Paula Rizzo previews her LinkedIn Learning course on setting boundaries and protecting your time. She shares practical tactics like time tracking, chunking your day into blocks, and scripts for saying no. A free List Making Starter Kit is available at paularizzo.com/list.
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Hey, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. Do you feel guilty when you say no? It's okay, I know. Maybe you feel like, oh gosh, I said that I would help my colleague or friend with a project, but now I don't have enough time. Why did I do that? Because I want to be a people pleaser. I want people to like me. I want to be helpful. I totally understand. You are not alone. This is all about setting boundaries, of course. And today we're going to talk about my LinkedIn Learning course, which is all about this. It's called How to Set Up Boundaries and Protect Your Time. And you can check that out right there. If you go to the QR code that is listed, or if you go to LinkedInLearning.com, you can find it. But I wanted to give you a little bit of a preview of what you will find in that course, because this is something that I struggle with myself too. So we'll talk about that. But Before I get into that, the details, I have a freebie that I want to share with you. It's my List Making Starter Kit, and it really does help to boost your list making. Uh, you know, I love lists. I'm the author of two books about productivity, Listful Thinking and Listful Living, and I love lists. And, and part of boundary setting is really putting yourself at the top of your list. So it's very relevant to be able to manage your time, make better lists, and carve out some time for yourself to make sure that you're getting to the things that you should be getting to, not to the things that you, you know, just because you can doesn't mean you should. So I want to hear from you throughout this show. If you have questions about boundary setting or anything else that has to do with productivity, really, please leave your comments and questions below. And if you have a friend who you think could use a little help in this department, tag them. I'm sure they will be thrilled to have some resources. So let's dive into it. The first piece here that you have to really think about when you're talking and thinking about boundary setting is changing your mindset, because boundaries are really your friend. Your boundaries are going to become your best friend here. And I know that sounds like, oh gosh, I don't like to say no. I don't like to let people down, but you really need to switch your mindset. And this is something that I work on in the course, uh, here on LinkedIn Learning about really taking the time back for yourself. And you have to make the case for yourself a little bit of protecting your time. So that's part of the course is thinking through your future life. What will your life look like if you stop saying yes to everything? So you really need to think through how your life can be different if you are protecting your time, making that case for protecting your time to yourself. And identify really how your time is best spent, right? Like, where will you actually spend this extra time? You know, I'm thinking through, there was, there was a time that I was invited to a wedding. I was working, you know, in TV news and someone invited me to their wedding because everybody was getting invited from, from the newsroom. And I really didn't want to go. I wasn't super close with the person. And I thought, you know, what could I do instead if I didn't go? To this, you know? And what I did was I said no. It was the first time I had ever done something like that because of course I wanted to go. You know, all my colleagues were going, but you know, I wanted to show up for people, but it wasn't the best use of my time. I didn't really feel like going. So instead what I did was I went to a Broadway show with my mother and that felt awesome. So to think about like, what will you do with this time instead, really, really does help when you are protecting your time for you. Another big piece of this is time tracking. So a lot of times we think that things will take a certain amount of time. So if someone asks you, right, oh, could you help me with this thing? Or, you know, you really think, oh, it'll take just 5 minutes. You really need to make sure that you know just how long is it going to take? Where is the time going? The things that you're doing and what are some of the common time-sucking activities? I go through this in the course because it's important to identify these things before it starts to take over. Right? So now this is not just about doing things for other people, but this is also like setting boundaries around social media, setting boundaries around, um, you know, how much screen time you have, even as an adult, how much screen time you have, because it's— studies have been done to find that we need a break. We need to step away from these machines. Uh, I sound like my mother now. Um, but we need to step away from these machines to give ourselves a break. And set those boundaries. So what I want you to do, even today, this is a, a good activity to think through, is to write down and, and chunk out your time. Like, what did you do today? What were the things that were most rewarding? What were the things that were most soul-sucking? Write down two lists. And it really does help you to think about, okay, where do I want to send— spend my time? How do I want to do this? And this brings us to setting your own personal boundaries. Now, Rules are your friend here, and you have to think about how do you work best? This is something that I talk about a lot in my books, Listful Thinking and Listful Living. And how do you work best? What is it that you need to do that? And for me, I block out my days very specifically. And so Mondays, I typically don't take meetings. And I work on writing or I get ready for the week. Solitary things, things that other people don't need me for. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I do things like this. I produce this show. I meet with media training clients. I do speaking engagements. I create videos. I do all of those things. And then on Fridays, I protect Friday for creativity. And that's when I do my writing. Now I'm working on a novel, but in the past, that's when I would write my nonfiction books. And so I keep that time for myself. I have batched and chunked my week to best serve me. OK, I work for myself. I realize this is not something you can always do, but I did this in corporate America too. I would only do interviews on certain days. I would only go, you know, I was a field producer a lot of the time too. So I would go out in the field on certain days or I would have guests come into the studio and I would chunk that time out. So I wasn't doing too many things at once. You want to really protect your time and you want to be able to protect your sanity. Because if I was doing something in the morning in the studio and in the afternoon in the field, like that for me is too much, too much going on. So I would just reserve and now I forget what it was, but maybe it was Wednesdays was in the studios and then like Tuesday, Thursdays were in the field, something like that. But to chunk out your time in that way and really help you best serve yourself is important to really set those boundaries and think through it. And in the course, we go into setting those rules for yourself. How do you do it? How do you get into your zone? To really get things done and structure your day for optimal productivity for you, because everyone is a little bit different. And then there's a bunch of strategies in the course too to stay on track, because it's one thing to say, okay, this is the best laid plan, this is what I want to have happen, wouldn't it be nice if this is what it was? But then how do you actually do it? Clear-cut ways, like there are scripts in this course on how to say no, what to say instead, and how to start to feel good about it, and how to stay accountable. Because it's one thing to be like, you know what, I need to stop committing to everything and doing all these things, and it's another thing to actually do it. So I give you some strategies in there. And remember, you know, just because you can does not mean that you should. The world will still hopefully keep spinning if you say no to certain things. So you do have to sort of get your time back. And I am excited for you because once you start putting boundaries up, it's really great. And then you think, I don't, I don't want to give that time back. I don't want to do, I don't, I don't want to do that anymore. I want the time for me. So you get a little bit used to it and And I promise you, it will serve you really well. So I hope that you check out the course on LinkedIn Learning. It is called How to Set Boundaries and Protect Your Time. And if you need a little bit of help also with your list making, I do have a list making freebie for you as well. If you go to paularizzo.com/list, you can check that out. So thanks for watching. And if you have questions, feel free to leave them in the chat boxes below. I will definitely check them out and I will see you next time.
