The Time Abundance Mindset

SARAH NALLY

the time a

e c n a bund t e s d min

hack your time to maximise your flow

1440 minutes

What could you do with an extra 30 minutes a day? Imagine if you started looking at your time like money. Each minute you save each day brings opportunities to create more flow and more time wealth.

Never be time poor again.

Flick the switch in your mind from never having enough time to a mindset of time abundance.

Have you ever wondered how some people seem to be able to juggle work, kids and a list of activities that would make most people fall in a heap and others seem to get overwhelmed by it all?

Having worked in Resource Management and Productivity for many years, I picked up some skills that have enabled me to hack my life, to hack time and to create a joyously full and glossy life juggling work and family without sacrificing the fun!

In this mini book, you'll learn how to do a mini time audit and to look for opportunities to reengineer your week to maximise activities and find pockets of time to spend on other activities. I'll also prompt you to review your week looking for moments when you are in flow, once you have worked out what your flow periods are, you can use these to hack time and tap into worlds of productivity!

Before you begin, I want you to take a moment to reflect on the type of life you want to create (you wouldn't set off on a ship without some coordinates or a destination in mind). For me "Happy, Healthy, Fully Expressed Children in a creative and calm home where Mum and Dad do work they love". Yours is up to you: ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________

We all have the same amount of seconds, minutes and hours in our day. How are you using yours?

In six sigma, we have lots of tools to diagnose and create more value with processes. I'm going to keep it really simple and just start with a time study to help you understand where you are spending your time and then using a simple process to understand your standards and your non-negotiables you will then learn to look for opportunities to harvest time, reallocate or outsource.

Whether you have no kids; a dog, 1 baby or 7, work full time or part time, work from home or in an office, it is important to have a view of where you are spending your time so that you can look for opportunities to group like activities (sequence tasks), outsource and of course delete things that are a waste of time and energy!

You may have gym classes, hobbies, dinners at people's houses - no two peoples weeks are the same. The example I have included here is just after having a baby, when the likelihood of mid week dinner parties and fun is pretty low given the inevitable sleep deprivation. Keeping the wheels on and the home humming is the most important priority, schedules and routines are ever changing but the principles behind understanding flow will enable you to shift as you need to for your family. I have travelled successfully with kids, started businesses and worked from home with much joy and wondrous work outcomes.

The first step to hacking your own flow is understanding what you are currently doing with your time.

There are 1440 minutes in a day, when we actually take a moment to understand how awesome that is, we have an opportunity to create more productivity and flow in our day.

Many people ask me "Where do you find the time?", it starts with having a mindset of time abundance: I genuinely believe I will always have or can make time!

I took the time to understand how long it really takes me to do things, so that I could play and experiment to see how much I could squeeze into one day without completely burning out.

So we will start with 1/2 hour time blocks for each day. List everything that you do in these blocks (you may like to include where you do it), this can be rather overwhelming but trust me when I tell you that it is worthwhile! On the next page I will show you an example of a day for me early days when Stella was 2 months old and Sienna was 3 attending kinder. I was breastfeeding Stella and had designed a work week that meant I could meet the needs of my brand new little baby, connect and play with Sienna and Sean and also get through my work load! My exhusband took responsibility for Dinner, Washing and we both did a fully focussed hands on bed time routine to connect with the girls and spend time together as a family.

There are 1440 minutes in a day, where are you spending them?

Sarah's Flow - Stella 2-7 Months, Sienna 3 (@ Kinder 4 days), Cleaner Once a Week to do Deep Clean, Husband on Washing duty and Cooking.

6.30am Feed Baby - Cuddle, Connect, Love, Pop back to Bed. 7.00am Meditate (every 30 minutes counts with small children) 7.30am Breakfast Prep, Tummy time, Play with Sienna, quickly check diary and email - Kitchen 8.00am Shower, Dress everyone, read a book or play a game, pack pram ready for walk. - Home 8.30am - 9.30am Walk with Kids - take 2-3 15 - 20 minute calls during walk (when kids are happy and settled), grab a coffee. - Local Walk/Cafe nearby 9.30am Drop Sienna to Kinder, make 1 x 15 min phone call in car 10.00am Play with Baby, Check Email 10.30am Feed Baby and settle to sleep 11.00am Work from Home or Scheduled Meetings, If WFH: (Online Meetings, Emails, Creative, Production, Project Management) 11.30am Work 12.00pm Work 12.30pm Work 1.00pm Work 1.30pm Feed Baby and have some lunch, start dinner prep.

2.00pm Go for a walk with baby - more calls or plan work lunch and bring Stella 2.30pm Work from Home or Scheduled Meetings, If WFH: (Online Meetings, Emails, Creative, Production, Project Management) 3.00pm Work 3.30pm Work 4.00pm Quick Whip around House (Vacuum, Mop, Tidy), Put headphones in and take calls while baby plays on mat/with toys if Baby is unsettled put in baby bjorn while you do a quick tidy or start getting dinner ready.

4.30pm Collect Sienna from Kinder - Calls in car on the way there if need be.

5.00pm Play time - Park, Creative Play 5.30pm Dinner for the kids 6.00pm Bathtime 6.30pm Stories, Dad Cuddles, Winding down to Bed - Dinner Prep for us.

7.00pm Stories, Family Cuddles and Connections, Kids in Bed 7.30pm Dinner and Chat with Hubby 8.00pm Work on the couch 8.30pm Work on the Couch 9.00pm Relax, Chillzone 9.30pm Relax, Chillzone 10.00pm Last work emails 10.30pm Dream Feed Stella, Meditate, Bed

What activities do you just have to do?

Where is the joy?

Can you squeeze in a few extra moments a day that make you happy?

Ok, your turn!

6.00am________________________________ 6.30am________________________________ 7.00am________________________________ 7.30am________________________________ 8.00am________________________________ 8.30am________________________________ 9.00am________________________________ 9.30am________________________________ 10.00am________________________________ 10.30am________________________________ 11.00am________________________________ 11.30am________________________________ 12.00pm________________________________ 12.30pm________________________________ 1.00pm________________________________ 1.30pm________________________________ 2.00pm________________________________ 2.30pm________________________________ 3.00pm________________________________ 3.30pm________________________________ 4.00pm________________________________ 4.30pm________________________________ 5.00pm________________________________ 5.30pm________________________________ 6.00pm________________________________ 6.30pm________________________________ 7.00pm________________________________ 7.30pm________________________________ 8.00pm________________________________ 8.30pm________________________________ 9.00pm________________________________ 9.30pm________________________________ 10.00pm________________________________ 10.30pm________________________________

This may feel really overwhelming, and it may also highlight some imbalances (particularly for couples, which makes it a great tool for ensuring that tasks are allocated and that each resource (partner) is utilising their time most effectively.

We can also highlight opportunities for sequencing and reassignment of duties and roles.

An example of leveraging these insights in my house was when we first added Stella to the clan, I was struggling to drop Sienna to Kinder and pick her up each day, it was messing with my flow (as my most productive hours are 112pm and 4.00-5.30pm). My family jumped in and helped which allowed me to maximise these productive zones without outsourcing care of Stella or rearranging Sienna's kinder (which she LOVES).

I used this time analysis to pitch my work from home maternity leave arrangement with my employer as I was able to demonstrate where I would get the work done at home with a newborn baby. As Stella weaned to a bottle, I found pockets of new time as I was no longer sitting and feeding her, as she slept longer I was able to get into a wonderful state of flow and found it easy to get through my workload in my dedicated time blocks.

Just for today, I'll enjoy myself for just 1 minute every hour.

That is at least 12 minutes of pure joy.

In the lead up to go-live of my major project Wired for Wonder in 2016, I enlisted the help of a trusted friend to take Stella for walks and help me care for her so I could leverage time pockets in my day even more. Rather than getting a full time nanny or send her to daycare, I worked out the hours that I'd need her to be on Stella watch.

We often revert to enlisting a tried and tested solution (part time nanny, day care, full time care arrangements) because we are worried about how our children will react to change and also worry about how we can make it work in a flexible way.

My experience in the first year has allowed me to forecast times where I need help (periods of intense overloading) and enlist the help to get over these humps. Inevitably after this, we have periods where the workload is manageable and I can handle the juggle once more.

The key here is understanding what are the opportunities for change in your week, what standards are renegotiable, what are your nonnegotiables. Let's put this into practice:

Eat, Sleep, Play, Repeat.

Non-negotiable standards in my house:

Eat, Sleep, Play - Repeat Food, Sleep/Rest and Play are non-negotiable in my house, I worked out I would rather read my girls 3 books a night than give them a bath every single day. I usually do shower or bath them every day but the point I am illustrating here is that some things are truly non negotiable and others are more flexible.

Food is non negotiable in this home. We must eat or we get HANGRY.

Sleep is non negotiable in this home.

We need our beauty sleep, or we turn into the beast.

So knowing these things about my family and my world, I use these as stars that we must orbit around to create a cohesive system. Everything else is up for grabs. As much as I try to take the girls to the park every day, if I needed to get some work done, we could skip this and then read an extra story or two before bed. This is the guts of fluid structure. Know your non-negotiables, know what is up for grabs. When we have fluid structure our children have enough structure to thrive but can also cope with change. We are the same, we are able to renegotiate our day depending on what our priorities are - it allows us to manage ourselves and our families in a dynamic and responsive way.

Ok, now it's your turn. Before you begin, it is important to remember that kids change every few months, nothing is forever and when you are flexible you can truly seize opportunities that will lead to bigger and better outcomes!

Step 1: Define Your Opportunities. An opportunity is the lowest standard noticeable by you and your family (can you skip a meal without the wheels falling off, can you skip a nap without the world coming to an end, do you need to bath at the exact same time every day or can you shower in the morning as a family instead?).

Step 2: Define Your Standards (Know what is important and why)

Step 3: Define Your Non-Negotiables (Understand what it takes to keep your family floating)

Step 4: Look for opportunities to leverage, outsource and reengineer (When you know the non negotiables and the opportunities, you can make trade offs, outsource, reallocate, ask for help!)

Ok, so how can I squeeze more in?

One of the daunting reasons people don't try and squeeze more in is a fear of 'running out of time' or 'not having enough time to do it well'. An example of this is when it comes to play.

I often ask parents "how much time do you spend playing freely with your kids" and they often scratch their head and look at me blankly.

The trick to squeezing more in lies in keeping it simple and not overthibking the activity!

For example; Playing with your kids need not take hours and hours up a day. Emerging research suggests that 12 minutes of connected, interactive play makes all the difference... The key is, are you playing too? Play needn't be time absorbing or intense! Aim for 15-30 intense and engaging moments of fun with your kids and you'll find that it also energises you! Here is just a little inspiration....

It takes just 3 minutes to make Jelly with your kids.

Reading 3 stories only takes 12 minutes.

Baking a cake takes 5 minutes of preparation (Cooking time not included) Craft Activities like paining or drawing can take from 5 minutes to hours of fun!

Dance Party - Pop on a few daggy tunes and get wiggling for 5-10 minutes!

Finding the time.

The key to finding the time is to understand how much time things take and then to experiment, iterate, redesign. When you have a constant focus on continuos improvement on your diary and look for ways to save time, you can reinvest this time on things you are keen to try. Experiment with different ways of working, of cooking, of putting the kids to bed! Think about how long things take and where you may be able to squeeze them in "if you could find the time".

My Wishlist of things I can't find time to do:

THING I WANT TO DO

ESTIMATED TIME PER DAY/WEEK

Common myths to bust to really open up your diary:

"You need 8-10 hours sleep a night" We are learning more and more about the human body and mind every year and the latest research is less inclined to talk about quantity of sleep and more inclined to focus on the quality. Are you drinking 8 wines before bed and then sleeping 8 hours? Are you exercising regularly but waking 2-3 times a night to breastfeed a baby. Focus more on the quality rather than being fixed on the hours you are asleep. I found that if I get 7 hours (stitched) of sleep + 2 x meditation sessions a day, I feel marvellous - what about you?

"All good things take time" I wrote this eBook in 2 hours. Many people put barriers to creativity, expression, productivity up in their own minds. Just get started, give it a go. You may need to iterate to get it to a standard you are happy with - buy you'll never know unless you give it a go!

"I can't find time" Give up something for a week and the world will not come to an end, whether it is a few hours laying in bed, watching TV, going to the gym, you can always borrow time from activities you enjoy to do something that your future self will thank you for!

I have all the time in the world.

Just subtle shifts in your attitude and mindset from time deficit to time abundance can unlock a world of wonder in your life.

Repeat after me:

"I make time for things that serve my greater good and my life purpose, I can always find time for things that will make me happier or more productive. I am abundant in time and energy when I remove the illusion of a lack of time in my life" I can't wait to hear how you unleash your mindset of time abundance to serve you in creating the most glossy and joyful life of your dreams!

I embrace a mindset of time abundance!