How many times have you wondered why there are not more hours in a day? How many times have you been so frazzled, stressed, and paralyzed at the thought that you don’t have enough time to do everything that’s on your plate? And how often do you find yourself at the end of the day dissatisfied, disappointed and disheartened at how little you accomplished during the day? If you have, and are nodding out reading this, you certainly are not alone. I know I have, and still do feel like this way more often than I would like to.
As a working woman, and especially after becoming a working mom, these questions have haunted me over and over again. And it’s certainly not for lack of resources around it…After reading countless articles and books on time management, I’ve realized many of those are not exactly built for us working women and mothers. Like much of the advice given out there, it’s mainly tailored for our male counterparts who do not have the same pressures and demands on their time as we do. This in turn has prompted me to consider the ways in which I could build a schedule that really works for me. I was tired of feeling like I couldn’t accomplish my goals and objectives. Like so many, I felt frustrated not being able to move forward, and experiencing a sense of failure as a result of it.
What dawned on me afterwards was that maybe the lack of time wasn’t the main issue. Maybe the issue after all, was a lack of alignment between the schedule I tried so desperately to make work and myself as an individual. Research shows making a plan and establishing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals increase the chances of accomplishing our objective. However, what I didn’t find much talked about in the research is how goals really tie in to who we are and not just what we do. Too often, we focus on the tasks on our to do list. We define ourselves by what we do and most importantly what we achieve and accomplish. At the end of the day, for many of us, we perceive, and so do others that it is what makes a successful. As a result, we often end up getting sucked into a tsunami of to-do’s, without clearly relating what we do to who we are. In turn, this creates goals and objectives that do not fit us as individuals, and as such are so much harder to reach, making us feel powerless and disempowered in the process.
This is especially relevant for us as working women and moms, as our nurturing nature often puts us in positions where we tend to consider others’ goals and objectives before our own. In addition, the pressure to conform to society’s expectations and demands often leads us to take on these expectations and demands as our own. Hence why so many of us find ourselves powerless in our careers, and by extension in our lives. The same goes for our schedules.
After years of fighting against the clock, and not feeling accomplished at the end of the day, I started asking myself if the goals and objectives I was pursuing were really the right ones. This prompted me to get more attuned to my inner voice and what brings me joy, what makes me feel fulfilled, what gives me a sense of accomplishment as opposed to what the world considers “accomplished”. And little by little, I started building my schedule around these. What I noticed as a result was not only an increase in productivity, but also in the sense of empowerment, joy and fulfillment as I started turning my schedule into something that was more reflective of myself.
As a result and after talking to many other working women and moms around me, I started building my schedule around three main principles:
- The Dream time
Carving out time to pursue dream ambitions and life goals is essential to our happiness. As a working woman and mom, this was time that often eluded me. As a result, I often felt frustrated because I didn’t have time to write, and go towards the things that really brought joy to me and nurtured my soul. Whenever I try to create more of that time, it almost seemed like I was taking it away from my family, my social relationships and other commitments already lined up. A strong sense of guilt would ensue which would leave me even more depleted and dissatisfied. This is where I made a conscious decision to intentionally carve out what I call my “dream time”. For me, it meant waking up a bit earlier to have some me-time, and tackle personal and professional projects. Despite having to be more disciplined and organized, I could feel my enthusiasm, motivation and joy increase. Paradoxically, the more disciplined I became in intentionally building my “dream time”, the better I was with myself and others.
Carving out your dream time is going to require discipline, organization, and is definitely not easy. However the more you build the habit, the easier it becomes, and the more joy you’re bound to experience.
- The Sacred Time
Building a schedule that reflects more of who I am is also making time for the non-negotiables in my life. Those are the sacred areas of life that we can’t reclaim back. For me, it’s time for faith, time for self, and time for family, friends and important relationships. Often, time spent at work or running around from commitment to duty to obligation can take us away from our “sacred time” time, resulting in disconnection, loss of relationships and even decreases in mental health.
What I learned from trial and error is to make sure my sacred time is always indeed treated as such. What this means is also striving to block my calendar, and build serious boundaries around my time. As a working woman and mom, I found that it allowed me to lessen the sense of guilt that I would get when working or engaging in other activities because I would know that I had respected my sacred time before hand. This also allowed me to build deeper, more intentional relationships with the people near and dear to me.
Carving out sacred time in an intentional and organized manner also requires much discipline, organization and boundaries. However, doing so can lead to much more satisfaction and much less guilt as working women and moms.
- The Impactful Work time
As a working woman and mother whose time is certainly not infinite, doing work in an effective and impactful manner is crucial. Yet I was finding that many times, I was spending time on work that didn’t reap the desired results. It almost felt like wasting time, which ended up being costly in the long run because each hour wasted would have repercussions on my personal and private life, as well as on my sense of fulfillment and worth.
This is where I started paying attention to the concept of impactful work. It is the idea that one should focus on work that creates a true, long lasting and effective impact. Was the work I was doing really creating this type of impact, or was I just doing busywork much of the time? This was a tough question to ask myself, as it also forced me to put my work habits, discipline, and work ethics into a question. Yet this also provided the opportunity to really define what impactful work was for me, and how to best achieve it.
Defining impactful work for yourself as a working woman and mother, and as an individual in general, will help you streamline the many tasks and to-do’s on your list. It will help you focus on what truly matters, what will matter tomorrow, next year, and in the next 5 to 10 years. With this type of focus, irrelevant tasks are eliminated, delegated, or postponed. Instead, relevant and impactful work is prioritized, put to the forefront, and dedicated a greater and more acute level of attention and focus. And ultimately, this is how impactful, deep work gets done.
For us as working women and mothers, it allows us to not have to give up on our careers, and our work in general because of lack of time or availability, but instead multiply our productivity and impact in less time.
Overall, carving out your dream time, your sacred time, and your impactful work time allows us as working women and mothers, and as individuals in general, to build schedules that truly work for us and reflect who we are. How we define our dream time, sacred and impactful work time will certainly differ for each and every one of us. Ultimately, it will help us create the life and work that are truly aligned with our purpose and with ourselves.
Now let me ask you, how do you define your own dream time, sacred time, and impactful work time? If you had to build you a schedule based on these three principles, what would fit in there?
The Corporate Sister
