How to Stop Being Overwhelmed and Over-scheduled – Behind the Scenes

Your time is precious. How you spend your time is an indicator of what you see as important. To lead your people, you have to stop being overwhelmed. You have to stop over-scheduling. Today, I am sharing with you part of my struggles and how you can stop being overwhelmed. Discover two strategies that will help you as a leader and stop being overwhelmed.

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Stop Being Overwhelmed: The Transcript

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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.  

[0:00]
When you look at your calendar from last week, do you feel frustration, the kind of frustration that knows that you wasted time, you didn’t move the business forward the way you wanted to? Well, you’re not alone. We’ve all looked at our schedule and realized we could do more. But for some reason, we weren’t. What we’re going to talk about today is how to stop being overwhelmed. And overscheduled.

[0:23]
I’m going to give you some practical tips. But I also want you to understand that you’re not alone. This is a natural course of your leadership. Yeah, I said natural because we all have to go through it. We all have to go through this struggle this uncomfortableness so that we can actually learn how to optimize our time, how we can actually stop being overwhelmed.

[0:47]
Before we jump into how do you stop being overwhelmed? Let me share a story with you. I remember a time in my business where I was focused on delivering, you know, value for the clients. How do I enroll new clients The content I was creating for magazines like Inc, and entrepreneur and podcast, interviews and all of the other stuff going on within my team within the business, and just feeling that sense of overwhelming. And when I look at my schedule, I felt the kind of frustration that I asked you to look at from your schedule. Now, you may have this dial than to a degree, but I want to teach you some concepts that will help you continuously dial in and that you can use over and over again, that will help you get to where you want to be.

[1:31]
Now, it wasn’t until I looked at my schedule, and I started making some of these changes that I felt more in control because that’s really the idea within your schedule. If you feel out of control, you’re not going to show up at the best place for your team. You’re not going to be actually prioritizing the right projects, the right task, the right strategies. Instead, you’re going to be just doing what comes to you or maybe putting grease on the squeaky wheel as they say, which that also gets doesn’t help you grow the business the way you want to. The two concepts I’m going to share with you are pretty basic. The first one was when I learned just, I could color code my schedule.

[2:11]
Well, I always knew I could color code, my schedule, but I thought it was a waste of time. But when everything came in as blue, I couldn’t tell what meeting was, what and how I was spending my time. How much time did I spend on new business? versus how much time did I spend on current clients? How much time did I spend creating? How much did I spend in meetings? Well, you can use red, green, blue, pink, purple, light purple, any of the colors you choose, you can go to any level of detail, but I actually color code everything in my schedule.

[2:45]
When I show you my schedule, I can look at it a glance and say how many client meetings I have this week, how many prospect meetings I have this week, how many meetings I have my team. All of those things have their own specific colors. How does this help you? Well, when you look at your schedule, you get to see how you’re spending your time. How much time are you spending on the most important activity, whether it be business growth, or maybe its team for you, you get to determine how much time you’re spending at a glance?

[3:13]
The second part behind this, stop being overwhelmed, and overscheduled is what I called the time audit matrix. The time audit is probably not new to you, you basically look at your time, how are you spending it? So what I’m gonna ask you to do is look at it from this matrix standpoint. So on the left-hand column, you want to list all of the things that you did last week, all of the meetings, you attended all of the projects you put time into. So if you spent more than 15 minutes on it, you should it should go on this list, and make that list as detailed as possible. Don’t judge yourself. It is what it is.

[3:47]
Now, in the second column, if you weren’t available, who on your team would actually show up on your behalf? Who would you tap on the shoulder and say, would you show it for me as well and the third column I want you to list the skills, the talents, or even the mindsets of why you chose that person.

[4:07]
No, I just want you to look at the list, I want you to be able to look at it objectively and be able to step back. What this is, is being able to step back, it kind of a bird’s eye view of your schedule. Many people are just so in the day to day, the weeds, if you will, they don’t take time to step back that 30,000-foot view. And that’s what I’m asking you to do here is to look at it differently. But then also, if life were different, who on your team would you select to do those tasks? That timeout matrix is a very powerful tool if you use it. If you want to go a little bit deeper into some of these tips. I have been very fortunate to interview a lot of people on the podcast Growth Think Tank.

[4:47]
My name is Gene Hammett. I work with leaders that are already high performing successful companies. And I help them go to the next level to make a greater impact. And to continue that level of success. Maybe it’s company growth. Maybe it’s a new model of leadership. But that’s what I do for my clients. If you want to get that download absolutely free just go to genehammett.com/productivity. You’ll get three tools inside there that will go deeper into the aspect of stopping overwhelmed. I want you to feel like you have the time and space to create the opportunity to grow your business, whether that be shifting your leadership model, or focusing on more visionary tasks for the business.

[5:23]
When you think about that, that will help you stop being overwhelmed. When you think about leadership and you think about growth, think of Growth Think Tank. That’s the podcast for founders and CEOs of fast-growing companies. Hopefully, you’ll tune in to the next episode we have here look for more videos from me more concepts around improving yourself as a leader, as always lead with courage. We’ll see you next time.

 

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

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