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Most of us equate being organized with being good at time management. Sorted inbox, perfect to-do list, color-coded calendar – that must mean you’re close to cracking it. But organization and time management are not the same skill, and the gap between them might be exactly what’s keeping you stuck. So if you’re organized and still chronically overwhelmed, I’d start here. Short one today, but it packs a punch.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Join the 10-week Bright Method program here: https://kellynolan.com/the-bright-method-time-management-course-with-kelly-nolan
Links you might enjoy:
- ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
- 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
- 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
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, and welcome back. All right. Today’s is gonna be short, but it’s gonna pack a punch. And a heads up, it’s a little bit harsher than I normally talk, but it’s not because I’m, like, you know, frustrated with you or anything like that. It’s, like, the frustration of this misconception around time management that gets me going on your behalf, ‘cause I think that this misconception makes a lot of people miss out on the results that they want.
So just this past week, three different women have said something to me along the lines of — and I totally get it, I’m not, again, not upset with them — they are saying something along the lines of, “I think I can just figure this out on my own. I’m pretty organized. I consider myself really organized.” And as I said, I completely get it. [00:01:00]
And even if you are super organized, if you still feel chronically overwhelmed, you may not be as good at time management as you think you are, and you might not be even close. And I say that because I think that when people are super organized, they think they’re close to cracking it. And I think it’s important to realize, no — you can be super organized, but you might not even be close to time management, like having a solid time management skill that will get you where you wanna go.
There is a fundamental misconception around time management that it is just about organization. Organization is about being really good at keeping track of things, keeping them in order, and finding them when you need them, and that’s excellent. [00:02:00]
Time management, in my book, is a skill of managing everything on your plate in a way that allows you to show up well in your roles and enjoy how it feels most of the time. Time management requires organization, yes, but it also requires more. Like, sitting here, I can think of five other things it requires beyond organization.
It’s about knowing when and how to make decisions about what you do and what you don’t do — sometimes hard decisions. It’s about understanding what things demand of you, how long things take, what is all required, all the little steps, so that you can plan realistically and create and protect a reasonable workload.
It’s about having a realistic game plan for following through on what you’ve decided to do. It’s knowing how to adjust when life shifts, because life is going to shift. And it’s about knowing when you can and should stop. [00:03:00] You can be excellent at organization and terrible, for now, at time management.
I think to bring this to life, I always find it really helpful to go to the physical, so let’s talk about packing for a minute. Let’s pretend you’re going on that weekend trip with friends. You gather a car full of items, and you are aiming to bring them all with you, but you are bringing a carry-on suitcase. You can organize all of that stuff to professional-level splendor. Everything perfectly folded, everything organized by category, everything labeled, packing cubes — and it’s still never all going to fit.
And if your solution to bringing the things you wanna bring on your trip is just focusing on organizing it even better, all while likely, by the way, beating yourself up for not working hard enough ‘cause it’s not working — that’s not going to get you where you wanna go. [00:04:00] It seems more obvious in that context, and so I think it’s helpful to spell it out that way.
Many of us are doing that with our time. You can have perfect lists, folders, processes, project boards, and inboxes, and you can still spend every evening thinking about what you didn’t get done. You can still feel pulled in a hundred different directions and like you have a hundred tabs open in your head.
You can still struggle to be present with your family. You can still feel like you’re drowning. The fact that you are tracking everything doesn’t mean you know how to manage everything in a way that feels good to you. And it’s a really important realization to have because I think a lot of women beat themselves up for not getting there sooner because they’re focusing on the organizational skill, and that skill’s just never gonna get them there.
And then I think what also gets me really heated — you probably hear it in my voice — is kind of… I guess it’s like an opportunity cost. [00:05:00] The more time you spend thinking just organizing’s going to help you get where you wanna go, the more life passes you by, the more time you could have had that felt more enjoyable and doable, just because you were very understandably focused on the wrong skill.
If you’re ready to focus on the right skill, if you’re ready for life to feel more calm and intentional, stop trying to solve your overwhelm by just getting more organized. Learn how to sculpt your workload into a reasonable one with clear game plans so you can actually accomplish the important things, even when life looks different week to week and life shifts on you and all that stuff.
Learn how to lighten your mental load so your brain is freed up to bring its A-game at work and be present at home. Learn how to relax during downtime with the peace of mind that everything else can get done later. It does not have to get done right now, and you truly can sit there and enjoy it without doing something productive. [00:06:00]
Learn the Bright Method. Join me for my November program. Organization may not be the solution, but there is a way to get life feeling more manageable and calm. Go to kellynolan.com/bright. Jump in. Let’s do this.
Links you might enjoy:
✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.
🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
