Show notes

[00:00:00] Michelle: Hello friends. Today, we have two Risa herb talking to us about tips for time sabers. She has a podcast called the time Tamers podcast, and she’s here to talk to us all about. Helping us with managing our time, which is so important and so vital as moms because we don’t have much of it, or it always seems like it’s in short supply and high demand.

[00:00:30] So Theresa, tell us a little bit about you and about your family and all kinds of things.

[00:00:37] Theresa: Awesome. Okay. Well, hi Michelle. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me first off. This is fun. I’m a speech therapist actually, or I kind of, I wasn’t another life, so I love to do. It’s like what I do.

[00:00:50] So this this’ll be fun. I could talk about time management all day. So I am first and foremost, a mom, and that’s essentially how I got into [00:01:00] this line of work. like I said, I am a speech pathologist and I opened up my own practice in 2014. I didn’t have any kids at that point. So, I grew the business slowly.

[00:01:13] I knew we would be starting a family. So I had that in mind and I knew that I wanted to be able to work part time and set my own schedule my own hours, that type of thing. When I did start my family. So I started the business and about two years later, I wound up getting pregnant with twins.

[00:01:31] But it really shifted things in terms of number of hours I was going to be working. I was on bed rest for a while. And so. things were slow and intentionally slow. But I loved it. I loved being able to have clients come to my house. We had, an office set up in the, house and I would be able to see people see kiddos and do my work and then go play with my own kiddos.

[00:01:58] And it was [00:02:00] great. The practice grew, I got a brick and mortar location. And as the practice was growing, my family was. So fast forward to COVID. that was March, 2020. I had a three month old and four month old, a four month old and a two year old and my twins were four. And then. Life just stopped. [00:02:24] we’re all home. And so I was home kind of losing my mind. Husband was home. He had a crazy dog, he was there. And so I was like in the corner of a room, like everybody else, trying to do my job on the computer and. Not let anyone see or hear things that were going on behind the computer screen on the other side.

[00:02:46] it was okay. The practice shifted and I had to pivot, and that was fine, but that’s around the time when I got really interested in time management, because obviously [00:03:00] we had a lot more on our plate and we didn’t have any free time. It’s just like, there is no break. So I had to get really mindful and very intentional about how it was spending my time when I was working.

[00:03:14] Kind of how to have boundaries, stuff like that. Cause I was so used to going into an office and didn’t have that any longer. So many other people out there. So I spent really, the next two years of COVID re-evaluating what I wanted to do and what I was interested in. And was noticing that I was starting to feel more and more burnout.

[00:03:35] I wasn’t loving my practice. I wasn’t loving my role as a speech pathologist in the same way that I was before. And that was never. On my radar, like I went to school to become a speech therapist I had just tunnel vision. That was what I was going to do. That’s what I wanted to do. I never even considered the possibility that I would be doing anything else, which is a little naive now that I [00:04:00] think about it.

[00:04:00] looking back. But I just sort of sat with the feelings of overwhelm burnout, confusion, and ultimately realized that what I wanted to do was help other moms like myself to learn how to. Manage their time, how to put themselves as a priority, how to be able to run a successful business, whatever success means to that individual and a successful home and feel like you could be present in both of those settings.

[00:04:35] And I was figuring out how to do that myself. I wanted to share what I learned. And so I then became coach. I enrolled in a coaching certification program for time management and productivity. And, it’s been full steam ahead since then.

[00:04:50] Michelle: I love it. So where did you enroll?

[00:04:54] Where did you get your certificate? [00:04:57] Theresa: I’m still going through the certification process [00:05:00] now. The program that I’m in is. Sort of piecemeal, like the classes that they offer the offer the first course. And then there’s a bit of time in between before the next course picks up. So the program that I’m in is an online program that I found.

[00:05:14] I actually found that. It was kind of like circuitous route. I, got interested first when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I looked at Napa and I didn’t know that. So Naples, the national association of productivity and organizing professionals and. I never realized that the P and Nevo was productivity.

[00:05:35] I had always just thought it was professional organizers. And it actually used to be, was I started exploring this a little bit more. I found out that it used to be professional , organizers, and then napalm was finding that so much of what the organizers were doing was also related to productivity.

[00:05:52] So changed their name essentially, and started incorporating a lot of coursework and content on productivity. So [00:06:00] I became a napalm member and started taking productivity courses. There started reaching out to other people in my area and actually not even in my area because everything was online at that point, which is one of the blessings I think of COVID.

[00:06:13] I got to connect with people all over the country, like you and I And that was how I learned about what it meant to be a certified coach and how you could be a certified life coach. You could be a productivity coach, you know, there’s different types of coaches that you can be. And so I found the program that I enrolled in through a napalm professional, who had specialized in productivity and had gone through the program that I’m enrolled in.

[00:06:38] Michelle: So awesome. I love the fact that since it was during COVID, more and more people were online. Cause that’s all we could do at that point. And so you were able to connect with not only this company and be certified, but then a bunch of different people who may or may not have been able to. They may be practicing or they might have [00:07:00] been doing more in-person coaching, maybe home coaching, but you were able to really connect with them.

[00:07:07] That’s so cool. [00:07:08] Theresa: Yeah, it is. And it’s funny. I often think about how, we were so disconnected in many ways during COVID, but we were also really, really connected and some of the people that are in my life now, So many actually are people that I’ve never met in person, but it doesn’t even feel that way.

[00:07:27] They just started like a, a big part of my life. And. It’s really cool to be able to have that, connection out of this, I think that was one of the silver linings,

[00:07:35] Michelle: but it’s hard. so we know you’re certified. What exactly do you do and how do you help busy moms kind of manage their time?

[00:07:45] Theresa: what I love about coaching is that it really pairs the. Mindset. With the action. So when I first got interested in time management, I was very [00:08:00] much interested in strategizing. So what are the programs you can use? Like what are hacks that you can use? What are different. Like, for example, we’re Kona is this new program?

[00:08:11] I just discovered we can talk about it later. It’s so cool. It’s all about like tab management and if you’re someone that has a million tabs open anyway, so I’m always interested in little things like that and how you can use them to organize your life, organize your business, organize your mind, organize your home, all that.

[00:08:29] But what I was finding was that just personally, I could use all the strategies in the world, or as I was started doing this with clients, I could give them all the strategies in the world. Like they be talking and I could think of 10 things, oh, you should use this. You use that. Like, I’d have all these ideas, but if we weren’t touching on the thoughts that were underlying, those.

[00:08:50] Choices. When it came to how they spend their time, the strategies weren’t going to be helpful at all. It was really looking at the thought work. [00:09:00] How do women think about their time? How do they think about themselves? How do they think about like, what are the thoughts that then drive the action? Because if we aren’t changing or addressing the thoughts, the strategies can only go so far.

[00:09:19] So that’s what I do with the clients that I work with. It’s very much listening to them getting to know what are their. Limiting beliefs. What are the stories that they tell themselves? What are the things, you know, the way that they talk to themselves internally, how can we look at those things?

[00:09:37] And I’m really, I’m not there to tell them what to think. I’m there to be really like a mirror. They’re talking and I’m reflecting it back to them so that they have perspective. They have kind of like an oversight over what they’re thinking. And then we look at those thoughts and we figure out, okay, what do you want to change?

[00:09:55] What’s serving you. What’s not serving you. What do you want to change? And now let’s come [00:10:00] up with some strategies to help you make that change.

[00:10:04] Michelle: That’s great. I would think that all the strategies would be able to help. Right. And that would be the foundation rather than the thoughts and the beliefs that surround it.

[00:10:17] That’s fascinating. It’s actually our thoughts and beliefs. It’s not the actions that we’re taking or the doable steps. I would much, but I guess I know my personality. I would jump into that part rather than during more of the thinking, feeling portion for the foundation,

[00:10:39] Theresa: me too, we are like, and I noticed that for me, I often would cause I started as I was becoming a coach, I hired a coach, which is the first time I really hired an, you know, I’ve hired coaches anyone can call themselves a coach and coach is very subjective.

[00:10:55] I had had. Business coaches in the past, but this was the first time I ever hired a coach to [00:11:00] really work on mindset. And it was life-changing. And what I realized was that for me, the feelings piece, like the touchy, feely emotions, I’d be like, oh, I don’t have time for that. Like, I’m not, I don’t have time for that.

[00:11:12] I’ve got four kids. I’ve got a business to run. no time to be sad, no time to be frustrated. You just got. Buckled down and get through it. And that could get you far. to an extent, but what is the cost? What is the cost of that? And so really being able to have somebody help me stop.

[00:11:35] Address the thoughts, sit with them and figure out how to use them to my advantage and then change the ones that are not serving me and to not be so afraid of feelings. And like, it’s not like we’re just going to. For like a whole week and be in our feelings and like kumbaya, like, no, that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, but just to be okay with like, no, it’s okay.

[00:11:59] To [00:12:00] acknowledge how you feel. It’s okay to look at how those feelings are connected to the thoughts and how the thoughts are connected to the feelings. And all of that is what drives the act. That’s

[00:12:10] Michelle: really fascinating because that’s what I think a lot of things are kind of going towards I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but there’s all kinds of things.

[00:12:21] Those thoughts work into your habits and then your habits are what drive your actions. And so it’s really, I’m a health coach. And so that happens with weight loss , or small little habits, mindset, things that people are thinking we’ll jump into their habits, which would then propel them into. Bigger habits and all the other things.

[00:12:46] And so it’s crazy that our minds and emotions and everything has so much power. I often think as we were saying that strategy and having the right steps in finishing [00:13:00] something and just kind of pushing through is. Where it’s at to get the result that you want to get to that end the goal.

[00:13:08] Theresa: I know, I bet you do experience that quite a bit as a health coach and the thoughts and the feelings that are associated with our eating right with our eating habits.

[00:13:17] And so we put into our body when we eat that stuff. So yeah, it’s so fascinating.

[00:13:24] Michelle: Yeah, because I’m not wired that way to think of feelings first. You said, I don’t know if it’s just, I’m not initially wired that way or just from being a mom and having kids and being like you just have to go, you don’t have time to like, sit and mope about it or cry in the car, your kid’s screaming and there’s, it was black and white.

[00:13:47] We got to get them lunch. We get to take care of things. Oh, I love that. So what are three simple time management or productivity hacks [00:14:00] that you are loving right now that maybe you share with your clients or you’ve seen results that you’re just excited [00:14:07] Theresa: about? Okay. So the first one, I guess I’ll, talk about where Kona, which is what I had mentioned earlier.

[00:14:13] I just discovered this and I’m like, okay, how much time do you have Michelle? And I feel like I’ve just barely scratched the surface with this one. But somebody had introduced this one to me for tab management. It’s so much more than that. You can do project management. It’s kind of a project management system.

[00:14:31] And I know that I’m. Fully using it to its full capacity. There’s a free version and a paid version I’m on the free. And I have found that it meets my needs just fine, but essentially what you do is you create and I’m totally gonna use the wrong words. Cause I, you know, I’m not like a techie person, but you create folders inside of this program. And so for example, for me, I have my speech business, which is still running on a very, very small capacity, so I’ve got my [00:15:00] speech business, I’ve got my coaching business and then I teach grad students as well. So I need different apps, websites for each of those.

[00:15:09] So I created. Teaching one, I created a coaching one and I created a speech one. And then you can assign, or you can, yeah, you can assign websites and tabs like bookmarks into those folders. So that way all I have to do is I, if I sit down and I’m like, all right, I’m doing my coaching stuff. I just clicked coaching.

[00:15:29] And all of the tabs that I would need are available in there. I can pick and choose what I want to open. Then when I close it, if I go to speed, I don’t have to close all the tabs. The tabs just disappear. I’d go to my speech folder, opens up those websites for me, and I can switch back and forth without losing the tabs.

[00:15:47] They disappear for a little while, but they’re still there when I need them. I

[00:15:51] Michelle: love that Yes, I am notorious to have about 20 open-ended time, because switch from different things of [00:16:00] coaching or mom things, your opening emails, your figuring out what your day looks like, where your schedule is.

[00:16:09] You’re jumping into your work block and working through your. Time blocks during the day. or maybe you’re creating something in Canva or there’s, tons of different links that I have open or tabs, because I don’t want to forget that I have to go do this

[00:16:26] Theresa: thing. Yeah. It’s like a to-do list, right?

[00:16:29] It’s like if there’s something left to do so you’d leave it open until you’ve done it. Well, now you can have it open, but you don’t have to see. That’s

[00:16:36] Michelle: lovely because when you’re looking at it, sometimes your brain can get overwhelmed with what do I need to do?

[00:16:45] Theresa: Where do I start? Where

[00:16:46] Michelle: do I start?

[00:16:47] And that kind of runs into your procrastination, which I know is a huge thing with time management. Can you tell us some about that and what you’ve seen that helps.

[00:16:56] Theresa: Yeah, I just recorded a podcast episode. [00:17:00] earlier this week it came out this past Tuesday and it was all about procrastination and why we do it and how we can.

[00:17:09] Overcome it per se. I use that term loosely, but just to kind of get a deeper look at procrastination and I think we can all relate, right? It’s that I’m not implying that I don’t procrastinate. I a hundred percent procrastinate. We all do. So I feel very strongly about the. Connection between thought work thoughts, the underlying thoughts and our actions when it comes to procrastination.

[00:17:35] So what I always work on with my coaching clients is one of the questions I’ll ask. If they’re talking about procrastination. I, what is the reason why, why are you procrastinating? because your reason for procrastinating this task may be very different from your reason for procrastinating that task.

[00:17:52] But if you don’t really know why it’s hard to. Change. It’s hard to, take different action and [00:18:00] have long lasting results. So for example, I noticed my husband, we were doing taxes and my husband had asked me to go back. Calculate how much we had spent on daycare over the last year. And I’m like, put it off, put it off, put it off. [00:18:14] Well, I put it, it was two reasons. Number one, I didn’t want to see the number. Like I did not want to know how much we spent on childcare. So it was number one. And then number two, I knew I had to find the login information to get into the billing system for daycare. I didn’t know what the website was. I didn’t know where it was.

[00:18:32] I didn’t have were Kona at that point. So, and so I had to find the login information and then I had to see if it was going to go back to the, amount of time, to the time range that I needed and blah, blah, blah. So it was like these extra steps that were preventing me from getting started.

[00:18:49] So once I was able to ask myself, Why are you procrastinating? Then I could fix the thought errors. They’re like, okay, you already spent that money. So yeah, you [00:19:00] don’t want to see the number, but the money’s already gone, like looking at the numbers, not going to change the reality of the situation. So that thought we’re done.

[00:19:07] That’s moving on. And then number two, it’s like, okay, wait a second. You actually do know where the log in information is. You have. Stored in this area, you just have to go and look for it. You have to open up that app and get the password and you can log in. You can sit down, log in and it actually won’t take as long as you think it’s going to take.

[00:19:25] So it’s just these silly little things that we all like. They’re just these little nagging thoughts that , we want to avoid. I think. The negative feelings that we try to avoid. And so we ultimately avoid the task, but what happens is all day every day, well, not all day, but throughout the day, you’ve got these intrusive thoughts of God to do the taxes.

[00:19:47] Oh, I got log in. Oh, I got log in. I got to find it. So I’ll be sitting doing something like playing with the kids and that thought pops up into my head. No. I want to enjoy my time with my kids. I don’t want to be focused , [00:20:00] on taxes. I don’t want that interrupting me. So trying to be aware of how, even when you procrastinate something, it’s still costing.

[00:20:07] You. It’s still costing you peace and happiness and positive energy. And so trying to just release that mental load, however, big or small it is change those intrusive thoughts by just doing the thing that you’re procrastinating. [00:20:22] Michelle: That’s awesome. Cause I know I do that all the time and then you’re right.

[00:20:26] It does steal your time when you’re thinking about other things you’ll be driving in the car or you’ll be playing with your kids or doing a hundred other things that as moms we do during the day and we think, oh yeah, I’ve got to do the taxes. Yes.

[00:20:40] Theresa: Ah, right. You can just do the thing and get rid of that thought then.

[00:20:47] Doing the thing is less painful than the thought interrupting you 30 times a day. Right.

[00:20:52] Michelle: So we do it the first time. It would probably save you, maybe it’s 15, 20 minutes, but then all those times that you are [00:21:00] the reoccurring time is probably far more than when the task would take you.

[00:21:05] Theresa: Yeah, I would agree.

[00:21:07] And then the other thing that I’ll encourage. My coaching clients to think about with something that they’re procrastinating is trying to get into what I would call done energy. So what is that feeling that you will have when the task is complete? Put yourself . In that position in your mind, think about what is it going to feel like?

[00:21:26] when you are procrastinating, where are you feeling it in your body? Are you feeling it in your stomach? Are you feeling it in your shoulders and your neck? And like, think about that and then compare to, okay. When it’s done, I’m just going to feel. It’s a weight lifted off your shoulders, or you’re like, yes, I did this thing.

[00:21:43] You feel accomplished, you feel successful. Whatever those feelings may be to really try to remember, or to visualize how it is going to feel and to remember your why, why are you doing this in some instances like taxes, you’re doing it because there’s a deadline and you have to do it where you get in trouble.

[00:21:59] If [00:22:00] you don’t do it. But for other things, it might be like a big work project. Seems really scary or really challenging. Right. And that’s why you’re procrastinating. But when it’s done, you’re like, oh my gosh, look at what I just accomplished. So being able to, put yourself in that frame of mind, that energy to propel you through the task , that you don’t want to do to get to the place where you

[00:22:21] Michelle: want to.

[00:22:22] Right. Oh, that’s so helpful. And so useful to think about how are you going to feel when this is all finished and this weight is off your shoulders and you can take a deep breath and not think about the taxes or not think about that to do thing that you’re putting off