Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.
Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.
Sophia Noreen: What's up everyone? Welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss at podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and today we're gonna be chatting about productivity and making the most out of your day. My favorite topic, I would say, and I think the reason why is because, of course, as many of you know, I have many things going on in my career as well as my side hustle, which is scaling and is leaving Walmart for the fourth season.
Again, for many of you who may be new to the channel or new to the podcast, we have a product-based business called also Sophia, and the business basically provides products for minority festivals. And we are in Walmart, Canada on a seasonal basis. So depending on the season, we have usually a setup going on there.
Anyways, I digress. And the reason I'm just filling you in on that is because, I have to be really diligent on how I prioritize my time because as many of you know, I'm a mother as well. So there are other obligations that I have to be mindful of, and I know most of you who are catching us on the podcast or on the YouTube channel.
Are also parents or students, and you have multiple facets of your life that you want to continue providing for or giving attention to. And so we have to be really smart about where we put our energy, our time, and of course our attention, right? If we don't do that, then we deplete ourselves and we feel like we haven't accomplished what we would like during the time that we.
So I have a few tricks. I have shared them in past episodes. I will link them below or I will link them within the YouTube channel video somewhere, depending if it is a video, and you guys can catch those after you finish this episode. So that way you feel like you are getting a sense of how I'm managing.
And the goal for you is to take a few of these tips and provide those examples as motivation for you and. You can action them in your own life. If Sophia can do it, you can do it too. There's nothing special about me. I'm just like everyone else. Mother have of course a side hustle going on. And then of course we have a career that's also there.
So again guys, the goal is for you to try to take a few of these tips and really put them into action. So make a conscious effort to take a few of these away. Okay? Let's get into those. Okay, the first tip I have is look at your calendar and look at your energy level and decide what deliverables are you going to put at what time of the day.
For example, I would not put anything that requires a ton of numbers at the end of the day for myself. Because my attention and energy is lower. So if I'm working with numbers, if I'm in my QuickBooks, if I'm doing some type of financial analysis or budget, it's gonna happen at a point in the day when I have a little bit more bandwidth and attention.
And generally that would be in the morning for me from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock, I try to put those projects, the ones that are nitty gritty. And so you have to ask your. What time of the day do you have the most energy? And I would always put those projects that require the most attention at that time.
I also like to do meetings in the mornings, so it does become a bit of a juggle. I do feel more social in the mornings, and I like to meet with people in the mornings. But sometimes the afternoon does need to take that time slot because I reserve those really high priority deliverables that require ton of attention from the morning.
And then I'll try to put an afternoon meeting. I'm very diligent on trying to ensure that my calendar's set up for me for success, and I'll actually take the to-dos of my day and I'll slot them into my calendar. That's a huge. That many people do not do. But if the deliverable led to do, for example, is like a financial report, I'll make sure it takes its own appointment time in my calendar at a time of the day when I feel prepared to do it.
So segmenting your day is extremely important, and then understanding where you can actually successfully complete that deliverable or have that meeting with that individual. Say for example, it's a board meeting if you have a board or if it's a investor meeting, if you have the opportunity to go and pitch to an investor, put it at a time of the day if you have the control to do so.
When you have the most energy and you feel like you can deliver your. So that is the first tip, is taking your calendar and optimizing it for your success. Again, you own your calendar. Don't let your calendar own you. And if you are able to do that, then you'll more likely feel empowered to get going every morning.
Another really great strategy I find is segmenting your days of the week. So again, I'm pretty strategic on the way I set up my calendar. During the week. So for example, I really do put Tuesdays and Fridays for meetings. And the reason I like to do that is because I get into the meeting mode, right? So one meeting, next meeting, I know that I have to prepare for the meetings perhaps, and those are occurring on a weekly or biweekly basis.
So I tend to meet with people weekly or biweekly, and those meetings will rotate, and they're slotted in those days of the week. So Tuesday and Friday. And then we also have community partners, and I tend to meet with them. I try to put those on Thursdays, so then if somebody's helping me manage the calendar, they know, Okay, Thursdays is generally the day when she has the opportunity to meet with a community partner, and it just happens to be like that, and it's been working out fantastic.
That leaves me, my Mondays and my Wednesdays for either catch up time, office hours, as I like to call it. So I'm spending a lot of time going through emails, catching up on those things that I have might have missed. And also, it's like a wild card, right? So if there's something that has come up, something that's like you can't deal with during the other days of the week, you say, Okay, I'm gonna deal with that on Mondays or Wednesdays.
So my goal for you is to look at your calendar. And if you have multiple things going on, say you are working your full-time or part-time position. You're studying, you're going to class, or you are perhaps in between jobs, and we would like to do some job hunting and or work on your side hustle. Really chunk out your days of the week and say, Okay, well this day is all about my YouTube channel.
I'm gonna do my YouTube channel on Mondays, which means that I'm gonna write my scripts, I'm gonna figure out what my topics are. I'm gonna make my thumb. I'm gonna do everything I need to do for my YouTube channel on Monday, and then on Wednesday I'm going to record everything that leaves me the rest of the week to do my other projects and or other obligations.
And I say use the strategy as well for everyday life, right? We do hear about this quite often where people will say, My laundry day, right? Or my cooking day. And it's because you get into that mindset of that is what is expected every week, and it's a lot easier to stay on top of it and accountable to it.
So really chunking out your calendar. Is a great way of achieving that momentum as well. And then of course, as we spoke about before, go ahead and look at your timetable and see where you can chunk out your times so you feel the most energized. And the last tip I am going to share with you guys today is all about having the ability to do a daily shutdown.
Now I've started this recently and really what it does is it allows me to not only close the windows, I have a ton of window tabs open. I'm not sure if you are in the same boat or like, you know, chrome tabs, whatever it is. You tend to open a ton of tabs during the day or a ton of documents, and then you perhaps don't shut them.
That's what was happening with me. I was leaving them open and then my computer would get mad and then I didn't wanna shut it down cause I wasn't done a. So I'm really being cognizant of this and I'm trying to shut things down, save them, put them in the right folders. I'm trying to make sure my inbox is sitting somewhere close to zero, so I'm not sitting there with hundreds in the not thousands of emails.
Now, you can probably go through past episodes, and I may have talked about this before, but. I essentially have some inboxes that have like 10,000 unread emails. Really bad habit. I don't recommend it. So my conscious effort now is to do the shutdown. Try to make sure I clean out the inbox that I'm working on that day, because you know, if I'm chunking at my day, there'll be some days when I'm not in a few inboxes.
But if I'm in an inbox for part. Job. So if I'm doing my nine to five, I'm in that inbox. I make sure I shut it down, shut down all the tabs, shut down all the windows, shut down all the Excel files or spreadsheets or whatever I have. And then here's where the magic comes in. I look at the to-do list and I say, Hey, I didn't get to this today.
I'm gonna schedule it in for tomorrow or the next day. And I actually make an invite for myself to work on that deliverable because if it's on the to-do list, it can get very overwhelming. I've shared this tip a lot with people that I work. I do oversee about 40 plus people right now. And so when we do have the one-on-ones or I have a session with them and they're saying, I feel like I have too many deliverables, or I'm not able to time manage, I hear that a lot.
I'm not time managing well. That is why number one tip for them is make an appointment with yourself to do that deliverable. Then you're not thinking about it anymore. You know that time is reserved and I always say, try to double the time that you think it will take because you'd be surprised. And how long some things will take you, and that way you're not stressed to do it, cuz I believe you don't need to be stressed to do your work, right?
Unless you're in a stressful situation like you're in the emergency room or you're a paramedic, or you're firefighter, that's your job. That's an emergency. That's stressful, that's an emergency. But for the most part, many of us, especially if you're watching this, it should not be stressful. It's not life or death.
It is whatever your deliverable is. Instead of raising your corticosteroids, you're getting all your stress hormones elevated. Try your best to schedule it. Give yourself enough time, be proactive. You don't need to wait till the last minute. Just because you wanna procrastinate doesn't mean you procrastinate.
You just say it's not allowed. So when you do your daily shutdown, you are telling yourself, I am planning for the next day. I know what to expect. I understand my obligations for the next few days, and that daily shutdown will give you a breath of fresh air. Then you can walk away from whatever you had to do that day and say, I've shut it down and now I'm gonna go enjoy it.
With my family, enjoy it. With yoga, the rest of my day is for me and for the other side of my life, and that will prevent you from getting overwhelmed. It'll also help you segment your day in such a way that your work life is not running into your family life or your friend life or your social life or whatever, because that happens a lot, especially post pandemic.
Many of us don't have that transition period from work to home. When you drove your car or took the subway or bus or boat you walked, or bike ride, or whatever it was to go from point A to point B, that was a good transition time for you to be able to shut down and close off that day. Now many of us are living in a situation where you're working from a room in your house and you're not shutting down, and then you're not segmenting your day, and then you're working at night, and then you feel overwhelmed, burned out, and not enjoying the work.
I highly suggest doing the shutdown. I'm trying my best with that as well, and I'll keep you posted on how it goes, but I think that's one of the tips that many of us are really failing at right now because we don't have that bridge or that gap between work and home. Okay guys, that is all of my tips for today on how to make the most of your day be as productive as possible.
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