166. How to Focus on the Right Things and Feel Better About Taking Time Off

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166. How to Focus on the Right Things and Feel Better About Taking Time Off

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo.<inaudible> Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Tell me if you ever feel this way, your business is not quite where you wanted to be.

00:00:41 Yet. There just aren't enough hours in the day and you either don't take time off at all, or you just have a really hard time feeling like you deserve to take time off and to let yourself relax. If you are an achievement oriented, driven business owner, you probably feel this way more than not. I know I am always working on staying more focused and setting myself up to not feel guilty about taking some downtime on the weekends or taking some time off.

00:01:17 And it's not so much guilt because I've given myself permission to take the time off. It's just always that feeling that I'm a not done yet. There's board to do the, to do list has not been checked off that never ending to do list that I've always been so tied to. So this is a journey that I've been working on for quite some time.

00:01:42 And I am no expert on time management. So I'm not so much teaching as having a conversation and just sharing my journey and some approaches that I've learned along the way and letting you know that you are not alone in your struggle and that you can get better and feel better and still be that driven achievement oriented entrepreneur. Before we dive in, if you are opening a coworking space,

00:02:14 I have a master class for you, three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space. If you're working on starting a coworking space, I want to share three decisions that I have seen over many years that successful operators make when they're creating their coworking business. This masterclass is totally free. It's one hour, which includes Q and a time. If you'd like to join me,

00:02:40 please register at www dot everything, coworking.com forward slash masterclass. I also want to mention that this month we have opened up five spots in community manager university. And I want to talk about this program because I think this is a critical time to pay attention to our community managers and make sure that they are doing okay. This is a tough, challenging time for them as our businesses are recovering and our spaces aren't quieter than ever before.

00:03:14 So this program is perfect. If you're hiring a new community manager and need a one-stop source for training on operations, community, building, marketing, and sales, finance, and leadership, but this is also an important time to support your more experienced community managers. We are hearing that our community managers are struggling right now, as many of your spaces aren't recovering managing through COVID.

00:03:40 Our managers are less busy with fewer members in this space, and they just don't feel like they're making as much of an impact. And that's so important to their satisfaction in their role. So this is the perfect time to connect them with a peer group and ongoing training that can help them dive into projects that have been on your list of to do's tighten up the sales funnel,

00:04:03 create or update your member onboarding process, develop a monthly newsletter for your members and your marketing list. These are the types of topics that we work on every single month. So to grab more info and to get one of those spots, one of those five spots we have opened this month go to www dot everything, coworking.com forward slash community managers. Okay,

00:04:26 so let's talk about focus and managing time. I would say a turning point on my journey to focusing, scheduling and planning. My time was one day in 2017. I was on a monthly call with my business coach. So I have for a long time worked with cultivate advisors. They are out of Chicago. They have they're headquartered in Chicago, although they have consultants all over the country and super side note.

00:05:02 But I always, so I originally, my coach was the CEO, the founder of the company. I was one of their first clients, one of my members when I had a coworking space in Chicago, worked with them. And I remember like, just chit chatting with him one day and you know, what are you up to? He's like, Oh,

00:05:18 I'm getting ready for a meeting with my business coach. And I was like, business coach, what's your business code? What do you do with a business coach? You know, I wanted all the details. So he shared, and I ended up talking with them and I've worked with them a long time on all of my different businesses. Um, and I used to work with Casey.

00:05:35 So anyway, I hadn't caught up with Casey in ages. As a matter of fact, since I last talked to him, he got married and had a kid. So lots of changes, but the re the thing that's relevant to you is they had an office in downtown Chicago, which I've been to a few times and would have all their consultants come in and do their calls,

00:05:55 et cetera. And then you, this happened and now their consultants are at home. And, you know, dealing with kids who are at home, doing virtual learning, et cetera. And Casey was like, yeah, I don't want the office space anymore. We want the flexibility. We don't want to be committed to longterm space, and he's trying to get out of that commitment.

00:06:14 So he actually made a joke. He's like, aye, I could give each either my consultants, one of those little like work sheds, have those popped up in your Instagram accounts. I totally want one. Our backyard is not big enough for one. Um, but if it was, I would want one he's like, that would be cheaper than rent.

00:06:32 And so would coworking space. And so, so it's happening. It's just taking time, right? So Casey's perfect example. They have under a hundred employees, um, they will need places to meet. They will need places to, um, you know, do team meetings, to have their consultants take calls at, and some of them, because some of the consultants it's not want to work at home.

00:06:53 Right. So they will offer some flexible options, but they are no longer going to have their own office space. They will use coworking space as needed. So that is happening. It's just behind the scenes and it's taken time for that too, you know, for them to go through that process of unwinding existing commitments and opening up budget for more flexible options.

00:07:16 So anyway, I was sitting on my couch talking to Casey and yeah, I don't know why I was sitting on my couch, but I can clearly, I never sit on my couch and work. I'm just not something I usually do unless I'm trying to snuggle with my dogs. But I think I was feeling super overwhelmed. So it was 2017. I mean,

00:07:35 and I was talking to him, Casey, and I remember he was like, Hey dude, you mind, I have this new coach wants to observe. He's not going to be on camera. We were on zoom. He's a kid. He'd just hang out and listen. Totally, that's fine. Sure. Okay. So I, at the time had two coworking spaces,

00:07:53 one in Chicago, one in Palo Alto. I lived in near Palo Alto, not really near an hour away in traffic, which was always an issue. Um, although closer than Chicago, which was four hours on a plane, um, I had a four year old and two dogs. I was brand new to the global workspace association, executive director role.

00:08:14 And I had a big job in front of me. The organization needed to be turned off around, and I had a big annual conference to plan, which I'd never done before and event planning and all those details were not my favorite thing to do. So I literally had post it notes everywhere. I think Casey must have asked me sort of, well,

00:08:39 you know, what's on your plate. And the tip like looked around and like picked up all my PostIt notes and showed them to him. And he was like, Oh no, Oh no, we're done with the post it notes. So whatever we are going to do that day shifted into get rid of the post it notes. He made me promise that that going forward,

00:08:59 I would literally throw out my post it notes and never used them again. So I'm sure that you, there are some posted notes users, um, in my audience right now. So if this is you then consider this an intervention and let me tell you how my journey sort of transformed after that. So he basically said, okay, get all your PostIt notes off of your computer screen.

00:09:25 You know, how you have your laptop and you just like stick them around the screen. So you don't forget to do things that are important. And all of a sudden you have like 600 important post it notes sitting around. So he literally said, okay, this is going to be painful. We're going to do it, take all the PostIt notes off of your screen.

00:09:40 I think by the way, at some point I was in tears. I think this is why he was like, what's going on. And I was like, what? You know, I have all these things and I posted notes and I was just totally overwhelmed. And that's the only time I've ever cried on my coaching call. And of course there was a guest somewhere off to the side who ended up,

00:09:59 um, building a website for me at some other point. So I must not have totally embarrassed myself, but I was kind of a mess. So we pulled the it notes down. We made a very long list of all the, to do's. We prioritize the, to do's and he literally sat there while I put the dues into my calendar, schedule them out.

00:10:19 And he told me me, assume whatever, where you think it's going to take, if you think that's 30 minutes, schedule an hour, and boy, did he know me well, because the thing I still struggle with today is I underestimate how long anything takes. I have not gotten a lot better at that. I'm more self aware of it, but it's still very hard for me to double the time that I think it's going to take.

00:10:43 And usually that's right. So the two, two critical takeaways that I had from that intervention with Casey were these two things, one, he literally said, you need to, you know, we're using, it's just scheduling meetings, right? So somebody needs time with us. You look at your calendar and your other commitments and you find a slot. And then the rest of it's kind of this gray area where you fit in,

00:11:08 you know, those post it notes that are stuck to your computer screen. So his, you know, what piece sort of forced me into following was scheduled well out every to do so from post it note to long sheet of paper prioritize. And this is not the process I follow today. If this is you, this, I get started schedule out all the tattoos,

00:11:30 like put the time on the calendar because you need to visually see that time has been spoken for, by all of the, to do's that you already have on your plate. And you cannot take on anything new until those are done, or, you know, you have to put it in a parking lot. If someone wants meeting with you and your calendar is full,

00:11:55 you have to say, I can't do this for two weeks. And Casey does, he did that when we were trying to connect. And I thought, I wonder if he does that just out of principle, he was like, my calendar is totally jammed for the next two weeks. It's going to be September 9th. And I was like, alright. And then I was like,

00:12:12 I wonder if he does that just to make up point, but you can do that. He was like, look, give yourself permission to be committed. You're committed to stuff. And so when someone wants time on your calendar, it has to be important enough for you to move something. Or you say no, and raise your hand. If you're a total people pleaser,

00:12:31 like I am somebody who wants a meeting, I want to say, yes, I want to make time. Right. I also just like people. So I like to talk to people on the phone. So you have to have a visual, you have to have visual clarity of how full you are. Calendar is. Otherwise, this is how we get overwhelmed.

00:12:49 Right? We commit to too many things in a timeline. That's not reasonable. We start to old people, things. I went through a phase of saying, I owe a lot of people, a lot of things. And that was, I felt like I wasn't delivering on my commitments. I was over committing to things I could not get done. And just constantly felt like I couldn't stop working because there were so much to do.

00:13:13 And that was within my control. Um, and that's why we schedule because it's a way to take control and to feel in control and to allow ourselves to schedule in downtime. So the other important takeaway from that day with Casey is he said, I, in case he's the CEO and the company has grown tremendously over the past few years, he said,

00:13:38 I spent two hours a week planning and my jaw dropped. I was like, what? Ain't nobody got time for that two hours just planning your schedule, just do stuff. Casey, what do you mean you're planning for do hours? Just do stuff during that time. Isn't that more productive? It's not. And so that took me some time to adopt,

00:13:57 but it's so critical. And now I'm so obsessed with my planning time, which I'll give you an example of in a minute. So two hours a week planning one hour is to review the last week and what did or didn't not get done? What went well? Cause you're never going to be perfect. I'm definitely not perfect. And then to look ahead to the next week,

00:14:18 and this is outside of any sort of quarterly annual planning, and if you don't do this process, you don't know where you stand. You don't know what to work on this week and you'll continue to take on things that you don't have time to do it. Just keep saying yes to more things and you won't be focused on getting the right things done.

00:14:37 So as entrepreneurs, man, shiny object syndrome, right? So many things we want to do for our business, want to do with our team, want to do in our personal lives. It can be really easy to just pile things on because love new ideas, right. But we have to pick what we're going to focus on. We have to decide.

00:14:58 And I think I w I struggle with this for sure, in sort of this day of everybody's visible on social media and there's all these tools you can use and all these fancy things like I'll give you an example. So, sorry. The point I'm trying to make is the 80 20 rule, which is so critical to managing your schedule and focusing on the right things.

00:15:21 Because as business owners, there's a million things we could do every day, right? There's always something we see that we want to make better. And we have to decide what are the 20% of the things that make the 80% difference in our business, like tools and making things fancier on social media. Like all those things take up a bunch of time and do they really really matter,

00:15:47 or is what matters, figuring out where are 80% of your leads coming from and how do you get more of those, right. Don't care about your social media graphics. Good enough is good enough. Where are the leads coming from? Things like that. So what Casey advised and I've had other coaches advise me to do is to get a planner that works and get rid of the post to nodes,

00:16:12 get rid of the sheet of paper. I still actually use a sheet of paper before I transfer things into my planner. So don't judge yourself, whatever works for your process. So I had a coach who had, and I can't remember what it's called. I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before, and I had to stop using it because it was ugly.

00:16:30 And that is the only reason it was black and boring and had like some strict gold foil on it. And I just was so uninspired to ever pick it up. So I went, wow. One of my, um, coworking colleagues was having drinks with him one night. And he said, he uses Michael Hyatts, full focus planner. And I said,

00:16:49 Oh, I'm going to try that. And it comes in red. So it comes in all sorts of fun colors. So I ordered one. And unfortunately, if you are outside of the U S I have some business friends in Canada and they are always debating the value of paying to get that thing shipped to Canada. It's super expensive. So maybe find a different one.

00:17:09 Here's why I like it. You, it has a section in the front where you can lay out quarterly annual goals. So you've got your big picture focused, your monthly overview, sorry, focus, not focus. And then your weekly preview. And I tend, again, I could be better at this not to do the monthly overview I'm working on that.

00:17:32 But the weekly preview is where I spend my time. Cause I, I do plan annually. I have the big picture of what I'm working towards. The projects that I'm working on, I've already started my 2021 planning. And what I need to do is focus my weekly time. So it has a weekly preview for each day, which I find is really helpful to kind of sketch out what each day looks like and what I,

00:17:57 what holes I have to fill. And then it asks you to commit to the weekly big three, because you know, those weeks that end and you feel like you did a million things that don't really matter, and you didn't get like the things that would help you sleep well on Friday night, didn't get done. So you're never going to get anything done,

00:18:16 the goal, sorry, you know, you're not, you're never going to get everything done, but the goal is to start getting the things done that really matter, and that drive your business. So this is how the weekly preview works. And let me tell you, I commit to this. So what I decided to do was get my fun read planner and it comes quarterly.

00:18:39 So I have a pile of them. Now, my daughter thinks it's sort of silly and ridiculous, but it works for me. Um, so I sorta make a date with myself of it. I go to my coffee shop and I'm in California. So we cannot sit inside of the coffee shop. We have to sit outside of the coffee shop, which has been fine so far.

00:18:56 The weather's good. And I will get a cappuccino and a croissant, a little treat, and my red book. And I sit down and I go through my week, the week before, and then the week ahead, and I will tell you, I am so committed to this process because it feels so good to look ahead and know what I'm doing and what I'm not doing.

00:19:15 That we have had very bad air quality for the past few weeks. So it was particularly bad. This past weekend, I went down to my coffee shop, which is like a 10 minute drive and fit close to 15. I got down there and the coffee window was open, but they had no seating outside. And I had actually said to my husband,

00:19:37 I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to do my weekly planning. And I don't really care if the air is bad, I need to do it. And I can't do it in the house. I know this about myself. I just mentally can't get into the right frame of mind when I'm in my house with the people who need me to do things.

00:19:51 So it's not that I get distracted. It's just not the right mojo. I have to go somewhere else and do it. So no seating. So I got my coffee in my croissant and I parked and I sat in the back of my car and I got my red book out and I planned my week and I felt totally fine about it because it was just the process and not being at home and making sure I was looking ahead.

00:20:15 So find something that you can commit to. So commit to the process of planning your week and looking forward and identifying your weekly big three, and then take your week plan and drop it into your calendar. And if you're strong, double the time you think it's going to take to work on whatever it is because you can't what your successful week looks like.

00:20:49 If you don't plan it out and you can't know what you don't have time for and need to push out to the next week. And this is partly why we often feel like we're not getting enough done, right, is because our expectations of what we can get done in a week are so off. And you know, I'm not going to go into like letting ourselves get distracted,

00:21:09 et cetera, et cetera. But even if you're pretty productive and you're not wasting a bunch of time on Instagram, it just can take us longer than we think we'll run into a technical glitch. We get stuck on something. We don't have something we need from someone else. Things just take more time. But if we've planned it out, we've been very focused about working on the 20% of the things that drive our business.

00:21:35 And we've got it blocked out. What more can you do? Right? And so we're moving away sort of from that checklist approach to, I'm going to put the time on my calendar and I'm gonna work on it. I was listening to a podcast recently and I think it was the StoryBrand podcast. And, um, the guests was talking about his new book in distractible.

00:21:59 And he was talking about this idea of trying not to work off of sort of checklists and what you're going to get done in a particular amount of time. But saying, I'm going to spend an hour working on this project and move it forward. As much as I can. I'm going to spend two hours working on this project and move it forward as much as I can.

00:22:20 And that way you're not judging, what's not done yet. You are judging whether or not you actually committed to that time and worked on what you said you were going to work on. And that was like such a shift in thinking for me, because I tend to like, even the planner sort of has me working off of, okay, these are the things I think I can get done on Tuesday,

00:22:42 but I'm trying to shift to, okay, what do I want to work on on Tuesday? And this is not always possible when you have, like, when you're trying to work towards a deadline and you need to get something done and you're backing up your calendar and you, you actually have to get certain things done by certain dates in order to hit that like launch date or,

00:23:00 you know, whatever it is. If you try to open your coworking space, for example, you have to back into a timeline and you have to hit your dates. So different projects will have different requirements in terms of timing, but that has been an important mindset shift for me. Um, and so, so again, be careful with that block,

00:23:18 scheduling, know what you're going to work on when you block something out on your calendar, when you block two hours out, you know, know what your next steps are, but don't judge yourself. If you don't get it all done, you can later that evening, look at the rest of your week, see if there's anything, you know, you can move around if it's a major priority,

00:23:37 or just make a note and readdress it. When you do your weekly planning session, you know, on Friday or Sunday, pick, it doesn't matter what day you do it. Just pick a day that works for you. I have started to struggle a little bit with Sundays because I find what happens when I sit down is I sort of make this list of things I'm going to do before Monday to sort of get ahead,

00:23:59 which is a bad habit. And so if I don't spend time working on Sunday, I'm already a little bit behind on Monday and I don't get the things done on Monday that I thought I would get done. So I may shift to a Saturday cause I think I'm less likely to do that. So again, be patient with yourself. I'm not perfect at it.

00:24:19 You're not going to be perfect, but you're going to be better than if you have no process. So I'm going to leave you with a couple of things. One in the show notes for this episode, which is number 166, I'm going to link to three books that I think are really helpful. The one is the 80 20 rule. If you've never read it,

00:24:39 I've mentioned it a long time ago on the podcast, but it's super, super helpful in terms of, it's just like one of those rules of thumb. If you can constantly be thinking about what's the most important 20% that drives 80% of my business, everything in the world operates on the 80 20 rule. Um, essential ism is another one it's about not getting more done,

00:25:01 but deciding what the important things are that you're going to work on, which can be hard for us entrepreneurs. So I love that book and I've read it several times. Um, the author, Greg McCune also has a podcast, which I think is okay, but not a strong endorsement yet, but my, you know, first 50 episodes or so of my podcast,

00:25:20 probably not that great either. Um, and then the new one that I just listened to, and actually I need to look up the author is indestructable by near all. He was a teacher at Stanford, wrote a book, an interesting book about, about, um, why it is that we're addicted to Facebook and Instagram. And while he was writing,

00:25:42 the book realized how distracted he was all the time. And so he did a bunch of research trying to solve his own problem and then wrote another book about that. So three good books. I will link them up in the show notes, if you want to grab that list. And then the thing I will leave you with is speaking of planning, it is almost time to start planning for 2021.

00:26:04 And if you're with me, it is a time to say<inaudible> to 2020 and start looking forward to a new year. So I'm developing a 2021 planning workshop called designed to thrive in 2021. It will run for three weeks in November, and I'm working on the details for that. And we'll share more on next week's episode, but if you are looking for a framework for planning out your 2021 and getting focused on the things that really matter

00:26:36 I hope you will think about joining me and more details to come have a great.

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