Hello, my loves.
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
We have Togi here with me.
But today, we are talking about how to make time for everything you wanna do.
I'll share some time management tips and productivity tips
to help you do more.
When I say do more, do more of what you want to do,
not more busy work or more distractions.
Before we get started, I wanna give a shout out
to the sponsor of today's video: AppSumo.
They are the leading digital marketplace for entrepreneurs, and more on that later.
Tip 1: train your brain to be more conscious and mindful.
The key is you want to be really good at being aware
and intentional about how you spend your time.
Most of our time is given away when we are distracted
and when we are not focused.
When you are responding to life
versus when you are being proactive to life.
That is how you lose time.
What I mean by responding is you get an email,
and so you check it and then you're like,
“Oh my God, I have to answer this email.”
And then it leads you down a rabbit hole of doing something
that you weren't really intending to do
and not spending time in the most effective way possible.
Mindfulness is your power.
You wanna be in control of your time.
You wanna be able to choose how you spend your time.
You wanna be the one that's deciding,
“Okay, this is important. This is effective. I'm gonna do this first.”
versus being pulled in all directions
because people are going to be asking things of you.
How do we train our brain to be stronger and more conscious?
First, you want to set some easy rules & boundaries for yourself
to not let yourself go down those rabbit holes.
For example, no phone in the morning.
Don't check your Instagram.
Don't check your text.
Don't check anything that has a possibility of making you respond and waste time.
Put your phone away in the morning,
do something else,
do something where you feel connected & centered to yourself.
For example, meditating.
Meditate for 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day,
whatever you can do.
Meditation is a powerful practice to help you connect
with yourself and calm your brain.
When you calm your brain, you can be more aware of things
and you can be more intentional about things.
Essentially, it trains your brain to slow down.
Once you can slow down and be more calm and detached,
you can be more intentional and aware
because you're not feeling like,
"Oh my God, I have to like answer this right away.”
or “I have to check this right away.”
Tip 2: cut out distractions.
Put your phone on airplane mode if you're working.
Put limits on your social media app
so that you only give yourself a certain amount of time a day.
Because it is crucial to put those boundaries and limits
to make sure that you don't waste too much time.
“Out of sight, out of mind” really works.
Don't tempt yourself.
Do what you can so that you are not tempted.
Just cut it out, shield it out, set those boundaries and limits.
Tip 3: work smarter.
Find ways to save your time, energy and brain power.
One of the ways that I've been doing this is finding new tools
that make my workflow more efficient.
Last year, I actually stumbled on the website AppSumo,
and I went on a literal shopping spree for digital products.
I bought tools for eCommerce, customer service, marketing, content creation,
because I found so many tools that could help me in my workflow.
And they were all at a great deal.
AppSumo is the leading digital marketplace trusted by over 1,000,000 entrepreneurs.
Their mission is to bust open the doors of entrepreneurship to everyone.
As a business owner and content creator,
there are so many digital tools and softwares out there
that could help you with your workflow.
But for the most part, most of them are monthly subscriptions.
And those subscriptions really add up.
What I love about AppSumo and what really got me excited
was this is a place where you can find one-time lifetime deals,
where you just pay one price
and then you get that tool for the rest of your life.
It's an amazing deal.
Plus, all of these tools help you save time, energy, brain power,
and they all help you elevate your business.
AppSumo has all the tools you need to automate all the busy work that comes with running a business,
so you can boost your productivity, scale beyond your skill set,
and focus on doing what you're passionate about.
For example, I just discovered there's such a thing as AI writing tools that can help streamline the content creating process.
One of the ones that I picked up is called AISEO,
and I got that at 86% off its original price.
AISEO is an AI writing assistant to help you create, optimize, and rewrite content.
You can just give it some keywords to expand on a topic
or have it rewrite and optimize your copy for SEO.
Tools like this can really help you save time, money, and effort.
If you are interested,
AppSumo is giving 20% off to the first 100 people
who click that link in the description down below.
Definitely check them out.
Thanks again to AppSumo for sponsoring this video.
Tip 4: assess how you're spending your time right now (daily & weekly)
For an entire week, track how you're actually spending your days by the hour.
You can do this in any calendar app.
Just go about your day, doing what you do--
and you don't have to track it every single hour.
What I mean is, say you're working from this time to this time,
you input that in your calendar after the fact.
Say you took a lunch break
and then you were on social media for 1.5 hours,
then you would go input that in your calendar.
Try to be as honest as possible
and track realistically how you've been spending your time throughout the week.
You'll find that there are pockets of time where you were distracted,
or maybe you were doing something that wasn't really important.
You had other important things to be doing,
but instead you were wasting your time on something else.
With this exercise, you'll learn two things.
(1) how long it actually takes you to complete tasks.
With that knowledge, you'll be better able to plan realistically your schedule.
(2) you'll realize how much free time you actually have in your day.
Because like I mentioned,
you're gonna find those pockets of time
where you have that free time.
You just didn't realize it you've been wasting it away.
Knowing these two things can help you be more realistic about how much time you have
and be able to plan everything else
that you want to fit into your schedule.
Tip 5: try out the "Ideal Week Planner".
This is a worksheet that I made a few years ago actually.
I'll link it down below so you can download it.
It's an exercise where you just literally plan out your ideal week,
trying to fit in everything that you want to do in a given week.
This exercise helps after you've done the previous exercise,
because in the previous one,
we learned how long it takes us
to actually complete certain tasks
and how much free time we actually have.
Once you know that, then you can start building it into your ideal week.
I say 'ideal' because obviously every week's going to look different.
It's okay to have some flexibility.
But at the very least, it's a way for you to realistically see,
“Okay, what can I fit into my morning routine, my evening routine?
How much can I get done in a day?”
It'll help you better establish your daily and weekly routines.
What's great about this exercise is it's an ongoing experiment,
so you can set your ideal week
and then you can try to live it out for one week
and then you'll realize,
“Okay, I gave myself not enough time to do this."
"I don't have time to do that.”
You kind of arrange it, fix it up, continually improve it as you go
until you end up at truly a realistic, ideal week routine
that you can follow.
Tip 6: plan out a realistic timeline for all of your goals.
This is similar to the previous point,
but the difference is this one is more about long term goals
and planning out long term timelines.
Most of the time, we have all these things that we wanna do.
It's all in our heads.
The problem is we either get overwhelmed because there's so many things
we don't even know where to start,
or we try to do multiple things at once,
and then, we get spread too thin.
It's not possible to make progress
because you're doing too many things at once.
There's a quote that I really like.
It goes something like,
“You can have everything you want, just not at the same time.”
The trick really is to plan out these realistic timelines
for how long it might take to work on this goal
and which goals you should do first.
To tackle this problem, you first wanna list out all of your goals.
All of your long term goals.
And after you kind of brain dump this list—
don't hold yourself back.
Just literally list as much as you can,
everything that you ideally want to do.
After you do that, then look at everything you wrote and decide,
“Okay, which ones are most important to me?”
or “Which ones if I were to achieve this goal would make the biggest impact on my life?"
There are certain things that will have a bigger impact than others.
Try to figure out which ones are the bigger impact, most important ones.
And those are the ones that become your highest priority.
After you figure out which ones are more important to you,
you don't have to narrow it down to one thing just yet,
but just narrow your big list down a little bit,
then try to ask yourself,
“Okay, how long does this goal take?”
“Is this a one month goal, a one year goal, a 10 year goal?”
“What kind of goal is this?”
Try to map out the timelines of each goal.
What's doable in your mind.
Of course not everything always goes according to plan,
but this is just a starting point.
Then ask yourself,
“Which of these goals do I already have resources for?
or "I already started on this goal.”
You'll notice that there are certain goals
that might feel easier to start on than others,
because you feel more ready.
Maybe you have the skills already.
Maybe for other goals you're not even ready to start on those
because you have preliminary things to do.
Ask yourself those questions.
Just try to realistically plan out.
“Okay, what does achieving this goal look like in terms of time?”
And by then, you can start putting the puzzle pieces together
and start actually planning out.
“Okay, from here on out, which one makes the most sense to start?”
Maybe you wanna start an easy one first that is a one-month goal.
And then, you wanna tackle a bigger goal after that.
The goal here is to end up with a realistic timeline
of all the things that you wanna do,
how long they're going to take,
which ones you're gonna tackle first and why.
Is it because they're most important or most approachable?
You start to have like a realistic timeline and vision
for how you're gonna make it all happen.
Beyond that, all you have to do is then further break down those goals into smaller and smaller bite size pieces.
I've shared this advice in previous productivity videos.
I hope you guys know it by now.
If you have a year's goal, break it down.
What does that look like month to month?
If you have a month goal, what does that look like every week?
How much you're accomplishing each week?
If you have a week goal, what are you doing during the day?
Just break it down into the smallest bits possible.
That is how it's going to feel more approachable and doable.
Tip 7: honor your cycles.
We all go through cycles in life.
Sometimes we feel very productive.
Sometimes we feel like we have a lot of energy—
a lot of hustle, go energy.
And then other times, we feel lazy.
We feel slow.
We wanna be more gentle with ourselves.
It is okay to have these cycles and these different phases of life.
In fact, it's normal and everyone goes through them.
I just wanna remind you to honor your cycles
and not push yourself too hard
if you feel like you're not doing enough.
There will be times where you're in the mood to be productive.
And there will be times where you're not in the mood to be productive.
That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.
The point of life is not to be productive all the time.
It's not about being efficient.
We are not machines.
Humans are nature.
Think of a flower.
We are a garden.
Flowers need time to be in the earth, the seeds,
and then they need time to bloom.
They have their own cycles as well.
There are cycles of seasons.
There's always cycles in nature.
We're part of that as well.
If you're a woman, we have our menstrual cycles
and there are certain parts in that cycle
where we have more energy and then less energy.
There's also the moon cycles
if you follow manifesting with the moon.
During the new moon to the full moon,
that's about two weeks.
That is the time where there's more energy.
You're supposed to be manifesting and taking action
and going for your goals.
Then, the two weeks from the full moon to the next new moon
are supposed to be for reflecting and slowing down
and doing a lot of releasing.
Know that there are cycles and phases
and life is supposed to be a balance between everything.
Tip 8: if you truly are passionate about something, you are going to make time for it.
Just like you somehow make all of this time to binge watch your favorite TV shows.
All that time out of nowhere that you don't have.
If something is important to you,
or if that thing lights your fire,
lights a passion inside,
you are going to make time for it.
Then you can ask yourself,
“Okay, can I be honest with myself?"
"Can I be realistic?"
"If I'm not giving myself time to learn languages,
even though I really want to,
why am I not doing that?”
Your answer might be,
"Maybe you're not super passionate about it,
which is why you're not making the time for it."
"Maybe your desire to do that thing is just intellectual."
In an ideal world, you want to do that thing,
but realistically, you're not that passionate about doing it.
And so it doesn't happen.
You just have to be honest with yourself.
An example from my life is I always have so much to do on my plates.
I am pretty busy.
I have a lot of things on my to-do list
and I can feel very overwhelmed very often.
For some reason, I always make time to learn
about these random topics that I'm interested in.
For example, astrology.
There was a point in my life where I was reading a lot of astrology books
and I was watching astrology videos.
It doesn't have to do with my job as much,
but I made the time to do it because of a passion.
And the past year I've been learning about Web3
and I've just been learning about crypto and this whole space, NFTs.
I got so into it that I was like,
“You know what, I need a place to share it.”
I even started a new Twitter account for Web3.
You can follow me.
It's @laviweb3.
I'm gonna start posting on that.
But it's a passion project.
I don't need to be spending my time doing this,
but somehow I make time for it.
Sometimes it's not about using these tips and tricks
to make yourself do more,
make yourself do all these things that you want to do.
Sometimes it's really questioning,
“Do I really want to do this?”
Because if you really did, you're going to make time for it.
I hope this video was helpful.
Let me know down below which tip was your favorite.
Let me know if you have any additional time management tips
or techniques that you'd like to share down below.
I will see you in the next one.
Love you so much.
Bye.