Listen to Conquer Inbox Overload & Reclaim Your Calendar!

00:00 

Are you a Christian working woman who is looking to boost your confidence and transform your life? Well, I have got just the thing for you. My online course. The 10 hour Confidence Transformation is available now. This course is designed to fit into your busy schedule and provide you with actionable strategies to increase your confidence. Plus, with your purchase, you will get access to a private monthly group coaching call where we can connect and grow together. Get all the details right now@danabycoaching.com. Before we get started today, I wanna take just a moment and share with you a recent five star review, my podcast received. She said, I love that Dana recognizes how so many of us are naturally wired. We desire to serve and are compassionate, but we also have a high drive to excel. She understands the faults and the strengths, always taking them back to Jesus so that we can understand ourselves in a healthy way. That five Star review is from do It All. Woman, thank you so much. Hey listen, if you're listening to my podcast and it's helping you, please take just a moment, leave a five star review that's going to help so many more people get access to my podcast.  

 

01:17 

Welcome back friends. I am so happy to be here with you today to have a little chat about taking back your time. If I know anything about my clients who are ambitious, Christian, working women just like myself, sometimes we become overwhelmed at work. So in this podcast, we're gonna dive into the real life challenge of feeling overwhelmed at work, and we're gonna uncover some actionable insights for you to help you live a more purposeful life. Like I said, I'm your host. I'm Dana, and today we're gonna address this common struggle because I think finding time to take breaks and to actually do the work that you were hired to do and to make time for yourselves, you know, admits the the sea of never ending tasks that come your way every day. We're gonna focus on that because if you feel like you are already behind and you're battling your inbox, you're fighting your schedule, there are looming deadlines.  

 

02:21 

This episode is for you. Well, first I wanna talk about the fact that the struggle is real. If you just heard me say you're battling your inbox, your schedule, your deadlines, and you thought, oh, that's a little bit embarrassing, let's just move right past that. Okay? I wanna validate that. Of course you feel that way and you are not alone. We are acknowledging a reality that many of us face, you know, feeling constantly overwhelmed by the demands of our work. Whether or not you love your job, you know, sometimes we love our jobs in seasons and not in other seasons, but you might be facing the burden of that packed inbox. Those deadlines and your your to-do list continues to grow. Can you relate to this? Whenever you've got a to-do list, you're checking things off and you're like, oh my gosh, I just added four things to that list.  

 

03:08 

And you start feeling a little bit like you're sinking. And you know, that can make it feel impossible to take a break. It can also make it feel impossible to get ahead or at least on top of the work that we are facing. And the problem here is that continuous cycle of busyness or that sense of overwhelm can create a narrative in our minds, the narrative that we are failing, that we cannot keep up, that we just have to tread water, that life is always going to be this way, and that taking time for ourselves is a luxury that we cannot afford. Those are lies. And here's the truth, feeling behind and overburdened at work does not mean that you're failing one, it means you're human. So yes, of course, we'll point that out, but I also wanna point out with some tough love here.  

 

03:55 

We have to be honest. If you're feeling behind and overburdened, it doesn't mean you're failing. Yes, it means you're human, but it also makes it evident that you just don't have a system in place to support yourself in anticipation of those busy seasons. And while you might think you don't have control over your schedule, I'm sure you don't have 100% control over your schedule. I would say most of us don't. But I actually think you have a lot more power than you realize. So let's walk into these ideas. I'm gonna share with you with some openness. If you're not ready to be open, maybe you don't wanna listen to this today. Okay, friend, I'm asking you to be open to the possibility that you have more power, more control over your schedule than you're realizing in this moment, and what that could do for you to embrace that openness in your schedule.  

 

04:47 

So I want you to think about a term that I call throttling your week. One powerful strategy to regain or really embrace the control. You might not see that you have to either regain that control or embrace it so you can schedule to throttle your week by designating one day of your week as the overflow day. So this means setting aside one day, doesn't have to be the whole day, but part of the day, specifically to catch up on the tasks that routinely spill over from the rest of your week. You know, un unexpected things happen. A meeting goes long, there's a software emergency, someone's out sick, you name it, life happens. But if you can throttle your week, if you have built in a tiny bit of overflow time into one day, you are planning for it, you anticipated it, it does not catch you off guard.  

 

05:42 

And you have created a buffer that reduces the pressure that you are feeling to complete everything on time every day for every person. This is gonna take you out of that place of performance and stress into a place where you're able to calm down, get your groundings, get your bearings, and have a better sense of what truly needs and deserves your focus. So for example, if your work week is Monday to Friday, Friday could be your overflow day. You know, this approach allows you to focus more effectively on tasks during the first four days, knowing that you have given yourself the gift of dedicating time, scheduling time at the end of the week to handle anything that might need a little extra attention or anything that can be paused but won't fall off the list of things you need to do. So if you believe it's impossible for you to do this once a week, I hear you, but I'm not going to completely accept that.  

 

06:40 

I'm gonna ask you to at least start with maybe every other week, or if you have to once a month. See, the process here is you're gonna have to prove to yourself that you can throttle or slow down or adjust all the things coming your way so that you can catch a breath. I mean, imagine yourself working your fingers to the bone. You wouldn't want your team members doing that. You wouldn't want your children doing that. You wouldn't want your leaders or your spouse or your friends doing that. Why would you do that to yourself? And I don't say this from a place of judgment. I'm really asking you to be open to recognize how you might be burning the candle at both ends without really stopping to acknowledge it. How fair are your expectations for yourself? And I wanna ask you that question because if you say, Dana, there's no way I could do this every week.  

 

07:32 

I'm saying, okay, ask yourself how fair you'll be. You are being for yourself to yourself and be willing to try it maybe every other week or once a month, whatever that looks like. And hear me say, you do not need permission to do this no matter where you work, if you work for yourself, if you're the lowest person on the totem pole in a massive organization, doesn't matter. And here's why You were hired to do your job well, if you think doing your job well is saying yes to everything and working overtime when everyone else has completed their work, just so that you kind of are able to take things as they come, but not set boundaries on your schedule, then you're not actually doing your job to the best of its ability. You're not doing your job in a way that's sustainable. So no matter where you are on the infrastructure of the organization that you work, I want you to be able to throttle your week so that you can perform in the way your leadership wants you to.  

 

08:32 

So next I wanna talk a little bit about how we throttle our work life to prep ahead. You know, if you're preparing for a travel day or weeks or time out of the office, or even if it, you know, something unexpected comes up, the ability I have learned over the years to throttle my schedule helps me have a bit of a cushion if something unexpected happens, or if I know that I'll be traveling in the near future. So another key strategy here is to prepare ahead for the days that you'll be out of the office or traveling. And that means identifying the tasks that can be or need to be completed in advance and setting up your work environment so that it can run smoothly in your absence. There are a couple ways to do this. You might be able to delegate or share certain responsibilities.  

 

09:19 

So even if you don't have any direct reports, you might be able to share some responsibilities. You know, I'll, I'll take care of this while you're on vacation, if you'll take care of this while I'm on vacation or delegating. If you do have direct reports, make sure that you're setting up those out of office replies, ensuring that you, everyone on your team knows how to reach you if there's an urgent matter. But here's the caveat there, I want you to go the extra mile and be clear in explaining to your team what does not qualify as an urgent matter. Okay? If you've got five people on your team, there might be five different definitions of what an emergency is. So just make it clear to them, you know what? The world's not gonna fall apart if X, Y, Z happens. I don't want you calling me when I'm at the pool.  

 

10:03 

If you know we lose power for an hour, you ability to give them that clarity, gives them permission to know what they can do in their roles, but it also sets you up to win when you won't be in the office. So you see the preparation here not only helps keep things on track, but it can reduce your anxiety about being away from your desk. It's gonna allow you to step away with confidence knowing that you have set things up for success, that everyone else around you gets to win even when you're not there. And now I want you to think about also kind of, you know, day to day, week to week, when you are in the office, blocking out time for focus. One of the most effective ways to take control of your schedule is to block out a couple hours of focused work on a single project.  

 

10:53 

This dedicated time free from interruptions allows you to dive deeply into a task and to make significant progress. I'm sure many of you probably are familiar with the experience that I certainly have had, which is, I want people, I want to be interruptible, right? I want to be available, but I also wanna be really effective in the work that I'm doing. And every now and again projects come along where we need dedicated time to focus specifically on it. Where if I'm interrupted or you are interrupted, it could take 15 minutes or more to return to kind of the focus position that you were in before you were interrupted. And this is a little bit difficult. You're gonna have to find a way how to do this depending on your workplace. If you work remote, that may not be a problem. If you work in an environment that is kinda like a fishbowl where everyone can see you and you are easily accessible, you might need to, you know, book out a conference room or ask for permission to go work somewhere else for a couple hours, whatever that looks like for you, you've got to advocate for yourself because your work will suffer.  

 

12:00 

And if your work suffers, you're going to make that mean something about your performance, about who you are. So you get to be an advocate for yourself here, to give yourself the time and focus that you need, if you will use it and use it effectively so that your work environment serves you instead of you trying to accommodate the work environment. So the only reason I can imagine that a woman might not be willing to block out time for focus is if she wants to appear, if she wants to appear like she has it all together, or maybe like she's superwoman, right? We don't wanna perpetuate those standards. And I'll go first and say there have been times I have not wanted it to appear that I've had to work hard. You know, the old image of a duck ducks on water, they just glide.  

 

12:48 

They look so smooth, right? Beautiful to watch, but underneath their little feet are just paddling like heck. We don't have to kind of create an image that we don't need to paddle hard at times. In fact, I don't wanna perpetuate that. I wanna create a workplace where the people who work with me know that I need time and space to crank out amazing work. When I write content, when I create a course, it takes large blocks of time not only to prepare it to be in the place mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally to do it so that one hour or one year from now, the woman who is receiving that content is experiencing the best that I could bring. So we wanna let people know that we need time to do amazing work. We are not superstars. We need as much time as anyone else.  

 

13:39 

And if we don't do that at work, we're going to wind up needing to work at a different time. And that creates a little bit of a struggle, not because I understand, you know, not everyone works well during the day. Some people are afternoon people or night owls, whatever that looks like, that's fine. But I mean, generally, if you're not able to create focus, it can really slow up the processes that are happening at work who depend on you. Not only can it be less, less excellent work, but they might be waiting on you. And finding that working with you is a rushed experience because you haven't set the proper boundaries to support yourself to have the environment you need to get the work done. So it can create a major kind of downward spiral that I know you don't want to get on. And I know you don't wanna perpetuate that if there are people on your team who are feeling a sense or a need to get amazing things done and less time, you know, you can go first and kind of create that culture of giving people time and space to do the craft that they were hired to do.  

 

14:43 

So marking out, you know, these blocks of time on your calendar, you wanna mark yourself as unavailable so people don't schedule meetings with you, and you wanna treat it as a non-negotiable appointment with yourself. So this not only helps you stay on track, but it also signals to your colleagues that you are unavailable for meetings or distractions during those time periods. So here's a a little bonus I think that happens whenever we block out time for focus. So your leader, I believe if you're listening to this podcast, you are a leader. And I also believe leaders go first. We take the initiative. So when you set this example of blocking out time for focus in your office, you are giving other people that you work with the permission they need to create focus time for themselves as well. So you're setting a boundary and then you can help them set boundaries for themselves as well.  

 

15:34 

This is going to directly affect the output that your team brings. So I love the idea of blocking out some focus time. And then I want you to think about the idea of protecting your time. This is a little bit different. Having your own back means protecting your time fiercely. You can communicate your boundaries clearly to your coworkers. You can do this in a really loving way. Let them know when you'll be unavailable and why it's important for your productivity and your wellbeing. You can encourage them to try this approach as well. Give them permission. Help foster the culture of respect for focused work time within your team. So there's not only the focused work time element, but this element is protecting that time when it is on your calendar really doing, and the integrity, what you said you were going to do, so that you can help everyone develop that habit.  

 

16:28 

And it's not just a habit, it's truly setting boundaries. By setting these boundaries, you're gonna create a supportive environment where everyone on the team can thrive. And remember, it's not selfish to protect your time. It's actually essential for delivering your best work and maintaining your mental, spiritual, and emotional health. Well, let's talk a little bit about some practical tips I have for implementation with these ideas. I'm sharing with you about how to throttle this sense of overwhelm in your inbox on your to-do list on your schedule in your work life. First tip is to start small. You've heard a few ideas already in this episode. Just pick one of those. You know, maybe just begin with one overflow day or one blocked time slot each week. You can gradually increase this as you see the benefits. Trust me, you are going to, for lack of a better term, really get addicted to the idea of blocking out just a little bit of time to support yourself.  

 

17:32 

Your future self is going to be thanking you to, for having blocked out that time, you know, Friday from 11:00 AM to noon, to catch up on your inbox. Whatever the process is, you are going to be so thankful that you started small. This is a habit, an approach of setting boundaries that can increase in your life over time. But you will see immediate benefits. The second tip is to utilize technology. You know, I've coached so many women who said, well, I'm new in my career, I don't have any direct reports. And I say, well, what kind of technology do you have that you can utilize to support yourself? You know, calendar apps, task management tools, things that are provided for you at work. You can use those to organize your time and set reminders for your blocked periods. And also letting people know, reminding them, yeah, hey, she's not available right now.  

 

18:20 

I used to work on a team where someone had a little card that they were gonna be doing focus time and they would just put it on the back of their monitor and they would put their headphones on and they worked it in the open, like open office space environment. So when I would walk into that open office space, if I wanted to speak to her and her headphones were on, and I saw that her little sign was up, that she was in the middle of focus time, then I knew my best approach to respect her boundary was to just send an email. Because trust me, they might've been important, but they were never really urgent things, right? I knew her focus time was just gonna be a couple of hours. It could completely wait. So use technology to your benefit as your personal assistant.  

 

18:57 

A third practical tip is just to communicate clearly. Anything you do ahead of time is going to support. You have open conversations with your team about this new approach you're taking and how it can benefit everyone. You don't have to sell it to them, but you can show them by example. Share your processes and this approach that you're taking so they don't feel stuck waiting on you. So whether you are out of the office on vacation, or if you have an unexpected sick day, or if you're just in the middle of trying to, you know, get through to a deadline, your team can still know the things they need to know through your excellent communication to keep moving forward so that you've at least got a little bit of time to yourself to be able to focus on what you need to be focusing on in the moment.  

 

19:41 

And I'll give you an example of clear communication for this. So one of my team members, she wrote up her entire job process that she uses for the different tasks that she completes in my business at Dana Buyer's Coaching. And what I love is I know exactly where she does these processes. And if I have a question, so for example, you know, we kind of have some different work hours she can, she has a very flexible work schedule. So if I'm curious as to where she is on a certain project, I can actually just go see her progress and track kind of the tasks completed. Just have a, a quick login somewhere, or check on a shared doc and see how things are coming along without having to text her, email her, or interrupt her. So we can keep each other in a state of flow in our unique tasks by providing each other clarity and access.  

 

20:31 

So that requires trust. But if you do that with your team members, it's going to help them be able to function so well. If for some reason you are unavailable. And the last tip I wanna talk about is review and adjust. I know I'm talking about this very seriously because I take this very seriously, but hear me out, I have been reviewing and adjusting my approach to this for years, and I find it very energizing because the, you know, the things that support me in this season are different than the things that supported me in other seasons. So you can regularly kind of assess how do the strategies, the things I'm working on, how are they working out right now? Do I need to adjust anything? Do what works for you this season. Don't change it if it's not broken. But you give yourself permission to just try it out, to iterate, to review what worked, what didn't work, and then make some adjustments.  

 

21:22 

If you start out with these ideas I'm sharing with you, if you start out with the the mindset that this needs to be perfect, then you won't be able to give yourself the freedom to experience it. That's why I'm giving you this tip to just try it, review it, and adjust. Imagine doing this every week and then over time, a month from now or 90 days from now, you could have experienced so much more freedom and so much less stress because you took the time to care for yourself, to support yourself, to have your own back, and to shift the culture in your workplace where everyone is able to have the focus and the time they need to do their jobs with excellence. So as we wrap up, I wanna remind you, I really believe you have the power to take back control of your time and to break free from the cycle of overwhelm that your inbox and your schedule might be creating for you at work.  

 

22:15 

So if you can throttle your week by preparing ahead, blocking out that focused work time and protecting your schedule, you can create a much more fulfilling work life. And remember, friend, you are not alone in this journey. I am out here with you. We are all out here together trying to improve how we work so that we can show up as our best selves and hear me say it's completely okay to ask for help, to set boundaries and to prioritize your wellbeing. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode on Been There, learned that. Until next time, take care and remember to give yourself the grace and the space that you need to thrive at work. Could you become a strong, empowered woman? Absolutely. I think it's important for all of us to learn how to become empowered women. And that's why I've created a special 30 page free download to a company of things you're learning. On my podcast, you'll get to take true purposeful action towards learning how to feel empowered as a woman after God's own heart. To get your free download, go to dana byers coaching.com/free.