Okay, let's move on to lesson two, finding more time. This is where the rubber really meets the road in this poll program. If you finished your time on it, you probably have a pretty good idea of where your time is really going now, this lesson is going to help you make some more intentional decisions about that time, so that it reflects your values and your priorities a little more than it has in the past. By the end of this lesson, we're going to accomplish three things. First, we're going to break down the activities you've identified in your time audit, and start to identify the areas of your life that aren't necessarily in alignment with your values and priorities. Once you've decided what activities in your life aren't worth your time anymore, I'm going to show you how to eliminate or reduce the time that you're spending on those activities.

And by the end of this lesson, you're going to have a much better handle on your schedule. My goal is to give you a system to regain control of your schedule. When you're feeling overwhelmed. It'll be up to you to do the work to remove those unnecessary activities. Your life, but you'll definitely know how to do it because I'm going to walk you through it step by step. So in the last lesson, you took a pretty thorough inventory of your time.

Now, now that you have an idea of where your time is really going, it's time to start breaking it down and removing those activities that no longer serve you. You're going to want to grab your personal values profile and your personal profile priorities profile that you created in module one. These two profiles are going to be your guide as you choose which activities get to stay in your life and which ones are going to be released in one way or another. So before we dive in, I want to prepare you this specific lesson is where the rubber really meets the road. This is where we start editing your life to create more margin for those things that are most important to you. This lesson also has several different exercises.

Make sure that you do these exercises in this particular order to get them to get the most out of them. Here's a quick overview of those exercises that they'll work on. And then after I give you the overview, we'll go into more detail throughout the rest of this lesson. So in exercise number one, we're going to categorize your time. And exercise number two, we're going to take what you've broken down into categories, and we're going to start to optimize that time. Then an exercise number three, if you're feeling overwhelmed, it's you're probably gonna, it's probably going to mean that you need to get rid of a couple of commitments in your life.

So this exercise is going to walk you through how to do that. Then once you've paired your schedule down, we're going to talk about how to evaluate new requests or invitations that come up so that you don't get overwhelmed again in the future. And then finally, an exercise five, we're going to talk about boundaries. Boundaries are incredibly important to maintaining control of your schedule and your life. Without them you're going to be doomed to a life of exhaustion and frustration. So we're going to try and Avoid that for you.

So just for this lesson, I'm going to give you your success tips before you dive into these exercises. This lesson requires the most work by far, so let's talk about a few things you can do to get through it successfully. The first tip is to take it one step at a time. There are five different exercises in this lesson, as opposed to just one for all the others. I included more in this lesson because it's where you really get to implement real changes into your life. This lesson more than any of the others is what's going to help you establish and maintain balance.

So don't bite off more than you can chew. Just take it one step at a time. Tip number two is to take your time, along the same lines. Don't rush through this lesson. Take the time you need to do your best work. Again, the more thorough your responses are in this lesson, the more you're going to get out of the program overall.

So just go at your own pace. And finally, take breaks. Don't try to get all of this done in one sitting. take breaks when you need to don't stress out about rushing through it, go grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, get your pens and paper and let's get down to it. The first exercise is going to help you break down your timeout it into categories. First, you're going to create a master list of all of the activities that take up your time throughout the week.

Then you're going to move those activities into four different categories. The first category are all of the activities that you hate to do. I think this is pretty self explanatory, right? This is everything you do on a weekly basis that you would love to get rid of. For me, this list includes things like scrubbing toilets, surprise, over time, on nights and weekends. Since that's my family and personal time, or dealing with technical issues.

I'll get an indication that something should go on this list is if you feel super resentful anytime you ever have to do it and would do absolutely anything to get out of it. The second category are activities that you might not hate, but you're not really that great at this category is going to include anything that you don't realize hate your time could be better spent somewhere else. Maybe this includes those hours that you spent trying to figure out someone else's job so that you could help out a co worker. Or maybe it's food shopping or paying bills or volunteering for a cause you don't really care that much about for this category, I think. Just go through those things that you're not especially qualified for, and really don't get that much enjoyment out of doing. The third category are activities that you're really good at, and probably even enjoy doing, but really shouldn't be doing.

So this can be the trickiest category from a lot of people. Sometimes we take on activities, but because we really like doing them, but having too many of these activities in your schedule may be what's ultimately draining you and creating chaos in your life. So for me, these types of activities generally tend to be fun social engagements or volunteer activities that I really want to do. But when it comes down to it, they're taking away from what's truly important to me. These are activities that you enjoy, but they aren't necessarily in alignment with the priorities that you've established on your personal priorities profile, and you don't have to, but I challenge you to really question what you're giving up for these activities. And then finally, the fourth category are all the activities that you're great at, you love to do, and you want to spend your time on.

So these are the activities that are in that are in alignment with your values profile and your priorities profile. We're going to strive to limit your schedule to these activities as much as possible. For me, this is spending time with my son going on dates with my husband, focusing on focusing for a reasonable period of time on work that's most important to me, and taking care of myself. So once you've kind of grazed your time, you're going to do the optimize your time exercise. And this exercise, you'll start to whittle down your schedule to include as many of the activities you love to do and want to do category and as few of the others as possible. Of course, this is life and there might be items in the other categories that you still have to do, like maybe taking your kids to school, or vacuuming, for example.

But the goal here is to start getting rid of the activities that truly are a waste of your time. To do that, you're going to analyze each of your activities and decide whether they can be one of the following things. First, eliminated, can you remove this activity entirely without any serious consequences? For example, maybe you're helping a neighbor or a friend was something that really is just a waste of your time, you can just stop doing this activity, just stop. Or maybe you've always gone to lunch with coworkers, even though you really would rather just get your work done. So you can get out of there and get home to your family.

You can probably just stop going to lunch. Most likely, it's not going to jeopardize your job. And you can probably explain to your co workers that you have a lot of work that you have to finish up. The main thing here is that there really won't be any negative consequences for eliminating this activity in your life. So while you may want to eliminate your job from this list, you probably shouldn't do that. But maybe There are some random little tasks that you've taken on that you don't really need to be doing.

Don't worry about how you'll bow to these activities yet, that's going to come up in another exercise, just identify which activities really would just, you would just like to stop doing all together. So the next thing you're going to ask yourself is whether this activity can be automated. You're gonna go through your list and find those activities that you do on a regular basis, but where there might be a shortcut that you could use to save time. So again, for example, do you send the same email over and over and over again, maybe create a file that has a text of that document already saved? And then you can just copy and paste that email anytime you have to send it. Or maybe take an hour or two, one day a week to prepare all of your food for any meals that you'll be eating that upcoming week.

So ask yourself is there a way to use a system a repeatable system to do things that you have to do on a regular basis. Or maybe you can use technology an app For a website or a service to cut down on the time that you need to do something. So I have an automatic bill pay system for just about every bill I have, I take a little time every month to monitor my bills and check on my balance. But I never really spend any time actually writing checks, finding envelopes and stamps, paying or mailing my bills out anymore. Even going online, I have most of it automated. So I just don't really have to worry about it anymore.

Another example is grocery shopping. So a lot of big supermarkets have online delivery options now. So you can order your food online and have it delivered to you the next day, sometimes even the same day. And so when I was a new mom, I would sit on the couch with my newborn, I would pick out everything that we needed for the week and it would show up in my kitchen the next day. And the best part is that they always had my list of frequently purchased items. So I could just go through that list and check off when at what I needed every week.

So it saved me hours and a lot of stress. So get creative, think about it and come up with some ideas for things You could do different routines that you could use systems you could use or technology that can help you accomplish things in a little bit more of a faster way. Every little bit helps. So even saving a few minutes a day is going to add up over time. So the next question we're going to ask is whether it can be delegated. What activities could you hand off to someone else, a lot of people don't like to delegate to others because they're afraid that job won't get done in the right way.

But if you cannot let go, if you can let go of needing things to be done a certain way, or look a certain way, you could save yourself a lot of time, you could ask your spouse for help around the house or with the kids. You can ask your kids to participate more with chores or getting themselves ready in the morning, you could ask a colleague to take over a particular project. Or if you have an assistant you can give them more responsibilities. You could also ask a friend to share carpool duty or to babysit for you in exchange for helping them out in some other way. There are a lot of different options here. But it really comes down to you deciding that having a more sane schedule is better than being in complete control of how everything gets done.

Also remember that delegation doesn't always mean abdication. If you hand something off to someone else, just be sure to factor in some time to check on how things are going and to make sure that everything's on track. So the next category that we're going to look at is whether you can procrastinate on something. So this might be kind of a funny thing to talk about when we're talking about time management. But this can actually be a fun list to make, because you don't actually have to remove this activity from your schedule altogether. Instead, you're just asking yourself, whether this is something that you could put off for a little while.

So for example, maybe you took on a volunteer activity right around the time you had a baby and the pressure is driving you insane. Or you might need to step back from some other volunteer commitment that you have or something else that's on your schedule until you have a little bit more time or a better routine or when your schedule is a little bit more predictable. So this is where your personal Pro priorities profile is going to come in really handy. Take a look at your prayer priorities profile. What did you list is your top three priorities over the next 90 days, instead of completely removing something from your life, maybe ask yourself if this just isn't the right season for it, maybe you'll have some more time and energy to focus on that activity a little later. So the next category is duplicate activities.

So there are some tasks I believe on your list that you can probably double up on. So the most important important thing to remember with these activities is that you can't is that you can't really double up on cognitive activities. So our brains aren't equipped to think about more than one thing at a time. So this is why multitasking really gets people into trouble. But you can definitely pair up cognitive activities with non cognitive activities. So for example, you can listen to music and exercise at the same time.

Or you can listen to an audiobook and work on something self development while you take care of the household chores that you've been dreading, and that can actually make it fun. Or maybe you can dance with your little one while you're making dinner and fixing lunches for the next day. So go through your master list of activities and figure out which ones might be able to be paired up and done together so that you can kill two birds with one stone without really sacrificing the quality of what you're doing. You can also download the optimize your time checklists to get an even better idea of what can be eliminated automated delegated procrastinated on and duplicated. Okay, so we just went through a lot, I want you to push pause on this lesson right now and take a little break. This is the most information, heavy lesson that you're going to have and I don't want to overwhelm you.

So put the work away for a little bit. Take a moment to get your bearings. Let's recharge and come back to this after you've had a little bit of time to let everything sink in. All right, you Ready, let's get back to it. Okay, so now that you have an idea of what you're going to need to eliminate from your life, it's time to figure out the best way to tell someone you're bowing out. This can be one of the hardest things in the world for a working parent to do because they don't like disappointing people.

But it's a necessity in life, especially if you're a working parent. It also sucks to have to renege on a commitment that you've made, I totally get it. But things change and you simply can't be all things to all people. So I put a tip sheet together for you to help walk you through this process of bowing out of a commitment in that you've decided is not really a priority anymore. You can go ahead and download that tip sheet and use it as a guide. That tip sheet also goes into a lot more detail.

But here's an overview to give you an idea of the steps that you can take. Number one, remind yourself of the trade offs. Number two, remember that serving others when you're burned out doesn't really help anyone. Tip number three is timing is everything. Tip number four, Don't beat around the bush. Tip number five, don't leave it open ended.

Tip number six, be gracious and respectful. And tip number seven, keep it short and sweet. So that's a quick overview, but go ahead and download the top seven tips to bowing out of current commitments tip sheet. Now, that tip sheet goes into a lot more detail about how to implement these tips into your everyday life. But I just wanted to give you a quick overview. So now that you've gone through the process of bowing out of certain commitments that you have made in your life, then we're going to go over a process you can use to evaluate new commitments so you don't have to renege in the future.

And here's my top seven tips for evaluating new commitments as they come in so that you don't get overbooked and overwhelmed anymore. Tip number one Practice the pause. Tip number two, ask yourself whether this activity is aligned with your current values and priorities. Tip number three, ask yourself what you'll be saying no to if you commit to this tip number four, don't be afraid to say no. Tip number five, be thankful for the opportunity. Tip number six, don't feel compelled to provide excuses.

And tip number seven, remember that there will be other opportunities. So that's it for now, the more that you can do these seven things, the less you'll ever have to bow out of commitments because you'll be making more mindful decisions about how you commit yourself in the first place. You'll also begin to realize how nice it is to have some extra margin in your life. And to only have things on your schedule that you really want to do. Plus, you'll get better at this as you go and it won't be as scary or as intimidating. Alright, so we've gone How to say no to others.

And so now we're going to take a couple of minutes to discuss boundaries. If anything I see working parents struggling with having a lack of boundaries is probably the one thing that causes the most stress and chaos in their lives. Everyone has trouble setting boundaries at times. But I wanted to focus a little on this topic so that you can leave here feeling that guilt without feeling that guilt of disappointing others as you go forward. And I promise the better you get at setting boundaries, the more you're going to enjoy your life because you won't be doing so much out of obligation or guilt or surprise. Practicing setting boundaries is the best thing you can do to overcome that overwhelm.

There might be a lot of different things holding you back from setting boundaries in your life. Some of the most common reasons are number one, you hate disappointing others, too. You're afraid of getting fired. Three that a certain person might stop being your friend for Do people might think that you're unreliable? Five, that you'll experience some sort of backlash for saying no. that perhaps people will be disappointed in you.

Or maybe you want to say no, but you're just not really sure what to say. Or maybe it's always been your role to help others and you don't know how to stop. If any of these reasons sound familiar to you, make sure you note them on the boundary setting basics worksheet, and if any other things come come up for you, where you realize that you're holding yourself back from setting boundaries, make sure that you note that as well on the boundary setting basics worksheet. So here are a few things to think about as you begin setting and enforcing boundaries in your life. Number one, there are going to be some people who may not fully support your desire for a manageable schedule. These people have certain needs that they want met and they've identified you as someone who can meet them.

They may get annoyed, angry, disappointed or frustrated that you aren't saying yes to them immediately, especially if you have a history of saying yes to them in the past. But the people who you want in your life will respect your decision. They won't try to make you feel guilty for saying no. They can have their own responses that that they should still honor your decision. If they don't, I would suggest that you evaluate whether you want that person in your life, at least to the same extent as they have been. At the end of the day, it's true that there may be some consequences for saying no to others.

But when you're drowning and commitments and obligations, it becomes necessary to protect your time and your sanity. And yes, there may be some consequences to setting boundaries with others, but I think you'll find that most healthy people will totally understand and it's worth the shirt short term inconvenience in order to reclaim control of your life. Who Okay, so that was a lot of tips, strategies and exercises, but you made it Have a lot more ideas and tips for saving time and becoming more productive, which you can always find on my blog or in my Facebook community. But the point of this lesson wasn't necessarily to give you hundreds of ways to save time, I don't want you to have to sift through all of that. You don't have time for it. So what I wanted to do instead was walk you through a system that you could use to create a more balanced life on your own.

This is a framework it's a blueprint for a more balanced life. I wanted to give you the concrete tools and foundation that you need to question which activities are going to fulfill you and provide the most meaning in your life. And then from there, you can utilize any productivity or efficiency tools that you come across to continue to make time for what's really important to you. If you skip building this foundation, though, all of those efficiency tips are just going to increase the pace of your life and fill your life with more useless activities. So don't let that happen. There's really only one pitfall I want to mention for this entire life.

Lesson. And that is to be aware of how easy it is to arrange your life according to other people's expectations. Remember that this is your life, the people around you have their own agenda, and not in a bad way. It's just everybody's kind of living their life. If you don't protect your time, it's easy to get pulled into everyone else's life and forget about your own. So like Jim Rohn says, let's go back if like Jim Rohn says, if you don't design your life, your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan.

And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. There are about 1000 books out there on boundaries, but one of my favorites is boundaries, when to say yes, how to say no by Henry cloud and john Townsend. This is a great straightforward and clear guide to starting to set boundaries in your life. This is one of the first books I read way back when I realized I was there was something that I needed to start doing, but I wasn't really sure what and it got me on the right path. They also have a series of other specific books like boundaries and marriage boundaries with kids and so on.

So I highly recommend them. It's a really easy read. And they give you a lot of really good concrete tools that you can use to apply in your own life. And then for those of you who get a panic attack at the idea of setting boundaries, I'd also encourage you to check out codependent no more by melody Beatty. So she's one of the first people who helped me realize that I was 100% codependent on my relationships. I was so focused on being there for everyone in my life that I had no idea where I ended and someone else began.

My needs came after me. absolutely everyone else's and it was killing me. If any of that sounds familiar to you, I would highly recommend melody Beatty. She has a few different books out on this topic, but this is one of the first in the series. reading this book was a huge wake up call for me and my life immediately improved once I started implementing some of the tools that she offers. You made it Okay, so are you ready to start tackling that schedule?

Let's go Download the first exercise for module two, which is categorize your time to get started. Again, remember to take breaks and work at your own pace as you go through these exercises. And as always check in with us in the Facebook group to let us know how it's going. Or if you want any support or have any questions. We are totally here for you. Let's do it.