136. When Time Freedom Backfires

I started my own business for more freedom and accidentally created a brand-new kind of stress.

If you’re self-employed, running a private practice, or even just craving more autonomy over your time, this episode is for you. I’m sharing a very real, very recent behind-the-scenes look at how “time freedom” can quietly turn into overwhelm and what to do when you realize your days aren’t working the way you thought they would.

This one is honest, a little uncomfortable, and incredibly common, especially for ADHD brains.

What You’ll Learn

• The hidden cost of time freedom no one talks about until you’re already living it
• Why wide-open schedules often lead to paralysis, reactivity, and decision fatigue
• How this showed up for me while running my coaching business from home
• Why ADHD + lack of structure can create chaos instead of balance
• I’ll help you reframe structure as the thing that actually creates freedom, not the enemy of it

If This Resonates…

If you found yourself nodding along, you’re definitely not alone.

This is exactly why I’m hosting a free workshop on how to run your professional life without burning out. Click here to be added to the Wait List and I'll email you with the details (time, date, etc) once they're finalized. 

If this episode hit home and you want support untangling your time, priorities, and energy, I’d love to talk. You can book a free 1:1 consult with me, and we’ll figure out what’s actually getting in your way and what to do next.

Resources & Links

📌 Book a free 1:1 consult → https://cutt.ly/KtwII93a
📌 Sign up for the free workshop here
👥 Join the FB Group → Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists

Keywords (SEO)

time freedom overwhelm
ADHD time management
private practice burnout
work from home boundaries
decision fatigue ADHD
SLP productivity coaching
executive functioning adults

Progress over perfection, always.

To find out how I can help you improve your work-life balance, click here.

Come join Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists on Facebook for more tips and tricks!

Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

Hello podcast listeners. Welcome back to the show. This is episode 136. I'm gonna be talking about something a little bit personal today, and it is something that I know is gonna be helpful. For those of you who are listening. It's going to be particularly helpful for those who are self-employed, contractors, maybe private practice owners.

But this is also helpful for those of you who are listening who are maybe thinking about starting a private practice or going out on your own, or maybe you are an employee and you're happily employed, but. You still struggle with deciding how to spend your time. So if you fit in any of those categories, this episode is gonna be useful for you.

Okay, so I'm gonna be talking about, what inspired this episode is a struggle that I was going through recently and it's a work in progress as everything is in life I think a work in progress. I'll share with you my own personal experience with this, but I'm also gonna talk you through how this has shown up in my coaching sessions with the SLPs who I have been coaching on work-life balance.

So here's the thing. So many of us in this field. We set out on our own in some capacity, right? We might leave our job entirely and go out on our own to have our own version, our own definition of a private practice, or we. Decide that we're gonna shift our employment, maybe go from full-time to part-time, [00:02:00] or we'll want to go from being an employee to a contractor.

Because essentially we are all craving more time freedom. We want more autonomy, more agency over how we're spending our time. we believe that the answer to that is to shift our. Our work in terms of our role and our schedule and, you know, the freedom that we have, right? I'm not necessarily challenging any of that.

What people are not telling you is how much you rely on other people, other expectations. Other schedules to shape your day until all of a sudden it's just you and you've got this wide open calendar and you've got a million [00:03:00] things that you could be doing, a million things that you could be filling the calendar with all of that freedom that we wanted.

Right. And now you feel. Paralyzed, you feel stuck. You feel like, I have no idea where to start, or maybe. You get right into action and you're in like go, go, go mode. But it is basically reactive, not proactive, and you are just putting out fires, responding to whatever tasks come your way. Whatever emails pop up in your inbox, whatever phone calls you get, whatever, Facebook or Instagram, chatter.

Is there, from referral partners or new potential clients, so on and so forth, right? And so your brain is just sort of bebopping around playing whack-a-mole as I call it. Like, oh, let me respond to this. Oh, okay, let me go do this now. Oh, let me [00:04:00] stop this and I gotta go over here and do that. 

And, and I'm at home so I could throw in a load of laundry and, oh. This room is really messy. Let me quick clean it up, and then I'll get going on my private practice stuff, right? All of that freedom, all of that time, autonomy that we want, that we crave does not come without its own costs. 

We're not aware of what those costs are, or we can't even prepare. We think that we can't prepare for them ahead of time. We just think, okay, now I'm in charge. Like I'm thinking of, what's that movie with, With the the ship when the pirates take over the ship and he gets on and it's based on a true story.

And I think it's Tom Hanks maybe, but I could be getting this wrong. And the guy takes over the ship and he is like, I'm the captain now, right? Like that's what we think when we go out on our own. I'm the captain now. I'm in charge. So [00:05:00] it's a beautiful thing. Yes, it's a beautiful opportunity. And yet. It brings with it lots of challenges.

So let me share just a little personal picture of what this has looked for me very recently. Okay. I started my private practice when I, before my kids were born and. I, you know, that practice shifted and grew and evolved and ebbed and flowed over time. But fast forward to now where I no longer operate in that private practice, I am working.

Nearly a hundred percent as a coach, as a productivity coach, a certified productivity coach for people with A DHD who want better work-life balance. Okay. And the SLPs, all of my coaching clients, almost [00:06:00] all of my coaching clients are SLPs. So I essentially have a private practice. That is now for coaching, just not for speech intervention, right?

Not for speech and language. So in my coaching practice, as of late, I noticed that I was, as someone who works from home and virtual, everything is online. I noticed that I kept prioritizing home stuff over work. Over business stuff, you know, like I would tell myself, okay, well let me just, get dinner prep before the kids get home so that way when they get back, it's gonna be less chaotic and everything's gonna be, smooth sailing.

And once I have that done, then I'll really be able to focus on my work. Or let me just clear this area of the house so I can really get it set up in a way that is, you know. [00:07:00] Gonna be, it's set up for success. It's clutter free, lots of space, all organized, and I can get going, right?

All of these ideas, all of these thoughts of things that I could be doing around the house, for the house, for the family. Essentially running the household, but not running the business. Okay? Now, if those are things that I intentionally decide to do, I knowingly decide to do it right and I am choosing to do that for reasons, and I love my reasons, and I have decided when I'm going to work on my business, then it's not a problem.

This just in and of itself is not a problem. Here's where it became a problem. I realized that I got to this point where I [00:08:00] was filtering, like when I was thinking about all I could do in the day while the kids are at school. the top of the funnel, if you picture like a funnel or a filter at the top of the funnel.

Was like house, household and everything. So it's like top was the house, running the house and doing everything that needed to be done for the household and for the kids. And then once all that was done, I would funnel and my time through there and whatever was left over could be spent on coaching.

I'm not talking about coaching my clients. I'm showing up for that no matter what I'm talking about the tasks and the energy and the time that it takes to run a successful business. I'm talking about it in regards to my coaching practice. But the same is true for you in your private practice.

And at the end of the day, I was feeling cranky Actually, I would say bitchy, if I'm being honest. I was [00:09:00] feeling, even at moments, if I'm being totally honest, I was feeling resentful. Not resentful of my kids, but really just resentful of this sort of. role that I was playing and the house and like all of that stuff, taking up my time and energy.

And luckily I caught it quickly enough and I recognized what was going on because, this is what I do with my coaching clients, I couldn't see it right away for myself. So once I saw it, I realized what was going on and I identified that there was an imbalance here that I wanted to be showing up more.

I love coaching. I love working. I love entrepreneurship. owning a small business and building a business and running a business, I love all of that stuff. I really, [00:10:00] really enjoy it, but I was not prioritizing it. I was putting everything else above it, and so at the end of the day, I was feeling very unfulfilled.

I was feeling ineffective. I was feeling unfulfilled I wanted to have done more in my business. I wanted to have done more as a coach and I didn't. Luckily through not just luck, I mean through, through work like this has been something that I've, that I, through inner work and personal work, something that I've done for myself is recognizing that I am in control over how I spend my time.

This is a me thing. This is something that I have created and that. I also, have the power to change. And so I've been shifting some things on my own time. The way I spend my time the way that I think, the way that I think about my business, the way that I think about my work, the way that I think [00:11:00] about my role as a mom.

As a mom who works from home, There's so much more that I could say about this and I realize as I'm looking at the time, I've completely rambled about this but hopefully that is helpful for you in terms of knowing that you are not alone and that there absolutely competing.

Want and need our time, right? That demand our time and energy, and you have to decide for yourself how you are going to respond to that. Now, your challenges might look different than mine, and this challenge that I am experiencing. of wanting to work more and do less of the house stuff.

That's a very different challenge than where I was when I started out, when I first had my private practice as an SLP, and when my kids were little, I wanted to work. Primarily I wanted my [00:12:00] focus to be my kids because they were very little. I loved that age.

I wanted to be there for all of those little moments because those little moments were really the big moments and so much growth and change was happening with them so quickly. I wanted to be there for that, so I was like, mom mode. I had my private practice and that was. Fulfilling. And it was rewarding, but that's not where I wanted the bulk of my time and energy and attention to be focused.

Now, My kids are out of the house in school for longer than they ever have been before. And while they still need me. and while my role as a mom is still very demanding, they don't need me in the same ways that they needed me before, so I have shifted the way that I'm spending my time.

You might be in a different season of life. You may not even [00:13:00] have kids. I don't know you. But what this can look like for you. I wanna maybe establish a private practice for more time freedom, and now I'm figuring out how to do that on top of my full-time job and my time outside of work where I am, maybe a wife or a mom, or taking care of elderly parents, or just a human being who wants to have a life with hobbies and fun, right?

Maybe you are somebody who has. Established a private practice because you want that time freedom, and what you've discovered is, oh my gosh, now I have no structure in my day because I don't have a boss to report to. I don't have any outside structures, outside barriers or like, I call them guardrails that are keeping me in a certain.

Container with my time, and that's what I thought I wanted, but now [00:14:00] I realize, oh my gosh, it's like blank slate. I have no idea what to do with all of this time. What do I do? I could be doing a million things. How do I know what the quote unquote right thing is to do? How do I decide where to spend my time?

Do I spend my time on finding a new clients for my private practice? Should I be spending my time on documentation for the clients I saw in my private practice? Should I be spending my time on continuing ed? So that I can learn more about the types of populations that I wanna work with in my private practice.

Or should I be, you know, outside raking the leaves or shoveling the driveway or doing a load of laundry or cleaning the bathroom? Or, or, or, right. Oh, I could go to the grocery store at one o'clock on an afternoon, you know, on a Monday afternoon. That's great. Right? So we have all this freedom. But what happens is it becomes overwhelming, and [00:15:00] now we're in decision fatigue.

You might be in analysis paralysis. You might be, like I said, in decision fatigue. You are maybe second guessing what you do and how you do it and how much time it should take. Right? You might be avoiding getting work done, because let's face it, nobody is gonna be sending you an email asking you why you haven't submitted this report yet, because, oh yeah, you're the boss, right?

So it brings in, it introduces lots of elements of challenge. But if you throw a DHD in the mix, it's like, Ooh, forget it. Right? It's like we could think of all the things that we could spend that time on.

we could hyperfocus on creating our website for five hours, and then next thing you know, the quote unquote, Workday is [00:16:00] over. And what do we have to show for it? Right, because we want the freedom, and then when we don't have the structure, we realize it can create utter chaos, right? It is an actual problem, and I want you to know that you are not alone, right?

There are a million things that you could be spending your time on, Not always easy to figure out what to focus on next, but here's the thing, when you discover that yes, there are these challenges and there are ways to solve for them. You start to show up and spend your time on things that you know are moving the [00:17:00] needle, you start to show up and spend your time on things that are lighting you up, that are fulfilling you, that are creating value, that are impacting other people's lives, right?

You start to show up and spend your time on things that you enjoy. You start to show up. And spend your time on things that have an impact. You start to show up and spend your time across different areas of your life, not just in one area of your life. Because when we hyperfocus on one area, like work, work, hello, talking to you, right?

What is the sacrifice there? Personal life, right? So then we like try to course correct and we're like, okay, let's go all in on, on personal here. This is why we wanted time freedom. This is why we made this change in our [00:18:00] life, right? So that we could, you know, have our morning routine look the way that we want so that we could do the class parties in the middle of the day so that we could sneak out for an early dinner or late lunch with friends or colleagues.

And then. We hyper focus and spend time and energy on that, and we're worried that we have dropped the ball on the business side of things, the professional side of things. But when you figure out how to take control over this, when you recognize that, number one, you can take control over how you spend your time.

And you start to get really clear on what is most important, where to direct your time, what are the top priorities, right? So that way when you spend your time, the way that you spend it, you're not second guessing it [00:19:00] every step of the way. 

Telling yourself, oh man, I should have done this, this, this. Why did I focus on that instead? Right? Oh, this was a bus I totally wasted all this time. Oh my gosh, I took a nap today. And I, what? Who am I? What am I doing? What do I think I get to spend, you know, a half hour taking a nap and taking care of myself when I should have been doing X, Y, Z?

Those are the things that go away. When you start to step into your time, autonomy, when you're really clear on what you want on, why you want it on an end, on how to create it, that is the type of work that I do with coaching clients. That's the type of work that you can do for you. So I have a very exciting offer that I am pumped for, and I'll be honest, I don't have.

All of the [00:20:00] details yet because mom life, and that's okay. That's the beauty of this, right? Working for myself. But if this is resonating with you, I'm going to be hosting a free workshop on Monday, February 16th. Just shy of two weeks from the time that this episode goes live, the day, the day that this episode is released.

Monday, February 16th, I will be hosting a free workshop online about this very topic, how to run your professional life, your private practice without burning out. Because this is what I see over and over again. We leave our jobs for more balance, but we accidentally create the same stress just in a different environment, and that stops now.

So if [00:21:00] this is something that you struggle with or it's something that you're thinking about doing in the future, but maybe you're holding yourself back because you're not sure how to do it or you're not sure it's possible. Join me for this workshop again, it is on Monday, February 16th, and here's what you can do now in the show notes.

I have a link. To get more information, all you have to do is click that link and give me your email address that you want the details sent to. And once I have finalized the time of the workshop, I will let you know. I just don't know what time it's gonna be right now 

They have a sports tournament that day, and I don't know if any of you can relate to this, but in our athletic world, a lot of the scheduling stuff comes last minute, So I'm still waiting for that schedule to be released, and once I know what it is, I will finalize the time that I'll be hosting this workshop.

But [00:22:00] regardless of whether you can come live at whatever time it is or not. If you're interested in this topic, if this is something that you have ever struggled with, click the link, sign up to get the details. And if you can't be there live, then you can get the replay, but you've gotta sign up in order to have access to the recording.

Okay? Alright, so stay tuned. For more details about that workshop, click the link in the show notes to learn more. in the meantime, pop into our Facebook group. Recently changed the name Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists. Pop into a Facebook group so that you've got access to any updates and details about that workshop and any other workshops.

The link is always in the show notes. Alright, hope that this was helpful, y'all. I will talk to y'all soon. Bye.