Erica: In my coaching experience, I always ask people, how much is your time worth? And you know what most people do. They take a look at their annual salary and then they divide it by the hours that they work in the year and they give me this hourly rate, or better yet, they just Google what is my hourly rate if I make $150,000 a year. But I'm here to tell you that's some BS, because first of all, that's not an adequate way to evaluate how much your time is worth. You are missing out on all of the things like your paid time off, your medical benefits, any 401k match, stock options that you might have, that your company includes in what they call your total compensation. And then second of all, that is just the wrong answer. And I'm gonna tell you why. The value of your time differs depending on your current situation, and stick with me, because I'm going to get to what I mean by that. But here's what I do know, and that is time is the most precious and non renewable resource that we have, because once that sand runs out of that hourglass, y'all, the jig is up and the game is over, and we are all going in that direction. So everyone should be doing everything in their power to optimize their time every single day. But I know firsthand how optimizing your time feels just impossible when you can barely find the time to come up for air from that 10 mile long to-do list, and all of the other things that are floating around in your head. I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed by the busy-ness of life and work and motherhood. But today, I'm going to give you the three questions that you need to ask yourself, so you can begin to optimize your time, make more hours for what matters in your life, and stop filling your days with a level of busy-ness that never ends.

Erica: You are listening to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors podcast. The podcast that will empower you to shatter limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities so that you can live your best life. I'm Erica Rooney, and I'm on a mission to bring more women into positions of power and keep them there. I'm obsessed with all things growth and abundance, and I'm here to talk you through the tried and true secrets to get you to level up your career and your life. We talk about the hard stuff here. Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear and burnout. So pull up a seat, pop it into your bed, and y'all, let's dive in.

Erica: Okay, the first question is, have you listened to my podcast where I deep dive into my Four P Principle? Now seriously, I'm not just directing you back to a different episode, but if you haven't listened to it, it is a game changer, and it's one of the main strategies that I teach inside my digital course, Reimagine It All. The first piece of my Four P Principle is a brain dump. Literally just taking everything that is floating around in that head of yours and brain dumping it out onto a piece of paper. All of those nagging tasks that keep popping into your mind about what you have to do later, what you need to remember, that's distracting you, it goes on to that piece of paper. Do you have to coordinate carpool later this week? Put it on paper. Do you need to plan out a project timeline? Better write that one down. If you've got a big family get together that you need to grocery shop for, you gotta write it down, because each task, each to-do that you have in that brain of yours, no matter how big or how small, it takes up energy in your brain. And one time I had someone ask, do I need to put down like brushing my teeth and washing my face on this list? And y'all, you know it was a man that asked that question. But the answer is no. If it's something that you do every day, like have your coffee, right, or maybe clean out the kitchen sink, and it's just a habitual part of your life, it doesn't take up mental space, you don't need to write that down. But if it's something that does take up mental space, if it's something that keeps coming back into your brain, that's nagging at you, that's that thought in the back of your head, then yes, write that down. But then you're going to take each one of those to-dos, each one of those mental tasks, those reminders, and you're going to slot them into one of my Four P categories, and that is Perform, Pass, Pause, or Purge.

Erica: And while that sounds very self-explanatory, I'm going to give you a little bit of what that means. So the first P, Perform, that is something that you and only you can do. It is your area of expertise. It is something like putting together the agenda for your team meeting, you have to do that if you were leading that team meeting. Things that might fall into this category could even be something like cooking meals, if it's also something you enjoy, because performing is not just what you have to do, it's also what you love to do. So for me, I like to perform carpool. Is that something that I can delegate out to somebody or ask my husband to do? Absolutely. But there are so many great conversations that happen in the car with these kids that I want to perform that job. So put that on the to-do list, right?

Erica: All right, the next P is Pass, and that is the delegation category. Pass it off to someone else. What is on your list that you can hand off? Now I recently did pass a little bit of the carpool responsibilities to my husband on Wednesdays, because that is a crazy busy afternoon day for me. So I asked him to do pick up on Wednesday, and that freed up an entire hour in my week, one full hour, just by passing that one carpool day. So other items that you might pass off to someone else could be creating a better filing system, maybe running a report, or getting that automated out of a system, crafting a communication. You might even pass something like grocery shopping off to a teenage kid who can drive and get to the grocery store. Whatever is something that you don't have to do yourself, and also that doesn't bring you joy, see if you can pass that off.

Erica: The third P is the Pause, and this is something that doesn't have to be right now. And I've put a lot of things in this pause category, it was probably one of the biggest categories that I have, because I have a lot of things that I want to do, and a lot of things that I want to get to, that I want to perform myself. But it's not mission critical, or it doesn't have to be right now. So maybe I can slate it for a different day, a different week, a different month, shoot, maybe even a different quarter, if my priorities aren't super crazy right now, it just depends on you. But I'll give you an example. One thing that I pause on all the time is when we have a big trip coming up, I'm always running through my brain about all the things I need to pack for myself and for my kids. And so for me, putting that packing on a pause list and kind of listing out the things that pop into my head that I need to remember to pack really frees up a lot of mental space for me. So those are all things that you can put in that pause category.

Erica: And then the final one is the Purge category, and this category is probably the most challenging of all, because it takes a real deep dive and a real look inward on what do you not need to do, what can you cross off that list. You know, sometimes we see things and we really struggle with comparisonitis, right, comparisonitis, what everyone else is doing, and we think that we have to do all of those same things, and that's not necessarily true, right? Like let's talk about just showing up on social media, for example, you may feel like you have to hit every single platform because all of the big wigs out there are doing it, right, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, I can't even keep track of all of them nowadays. And the truth is, how freeing will that feel if you just cross one of those off that doesn't resonate with you, right? Like Threads, I don't ever post on Threads, it's not my jam, right? It might be someone else's jam, and that's great, or maybe they have this huge team that can do it for them. But it's not something I needed to spend my energy bucks on right now. And yes, I said energy bucks, that is something that I teach inside my course, and that is that we only have so many energy bucks to spend, you need to make sure you're spending them wisely.

Erica: The beauty of this exercise is that once you pass, pause or purge, you clear up a lot of time on your calendar for the things that you need to do to perform, right? We get so caught up in this busy-ness of life and the daily grind that we aren't focusing on what matters most, which brings me to the second question, and you really need to go deep on this one, and ask yourself, is what's going to matter in 10 years. Seriously, when I find myself really anxious or stressing out over the things in my life, I ask myself, is this going to matter in 10 years time? And most of the time the answer is no. Right back when I had my first kid, Hudson, I wanted him to be breastfed for the first 12 months of his life, like many moms do, right. This was a goal I had, I had always heard breast was best, and so I was hanging my hat on that. But I was not producing enough milk for this kid, he was eating like a dang hog. And so instead of just saying, is this something that I really need to be doing, and is it going to matter in 10 years, I was waking myself up multiple times during the night to pump, I was taking all of this extra time away from the things that mattered most to pump, I was growing resentful about pumping, none of which was helping my situation, right. And you know what, this kid is still eating candy off the floor that he found in the back of my Toyota Highlander right now as we speak. So does it really matter? No, he's not even 10 yet, so we're not even at the 10-year mark, and it still doesn't matter. So ask yourself, if you find yourself really anxious and stressing out about whether you should worry about something or not, if you need to perform it or pass it, ask if it isn't going to matter in 10 years, and a lot of the times you're going to find that the answer is no. If the answer is yes, then you absolutely need to spend some time on that. But everything that you're doing in your life right this minute is not going to matter in 10 years, so flush out the things that don't and focus on the things that do.

Erica: Now the things that will matter in 10 years, y'all know this, are things like growth in your relationships, your mental health, big ticket things, right, like just big projects that are going to take your career further. So the next time that you find yourself stressing about the time in your day, instead of asking like what do you need to cross off, ask yourself what's going to matter in 10 years, and then really dig deep to answer that question and see how it shifts your approach to the day.

Erica: And then the final question that I want you to ask yourself when it comes to optimizing your time is, have you mapped your energy levels to your tasks? Now in my course, Reimagine It All, we go deep into an energy audit. Most of y'all are familiar with a time audit, but are you familiar with an energy audit? And that energy audit is really about making sure that you were aligning everything that you got to do with your energy levels. And here's what I mean by that. I'm a morning person, I am most creative and most productive in the hours before lunch, and I mean, I could even be creative at 4:00 AM, that is my chronotype. Okay, if you're not familiar with what a chronotype is or what that even means, it's the natural inclination of your body to sleep at a certain time, and what most people refer to as either like, hey, I'm a morning person, I'm an early bird, or I'm a night owl, right. But your chronotype does have an influence on a lot of bodily functions, like your appetite, your exercise, your core body temperature, but it is all about your body's natural activity, alertness, and your rhythms. And this is important because you should not be signing up for some sort of seminar or class that kicks off at 7:00 PM at night if you're an early bird and your brain is shutting down. So you need to make sure that you are matching your tasks with your chronotype, with your energy levels. So for me, when my alarm goes off at 5:00 AM, it is likely that I am already up, that I've already gotten my day started, because I'm working with my natural chronotype. Now you look at my husband, total opposite of me, 7:00 AM and he is still struggling to get going, you gotta pull him out of bed, but he could stay up all night and go laser focused in on work and produce the best work at eight o'clock at night, when you're not going to get anything from me, no way, no how. But when you live according to your chronotype, you're going to benefit from having higher energy levels, your sleep is going to improve, and just your overall wellbeing. So I actually use the Oura Ring to track my sleep and see how it matches up with my chronotype, and it will tell me if I'm either ahead or behind, and I can really see and tell the difference when I'm not working with my chronotype in all of the work that I produce.

Erica: So y'all, when it comes to optimizing your day, it's really about knowing yourself. It's about clearing out that mental workload that you keep locked away in that brain, and that first step is really just brain dumping it out, and that truly helps your ability to clear the clutter, clear the cobwebs, and get laser focused in on what you need to do. Then you can start to focus on what really matters, and you might want to revisit that brain dump list and start thinking about what does matter on this list. You might end up passing or purging items that truly don't matter, that originally you thought really were important, right, so take a good look at that. And then once you have that list solidified, start to map it out, all of your to-dos according to your energy levels, and function in a way that is most optimal. Now in my course, Reimagine It All, I talk about how to best rearrange your day and map it to your chronotype, so that will be a huge, huge win for you if you join in on the course. But stop trying to force activities at times of day that don't work for you. So I'll give you a perfect example. When I was in college, I used to try to cram for exams late at night in the library, just like everybody else did. But I found myself just reading and rereading the same page over and over and not retaining anything, y'all, okay. When I flipped that, and I put myself to bed earlier and then woke up super early to study, I started retaining so much more information. So it's doing the exact same thing, just at a totally different time of the day, and it produced completely different results.

Erica: So step one for today, for all y'all listening, I want you to head back to my episode on the Four P Principle and listen to it in detail and map out your mental tabs. You can also join my Peak Productivity Masterclass, that is free, it is on May 7th, it's coming up, but I'm going to go all in on my Four P Principle there. So head to the link in the show notes, sign up for the free masterclass so you can get a little taste of what that Four P principle is. And then ask yourself, is this going to matter in 10 years? You know, if not, think about revisiting it. And then finally, map out your energy levels, figure out what your chronotype is, use a device like the Oura Ring if you want to, you don't have to, but I enjoy it. And then start optimizing your day according to you. You ask these three questions, you start doing the work, your energy levels are completely going to change, your productivity is going to fly through the roof, and you're going to find immediately that you have more free time in the day to do the things that truly, truly matter.

Erica: All right, y'all, if you enjoyed this episode, I have a treat for you that is going to take optimizing your time to the next level. I've talked about it a little bit already in today's episode, but the digital course, Reimagine It All, is available for purchase right now, and at the biggest discount it will ever, ever be, and it is no longer going to be discounted after May 10th. I am giving you 40% off right now, 40%, it's a steal, but after May 10th that price goes back up. So make sure that you click it, you sign up for it, it's never again going to be this price, but it is the personal and professional playbook for all of you ambitious women out there who want to make the most of the hours in the day, right? You're going to learn how to make your own success, master your time, and unlock a new level of potential with my science backed system, y'all, that is designed to add value to your life, not things to your to-do list. Seriously, don't miss out. All right, enough on that, thank you so much again for listening and tuning in, I am so, so grateful, it is so fun to come in here and just chit chat with all y'all every single week. If you haven't left the podcast a five star review, please go do so, it truly helps it land in the hands of the woman that needs to hear it the most. But until next time, y'all, the only ceilings that exist are the ones we place over ourselves. I want you to remember that. Now let's go smash through them together.