5 Essential Mindsets for Time Management (Rerun)

Kendra Adachi (0:00)

Hey, everybody. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 246, Five Essential Mindsets for Time Management. I have done a lot of content over the last few years about time management, and it continues to be the most requested topic. We all have time, and we all have expectations about how we want it emptied or filled. And we have a lot of hard, busy, stressful days that we need to manage so we don't lose our minds. It is a front burner challenge pretty much all the time for most people in some way. When we want to tackle that challenge, we often will look for hacks and systems and practical ideas to help us out. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, here are some episodes that you can listen to that are practical and systems and ideas. Episode 197 is The Lazy Genius Plans a Day. That's where I talk about flags, bunting and chairs. Episode 198 is How to Lazy Genius Your To-Do List because so much of our daily planning is organizing the stuff we have to do, right? And then Episode 238 is How to Get Stuff Done When You Don't Feel Like It because that is very, very real. Those are practical and helpful, but practical isn't the only piece of the puzzle. One of my foundational principles in my own personal work is that we need both practicality and permission, system and soul. Telling you that you're doing great, that matters, and it makes a difference. Encouraging you and giving you permission, that matters. Giving you ideas and systems on how to get stuff done. That also matters. That also makes a difference. But the two together are where we can start to see some real change. We need both, often right next to each other. So since I've already given you some really practical episodes on time management, today I wanna go a bit higher level and share some essential mindsets or mantras that will impact your time management no matter what your time looks like. I have said all of these things in fits and starts in different places over the years. But this is your episode to have all of your time management mindsets in one place. So let's jump in.

Number one, your beliefs affect your time more than your schedule does. Your beliefs affect your time more than your schedule does. I'm not saying that you need to manifest your time or that your appointments aren't actually real. None of that. Your schedule is legit. You likely have actual things to do. But what I want to encourage you in is that your beliefs about your time have a greater, deeper impact on how you spend it than you realize. For example, if you tell yourself that you're a bad cook and can't get anything right in the kitchen and that your mother or mother-in-law or anybody that looked inside your fridge or watched you cook a meal would be so embarrassed for you, if you have that rolling loop in your head while you make a meal, it's going to take you a lot longer to cook dinner. It's also going to feel like it's taking longer because you're weighing the time down with those harmful beliefs.

Less harmful but still impactful is when you look at your overwhelming to-do list and you say, I'm never going to get all this done. I'm never going to get all this done. Now, I have often said that very sentence. But if you stay in that sentence, in that belief and let it dictate how you plan your time, that is going to impact your schedule and your soul way more than the actual tasks will. That's part of why this episode is important and why these mindsets make a difference. You are choosing to believe new truths about your time and how you manage it. We need these beliefs to help us craft our days in a helpful, authentic, kind way. So on to number two.

Do not judge every day against your best day. I will say this until I'm blue in the face. Do not judge every day against your best day. We all have experienced days that feel like best days. We're in the flow, we're happy and light, we get stuff done, our kids or our coworkers or whoever we're spending our time with. They're all like kind and easy to get along with and there were no ridiculous messes to clean up. Literal or metaphorical, says the woman who just had to clean pee off the bathroom floor 10 minutes ago. We took our vitamins, we drank our water, we got up out of bed without dragging, we felt pretty, we made dinner, all the things. It was such a good day, right? A couple of things. First, my guess is it's been a couple of years since you've had a good day like that.