but not productive trap and the paralyzing perfection trap. So to break free of the everything is important trap,
Acknowledge that your capacity is finite. Schedule planning time every week in a recurring time block and use that time to actually decide and schedule into your calendar what you're going to prioritize in the week ahead and what has to wait or drop. And then celebrate yourself when you get to the end of the week and you actually did what you said you were gonna do. To break out of the busy but not productive trap, we have to acknowledge that being creative and strategic and actually moving the needle on our true priorities
Emma (30:19.985)
requires sustained focus time to work on them. So block off four hour blocks at least a couple of times a week and work on the key priorities that you've identified without distraction. And then lastly, to break out of the paralyzing perfection trap, acknowledge that perfection is an illusion and that getting to excellence requires taking action, getting feedback, learning and iterating along the way. Perfection is never going to be accomplished at the starting line. So
lower the pressure, lower the expectations you put on yourself, ask what done actually needs to look like rather than striving for perfection, and then see how much time you save and how you could reinvest all of that time you save into learning and iterating and growing along the way. So I hope that this was helpful. I would absolutely love to hear what resonated with you or what questions that you have. You can always DM me on Instagram at Conscious Success Co. And also,
If there are any topics that you want me to cover in a future solo episode, please let me know. My goal and intention of this podcast is really for it to empower you and unblock you and allow you to feel good in your career and to be able to do your best work. if there's anything that you're struggling with, let me know and I would be so happy to explore it in a future episode. All right, guys, thank you for listening and I hope you have a wonderful week.
