American culture is fixated on DOING – and those of us in it struggle to stop the doing to plan and prioritize. This quote caught my attention on that front: “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” The quote is by Amos Tversky and doesn’t relate to planning, but it made me think that we do risk wasting weeks, months, and years by not planning and prioritizing where we want to go. Busyness without direction doesn’t always get us where we want to go.
Let’s discuss – and walk through what this means from a practical perspective.
Other episodes referenced:
- Prioritization – Ep. 4 – “How to prioritize in a way that actually works”
- Weekly planning session – Ep. 8 – “Your new weekly planning session”
- Annual planning/Thinking Time – Ep. 33 – “Long-term planning: How to feel like YOU & create long-term plans”A full transcript will appear here within two weeks of the episode being published.
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To learn more about and sign up for the Bright Method 8-week program, click here: https://kellynolan.com/the-bright-method-time-management-course-with-kelly-nolan.
Full Transcript
Ep 55. We Waste Years By Not Wasting Hours
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: 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!
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Hey hey! All right, today I want you to buckle up because we are gonna nerd out together on something that is a little high concepty. It’s kind of nerdy, but it’s critical to time management and I really want to dig into it with you today. What prompted this episode is a quote I heard by a psychologist named Amos Tversky. I candidly know nothing about this person. I’m actually taking his quote and using it in a totally different context than I think they meant to, but the quote is: “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
Now, I think he meant it in more of an academic-research context and about the importance of taking breaks actually, which I can fully get behind if that’s what he meant. But when I heard it, I actually interpreted it more around what I think of as planning, and planning is so hard to motivate for, even for me still. There’s such a draw towards the doing versus the planning, and I think we really need to talk about this because while we, I think, all have this natural aversion to planning, for the most part, I really do believe that we could waste years by not being open to “wasting hours” by planning.
So I want to talk a little bit more today about what I mean by planning. I think that we kind of throw that word around but it could mean a lot of different things, and then the importance of it and then really bringing it to the practical reality of what does that mean because I at least used to know theoretically that planning was important, but I didn’t know what that meant. So I really want to make sure that we’re being clear on what we mean by it when I talk about planning.
So, first, I’m gonna talk about the context of this just in American culture. Next, I want to dig into the importance of planning. And then, third, how to really do this in a practical sense.
Context of Planning – 2:16
So just to give context, the reason I think this is so important to talk about is, as I said, in our American work culture, we heavily value doing. We talk about efficiency. We talk about doing more with less – less time, less people, lean teams, all that kind of stuff. We very much value the doing versus planning. We even think about planning as we’ve got to slow down to plan, when in reality, it’s not really slowing down. It’s just not quick wins I think is really what it comes down to.
If you compare a planning session versus spending the same amount of time in your email inbox, I think we can all understand that email typically (not for everybody but typically) is not your highest-value work, and yet, we would rather spend that same amount of time in email because email is quick wins. We see those emails come in. We see them go out. We see that number going down. We hit send. We get that dopamine hit of kind of checking something off the to-do list, and that feels good. Versus planning for the most part, I do think you can kind of leave a planning session feeling really good because you get this clarity and this peace of mind around it, but before planning and during a planning session, it’s just hard to motivate for. You’re not getting those quicker wins. It’s heavier intellectual work in a lot of ways. It’s harder to do, and you’re not getting that quick feeling of winning, and so, it’s just harder to motivate for.
And so, to me, a lot of people dread it. It’s kind of like working out. It’s like the first thing to go. If you’re feeling underwater, you’re just gonna skip a planning session. But I really want to address this today because of that quote (I just think it really makes it succinct) of you waste years by not being able to waste hours. To me, I take it in a different context of you could waste years of your life, of an organization’s production, whatever you want to think of it as, by not being able to “waste hours” by getting clear on the planning side of things.
What I Mean By “Planning” – 4:18
I want to talk about what I mean by planning kind of just from a high-level concept here. It comes to another quote. It comes back to another quote, and just as a sidebar, I love quotes because I don’t think in sentences. I think some people kind of think in words and sentences in their head. I don’t think that way. I’m not sure if that’s weird or normal, but because of that, I find quotes so useful because they put into words some things that I believe in that I haven’t yet been able to put into words well and definitely not in a succinct way. And so, that’s why I really love quotes.
So the quote I wanted to pull in this context is a quote — I actually couldn’t find the person who said this originally. I’ve definitely seen it in a lot of places. It’s very clearly not mine. But what the quote is is the importance of valuing direction over speed. That cuts to the heart so much around American work culture. I really believe that we value speed. We’re fixated on speed, as I said. Do more with less time and less people and all that kind of stuff. Without valuing, sufficiently, the direction that we’re trying to go in, the direction that we’re trying to leverage that speed in, we just don’t focus on that as well, and that is a big, big problem.
And so, when I talk about planning, it’s really the importance of figuring out what direction we want to go in, and to be clear in a more practical sense, it’s getting clear on, “Hey, what’re all the things we’re trying to do right now,” like get a bird’s eye view of, let’s say, the ten, twelve, however many projects we have going on, and really prioritize there and realize, “Hey, we’ve got limited time and capacity. We can’t do all these things. We can’t do all of them well. We can’t do the really high-priority things well if we’re trying to do all 15 of these things.” And so, which ones are we really prioritizing here given where we’re really trying to go, the bigger direction we’re trying to go in. Which projects serve that most efficiently, and how are we going to protect time and energy to do those well, and that means eliminating or punting some of this other stuff.
That is really what I mean by planning is having that clarity for yourself and then eventually potentially with teammates that you have to have that conversation with, really, that is what I mean by planning is understanding — clearing the backlog of things, all that kind of stuff that I think about. But the real takeaways are getting clear on where are we trying to go, how are we gonna get there in a realistic way, and really coming up with a gameplan to get there over time.
I want to keep talking about this a little bit before we move more into the practicalities because I think it’s really important for this to sink in for everybody. When I think about the speed versus direction dilemma that we have, and just to be clear, I think speed and direction can work very well together if direction is clear. Then, obviously, speed can be so valuable. But if you only focus on speed without clarifying the direction, that’s where you run into a lot of problems. That’s where busy-ness and spinning wheels comes in.
I really think of it as if you imagine a big dot, and we’re the dot, and you’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna do ten projects,” and you think of these as little lines with arrows coming out of them in all different directions, and some of those projects might go in the same direction, but some are going elsewhere. If you work really hard over the course of the year on all those different directions, it’s somewhat a crapshoot of where you’ll end up because this dot is being pulled in all these different directions, and it’s just kind of a crapshoot where it ends up. You might go somewhere where you didn’t want to go. You might just have forgone the ability to go where you wanted to go. You might not have gone anywhere because you’re getting pulled in all these different directions that they all cancel each other out, dilute each other out, and you just stay in the same place, versus if you get clear on, “Hey, this is the one direction we’re going in, and these are the three arrows that I think will get us there,” and you picture a dot with three arrows coming out of it that are pretty much pointing at the same spot, it’s not guaranteed. It’s not gonna be a perfect linear line, but your dot is going to move in the direction that you want it to go in. It just has a much higher chance of getting there than getting pulled in the ten different directions. I think that makes sense to everybody, put in a more realistic, practical context, small-scale. Just thinking about our personal life, let me put this in a more practical, maybe, small-scale example.
Let’s say over the next three months you decide, “I want to drink more water. I want to walk 15 minutes a day outside. I want to workout three times a week. I want to eat more protein. I want to sleep more. I want to stop drinking alcohol, and I want to read a book a month,” and maybe three more things because that’s kind of how we roll, especially in that New Years period. Now, I want you to think about that situation versus sitting down and realizing, “Okay, I’ve got just really limited time right now. I think the most important thing for me to do for my mental and my physical health would be walking 15 minutes a day outside for these next three months. So that’s what I’m gonna do for the next three months.”
Let’s assume that walking outside for those 15 minutes is a top priority, that it is the most important priority. Situation A or situation B, which one do you think is more likely for it to happen? It’s just that simple, right? I mean, that first scenario, you’re not even clear that it’s the most important. You’re trying to do a whole lot of things, and you have limited time or energy, and what’s probably gonna happen is you’re gonna kind of peter out on all of them, versus if you’re focused on just walking 15 minutes a day, that is the only new goal you have on that front to try and incorporate into your life, you’re pretty likely to do it. You’re much more likely to do it than in the first scenario, and that’s really what I mean.
By taking the time to sit down and plan and think, “Of all of these things I’m trying to do, what is really the most important thing for me right now?” Then you’re much more likely to accomplish it than trying to spin yourself around in a lot of different ways to make it happen.
Now, I know that this can sound idealistic in some ways. I think that there is a thought of, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” or “That’s cute that you think that I can do this at work.” But I want to really challenge you that it’s not just idealistic. Having these decisions made and these conversations (if you need to) at work is the epitome of strong leadership, in my book. I truly believe that making these tough calls, these uncomfortable calls, having these uncomfortable decisions in the sign of great leadership, both for you and how you can evaluate if you have strong leadership above you.
There’s a Tim Ferriss quote that I read. Tim Ferriss, if you don’t know him, has an awesome podcast that I really enjoy. It’s called The Tim Ferriss Show. He’s the author of The Four-Hour Workweek. I think that’s what it is. I think it’s something like that. I don’t subscribe to everything he talks about, but I really love his podcast. He has excellent people on and really deep dives into some stuff. It’s really excellent if you want to check it out. And he has a quote actually from Instagram stories that is harsher than the way I think of it as, but I want to share it because I think there’s enough validity behind it that it’s worth sharing even though it’s harsh.
The quote is: “Being busy is a form of laziness, lazy thinking, and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically-important but uncomfortable actions.” And I do believe in the heart of that. I think in some ways it is easier to say yes to everything, or at least easier in the short term. It is easier to just kind of spin and try and do everything. It is harder to whittle things down in an effective way, but it is so much more effective and, long-term, less stressful, more valuable in so many ways. It’s just having that front-end frustration of making these decisions that is so hard, but it benefits everyone from then on out.
Decide What’s Important For You – 12:31
And kind of digging into this one more layer down is it’s really about absorbing that you cannot do it all, and I think it’s really hard for us to stomach both for ourselves individually and an organization to stomach for itself. But it’s so true. It’s so simple that we cannot do it all, and therefore, we have to make decisions.
I want to bring another quote into this. It’s actually a quote that I read, another Instagram quote, from a woman who follows Catherine Brown. If you don’t know Catherine Brown, she goes by @_thecabro on Instagram, and she is a working mother. She works at Microsoft. She has two little kids. So especially if you’re a working mom with little kids, she’s an excellent follow because she shares a ton of practical strategies around workplace success and also juggling work and home and dividing up the household labor at home with a partner, if you have one. She’s just an excellent follow on that. A lot of practical tips.
This week, she was asking the women who follow her, “What are some things that you’ve learned this week?” And someone shared, “Not everything can be important at the same time. Decide for yourself what is.” And I just share this because it’s just another angle of getting at what we’re talking about, is really absorbing, “We cannot do the ten things we want to do all at the same time, all well at the same time. We have to decide.” If you don’t decide, it’s just a crapshoot of what gets done. It’s a crapshoot of where that dot goes. But if you decide where you want to go, you’re much more likely to do that well, and that will involve eliminating or punting or accepting C-level work on a different area in order for you to get where you want to go well. But that’s okay. That is strategic. That is what leadership is, and that’s what we need to strive for.
So during this second part of this of why we plan, I know I’m kind of a little bit spinning in my own little circles here, but I really get passionate about this, of really absorbing, “We cannot do it all, we have to decide what is going to get done, and therefore–.” That is what planning is. That is what planning is is really getting clear on what is all on my plate, and then deciding what are the most important things, how am I gonna bring those things to life, and how am I gonna ensure I have time or energy to do those things, which involves eliminating or punting other things on my plate. This can be done individually. This also can often be done in your career role and might involve the need to have conversations with other people around it.
Now, what’s related to this, just a podcast episode that’s related to this is episode four on prioritization, so check that out if you would like to. I’ll also just write it in the show notes so that you don’t have to remember which episode it is right now and can keep listening to this. But check out the show notes on that front if you would like to.
So to wrap up this point, let me just kind of go back to the beginning to give context to where we are. Again, that quote that really triggered all of this is: “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” What that comes down to is really valuing the role of planning and not just do, do, doing in our life. By planning, what I mean by that is the importance of really absorbing that we cannot do everything we want to do and need to do, and so, we have to make decisions on what we are prioritizing and how to get there, and then ensuring we have time and energy enough to do that, and that can include eliminating or punting other projects.
Real Life Examples From My Clients – 16:20
And I just want to share some examples before I keep going. We’re going to turn to what does this mean in a practical way next, but I want to share some examples to bring this to life a little bit more, and more to let you know that you can do this in real life. The examples are conversations that I have seen my clients go through and also that I’ve experienced myself in relation to these types of conversations. What I want to be clear on is that sometimes these conversations work and sometimes they don’t, but I still believe they work. In a sense, I believe these conversations work even when they don’t play out in the way that you want them to.
So an example of it working is I had one client who worked in finance at a huge corporation supporting multiple departments. So there were a lot of people claiming that their projects were her priority. And after going through The Bright Method program she shared this. She said: “I had more confidence in pushing a prioritization conversation at work with my boss and business partners. I was able to get alignment to work on three big priorities for the quarter, only three. With two weeks left in the quarter, we’re on track to deliver all three, something my boss didn’t expect would be possible.”
I love this for the obvious reasons. There are two reasons I want to point it out with you. She had to protect time to come up with her proposal to do this on her own and then have a conversation with her boss, and I just want you to see this because that’s gonna move into our second point of we have to protect time for this stuff. It doesn’t just happen. But by protecting time and getting the clarity in her own head about what the priority should be, then having conversations and getting buy-in with the people around her, she was able to streamline, I think it was like 12 to 15 priorities down to 3.
The second point that I find fascinating about this is that she went in, again, with something like 12 to 15 priorities that she felt like without this conversation she was going to be expected to hit all 12 or 15, and with work, with her boss and just her own clarity, she was able to whittle it down to 3, and even then her boss didn’t, in reality, think she’d be able to do it. And I just find that fascinating that she was having about 12 priorities imposed upon her, when in reality, her boss didn’t even think she could do all 3. But getting clarity around just three, she was able to do them all well. I just find this work-culture thing that we have going on where it’s like, “Yeah, of course you can do all 12.” Where in reality we know, “We’ll be surprised if you get all three done,” that is such a weird place to be operating from, and instead of stressing ourselves out trying to accomplish 12 and then being pleasantly surprised if we get 2 or 3 done, why don’t we make that decision on the front end? Why don’t we get clear on, “These are the three that we really want to get done,” not just the random three that we might get done if we’re trying to do twelve, and save all of us a lot of stress, a lot of time, a lot of energy, and leverage that time or energy towards the three that are most important.
So I hope that makes sense. I know I was a little rambly there, but I just find this stuff fascinating that had she not had this conversation, she would have been killing herself and her team to get 12 priorities done, where in reality, 3 were great, and actually she came out looking incredible because her boss didn’t even think she could get those three done.
Now, I have to be clear, seeing it not work out, where you can have a similar conversation — I’ve had clients have similar conversations, and they don’t get clarity. There’s a lot of, “Get it all done. Figure out a way to get it all done,” or “Yeah, I know this sucks, but we really need to keep going with it,” or questions about, “Hey, is there light at the end of this tunnel, here?” and they’re saying, “Not really.” And that, even though it is not the ideal outcome we’re hoping for, is still incredibly critical information and data to have for you because you can take this in a lot of different directions, but to have it very clearly said to you, essentially, “You need to do an impossible workload to do well here,” there is something powerful that shifts in you when you hear that because you’re like, “I know this is objectively impossible. I know I cannot win by your rules. So I’m gonna figure out what winning looks like by my own rules now.”
And that might be deciding what winning looks like in your role and going after those things and letting things go and just being okay with that, knowing that you are hitting the top priorities from the way that you’re thinking and that you’ve had conversations to try and get by in there, and you know you cannot possibly get it all done, so you’re just not willing to sacrifice your life anymore to work so hard to inevitably not accomplish what they’re asking you to accomplish, it might be putting an exit plan in place. I have had it work out where a client got at least a 20% raise because of the crazy expectations on her. That’s not typical, I would say. But it’s definitely not — the lawyer in me is like, “Disclaimer: I can’t guarantee that.” But it’s more to the point of when you have this clarity around what’s a realistic workload, what should be a priority given what you’re seeing, and you get pushback on, “No, just get it all done,” and it’s impossible, you know it’s impossible to get it all done, there is something that shifts in you that allows you to get more creative on, “Where am I gonna go from here?” Instead of just continuing to kind of run into a brick wall trying to get work done and feeling bad about yourself versus understanding this is not a you problem, this is an organization problem.
Taking a step back again, what I really want to just emphasize here is we need to decide what is most important to us individually and potentially with your department, with your organization, whatever it might be, and what the top priorities are and really letting go of the rest. And episode four on prioritization can help more there on that side of things, but regardless, we really need to absorb. We cannot do it all, and we have to make decisions.
Practical Planning Session – 22:22
Now, moving into the last point of this is what does that mean practically, because I used to be like, “Yeah, I know planning’s important, but how do I do it, what do I do during it, what does it even mean from a practical standpoint?” What I want to talk about today is just really emphasizing the need to protect time for it because planning does take time. I want you to really absorb the fact that this level of planning that we’re talking about, this level of understanding what is all on your plate, really getting clear like a bird’s eye view. “What are all the projects that I have going on on my plate? What are all the repetitive things I’m being expected to do,” and then thinking about, “Okay, what’s my capacity,” or “What’s my team’s capacity?” And in light of that, what of all these things is going to be put into that capacity. What are we going to prioritize and make space and time for and what are we gonna let go so that we have the time or space to do that. All of that requires time and, really, the ability to focus on that high-level work.
Now, there’s no right or wrong from a practical standpoint of what this means, but for me what I’ve found that works well for myself and what I teach in The Bright Method and tends to work well for many women is two main things. One is a weekly cleanslate session. It’s really a time to make sure that you got everything done that you wanted to get done and look ahead. I have a podcast episode on just that cleanslate session. I’ll link to it in the show notes. And then separately, there’s a time once or twice a year that I really encourage you to protect time, like three to four hours just once or twice a year. I think of it as thinking time. I’m terrible at branding. But that’s the way I think of it is just thinking time. Once or twice a year, hopefully you can go to a special location. For me, my ideal is sitting by a river in Colorado and bringing a journal. I’m not a big journaler, but it is the time that I do just let the ideas flow and write as fast as I can down on a piece of paper. That’s a time where I really like — it’s just a time to look up and be like, “What direction am I going in? Where would I like to go? How can I bridge where I’m at to where I want to go in the best way possible, in the most realistic way possible?“
So those are the two main planning sessions that I do. Again, I did not know what kind of planning meant. It took me a while to figure out what works well for me in these contexts. Within The Bright Method program, I give an agenda for that weekly planning session that people can tailor and personalize to themselves, and I also give a worksheet that, really, I use as more things to think about and journal about during the once or twice a year that I actually journal. I give a worksheet to help kind of tease all of that out, to bring it to life more because I am someone that needs to be told — kind of have step by steps, not just high-level concepts. But again, it really comes down to protecting time to do this type of stuff, to look up, to make those decisions on what is the priority you’re going after and not just expecting it to happen in your day-to-day life.
Start With The Day-To-Day – 25:24
A couple things I want to say here that are a little bit miscellaneous but in relation to these planning sessions are if you’re just getting started with these, don’t start with the big thinking-time one. I’m actually a big believer that we need to start with getting a handle on our day-to-day life before we kind of think about where do we want to go. Part of that is related to I think that when we are so busy, we often don’t actually know where we’re at. And so, it is very helpful to understand where you’re at before you decide where you want to go. So that’s one reason. I also just feel like I didn’t have the brain space to even know myself and know where I wanted to go when I was feeling stretched too thin. And so, by getting a handle on the day-to-day, that gives you more breathing space and mental space to have these conversations with yourself.
So if you need to kind of know where to start, I would start more with the weekly cleanslate session than the larger thinking time. Again, I’ll link to the podcast episodes about those two things. They kind of give high-level overviews. Obviously, in the program we dig into them a lot more, but I give you high-level overviews in two different podcast episodes, so I’ll link to those in the show notes. But when in doubt, start with the kind of day-to-day stuff, which is more in relation to that weekly cleanslate session.
Long-Term Plan At Least Once a Year – 26:42
Another point I want to make is the importance of having these thinking times once or twice a year and not just doing it once and then kind of thinking you’re done. I don’t think we think that way, but as I said, it’s hard to prioritize planning, so we kind of have a big planning session at one point and then five years can go by before we think about it again. And the reason I think it’s really important to do at least once a year (if you can do it twice a year, wonderful) is that the direction we want to go in changes. The direction we would have set for ourselves at 30 is different than the one we would have set for ourselves at 20 or the one that we’ll want to set at 40 or 50 or 60. And so, you really need to think about it year to year, I believe, because it obviously — life changes and our priorities change, and so, the direction you’re gonna want to set for yourself is going to change, and that’s why I think it’s really important to do that.
I also want to clarify that I hold all of these things flexibly. So whatever direction you set for yourself, if something happens, you can be flexible with it. I really want you to hear me on that side of things, but I still believe that even if we all know curveballs are gonna hit in our life and things might change, having the clarity of where you want it to go is really important when you’re shifting versus, again, trying, if you picture that dot with the ten lines coming out of it, then a curveball hits, you’re like, “I don’t even know what this does to where I was trying to go,” where if you had the clarity of where you’re trying to go, you are more likely to be able to shift and adapt to a more compromised position where you actually want to go versus just kind of spinning out because you’re not even sure where you were when the curveball hit.
Another point I want to give is just more examples of what has come out of this long-term planning for me that I think is just important to bring it to light just so that I think it just practically is more useful to hear real-life examples. For me, when I have sat, ideally, when we’re in Colorado if I can grab a bike and bike half an hour or 40 minutes to an isolated spot on a river and sit there and journal, that’s where I feel most like myself. That’s where I feel most stable, and I can think about really how do I want my life to feel in a year or three years or whatever time you want to think of it in, and then what has to be true for that to happen. The things that have come out of this for me are moving from California to Minnesota, having the clarity like I really want to be around family. That was something that came out of it for me that slowly over time then I could bring it to life and it actually happened. It also gave me a lot of clarity on what do I want this business to be in my life, and therefore, really shifting how I run the business, really shifting to just running two programs a year, I’m sure I’m leaving money on the table by doing it, but it is what fits my life most right now with little kids, and that clarity came from sitting there and really thinking about, “What do I want this business to be? How do I want my life to feel? How do I get there in a practical way,” and then shifting my business model to help me get there.
So those are just two examples that took a lot of journaling and a lot of writing. There were a lot of other things that I wrote down that I decided not to pursue, but picking those things with the clarity of, “These are what I want to work on over the next year,” really helps you get to where you want to go and spend the rest of the year, honestly, kind of in the weeds. I mean, our lives can be so busy, especially during certain phases of life, and so, acknowledge that most of the time you’re not gonna be thinking about this stuff. Most of the time you’re just gonna be dealing with what’s in front of you, but by having time protected once or twice a year to really think big picture and really think, “Where do I want to go? How am I gonna make that happen?” Calendaring out the little steps to get there, that allows you to live in the weeds more but slowly be chipping away towards the longer view that you want without having to think big picture about where you’re going all the time.
I think the biggest takeaway here on a high-level thing is that, as with everything time management, you have to be intentional, both on what we’re picking to do with your time and also intentional on protecting time to decide what you’re going to pick to do with your time. You can be flexible with it, but you do have to be intentional and proactive about this stuff because it doesn’t just happen. If you don’t protect the time for it, you’re going to spend most of your time in reactive mode reacting to what everybody else wants you to do without the clarity of what do you want out of this. That’s why I think that it’s so important to protect this time. That weekly planning session and that yearly big-picture thinking time so that you have that time protected for you intentionally to then intentionally pick what you want to do with the rest of your time.
So I hope that made sense! I know I kind of threw a lot of random things at you. It’s a little bit high level. It’s a little bit spinning in my head. But it’s so critical. These planning sessions (particularly that weekly planning session) are the cornerstone of The Bright Method. I think of any solid planning, time management system, you have to protect time to plan so that you are setting your own direction and not just focusing on speed. We need to protect the time for it. We need to honor it. It is going to be less short-term satisfying but it is so much more powerful in the long-term, and that’s really what comes down to that quote, for me, of don’t waste years by not being willing to waste a couple hours on planning. And I don’t think it’s a waste of time, but I think we think of it as a waste of time sometimes, and that’s why I think that quote really spoke to me on this front. This is the time that you set your direction so that you can leverage your speed to get actually where you want to go.
I hope that this episode motivates you to protect time for these planning sessions, starting with that weekly planning session (and listen to that episode if you need some guidance on that front), and then slowly over time as you get more of a handle on your day to day and you get more breathing space and mental clarity, that bigger-picture, longer-term planning as well.
If you want more help on this than what I share in the podcast, if you want the little step-by-step agendas that I come up with for both of these planning sessions, please know that I am running my next Bright Method program in the fall. The waitlist is open, and what’s really fun is if you jump on the waitlist, you can add all the calls to your calendar now to block your time. I know that we’re just in May right now at the time of this recording. But we will be in September before we know it, and I know that you’re probably already planning out that far. And so, by blocking time in your calendar, you can block time for those calls right now if you would like to join the calls. Just know that the calls are recorded, so if you can’t make a call or two or any of them, you do get the recordings of the program calls for the program and then three months after as well.
In addition, on the website, which is www.kellynolan.com/bright (like The Bright Method), you can join the waitlist. You can get all that information I just talked about. You also can get links to PDFs to share with your employer if you want to see if your employer will cover it in whole or in part. I also just created different PDFs so that there’s the general one, which I’ve always had, that you can share with your employer that has information about the program and things like that, but there also now are specific ones for people in the medical field, the attorney field, and also I believe corporate. So if you fall into one of those categories, just know that there are now PDFs that are designed just for those tracks as well. So you can check those out on the website at www.kellynolan.com/bright.
Most importantly, thank you for being here! I hope that this made sense. I’d love to hear your feedback on it, and I will catch you in the next episode!
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