The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Solo - How To Take Control Of Your Time & Manage Time More Productively

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

#673: On today's episode Lauryn and Michael are solo to discuss ways to change your relationship with time and how they view their personal time. The couple also discuss ways you can look to more productively manage your time and change the way you view time as an asset.    To attend Dear Media IRL in Austin, Texas on May 4th click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential    Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. up this year is on fire. Yours truly will be there. Lauren will obviously be there as well. We have other dear media hosts like the ladies from The Toast, Claudia Oshry and Jackie Oshry. We have Dr. Will Cole, Olivia Perez, Gracie Norton, Sammy Splatter, Arielle Laurie, Pia Baranchini, and many more. It is going to be a phenomenal event, like I said, and it's here in Austin, Texas. It kicks off with morning bites and beverages, followed by a bunch of panels with all of the different hosts. It's a great event. Think of it like a happy hour on steroids. You get to meet a ton of people. And last year we had an amazing time. If you guys haven't seen the event before, just search Dear Media IRL on YouTube and you could see what it looked like. For those of

you that are interested in attending, tickets are limited and will go fast. Just go to dearmedia.com slash IRL to get tickets. Again, that's dearmedia.com slash IRL. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Happy Friday. We are back with a bite-size episode. And in this episode, we are going to talk about how Michael and I view our time. How we look at our time, I think from a daily perspective, from a weekly perspective, and from a yearly perspective. Because we take our time, I think from a daily perspective, from a weekly perspective, and from a yearly perspective, because we take our time out of everything we do probably the most seriously.

To me, it's the most valuable asset one has, which we're going to dive into. And I don't think people put nearly enough emphasis on their time, whether it's wasting time in a meeting, wasting time scrolling on Instagram, wasting time at home. Money is endless. Your love can be boundless, all of these things. Time is a set amount. You only have so much of it and to waste it is one of the biggest sins I think one can commit on themselves. And it is so counterproductive to do so. So we're going to talk about how you can start valuing your time by actually putting a specific dollar amount even associated with that time, or at least I will tell you about that.

And then Lauren's going to talk about how she values time. Again, it is a resource that is limited that so many people squander. I think the first step for me is what I do is on Sunday, I look at my calendar that's coming up for the week. The first question that I ask myself is, is this worth being away from my kids? So if it's a call that's during a time where I am supposed to be engaging with my daughter or picking her up from school and it's not important, I will either have my team take it or I won't be on it. If there's maybe a dinner meeting that we have to

go to that I don't think is worth it, I will cancel it. I'm very brutal when it comes to being away from my kids. So that's the first lens that I look through. And then I also look through the lens of how can I maximize my time? And what I mean by that is if I have six conference calls in a row, am I doing something else at the same time? So am I getting my makeup done for a podcast? Am I getting a blowout done so I don't have to wash my own hair? Am I taking a walk while I'm doing it? I love passively multitasking. So I do those two things on Sunday, every Sunday. I look through the lens of my kids and the lens of making sure I'm passively multitasking to capitalize on all the time that I can. I personally think that we don't do a good enough job talking

about how we're going to use our time. For example, if I'm going to get with someone, I will say, is this social time? Are we being social? If it is a business setting, I will say, what is the point of it? How are we being productive? What is the intention we're bringing to that setting? If it is time where I want to spend with my kids and just relax and not deal with anything, I'll think, okay, is this time with my kids? I don't think we do a very good job at distinguishing how we're using our time. We just kind of jumble all these things together and try to squeeze everything in one place. And then another thing that I do specifically personally with my time is I actually set a very specific dollar amount of what my time per hour is worth. I'm not going to tell you guys what that time is. At this point in my life, it's a high number.

And then what I will do is I will say, if that number, if I can outsource for a lesser amount that time, for example, if it is something that has to do with cleaning or cooking or something that I can pay a service for, getting a car wash, whatever it may be, if it's something that that number is less than what I think my hourly time is worth, I will typically spend the personal money to do that and then use my time to go and get that dollar amount back. For example, if I believe that my time is worth, I'll just pick a random number. If I say my time is worth $500 an hour, then I'm not going to take an hour to go run errands. I'm going to go and see, okay, is there a postman or something I could pay? And I'm just using a specific example because I want to get that time back so that I can be productive in other areas of my life. So again, we squander

time and we waste it and we look at expenses. Some people may look like, hey, I'm going to pay for a service as a waste of money. Not if that time is worth more to you than that service costs. And I think sometimes people get this twisted and they don't take that time to actually say, okay, is it better for me to actually spend the money to outsource this specific activity so that I can get back and be more productive? Or is this something where I need to be the one that steps into it and uses my time allotment in order to get something done? Does that make sense? It makes total sense. And I think just going off what you said, what I'll even do is with my meetings that I have, I make sure there's an agenda. I am not going to do a 30-minute meeting unless there's a severe, serious agenda. For me, it's 15-minute meetings.

Let's get them back to back. And there still has to be an agenda. And if we're going to do an hour meeting, there has to be a real goal that is out of that hour meeting. So I think a lot of people, and I've seen this recently, are on Zooms for hours and hours and hours and hours a day. That's the worst. Yeah. I just think that you really have to be methodical and thoughtful about what is being accomplished and can it be accomplished in a shorter amount of time with an agenda. Speaking of shorter amount of times, I'll give you a reverse way to look at time.

Sometimes in my calendar, even during a busy work week or work month, I will set a specific amount of time to read. And while that sounds crazy, like how could you set time to read when all this stuff's going on? I believe that there are certain instances when I'm working through problems in business or in life that the book is going to save me more time in the long run. So if I'm able to read a specific book

on a subject I'm working through, say you want to increase sales, you can bang your head against the wall and spend hours and hours and hours of time trying to sell more, or you can read a book that has specific knowledge in order to increase that sales in a faster way. So maybe you take two hours to read, which is going to then save you 20 or 30 hours of time spent actually physically trying to learn it yourself. So again, I think there's multiple ways to look at time. You can say, okay, I can spend a thousand

hours of time trying to learn this new thing, I can spend a thousand hours of time trying to learn this new thing, or I can spend 20 hours of time looking at it in a book and shortcutting that. Of course, you're still going to have to work. Then the other side of that is, okay, I can spend my personal time going and running errands and doing all these things, or I can spend a specific amount of money that is worth less to me than my personal time to go and outsource that stuff. And to Lauren's point, when you're going into an instance, say it's a business setting and there's a meeting, getting an agenda in advance, that's going to get everybody on the same page.

So you don't have to waste a bunch of time sitting there. What are we talking about? How are we talking about it? What's the goal? What's not the goal? Everybody on the same page right from the beginning, all of these things so that you can maximize more. Again, we're just so wasteful and thoughtless with how we use our time. And everybody at the end of the day has the same 24 hours in the day.

You wonder why certain people get to further places. It's most likely because they are putting a greater emphasis on how they use their time and how they spend their time productively, as opposed to just squandering and wasting it. I also think it's important to mention the art of no. I think I use that word all the time. So if something doesn't fit in or it doesn't work or it's not worth being away from my kids, I think saying no is super powerful. I also think that it's important to look at your time on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and on a yearly basis. And what I mean by that is every Sunday, make sure you're evaluating your calendar from a weekly perspective, but also look at the whole month. And I'll give you an example of what I'm

talking about. If Michael and I have to go to LA for four days and we are doing nonstop, and I mean nonstop podcasting, work, meetings, dinner meetings, then the day that I come home, I want to be open because I want to have space with my children. So I also look at time through a lens of ebbing and flowing. So when it's time to work, I put my work hat on. But then when it's time to come home and take a beat and take a minute, I also have time and space in my calendar. And I do also want to talk about space. A successful person, in my opinion, has a lot of space. And I talk with Katie a lot. You guys have met Katie on the podcast. She's our executive assistant about how in my brain, the most

successful person has open blanks all over their calendar. So in my calendar, I'll have reading time. I'll have working out time. I'll have walking time. I'll have cold plunging time. I'll have time with my kids. I will have all these space blanks on my calendar. I think at the end of the day, and I talk about this all the time internally in the businesses is like, I never reward quote unquote, just hard work and time put in. I reward impact and for myself as well. So I would much rather take eight hours of sleep, take two or three hours in the morning to have a good wake up and routine. And again, I'm not, that's not, everyone can do that. I get that, you know, get a workout in. And then when I get to work, if it's a five or six hour sprint of hard,

dedicated focus work that drives an impact to me, that is much more valuable than spending eight full hours, wasting a bunch of time. And I was talking to a friend the other day, he was kind of like blown away that I could be in a position where I'm, you know, doing the podcast and running the company. And my workday looks sometimes like five to eight hours. Sometimes like, he's like, how could you have a day where you can get all this done in five hours? Like, well, if you do all the other stuff and you're taking the time to read and you're taking the time to think and you're taking time to actually be thoughtful with your time, when I actually go and do the things that I'm trying to accomplish, it can be accomplished in a shorter window of time because of all the prep work.

And because I'm being thoughtful with time, if you actually really sit back and audit all the time you waste throughout the day, scrolling, emailing, happy hours, running around the water cooler, all that stuff. And you, and you start to audit and like, think about it as like, Oh, every minute that goes by, if it's not productive as is a waste. Then I think you'll start to see you really don't need that much time to accomplish a lot of things. You just need that window of time when you are trying to accomplish something to be extremely productive. So that's how we think about time. We think about what is the most productive way to use it at all time. I also think that something for me that I do is I try to do three days in a day.

So I'll go really hard Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then I'll book in my week with a little bit easier days. So I have some space and time with my kids and I'll also theme my days. So like today we podcasted all day long. Maybe on another day we shoot content all day long. Maybe on another day I'm doing calls all day long. Maybe on another day, I'm doing calls all day long. I'm really about theming the day so my brain is not switching back and forth. Those are some of our tips on time. I will say, I think this is relevant for this episode, I think everyone's first hire in a business should be someone who is monitoring your time and helping you schedule and calendar. For me,

that's number one. I don't know if Michael agrees with that. No, I think it's that. And then I think in your personal life, I think if you were going to start thinking about how to manage your time better right now, I would start actually documenting and journaling for one week straight how you're actually using your time. And you have to be brutally honest. If you wake up in the morning and you're sitting there staring at a wall for 30 minutes trying to get your morning right, okay, fine. If you're sitting, you're like, Oh, I'm going to go have a snack. And that snack turns into you pandering around in the kitchen for an hour. Or if you're in a meeting and half that meeting, like, and this isn't a business setting,

half the meeting is talking about what Susie did on the weekend. That's a waste of time. If you're, you know, scrolling social media for three hours of the day, and you're saying you don't have time for other things, like you have to be brutally honest. honest. So just being aware of how you're actually using your time right now and auditing it and actually keeping a time journal and then reformatting your week and days around actually using it productively is going to make a massive impact on your life. And I think as soon as you become aware of wasting time, you may be okay with that. So, you know, today I really need to waste the time and I'm good with that. But I think what most people will find is they waste a lot more time than they think

they do. And just being aware of that is going to pay dividends. Two tools that I use. The first one is the big ass calendar. It's by Jesse Itzler. He's come on the show. I think you can use code skinny. We have planned our entire vacations, everything out in this yearly calendar.

And it's been really helpful for Michael and I work travel, all sorts of stuff everything out in this yearly calendar. And it's been really helpful for Michael and I work, travel, all sorts of stuff. Everything is on this calendar. It shows where we're going to be all year. It's very helpful. And then the second is the skinny confidential planner. This is more to plan your time on a daily basis and to really watch how you're spending your time and your day every day. And it takes two minutes. I use this prompt every single morning for the last like five years. It's changed my life. You can use code butter for 20% off and grab the planner on shop skinny confidential.com. Thank you guys for listening and we'll see you on Monday.