How to Manage Your Time When Everything Feels Important | Ep. 91

We've all been there before - wishing we spent our time differently. Maybe we fell short of something and we knew that the reason why is because we mismanaged our time. Here are 3 time management ideas that I think you can take to the bank and cash it in - similar to the MEGA MILLIONS. 

got any other suggestions that work? Comment below or email me at talktopeoplepodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

This is officially episode 91.

I am your host, Chris Miller.

If you've never been here before, I'm so glad to have you here.

Last episode, we talked about AI and its impact on relationships.

In this episode, we're going to be talking about three time management tools you should probably know.

And the reason why I think you should probably know them is because I've been reflecting on how I should know them.

We have all been there before, wishing we spent our time differently, wishing we spent our time better.

Maybe we fell short of something and we knew.

The reason we fell short is because of how we spent our time.

So today, we are going to look at three time management tools.

Number one, two, and three are all equally important, and I imagine you have felt them all.

A quick note, if you haven't listened to the last episode, episode 90, I would encourage you to check it out because ever since I've recorded that episode, I haven't been able to shake it from my head.

I have seen so many things on social media, so many jokes about ChatGPT being people's best friends.

And with every great joke, what makes it so brilliant is it's teeming with humor and creativity, but there's a shred of truth in there.

And the more we're going to see these jokes, the more it becomes a part of the zeitgeist, the more it's actually happening, and the more we are interacting with AI more than we're interacting with humans.

And I'm going to kind of hop off that topic because I could riff on it for a long time, and I've thought about it a lot, so I should probably write about it to be a bit sharper before I start talking again.

But I encourage you just to re-examine and to be a critical consumer with how you use AI.

Okay, ba-da-da-da-da.

Enough AI talk, because I want to talk to you about something I've been reflecting on.

I am about to turn 30, and I was giving this Toastmaster speech, I mentioned it a few episodes ago, and I said three things I want to do before I turn to 30.

And one of those things that I wanted to do, actually two of them are related to time management.

And I have this journal that I've had for close to 10 years, and I can go back and look at entries that I've put whenever I was in grad school, or whenever I was in undergrad, or whenever I got my first job, or whenever Annie and I were first married.

And one of the consistent things that I've seen is I am critical with myself on how I am handling my time.

I am wishing that I spent my time differently.

And it comes in different formats.

It could be, oh, I wish I got more sleep.

Or it could be, ah, I shouldn't have played video games that long.

I should have spent more time on this.

Overall, the main sentiment is I wish I would have done it differently.

So having a bit of regret with time management.

And this is consistent throughout the past decade, looking at year over year over year me wishing I had spent my time differently, wishing I had gotten more sleep.

So now I'm like, okay, I'm about to turn 30.

I need to focus on how to be better at time management.

And I'm imagining some of you who are listening also feel that way.

So this episode is going to be all about time management, all going to be about things and tools that I want to work on.

I'm not a time management expert, as I've just laid out.

So, I may not have the best solutions, but I imagine with us talking through, you may be able to relate to this, and we'll be able to come up with some solutions, because the first one is going to be the low-hanging fruit, but it's going to be the tool of being on time.

I asked people in my Toastmaster speech, if you have any feedback for me about any of these tips, and I told them I was struggling with being on time, someone approached me after.

And this was someone who had been a physician for 40 years, who was associated with the university, a real sharp fella.

He was a soccer player.

I think he played semi-pro soccer.

So we were hitting on all cylinders, right?

And I'm a big soccer person.

And he approached me, and he talked to me about the year after residency, after medical residency, he was about to officially be a doctor, stand alone, working with patients, not worrying about school anymore.

He was waiting at the airport, and he was with a buddy.

They were drinking.

He had drank a few drinks, chilling, having fun, kind of in a days, when all of a sudden, he was broken in that days with this loud voice on the intercom.

And it said his name, and it said, your plane is departing.

This is the final call.

Your plane is departing.

And he scrambled, and he ran as quickly as he could to get to that plane.

He was so stressed out.

He made it, got on the plane, and he looked at me, and he said, the urgency I felt then, I've always asked myself the question, would the plane have waited on me?

And he said, well, he asked me, and I said, no.

And he said, exactly.

Does a plane wait for anyone?

And I said, no.

And he said, well, don't pretend like a plane will wait for you.

And my interpretation of that was him saying, no one's important enough to be consistently late to things.

No matter what you do, this is part of communication, we call it chronemics.

How you communicate with your use of time.

When you go to the doctor's office, power is communicated because you have to wait for them.

You can't say, all right, doc, we're on my time.

No, you better get your butt in the waiting room or else we're canceling your appointment.

Whenever you meet the president of the United States, you have to wait before you get to go into the Oval Office.

The president's time is important.

No one is important enough, though, to consistently be late to things.

No matter who you are, even the president of the United States, if they have a very bad health concern, they're going to have to wait on the doctor whenever the doctor's ready for them.

We can coast by.

I can coast by.

And to be late and be charismatic and laugh a bunch and play it off.

I've been coached to say, rather than say sorry for being late, I've been coached to say, thank you for being patient.

I worked at a DOD military base, or many of them, for many years.

And unless you are part of the military, more than likely, you probably struggle with being on time.

I know there are some careers where you simply can't afford to be late, but I would say many of you listening are wishing that you were on time more.

So we need to show up on time.

Now, when we work with solutions here, what are solutions to have for being on time?

Well, I'll share with you something that someone came up to me after my speech and said.

They said, you always need to be asking yourself the question, what was I doing that caused me to be late?

Because we have a fixed amount of time, right?

And when we're late, that means we've expended that time that we should have expended to get there.

We expended it on something else.

So going back to think, what were we doing?

How did we expend that time that should have gone somewhere else?

Is one way to look at it.

And then we can isolate, identify what's taking our time.

Another thing is to show up early.

Okay?

So I've seen people do this.

I think it can be a little obnoxious, depending on what you do.

But people will show up 30 minutes early, and they will just work from wherever they're at, work from wherever that meeting is.

I understand if you have a lot of back to backs, that can be hard.

But solution number three for this is don't have as many back to backs.

Many of us are showing up late to things and stretching our time too far because we are planning too much.

And ultimately, it is diminishing our effectiveness and diminishing returns, right?

Our effectiveness is going down despite having more meetings.

We're not being as effective as if we had fewer meetings, showed up on time.

We're present, our effectiveness would go up, right?

So less back to backs, asking yourself the question, what was I doing with that time that I should have been doing by showing up?

And the number three is just simply showing up early, working on whatever you have there, which makes the commute a lot easier because most often people struggle with commutes.

That's something I struggle with, right?

I'll technically leave on time, quote unquote, in my head, but then there will be traffic lights.

Like, blaming the traffic lights for me being late, when really I'm late because I left so late.

I could have left earlier, essentially.

Okay, so being on time is a big time management tool I myself need to learn, and more than likely so do you.

And another one, which I think is a bit, hmm, a bit of a better conversation for us to have, because there's gonna be more here, is we need to learn how to be happy with how we're spending our time.

And I struggle with this, because I feel like there are so many different ways for me to spend my time.

Even right now, I'm recording this podcast, and I have family in town.

So I could be hanging out with them, or I could be exercising, or I could be walking the dog and making sure that my dog is living a really happy life.

Or I could be studying for my job to improve my effectiveness and value there.

Or I could be reading a book that helps me gain knowledge, which will ultimately help me with everything, right?

Or I could be working on my company.

There are so many things that we could always be doing with our time.

And one major skill that I believe all of us should learn is how to be happy with how we're spending our time.

There is a lot of self-criticalness in this.

And I wrote a blog on this.

You can always go to the talktopeoplepodcast.com.

I don't know if you ever checked out the Talk To People Podcast, but it's on all podcast platforms.

And I have a blog on there, and I wrote about figuring out how to be happy with spending our time.

Here's what I wrote.

I said, in my 20s, I felt immense pressure to provide evidence for how I spent my time.

Each birthday, I would look back and think, did I spend my time well?

What do I have to show for this year?

The year I started this podcast, I felt immense pride.

I was like, yes, I have so much to show for this year.

Cut to the next year when I got rejected to 90 jobs, burnt out creatively, and my episodes had turned to mush.

That birthday was not as full of pride.

Most of us in our 20s and beyond can vividly recount moments where we're laying in our bed and wishing we spent our time differently that day.

Maybe it's getting our brain sucked out of our eyes by hours of social media, or maybe we've avoided a big project we want to do.

I just want us to get happy to where we're, I just want us to get to a point to where we are happy with how we're spending our time.

And here was a little solution I had come up with as I was writing.

I created a hierarchy, a tier list.

Tier one, think about people first.

For me, this is my wife.

This is my family.

This is the people who I work with.

This is my neighbors, the people I go to church with, the people I play soccer with, my friends, the people I interact with.

I have another phrase where I say, the heart beats first.

And when I think about that, there are two different ways I look at it.

The heart beats, literally the things with beating hearts, I need to attend to.

I can't go a day without letting my dog out to go to the restroom, right?

I can't go a day without acknowledging my wife.

I can't go a day without showing up and checking in with the people I work with, like, sure, weekends.

But for the most part, you know what I mean.

We have to prioritize the people, because human relationships are the most important thing for our wellness.

We are social creatures.

We won't ever be able to escape that biological wiring.

Last episode, we did talk a little bit about change humanism.

So if we were to completely replace the human wiring with robotic wiring, maybe there's a way that we could adjust that.

But as is, as you're listening to this podcast, you have to prioritize people.

People go first.

Projects go second.

Projects could mean a lot of things.

It could be a passion project you're working on.

It could be crocheting.

It could be.

But this is work.

These are big.

For me, Talk to People Podcast is a very big project I'm working on.

My job, I consider a very big project.

And then Digital Dopamine Third.

There's a lot of stuff we could put on this tier list, but for me, I have Digital Dopamine Third because we consistently spend our time with Digital Dopamine in this.

I'm talking about all of the things on the screens that are stimulating us mentally.

And the list is broad and wide.

Different people struggle with different things here.

It could be playing Farmville.

It could be watching YouTube.

It could be being on TikTok.

It could be scrolling Reddit.

It could be millions of things, right?

Even me trying to pick things to mention here is a tall task.

People first, project second, and dopamine third.

Another way that we can ensure that we're happy spending, we're happy with the way we are spending our time is to be a little gracious with ourself.

More than likely, you are doing the best you can do.

There's no reason you'd be self-sabotaging yourself, right?

You are trying your best.

You are wanting to make the most out of your time.

And whenever you do have a moment where you feel as if you could have spent your time better, reflect on that.

And if there's merit there, then take it on.

Say, yes, I accept that.

And use it to adjust how you spend your time the next go around, right?

So time management tool number one is being on time, but time management tool number two is getting to a point where you're happy with how you're spending your time.

And we'll know, you have an inner compass.

It'll tell you, Chris, you could be doing better.

Chris, you know, you don't feel that well whenever you spend your time doing this.

When you're laying in bed and you have that thought, I really wish I would have done that.

Try your best to accept that, take it.

And not in a critical way to where you hate yourself, but in a way in which that says, okay, thankfully, I do get another day, and I'm going to use that to adjust the next time around.

Which leads us to number three, and this is something that I love personally.

I've seen it in my life.

I can attest to its effectiveness and the grit, and the tenacity that this one tip will bring about, and that is using your time to prepare, using your time to prepare for things.

I've heard someone say, it was Alex Hormozi, he said, every minute I prepare for a meeting, I view it as improving my IQ that many points.

So if he spends 30 minutes prepping for a meeting, then theoretically, he has 30 higher IQ points in that meeting because he's actually dedicated time to the content matter.

For me, I've given a lot of presentations, and I can't tell you how important it is to prepare.

Prepare, prepare, prepare.

I was listening to a podcast on the Founders Podcast, How to Sell Like Steve Jobs was the episode, and he was talking about Steve Jobs, and Steve is really well known for his presentations.

He would go up with these revolutionary products.

The engineering was completely out of this world, but people remember most Steve Jobs' ability to present, to sell, to inform the audience in a very entertaining way.

He said he would dedicate 90 hours for every hour on stage.

So one hour presentation required, from what he said, 90 hours of preparation, which is mind blowing.

I spoke about Oxford Mosey with that one minute, one IQ point for preparation.

He is similar with very big presentations he does.

He spends hundreds of hours prepping for that.

I know that's not realistic for you and your life.

If you have a work presentation next week, you're not going to spend 100 hours presenting on it.

But if you spend time to prepare, you would be astonished at how it would change things.

I think preparation is misspelled, and it should be spelled P-E-D, because it is a performance-enhancing drug.

You will be blown away by how much better you perform, and really all aspects of life if you spend time to prepare.

I remember whenever I was a waiter, it was in high school.

I got my first job at, well, my first service job in the restaurant industry at Red Lobster.

If you've ever been to Red Lobster, it's where a lot of people love to go whenever you're...

For many families, it's the nicest restaurant they go to, is Red Lobster.

It's a seafood place, but they got other things there.

I got the job because someone who I looked up to, he was a couple years older than me, he also worked at Red Lobster as a server, and he made decent money.

That perked my ears.

I looked up to this guy.

I wanted to be just like him, so I got the job.

The hardest thing for me was to learn the menu and to learn the alcohols, because I never drank.

So people would ask me what's good.

I had no clue.

I would just look and say, hey, I'll be honest, I don't drink.

I couldn't tell you.

But something about being a waiter or being a server that you realize is you become so much better the more you know the menu.

Because when you're first serving, you're trying to figure everything out, which inhibits your ability to relax and be yourself.

And I've talked about on this podcast, last episode, I talked about it, the importance of being yourself, the secret to great communication, as if you can lean into your personality.

When I taught public speaking, my students week one were robotic.

Week 16, I actually saw their personality.

They're making people laugh, and they're much better speakers.

In human communication, writ large, your ability to be yourself, tap into your personality, will help you connect way better.

So whenever you're serving, and you're trying to think about the menu, you're trying to remember, do we have a big salad?

Does the salad go with that order?

Is there croutons on that salad?

Is there dressing?

Oh, this person's allergic to sesame.

Is there sesame seeds on that bun?

It's stressful, and it prevents you from tapping into your personality.

But the more you do it, the better server you become, the more money you make, and the more you enjoy it.

So if you spend a lot of time preparing and getting to know that menu, it's going to make you so much more impactful, active, and really a better server, better at your job.

And that's one example that I've seen in my life that is probably relatable to a lot of people listening.

You have been in a job before where you had to learn the content, you had to figure out what exactly you were doing, and then you got to go out there and be yourself.

And preparation is one way you could and should be spending your time.

That expedites the phase where you start to be yourself, and you start to add that touch that no one else can add other than you, because there is no one who could be your than you, and that is truer than true.

Your personality can be everywhere you want it to be once you've done your preparation.

So what are three time management tools that we could be working on?

We, you, and me.

Well, the first is we could be better at being on time.

Ways that we could do this, we could think to ourselves, how are we spending our time?

What did we spend our time on that caused us to run behind?

Then let's take note of that.

Another way that we could do this is we show up to the location earlier, and maybe we do a couple of tasks that we were needing to do.

If I could add, let me finish, but I'll share with you a bonus tip that I kind of wish I would add it in here.

But number two would be showing up to the venue early.

And then number three would be planning less things so that we don't have as many back-to-backs.

The second time management tip that I think we all should be working on is we need to get to a point to where we are enjoying how we're spending our time.

One way to do that is becoming clear on our principles, on what guides us.

I gave that tier system, right?

People first, project seconds.

Then we can go to the dopamine.

Another way that we could be doing this is by being gracious on ourself and taking note of the moments where we wish we would have spent our time differently.

And then the third time management trip tip that I think we all should be working on is using our time to prepare.

Preparation is spelled P-E-D because it's a performance enhancing drug.

It'll be so much better for you, your job, everything that you do, if you prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare.

Bonus.

Here's a bonus.

You stay till the end, so I'm giving you a bonus.

Another time management trick that we could use, we can be working on, is having moments of time where we're not doing anything.

Nothing.

Sitting down, looking at the wall.

This could be used for meditation.

It could be used for prayer.

But what's most important is the absence of a task, because it will reground you.

And currently, that's the number one thing.

It's one of the, I would say, it is probably the resource that we lack the most, is a moment where our brains aren't stimulated by something.

So that'd be a great time trick, because we'd be a lot more effective.

I shouldn't even put it in terms of effective, but we would just enjoy life more.

If we had a couple of moments where we weren't doing anything, and we got to be centered and grounded.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this video.

If you would like, check out episode number 90, How AI Will Affect Your Relationships.

If you have any questions or suggestions, you can email me at talktopeoplepodcast.gmail.com.

Remember folks, life is better when you talk to people, and I will see you next time.