Productivity Is Not About Minute Management but Mindset Management.

You know the saying that it's not what happens to us that defines us but how we choose to respond to the circumstances.

It's the same with how you manage time.

It's not the tasks that create your stress but how you choose to perceive them and respond to them.

Time is just time; it is our mindset and how we navigate our minutes that defines how we show up to the tasks. Consider what mindset shifts you need to make to move from joyless urgency to the unhurried life:

Manage your expectations.

One of the best time management tools is to plan your week before you are in it, but with a twist – begin with where your time cannot go. Start by scheduling the weekly team meetings or any other commitments you cannot shift.

Include personal responsibilities, such as extra murals, school lifts, and any other existing commitments. From this place of reality, now begin to schedule and plan your week.

Managing your expectations means being realistic about what you can accomplish in a day.

Most frustration comes from a feeling that you should be able to do it all and you should get to everything on your to-do list in one day. When you plan your week before you are in it, you can at least begin to be more realistic with yourself.

Another way to manage your expectation mindset is to consider the context of the situation. A few years ago, we went on a family beach holiday, and I had these grand visions of me reading my book by the pool, totally relaxed and undisturbed. My kids were still young at the time, and oh boy, was I mistaken.

For the first two days, I was resentful because, naturally, I never opened the book. The problem was my expectations of what I considered possible. It was never going to be relaxing, but frustration shows up when you compare an ideal reality to the current one, and they don't match up. To enjoy the time away and feel relaxed, I had to let go of this unrealistic expectation. It was about connection with the family, not relaxing.

Consider the season you are in now…what is realistic under the current circumstances? If you're ill or have ill parents, or even have a sick child at home on a work day. You will never be able to accomplish the same amount as normal. So even though you know this logically, you have this wild expectation of yourself to perform under these circumstances.

The sooner you can make peace with what's possible on a given day, weekend, or holiday, you can drop the slave-driving inner critic and surrender to what time is available to you and enjoy it irrespective of whether you are working or not.

Replace balance with harmony.

Balance is another productivity myth. It proposes there is a magical formula to fit everything in a day so the scales balance out. Instead, replace balance with harmony because this is unique to each person and also unique depending on your current circumstances and life stage.

My definition of harmony is presence minus guilt. When you are working, be all in and love what you're doing without feeling guilty about what you are not doing and that you're not with your loved ones.

Even more important, when you are not working and enjoying your downtime, drop any guilt that you should be working.

If you change your language from balancing to prioritising, you will start to have gentler days. If you have to focus on work, you naturally will go out of balance, but the question is how long you decide to stay there before you come back to the other areas of life.

Every day is different and brings its own surprises – the ones we call problems. Not every day is going to feel harmonious in terms of spending equal time between home and personal life, but overall, in a week, how did you do?

Move into Surrender.

This has definitely been my greatest lesson, and I constantly have to be reminded about it. Surrender means you are not resisting reality and accepting the situation for what it is. From this place of acceptance, you can decide the most constructive actions.

Surrender also means you may not have a choice in the situation and you are OK with not being OK.

Beth Kempton, author of Wabi Sabi, shares this beautiful insight into acceptance and surrender.

"Acceptance is not about giving up or giving in. It's about surrendering to the truth of what is happening and then playing an active role in deciding what happens next. For example, if you are sick, it's about recognising that you are sick, accepting that you are not at full capacity, permitting yourself to slow down in order to heal and asking for help when you need it rather than powering on through. Surrendering to the truth of suffering in any area of your life allows you to proactively decide your next steps with clarity, compassion and a degree of ease."

When you feel yourself speeding up and getting frustrated that you should be doing more, stop and pause. Ask yourself if it's realistic to be doing more or if this is a self-imposed deadline.

I had four kids over for the long weekend, and when I wanted to try and squeeze some work in, I had to remind myself this is the situation and trying to make time for work is futile. It will only frustrate me and create disharmony for everyone around me.

I am sure you can remember a time in Covid when you had grand plans and visions of how you would spend your day, and it got turned upside down with homeschooling and other unexpected interruptions. After many migraines, I began to listen to the message – surrender. This is the season you're in – do the best you can with the resources and time available.

Drop the mindset of more.

It took me a long time to adopt this practice, but it is one of the most valuable mindset shifts you can make.

When you can internalise it and adopt it without guilt, it moves you from a place of joyless urgency to an unhurried life.

I worked on a project where I had to do five masterclasses back to back in a day. They were thirty-minute masterclasses with a half-hour break between each one. Not only did I try to fit an extra task between the sessions, but I also felt like I still had to add more to my day after they were completed.

Never mind the mental and physical energy spent to ensure each one was equal in energy and delivery. It still felt like it wasn't enough. How could I not do something productive for the remainder of the day in between picking up kids from school and shuffling some extra murals on top of that?

It's exhausting, and no matter what you accomplish, there is this inner slave driver yelling to keep going; it's not enough.

Until I decided it was enough.

To get to this place, you need to stop defining your self-worth according to your busyness and rather the value you have created. Earlier this month, I completed a half-day workshop by lunchtime. I was so satisfied with the output that I gave myself recognition and rewarded myself with a mental and physical pause. It wasn't necessary that day to find something else to do to feel validated.

The other side to this is that I had planned, knowing I would have four days of workshops in a row. I didn't want the mental drain of having to complete other things this week. I made sure the big things were done so I could work on less energy-intensive tasks afterwards.

I'm not saying to do one task a day and take the day off; I'm saying that when you have delivered a superior output and your energy is depleted, then manage the pace of the remainder of your day rather than trying to do more for more's sake.

Is it on the way or in the way?

Time shrinks or expands in proportion to how much we enjoy the task. When you are doing something you love, and you're in a flow state, time disappears. When you are doing something that you dislike because it's boring or monotonous, you tend to resent it or feel it's beneath you.

The task has to be done, so manage your mindset by reframing it from 'in the way - to 'on the way'. When it's on the way, ask yourself what lessons you are gaining from it. How is it making you better at your craft?

When you position a task as in the way, it feels like it is an interrutpion to what really matters.

Perhaps you have to stop your day to collect the kids, and this feels like a waste of time. When you see that you get to collect the kids and they are very much on the way, you will show up differently.

Consider how they feel when you arrive on the phone in a hurry and whisper between conference calls irritated versus arriving present with a big smile and happy to see them. They will feel the difference.

Although we have days where your personal life feels in the way, it is always on the way.

Does this expand me or contract me?

This is a wonderful question to help you determine where to invest your time. If you continually say yes to things that contract you, there is your compass. Contracting means it brings up feelings of anxiety, stress or frustration. When you think about doing it, you tighten inside.

When something expands you, it's the opposite. You feel energised, excited and grateful. You may even feel nervous, but that means you care about the outcome.

When something expands you, find a way to bring more of that experience into your week. When something contracts you, find a way to reduce or eliminate it.

Perhaps there is something you can't change that contracts you. There is still a choice available to you – you can change your perception or the procedure.

Can you change your attitude towards it, like seeing it as on the way? Or does your procedure mean how you can make the task fun or interesting? How can you make it feel like play?

A simple example is when I entertained family over the weekend, and after they left, I was staring at my kitchen like a deer in headlights, not knowing where to start operation clean up. Rather than feel resentful about the task ahead, I found an interesting audiobook, stuck in my headphones and had a great time sorting it out.

I couldn't change it, but I could change how I show up to it.

It's the same with your work tasks; if you can't change it, then change your perception or your procedure. Perhaps that means instead of doing a tedious task at your desk, go to a coffee shop and at least change the environment and make it more interesting.

Final thoughts.

You cannot manage time; all you can do is manage how you choose to show up.

To master the minutes, master your mindset with these questions the next time you feel yourself speeding up and fretting about the need to do more or your day isn't going how you intended:

·         Do you have realistic expectations on what can be achieved given the time available or circumstances?

·         Are you trying to optimise for balance or harmony?

·         Are you resisting reality?

·         Are you in the mindset of more?

·         Is it on the way or in the way?

·         Does this expand me or contract me?

Here's to owning your days,

Warm wishes

Lori