Episode 5 I Have No Control Over My Schedule
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Hello, welcome to the productivity genius podcast. I'm your host Kelly Fifield. And honestly, this probably should have been the first episode I did.
I'm not exaggerating. When I say that, what I'm going to share with you has the potential to change your life. I know this because it totally changed mine.
And before I start, I'd love to share a thought that serves me really well when I'm listening to podcasts or books or coaching.
When I'm about to listen to a book or podcast or coaching session, I decide this is for me. There's something in here. That's for me.
And then perhaps not surprisingly, I always get something out of it.
And this isn't surprising. It's the reticular activating system inaction.
The reticular activating system is a little bundle of nerves in your brain that helps us deal with all of the data that our brain is being bombarded with at every moment.
If you think about it, right at this moment, your brain is exposed to so much information.[00:01:00]
You're taking in sites. There are sensations of touch.
Just think of all of the things that are in your visual field right now, not to mention everything you can hear. Or touch or feel. Are you conscious that you have feet right now?
Most likely before I just mentioned it. You weren't paying any attention to your feet. Now that I mentioned them. Do you notice how they feel on your shoes or on the ground?
Before I mentioned it. Your brain was receiving information from your feet about how they were feeling. But it wasn't important information. So it wasn't in your consciousness. Your reticular activating system, filtered that information out.
Thank goodness. We have that system to keep our brain from getting overwhelmed by all of the things that we could be experiencing. It processes out the things we don't need and just filters for the stuff that we do.
And, one of the things it's always filtering for is evidence of what we believe. And fortunately we can intentionally program it to.
Here's something you should know about my podcast.[00:02:00] This is a project of love for me. When I'm making these episodes and creating the outline. I'm thinking of my immediate family, my extended family, my friends, my former self, like the things that I wish I had known. Like, how cool is it that potentially my great grandkids could listen to this and I could share with them the things that I've learned, and that helped me so much.
And the thing that helps me push through the insecurity of putting this out there and maybe being embarrassed or judged.
It's remembering that this might help someone else in the profound way that I was helped when I learned this. And that's, what's so exciting. It makes it totally worth it for me.
And the reason I'm telling you this is because the things that I share on this podcast are the things that I want my own children and grandchildren to know. So, you know, that everything I'm sharing is out of love.
Okay. So maybe now that I've shared that with you, your reticular activating system is turned on and like, okay, what are we going to get [00:03:00] out of this episode? And I hope you stay with me. After this next line. You have complete control over your schedule?
Okay. If you're still here. Thank you for not hitting stop, but let me guess your brain is like, ah, no. Tell that to my boss. You have no idea what my day looks like. You might be thinking, okay, this podcast is public. It goes to everyone. Kelly's not talking to me.
But actually I'm literally talking to you. Like look around if you have AirPods on no one else hears me. Right. I'm talking directly to you.
You have complete control over your schedule?
If you're an employee, you don't have to go to all those meetings. You don't have to answer your phone. You don't have to reply to emails.
If you're an entrepreneur, you don't have to run ads. You don't have to create funnels, offers websites, lead magnets. You don't even have to pay taxes.
If you're a mom, you don't have to change diapers. You don't have to feed your kids. You don't even have to be nice to [00:04:00] them.
Now, let me be clear. I'm not suggesting you don't do those things. But what I am saying is you don't. actually have to do any of those things.
I know there's that old Ben Franklin quote, something about death and taxes, kind of implying that everyone has to pay taxes. You actually don't.
Now I'm not suggesting you don't do those things.
And I'm not saying you should do those things. But what I'm suggesting is that you look at it in a much more empowering way.
What I'm suggesting you consider is that you've chosen your schedule.
For example. Let's say one of my jobs, I'm a math teacher. In my contract. I think it says I have to be there like 15 minutes before the students arrive. And 15 minutes after, honestly, I don't know. I get to school so early. I don't even know what it says. I have a prep period and I have a lunch and then the rest of the day is dedicated to teaching and like duties.
Yes, Scott. I said, I have duties. [00:05:00] Scott, always comments on me saying duty, which I find hilarious since he's a police officer and he's always on duty, but I digress.
Now I could look at that schedule and say, okay, well, besides my prep period in my lunch, I really have no control over my schedule. The bells ring, I have to be in this room. There are students there's responsibilities. This is what my schedule says. They literally printed out for me.
But the other thing that's also true about this is I chose to be a teacher and therefore I chose the schedule. I decided on this schedule. I wanted to be a teacher. Part of the job I took requires me to be in those places. At those times, I chose it.
Now do I have to show up to those things? No, I could just stay in bed and not go to work, but I like being on time. I like being a good employee. I actually enjoy following the rules because I really don't like getting in trouble.
so I actually want to be in the places that my [00:06:00] boss wants me to be kind of convenient.
And I like behaving in a way that helps me think I'm doing a good job.
There's nothing I actually have to do. I could just stay in bed. Not show up. I never send an email, never turn in my keys. Never answer a phone call and just never show up again. I could totally do that.
But I choose to show up to work. I choose to be on time. I choose to teach at the times I'm scheduled to teach. I choose to show up to my duties. I choose my schedule.
And I choose to follow. The rules of my job, because for me, that gives me great peace. I love knowing that I'm a great employee.
Now. Maybe teaching. Isn't a great example because a lot of us would probably think, well, a heck, yeah. Who wouldn't like to be a teacher you're done early. You have holidays off in the summer. Of course you like it.
But that's my job. You chose your [00:07:00] job. There's part of you that wants to be there.
It's just not useful to tell yourself you have to go to work. You don't want to go to work. You hate your job. You literally can quit right now.
You could just never show up again. Never call, never email. Just stop showing up. It is possible.
And it's just good to know. You have so much power.
Now, this might seem like semantics and your brain might be arguing like, no, you don't know my situation though. I can't just quit my job. I have a mortgage. I have kids to feed. I have bills to pay. And I'm not suggesting you quit your job. I'm just suggesting the way that you think about your job and your schedule, that you really look at what you tell yourself about that, because it creates different emotions.
Telling yourself. I go to work every day because I care about my family. I want to provide for them. That feels a lot different than I [00:08:00] have to go to work. I can't quit my job.
You totally can people do it all the time?
So, instead of telling yourself you can't, which actually isn't true. Tell yourself the truth. I choose to go to my job. I choose to work.
You can choose to go to work and hate your job.
I wouldn't suggest it necessarily, but you totally can.
So, instead of telling yourself you can't, which actually isn't true, you know, you could at any moment, quit your job Instead, tell yourself the truth. I can quit my job if I want to, But I choose not to quit. Therefore I'm choosing the schedule that I have.
Okay, so that's sort of part one. We're choosing our schedule when we choose our job sort of.
But the second part of that is looking at how you use the hours in your day as defined within your schedule.
Again, you don't actually have to do any of the things that you think you're required to do, or [00:09:00] that somehow you will be physically like forced to do. You don't have to answer emails, attend meetings, write reports, meet with clients or patients. Return calls, create resources. You don't have to do any of that.
It's just not useful to tell yourself you have to.
Instead of telling myself I have to go to these meetings. I might tell myself I attend meetings. I choose to go to all meetings. That's also true and it feels a lot better than telling myself I have to. Because when I tell myself I have to do something, which I totally fall into that all the time as well.
Then I feel resentful or frustrated and maybe even a little bit of tinge of like rebellious, like, ah, Like, I kind of don't want to do this and want to just not show up because I have to.
But when I tell myself I choose to do something, I feel more empowered and almost honestly like a little bad-ass like. I'm not going to this meeting because you told me I have to, or because I have to, I choose to go to the meeting. Right? Doesn't that feel [00:10:00] more powerful?
Okay. So now that we've established. We're choosing our job, whether we like the job or not currently, whatever job you have, you're currently choosing to do it doesn't mean you're going to keep making that choice. But for right now, this is the job you've chosen to do.
You're also choosing to do or not do the things as outlined by whatever the expectations are for your job.
But my guess is that you don't feel like you have a lot of choice of how you allocate your minutes while at work. And that's where I'd like to push back a little bit.
Does your job actually say some more? Like, did they give you a paper that says you have to spend X minutes on this and Y minutes doing this and Z minutes on this. Most of us, probably not. There's probably maybe some sort of job description where they kind of outline the general things that you're expected to do. And then we get assigned these things to do, and then we're just expected to kind of do it.
So, if you don't work on an assembly line, if you have a job, like most people's jobs Where there's [00:11:00] expectations and projects and things that we're expected to do. And we're supposed to get those done in our work hours.
This is the case where you can reclaim hours and hours back in your week.
If you approach this creatively. And with an open mind, you can look at the tasks and the projects and the things you're responsible for at work. And ask yourself some really good open-ended questions. To dramatically reduce the amount of time you invest in the different things that you do at your job.
Here are some of my favorite questions to ask myself.
What is the biggest time suck in my job.
I don't like to start with. A project or a task that I really dread. because the emotion dread feels terrible. So I don't really want to start with doing work around that. I would pick a task that you do regularly. That takes a lot of time, but you think this shouldn't take me this long.
Maybe brain dump a few [00:12:00] tasks like that. And then pick one and ask yourself these other questions.
How could I accomplish this and half or a quarter of the time?
What parts of this? Could I delegate?
How could I create a system that would reduce the amount of time this takes?
If I could do this task in less time and have a better result, what would that look like?
What are some creative solutions to getting this done faster?
When you're asking yourself questions like this, you don't want to judge your answers. You just wanna allow your brain to be creative in fact, to better access the creative side of your brain. You probably don't want to sit at your desk while you're doing this. Maybe find a comfy chair or go outside.
I love to get plain white paper, like a stack of it, and just kind of scribble and draw without any restrictions or ideas of what it should look like.
If you can shave off just 24 minutes a day. In a five day workweek that's two hours saved.
You will [00:13:00] be blown away by your own brilliance. Just give yourself some space to really think creatively the right side of your brain is going to love this open space.
In fact, perhaps consider using your non-dominant hand to answer some of these questions.
That's an interesting brain hack that allows you to access Areas of the brain that you don't normally use. You may be surprised by the answers that you come up with when you're using your opposite hand.
I appreciate you sticking with me in this episode.
You may not have agreed with all of it. And of course that's okay.
We can disagree sometimes and still totally be friends.
But as my friend at times, I'm probably going to give you a little pushback for sure. When you're trying to convince me about your limitations.
That's just not going to fly.
And the next episode, we're going to look at achieving balance in your schedule. Now I haven't decided on the title yet. I want to call it balance is BS, but if I use BS, do I have to check that little [00:14:00] E for explicit? Like, I'm not saying the bad words. Although I already said bad-ass in this episode.
now the whole podcast is going down the tubes.
Okay. So maybe the next episode is going to be balanced as baloney. I kind of like that because then I can reference the Jim Gaffigan comedy thing. Not sure yet you'll have to tune in next week to find out. See you next time, my friend.
