Ep.3: How do I make more time in the day?
About this Episode
Ring riiing! ☎️ In this episode, our Creative Producer, Olivia, asks the question: “How do I make more time in the day?” Who doesn’t have this problem? Well… maybe not Muad’Dib or Beyoncé. Puno walks her through tips of how to reorganize your thinking, schedule tasks, and achieve your goals one task at a time with her ‘Digital Bujo’ method! Featuring Bujo videos from That’s Chic and AmandaRachLee. Get ready to learn some eye opening tips on how to stop binging on Netflix and get stuff done!
👀 Apps mentioned: Notion (Get $10 Credit) and Workflowy.
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Intro
Olivia: Ring. Ring, ring. Hello?
Puno: Hello?
Olivia: Hey! Hey, Puno.
Puno: Hello. Hi! Who is this?
Olivia: This is Olivia! [Laughs]
Puno: I'm going to put you on a new line.
Olivia: Okay.
[Music] 🎵
Puno: How's it going?
Olivia: Hey, it's going good. How are you?
Puno: Great.
Olivia: I'm going to be real. I'm in the room with you right now.
Puno: She's right there. So you got a question. What's going on?
Olivia: I've been feeling like I just don't have enough time in the day. I'm trying to fit a lot of stuff in. So I was wondering if you have any tips for kind of, you know, just making more time in the day.
Puno: Who doesn't have this question? Maybe Muad'Dib.
Muad'Dib: I don't have time in the day.
Puno: So what are all the things that you want to do? Why do you feel like you don't have enough time in the day?
Olivia: I have a part time job for ilovecreatives. That's about three times a week.
Puno: Three times a week. A full day, though. Okay.
Olivia: Exactly.
Puno: It's like seven, eight hours.
Olivia: Yeah.
Puno: I mean, I know, but.... [Laughs].
Olivia: I also have a side project going on. I started a blog recently. It's a music blog where I interview musicians.
Puno: Cool.
Olivia: So, I'm getting that going.
Puno: What's it called?
Olivia: It's called superspeedway.
Puno: www.super-speedway.com. Cool. Awesome.
Olivia: Then, I'm also just struggling to find time to workout. I feel like at the end of the day, I get home, and I'm so tired.
Puno: Yeah.
Olivia: And I just don't want to do anything.
Puno: Yeah.
Olivia: And I feel like part of that exhaustion comes from stressing about not having enough time.
Puno: Why are you stressing about all the time?
Olivia: Because there's so many things to do in the day.
Puno: That would be the first thing that I would change is how you think about time. Like you said, it's emotionally draining, but there's other ways you can think about it. Right now, I'm feeling like you have a little bit of anxiety about how many things you have to do. When I lived in the suburbs in Houston, I was like 10, I felt bored af, and now I have like this crazy to do list of all these amazing things I want to do.
Olivia: Yeah.
Puno: It sounds like you're working on a lot of cool stuff. I mean, you have a music blog that you want to grow, you're working on this super awesome part time job, and you want to exercise, which is always something hard to get to do, but once you do it, you love it.
Puno: So that's the first thing is thinking about how many awesome things you get to do as opposed to feeling like there's this huge weight on you of all of these tasks and you just don't feel like doing any of them. Maybe instead of writing to-do lists, you can write "My list of Super Fun Things I Want to Do." And that's it! Bye!
Puno: No, but seriously though, thinking about time in a negative way is going to be very emotionally draining for you. Okay, I'm stoked I get to do all of these things. But now, the second part, is how are you managing your to-do list? So what are you doing right now?
Olivia: It's kind of just one big ass list.
Puno: Okay.
Olivia: I use the app notes, but it's not really organized by day. It's kind of just one list that I keep adding to and removing things as I go.
Puno: Do you have any other things in there as well, like yearly goals or anything like that?
Olivia: Kind of just everything, you know?
Puno: I want to show you how I organize my time. I also use notes, as well, but I actually use notes for just notes. [Laughs].
Puno: So, I took this concept from Bujo, Bullet Journal. Have you heard of a Bullet Journal?
Olivia: Oh, no, what is that?
Puno: I mean, this is how I'm describing it. You know, with your planners, everything is figured out for you. You've got your months written out and your lines are all there with all the little numbers.
Puno: Well, with a bullet journal, you're essentially drawing everything in. It's kind of an exercise of owning your time. A lot of people go a step further, and they add some little kitties- super cute. I don't really have time for that 'cause I'd rather use my creative juices on like cat calendars. You know what I'm saying? Like, like one of these, like one of these guys. Put that right there for me.
Puno: I'd rather do it digitally as well because I'm a digital girl. I get this and get this... I like to put everything in my list. I know I always have my phone. I don't want to carry a journal around...
Olivia: The journal sounds really magical, but I can't see myself doing that every month.
Puno: Right. Well, actually you're supposed to do it in the beginning of the year. It's like, it's like a January 1st exercise.
Olivia: Oh, I see. Okay.
Puno: The big takeaway that I loved was that you are basically always looking at your yearly, monthly, and weekly goals all the time. And the other thing that I loved about it was you're constantly having to manually bring tasks to the next day and that exercise kind of makes you feel more responsible for your time or in more control of your time. So let me show you how I do it.
Puno: I used to use this app called Workflowy that I still love. I have, you can see, yearly goals every single month. This is a monthly goal week. Under the week, you have a weekly goal. You've got your Monday, Tuesday through Sunday.
Olivia: This is awesome.
Puno: Workflowy is great because you can just like literally move things around really quickly. The reason why I switched, I'm starting to use this thing called Notion because Notion is this new app that's come out and we use it for project management. It's like Diet Coke, Google Drive, plus Asana, or Trello.... all those kinds of kanban project management things. Then, they've got this, which is my digital bujo.
Puno: So, I call it "my time." You can do the same thing as Workflowy. It's also cheaper. It's free. They have a free plan for up to a certain amount of blocks, and then it's $4/month afterwards. Whereas Workflowy is $4.99/month. You don't get all the other bells and whistles that Notion has. It's sad for Workflowy. I was super loyal for four years.
Puno: So, when I have my yearly goals, I break them down. I personally break them down to money, health, creative. Before I used to just have 'a goal.' The first time I actually started it was in the middle of the year. So I think it's totally fine to do it whenever. These are the questions that I ask myself.
Puno: I'll ask, all right, whatever my goal is, what is important about it? Will I get it? What is preventing me from having it? How will I know if I'm successful? And so, for example, my money goals last year was I wanted to make $100,000 annually by working two hours a day. The year before that, I had a reason for wanting this specifically. Then you can write out what is preventing you from having it, what do you need to do in order to get it. So it's just kind of brainstorming out all the steps. Health goals are that I didn't want to drink for two months, and I wanted to play squash against a stranger. You can put all of your goals on here and then once you've kinda written out a few steps, then you can go into your monthly goals. I've got January through December. Anytime that I'm done with a month, I change the color to gray. Goodbye!
Olivia: Satisfaction.
Puno: So what goals would you have? Let's start with your health.
Olivia: The easiest thing for me to do would be running. Right now, I'd like to just start.
Puno: So in the next 30 days, what would you like to accomplish?
Olivia: I'd say I could probably, right now, workout two times a week.
Puno: We'll say run eight times total this month. This is a little bit different because it's running, so it's pretty regular. Honestly if you really want to do it, I say write it down. That's kind of that Bullet Journal part. Just schedule it in.
Puno: Oh yeah, the other unfortunate thing with Notion... I wish that it was connected to your Google Calendar. Your first weekly goal will be.. Put this here. So, run two times this week. Now when. What day can you run for the first time?
Olivia: Monday would be a good day. Start the week off with a run.
Puno: Yeah! So, I'm going to do a to- do lists. What time do you want to run?
Olivia: Maybe around 7:00 AM.
Puno: Okay. Run. For how long?
Olivia: I think I can get to 30 minutes.
Puno: Okay. Where are you going to run?
Olivia: Probably just in my neighborhood.
Puno: Neighborhood. Okay, so you're going to run 30 minutes around your neighborhood at 7:00 AM. When else do you want to do this?
Olivia: Saturday.
Puno: Saturday. I duplicated that and then I'm going to move this into Saturday.The other thing that I've learned, especially when I put my working out stuff in here ,if I want to wake up at 7:00 AM on Saturday, then I have to go to sleep around 11:00 PM on Friday. Now, this is what you're having to do every week. Delete these weeks. You can duplicate this by pressing command D four times and then just change it.
Olivia: And what about this toggle feature?
Puno: You can turn anything into either a checklist, a to-do list, a numbered lists. The way that I look at it is, it doesn't matter what the task is, all the tasks that you do take time. That's why I like to put everything that I have to do in the day in my to-do lists.
Olivia: So this doesn't have to be just goal-oriented?
Puno: Just anything that has to do with the time in your day.
Olivia: Okay...
Puno: Your time. That's why. My time!
Olivia: My time!
Puno: Let's go into another monthly goal. What about super-speedway?
Olivia: I think right now I'd like to get out one article a week.
Puno: So what do you need to do in order to do that?
Olivia: Well, I would have to contact who I'm going to interview. Actually, before that, I would probably come up with a concept.
Puno: Concept, article, contact who you're going to interview.
Olivia: Then either send them the interview questions or schedule a time to meet with them and shoot it. Either edit what we created or make up the blog posts.
Puno: Now you've got this thing that you have to do four times. It's almost the same thing as running. You can also put this in your week. So let's go to week one. You want to do write one article for super-speedway and then what day would you do this?
Olivia: Probably on Monday would be when I would come up with the concept.
Puno: Okay. I'm just going to duplicate all of those. Press Command D. Now I'm just going to just simply drag this concept, article. Then, you need to contact who you're going to interview.
Olivia: I probably could do that Monday as well. Depending on when they're free, ideally it would be earlier in the week. Thursday?
Puno: So schedule. Okay. Edit and publish an article. Friday?
Olivia: Yeah, as soon as I could get it done, I guess.
Puno: Well, and then you know with blogs, especially when you're interviewing people, it's going to be stacked, so maybe this is your edit and publish article day, but it's not necessarily for that specific one. And you'll start understanding what's your typical turnaround time from contacting to scheduling to actually shooting. So that was one thing that's not on here. You had schedule, but you don't actually have shooting. Maybe that's something that you can't put in your list, but you know that that's something that will take time and it'll probably take four hours if not more.
Puno: Let's talk about the part time job. Since this happens all the time, you don't have to necessarily make this a goal, you could just put it in your week. So when do you work on your part time job again?
Olivia: Usually Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Puno: Okay, so Monday you're working from what time to what time?
Olivia: 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Puno: To 4:00 PM. Already, I see that you want to run, and you need to go to work right after that, and you want a concept the article and contact who you're going to interview as well. When would you do that? Because you also have dinner.
Puno: This is my routine. Right before I go to sleep, I look at my Google calendar because it's not connected, and I look at what are all the events that I have to do the next day. I'll really quickly write that in my Monday. I know that at 3:00 PM I have a call at 7:00 PM I have dinner.
Puno: I just don't know when you would actually have time to concept and article and contact who you're going to interview...
Olivia: Totally.
Puno: Let's go ahead and add the days that you're working too.
Olivia: Sure, okay.
Puno: So then when you schedule it, that might not happen the next day. That might happen actually a few days later. For now, if you want to, you can just remove this until it actually happens, but maybe on Fridays you always edit and publish your article. Another thing you can think about is since you have this routine on Monday of running and then going to work, maybe you move the Saturday one to Thursday or Tuesday,
Olivia: Get more of a routine going.
Olivia: Anyways, you can always change that later. This is kind of your work week and, as things come up, you want to write them in here. For example, this happens to me every day. I'll be working. I'm like, oh shit, an email just came in, but I'm working on something else. So what I will do just to get it out of my freaking head is I'll just write check emails for ilovecreatives. I just put it in there because even just checking that and distracting myself makes that task so much longer I'll just put it at the end. Then I'll just think about, oh shit, I need a buy tape on Amazon. I'll just write Amazon: Buy tape. It just kinda helps you focus on what you're supposed to do and get that other task out of your brain. Every night I go back, and I look at all of the things that I've checked off. I got to this, but I didn't get to the Amazon: Buy tape. Right? So you will move this to the next day.
Puno: That whole process is what it's all about. You wake up, you kind of already know what you need to do, and then you're off. So I have my weekly review and this is kind of the journaling part where you just be like, "Hey Olivia, we only ran one time this week. What was the reason why?"
Olivia: Too much Netflix. I already know,
Puno: I used to have a Netflix situation too. So anytime that I feel like I really want to watch Netflix, I just do it on the treadmill. Next week, try not watching Netflix after 10:00 PM. All of this is giving yourself feedback, iterating, and trying something else.
Puno: Just think of it this way: what were the things that I could have done differently so that I can meet the goals that I want to meet? And the same thing for your monthly review, you know, did you run eight times total this month? What were things that you could do to improve? And you just keep doing that until you get to your yearly review and then you're done.
Olivia: You make it seem so easy!
Puno: Well, right. Is there anything right now that's making it feel like it's too daunting?
Olivia: I think the main thing would be setting aside time every day and making sure that I actually follow through with it.
Puno: I'm going to tell you, even though I have this all written out, I sometimes, I just forget. I don't look at it, but those are the days that I really feel like I have no control of my time. Once I get back into this routine of checking this once-a-day and organizing it at night only takes like 10 minutes. It's not that long because you're just like, oh good, good, good. Whenever you feel like you're not doing it, don't worry. You can try to get back into it and that's hard. But that is why you feel like you've lost a sense of control over your time is because you're not really looking at it all the time.
Olivia: Dedicating yourself to this and making sure that you're filling this out every day. It's a trade-off for feeling that you control your time and you're more organized. Yeah, this is amazing.
Puno: And you know, you're looking at your yearly goals too at the same time.
Olivia: Exactly.
Puno: Every now and then, I'll just peek at my yearly goals and it's kind of funny because I'm looking at it and I'm like, wow. January Puno was all about this and July Puno has not really done what January Puno wanted to do.
Puno: Reprioritize. Is this really important? If so, what can you do next month? Everybody wants to move their reset to January 1st, but honestly you can do it whenever you want.
Olivia: Time is a construct. Time is this space time continuum. It's all relative.
Puno: All right, well I hope you have a good day.
Olivia: Together!
Puno: Together.
Olivia: I'll still be here!
Puno: Yeah. Let me know how it goes.
Olivia: Yeah. Sweet.
Puno: Alright. I'll see you guys later, bye!
Outro
Puno: Thanks for watching. Or listening. Don't forget to click to subscribe because not everybody remembers to do that. That's why we had to say that right here. But, do that. Oh, and if you have any questions, just go to www.iloveccreatives.com/1-800-HEYPUNO. Would love to hear your questions and maybe have you on the call! We're waiting for you.