You’ve probably heard me say (98493 times) that everything comes back to time. This explains why it’s smart to streamline tasks (which all require time) in your calendar. It also plays another role: anything that bugs you in your life can also be alleviated and/or have clarity and progress brought to it through using our calendar. Let’s discuss a lot of practical examples!
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Full Transcript
Ep 66. Examples of How Everything Comes Back to Time
[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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Kelly Nolan: Hey, hey! Welcome back! All right, if you have worked with me before, or even if you’ve listened to this podcast in full, you have probably heard me say many, many times that everything comes back to time, and I typically talk about this in, I guess, two different contexts. The first is the one that most people have heard me talk about in the sense that I really kind of beat that drum of everything comes back to time when I am setting up the premise for The Bright Method, when I am getting people to understand why a digital calendar, even if they are paper and pen lovers, really shines when it comes to time and task management.
Just to give a quick summary of that before we move onto the next element, the next context that we’re gonna dig into more today, the real reasons for this are that we’ve kind of grown up using calendars for events or things we do with other people and then the action items that require our time live on to-do lists, Post-It Notes, a ton in our head, email inbox, all these other places, but at the end of the day, they all, no matter where they live, require our time, and we need to have clarity on how they come together from the same bank of time, which is our awake hours. Can all of those action items that live in all those different places come together and pull from the single pot of awake hours we have to give to them in a way that’s realistic and in a way that gives us the breathing space that we want in our life.
And so, that’s kind of why I kind of bang that everything-comes-back-to-time drum because to me the best way to see that, to see if they can come together in that realistic way, is to use a tool designed to manage time, which is a calendar, and in particular, a digital calendar, which we’ve talked about before in the past as well.
That context is still valid. It’s not really what I want to focus on today. I think people hear that, and they’re like, “Okay, let me dig into the time-management element of this,” and so, they start using a digital calendar, but there is an element of very understandably we all go live our life and we forget about the kind of intellectual underpinnings of this system, and instead we’re living our life and we think, “Oh, I’ve got to do that,” or “Ugh, this thing is bothering me,” or “Oh, this hard or good thing is going on in my life,” and we don’t always jump to, “Let me use my calendar to address that.”
And I very much understand it. You’re like, “Okay, that’s my time-management system, but I have some other issues in my life going on, and I’m just gonna ruminate about them,” because that’s what I do! If you do that, ruminate about them or think about them, and I don’t always think, “Hey, let me go check out my calendar and use that tool that I’m using to manage my life to manage this issue.” And if that’s something I just want to get everybody in the muscle of doing is that if anything is going on in your life, and you can hear my banging-my-drum mantra here, is that everything comes back to time. So how can we take an issue, any issue going on in your life, and break it down into the time components of this, and then how do we use our calendar to bring it to life. I’m gonna give some examples today because you’re probably like, “What are you talking about?” Let me give some examples to bring this to life for you.
All right, we’re gonna kind of build on this. So these are gonna be some small issues in the beginning, and we’ll kind of build up to bigger issues.
Smaller Logistical Examples of How Everything Comes Back to Your Calendar – 3:54
So for example, smaller issues that come to mind for me these days are doing little medical things, like whether it’s taking medicine, having a child take medicine. In our family right now, we have to patch an eye visually so that one of my daughter’s eyes, her brain registers that it should look out of both of her eyes and not just one of them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry. But it’s just kind of a low-required, not-heavy-lift thing but we have to remember to do it every day. Any of those types of things that you have to do in your life, any small medical thing that you have to do, don’t expect your brain to remember every day that it’s time to do that, and use your calendar to remind you to do those things.
So, again, this eyepatch thing is new in our life. I kept being like, “Why am I forgetting to do this?” And even I’m beating myself up for that, and then I’m like, “Whoa, hold on. Hold on. Everything, everything, everything comes back to time, so what do I need to do this?” Obvious solution here: calendar every day when to do this.
But here’s why I love this (we’re gonna dig into the benefits of this more later), as I calendar that, it helps me think about, “Okay, we need to do this two hours a day. When is the best time to do this? When are the best times to do this, perhaps? On school days this is the right time. On the weekend, this is probably the right time. I can move these things around,” but in my digital calendar now, every day at, I believe 4 o’clock after school, I have “put her eyepatch on,” and on the weekends more at, like, 7:00 in the morning, I have “put her eyepatch on.” And by putting it in the calendar, I can see, you know, some of these days are different than others, and that’s how I can really take it beyond just when should I be doing this in an intellectual way and really look at the calendar and understand when the right time for our family really is, and it can vary by days, and I can customize that in my calendar in a way that really works well.
Taking this — just to clarify, I also really like alarms for this type of thing. I actually have not done it for the eyepatch, but for one of my daughters we have a cashew challenge that I also have in the calendar, but I also put an alarm on because it’s really important we do it every single day, and I really want that hard stop reminding me to do that in the chaos of after-school time. But what I really want you to hear is beyond an alarm, put it in your calendar, and the reason for that is as each of your days shake out, you start seeing how this thing that you have to do, like patching an eye or taking a cashew challenge or taking a medical pill, will relate to the things you have going on. So if you could normally do it at 4 o’clock and you do it every day, great. But if something comes up and you’re not gonna get home ‘til 6:00, that’s a reminder to you to bring the pill to the thing or bring the cashews that you’re gonna need for the challenge or bring the patch, take the things that you’ll need to do those things earlier in your day so you have it when the time rolls around, or maybe you adjust the time that you do something, moving it around. But that’s where a calendar really shines is it starts letting you see how this stand-alone thing interacts with everything else and how some things might need to be adjusted to make that work.
All right, really went off on a tangent there. I was just trying to give an example, but I get a little carried away.
All right, another thing is kind of actually similar to what I was talking about is if you need to bring something to an appointment, often we’re like, “I need to remember to bring this!” Whether it’s your insurance card or a book to a meeting or whatever it is, you need to bring some things to an appointment and you tend to always forget to do those things, which I am right there with you. What you want to do is calendar when to grab it as you leave your home or your office. And again, where a calendar shines here is that’s not always as you leave. That’s not always 30 minutes before the appointment when you’re gonna get in the car to go. That might be at 7:00 AM you need to grab something because you’re not gonna go home again before that appointment, and by seeing it in the calendar, you can see that you’re not gonna be home. And so, you need to grab it earlier, and so, you can set it up the night before or put it in the car the night before, put it in in the morning or whatever works. Even though you, at 7:00 AM on your own, would not remember to grab that medical card you’re gonna need for that 5:00 PM appointment, your calendar can help you do that.
So, while these things sound random because they are, what I mean is everything, everything, everything comes back to time no matter how random or weird it is, and that’s why I’m giving you random examples. Everything comes back to time, especially if you catch yourself beating yourself up for something like, “I always forget to take this pill,” or “I always forget to bring my wallet to that appointment,” or whatever it is. Instead of beating yourself up, just think, “How do I solve this going forward?” And start using your calendar, the tool designed to manage time, to help you do those things that require time.
So another smaller thing is another one that used to bother me. I would always forget to clean the house before the cleaners would come, and so, the morning of, I would see it in the calendar they were coming, and I would completely scramble and forget and run around trying to clean up the house. And so, instead, you know, repeating every two weeks, the evening before the cleaners come, I have a calendar alert that’s like, “Cleaners come tomorrow. Clean up the house.” [Laughs] And in the morning, I also am like, “Reminder, cleaners come tomorrow. Tidy up whatever will be messed up that morning.” But really, having those things, we really need to break down what are the things that go into making the kind of deadline-y things like the cleaners coming, what are the things that go into making that successful. They require time, and so, really think about what those action steps are, what time do they require, and use your calendar to bring those to life.
Smaller Emotional Examples of How Everything Comes Back to Your Calendar: 9:41
Okay, so those were some small examples, but I also like to think of it beyond just the logistics and into more emotional examples. I think those are — sometimes we have challenges in our day-to-day life that are more emotional, and so, our brains don’t naturally go to the calendar as a way to solve it, which I completely get. I do this too. I can have this big emotional thing going on in my life, and even though I live and breathe this stuff, I don’t always remember, “Hey, everything comes back to time. What is this thing? What are the things that come back to time that I could help with this?”
So, just for examples, as I’m recording this it’s late August. It’s back-to-school week. So really thinking about the big emotions going on during back-to-school periods, and anytime there are big emotions for you or a child, you can really think about how do I want to give breathing space to allow these foreseeable curveballs that are probably gonna hit, and if not we’ll take it the bonus time, but probably we’re gonna need some extra wiggle room here.
So for example, and you’ve probably heard me talk about this before, you could block out your work hours to give you more flexibility and breathing space if there’s a big emotional issue that morning. It’s a lot less stressful if there’s no 9:00 AM meeting staring you down. What I do now is for I think the first five school days, which is also — ours are a little broken up. It’s like the Thursday, Friday before Labor Day, and then it starts again on Tuesday. So I did this for the Thursday and the Friday and then the first couple days, maybe the whole next week as well. I blocked out the hours after school. I think it’s like 3:15 or 3:30 to bedtime. I just blocked them out, and I said, “Don’t plan anything. First days of school. Emotional curveballs,” or something like that. I also did that for the weekend as well. I blocked out the days entirely and said, “Don’t plan anything.”
Now, candidly, we got a great invite that I want to make an exception for, so we’re gonna do that. But it’s nice. It’s on Sunday afternoon. I can really look at this, and as I look at my calendar and see can we do this, I see all these days blocked out and they’re like, “Don’t plan anything.” And then I can remind myself, “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna be in potentially a fragile situation, but would the Sunday afternoon to evening of Labor Day where we would have all of Saturday to decompress, all of Sunday morning to decompress, and then we could do this fun thing Sunday afternoon and then have some more breathing space on Monday, would that work? Great,” and I can say yes to that.
Just to be really clear about this too, I could always add on more. We’re not just gonna be sitting in our house doing nothing. But I can kind of gauge, “How’re we doing here?” And on Saturday morning, I could reach out to someone and say, “Hey, are you guys free for Saturday, this afternoon, for something?” But if everything’s a mess, then I don’t have to, and I’m not stressed about my kids not being in the mood to socialize, and that’s great. I’m just using that calendar to help me account for emotional curveballs in the ways that I want to. I’m not saying everyone should do this by any means. Know your own family. Know your own kids. Know yourself. But for our family, that’s what makes sense, and for you that might look really different. But the principle still stands. You can still use your calendar to give yourself the breathing space in the ways that you want to in relation to this type of stuff in any way that you want.
Schedule Reminders For The Intellectual Stuff – 13:03
I’ll also throw out there it’s not always logistics stuff too. I also — and I’ve shared this before in relation to the end of school year and I’m doing it at the beginning of the school year is this week and next week I have little calendar alerts at 6:00 AM, at 3:30 PM, and at 6:00 PM to remind me to have more patience with my kids because of just how zonked they’re gonna be, and it’s a lot. This is stuff that — it’s the reminders that — the thing is that I don’t need the reminders on an intellectual level. I know this intellectually. But let me tell you, sometimes it’s really hard in the day-to-day life to remember the things that you know intellectually in the heat of a moment, in the chaos, when you’re learning new routines, and all of that.
And so, I personally really like for just that two-week period of time having those reminders at the times that it’s gonna apply, remind me, “Hey, just remember if a kid is losing their mind, it’s not a time maybe for the normal discipline-type stuff that we would normally bring in. But instead maybe just give some extra grace because everyone’s doing their best right now.”
All right, so hopefully you get really what I mean by this is I really just challenge you. If there’s anything emotional going on in your life, I do think our logical — the place our brains go is not to calendar things. But I really would encourage you to say, “What action items could I take to make this better, what reminders do I want in my life to make this better, and how can I calendar time to help me do that?”
Bigger Emotional Examples of How Everything Comes Back to Your Calendar – 14:34
I also wanted to give some bigger ones that are maybe less — I mean, they’re definitely gonna be emotional. The bigger the issue, the more emotional it gets. So here are just some more maybe less emotional ones but bigger issues that we would have going on in our lives that I also wanted to just give as an example of everything comes back to time. If these things are going on, think about what are the action items that come back to time.
So career transitions. You know, if you’re someone who you know the job you want to go for, that’s a bit easier, but you also might just have that nagging feeling of like, “I think I want to do something else. I don’t know if it’s something like a different role within my same field. I don’t know if I totally want to shake it up. I don’t really know yet, but I have this nagging suspicion that I’m just not in the right job for this phase of life.” And so, if that’s you, then there are lots of different things that you could do that come back to time.
So it could be even calendaring half an hour to look up career books that you might want to read. It could be calendaring — you’re not even sure what you’re gonna do, but you know that for any transition you want your network to be strong. And so, once a week, you are going to protect 45 minutes of time to look up someone in your network to reach out to and then actually reach out to them, and it can just be to reconnect or maybe setup a coffee chat, but maybe it’s just like reconnecting and touching base without even setting up a meeting. Even just exploring your network, seeing what people are doing from college, from grad school, from high school. What are people doing now? Does anything look interesting to you? Anything like that, but I don’t even mean it from a job-search standpoint. At that point it’s more like laying the foundation of, “I need to really tap into my network, and maybe I haven’t for a while because of how intense my job has been or family life,” or whatever it is, and so, just calendaring reminders to reconnect so that when you’re ready to make more of a move in your career, you have that foundational network feeling more strong, feeling more there for you to support you there.
You might want to even calendar researching career opportunities or maybe a career coach, if that’s someone you want to work with, calendaring out time just to think, like maybe taking a weekend and doing a staycation even six months from now to really think about it. There are lots of different things you could do to support yourself and try to find clarity through a career transition and set yourself up for doing that well. Sometimes we just don’t even get there. We’re spinning in the “what will I do?” That’s something that I did too. I remember being like, “If I leave law, what is the next thing I do, and how do I get there?” And instead, I had to do this myself, is giving myself the breathing space to hear myself. What did I want to do, reconnect with people, understand what the options are, do research on what different options are. I did work with a career coach. Sometimes we forget the action steps we could take when we’re spiraling and spinning and whirling in the kind of identity crisis of it. [Laughs] And it can be really truly helpful and empowering to even just start taking action on the small steps. And so, really thinking about that and using your calendar to bring even those small steps to life that you can build on down the road can be really, really beneficial.
Other things are medical concern, if you’re concerned about something with yourself or a child. Again, that can be something that causes a lot of whirling and panic, which at least for me it does. It can be really, again, empowering and actually helpful and productive and constructive to say, “Let me just slow down. I don’t know what’s going on. When do I want to take action on this? Do I want to watch this for another two weeks and then take action if it’s still going on? Okay, great. If so, let me calendar out two weeks from now ‘if this is still going on, then I’m gonna reach out to a doctor.’”
You might want to calendar out now. You might say, “Ah, I’m not totally sure I’m gonna need this, but let me make an appointment now.” So calendar when you’re gonna call, when you’re gonna research doctors, perhaps, when you might post anonymously in a Facebook group to find a great doctor, when you might just search those Facebook groups or ask friends for specialist recommendations, whatever it is. Maybe you decide just to make an appointment and then you can observe until then. And then maybe you want to just remind yourself two months before and one month before to re-evaluate if you still need that appointment.
You might even want to calendar out reminders to just write out symptoms. So you could start an Apple Notes app on your phone of the symptoms you’re thinking about, and you remind yourself once a week, once a day, twice a week, whatever it is, to update that with symptoms so that if you do decide you need to go to a specialist or if you’re waiting for a specialist appointment, you can really have that data at your fingertips. Again, I know there’s a lot of different ways this could go, but I more share these things to get your wheels turning on, “Okay, there are action steps I can take to do things, and to me that’s, first of all, just such a great anecdote to any anxiety, but it also really actually moves the ball forward on some of this stuff instead of feeling stuck in that whirling place I think we’re all familiar with.
Other things are maybe a friend is going through surgery or chemo or their child is. Calendaring reminders to check in at the cadence that you want to, do not expect your brain to remember even though it is so important to you, and you love them so much, your brain is not an alarm clock. If you forget because of the 50,000 other things you’re doing that day, it’s not a reflection on how you feel about that. It’s just that you were busy with 50,000 other things that day. And so, anticipate that and use your calendar to check in. That’s been a major, major — win’s the wrong word for this, but honestly, many of my clients’ favorite parts is the way they can show up for friends using this system in a way that’s realistic for them.
I also feel like I’m going down a sadder train, which I think that makes sense for this topic because I think often we’re thinking of the things that we ruminate on are really what I’m getting at, and I want you to really hear that truly everything comes back to time. If you disagree with me, if you have something going on in your life and you disagree with me, let me know. But I really, really believe that everything comes back to time.
And so, if you’re struggling with something, instead of getting caught up in the ruminating, in the whirl, really thinking about what are the things that I could do. Even if there are things where you can’t take action, you can’t solve the problem, what do you want to do? If there’s something that you cannot fix, do you still want to be there for the person? Do you still want to soak up time with that person while you can? What would that look like? Do you want to set up a lunch with them? Do you want to set up a phone call with them once a month? Whatever it is, that can be really a powerful way to make you feel like you are doing something and again truly soaking up the wonderful times as well.
But also there are not all just sad things. If you want to be there for a friend in great times too — we’ve talked about this before, but if you know a friend’s starting a new job because they got promoted or they have their due date and they’re counting down to it, or any sort of thing, really calendaring those things but then also calendaring “it’s their last day of work before the promotion. Reach out to them then.” “Reach out to them at the promotion.” “Reach out to them three days after or three weeks after and say, ‘How’s it going?’” If there’s a due date, the week before being like, “I’m sure you’re counting down! How’re you doing over there?” Don’t just calendar the thing. Calendar the things you want to do around the thing, [Laughs] in my ineloquent way of saying that. I think you know what I mean. But I truly, truly believe that everything comes back to time, and so, these are just some examples to help you do this.
Why Calendar All of These Life Things – 22:28
And I’ve touched on these like why would you do all of this. I think it’s obvious, but just to get it clear is you’re getting stuff out of your head. You’re laying out when you’re gonna do it and protecting time for it, and very importantly, you’re making sure it fits with everything else. As I mentioned with the cashew challenge, if you typically do that at 4:15 every day, which we typically do, but you see you’re not gonna get home ‘til 6:00, seeing that helps you understand, “Okay, we’re gonna have to do that either on the road or do it later. What does that mean? Do I want to remind myself to bring cashews at an earlier time of the day,” and so on. Using your calendar in this way to see all of these little things that you want to do and then how they interact with everything else you have going on is really very powerful in that, again, it helps you see it interact, but it also helps you see that it’s realistic.
And I talked about this in the friendship episode but related to some of this stuff that we’re talking about in terms of being the friend you want to be, you might go into this saying, “I want to support a friend through something hard. My friend’s getting divorced. I want to be there for her. I’m gonna call her every morning,” and then you calendar that out and you’re like, “That is too much. [Laughs] That’s not gonna work.” And so, you adjust. You say, “Okay, for the first week I’m gonna calendar I’m gonna call her, let’s say, every morning or every other morning, and then from then on out, for the next two months I’ll do twice a week, and I’ll also send a text at this time, and then from then on out I’ll call once a week and text once a week, whatever it might be. But by calendaring it, you get that check of what is realistic and what is not and then can get intentional about what is actually realistic for you in the ways that you still want to be doing it, like you still want to be that friend, you still want to show up, but how is it realistic, does it evolve over time, and things like that.
And again, just to be clear, you can always move these things around when the time comes. It’s more of just the reminder for you to do it and it ups the likelihood of you showing up in those roles in the ways that you want to more than if you let it all to your brain. All right?
So, as I’ve said a thousand times in prior episodes and today, everything, everything, everything comes back to time. Even very incredibly personal things like fertility and trying for a baby and relationships and changing jobs and managing very personal health things for you or loved ones, all of that comes back to time, and it can get so personal, and I think so emotional, typically, that we don’t normally think, “Hey, let me go to my calendar that I use to do events to help me with this very emotional thing.” But I just want to encourage you to try and reframe in those scenarios, and I have to do it to myself. When I’m really in that emotional state, I have to remind myself, “Hey, you know, I have this really handy tool that helps me manage so much else in my life. How about I try to use it to manage this as well even if I can’t fully solve it to really help alleviate the stress and the issues and things like that.”
I do want to note here that because time management can get so personal because of those things I just mentioned and other things, that is also why I don’t limit questions when people are learning The Bright Method to the group because I don’t want people to feel like they have this very personal thing that they might not feel comfortable broaching to an entire group of people they don’t know. I will say, it is amazing how close we can get and talk about some of this stuff because there’s a beauty in anonymity to some extent as well. While you’re not anonymous, these are not colleagues or friends of yours so people can be more open, but you might not be, and that’s why I have unlimited email support within the program because I want people to have an avenue to address some of this stuff with me that isn’t just the full group.
So I just wanted to throw that out there if that is something that has maybe prevented you from joining the program because some of the things you juggle in your life feel very personal. Just know you have that avenue to talk with me as well on that front.
Importance of Having a Time-Management System in Place – 26:37
The main thing I wanted to share today and kind of a click moment for me is that because everything comes back to time, that is why having a system for how you manage your time and things that you want or need to do with it, it just has such incredible ripple effects. It affects your relationships, your health, your career, all the things we’ve talked about. It brings clarity and mental space to see what’s going on. It helps you move balls forward in that constructive way we were talking about, and it really can help you make decisions where you need to and where you want to.
And I realized that’s the magical piece of why so many of my clients call learning The Bright Method life changing. It’s not because they suddenly are like, “Wow, I really love my calendar!” It’s really more about the ripple effects, and the ripple effects happen in all of these different, almost surprising areas of life because of the power of having a solid time-management system. Just wanted to share what some people have said on that front because I don’t want you to be rolling your eyes like, “Of course she says it’s life changing.” I’m just gonna share three quotes that people said.
One woman said: “I truly didn’t know how life changing this process would be. I feel that I am a much better wife, mother, daughter, employee, colleague, and friend now that I have a practical time- and task-management system in place.”
Someone else said: “Now I think I couldn’t afford not to take this program. It has changed the way I look at time and the way my mind processes it. This was a game changer for me!”
And finally someone said: “Know that I get that sometimes we might think that investing and knowing how to be better organized seems overwhelming and even sometimes unnecessary, but it’s the base of being able to do all the things you want. Do it. It’s life changing.”
So if this sounds like something that you need in your life these days, I truly encourage you to join me for a Bright Method program. Enrollment closes on Thursday, September 19th, which is coming up, if it doesn’t sell out before then, because spots are limited. If you’re interested, check it out at www.kellynolan.com/bright. I’ll put that link in the show notes as well. And reach out with any questions! Most importantly, thank you for being here, and I’ll catch you in the next episode!
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