From Time-Starved to Time-Zen

When I started my side hustle last year, I was overwhelmed by how little time and energies I had to work on it. Justifiable to my eyes: Full time job, 2 little boys under 3, a husband with a demanding work schedule and my own relationships and self-care. Early this year I created a vision board with Morgan Connel Hall through RBM and that was the beginning of my outlook change on time: I realized that myself, my mom, Beyonce and Kate Middleton have the same amount of hours in the day. We just use them differently. So I started studying the art of time management, and I realized that “time stress” is a social construct and a choice (yes, a choice- biggest mindset shift here). At some point in history, being overly busy became somehow cool, like a badge of belonging to the club of time-starved adults. It was taking a toll on me on my sanity, so here I share a few of the principles and mantras that have helped me to move from feeling time-starved to being time-zen: I learned that we can choose to be overly busy or to prioritize and delegate the rest, or simply delete it from our lives. I re-invented my week schedule to allow for an hour every morning working on my business. I shifted my day job hours, negotiated dayhome drop off schedules with the husband, and bought a Focus journal to help me keep on track. I scheduled Thursday lunch hour calls with my friend Lisa in Ontario and realized that I spent very little time alone with my husband and I really like him, so I enlisted a couple of babysitters to free us a couple of hours a month to do something together. The ultimate time win was to hire a lady in my community to come and help me meal prep on Monday mornings for the week, which is the domestic chore that drains me the most. She fills my fridge with tupperwares for the week and when she leaves, she always says: “I love feeling useful”. Win-win. Little by little I found that there is always time for what matters. These newly found hours have come with a cost: I don’t watch more than 2 hours of TV/week, I say no to some invitations (as gracefully as I can) and when I start getting overly busy I say to myself: “I don’t do overwhelm”: it is a choice. In order to pay for meal prep and babysitting, we don’t have pets, we don’t have a garden, we don’t have an RV, our cars are small, and we don’t eat out very often. I am fine with it, in this season of our lives this is what we need most. It all comes back to prioritizing what matters. I don’t say do as I do. Different things matter for different families and in these issues, one size does not fit all. But today I invite you to do a time audit in your life: which are your priorities and how much time are you allocating to them? What could shift, be delegated, or deleted (even if temporarily) in order to allow more time for activities that bring you joy? Who can help or support you? what difficult conversations can help you make your life easier? Time-stress is a social construct and it usually falls hard on moms, especially working moms. It is unfair but it is also a choice. Best wishes starting this Fall season!

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Meet the Author

Monica has designed, delivered and evaluated learning experiences for 25 years around the world, in different settings for very different audiences.

She is currently committed to a simple and human-centered focus in training with the belief that if people thrive, businesses will thrive. Monica lives in Calgary with her husband and two little boys. She loves to visit with friends, read historical novels and everything Alberta.