132: Ditch the Busy: How To Make Time For The Needle Movers in Your Business with Jen Theuriet

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. In this podcast, we go deep into product and marketing strategies for digital product creators. We cover everything from digital product creation, how to market and sell your digital products, and just as important, how to find your ideal customer. Let's jump right into our show.

And my special guest today is Jen, 38. Jen is a writer and productivity coach for female creatives and entrepreneurs. Through her time saving tips and clarity coaching, she is here to help you make progress on your goals while making it all feel like it is within your reach. Her advice has been featured on Thrive, Global, Healthline, Lifehack, and more. And when she's not coaching female creatives to live smart, you can find her indulging in nature, time with friends and family, and the occasional chocolate binge. Jen, thank you so much for joining me. I am very excited to jump into this topic with you. Today. We're going to be talking about how to ditch the busy without losing yourself. But before we begin with all the good questions I have for you, can you tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Yeah. Well, first, thank you, Destiny for this opportunity. I am so happy and excited to be here. And yes, like you said, I am a productivity coach. I love helping female creatives and entrepreneurs achieve more by doing less. And my approach is truly to help everyone see that managing their time and their focus and being more productive is really a skill that you can learn. And everyone's brain is wired a little bit differently. So it really breaks my heart when people feel like they can't do it. They just want to give up and they end up letting their dreams and themselves slip through their fingers because they're just so busy being everything to everybody else. That is my mission. I do have two kiddos, both with ADHD diagnoses. While I'm very type A, I have immersed myself in the science and the research to help those that struggle to focus as well. So it's really a personalized approach to time management.

So I think there's a lot of people listening here today, whether they're an entrepreneur or a creative, where they're at home maybe creating stuff or working in the garden or, you know, doing, creating handmade goods. A lot of us feel like there's just enough, not enough time in the day, if you would. So let's talk about this a little bit more and delve into it. What do you see as some of the most common mistakes when it comes to time management.

Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. And this is how we ditch the busy, right? It's by finding those common mistakes and moving from the busy bee to a more productive life. And so the first one I actually touched on a little bit, and I love to use the analogy that imagine that I'm in Sacramento and you're in Atlanta and I board an airplane, airplane to fly to Atlanta. I don't know if you know, but the pilots in the cockpit of that plane are constantly course correcting. They're using their tools and their systems to constantly course correct and make sure that I'm landing in Atlanta to come visit you. Well, it could be that, that you're not using the right tools and systems that are set up the way your brain is wired. And this has a lot to do with our cognitive style. So if you think back to when you were in school and how you liked to receive information, how you learned, were you a visual learner, were you more of a kinesthetic learner, like a hands on kind of person? Or maybe you needed like a group, you did better in group settings. And oftentimes we don't really think like, how are we managing our calendar, how are we managing projects? We just do it. And we were never really taught how. But if you spend some time actually setting up these tools and systems and identify how you like to learn, I call it a productivity style, and come up with tools and systems that match that or make some tweaks. And because a lot of them are like project management systems, for example, you can actually set them up. Whether you're a visual person or, or you're more of like a detail oriented person, you can make some changes within that system. So that's number one is really like you're not using the right tools and systems that work for you in the way that your brain is wired because you've never really thought about it before and nobody's really taught you to do that. Any questions there? And I'll move on to mistake number two.

Well, actually I think you brought up something good about the project management systems and how, how some of them I'll just bring, you know, mention Asana as an example. So I know you can do boards in there, you can do list. And I think depending on what I'm working on, I might do one or the other. Is that what you're referring to when you say kind of set it up to how your brain works?

Yeah, I mean you could Set it up to one or the other, depending on what kind of like, project you're working on. But yeah, if Asana, for example, like, they have a mind mapping tool inside of Asana, I believe you can do like a card. I use Trello, and it's a. It's a card system that's very visual. And you can also set it up so it's more of like a, like a tree system where it has like all the little branches inside of a project. So if you're more like planner oriented, that might work well for you. And arranger. I actually have a productivity style quiz on my website and an arranger is one of the styles. And those people, those are people people. And those people really need others to hold them accountable, to get them to show up. And that's what drives them and motivates them. And that's how they kind of like to organize their lives. So maybe you need to have like, collaborations inside of Asana. Other people like checks and balances to make sure that the project is moving forward. Does that make sense?

I love that. I love that. And I did not know that Asana had a mind mapping system in it. So I learned something new every day. All right, so moving on, what's another mistake that many people make when it comes to time management?

So another really common one is the idea that when we are overwhelmed, our tendency is to move into that fight or flight. You hear that all the time. To go into overthinking. Your mind just starts running and running and running and you go faster and faster and faster because you fear that you're never going to figure out the steps, because maybe you're taking on a new project that you've never done before, or you're picking up a new skill and instead of slowing down, you never take action because you don't have clarity. And while our mind wants to run faster, that was great in our hunter gatherer days. But this goes into a little bit of neuroscience and talking about the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is that fight or flight, it increases cortisol, it increases our heart rate, it increases our breath, and we just want to go faster and faster. But what you have to do to fix this and to get out of overthinking is actually to slow down and engage the parasympathetic nervous system. And by doing this, we can do it a couple of ways. Like it could be yoga. It can be, you know, just getting up and taking a walk. When you feel like that sense of Overwhelm setting in. It feels like the opposite of what you want to do. But if you can think about, like, when you're in the shower, those aha Moments you have when you're in the shower, you're not actually doing the thing right? Like, you're completely removed from the work work or the project, and you have that breakthrough. Well, that's exactly what's going on, is your parasympathetic nervous system is kind of calming down, and it gives your brain more clarity to focus on the next step. And all you truly need is that next small little step to be able to get more clarity on the direction you're going.

I love that. And I was thinking about a conversation I was having last night with a friend of mine, and I was like, I am so overwhelmed right now. Like, I got so overwhelmed, I didn't even know what to do next. But I love what you said about taking a walk or taking a step back, and that will help you figure out that maybe that little small step just to keep you moving forward. So that is such a great tip. So what is the next common mistake that people are making?

So another really common one. And I sort of blame social media and, like, I actually have a journalism background. So while I blame, like, media for this, but it's the idea of hustle culture and the thought that time equals money. And this goes, you know, most mostly to entrepreneurs, but even the creatives. Like, the more time you spend working on something, the more that's going to get done. And especially if this is part of your business, the more work, the more money you'll make. That sort of mentality, that hustle culture we're all sold so often can lead to burnout. And you hear all the time about stopping the distractions. And I do think that's super, super helpful, like creating a way to turn off the bings and the dings and all that stuff on our devices that we're constantly connected to. I love to share the tip that think about your work environment and where you're actually doing, doing the craft, doing, you know, working on your side, hustle, whatever it may be, and make sure that that's set up, that environment is set up to help you focus. So what do I mean by this? I love to take people through, like, a sensory tour of that space and think about the smells that are in that space. Maybe it's a cup of coffee that you need to, like, trigger that brain to focus. I know that helps me a lot, but I also actually have, like, a diffuser in my office. And I use a blend of sense that. That I turn on when I'm ready to go into, like, a deep focus session. And that scent, my brain kind of triggers. Okay, it's time to, like, settle down, silence everything out, and really focus on the task that I have in front of me. Because truly, just being present and mindful and making the most of the time that you have and limiting those distractions rather than working more time can be that much more effective. So smell is just one of them. We can go through all of the senses. You can think about sight, line of sight, what you're looking at. If you have a bunch of piles of clutter around you. And those piles of clutter trigger your mind to go to, oh, my gosh, I need to take care of XYZ thing. And 20 minutes later, you're wondering where the heck the last 20 minutes went, and you finally refocus back onto the task at hand. That's another. But so just kind of look at your space and go through a sensory tour and think of what's around you and how that can actually be pulling away from your focus.

And I love that. And when you were talking about that, I was thinking about, you know, my office, and my big trigger is I don't like clutter. Like, it just. I have trouble focusing when there's a bunch of clutter. So that. That is something I really do try to keep out of my line of sight and, you know, around my. Around my desk area. Any other common mistakes or did we cover them all?

And the one last one that I'll share, and I actually. Let's see, which. Which one did I skip over? Oh, this is the. The Superwoman or the Superman syndrome. And I work mostly with females, so I always call it the Superwoman syndrome. And that's thinking that it's your job to make sure that everybody else has what they need. I talked a little bit about this in my intro, right? And you end up being the one with the unfulfilled life. Everybody else is okay, but. But you're not so okay. And the quick fix for this is really just to take a few moments right now and decide what matters most in this moment. And no more than three, because I believe if you have any more than three priorities at any one point in time, you are in that busy zone versus the productive zone. And there's a formula that I like to follow that kind of helps once you identify what those one to three things are. And it's called the productivity formula. And basically what it is is just for simple math purposes, let's say you have a 40 hour work week, and we're talking about like a business project or an entrepreneurial project. If you've identified this project as one of your top three priorities, you should be spending 60% of that 40 hours on that particular project or tasks, and that translates to 24 hours per week. So if you want to do this for yourself, calculate how many hours you have. So maybe it's a side gig, maybe it's a hobby, and how many hours you have to spend that. Well, 60% of your time should be spent on that. Needle movers and stop pouring into everybody else and really create a time budget. When you think of the word budget, often our mind goes to money, but you can actually also create a budget for your time and make sure that you're spending the majority of your time on those needle movers.

That just when you were going through that, I was like, had so many aha moments. So I was thinking about some of the big projects that I have in my life. And, you know, I've never thought about that time budget that you were mentioned. And let's just say that one of them was to set up. And I'll just talk about it from a business perspective because that's just right in front of me. One of those is to set up a Shopify site for my digital products. So if that's one of the big triggers and one of the big movers, you're saying I should probably spend, you know, 24 hours of my week focused on that. In that.

Yeah. If that's your big priority right now, where is that in your calendar? Right, like where that needs to be occupying 60% of your time inside of your business.

I love that. That. That just was like, oh, my gosh, such an aha moment there. So, Jen, any last minute tips for the audience today?

So, you know, the one thing I love to share, and I know this is, this is a podcast, so it's. It's not a visual thing, but I love to share. We talked about, like creating an environment for focus and like inside of your office and not the digital distractions, but one thing that I think is a game changer and it has been for me is on my Apple iPhone is the Focus feature. Are you familiar with that? Destiny? Do you have an iPhone?

I do have an iPhone, but I've never used that Focus feature. So walk everybody through it.

Yeah, I want to walk you through it. And they do have a version of this On Android. I don't have an Android, but I know Android has their own version of this. But so phone and you swipe down, it used to say do not disturb it. Now it says focus. I actually have mine on because I wanted to silence my phone for this conversation. But it'll automatically default to do not disturb is still there. It's at the top of your screen. And then it goes to personal work, sleep and driving. And so the way I have the game changer for me really has been the work feature. If you click on the work feature, there's three little dots on the side and you can go down to settings and you can customize this. So how many times have you picked up your phone just to like answer a quick text or check something really, really quick and then 20 minutes later you're like, oh my God, like what just happened? Where did that time go? You can have this silence, all those distractions so only certain people can break through your work focus. So I have it set up so my kids and my husband and my kids school can break through and you can even have it like set up for certain apps. Say maybe you have like a Slack channel or something and you need to get notifications from your co workers. You can set it up that way. And the best part of this is once you get really in touch with like how you work best if you have certain hours of the day, because everybody does, everybody has certain hours of the day where they can do something certain work. Like maybe it's a creative work versus analytical work. Well, my most focused time is from that 9 to 10:30 slot in the in my mornings. So my phone actually goes into this work mode because I've played with the settings inside of my Apple phone without me even having to pick it up. So that is such a game changer because I can't tell you how many times I pick it up and I'm like, oh, my friends are trying to plan something and then I participate in this group text and I totally lost that train of thought. So even picking it up to like silence notifications, having this go into that setting automatically is, is a game changer. So I love to share that. That's a quick tip. Everybody can do Android Apple users, everyone.

And I love that. And as you were going through that, I pulled it up on my phone. I didn't even know it was there. And it, that is amazing. Such a, such a game changer. I love it.

And you can have it based on location. So if you have like a physical office that you go into, you can have it turn on when you get there. There's lots of cool things. I just kind of like barely broke through the service. But yeah, it's really cool to play with.

Wow. I absolutely love that. Jen, can you tell people where they can find you? And I also believe you have a free gift for them too.

Yeah. So the best place to find me is my website, thelifeafterbusy.com and the social platform I hang out the most at is usually Instagram and my handle is En Thurrier. It's J E N N T H E U R I E T. So those are the best places to reach me. But I do also have a free gift and that is my reset routine. I actually, if you follow me over on Instagram, I go live there Monday through Friday and go through it with you. But this is a free video training. It comes with some downloads and it teaches you how to just do a 10 minute reset identify, like what time you want to shut your workday down.

And.

And it takes you through this process of shutting down your day, identifying what got done, do a little bit of reflection, set yourself up for tomorrow and really be present and mindful in the downtime that you have, because that's so important for showing up as the best version of yourself and the most energized and focused version of yourself for tomorrow. So that is my free grid, that video series. I love doing the reset. And if you guys want to join me on my Instagram, I'm there doing it Monday through Thursday.

And that sounds like so much fun. And Jen, thank you so much for joining us today and providing us all these new tips. I feel like I learned more than one new thing today.

Awesome. Thank you for the opportunity. It's such an honor.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.