Feel Like You Never Have Enough Time? The Top Three Ways You May be Wasting Time Without Even Realizing It.

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Oftentimes I hear people talk about how homeschooling takes all the time from doing other things in their life. Household and family management tasks are overlooked. All the things moms want to do for themselves, like grow their interests or take care of themselves, go on the back burner. Most of the time, though, the issue isn't that we don't have enough time. It's that we're doing particular behaviors that actually waste time and we don't utilize the time we have in the best way. So, today I want to talk about three ways that you may waste time without even realizing it. 

The first one is how you think about time. When we tell ourselves constantly how busy, how overwhelmed, how exhausted we are, we are reinforcing that belief in our minds. When I was working through my own life coaching, I realized that I was making it easier for my mind to get overwhelmed and busy, and I was creating a result I didn't want in my life. How does it make you feel when you say, “Oh, I feel so overwhelmed,” or “I’m so busy,” or “I am exhausted”? How does that make you feel? Well, sometimes that makes me feel really stressed out. That makes me feel so anxious. When I think about how short I am on time and all the things I have to do, and when I get really anxious, I can do a couple things. I can feel the need to control, and to micromanage. I can get snippy with people who are wasting my time, or with my family, and want everything just to go the way I want so we can get it done, because we don't have enough time around here. I don't really show up the way I want in those moments. I can be very controlling.  Not very kind or patient.

Another thing that happens to me when I feel really anxious about time and all the things I have to do is I can become like a deer in headlights. I become so overwhelmed with all the things on my plate. I'm feeling that I don't have enough time and all that stress and anxiety makes me freeze. I actually can't focus on the things that I'm trying to do. It makes it harder to get things done in the time that I have, because the thoughts that I'm thinking are causing me to feel so anxious and stressed. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed and too busy I just want to escape. I just want to go in my room and pull up the covers and take a nap, which actually makes me have less time in my day. So I've learned to stop saying I'm so overwhelmed or I'm so busy. Now I say things like, "Well, I have a lot on my plate" or "I'm working through a lot of different things right now." I have been practicing some thoughts like this, I always have enough time in my day to accomplish everything I need to. I already have the time to get this done. Time is just time.  As time goes into our day and our schedule, what I really needed was to practice my thoughts around it. Just listen to me, say those things and think about how you feel. “I always have enough time in my day to accomplish what I need. I already have the time to get this done. I really need to get something done. Pockets of time will appear.”

How do you feel when I say thoughts like that? Do you feel frazzled? Anxious, stressed, overwhelmed. I don't know about you, but when I think those thoughts, I feel calm. I feel patient. I trust that everything is going to get done in the right amount of time. Those are thoughts of abundance that we always have enough time. I don't know how, but it's going to work out. I always have enough time to get the things done that I need to. When I say things like that, again, I feel relaxed. I feel confident. What happens is that I show up differently. Instead of showing up and feeling anxious and overwhelmed from the minute I wake up in the morning where I just want to shut down and I don't want to do anything and the work just keeps piling up. When I feel calm and confident, I actually get the things accomplished that I want to.

I often get asked how I do all the things that I do, like write my own curriculum and have my own podcast. I honestly can just say that sometimes I feel like God just lets the sun stand still. He gives me an amazing ability to focus, and all the stuff just kind of happens, and I really have no idea. I can honestly tell you sometimes I have no idea how I was able to accomplish the things that I have. But, I think it comes down to this faith and trust that I'm going to have the time to get it done, which changes the way I show up. Just the other day, I had a lot going on and we got stuck in a two and a half hour traffic jam. I started to feel the stress and anxiety come up of how I wasn't going to have enough time to get everything done I needed to. But, I was like, “okay. I have a choice. I can get overwhelmed and anxious and upset by this or I can practice my new thoughts.” So I kept telling myself that everything will fall into place and I will have the time to do the things that I need to do in a different time. Yes, it was extremely inconvenient to be stuck in traffic, but I was able to show up back home, in a calm state and was actually able to get some things crossed off my list. 

Another way that we often waste our time is through indecision. Our brains can get stuck in these loops on decisions, and we feel like we have to make the right decision. As homeschool moms, you know what that's like. We are constantly having to make decisions. Should I buy this curriculum or that curriculum? Should we sign up for this co-op or do this class? Should we do soccer or should we do football? And the decisions go on and on. The more we think about them, the more that we reinforce the mental pathways, and then the more we start thinking about them. Then we can get into cycles where we feel stuck and we don't even realize how much time we're actually wasting just thinking about the decision over and over again.

My coach told me when you have two choices, you have a dilemma. There are always more than two options. When we put ourselves in a dilemma, we tend to overthink and overanalyze. We can get stuck over what is and get into what I call analysis paralysis, where we're just frozen and can't even make a decision because we can't stop analyzing it. In doing so, we are wasting so much time. I encourage you, if you have something you're trying to make a decision about, set time on your calendar to think about that decision. When thoughts come up, or you start to worry, or you start to feel anxious about the decision, stop your brain and say, “No. I am going to think about this Friday at three o'clock.” Then when Friday at three o'clock comes around, set your timer and give yourself 30 minutes to do a brain dump and just write everything that comes into your head around that decision. When you are able to stop your brain from getting stuck into thinking about a decision over and over again, you're able to focus more on the present in what you're doing right now. When you can focus more on the present, you're actually able to get more done in a shorter period of time.

Oftentimes, we just need to make a decision. Like I said, so often we think that there's a right decision and a wrong decision. But most of the time, that's really not true. It's not like there's this one or that one, where one is right and one is wrong. We put so much pressure on ourselves to make the right decision. Most of the time, there really isn't a right or wrong decision, so we can take the pressure off. Either decision that I'm going to make is beneficial for my family. You don't have to get it 100% correct all the time. Take an action, take another action. Learn and grow. Don't let yourself waste time spinning in indecision cycles. 

Another way that we waste time is that we don't actually plan out the time that we have. We all have the same 24 hours in our day, but the way that we view time, the way that we plan for a time and plan our calendars really does make a huge difference in the amount of time that we have to accomplish the things we truly want. That's the goal here. Our days will be dictated by other people in the tyranny of the urgent, if we're not purposeful and intentional about what we want to create in our lives. So, we need to be purposeful with our time. You can always make more money, but you can't make more time. We're all allotted a certain amount of time and we need to be good stewards of it and make sure we're using our time wisely. But, oftentimes you feel like we don't have enough time, or we say that we don't have enough time, because we're busy doing a lot of things that really don't matter that much. 

 If we have certain things that we want to do in our life, we have to be intentional about creating time for them. What happens is we get to the end of our day or the end of our week or the end of the year, and realize that we never really got around to doing the things we actually wanted to do. The reason is not that we don't have enough time. It's because we weren't intentional about planning the time that we did have. The average American spends four hours a day watching TV and an hour and a half on social media. That's five and a half hours a day. When we think about it like that, what could you do in five and a half hours of extra time? Man, I could write a book or learn a new skill, like playing guitar or learning a new language. There's a million things I could think of to do in five and a half hours. Now it's not that watching TV or going on social media is horrible. I mean, we all need to relax, right? But it's about doing it in moderation and actually planning for those things and not just doing it because you're bored and you don't have a plan for your day. 

We need to do things in our life that don't make us feel worse afterwards. We need to plan times in our lives for the things that will make us feel better. I talk to moms all the time about the importance of feeding your own heart, soul, and mind. That might look different for each person. For me, reading is really important. It helps grow my mind. It gives me things to think about. Being in nature is so healing, and I have to schedule these walks outside several days a week because I know they are so vital to me. Having a spiritual practice every day is also very important. So that's become part of my morning routine at this point, it's just automatic. It's like a non-negotiable. It just happens, just like brushing my teeth. It's important and it's not like you were ever going to be this machine. You don't have to schedule every second of your day, but you do have to make sure you're putting on your calendar the things that are most important to you, and one of those things should be self care. 

Oftentimes that gets pushed to the wayside. We say that we’ll take care of ourselves when we have some more time. You're not going to ever get just extra time. In order to be the best mom that you were created to be, you have to take care of your physical body, your mental health and your spiritual life. Where in your schedule, if I went and looked at your calendar right now, where would that be happening? If it's just going to kind of happen whenever, maybe, probably, you might sometimes get around to it. Girl, it is not going to happen, and we fill our day with other distractions and then we'll fill our extra time up with social media and TV, eating food, whatever. 

We need to be intentional about how we schedule our time. So at the beginning of the year, I start planning my time and say, “Okay, what are some things that are non-negotiable for me this year? If I want to go on a field trip to such and such place, if we're going to take a nature hike, where on the calendar is that.” Research things like, “Where are you actually going to go? Do you need to schedule this? What kind of things do you need to bring there? What do you need to book?” Oftentimes, if I book something and I pay for it, it's going to happen. That's why I do it several months out. Then it becomes a non-negotiable for me, it's on the calendar, I pay for it, it's booked. No matter what happens, we are going to make this. Otherwise, those priorities and those visions and those goals we'd have for life, they're really just a wish. It's when you actually schedule it, that it becomes doable. 

So, I plan out my year filling in big, fun priority things at least once a month. I plan, then each week out on Sunday. I do this for school and this is a video where I show you how I planned out my lessons for the week for my five kids in 30 minutes on a Sunday. I also plan out the rest of my day, too. Oftentimes, as homeschool moms, we can just focus on planning the hours that we're actually doing school, and we don't have a plan for our mornings or afternoons or evenings, and we get sucked into these time wasters. So, plan for the rest of your day as well. What are you doing in the morning before the kids get up? What are you doing to shut down your school day? What are you doing for your evening routines and those kinds of things? 

I add my priorities to my calendar first, and then I add in other tasks to the empty time slots. Sticking to a plan helps me stay focused, while still leaving room for spontaneous changes.  People often say "I'm not a planner", but sometimes that's just an excuse not to even try. We are worried that we'll fail. We're worried that we won't be consistent. Having a plan for your time doesn't mean you're a slave to schedule. It just means you will have a greater likelihood of getting the things done each week that are important to you. If we wait around for an opportunity to do some of the things that we really want to do, like time is just going to fall into our laps, it's just not going to happen. Then we end up getting frustrated and resentful with either the people in our lives, or the circumstances in our lives that we feel are keeping us from doing the things that we actually really want to do. 

In conclusion, there are three different ways that we often waste time. The first one is our negative thoughts around time that are actually causing us a lot of stress and anxiety and making it so it's harder for us to focus. Another way that we waste time is being stuck in indecision and thinking about decisions over and over again, instead of just moving forward. Then the third one is by not intentionally planning out our priorities and putting them on our calendar. Until next time, remember, life is a feast, let's savor it.