4. Reclaim Your Day - A Time Audit Challenge

The Beauty Hunters Podcast | Strategies and Inspiration to Thrive as a Creative

Hello friend!

I know you've been juggling a lot lately, just like we all have. Life can get crazy, and it's easy to feel like there's never enough time in the day to pursue your creative passions.

Well, guess what? You're not alone in feeling that way! In our latest episode, Jonathan and I dive into the world of time management for busy creatives.

We'll share a powerful exercise that's been a game-changer for us. It might sound a bit challenging, but trust me, the results are worth every minute (pun intended!). Plus, we'll show you how to make time for what truly matters to you.

Tune in, and let's journey together towards a more balanced, fulfilling life. You won't want to miss this one!

Take care,

Michelle

So, if you loved this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes and hop on over to Facebook and tell us how you spent your time during the 48 hour challenge. We’d love to hear your insights and experiences!

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Transcript:

Jonathan Rose 0:08

Have you ever felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day to pursue your creative passions? We totally get that. This week we peel back the onion of time management. It might make you want to cry, but I promise our practical tips will make it worth it in the end.

Michelle Rose 0:24

Yes, time management is near and dear to my heart just like numbers and I hope that we can help all of you busy creatives out there. But before we get started, we want to express our heartfelt thanks for your incredible support during our launch last week, your feedback and reviews have been fantastic.

Jonathan Rose 0:42

Absolutely. You guys totally warmed our heart with our launch week support. And speaking of reviews, I want to share a wonderful review that we received from one of our listeners named and what she said truly resonates with the heart of our podcast. She says, if you're the creative sort, struggling to live the creative life you want, this one is for you. Thank you so much and your words keep us inspired. So now let's jump into today's episode, where we're going to explore a powerful exercise that can help you regain control of your time.

Are you creative, but feel stuck and tired of not having enough time and money to create? Do you dream of your content making a significant impact on those around you? At the end of the day? Are you frustrated that you have no energy left to be creative? You are not alone.

Michelle Rose 1:36

Welcome to the beauty hunters podcast, where we explore life's beautiful moments to awaken your creative part. We are your hosts, Jonathan and Michelle Rose. Fellow creative souls who have broken out of the daily grind and are living full time in our creative pursuits. We understand the struggle and are here to guide you with inspiring stories and strategies on the path to vibrant creativity.

Jonathan Rose 2:00

So if you're ready to take your creativity to the next level and release it into the world, then grab your coffee. Tune in and let's create a more beautiful world together.

Michelle Rose 2:13

So we're coming to you today from is it Biloxi or Biloxi?

Jonathan Rose 2:17

It's Biloxi. Unless there's a listener in Biloxi who wants to correct me i open for that.

Michelle Rose 2:23

So we're coming from Biloxi, Mississippi, with a view of the Gulf right outside of our campsite. It's incredibly inspiring, and I'm super grateful that I get to be working out in the morning with the sunrise. It really kind of reminds me of our journey through 75 hard. Wouldn't the sunrise in front of the Gulf really have made a big difference and made it a lot more fun and inspiring?

Jonathan Rose 2:45

Oh, absolutely. I'm always inspired anytime I'm near water. It's one of my muses. I remember those days when we embarked on the 75 hard challenge. And for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, just Google 75 hard. It's a very challenging exercise regimen. And we had to fit it in the middle of juggling our busy lives and it seemed impossible, but we figured it out. We made it all the way through the whole 75 Day Challenge. And we we learned a lot about time management along the process of that journey.

Michelle Rose 3:19

Yeah, that's right. And that's what we're here to share today. Our insights into managing time effectively, especially for all of you who like us live really busy lives. Have you ever heard that saying? If you want something done, ask a busy person.

Jonathan Rose 3:32

Yeah, it's crazy because we all have the same amount of time each day. And yet some people seem to accomplish so much more than others. But we all have the same number of hours in a day. Like I just finished listening to the biography of Elon Musk, and it's just insane how much that guy gets done, but he's got the same 24 hours in a day that I do but something's different there. You know.

Michelle Rose 3:57

And it's interesting because we do all have similar things that we have to get done in that that same day time, right? So like people have to go to work, pay their bills, take care of their kids, wash dishes, laundry, all that kind of stuff.

Jonathan Rose 4:10

Yeah, there's definitely non negotiables in all of our schedules.

Michelle Rose 4:13

Yeah. But then there's the things you have to do with the time leftover, right? And I kind of look at that in two different ways. Sometimes it's your time being invested. You may not get to see what it's unto just yet and it may not be exciting, but it is an investment. And then sometimes we're just spending our time. So how do you look at that?

Jonathan Rose 4:35

Yeah, so one of the time management philosophies that I learned a long time ago was just through Stephen Covey's classic self help book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He talks about how we spend our time in four different quadrants. The first quadrant is those urgent and important things is those hard and fast things in our schedule that have to get done. If we don't, you know, everything's going to burn down, right? That's quadrant one. Quadrant Two is things that are not urgent but they're important. And that's the that's the quadrant where we actually get to invest our time in the things that will yield better results for us. But then there's quadrant three things that are urgent, but not important. And that's the text messages. That's the notifications on our phone. That's the things that just pop up in our lives. And honestly, nothing's going to happen if we don't answer the phone when somebody calls but it feels urgent. So we do it anyways, and we just waste a lot of time. Quadrant three is where most of our time wasters happen and then there's this quadrant four... not urgent, not important. And that's not a bad quadrant because sometimes we just need that brain dump that time just to relax, unwind.

Michelle Rose 5:53

That's where the creativity sometimes actually happens in quadrant four. Yeah, we'll be going and doing quadrant four activities when we go walk out on the golf tonight.

Jonathan Rose 6:02

But if you don't manage quadrant two very well, we don't often get to quadrant four.

Michelle Rose 6:07

That's right. Yeah. So we're here to help with that with some tips on today's episode. Yeah, so speaking of that, let's just go ahead and dive in. You know, recently I had an experience where a mentor of mine challenged me to do something that she called the 48 hour time challenge. I'm sure there's a more creative way that we can title that later.

Jonathan Rose 6:27

We'll just call it 48 hard we did 75 hard.

Michelle Rose 6:31

So anyway, you need paper for this because if you tried to do this with a digital device, you might get stuck in those rabbit holes and distractions of quadrant three, was it three?

Jonathan Rose 6:44

Yes.

Michelle Rose 6:45

Okay. So you want pen and paper, and what you're going to do is you're going to write down every 15 minutes and I did say 15 minutes. What you did during that 15 minutes. And what's important here is to do it on a normal operation day. So you don't want to do it on a holiday or vacation or a weekend because that may skew your results. But you're just tracking what you did throughout the day. And then I want to make sure that you know when you're done writing this all down, you're just analyzing the results. You're not beating yourself up. It's just analyzing the results.

Jonathan Rose 7:21

This is just data.

Michelle Rose 7:23

That's right. Okay. And so we'll talk about self talk and all those things that you did with your with your time in a future episode, but you're just auditing what your results are telling you.

Jonathan Rose 7:34

Yeah, and obviously be practical about it. Like if you've got a one hour commute don't stop your commute every 15 minutes and write something down but you know, you can you can actually go back over that hour commute and write down Yeah, I spent 15 minutes on a podcast or maybe I just listened to music. Or maybe I listened to this audio book or took a phone call. You know, like be aware of how you're spending even that time. Right?

Michelle Rose 7:58

And I want to make sure here we know that a lot of you guys may be thinking you know, I'm so busy that I can't even see myself writing down every 15 minutes and we get it. I really do hear you and I promise that the results will be worth it. And it's only two days and it doesn't have to be consecutive days. It's just two days of your time. And you may also be thinking that when you've done exercises like these before, and they didn't really pan out for you however I have too and in this season, I was in a different place. I had different support. I had different motives and reasons for why I was doing it. And so therefore it actually stuck this time.

Jonathan Rose 8:32

Yeah, and I also want to just just encourage our listeners to pause just for a second. Check in with yourself. You might be listening to this idea of a 48 hour challenge and going that's insane. There's no way I could do that. Pay attention to what you just said about yourself because you're actually going into critic mode and telling stories about yourself. And those actually tell you a lot about your own time management and the the stories you're telling yourself about what you can and can't accomplish. It's important to actually pause and take note of your reaction to the idea of doing something like this right?

Michelle Rose 9:13

You don't want to self sabotage yourself out of truly maybe finding fulfillment in this one exercise, right? So don't worry if every minute is truly filled with important things like those quadrant one activities that may truly be the season that you're in. But we will go over all of that data and give you the next steps in future episodes where we talk about time. We just want you to be able to first know where you're spending it.

Jonathan Rose 9:38

Yeah, it's super important just to be aware of things like that, because I bet you most of us and this is a story that this is a story that's true about myself as well until I started paying attention just to realize how much time I actually give away on things that don't feed my creativity and don't make a huge impact on the quality of my life. And that self awareness actually allowed me to make important choices on setting better boundaries and guidelines for how I'm spending my time which we will unpack more in future episodes, but just wanted to just kind of sprinkle that in as some of the value that doing hard things like a 48 hour challenge can can offer you on your creative journey.

Michelle Rose 10:29

Once you've done this exercise. Go on over to Facebook and leave comments about your results because honestly, what each other has to say about their insights and their results may be truly insightful to what you've experienced as well.

Jonathan Rose 10:44

We hope you guys have been encouraged by this episode as we peel back that onion. I promised you it might make you want to cry. But if you embark on something that's difficult but valuable, I promise you, you will be so glad about the dividends that pays you towards your creativity.

Michelle Rose 11:02

Thank you for joining us on the beauty hunters. Podcast. We hope this episode has inspired you.

Jonathan Rose 11:08

Before you go please hit that subscribe button. Share us with your friends. If you want to support the show, the best way is to leave us a review on iTunes. You can connect with us on socials at the beauty hunters podcast.

Michelle Rose 11:22

Until our next encounter. Always remember that your creativity will make the world a more beautiful place.