Too Many Ideas & Too Little Time? What to Focus on FIRST | Marie Forleo Time Management

listen to The Quiet higher self and tap in and say hey if I were going to move ahead with just one project for the next six months which project is going to make the most impact for me what do I want the most hey it's Marie forleo and welcome to another episode of the Marie forleo podcast and marietv the place to be to create a business and life you love and we're doing something we love today which is q a Tuesday and today's question comes from dree Murray hi Marie my name is dree Marie and I am in Edinburgh Scotland my question is how do you prioritize your time and how do you manage your time when you still have a day job and you are just starting your business and you have many Big Ideas and a huge vision and very little time to implement things what would you advise and what are your thoughts on this tree thank you so much so we just played that question I appreciate you for submitting it and I also just want to say oh my goodness this is so relatable and thank you for sharing it so first thing I don't know if you know this there was actually quite a big study done in the U.S where they tracked about 5 000 entrepreneurs over 14 years and guess what they found that entrepreneurs who started companies while they still had a day job were 33 percent less likely to fail meaning wow yes and so I always like to trot out that little study because that was me when I started my business I had multiple day jobs and I know so many successful business owners who started off with day jobs so I just want you to let you know that you are in very good company and it doesn't have to be a limitation I think it could actually be a strength in more ways than just your company surviving but really training you to pay attention to what matters most and how to really focus your time and your energy in a way that is effective and impactful and that helps you get the move the needle done kind of activities and leave away all of the fluff so my first question for you is are you more of a morning person or an evening person meaning do you find that you get like your best ideas and your clearest thinking and your most energy in the morning or at night are you like oh my goodness I just can't go to sleep because this brain and I want to do all the things which which type do you tend to be morning morning yes absolutely awesome and then my second question was this what kind of business are you starting I am coaching women to heal their relationship with food and with their bodies beautiful okay love this so morning person and you're starting a coaching in an information service based business yes okay so here is my answer to your question if I were you and I was you this is what I did I carved out non-negotiable time every single day and for me I'm a morning person as well I still do this to this day when I'm working on big new projects that are apart from my day job of running the business yeah that non-negotiable time in the morning is miraculous it helped me get my book done it helped me create the new program that I'm inviting you you need to get your butt in it time genius it has helped me accomplish every major thing that I've ever wanted to create and put out into the world especially when I was short on time and if it's okay with you I wanted to actually share a little story from someone internally on our team who has been using not only the time genius methods but this one in particular to create spectacular results so she's a super high performer on our team she's a senior editor and she loves writing so not only does she support myself and our whole company with the writing but she's also a brilliant creative writer and one of her Big Dreams has been to write novels she started waking up she also has a uh I think her toddler's five years old right now so here's what she wrote she says I have a five-year-old so at seven a.m I need to be with her making breakfast and she starts work for our company at 8am yeah and she says that by the time 5 PM rolls around and her daughter's back home that she is exhausted and she's like there's no way in hell I can write then so she said for the past three years I've been waking up at 5 30 to prioritize my personal writing she takes about 30 minutes to like wake up and have her coffee and then she puts everything on do not disturb mode like everything and she's does about um six to seven a.m she writes consistently she said she's published about a hundred thousand words over that time outlined three books she's actually sold one of her books to a major publisher and she says and you know keep my day job which is her day job with me um and so she said in order to do that she's had to go to bed earlier and that she said this might be too much info but she said I started wearing a wristband that vibrates because when she gets up at 5 30 she didn't want to wake up her husband and so with her wristband vibrating that just allows her to do it and then to not cause problems in the marriage yes so for you my dear have you or can you commit to carving out even if it's a little bit of chunk of time in the morning to start really hitting it with your business yes yes I can and I'm going to have to look to the bedtime routine to be able to do it like it has to start yeah yeah and you know what I have done it before I know it's doable it's like doing it on the lens the length of time that's right yeah and you know it's challenging and you won't have to do it forever and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do it every single day of every single month of the entire year but if you did that about 80 of the time and like 20 of the time whether it's weekends or you know there's something special going on you're like look I just I need a minute yeah my goodness dree you will be shocked at how far you will get fast and and tell me if I got this right you're a copycure student yeah I am yes yes so I love that I love that so that means that you've got all of the tools and you got training there to really dial in your messaging I'll tell you this um whether it's time genius which again is like an extraordinary program I believe in all my stuff because it's really good it works right I wouldn't be here if it doesn't but b-school is actually going to be brand new this year too we're not doing that and for another couple months but we've rebuilt the whole thing from the bottom up so it's like every single and no one's seen it yet so brand new yeah because I'm also a schooler um so then you I didn't know that so you'll have access to all that already so that's coming for you yes exactly so you're in on that as it is but I'm telling you it's hard in the beginning as you know it's like you've got this beautiful job which I'm sure you're grateful for because it pays the bills and now it's about just expanding your capacity to focus and get things done and since you're B school or you know this we want to focus on the marketing and the money making stuff first there's going to be all the shiny objects that all the people are going to be like you should be posting a gajillion times a day lady you don't need to as you know yeah this is about getting those clients getting them in the door and setting nice little goals for yourself every morning like okay if I know I'm creating this program do I need the marketing what do I need to do in order to get this business going even more yeah yeah that makes it makes so much sense so so then for me for me the piece where I get a bit stuck is as I said in my question because I have so much I want to be doing so I'm I'm in talks to start a podcast I'm writing a book I'm interviewing a lot of women about their relationships with food and body and stuff to write a book about it um I'm also you know I'm told but you need to be growing your mailing list no you need to be nurturing your mailing list so you need to be writing your newsletters and doing your thing and it's like I want to do so much what do I what do I do first what what should I prioritize it's a great question so I'll give you my opinion on that and I have strong opinions one I think that you should always be nurturing and growing your list nurturing your list also helps maintain it and it could be growing if I were you I would have like one day at least a week that was all around that nurturing and that list growth so I'd go there then in terms of a podcast versus a book I would step back and by the way I can relate to this so well my team knows this very well I've got ideas coming out of every orifice all the time of all the things that I want to do yeah thank gosh I have learned over time that I can actually create more havoc and not get anything done with all of my ideas so I've had to really discipline myself and step back and go okay what do I want most in some Seasons I am excited about seeing Financial expansion when that's the truth I know that the opportunity for me to make an impact and also to see our Revenue grow is going to be around creating a new particular program right and I'm like oh well that's going to be really fun there's other Seasons where I'm like oh my gosh like when everything is figureoutable when I was like I knew it was time to write a book I said I know this is not the most lucrative thing I know it's actually going to take a lot of time away from other things that could grow the business in different ways but I knew the long-term growth and the long-term impact of that particular project was worth the sacrifice of a few years of me putting my head down yeah yeah so what I'm going to invite you to do Dre is really take some of this time in the morning or even in the evenings when you're showering when you're walking around when you're doing something that's maybe not at the computer and rather than letting the spinny like oh my God I have so many ideas listen to The Quiet higher self and tap in and say hey if I were gonna move ahead with just one project for the next six months which project is going to make the most impact for me what do I want the most is it to have that audience growth from a podcast are you like oh my gosh I just can't wait to start a podcast or are you starting a podcast because someone told you you should start a podcast or you're like oh it kind of sounds like fun and I think I should or is it like oh my gosh if I had this book book would change everything it would increase my credibility it would allow me to get on other people's podcast which would grow my list it would sell my other Pro does that make sense it makes complete sense yeah so I want you to start stepping back and not only tapping into your higher self but tap into your strategic self too the one who thinks about okay what sequence should this go in right what's going to get me to the place that I think is most important to get to what feels the best where do I have the most juice what's going to make the most impact and again if it's important to you what's going to make the most money it may or may not be significant for you right now but I think it's an important thing to look at yes and to use those kind of questions as your filter questions to make a decision because you can't do everything at once it's going to drive you crazy no why is that it's well we're blessed as entrepreneurs with lots of ideas and lots of energy we're blessed as creators to have all of these big dreams but we have to learn the lesson of how to bring them to life joyfully and in my experience it's not about spending you know 15 different plates at once three or four maybe yeah if we're one or two awesome because we can get something done we can complete it we can ship it and we can move on to something else more quickly that requires um discipline and discern which you have that potential in you but I think you might need to strengthen that muscle yeah it was that was very much at the heart of my question I think just is it is it a matter of following the excitement following the energy even if you know conventional business wisdom or whatever says like but you're not gonna make any money straight away if you focus on your book or you're you know but well when I feel that excitement it's like correct it feels alive you know if it feels alive and you are going into a project Eyes Wide Open that's what matters most so I've made many decisions in my business career that on paper didn't seem like they were the wisest business choice but it was the right business choice for me yeah right so as long as dree you are going into these decisions with eyes wide open like hey you know a book in my opinion most of the time unless it's self-published a book is mostly a big business card it's not the kind of thing that unless you become a Stephen King or an Elizabeth Gilbert or and by the way not to say that you can't but I don't hear from you that that's necessarily your aspiration yeah it appeals to me like you have this beautiful message that you know could transform your ideal customers lives and you want to have it in book form so it can be accessible to even more women would that be accurate yes absolutely yeah yeah so you know it is a beautiful tool that can help get you on podcasts that can help introduce you and your work and your methodology to a larger number of women um I think it's incredible as long as you know that putting effort and energy and time into this isn't necessarily going to have an immediate financial gain it will be a tool that helps you grow that business in many ways that are far beyond just the book yes yeah absolutely that that makes that makes complete sense and it makes even more sense if I suddenly open that window of time in the morning to be able to do some of that and you know nurture the list that I do have yeah that's right and you did those two things and you'd be like wow I am making huge progress on my book I am nurturing the list that I do have and ideally doing a couple of strategies to grow it then all of a sudden whether you choose to go to a publisher and you want to do a more traditional deal or honestly these days sometimes it's much more lucrative and much faster and you can just get things out in a much quicker way to have a version of self-publishing or or there's kind of hybrid versions that exist now yes that's something that you might want to consider because it can be win-win all around and I think that um having all of these considerations for you in play is going to help you take that beautiful chunk of sacred time in the morning and feel really good about how you're using it and the one last thing I'll say is the ideas won't stop coming right this is a beautiful gift that you have this is a gift that we share as entrepreneurs what I do is I collect all my ideas I'm like oh just this more morning I'm going to be honest with you before we got on this I was on GoDaddy buying yet another domain name it's like I'm not addicted to many things but my goodness I'm addicted to domain names because I had an idea for another book or slash program so figure out a beautiful way for you to capture and hold those ideas whether it's a Google doc or a journal or someplace where you don't necessarily feel like you're like but I gotta do it right now and if I don't do it right now it's gonna go away where you just want to hold them in their beautiful little holding pen and you're like no mama is working on the book right now looks gonna get the attention and then when you've got a little bit more time up you can go you know take a look around in that little pen of ideas and go pluck one other one out you know I really really love that actually it feels like if I found a way to rather than have everything swirling around in my head and I've noticed that so many times before we're just writing everything down capturing the ideas having a you know it's just like okay I can see they're not going anywhere you know right they're used to them that's right they're safe they're not losing them and for me again uh as someone who can battle ADHD and just being like whoa there's a lot happening up here yeah it has been one of the most therapeutic and soothing and uh peacemaking activities that I can do is like write it out get it out of my head get it onto the paper get it onto the page and then again if there's a simple action I can do like I'm buying a URL I'm going to do it because I don't want anyone else to scoop up that URL but after that I'm gonna I'm Gonna Leave it I'm gonna stay focused on the task at hand yeah yeah that makes so much sense thank you so much that really well clarifies clarifies a lot of things yes and and have fun make that morning time what I do is like this morning it happened um there my where I am right now like my lawn furniture was uncovered and it started raining and I was like oh I need to like get up and it was earlier than I and I'm like out in the dark covering my furniture but I'm like I'm gonna turn this into a party I'm gonna make my coffee I put on beautiful music Kuma was hanging out with me so set yourself up dree to have like the most magical morning you know if it's a little earlier than you're used to waking up get your coffee or your tea or like whatever your morning drink of choice is like set up your area where you're gonna work the night before so you come down the stairs or you come into that little space feeling like a queen yeah and it's gonna be so good to get that hour or hour and a half or half out whatever it is that little amount of work done and then you can shift into getting ready for your day job and walk into that day job feeling like a boss like I did this and now I got to show up here and contribute here and you're gonna feel so good yeah that sounds that sounds amazing I wonder what can I ask you what time does Marie forleo get up like what time do you wake up yeah yeah it varies it can be anywhere from like the 5 a.m range to like the 6 a.m range and that usually depends on um honestly the the time I went to bed the night before and what big project I'm working on so usually for me after I have created something like right now I'm in the finishing up of all of the new b-school stuff yeah once I've completed everything that I'm doing here I'm gonna need a minute like a couple of weeks where I'm not waking up every morning and like going for it just to give my brain that reset and I found over the years that that really helped so it might be like two or three weeks where I'm just like I'm waking up and I'm taking my walk or I'm doing my journaling or my meditation and then I can kind of get back into another mode but usually between between 5 and 6 a.m depending on the seasons and like how my body's feeling yeah see that because that was if if you don't mind it's just the one last thing that's been yeah around this whole question is simply the energy the you know the energy fluctuations the having a day job means that there can feel it can feel like there's so much pressure on the days that I have free to work on my business to be like you know 100 and it can be like I'm I can be feeling just ill that day or or not well or really tired and it's like it's that management of refueling making sure I look after myself making sure that sometimes I step I step away as well yeah and I just wonder if you have any any thoughts that I absolutely do I'm gonna tell you my thoughts around that and then based on that question that last part of that question I am giving you my heartiest invitation please join us for time genius it will forget I'm not and again I'm not saying this selfishly if you signed up and you're like this sucks you can get your money back in a second which you've been experience in my programs you know right we overdo everything in the best way so here's my answer we live in a culture right now that is very much drowned in messaging that if you're not hustling 24 7 on your business that if you're not going for it at every waking minute that you're lazy and you don't want it enough and in my opinion that is a really destructive message it is a message that I kind of absorbed and thought was the truth and nearly killed me yeah and what I've discovered is that you know on those days where it's like you don't have your day job you may need a full weekend or three or four days where you need to clear your head you need to rest you need to be nourished by other things other people and have a complete break so we human beings we are amazing right I never want to put a limit on anyone but when you're like when something starts to not feel right you have to trust that and it doesn't make you wrong it doesn't make you lazy the times when I have had that drum beat of a message in my head like okay every waking moment every single thing you gotta it has grinded my creativity and my joy and my energy which was a word that you mentioned to a halt and Josh is actually awesome with me on this one and he'll he can see and detect when I'm like going into a place where I'm like I'm withering he's like you you need to either come to the beach you need to do that I'm like you are absolutely right because I'm going down a not so good place and Dree every single time I take that break whether it's a day or two days or like I was telling you once I kind of complete a milestone I give myself a little bit of a breather and then I come back with Monster Energy yeah and monster clarity and it's not like oh I'm gonna go you know take six months off not that that's bad if that was my choice less but usually it's like honestly a day or two yeah or maybe three and I come back and I'm like what's up like it's a whole new thing so on those times when you feel crunchy and you can tell that your body is starting to to feel withered and your brain just can't take anymore you need to take a break yes yeah I mean I feel like that's what I basically burnt out like at the end of my first year of starting things getting things started because I like I wasn't seeing my friends anymore like I mean it was like and suddenly realized when was the last time I went for a coffee with a with a dear friend on that day because I'm supposed to be working on my business so you know and it did it burnt me out completely and I think that's what contributed to me actually asking you that that question because I was like how do you imagine yes no sustainable success for me you know it is it is the way to go I am extremely passionate energetic person and I'm also human yes and I really have learned to not do the punishing version of success to not do the punishing version all the time it's like to really pay attention and to show up to do all the things that we know to do to fuel our bodies to take care of our health all that's super important that's why we're talking about sleep right it's like I don't want you getting up earlier unless we're really accounting for it on the back side so that you're taking care of what your body needs to feel and be its best yeah um but but definitely experiment with um with the amount of kind of free time that really helps you you know computer no reading self-development you know what I mean just like really break away you know come back and you'll find the ideas and the energy are at a level 10. yeah yeah that's awesome that's good thank you so much for such a fantastic question I'm going to keep everything crossed I'm gonna see you in the Fallen time genius but either which way this should give you a great little road map um for how to get your most important projects done and to feel great while you do it that's brilliant thank you so much Murray this this is great and I've oh and I wanted to show you because I know you love the Smurfs that I've been writing all of this on my one of my favorite Smurf albums which is in French what done my notes I just worked for the best I'm so I didn't even know I mean this is the best thing ever you might have heard me tell this story but like I was one of the first official members of the Smurf fan club as a kid they like would send out newsletters it was there was no internet yet but they sent out newsletters like they had a whole list and I was on their list and they sent me like a velcro little wallet it's is the best thing ever I was like woo yes I thought you know what I'm meeting with Marie I'm gonna have my little uh my little album oh my goodness I love that conversation I hope you did too if so let me know in the comments below and by the way if you want to radically increase not only your productivity but your joy two to five x your creative output earn more work less play more come to jointime genius.com this program it's mind freaking blowing and I personally guarantee it you can get your money back if you don't like it so come join us for it it will radically change your life it continues to change mine and until next time stay on your game and keep going for your Big Dreams because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you soon one of the biggest differences that I made that allowed me to create the results that I'm really proud of is designing my day with intention

Channel: Marie Forleo

Views: 17,341

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Id: y-3LQ_Io1WE

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2022