10 Time Habits That Can Quietly Wreck Your Day

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Thought it would be fun to go through 10 things that can wreck your day – sometimes, without you realizing it.

Full transcript:

Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.

Hey. Hey Ian. Welcome back. All right. Today I thought it’d be kind of fun to go through 10 habits that are time related that can quickly and quietly wreck your day. So we’re just gonna kick it off, and I’m just gonna go through one each at a time and kind of spitball about ’em a little bit. So the first one is telling yourself that you can just squeeze in an extra task as you run out the door.

I don’t think we need to talk about this one a whole lot. I think we all are familiar with it and it is one of those [00:01:00] things that makes a ton of sense, especially as we remember the little things that come up. And so when this is you. The first thing I wanna say is the exception to the rule. For me, it is always smart to start laundry as long as it’s quick.

I will say that just those things that we’ve talked about, the getting the machines running first thing where if you’re new here, I’ll just quickly say that there’s this woman named Lisa Woodruff. She runs more of like a home organization company called Organized 365. And when I was thinking I was gonna do home organization, she had this.

I can’t remember, probably on a podcast, a thing about getting the machines running first and how when you can get the machines running like a dishwasher or a laundry machine, you’re essentially like multiplying what you’re doing at any given time. And so along those lines, getting laundry going, even if it makes you a couple minutes late, is usually pretty good in my book.

Usually not for maybe like the most important [00:02:00] things, but. Almost anything else, it’s really worth it to me. So I just throw that out there as that’s usually my one exception, as long as it’s fast. But for anything else? For anything else, just have a hard rule of no. Like you don’t go do anything else to squeeze it in before you go out the door.

Now, I think the reason that some of us do this though is ’cause we worry we’ll forget, which is very understandable. It’s like, I’m gonna forget to do it if I don’t do it right now. And so if that is you. Consider capturing that thing and parking it somewhere that makes sense to you, so you will trust that you will be reminded to do it later.

Obviously for me, that could be a calendar. Sometimes it’s just an alarm. Like sometimes I’ll like push my phone down and say, set an alarm for. An hour, an hour and a half, two hours from now when I kind of know I’m gonna be back at home or yeah, in that spot that I could do it. Set an alarm to remind me to [00:03:00] do X, Y, Z, and then you’ll get an alarm.

At that time, you can just double check as it’s being made that make sure it like is does get set. ’cause Siri can be a little finicky, but setting that alarm, making sure it’s labeled in the right way, that will remind you like future you to do the thing. It’s a lot easier to let it go. So just throw that out there.

That for me, often when I get panicky about something that pushes me into doing something I don’t have time for, or even when I’m working, I’m not leaving the house, but I’m working and I get like derailed because I’m like, oh, I should do that thing. Often it’s the urgency is not, it actually has to get done.

The urgency is if I don’t do it right now, I will forget to do it. And so help yourself out. By setting something up to help future, you know, to do it. And that will allow current you to let it go. Okay, so time habit number one that can quietly wreck your day is just really trying to squeeze an extra task in as you run out the door.[00:04:00]

And other than the exception of laundry, really trying to not do that and. Instead setting up something, calendar, alarm, whatever, to help future, you know, to do it. I will also broaden this to say just trying to squeeze anything in can often be a recipe for disaster. I really think about this in terms of like.

Calendaring and just the number of things we would just squeeze in. And if everything on average takes five to 15 minutes, if you calendar them all for 15 minutes, like game of averages over time, I should say everything takes like five to 25 minutes. And so if you calendared everything for 15 minutes, game of averages, it would probably take that amount of time.

If you see how much time those things stack up into, you realize squeezing those things in is not a great approach. And doing it more intentionally and sprinkling them out over time, or planning for a power hour, but protecting a whole hour for it. That’s how you really do those [00:05:00] types of things in a real way versus just trying to squeeze them all in around everything else you have going on that day.

You’re kind of dismissing how long I was gonna say those things, but all the things take and how limited your time is and how that’s not gonna work. Okay. Second thing, saying yes to anything without checking your calendar first. And I mean anything, this is something that, man, I do this too. I still sometimes am tempted to do it.

I’ve talked about that in relation to that speaking engagement a couple months ago that I almost said yes to without really thinking it through on the calendar and. I do it even like, I don’t know why sometimes I’m still like, yeah, I don’t think I have anything. Tomorrow. I could do that. And then I go look at my calendar and I do have things tomorrow morning.

It’s really one of those things that we really have to work on. I am not allowed to say yes to anything without checking my calendar. Now what that looks like, you can still express so much enthusiasm and say, this set really sounds wonderful. I need to [00:06:00] check my calendar before I commit. But man, I hope I’m free and can do it.

Something like that. But really go home and check your calendar. And you know me, look for the availability and if it’s simple availability, that’s the end of it. But also always consider what is all the work that goes into doing that thing successfully, and do I want to do all of that? Even the simple things, you know, you’re like, yeah, I can meet someone for coffee, but if you also have to shower when you may not have showered yet, if you have to drive there and drive back, you know, if you have to get dressed, like all that kind of stuff, it, it does take time.

Then it’s important to factor all of that into the equation. So the second thing is. Instead of always saying yes or saying yes to anything without checking your calendar, really build in that pause. Check the calendar, and think about the broader implications of that. Yes, as well. Okay, third time habit that can quietly wreck your day.

Not checking, driving directions and traffic for that time of [00:07:00] day well in advance. And this is one of those things that, whew, we’ve all like stumbled upon the thing where we were like, I didn’t realize traffic was gonna be this bad, or I didn’t realize that thing was so far, or I didn’t realize there was construction right now, or whatever it might be.

And there are just such handy tools now to really help with that. I love using Google Maps. Like you put it in like the driving and then you say you want to arrive by. And I’ll put in usually an arrive by time of like five to 10 minutes before an appointment if I have to like park, find parking, find the right place to go to, all that kind of stuff.

And if you can put it the specific day of the week, so like a Monday, a Wednesday, Tuesday, blah, blah, blah. And the time you wanna arrive, it will give you an estimate of how, when you should leave based on typical traffic during that time. And man, it saves me. So I just throw that out there that don’t wait to look up traffic around when you think you should leave.

Really put that in, do a bit of that [00:08:00] work. I love doing that during a Friday planning session. Looking ahead at meetings, if there’s any driving time involved, really plotting out the drive and seeing how when I should leave based on that. It’s hugely, hugely helpful. It doesn’t take a ton of time, and it just saves so much headache and hassle down the road.

Number four, crawling into bed with your social media app of choice, and then looking up, you know, bleary-eyed, 90 minutes later, social media or whatever your. Drug app of choice is they are all really designed, as we all know, to suck us in. And there are a lot of very smart and a lot of them very smart people trying to make these apps as appealing as as addictive as possible.

So one thing that I do well, and then I will say one thing that I do not do well that I’m gonna work on, but one thing I do well. Is having an app like Opal, OPAL. That’s the one I use. There are other ones like Roots. There are other ones like Brick. I [00:09:00] think Brick You Can Time. I’m not sure though, what I love about Opal.

I can set reoccurring blocks to lock me out of certain apps on my phone, so I can still have my phone. I can still use it as a camera for my kids. I can still get texts and calls from my husband when he is coming home from work. But Opal will and I do pay for it so that I, I cannot override it. And I have tried many times, so you really can’t override it, but you can set it so that it locks you out of certain apps.

For me, it’s Instagram, Facebook, Reddit. I think that might be it. Those are the ones that I can really get sucked into and I get locked out every day from four to five 30, so when my kids get home, I’m fully focused on them, and then also 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM to really protect my sleep. It is game changing.

I think it’s about a hundred dollars a year. I cannot tell you how much sanity and sleep it has given me. To me it is. Probably some of the best money I’ve spent right up there with house cleaners, and [00:10:00] so I just share that with you that that is something I do really well, that I’m grateful for. One thing I would really like to do though is not have my phone in my bedroom, and that is something that I do not do well at, so I can crawl into bed with my phone.

Luckily, my social media stuff’s usually blocked out by then, but I think I need to just add some more apps, at the very least, to my like evening block. And at the best I would really like, I need to buy one of those like cool hatch alarm clocks or just a basic alarm clock and put my phone, plug it in downstairs.

’cause that would be really great. I do worry about phone calls though, so if anyone listening to this has figured that out. I think what I need to do right now is at least just block like safari, like the internet off of my phone after 8:00 PM too. That would be a really good move, so I should do that.

Okay.

Point five is relying on memory for anything. I don’t know why. I still [00:11:00] think sometimes I will say 80% of the time I’m very good at this. 20% of the time, I’m still like, yeah, I’ll remember that. Especially in the shower or as I’m running around upstairs, I’m like, yeah, I’ll remember that I need to do this.

Like how great that I remembered. I’m so proud of myself for remembering to do this thing, and then I quickly forget. Again, really counting on your brain to remember anything. I don’t think it’s a fair thing to expect of ourselves because we are. Constantly juggling so much that that thing you just remembered will really, I mean it is gonna get boxed out by something else in any second.

And so really prioritizing, capturing things is really, really smart. Again, for me, I love Siri Plus reminders. I’ll just like be walking around and be like, Siri, remind me. Five minutes to do this thing. Siri’s not very good at reminding you to do something. I find. I don’t think the reminder function is all that great, so if I really have to remember something time sensitive and I’m on the go, I’ll set an alarm for that thing.

The capturing of [00:12:00] using reminders for me is just really capturing the idea and not necessarily having to do it five minutes later, but just capturing it and then I’ll process it later in the ways that I’ve talked about in the past. Okay. Sixth time habit that can quietly wreck your day is keeping your calendar and your to-do list separate.

I really do not understand where this came from. I mean, kind of, I just think that, I don’t know, for me, growing up hard events, events, you could not move phone calls, meetings, that kind of stuff went in your calendar and to-dos went on a to-do list, but all of those things. All draw from the same bank of time, which is your awake hours.

And we have to tie, first of all, task to time, both in terms of when are we gonna do something, but also how long are they going to take and tie them to time. And the tool we use to manage our time is our calendar. So that’s [00:13:00] my belief is that everything needs to go into the calendar. So that you have clarity around when you’re gonna do things, you have clarity around does it all fit together?

And if not, you can make adjustments on the front end instead of constantly scrambling and wondering why you didn’t get everything done. I’ll also say it’s really why I don’t like any of the concepts where people are like, have your top three things you need to do today or your top one thing you need to do today.

Like the one thing to me that just ignores the fact that sometimes your one thing could take. 20 hours to do, or your three things could stack up into, you know, as I said, like 20 hours. Like not having any clarity around how long do these things take and do they actually fit in my day? And even if you had just one thing that took 45 minutes, but you’re in eight hours of meetings all day like that also isn’t going to work.

And so that’s what I mean by, I really, really think [00:14:00] that we have to keep our calendar events and our task to-dos all together in the calendar so that we can see how do these all fit? Do they all fit? What’s the realistic plan? And we can always move it around as I, I’m a huge proponent of time blocking in a very flexible way, but we do need to time block so that we can see if our plan is realistic and doable.

As I said, if it can all come together, fit together within the hours of the day, in the hours that are your awake hours, along with everything else you have to do that day. I will also note here though, that the only things in your calendar are not just events and things you put on a to-do list. That there are hours and hours of things we do on the repetitive personal and work things in our life.

And so if you have tried time blocking before, but you looked at a somewhat open calendar, people in corporate are laughing. There’s no open calendar in a lot of [00:15:00] corporate, like meeting heavy culture. But even if you just had just your meetings in your calendar and you just started adding your to-do list in there and it didn’t work for you, that is why, because you weren’t accounting for the hours and hours of repetitive personal and work tasks that you have on your plate before you can get to the to-do list stuff.

That’s a huge part of what we work in in the Bright Method. When you work with me, you’re gonna spend at least two to three to four weeks building out the repetitive stuff before we even get to the to-do list stuff, which is hard. But actually sets you up for a lot of success because your plans will actually be realistic because they account for everything.

Okay, next tip. Treating sleep in any way other than essential. Now, when we were younger, we might have been able to live a life where we didn’t have to do this, but if you were around my age. Like I’m 40. Sleep is really make or [00:16:00] break on a lot of things. A lot and we know this and so I will just throw out there that really treat sleep as essential as anything else you’re doing.

So for me, I calendar my sleep. A calendar when I wanna start heading into sleep. It really helps me protect the hours that I want for sleep. I also, I’m not saying everybody is this, I have also realized alcohol really disrupts my sleep, even a little bit of it. So I’ve had to cut out most alcohol in my life.

I do sometimes drink when I’m social, not even all the time. I went to. Super Bowl party last night as I record this and didn’t drink. It’s just one of those things that I’ve just realized over time the cost to me and my sleep and the resulting like prickliness and lack of motivation the next day. But I just throw that out there for what it’s worth.

I also try to cut out caffeine at a certain time of the day. I cut out dark chocolate a certain time of the day. Just really do try to prioritize sleep as best I can, because I do think it has to be [00:17:00] the number one, or at least a very top thing that has ripple effects on how we feel, how we operate, all of that the next day.

And then, as I mentioned, put it in the calendar. If things are important to you, you calendar them, and that is one of those things that really needs to be in there. It also has the added benefit of white space in your calendar Then is truly free time versus where you’re like, well, am I asleep by then? Do I wanna be asleep by then?

Should I be asleep by then? It’s all clarified for you and less mental gymnastics. All right. Next one is thinking you’ll have energy for productive things at night, unless you are a night owl. I will give that exception. I have done a whole episode on that. I will put the number of it in the show notes, but really owning the fact that, and you know who you are.

If after work you do not have energy to do productive things, own it. Just accept that about yourself. Own it and [00:18:00] work with it, and check out that podcast episode on what to do if you don’t have energy for productive things after work, after kids go to bed, whatever it might be. Second to last tip, not blocking time to prep for or follow up after meetings.

This is a big one. I think the prep is pretty self-explanatory. I think a lot of us understand, okay, we have meetings we need to prep for them. That could look different for every meeting. Some meetings really just need like five minutes of prep. It’s like, who am I meeting again? When was the last time I talked about them?

What’s like the one takeaway I need from this work meeting? Or I just wanna. Enjoy it. How do I wanna feel? That kind of stuff. Five minutes might be sufficient for other big meetings, obviously it can go on the other extreme where you have to prep documents, you have to have meetings, you have to, as a team, prepare for it.

You have to individually prepare for it. You might wanna practice out loud. Prepping can look a whole lot of ways, but regardless, protecting the time to do it is really big. I just throw that out there for you, [00:19:00] that really protect that time and then the follow-up is huge. That’s something that I didn’t realize until a lot later, but you might not know what the follow-up’s gonna be when you block this.

I do this kind of blocking in my Clean Slate weekly planning session. Have an whole episode about that. I think it’s episode eight. Somewhere around there, but blocking for any meeting that you have follow up time, even just 15 minutes is a great reminder to go back and look at meeting notes or think about the meeting again and think, did I say I would do anything?

Did I say I would send an email? Do I need to do anything coming outta that? And if so, it’s a nice check of like, oh yeah, I need to do that. And if you need to do more work than 15 minutes, you can calendar it later. What we’re trying to prevent. Is just forgetting to do those things, which I very much do that.

Like I would be someone who would like just walk away and never think about it again. And so we really are just trying to build in a backstop measure to prevent that. And then again, you can calendar time later to do the actual things that [00:20:00] you need to do. Okay, final time, habit that can quietly wreck your day is sticking with a system that is no longer working and assuming you are the problem.

Now, this is something I used to do. I, as I’ve previously mentioned, was a paper planner, user and lover all the way through law school. And then I got into actually becoming a practicing attorney, and that system was one kind of yanked away from me. I mean, so much is done with digital calendars that you can be kind of forced into it, but I didn’t.

Appreciate that shift and what it meant for me. And so I was like kind of trying to keep some of my old systems of the to-do list and the post-it notes and all that kind of stuff. That was like akin to the paper planner with this new system and not creating my new system, but also being like, well, these old systems that I’m still using parts of used to work, so I know they work.

So the problem must be me. And it took a [00:21:00] long time to realize. No, the systems that got me really, really far just can’t keep up with my life now. And it’s not a me thing, it’s just a system failure and I’ve gotta switch out and find a new system that can keep up with my life now. And so if that’s you, switch it up.

It makes you smart. If you’re feeling scattered and stretched too thin and overcommitted and just stressed out and confused because the system that used to work for you is resulting in you feeling the way you are now, it’s smart not to settle for that anymore. If I can help you swap out that system that’s designed for professional working women that can keep up with really complicated lives, I would love to help you and I would love to help tailor it to you and your industry and your family and your preferences as well.

So if I can do that, jump over to Kelly nolan.com/bright. I would [00:22:00] love to. And more importantly, I just hope that all of these tips give you something to noodle on. I know that they don’t all apply to every person, but it was kind of a fun, wide ranging list of things that I see derail people’s days that I just wanted to speak to.

And hopefully you got one or two things out of it that will be fun to implement. Alright, thank you for being here and I’ll catch you in the next episode.

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10 Time Habits That Can Quietly Wreck Your Day

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