Making time for you
Me time? What’s that?
I help high-achieving women, overwhelmed with work life, to let go of the guilt, work less, and feel better.
Truth is, we only have one life. As a mom, daughter, wife, physician I understand how the commitments in my life, are both a joy and frustration. In my case, I made a commitment to my education, my patients, my family, my community, and on and on. When I am present with a patient, I knew that when I gave my full attention my patient received great care. Too often though I was distracted, interrupted and doing so much there was almost nothing left in the day for me.
Sound familair?
In our own lives we multitask, eat when in the car or walking, cut back on sleep, skip exercise and self-care. Unfortunately, both medical training and gendered socialization taught our brains this approach to our life was OK—much to our detriment. The patterns we developed in life and in formal training are so deeply ingrained that we don’t even see them until we are harmed by them. The good news is we can unlearn harmful patterns by becoming conscious of our choices as to where, and how and with whom we spend our time. You have the choice: choose you.
First, List your commitments.
Make a list of your current commitments. Where in all those commitments are you? Are you in the middle? Last? Do you even make the list?
Is there no time left in your day for you? Have you tried everything? Planners, calendars, classes, courses, mentors? Do you believe that you will have more time when the kids are older, when you move into the new house, when you get a new nanny? or fill in the blank ___________? Do you feel guilt, or hide nice things you do for yourself from others?
It’s time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers and learn how to take control of your life once and for all. We are adults, and we decide how we spend our time. Everything we do is a choice, and in making that choice we are choosing not to spend time on other things. We over-schedule ourselves, which means we do not keep our promises to ourselves and others by being late, cancelling and avoiding and complaining about the overwork that we placed on our own shoulders.
Budgeting our time differently can help nurture better choices, and will allow you to create space for and commit to your own well-being. In turn, you will build the foundations of a sustainable life. I invite you to use the following method to budget your time differently for one month. Let me know how it works for you!
Budgeting your time
Step 1:
Set an hour aside every week to budget the following week. Think of each item as $1 (an hour) and you have a $168 (hour) budget!
Step 2:
Airplane rules apply. First secure the oxygen mask for yourself, before assisting others. Schedule on your calendar the time you want to be healthy and strong. These include:
Sleep = Example: $56 for 8 hours/ day
Exercise = Example: $5 for 5 hours/ week
Shopping for, planning and eating meals = Example plan $1, shop $2, eat $1.5 hours/ day or $10.5 = $13.5 total
Self-care, doctor and wellness appointments = as needed AND desired!
Step 3:
Make a list everything you want to achieve next week. We generally underestimate how long things take to achieve and put the big goal on the calendar. Until we really think through all the steps to getting this done we can have no idea how long something will take.
List major projects and breakdown all the steps to achieving them. Then estimate how long you will work on these individual steps.
In addition to clear-cut projects, you might include blocks of time set aside thematically. Some options include:
Dream time: time to just be. Many high achieving women do not find this restful! But this time can be the best way to refresh, realign and get out of being stuck.
Leisure time: time to relax, refresh, read (remember that?)
Appointments Time: time to schedule others to help such as repair services, doctor’s appointments. This is one of my favorite and most satisfying blocks of time!
Place time on the calendar for each item. Notice what you see.
Constrain! Rome wasn’t built in a day! You may need to move some items to the following week, or the week after, or schedule less time for a task.
Step 4:
Make any adjustments to address all conflicts in advance. Send regrets. Decline appointments. Accept others.
Step 5:
Throw away your list. Commit to keeping your promises to yourself. I promise you will not feel comfortable taking care of yourself the way you want to immediately.
Step 6:
When you budget for next week, take a few minutes to review last week’s calendar. Avoid judgement, nurturing curiosity about what you achieved, didn’t achieve. Ask why it didn’t happen. Were you interrupted by things out of your control? Be curious and ask is this true? Commit to next week with those learnings fresh in your mind. You have the power to change your life!
