Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Identify your Time Suckers for a more Productive Life | Clutterbug Podcast # 103

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

In this podcast, I'll share my biggest addition and how I'm using time blocking to overcome it and lead a more productive life.      You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you know what your time suckers are? Do you know those things that you are doing to sort of pacify yourself or escape, procrastinate the things that you know you should be doing, but you really don't want to? I'm going to talk to you about my time suckers today and some ways that I am making a change. Hey, clutterbugs, welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today I want to talk about really my biggest addiction. That's what it comes down to. I think all of us, have things that we do when we're procrastinating, these time suckers, these ways that we pacify ourselves and everybody's different, but we have these things that we're doing in order to make ourselves feel better, I guess, or escape the things that are bothering us, sort of,

yeah, pacify the fear. But the truth is they're getting in the way of us living the lives that we really want to live. And for me, it's 100% my addiction to screams. I watch way too much Netflix and Amazon Prime. Like, it's ridiculous and it's embarrassing. And it started out as just something that everybody did. You know, when I had some free time or I was done work at the end of the night, when I had all my things done, I would reward myself with the show. And then I would maybe binge it, but still, it was an appropriate amount of time.

But since this lockdown and since the stress and the family's home and any time I'm feeling any type of anxiety or overwhelm at all, I find that I'm pacifying myself with screens. Instead of working, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, like I don't know what kind of video to make and the kids are being loud and how am I going to do my job, my go-to gut reaction is pacifying myself with a screen. And I've created this habit for myself.

And maybe if you're listening, you can totally relate. maybe you pacify yourself with video games or online shopping or whatever it is that you do but is it getting in the way of the life that you want to live and i definitely see how netflix and amazon prime and even surfing the web has gotten in the way of not only my work my free time but my family time as well and it has gone from just something that i do too much to something that is one hundred percent impacting my life in a negative way. So that was what I classify as an addiction, something that I'm repeatedly doing that is negatively impacting my life. And it became even more apparent. I was talking to my sister-in-law a few days ago who is quarantined like we are. We are on locked down here. We're not going anywhere. The only person going to the grocery store is Joe, because I hate the grocery store. And he's only going once a week. And otherwise, it's just my little

family of five all day, every day. I haven't been outside in a very long time or, or, you know, seen another human being in quite some time. But I was talking to my sister-in-law on the phone and I was asking her if she'd seen the new show Bridgeton on Netflix and she was like, oh, we don't watch screens. And I was like, what? You don't watch. She's like, no, we don't, we don't go on Facebook. We don't watch any television. I was like, what the heck? do you do all day? She reads. She was like, we do puzzles, we do board games. And it was so foreign to me. And I instantly felt jealous. I instantly felt shame for my own addiction. But I felt jealous because I thought, what could I do? What could I accomplish if I wasn't

wasting my time on a screen? And I think the screens started out as, a reward. It started out as a way to relax and unwind, but it definitely transitioned to something very, very negative when I'm using it as a pacifier. And what I mean by that is anytime I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed or I don't want to do something hard, I immediately say, I'm just going to watch one more show and I'll do it later. I'll do it tomorrow. I'm just going to check Facebook and then I'll get to it with and I instantly feel relief because I don't really want to do that thing right now either because I'm feeling fear of the extra work fear of doing it and failing or just underlying stress and anxiety that come with all of that I'm avoiding all of that by pacifying myself

by distracting myself with a with a screen and so I instantly you know putting that off I'm like I instantly feel relief, which feels good. It releases dopamine. I'm like, oh, this feels good. And so that's been my go-to reaction now. Anytime I feel that sense of stress, that sense of anxiety, I pacify myself with a screen. And it's become, well, life is really stressful right now. So now it's become an all-day thing. It's like, I wake up in the morning and I'm like, oh, I'm really behind because I wasted so much time. Oh, and I have all these things to do. My to-do list is really, really big. And I'm like, I've got to get all these things done. instantly my brain is telling me just watch one more episode of flea bag for the 50 millionth time

because it's my pacifier and so i'm going to challenge you to take a look at your own life and see if you have any time wasting pacifiers things that you're doing when you're procrastinating things that you're doing when the things you know you should be doing are causing you that fear and anxiety and you're putting it off. Maybe it's working out. You put off working out by doing something. And maybe this something that you're doing could even be a positive thing. But imagine, imagine if you were no longer engaging in that time wasting activity. What could you do instead? And when I really thought, when I was talking to my sister-in-law and she said she doesn't watch screens at all. And my initial gut was, you're crazy. That was my first thought. I was like, okay, you're crazy.

But immediately the thought that followed that was, how lucky are you? I could craft. I could go for walks with my family. I could definitely get more work done. I could have time to enjoy activities that actually make me feel good about myself. Instead of zoning out to a screen, which inevitably makes me feel bad about myself, which makes me really feel just, yeah, shameful, bad about myself. And I'm not being the person that I know I should be. I'm not living my truest self and the vision that I have for myself, which is somebody who is a family-oriented, productive person. And I'm not saying that television's bad and I'm not saying that screens are bad, but everything in moderation and definitely what I'm doing, you guys, is not moderation. There are days that I wake up

in the morning and the first thing I do is grab my phone or my tablet. I surf the web for an hour, maybe reply to a couple of emails, stay in my bed or go get breakfast and bring it back to my bed and watch three or four episodes of a show or an entire movie, then maybe have some lunch and crush more Netflix. I mean, it's become something that I do to soothe my stuff. I mean, it's become something that I do to soothe myself and that's how I know that I have a problem. Not only that, because it used to be a reward for me, it used to be something like if you do the dishes or clean the kitchen or if you get all your chores done, then you can watch a show. I've completely bypassed that and now I'm just using it as a crutch for my life and as an escape all day long. So this is how I know I have a

problem. So what I've decided to do is put a no screen time before eight unless it's on my laptop and only for work. So I cannot watch any mind-numbing crap before 8 p.m. And that has been my rule. It's only been a few days, but already I feel better. I felt I need a hard rule. I'm an all or nothing person. So if I was to say to myself, you're just going to do less screen time casts, I would just continue to procrastinate and go in this downward spiral of escapism really what that's what it really is and instead giving myself a rule like a parent would do because i need to parent myself and need to put on my big girl pants uh telling myself that i can't have it before eight it's a really healthy boundary for me and that's what i need in my life are those healthy boundaries and so

the first day i was was rough but It's been a few days now and I feel amazing. I feel like I'm getting back into the swing of things. I feel like I'm finding my motivation again because I've given up this habit of distracting myself. So I want you to identify some of your time wasters. Maybe you don't have any and that's amazing. But maybe you do.

And I'm not saying that these things are terrible and that you never have to do them. But what if we limit ourselves to only certain hours of the day or certain times where we can engage in these type of activities so that we're, we can have so much time to do the things that we really want to do in life without that avoidance crutch in our way, without that thing that we're using to escape, that we're using to give us that dopamine feeling to make us feel better in the short term, but ultimately feel really, really bad in the long term. So I want you to make a list of some time wasters that you do and think about time blocking them. Think about giving yourself, allowing yourself to engage in that,

but only for certain times of the day and really stick into it, you guys, stick into it. And so I'm just curious. Maybe I'm totally alone here, but I do think it's human nature. I think as humans, it's a good thing to have this avoidance technique that we do. If we were in the wild and we were running and we saw like some willed beasts or something out in the distance and we felt like oh i'm comfortable about it you know like oh maybe they'll attack us and rip our heads off we should go in the other direction that's good that that that keeps us alive right then our body gives us a bunch of dopamine you're like yes you avoided that toxic potentially deadly situation yay for you and then so anytime we feel that feeling of like oh this is scary uh we avoid it and then we reward ourselves for avoiding it

we eat lots of dopamine and feel goods, all the feel goods feelings. But I think we don't live in a situation day to day where we have to worry about, you know, will the bees ripping our heads off or whatever it is. But we're still kind of training ourselves the same way with these avoidance techniques. So we're scared to send that email or we're afraid to write or start a podcast or we're afraid to declutter our house because we're afraid we might fail. We're afraid people may judge us. We're afraid of the extra work and not being able to finish it.

We have all of these thoughts and our brain sort of running. And our gut, our lizard brain is telling us to avoid, is telling us to run in the other direction. When the exact opposite is true, we should be pushing through those feelings because that is how we're actually going to become the person we want. And that's how we do hard things. Everything worth it makes us feel uncomfortable and gives us anxiety and fear. Everything new makes us feel anxiety and fear. All the things, the biggest and best things that I've ever accomplished in my life have been terrifying and I've had to force myself to take every step towards it until it got easier.

And why now am I running away? Why now my ostriching, sticking my head in the sand and pretending like all of the bad stuff doesn't exist? I don't know, but it stops now. And I'm hoping you're feeling inspired to identify your own avoidance behaviors and know that they are coming from fear and anxiety. And it doesn't mean that we should give into it. Because at the end of the day, you know if those things are getting in the way of you living your best life. And so make a list. Pick one, you guys, pick one thing and time block it. You don't have to give it up, cold turkey. This isn't about completely changing you or your habits. This is about time blocking, making a small, actionable plan that's really realistic to carve out more time in your day to do the things that you really want to do.

So thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you're feeling really motivated and I'll see you guys next time.