Time Management Tips For Doing ALL THE THINGS

I wanted to come on and talk about time management, and doing all of the things in your life and in your business. So if you are not familiar with me yet, I am a mom of a toddler. As I’m recording this episode, he is three, and he keeps me on my toes. And my entrepreneurial journey started pretty much simultaneously with becoming a mom. I had been dabbling in network marketing during my pregnancy and prior to bringing my son into the world. Then, the second that he was born (and honestly before he was born), I knew that I was never going back to a regular job. 

I was never going back to the 9-5 lifestyle. 

And I knew before having him that that was draining me. It was not something that I was meant to do in the long term. Now, I was really good at my job (jobs I should say, because I skipped and jumped around a whole lot) in the years leading up to becoming a mom. 

I am a college dropout. And I had no clarity on what I was supposed to be doing in this world. I dropped out of college because I knew that I was uncertain on what my major should be on what my career path should be. And so after dropping out, I jumped from job to job I worked at a coffee shop I worked at quite a few doggy daycares and pet care facilities, even children daycares, (which was an interesting thing to observe how similar children and dogs are, but that’s beside the point). 

I had jumped around a bunch. And then I had my son. And I knew that everything was going to be different. Everything about my lifestyle, the way that I showed up in the world, and we talked recently on the podcast about redefining your identity. And this was honestly, like jumping in headfirst off the deep end because I was not prepared for how drastically my life was going to change. I honestly didn’t do a whole lot of research or learning when it came to how to be a mom, or how to raise a human. And there is no guidebook, right? There’s no dictionary where you can look everything up. There’s certainly a lot that you can learn from Google and from other moms, but everybody has a unique experience. And my experience was so unique in the sense that I took away all of my financial security at the same time as I became a mom. And that was so scary. It was so scary. I had no idea what was going to happen. Thankfully, I had a partner who was working full time and really supporting us as a family. But it was really tight, right? We were working really hard to make ends meet. And there was just a lot of uncertainty. And when you are suddenly responsible for a human being, you really step up to the plate, right? And if you’re a mom listening to this, you know what I’m talking about.

There is no magic token that you can just hand in and say, I’m done with this for a little bit. I’d like to take a break – because when you’re a mom, especially to a young child, you’re responsible for that human 24/7.

If you’re also growing a business, which is what I started doing, and as a new mom, it’s a lot It is a lot of work. It has a lot of energy and time. And this is why I wanted to come and talk today about time management and self-care because I consider myself a little bit of an expert in this. 

I’ll also admit to the fact that I am not perfect in this area, I am still learning and with every new evolution in motherhood in business, there are new things to learn and embody when it comes to time management and self care. When my son was an infant, it was really easy to grow my business and to spend hours and hours behind my computer. Because he napped a lot, and he was really easy to contain. He would play independently very easily…and then as he got older, and now he’s three. So you can only imagine if you know anything about children, that he is very busy all of the time and he needs mommy’s attention a lot of the time. And I’m so grateful that I took the leap of faith in myself and started a business at the same time as having him because it allows me that freedom and flexibility in my schedule now to set the tone, to define when I am working, and to have boundaries around when I am off in my business, when I’m not paying attention to what’s happening on social media, and I can really be present with him. 

So what I have learned with time management and self care is That you have to set the priority that you will take care of yourself. Number one thing when it comes to running a business, being a mom and being, you know, a wife, a partner, a friend, maybe you’re a dog mom, whatever your role is, there are situations where other people need things from us, right? They require our time and our energy. And if you’re a mom, that is particularly true.

The first thing that you have to understand and be able to prioritize is your own self care, your own well being. Because if you are not filling your cup up, you’ve probably seen this quote on Pinterest: If you’re not filling your cup up, you’re not going to have that overflow, to share with other people. And it can be a really tough place to be when you feel like you’ve stretched yourself thin when you reach a place of burnout, which is something that I have absolutely done in the last three years and learned the hard way, that if you don’t take care of yourself, it’s going to be really hard for you to take care of other people. And you’ll stop, you’ll start dropping balls and things will just feel chaotic. So the first priority that I had to make in the beginning stages of my business, was really setting boundaries around my time. And in those pockets of time – I want to talk a little bit about the actual time management strategy that I use in those pockets of time. Making sure that there is time and space for you time and space for nourishing yourself whether that’s drinking some water or going for a walk or taking a bath, (which is a pretty, you know, generic self care practice), you can do really anything that makes you feel good, I don’t want you to have this idea that you have to have the luxurious bubble bath to be practicing self care.

But there’s a lot of things that you can plug into those pockets of time.

So some of the strategies that I used and continue to use and play with in my business (I say “play with” because like I said before, this is flexible, this is something that you have to revisit). 

It’s always going to be changing. 

I changed my schedule and my Google Calendar, at least once a month, sometimes more than that.

But something that I really loved to do in the beginning, was to work from time blocks. 

So you may have heard of this before, but essentially what time blocking is, is chunking down your actions into set times. So let’s just say for example, that you are trying to grow your own audience on social media, you are working with some clients, you’re also a mom. And maybe you have pets at home too. That’s my situation most of the time. I am stretching myself between all of these things. So let’s say that that’s your situation. And throughout your day, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, right? We all have the same hours in a day as Beyonce. 

Let’s look at your daily schedule. So, time blocking allows you to identify when you are working on your business when you are plugged into and present with your real life in the day to day when you are taking care of yourself and all of the things in between.

Something that I do is for time blocking I use my Google Calendar – super simple, totally free, you create a Google account and open up the calendar app. 

And I blocked out the hours and the timeframes that I’m going to be spending and intentional focus on x, y, and z. So, for me right now, in this season of my life that looks like we’re waking up really early, I wake up between 4:30 and 5:30am. Every day, I’m never sleeping-in later than 5:30 in the morning, even on the weekends, which sounds crazy, but I am a morning person, I always have been. And so, that time in the morning, I blocked off time for myself. So my son sleeps in until about 6:30 or 7 (if I’m lucky, sometimes later if I’m really lucky). And that is my dedicated time to get things done that are important to me that day. 

So before I jump into the day, I already know what my priorities are. I typically sit down and this is a practice that I encourage you to prep, embody and practice yourself. I sit down at the beginning of every week, and I look at the week ahead. So on Sundays, I make the time to look at my calendar to see what calls I have to see if I have any meetings. I know my business activities ahead of time and what needs to be accomplished. And so I plug these into my week, looking at the week ahead. 

I know in the morning during that initial couple of hours, I am going to be eating my breakfast, I’m going to be drinking my coffee (because if you know me at all, you can know that I cannot survive without my coffee. I do have a slight addiction, just being transparent) and I tend to get work done in those morning hours. 

Now, this leads me to another point that is kind of a sidestep but super important to highlight the way that you work best is going to be different from somebody else. So if you’re listening to this and thinking “holy sh*t, there’s no way that I can get up at 5am and go to work”. That’s totally fine. I don’t want you to put pressure on yourself to be a morning person if you’re not, because what is important here is that you are aware of your energy throughout the day. So for me, I am a morning person, I have the most energy throughout the day before 10:11am and I very often start to lose my drive and my ambition to do things and check things off of my to do list around the afternoon (sometime after noon). I like to take a long lunch break and I like to just kind of chill out and allow myself to be in the afternoons which is why I work during those really early hours in the morning, because it sets me up for the flexibility throughout the day to do the things that I desire to do, and to plug in that self care, which I talked about already. 

So that’s what time blocking looks like for me, I block off the hours that I’m going to be working on my business, I block off the hours that I’m going to be intentional around myself care. I even go as far as to block off the hours in which I’m spending time outside and playing with my kid and really being present with him. Because I know for myself that I get easily distracted and sucked into my work. If I have my phone in my hand, it’s very easy for me to pick it up and get on social media and be completely zoned in on what’s happening on my screen, rather than paying attention to my kid who’s right in front of me. And that’s something that I continue to work on. For myself, that is a goal that I am working on improving my presence as a mom. And that is one of the strategies that I have. 

Time blocking helps so, so much and setting the tone for the day before the day even starts. So planning ahead, planning ahead, planning ahead, and I am somebody who, if you know me in real-life, in person, I am very disorganized, and I like to kind of fly by the seat of my pants. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t structure that keeps me on the right path. And I might stray away from it a little bit, sometimes a lot. But I always come back to my “truenorth” right. 

I know what works for me and my body and my energy and what also supports everybody else in my life. So time blocking is one of the best strategies that I have been able to use. And if you’ve never done this before, I would love for you to at the very least, open up Google, create a calendar for yourself and just pay attention to what you are currently doing throughout the day, and how you might shift that to better align with what feels good for you. 

That’s a really, really the important piece here is that your schedule your time management, the way that you show up as a mom, business owner, whatever your title or hat that you’re wearing, is that you are doing that in a way that feels good for you, so that you can show up and serve and be that supportive person and really fulfill who you were trying to be. We talked about that again in the redefining your identity episode, so go back and listen to that. This is kind of the action steps that you take, after you have looked at and defined who it is that you want to be. 

Now, the next time management strategy that I want to share with you, is kind of breaking it down to the hours within your day. Because it’s really good to have a time block and to have an intention on what you’re working on and what you’re putting your focus on. 

If you set just aside, let’s say two hours to work on your business, that is really vague. And what tends to happen and I know that this happens to me, (so don’t go try and say “Oh, no, that’s not me. That doesn’t happen.” I know it happens to you. Let’s be real here. This happens to all of us.) 

If you set aside two hours to “work on your business”… You’re going to slip into shiny object syndrome, you’re going to end up with 15 tabs open on your browser, and three of them are Facebook. And I know because that happens to me too.

So I want you to look at within your time blocks: what are those specific activities that you are doing? And how can you manage your time around those things? 

A tool that I use is the Pomodoro Technique. I might be mispronouncing that, but I will put a link in the show notes so that you can understand what I’m talking about here and have a better reference place. But essentially what the Pomodoro Technique is, is blocking off small increments of time, based on the way that humans work the best. So this is infusing a little bit of human psychology for you. And this is a proven method to help you stay in your best energy as you are completing the tasks on your to do list. 

Pomodoro is setting a timeframe. And for me what I do, and I think that this is in alignment with the actual technique, but I honestly haven’t given it too much thought is to set aside the 25 minutes of focused and intentional work on a specific activity. This is really helpful if you are working on your business or in your business. And if you are, let’s just say, planning your social media content – if you’re sitting down to plan your social media content, give yourself 25 minutes to get it done. 

Because what tends to happen is if we give ourselves a set amount of time, we will get it done and get that task done in that set amount of time.

So if you’re giving yourself two hours to write social media content for the week ahead you’ll take the full two hours, and you’ll probably get sidetracked and end up on Facebook or Instagram scrolling, right, let’s just be real. But if you give yourself 25 minutes to write the post for next week, chances are you’ll be able to get that done. And if you don’t get all of it done, that’s okay. You reset your timer for yourself using the Pomodoro Technique. 

And in between that next set of time, you’re taking some time for self care. So maybe you are getting up and going for a little walk. Maybe you’re just pacing your house, or filling your water back up, stretching/moving your body – doing something to shift gears so that your mind resets because if we get the tunnel vision of getting something done, we start to have our eyes glaze over, especially if we’re working on our computers and our energy begins to dip. 

This technique is really going to help you with keeping your energy high, keeping your self-care front and center throughout your day, and keeping you on track for accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish. 

So within your time blocks, you want to be thinking about what you can get done in that amount of time. So we’re using social media content as an example, because I know for me, that’s about how long it takes me to get content done for one account, and I help some entrepreneurs schedule their content out, and that is part of my workload. I have my account, and I have other accounts and it’s a little bit different between one account to the next. So like I said before, this is going to be very independent to how you work best and what works for you. But for me, social media content is easy to put together. It comes naturally to me and when I give myself a deadline, a set amount of time to get it done. 25 minutes is really all I need to get a week of content created and collected, you know – getting the photos, getting all of the things together, writing the copy and putting it into the scheduler is 25 minutes.

So if I am giving myself two hours to work on my business, and I’m only using 25 minutes for content creation, what else can I spend that time on?

You want to within your time blocks, think about the Pomodoro Technique, think about the individual activities that you are doing, and really get clear on what you’re doing in those pockets of time throughout your day.

For example, this podcast episode is going to take me about a half hour. I know that I have two hours before I have my next coaching call. So I’m recording this episode, and then I have very clear activities that are going to fill the gaps in these two hours, so that I am getting things done checking things off my to do list, which makes me feel really good, right. I have the time in between each of these activities to eat some breakfast and drink my coffee (or drink some water, which would probably be a better choice. So I’m going to hold myself accountable for that and drink some water after this episode). 

What I want you to understand is that managing your time is a really intentional practice. And it is exactly that it is a practice you have to practice at it to get better at it. And I see a lot of people get really frustrated that they don’t have the perfect schedule or they’re finding themselves sidetracked, shiny object syndrome is just taking over. 

The truth is that we all hit those obstacles – over and over and over and over again. So if you’re feeling frustrated, or the idea of this sounds overwhelming, I want you to really know that this takes practice, it takes refinement, and you’re going to have to create the wheel all over again, if something in your lifestyle changes. 

So going back to my motherhood story, when my son was an infant, I had so much more time to get things done in my business, I would work on my business six hours a day, usually, and that’s totally just guessing, but it was about six hours a day because he would nap so much more frequently. Now he is a toddler and he’s busy. So when he is awake, he requires a lot of my attention. And when he is sleeping, he is sleeping far less than he was when he was an infant. 

I am lucky if I get a two hour nap every day on the days that he is home now, I am really grateful that I have been able to send him to preschool three days a week. And that was a decision that I made for myself and my business. Because I knew that having him home 24/7 was going to take my energy away from my business. And I have very clear goals and a very clear vision on what I am creating with my business, which requires the time for me to be focused more throughout the day than I would be when he is home. On the days that he is home with me, I work maybe four hours a day, and two of those hours are him sleeping. 

You have to really understand that this is going to look very different for you in different stages of your life. This is also true if you are experiencing any health issues, or you’re going through something in your family, whatever is happening in your “real life” is going to affect how you show up and manage your time for your business. 

So be flexible. 

Give yourself grace around time management and know that it is going to continue to change. And one more tool that I just want to share with you, going back to the Pomodoro Technique is a platform called Toggl. And I will link that up in the show notes for you as well. 

This is what I use to track my time for clients when I’m working on client work. But I have also started using this in my own life and business. In addition to my calendar, I have reminders on my phone and timers and alarms. I have to use a lot of triggers and notifications to keep me on track because I get so zoned in on what I’m doing. 

If you’re going to practice the Pomodoro Technique, you could very easily use the alarm feature on your phone and just set a timer. Or, and or if you’re working on your computer, I use Toggl – you can open this up in your browser, and install it as a plug in for Chrome. And all you have to do is hit the little Toggl icon, and it will start timing you based on the activity that you are doing. 

Now, in the settings of toggle, something really cool that you can enable is the Pomodoro Technique. So what happens is you turn your timer on, and when you reach 25 minutes, you can change the time here. So if you find that 30 minutes works better for you or whatever it is, then you can shift to that setting.

When you turn it on, it starts timing you and when your time is up, it will ding and come up with a notification and tell you that it’s time to take a break. So if you’re finding yourself getting sucked in to your work, maybe you are working on the computer for extended periods of time throughout the day, this is a really great tool to just help you reconnect with your time management, and how you are strategizing your day to day so that you can feel your best. So that is another tool that I wanted to share with you. 

I want to quickly recap before I wrap this episode up. I know this has been a little bit of a longer episode, but I’m hoping that it’s helpful. What you want to be looking at for your time management and giving yourself the opportunity to feel your best in your day to day is to know yourself best. really be intentional and focused on when you feel good throughout the day, when you need more self care and making your self care a priority – every single day then I want you to be planning ahead. 

I like to do this on Sundays sitting down and looking at the week ahead. I also do this every month and every quarter for my business, sitting down and looking at what needs to be done in the week ahead. And then from there, time blocking and managing your calendar to reflect those tasks, those to do list. And within each of those activities, breaking down your time so that you are working in smaller intervals and being really intentional and focused on the task at hand.

When you bring all of these pieces together, and you take into consideration your real life in your day to day. I promise you that time management is going to get so much easier. And the more that you practice at this, the easier it will become when you have to pivot and re-define your time strategy and how you’re showing up in your day to day. 

I hope that this was a helpful episode for you. If you have any questions, please reach out to me, send me a DM on Instagram. My handle is @calandra.martin, I’ll link that in the show notes for you. And if you would love to hear more of these types of episodes that are a little bit off topic from branding and marketing, I would love to know what I can cover for you in future episodes.

So go ahead and send me a message. 

If you found this episode helpful – please, please please leave a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us grow the show and reach more people and really just gives me the confirmation that I am showing up to serve you in the best way possible. 

And stay tuned for some incredible interviews that we’re going to be releasing over the next couple of months. If you want to share This episode, I would love for you to share it on social media so that we can reach more entrepreneurs and ambitious magnetic bosses. 

Check out the full podcast episode HERE.