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Watch Out for These 5 Time Thieves · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is produced by my friends at WalkWest.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: From emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Comedy Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Through these small bites of self-visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Kamine Wood, and I'm very excited and thankful and grateful that you've taken a few minutes out of your day to spend with me.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And on our topic of time thieves.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you spending some time with me today, hopefully this is not one of those moments where you look back and say, oh, I just lost those uh, you know, five to ten minutes of my life.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but hopefully you find some information on here useful today.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I wanted to talk about was the five top time thieves that we seem to um as a society kind of come up against and maybe some ways of how to overcome them.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are time thieves, and what do I even mean by that?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Time thieves are those activities that cut into maybe our working or productive day that seem to happen out of the blue.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: They tend to disrupt our concentration or distract us from the priorities that we have set up for ourselves, maybe taking half of your day without you even noticing.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're the the distractions that you kind of look up from your phone or look at from the thing that you're you're doing, and you kind of wonder where the heck did my day go?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it can include things like answering your phone while you might be needing to work on a presentation or a report, or your inability to say no to people, or maybe procrastinating, starting a project and saying, you know what, let me just scroll on social media for a couple minutes and I'll get back to it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly the time seems to disappear, or maybe it's visitors popping up at your home, or even just at your your office desk if you are actually in the office.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about time thieves, it's really about recognizing that they just make us chat it makes it challenging for us to actually get back absorbed into the thing that we were really trying to, our intention for the day, or our intention for the project that we were working on, and and end up disturbing our efficiency and our productivity.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are the five top time thieves?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The very first one are those distractions and interruptions.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you work from home or you work at an office, distractions and interruptions are absolutely inevitable in our workday.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're working from home and our kids happen to be home, it could be that suddenly our kids need our help with something, maybe it's with homework, or maybe it's just with some some project that they're working on in the middle of our day.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or if we're whether we're working from home or at the office, it could be something as simple as checking social media, or um, you know, just getting on that, just watching that one TikTok video, uh, or you know, scrolling through feeds when you're quote unquote on a on a quick coffee break or a water break.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um phone calls, emails, uh uh colleagues stopping by your desk, or if you're working from home, solicitors popping up at your doorstep.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Any interruption that can actually keep you from uh remaining concentrated on the task at hand, and it really does make it difficult for us to focus on our work because once a distraction is done and over with, it takes time for us to get back into the thing and re-engage with the focus that we had.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another top-time theme is procrastination.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Procrastination is the habit of postponing a task that we have or decision that we need to make while focusing on less urgent ones or maybe more pleasant things to think about.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Procrastination is one of the biggest time wasters at work.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, many times we will come up with a way to um to just put the thing off that we don't want to get started on.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we might put off starting that project because it just is seeming so overwhelming, or we might put off making an important decision at the office, or maybe just starting, starting that PowerPoint presentation.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what ends up happening is when we leave everything until later, it can really eat into the time that we have, and it can also lead to self-sabotage and also lead to stress and anxiety and overwhelm because suddenly now we're up against this deadline that we weren't before.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Another top-time thief is just too much work all at the same time.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what that really means is taking on way too much because we cannot say no to people.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, oh yes, I can do that project.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you need me to work on that?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, I can do that too.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure, yeah, I'll add that to my list as well.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's about learning to set boundaries because sometimes when we don't have those those boundaries with accepting of work and simply just being honest and upfront and saying, I don't have the time to work on this thing right now, I could work on it, you know, in a week.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: We end up putting way too much work on our plate, and that can actually distract us and keep us from from accomplishing what we need to.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Another top-time thief is poor goal setting.
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  SPEAKER_00: Um, not being able to really be clear about the goals and intentions that we have for certain projects.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe it's over being overly ambitious with the goals too.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's really about also adding in the ability to be realistic about the goals that we're setting.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because sometimes when we're overly ambitious and we don't set reasonable ones, we end up falling short, and then that can actually eat away at our intrinsic motivation.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course we have conflicting priorities.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: When we're uncertain about what the most important things are, it can it can actually we end up spinning our wheels and wasting our time.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I actually recently was talking to a client about this and just really empowering my client to talk to the people that she works with about really getting clarity on what are the priorities because when we have that lack of prioritization, it can lead to overload and burnout, and it can also lead to just feeling completely discombobulated, not being able to figure out how to move forward, and it can actually we end up spinning our wheels and wasting our time.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some methods to help us with this time management and these time thieves.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, number one is time blocking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Time blocking involves dividing your you dividing a period of time up into smaller segments of time designated for certain and specific tasks.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you can use this time management technique to divide your working day into different areas of what you're going to focus on in each part of the day.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: A second really important method is to is to limit the distractions.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe considering you know exiting out of your email client during the course of your workday.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you check it in the morning, maybe you check it in the afternoon, you check it in the evening, but not having it open all the time because what happens is we get pinged with it, or maybe turning off the notifications on your phones that you're not getting the notification every few minutes that there's a new Facebook post or you know a new email came through or a new Slack message came through.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Setting boundaries is really important.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if you're working from home, for instance, it's setting boundaries around maybe the physical space that you're in.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who can come in, who when you're at quote unquote work, setting boundaries around what types of home distractions you'll allow in.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're in the office, being able to learn to say no or communicate what you can and cannot add to your plate is really important.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Self-awareness is essential to our sense of emotional balance and well-being.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an integral part of our emotional intelligence and also it's about understanding the emotions and thoughts that we're having, which allow us to be able to do those other things, like set healthy boundaries, or be able to identify our strengths and weaknesses, or being able to identify, you know, the idea that we we will be triggered into getting onto social media and what happens when we get onto social media.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: That self-awareness allows us to go ahead and put some um parameters in place as to how to how to limit those things.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, my favorite one, which is mindfulness.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about mindfulness all the time.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mindfulness is about being in this present moment, and it is a really important thing that helps us deal with stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so having regular mindfulness exercises does improve our self-awareness, and it can also help us understand and recognize when we're in the present moment, when we are being triggered by distractions or we're being um where we are procrastinating or doing having those destructive um behaviors or patterns that lead us down the path of giving into those time thieves.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you are feeling that you're you're you're feeling a little bit stressed out, you're feeling like you don't have great um ways of coping with this, or you're just recognizing that there might be some issues in terms of just um dealing with fear, like the fear of of of per the fear of maybe getting started, or the fear of perfect um not being perfect, right?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So perfectionism could be keeping you stuck in that procrastination phase, whatever it may be, or you just want to talk more about what's coming up for you.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to reach out to me at any time at chatwithcomedy.com.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, stay well.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: For more information, book a chat with comedy at www.chatwithcomedy.com or visit her website at www.comedywood.com.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can also find comedy on Facebook or Instagram.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Username it's authentic me.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.