Differently
Simple, yet powerful ideas for building a life, differently. Hosted by Carla Reeves, creator of The Differently Coaching Experience, this podcast offers thought-provoking conversations and practical insights for anyone looking to get out of survival mode and build a life that is truly your own. From the highs and lows of love and relationships, to the challenges and opportunities of work and career, Differently will challenge you to to rethink what’s possible.
Differently
Master Your Capacity to Realize Your Goals with Josephine Owusu
Do you overestimate what you think you can achieve in a given time frame?
Our friend, Josephine Owusu is back to arm us with practical tools to optimize our productivity, creativity AND peace of mind
Josephine Owusu is a business strategist for purpose-driven coaches, content creators & creative entrepreneurs overcome overwhelm & burnout by getting their time back, increasing revenue and building a business which they love and allows them to live life on their terms.
You will learn...
- Tangible strategies to help streamline productivity and prevent burnout.
- How to tap into the rhythm of your peak productivity times
- How the Capacity Calculator can help us reclaim our time and lead our business AND life.
Buckle up! Josephine always brings it and her energy is contagious!
Learn more about Josephine:
Website: https://www.theowusucollective.com/
Check Out Josephine's New YouTube Channel
Connect on IG: https://www.instagram.com/iamjosephineowusu/
And, get The Capacity Calculator
Check out Josephine's previous episodes:
CEO Time: Level up Your Business
Build a Business AND a Life
Learn more about Carla: https:/www.carlareeves.com/
Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reevescarla/
Explore Coaching with Carla: https://bookme.name/carlareeves/lite/explore-coaching
Learn more about Carla:
Website: https:/www.carlareeves.com/
Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reevescarla/
Connect on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@differentlythepodcast
Go to https://www.carlareeves.com/getunstuck.com to download Carla's on demand journaling workshop + exercise to help you stop spinning and start moving forward.
Explore Coaching with Carla: https://bookme.name/carlareeves/lite/explore-coaching
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Thank you for listening!
I'm Carla Reeves, and this is differently. Whether you feel stuck in survival, navigating a change or seeking more for your life, may this podcast be your weekly nudge to take a risk to build a life that is uniquely bold, authentic and in alignment with your deepest values. After a decade of coaching individuals from corporate leaders to creative artists to multimillion dollar CEOs I'm convinced we are far closer than we realize to what we deeply desire, and it's a willingness to do differently that can change everything. Do you ever overestimate what you think you can achieve in a given time frame? I sure do. Or maybe do you try to cram a week's worth of tasks into a single day? I've never done that. How about you?
Speaker 1:Our friend Josephine Wusu is back with us today to arm us with practical tools for balancing the demands and joys of running a business and leading a personal life, so that we can optimize our productivity, creativity and maintain peace of mind. Josephine Wusu is a business strategist for purpose driven coaches, content creators and creative entrepreneurs, helping them overcome overwhelm and burnout by getting their time back, increasing revenue and building a business which they love that allows them to live life more on their terms. Be on the lookout. You're going to love the tangible strategies she shares to help us streamline productivity and prevent burnout. Learn how to tap into the rhythm of your own peak productivity times and benefits of tailoring your schedule to match these. Get ready for an energizing conversation that will help to declutter your mind. Call out the blind spots that might be sabotaging productivity, and Josephine is going to arm us with a great tool the capacity calculator to reclaim our time to lead our business and our life. Buckle up, josephine always brings it and her energy is contagious. Josephine Wusu, welcome back.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Kala. I'm so happy to be back.
Speaker 1:So today we're talking about capacity and this calculator that you have that I can't wait to hear and learn more about. But take us into this idea of capacity. I think you mentioned you have a personal experience recently that could kind of bring us into this whole idea of thinking about our own capacity and life in business.
Speaker 2:Okay. So capacity in terms of business sense is how much time you have to be able to do the things that you need to do in your business. So, whether it's client work, whether it's marketing activities, it could be networking all the things that help to move your business forward, even your admin when it comes to the financial aspect. And so, when it comes to capacity, I want to talk about how much time do you have for your actual clients and how much time do you have for things to work on your business, and recently, so a great example I am currently studying for a women in entrepreneurship certification with Equornell and the Equornell University, and I'm nearly done. Yay, I'm doing the last module right now, which I'm so excited about. It has been absolutely amazing. It's been brilliant. It's going to help me with my clients going forward because of all the extra things that I have learned.
Speaker 2:However, it has been very time consuming, and so it has limited my capacity. I knew it was going to be a lot, but I didn't realize how much of my capacity it will take, and so, because of that, I had to adjust my schedule a bit, just because I knew that it was for short term. It was 12 weeks and I wanted to put my all into it so that I would get a good grade for it. And so what I did is I paused on creating content for LinkedIn because I was still working on my systems for that, so that in future, when things get busy, it can still be rolling on. But because I just started LinkedIn, that's the reason why I had to pause.
Speaker 2:And for my YouTube as well, I had to just slow that down for a couple of weeks because I didn't want to get to the point of burnout. So if you are over capacity, you are going to be feeling burnout. And so what I did is I decided I'm going to pause on these two things. I am going to pick them up when I'm at the tail end of the course, which I've started picking them all up again. And what I did do is the time that I did have, I did spend time strategizing and mapping out my content for LinkedIn, for YouTube, so that, going forward, I've created all that content and, regardless of whether it's a busy season or it's a quieter season, I can still remain consistent.
Speaker 1:I think you're talking about something that's so relevant to the listener and to people that I work with and myself. Right, because, as high achievers and driven people, we often I often overestimate the amount of work I can get done in a particular chunk of time, and so can you speak to that a little bit and what you see inside of your business in working with entrepreneurs?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I'll give you an example. I don't remember who said this, but I heard it on a podcast years ago and it's always stuck with me. They said that sometimes, when we're planning our, our schedules, we overestimate. As you said, that's a common thing, we all do it, and it's like when you're going on holiday and you stuff that suitcase, you could be going away for a week and you put 10 for the women out there. You can put 10, 10 pairs of shoes, but then when you go on the holiday, you probably only use two of them, and it's usually the flip-flops and the Comfortable sandals, and then you come back so you have this packed suitcase that is full to the brim.
Speaker 2:And that's sometimes what we do with our time. We we put the longest list and then we wonder why we feel like we've not achieved anything at the end of the year, at the end of the year, at the end of the day, because we've kind of set ourselves up to fail. And the reason what? Another thing that I see a lot of clients do is Sometimes clients do not track their time, and I always encourage this that you track your time so that you have an idea of how long it takes you to do particular tasks, and so when you are planning your time, you are actually planning with an accurate time frame in mind. And so I would say the first thing if you don't track your time, start doing that. You will thank me later. Don't just track your time that you spend with your clients, but also track the time that you spend on the things where you're the task, where you are working on your business.
Speaker 1:I need to do that. So I want to go back to the suitcase, because are you saying that we I can so relate to that. By the way, and I'm sure everybody listening again Are you saying that we could like, have like, a capsule wardrobe for our business? Yes, I like that idea a lot for that to-do list. It would be like near really narrowing down what we're focused on in the things that move the needle, which reminds me of If you haven't already listened to Josephine's prior episodes here on differently, you can go back to build a business and a life, and also she was on talking about CEO time. So we'll put the links in the show notes, but make sure you go back to those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this I would even tie it into. So everyone works differently, but you can even theme your days, for example, so you can have your days where it's like, okay, it's, these are my client days, it's 100% client work. And then you can have your days where it might be writing days. If you do a lot of writing in your business, whether it's for blog posts, whether it's for LinkedIn, if you're someone like you, carla, if you have a podcast, then you can have a podcast day. So that could be the days where you Record your podcasts, even the days where you do interviews for podcasts, if that's something that you do and you want to be a podcast guest.
Speaker 2:So there's so many different ways. You can have half a day for your accounting, like just looking at your books before you send it over to your accountant. Yes, it's, it's. I think it's so important that we're really intentional about how we spend our time, and so, yes, I love what you said, that we can have a capsule wardrobe for our CEO time, very important for our capacity. I mean, yeah, well, and what you're saying, I mean today is really one of those days like today is a podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm doing interviews today, right, and what I love about that and sometimes I do, you know, days where I can do just client days, where I'm doing coaching calls what I love about when that happens is that I can really get into that lane and Go like it, just my mind is kind of focused on that one lane instead of switching lanes all day, and I feel like I'm more powerful in my day. What you know, even with coaching calls, often those conversations one to the other will something from one conversation will benefit the next person I'm talking to, and so so incredibly valuable.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you. It's all about getting into that zone. There's been so many studies that have been done that if we Switch between different tasks, we actually end up being less productive, and so it's really important that we just get into that zone. And the same with you. When it comes to coaching calls, I Don't know about you, but I know for me, by the end of the day, even though I have loved them and it has been amazing and we have really Gotten into the zone, I'm also drained. So there's no way my brain is mush. There's no way I can go and write a blog post After, yeah, being in that zone, because it, yeah, it takes your energy in a different way.
Speaker 1:Well and to. I mean, I've had to learn over the years like managing, you know, my energy and capacity on those days where I used to do a lot more coaching calls in one day. I don't do that anymore and I also make sure that even however many I am doing that, there's like good breaks in between that are Kind of filling me back up, and so there's ways to even manage our energy and capacity inside of those things. But I think this is such an important conversation. So how do we begin to? I know you have this idea around a capacity calculator and you have a special gift for listeners today, but help us to start to think about what is a capacity calculator? I have no idea and I love this.
Speaker 2:So it sounds more complicated than it is, but it's a tool that I've created where you basically put in the, you look at your schedule and you put in the hours that you have the capacity, so your hours that you have available every single day of the week and the way I've done it as well is you will have it from I think it starts at 6am I've created kind of three times lots From 6am to 12, then 12 noon to 6pm and then 6pm to midnight. Now the reason I've done this is not because I'm encouraging you to work 24 hours, but it's more because everyone's capacity is different. So you have some people where they have young children and so sometimes they get up really early to work before a certain particular time. Or some people they they're just night hours and they prefer to work in the evening. So it's really all about looking about your energy levels. As you said.
Speaker 2:When are you the most productive? When are you sharpest? So for me, I'm a weird one. To be honest, I'm a bit of a weird one.
Speaker 2:I can be, I'm an early morning person and my brain can be sharp, but I'm also that same person at midnight where I'm literally like Lord, there's too many ideas coming in my head and so I am a bit of a you know, a strange one, but some people are morning people, some, and then by the evening it's like their brain cannot function. And then other people they light up when it comes to the evening. So it's finding out when am I actually the most productive, when is my brain the most sharpest? And you want to, in those particular times you want to make sure that you are focusing on those tasks which are even the most difficult ones, the ones that you've been putting off but you know you need to do, but you need a lot of concentration, and then also those tasks which require your creativity as well. So you want to kind of make sure that those key tasks that you need to do schedule it in that time when you are the sharpest.
Speaker 1:I really like the idea of managing your energy, so choosing the type of activity you're doing at the time of day where either your energy is high and you need high energy for that particular activity, or it's maybe at the end of the day. I know for me, like the end of the afternoon, like two or three in the afternoon I can get kind of droopy. That's a good time to do just simple task kind of things that don't require a lot of creative brain power or a lot of energy. So I think that's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then what we do as well is we look at the capacity calculator allows you to kind of just see how much time do I actually have, because sometimes we just think, oh yeah, I've got this amount of time but we've not factored in, for example, if you're a parent, you've got, and you've got a school run, or there might be some meetings that you have here and there. So it's really knowing how much time do I actually have and then splitting it into okay. So I've got this for client work, I've got this for tasks that I need to do to work on my business, and then you use that to kind of plan out your time, based on the data that you have of how long it takes you to do different tasks that you do regularly. So just help, it's another planning tool.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the signs for people who have never really managed their time or capacity or been intentional about this? It makes me think of a workshop I did not too long ago which was inside of a company. So these are people working nine to five jobs. But I remember giving them a reflection exercise and it was I remember somebody said, wow, I hadn't actually stopped to ask myself if the motions I'm making are leading to the life and life I want to be living. And so for somebody who is just like, this is a brand new idea where one where can we identify where we may be like are stretched way outside of our capacity, because I think a lot of people are operating just stretched all the time and so they might not even know. And then two, yeah, what are some of those signs that we can be looking for? And then we'll go to kind of, how do we begin shifting that?
Speaker 2:Okay, so where people can be stretched, I think I love the example that you gave about the reflection, and what I would say is grab a piece of paper and just write down every task that you currently do in your business. Write it all down, every task that you do, and then I want you to ask yourself is that task moving my business forward? And then highlight the ones which are actually you would say are moving your business forward. Another thing that I would recommend as well is looking at roughly how much time are you spending on each of these tasks, because then you'll be able to see if, when I'm looking at my capacity, am I spending 80% on things that are maintaining the business as opposed to moving the business forward.
Speaker 2:And so it's kind of doing a time audit, time and task audit, just to see what is it that I'm actually doing. Well, it's so true, am I?
Speaker 1:actually yeah, no finish.
Speaker 2:No, what is it that I'm actually doing, and is it moving my business forward or is it maintaining the function of my business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's so true, because how often are we just going through these motions and at the end of the day, we're like, what did I do today, what? And at the end of the week, what did I move forward? It's so easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and everything you just said. I just want to remind the listeners you could apply all of this to not only your business but to your life. You know, are you spending time on the things that align with your values and the things that align with your bigger dreams and goals? Because a lot of times in our mind it feels like we are, but when you actually stop and do what Josephine is saying, like actually track it and log it, it's so incredibly eye-opening yeah.
Speaker 2:Like. It just gives you that clarity. We need to move from that place of being reactive to being proactive and so by taking this time and task audit, it just allows us to have a bit more clarity and to kind of fix what needs to be fixed so that we're not just going through the motions. And the second thing you said you asked about what are the signs that we're at capacity? It's burnout, burnout, overwhelm. If someone knows that they have a long to do list, but they're just overwhelmed and they're literally like I don't know when to start, I don't know where to start, I don't know what to focus on, so they have decision fatigue basically. And that's because they're at capacity and they don't even have the capacity to sit down and just do a brain dump and think about okay, how should I change this, what am I doing? How do I assess the situation?
Speaker 1:Is that one of the first things that you do with people? I imagine it's built in somewhere, but it sounds like, especially for someone who's overwhelmed, that's a great place to start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If one of my clients comes to me and overwhelm is the big one of the key things that they're just they need help with, the first thing we do is we do like a task management exercise and we just look at what are you spending your time doing? Because you're busy, but what are you busy doing? We need to. We want you to be busy but then to also get results where you feel like, okay, I'm moving the business forward.
Speaker 2:And sometimes another sign that someone is at full capacity, but not necessarily doing things that are in their genius zone, is they could be doing all the things that are in their business, so they could be doing all the admin stuff or the maintenance tasks, but they're not doing enough of what is their genius zone, what is their gift, what are their natural skills, and so that's going to drain them even more. If you're doing something that isn't your actual natural skill, it's going to actually drain you. So if you're doing something where, yep, I'm operating in my genius zone and I'm passionate about this, it can be tiring, don't get me wrong, but in a different way. You're just you're buzzing.
Speaker 1:Completely so. Our work parallels so well together. Josephine, as you were talking, I'm thinking about when I start working with a client. You know, a lot of times people are overwhelmed, but in a different way, and it's, you know, the first part of our work together is to empty their mind and their thinking, because a lot of times, when your life feels chaotic, your inner life is chaotic, and so we've got to, like assess what's happening in your inner life and what you're spending time thinking about all day, because that thinking is driving all of your behaviors and actions, and a lot of times it's outdated and driving patterns that are actually like just sucking your energy and time. There are things that you they're outdated jobs you don't need to be doing anymore, and it's one of my favorite places to work because you can like harness time and energy that people don't realize they have, and so, oh, it's so exciting.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it Okay.
Speaker 1:So back to capacity. How can people start to use this calculator and start to make some simple changes? How can we do differently, Josephine?
Speaker 2:So what they can do is, first of all, just look at their calendar, look at their schedule and kind of pay attention to any patterns from a week to week basis. And what they can do as well is they can use the capacity calculator on a week to week basis actually, because obviously every week, depending on what you do, some people's weeks are different to other weeks and then for some people their weeks are consistent. So if you have a consistent schedule, then it's easier. You just put it in once and then you might change it quarterly or every six months or something.
Speaker 2:But if you're someone where your schedule is different every week, depending on what client projects or client meetings that you have on a weekly basis, I would say, start with looking at your calendar for the next week and looking for the gaps where you have some time available. So you might have all your client meetings booked in, but you might need to also, for some of your client meetings you might need to prepare some work for it, so you need to factor that in as well. So you want to. You know that, okay, if I have a two hour client meeting, I might have to do 45 minutes of prep work, so you factor that all in as well and you put the hours, put the hours that you have free for each day into the calculator and it calculates it for you. So it tells you how many hours you have for the week to work on your business and to do marketing tasks and revenue generating tasks.
Speaker 2:And then from there, what I would say is you will create a list of all the tasks that you know you need to do, which are either marketing related so it could be content creation, scheduling stuff in replying to comments, all that kind of stuff connecting with potential clients or just other people, business people who have complimentary services and then look at okay, I've got this amount of hours, I've got these tasks that I need to do. What's my priority for this week? What do I want to have achieved by the end of this week? And then you can pick the tasks that line up with that and then try and slot them in to the time that you have. So this is where having your idea of how long it takes you to do tasks is really helpful for you to estimate that, okay, it's gonna take me roughly this long, so I've got an hour and a half here on a Monday, I'll slot 90 minutes in there for me to do all my posts for LinkedIn, get them written or edited or whatever, and yeah, scheduled out.
Speaker 2:So that's what I would say, and then you can have that list can just be a long list that you have and it doesn't mean that all of those need to be done in that one week. You can leave stuff off. It's just about establishing what's the goal for this week, and that goal for this week should tie into your goal for the month, which has come from your goal from the quarter. So it should all link.
Speaker 1:So one thing I know about you, josephine, is that your wellbeing is a high priority as well and, I believe, committed to taking care of your own energy. In the way that you show up for your clients, for someone who's overwhelmed, I imagine that at first, maybe that carving out space is to sort of get them reset inside of themselves so that they can really maximize their capacity in these other ways. So speak to that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love that you've just asked that. So for the person who's overwhelmed right now and just even the thought of even trying to figure out their capacity is overwhelming them- on top of it.
Speaker 2:I would actually say take some time out in nature. It can be half an hour, it can be an hour. Go for a walk. And I would actually say, maybe take a notebook and a pen when you go for that walk. So go out for a walk, or, you know, for some people it might be even going to an exercise class. It's what works for everyone. I love walking, so I'm always walking in the countryside and it just helps me to just refuel my energy. Sometimes I'm just walking with nothing in my ears, sometimes I'm listening to a podcast and I'll get ideas from just from that.
Speaker 2:So I would actually say step away from your environment Whenever you're overwhelmed. There's no point in you sitting at your desk in the overwhelm. That's not going to benefit you. I would say remove yourself from your environment. So go for a walk or go for a coffee somewhere else or, you know, breakfast somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Do yourself, just change your environment. And what you might do, for example, is you might treat yourself to a breakfast at a lovely cute cafe and you take your notebook and you just do this exercise where you just do a brain dump away from, but you're in a nice environment and it's just like, okay, I'm just stepping away trying to do something nice for myself in the overwhelm and then just kind of write everything down and I'd say, start with that. The key thing I would say is change your environment and if you can you know, I know it's not always possible, but if you have the means to go away for a weekend, go away for a day, but yourself in a hotel, like, just go and get inspired by a different surrounding you would be shocked how that will just help you in terms of thinking clearer.
Speaker 1:Oh, I just I can't second that enough. It's um, you know it's so can be so counterintuitive to the entrepreneurial high achiever mind to step away when you have so much going on, but it's the very, very thing that you need and it will fuel every part of your business and life. I, every time that my mind is like no, you can't, you can't do this, and I stick to it, my commitment to pull away, to take, you know, good care of my energy. I come back with more creativity, more inspiration, I can show up, more for everything and everybody. It's just it. It gives back to everything.
Speaker 2:Yep, I completely agree with that, and you know we all do it where it's like oh, I've got this deadline or I have these things that I need to do, and so we're pushing through, we're not taking any breaks and you're hanging by a thread, your brain is not functioning, but you're like I'm pushing through, I need to get this done, whereas if we'd taken that time out to just have a break to rest our brain, we would be shocked the ideas that we have. I don't think anyone has ever said please point me in the direction of that person who has announced that all of their creative ideas came at their desk.
Speaker 2:So so so it's usually in the shower on a walk, you know, on holiday.
Speaker 1:So true, a lot of times I'll just move my workspace around. My kids used to make fun of me because they're like mom, you have like five desks, but I'll, like I might work on the couch, or I might spread out on the kitchen table, or I might go outside, sit outside and do some creative work, but changing your environment is so, so powerful. Okay, so, as we close, josephine, is there anything related to this, like inside of your work, or a program you want to share with people, or anything you want to share that you're up to as we close?
Speaker 2:Yes, if you are someone who struggles when it comes to your capacity and you just want to kind of move your business forward. But you just feel like you're on a hamster wheel and you're always just working in your business. I'm your person and there's two ways that you can work with me. You could either work with we can either have a strategic planning day where we actually sit and we plan your. We look at your business from a top level and we just kind of look at what you need to be focusing on, kind of look at your goals and everything. I love doing those. They're very intensive, they're six hour intensive days, but they are wonderful.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of aha moments that I usually have with my clients and it also just helps you to. It reminds you to dream, it awakens that's one thing I can tell you with all the clients that I have helped. It causes them to dream again and sometimes reminds them of dreams that they had forgotten about when it comes to their businesses. And the second way that you can work with me is through my 12th month strategic and accountability program, where I just love it. I've got a whole framework so we start with your vision and then we end with growth, and it's just a way for us to just really look at what are the best ways for you to work in your business, for us to utilize your genius zone and for you to focus on the things that will allow you to grow your business, but in a way that allows you to live the life that you would like, allows you to live a life where you're not bad to health and, yeah, so that you were maximizing your time and your gifts and talents.
Speaker 1:So beautiful. Be sure to check out what Josephine is doing and how you can work with her and never stop dreaming. Make space to dream. It's so. It's such a good message. Where can they find out more about you?
Speaker 2:Yes, you can find me on my website, wwwthearusucollectivecom. We will link that below so that you're not trying to figure out how to spell it. I'm also on LinkedIn, so if you search Josephine Ausou, I'm the Ausou Collective, I'll come up. I'm also on Instagram at IamJosaphineAusou. I've got my YouTube channel as well, so if you search for Josephine Ausou, business strategist, you'll be able to see my life as an entrepreneur, and in the English countryside as well, so you'll get to see other things. Aspects.
Speaker 1:And I love watching her channel. So make sure you check that out and make sure you download the capacity calculator. We'll have the link in the show notes. And, josephine, so many gems. I always leave our conversations feeling inspired and excited to go back and just make time for the important, I think, thinking that we need to do to really maximize our capacity and the work that we're doing in the world and remember why it's all so very important. So thank you so much for the good work that you're doing in the world and I'm just so grateful that we get to collaborate.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, Carla. I love coming on to your podcast and we could talk forever.
Speaker 1:True, you'll be back. Have a great day everybody. Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode of Differently. I hope it stirred your thinking and I invite you to take one inspired action from something that stood out to you. If you want to hear more conversations like this, be sure to hit follow on your favorite podcast app, and if this episode could impact someone you know, please help us spread the word and pass it along. Remember new episodes drop weekly. See you next week.