do you ever feel like there just aren't enough hours in the day you feel like you have more to do than you have time to do and all of the things that you want to do the fun things or even things that maybe aren't so fun necessary things you feel like aren't getting done you don't have an opportunity to chase your dreams to shoot for the moon so you can land Among the Stars and all the other BS you don't even have time for that and I'm sure that you've heard plenty of people say well we all have the same 24 hours in a day you think okay well what am I what am I doing with my 24 hours that this is such a problem for me it's I don't have time to do any of these things that I want to do because of all the things I have to do what we are going to discuss today and what I'm going to share with you things that you might be doing that are wasting your time and hear me out you might be like I don't waste my time okay fine you don't just could we go through the list though and maybe you just give it a second maybe you just marinate on it you just it with one of these seven things for just a second and think well maybe am I doing that my argument to you is this that most of the time when we feel like we just don't have enough time to get everything done that we need to we certainly can't add other things it is likely because of some misplace misused time or as always like exigent circumstances things that are out of your control and it's a season of life for you but it's not a pace of life that anybody could ever maintain for a long period of time and particularly if you live in a first world country if you live in a Land of abundance it's likely that it's something that we're choosing or we're doing that's making our life harder than it has to be again I feel like I always have to give the caveat that not always there are some people with very extenuating circumstances but no matter how tempting it is to think that you're the exception to the rule I would encourage you assume that you're not the exception to the rule and let's go through these seven things and see if perhaps one of them is something that you might be doing for the rest of us who are Squirrely and we know it this video is for us okay my fellow squirrels I too am someone who feels as though I'm always on the hamster wheel and I've always got more to do than I have time to do and I can really work myself into a lather you guys I can really work myself up get my panties in a Twist get myself in a tizzy all the little expressions and sayings they are very true and it's absolutely a position that I can get myself in and I have to stop and these are some of the things that I evaluate that I ask myself that I choose to like look at and evaluate about myself about my day about my life before I decide that impossible for me to do this thing I really want to do or this thing that's actually really important and probably should be done but I can't because I just don't have time before I let myself fall down that rabbit hole I ask myself and evaluate the following seven thanks the very first thing is am I doing things with intention is there a lack of intention in anything that I am doing am I just doing something because I think I need to I'm supposed to maybe other I think other people expect me to I will legitimately grab a notebook my Commonplace Notebook something of the like and just write down kind of everything that is Weighing on me everything that I feel like okay I've got to get all of this stuff done and it's it's kind of like evaluating my master to-do list if you have a master to-do list you can look at that too it's really including anything and everything because sometimes there's stuff that's Weighing on us we don't even realize that we've kind of put there in a weird place let me just give you a random example for my own life sometimes I get all up in my head about using grocery delivery services because of the extra expense the service fees sometimes you get the wrong things it feels like it would just be easier to go get the groceries myself but the truth is is that for me the time to money trade-off makes way more sense for me to use a grocery delivery service for the most part I still like to do my own big like Costco and Sam's Club trips but for the regular grocery store that makes more sense for me so I I need to not be having going to the grocery store for half a day on my to-do list because the when I look at like what's the intention here well it's not actually meeting that it's actually costing me more time because I have some kind of weird uh moral complex about it that doesn't actually make any sense number two is underestimating how much time something is going to take when you sit down and make your to-do list for the day if you're doing it the night before or the morning of I mean tell me the last time that you ever got everything done that you wrote down on your to-do list for the day you got it all done that probably happens very very rarely and so the the truth is is that we are wildly wildly underestimating how long certain tasks take and because of that we may be let's just say have 10 things on our to-do list today we check off four of them and we go to bed or end the day feeling almost like a failure because we didn't get to all 10 but the truth was all 10 were never possible to begin with ever ever in a million years making sure that we are not overestimating our own abilities underestimating how long things are going to take just sets us up for failure and time wasting and staying on that hamster wheel of not being able to actually get things done or add anything new or make changes in our life because we already can't keep up with all this stuff are these things actually priorities are they things we're just putting on our list without a lot of intention or thought and we're making ourselves feel like we're not achieving them because we're putting way too much on our plate in any given day number three and maybe this should have been number one is to have some kind of a visual to-do list even if you're like I'm not a visual person well guess what it is very hard especially as adults with a lot going on if you're juggling kids a career their schedules a spouse their schedule all of that kind of stuff animals whatever you've got going on you think that you're going to remember everything but the truth is is that you're probably not and it is a huge time waster for you to then Scurry around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to figure out what you forgot and what am I supposed to be doing and I don't remember and I started doing this and then I got distracted it's it can be rough okay it could be rough so having a very simplified to-do list I actually have an upcoming video I want to teach you a tactic that has really changed my life but we're not going to go into it today I just want you to start by having a very simplified to-do list depending on what this to-do list is for if you're at home or if you are working or you're working from home I mean start with three things three things that you need to achieve that day don't overwhelm the list guess what if you have them I always encourage people to have like a master running list I find that to be the best way you can like pull from that later but it's not on you're not looking at this overwhelming list every day but pull three things from that that either have to get done you really want to get done always start with the have to's a start with those three things and then guess what if you do get them all done and you're like hey I can throw something else on my plate guess what that's going to start feeling like to you it's going to start feeling like oh I have more time than I thought that I did it's this whole mental gymnastics thing that we do to ourselves that makes us feel like we don't have time can be the same thing the same outcome but the way that we frame it for our brain determines whether or not we view it positively or negatively or like we're achieving things or we're overwhelmed a lot of it is just mental framing a part of that has to do with tricking yourself into feeling accomplished instead of behind number four is not having a mom uniform you guys I'm singing the Praises of the mom uniform something I never thought in a million years that I would do or encourage but I'm here to tell you that it makes a huge difference I did a whole video about this I will link that video down below your mom uniform boiled down to the nuts and bolts of it is simply a outfit either by color or type or whatever that you know like Monday through Friday this is what you're putting on you're not thinking about it you're not standing in your closet staring you just know that every day Monday through Friday I wear leggings and a button up I wear jeans and a graphic t-shirt something like that and so you know exactly where to go you grab your jeans you grab your graphic tee you grab your leggings you grab your button up there's no thinking involved in it it's just that Monday through Friday you know exactly what you're wearing and you are not wasting any of your precious brain power making decisions about something that you you don't need to be making decisions about and isn't going to have an outsized impact on your day these are ways that little by little we are giving ourselves back the time to do some of the things that we really want to do to achieve some of the goals we really have for ourselves in our lives whether those be family related personal work whatever it is that you're feeling like you're lacking and that you don't have the time for by going through these things and seeing if you are doing any of these or not doing these and should be we can kind of give ourselves back that time to be able to kind of Chase down some of those bigger goals and dreams or plans and even if it is just margin margin can be the goal number five is not batching your errands I am so so very guilty of this and it is something that I've been working on and the difference I have noticed has been so incredible that I feel like I have to include it on this list when you are going to go out and this should be easier for me because I leave the house like once a week okay I am a home body everything I do I work from home I homeschool my kids so my husband takes them to their you know various sporting uh practices and stuff like that a lot of times so it just really depends sometimes I leave the house a bunch during the week I'm only mostly kidding but my preference is to leave the house as little as possible all that to say that when I do leave I really need to make the most of it I need to do all the things that I can fit into the time that I have allotted for those errands batching your errands knowing for example if you live in a small town and you're going into the big town today look at that Master to-do list and see is there anything that's coming up before my next trip into the big town that needs to be done in that part of town so that I do not have to come back here for a trip later just for one thing or two things when really I could have gotten them all done in one simple trip it's really just a matter of batching errands as best as you can being again was kind of back to that word intentional thinking about what you're doing so that you can make the most of your time and use your time wisely it sounds kind of silly but if you you might be thinking like duh of course but these are ways that we waste time without realizing it okay well let me just take a look at all these things that I'm doing or have to do and where could I group some of them together batch them if you will to make my life and time a little bit easier number six is not keeping a running shopping list just like I encourage you to keep a master to-do list a place where you just write down all the things that are I kind of have like personal I actually have like three Master to-do lists so I have like a personal a farm related Master to-do list and a work related one so anytime something comes up in my mind and I'm like oh I need to do that um as long as it's not like I need to do that right this second like it's urgent then it goes to my master to-do list that way when I'm sitting down to make my to-do list for the next day I can pull from the master to-do list when you run out of something write it down somewhere don't think that you're going to remember it I'm just telling you okay the older you get the harder it is to remember these things and how many times have you stood at the grocery store or you're sitting there trying to do your instacart order and you cannot remember for the life of you you know you're out of something and you can't remember what it was and it's really very easy especially you know if you can like send your husband on an errand or if you have a teenage kid who's a driver where you can like snap a picture of that list and send it to them and ask them to stop and pick up those things and you don't have to sit there and think about it in humming Hall you're just wasting time later worrying about it when you could just immediately write it down and save yourself the time in the future okay the last one I saved for last because I I know I'm gonna make some people upset and it's not because I'm saying anything that's like uber controversial or something it's just because people get really touchy about certain topics so number seven is to stop watching so much TV okay I've talked to you guys before about ways that we waste time with social media fortunately for me because it's my job it makes it so that I don't um I don't want to be on it if I don't have to so I say this knowing that in previous years before being on social media was part of my job I struggled like everybody else with overuse of it was spending too much time on the scroll so it is easier for me to say that to you now because it's not something that I struggle with but what I can tell you is that as I by force of just like you know anytime something's your job you just slowly start to like not enjoy it as much and it just takes on a different meaning sometimes for you and I also think that the longer it's been around and the more we've seen some of the detrimental things that happen in people's lives because of social media some of the way that it changes people some of the ways that it's damaging to people I just know that I have a very addictive personality it's easy for me to get addicted to things so I just kind of am like okay I am not even going to go down that road or that path and so I would encourage you to not only evaluate your use of social media again there's all kinds of apps and stuff that you can use that will track your time on your phone but also TV time TV can be such a brain suck and I remember as a kid same thing just like you kind of just sit there and you zone out watching cartoons or I mean for me it was like CMT music videos I'm really aging myself here TV could be a real time suck and a lot of these series now that get released and you get all of the episodes at once it's really great you can binge it and stuff but I don't think people always realize how much time they're actually spending watching television I know that even for us we had to unplug our TVs because our kids were getting to the point where they were I could see them like falling down the rabbit hole of way too much TV use and so we said let's just cut this off um from the jump let's go ahead and just like make everybody go cold turkey and what we found and obviously this is applying to my children but I think it's probably somewhat true for adults too because we see all the memes and the jokes about like watching a movie with my husband and you know you're both sitting there on your phones that's uh very very true and we pulled out the TV the other day to let the kids watch a movie it was I believe it was like a super rainy thundery day or something and my husband pulled out the TV let the kids watch a movie and have popcorn it was the middle of the day and I walked in there and then I walked back in the kitchen I looked at my husband I was like do you notice something different and he's like yep it all of the kids were sitting there watching the movie quiet sitting there watching the movie where normally they would just be running around making a mess with food some would be playing they'd be distracted but when you take that away as an all the time thing the little times that you bring it back it feels really special and they pay attention I truly believe that TV and this is not based on like Angie believes thus it be true it's based on actual like scientific research that our attention spans have gotten so short due to television it started I believe like in the 80s with MTV making Cuts Like every two to three seconds in their shows and music videos I think it might have just been TV shows but um that was really the start of it the nobody has an attention span thing anymore and well that's not entirely true because we see long-form content podcasts and stuff that are three hours long you know those are very popular but especially for the younger generation not so much and I think with you know reels and shorts and tick tocks it's only just making it worse so for me I thought okay well I'm gonna see what I can do to help my children regain some bit of attention span because not being able to pay attention and complete a task is a rough thing we've gotten off we've gone off the beaten path I'm sorry let me come back around we go on rabbit Trails sometimes see I'm doing it right now I'm wasting my own time and yours by going on rabbit Trails but I feel like it's important information okay so if you think that you might be watching too much TV or maybe you think you're not watching too much TV but when you sit down and actually like maybe write down the amount of times keep track of it you're surprised right we all have those things we're like I'm not whatever and then when we see proof we're like oh I am so maybe double check that okay the point is I think that if again you're feeling overwhelmed can't seem to you know achieve the things that you want you just just feel like every day you're spinning your wheels I would urge you to go through this list of seven things and see if any of them apply to you either because you're not doing them or you need to be doing them so evaluate those see if it's something that you can make little changes to try to give yourself back some of that time some of that peace and as I always say I my goal is to have more of the mundane I believe that the best moments in life the magical moments in life Truly Come From the mundane things and I want more of that I want less of my hair on fire and more of relaxed calm chill and being able to say what do I feel like doing right now or today and not oh my God I have to do all these things and panic you know if that's you too I hope that this video was helpful for you again like I said if you are somebody that knows that you are struggling with some other stuff going on um whatever that may be I could list out a bunch of things but I'm not going to you know for yourself if the if the reasons for your scatterbraineness or your overwhelm are truly legitimate things in your life that you just can't change right now it's a seasonal thing okay then this does not apply to you unless you feel like there are areas that you could make changes and want to but this is not me you know saying if you don't do these things you're bad wrong or otherwise it's just sharing some things that have worked for me over the years to evaluate and make changes to get some of my life back my time back for more of the things that I want to be doing more of the things that I enjoy doing and more of the things that actually need to be done instead of just I think need to be done when they actually probably don't or at least not in the time frame I've given them okay that's it that's it for me today you guys I hope that you enjoyed and I will see you again very soon bye thank you foreign [Applause]