#83 - Practical Exercises for Better and Holistic Time Management

Hey everyone,  Ever feel like your day is a whirlwind and you wonder where all your time went by bedtime? In this episode, we're diving into the secrets of mastering your time with a holistic approach. Reflecting on my journey running an indie yarn shop, I realized the chaos of constant busy work and the importance of focused, mindful time management.

I'll walk you through five steps to gain insight into your current time usage and practical exercises to improve it. We'll cover everything from tracking your time with a bullet journal to setting clear intentions. Plus, I'll share wisdom from Oliver Berkman's book "4,000 Weeks," which reshapes how we view productivity. By the end, you'll have tools to balance your work and personal life better. Don't forget to share your insights with me—I love hearing from you all. Let's create a pattern shift in your life and business!

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QUOTE FROM THE EPISODE

"Understanding how you use your current time is the first step to making meaningful changes."

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Chapters

• 0:00 Mastering Time for Small Business Success
• 4:29 Time Management and Reflection Exercise
• 21:57 The Power of Time Management

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Do you ever feel like your days are a whirlwind of tasks? Yet by the time you hit the pillow, you wonder where all your time went. What if you could have a clear, balanced schedule that not only boosts your productivity but also leaves room for the things you love? In today's episode, we'll uncover the secrets to mastering your time with a holistic approach, so get ready to transform your daily chaos into a well-oiled machine with lots of time for fun left.

Speaker 1: 0:37

So when I think of the days when I used to run an indie yarn shop and needlecraft school, I mainly think about the headless chicken that I was constantly doing things but never really truly focused. I knew what I was doing and I knew why I was doing it. I just had a really hard time managing my time in such a way that it left time for me to focus on those things that actually grow a business. I was constantly putting out fires and working on big things with small effects and small things that I could have just skipped. I came into the door every morning and started working on whatever was in front of me, and then the customers would come in and I would fill the time in between with busy work. I didn't take the time to figure out how to actually use it in the best way. Now, time is worth its value in gold, but I will warn you to fall into the trap of time management as we usually talk about it. To a certain extent, we need to organize our time, but in our effort to find more time to do more things, we want to become more and more efficient and fill that time with more and more things to do, and that's not where we want to end up. My work is to share with you tools and ideas that will help you to get focused. Focus will make a big difference in getting your work done in less time and have some time left to do other important things in your life. When we talk about time management, we look at it from a holistic point of view and balance it out with reflection and mindfulness, much like in the bullet journal method. It is very important to have a healthy relationship with time so that you can stay away from overwhelm and burnout.

Speaker 1: 2:50

Hello, my name is Saskia. Welcome to Pattern Shift. Are you running a textile craft business or dreaming of starting one, whether you are trying to make a living or something extra on the side, turning from crafter to business owner can be a steep learning curve. It doesn't have to be With 16 years of experience in running small businesses in textile crafts and a drive to build a solid alternative to fast fashion. My mission is to provide you with no BS, actionable exercises and strategies in a language that makes sense to you, that you can implement right away so you can organize, build and grow your business. So don't burn out before you get started. Build a solid base with the help of Pattern Shift Podcast and the Yavol community and its programs. So in today's episode I'll walk you through five steps and give you a few exercises to do so you can get some insight in what your time management looks like now and how you can change it for the better. By the end of the show you'll understand, hopefully, why time management is a key skill in running a small business and staying happy and healthy while doing so. Ps, I would love to know where you are in the world. Why don't you sign up for the PatentShift mails and just reply to an email to start a conversation with me? I'd love to hear from you, find the link in the show notes and on patternshiftfm.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Now let's get into today's episode. First, we have to understand our current time usage. First, you have to understand how you are currently using your time. It is really important to have a beginning point, so the best way to do that is to start keeping track of how you spend your time. Before you can even start to change things and make things better, you really have to know how you are living your life right now. You think you know and then you write it down and you're shocked.

Speaker 1: 5:12

I remember basically actually all of this, all of my kind of new direction in my work, direction in my work. I had a key, pivotal moment when I did this exercise. I got my bullet journal and I started to keep track of how I spent my time. I had two small kids in school still in school, but they're not that small anymore. I lived outside of the city. The school was in the city. More, I lived outside of the city. The school was in the city. My business was in the city. I taught at night, I was in the shop. During the day, I spent a lot of time at home with the kids as well. I was doing all the things and by actually taking note of this, of all of my um, all the things that I was doing. I found out that the only time I had truly to myself was the time driving back from school to my shop. And, um, wait, wait, wait, which one was it? And at night, back from the shop to my house. When I taught at night because I was going back and forth, so from my house to the shop at night and back was my only me time that was so shocking. Um, I didn't know it was that bad and it was. So I decided to dive deeper into bullet journaling and be more connected to what I was actually doing in the moment, have never looked back. That was really powerful, and I hope this exercise has the same effect on you.

Speaker 1: 7:09

So every day, for at least a week, you have to write down what you're doing. It is for personal insight, it is for preparation. Of course, you may share your results wherever you are, with whomever, but this is for you to just see what's happening. So I would say, group your track time into categories Family time, work time, me time, house cleaning, dog walking, sports, social time Kind of make these categories and then, first of all, journal around these questions that I'm going to share with you now. Just take your journal, take a pen and start writing. Don't be like, be kind to yourself, it can be ugly, it doesn't have to be correct language, it's all fine, it's all for you.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So think about these questions. Where do I spend most of my time? Does this feel good for me? How much time do I actually have to work? Is my time organized or do I just let things happen? And what do I feel needs to change and what can stay the same? So these are important questions. You can ask this question and journal about it before you start tracking, and you can also do it after or during. What you also want to do is to grab your journal or a piece of paper if you don't have a journal and write the days of the week horizontally on top of the page, then vertically on the left-hand side, divide in increments of 30 minutes or an hour from the moment that you wake up, usually to the moment that you go to bed, and this will give you vertical spaces that you can divide into different sections.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Now you can make it fun. Take colored pencils or make little dots for one thing, stripes for another, but take this vertical not a line, but a vertical space and fill it out with the different categories that we were talking about before. So that would look like, for instance, from 8 to 8.30, meal time, and meal time could be orange, I'm just saying something. And then it goes from 8.30 until 9, take the kids to school, so that practical family time or family time and so on and so forth. And what will happen by the end of the week? You'll get a color block situation. So you're color blocking your time, and not with the future in mind. You are doing, you're making a map of how you are currently spending your time. So we're not thinking about the ideal situation, we're just noting what's happening. If you don't bring your journal with you everywhere, then make sure that you have a small piece of paper or your phone to take notes so you can do it at the end of the day. But make sure that you do this for at least a week so that you can have a clear idea of what your week looks like.

Speaker 1: 11:01

And then, after that, the second step is to analyze this and reflect on it, and I was talking about these questions just before. Where do I spend most of my time? Does this schedule feel good to me? How much time. Do I have to work? Is my time organized or do I just let things happen? Is my time organized or do I just let things happen? What do I feel needs to change and what can stay the same? Again, look at it and write down what you're feeling, what you're thinking and how you want to move forward with this. It's very valuable to know what's going on and see this in front of you, to know what's going on and see this in front of you.

Speaker 1: 13:28

So I just want to mention that it could be dangerous to overly plan your time and make it a rigid situation. As you can probably tell from your color blocking schedule is that things are different in different days and things do not always look the same, and you want to, in the end, get to a situation where there is time to breathe, time to move time to be flexible, and it is all about becoming realistic. How much time do you actually need to do things and have enough time to go from A to B? Don't forget about that as well, and it can be quite shocking to figure out that you don't have actually have the time that you want to have or the time that you think you need. Um, but it can also be very freeing and liberating. So, um, um, one of the most important things, that is, um.

Speaker 1: 14:35

The core of this work is to build on a healthy relationship with time and let it breathe a little bit more. Then you're much more capable to take care of yourself and your family and your business and your dog Monkey, I don't know, don't have a monkey. That's not good. So I always feel like, whatever you do, if you implement time to reflect, you are automatically taking more time to do things. You're automatically slowing things down because reflecting on what you've done will kind of stretch your time and it will offer you so much as well. Being mindful in the moment will actually kind of give you some time back because you are focusing on what's happening. You probably know that when you eat, you're not supposed to be reading something or looking at your phone and I know we all do it but when you focus on your meal, you process the fact that you're eating with all your senses, and so you'll have the sense of being full at a more natural moment. So it's the same with the general time. Being mindful in the moment is gifting you back a lot as well. So, on one hand, we're slowing down and it feels like we will get less done, perhaps, and on the other hand, we'll get time back by being more mindful and reflecting on our time and how we use it, so that we can make better decisions. This is actually already.

Speaker 1: 16:40

I'm already going into the next step, about setting intentions and building that framework. It is just so important to know what your intentions are Intentions, goals intentions is a better word for it. Do you want to be more present as a partner, as a mom? Did you just get a dog, but you don't really feel like you're spending enough time with the dog outside. All of that is important to know what your intentions are. Do you want to grow your business and have more focus? While you're at your studio or wherever you are working, write down what is it that you actually want from the time that you have available. So with this, you're building on a solid foundation for more effective work, planning and also more focus in the end.

Speaker 1: 17:50

Another journaling prompt is how much time and I mentioned it before, but I want to focus on it again how much time do you actually have to spend on work, ensuring that your personal life, your family if you have a family gets enough space and attention. So flip the things around what is the amount of time that you need so that your personal life gets enough space and attention and you can stay happy and healthy? And then look at your work how much time is left? Look at your work how much time is left? And only after that you can have a look at how you want to spend that time. How can you be more present, effective, efficient, like I feel? Efficient in this topic feels like a little bit of a curse word, but I just love efficiency. I mean, if you get away from the busy work, if you find ways to kind of move away from all the chatter and focus on what needs to get done. I mean, these are 700 other episodes, but that is, I think that's gold. But first things first, right, so first of all we'll start with journaling and thinking about how we use our time. Then we're going to actually map our time, color blocking our time, and after that we reflect on what we actually see, taking some of those journaling questions again and looking at it again and see if things change, and then we will also look at how much time do we actually have available to do our job and from that we can move on into building the ideal quote unquote ideal week. But that's something for another time. Now, as I said before, reflection and mindfulness is a very important part in maintaining a balanced schedule.

Speaker 1: 20:16

Oliver Berkman he wrote his book 4,000 Weeks and it made such an impact on me. If you have the possibility, please do read it. Slow down, read that book and you'll gain more time after. It is actually so true that sometimes you have to stop, take some time to do a thing so that you'll have more time after, and usually those things feel so counterintuitive, but that's just doesn't sound like a lot, does it? I mean, it's finite, that's it.

Speaker 1: 21:25

I just wanted to share with you some of the key points from this book so that you have an idea what this is about and how Oliver Bergman looks at time and how it could be so healthy for you, for me, for everyone, to just have a different point of view to this whole time management point of view to this whole time management, productivity, hustle, culture. We don't want to go there. I use the word time management because we're so used to it. But okay, let's listen to the key points of this really great book.

Speaker 1: 21:57

So he talks about the obsession with being productive and how it has made it so difficult for people to appreciate family time. And the best way to make the most of our time is to actually spend it doing the things we love. So it's incredible that I'm talking to you and you're either trying to start a business, wanting to start a business in the textile, craft or creative industry, and you are the kind of person that wants to work and do the thing you love and earn a living or earn something extra on the side. And the best way to do it, the best way to make the most of our time, is to do something that we love. It's still going to be work, don't? I mean we don't have to like pussyfoot around that. It's still going to be work. It's still going to be hard, but doing something you love makes a huge difference in how you spend your time and how you feel about that.

Speaker 1: 23:00

This also talks to the concept of ikigai, a Japanese idea philosophy, where ikigai is the place, the crossover, where you find something that you love, doing something that you're really good at, and something that can earn you money, but also something that helps others, helps the world. So it's kind of like, when you get all of that together, that ikigai, then you basically already gained a lot of time because you don't have to split it, and it will give you, because you don't have to split it, and it will give you a really centered and great feeling. I mean, what's not to love about doing what you love and making money and helping others? So okay, back to the key points of the book. So distraction is essential to our existence. Hence, gaining perfect control over our attention is kind of problematic. This is what I was talking about before. We kind of have to be a little bit flexible and don't have too rigid ideas of how to spend our time. I do have to say that I thrive when I have specific topics for specific days, because I kind of need the routines to. It's really helpful for me, but at the same time, sometimes I just really want to mix it up or I just want to go somewhere else and that then makes me really happy and that brings a lot of joy and energy, and then the next day that will kind of give back to me.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Although we recognize that life is frequently beyond our control, many people waste their time attempting to arrange every minute. It's such an interesting one when you know that time is beyond our control. Arranging every minute is such a waste of time. Right? Paying attention to how we spend our days is the most effective method for choosing what to accomplish with our time. So what you can do as another little exercise is breaking down all your duties into tiny sections and make a list and actually remember that you only can have one priority at a time. That's actually what the word is. It's just one thing at a time. That's actually what the word is. It's just one thing.

Speaker 1: 25:46

So think about it. Make a list, what is most important to you. And then another thing you can do is there's technology that you can use with a specific purpose in mind, like if you use an e-reader to read a book instead of reading it on your iPad or on your phone. You'll be far less likely to get distracted. That's also more of a be in the moment. Make use of the time you've chosen to spend in a certain way and I mean this is Mrs Squirrel, mrs Shark, I get distracted a lot of the time, so I'm not saying you shouldn't get distracted, it happens. So what we can do is we can find ways to get less distracted so we can actually do the thing we want to do in less time and use the time that we have left to do the other things that are important to us, right? So, like everything, the idea is quite simple. It's just not always easy to do, so that's why these exercises can help you to get more insight and to have something to work with in the future. So I hope this gave you a little bit of insight.

Speaker 1: 27:15

What we've been talking about is understanding how you use your current time, analyzing and reflecting on that time, then setting intentions and building a framework, some practical exercises blocking or not really blocking your time, but color blocking your time, because blocking your time is something else that we might talk about in the future Color blocking your time and making a map of how you use your time right now. And then we talked a little bit about reflection and mindfulness in time management and how to have a holistic approach, and I talked about the 4,000 Weeks book by Oliver Berkman. That gives us a different viewpoint on time, which is super interesting to me. I would love if you complete your exercises, if you want to share what you did with me, what you got from it. That would be worth more than I don't know you becoming a supporter of the show. I really I'm doing this to help you feel better about what you do and to grow your business so that other people can enjoy your products and so that we can move the hell away from fast fashion. That's why I'm doing this, so I'd love to hear about your exercises, your insights, the things you got from this and, be honest, I can take it. I hope, okay, you can share all of this with me in a multitude of ways.

Speaker 1: 28:54

The easiest thing you can do is to go into the app where you're listening to this. There will be a message saying send me a text message. Just click it. Send me a text message. You'll find my website there patternshiftfm and on the website you can sign up for newsletters and get notified whenever we have a new episode out. I also send out newsletters that focus more on business tips and tricks, and then you can also leave a voice message on the show notes for this episode. There's a little button on the side and you can just leave me a voice message. I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much. Until next time, and remember that every stitch counts as we work together and create a pattern shift for you, your business, the crafters and the fashion industry. Thank you, thank you.