#18. Use My Time Buckets System to Manage Your Time (and an exciting offer!)
Episode Shownotes:
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with an endless To Do List running through your brain? Do you struggle with keeping track of all the things you have to do as an SLP, a mom, and a spouse? That's exactly why I created The Time Bucket System and I
m sharing it with you today. Once you start implementing this simple three-step system, you'll wonder how you managed your time without it. Grab the Time Buckets Resource here and get started today!
Don't miss out on the live Virtual Planning Event for 2024. Together on October 27, 2023, well set your goals for 2024 and map out a plan for how to achieve them. All who join will have complimentary access to my Q1 2024 Digital Planner as well as the digital planner for the entire year before it goes on sale to the public. Sign up here!
Mentioned in This Episode:
**Download your free Time Buckets Resource here.
**Register for the Virtual Planning Event here.
**Learn more about working together for free.
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today to learn about how I can help you take back control of your time.
Come join the FB Group SLP Support Group for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
Episode Transcript*:
This is Your Speech Path: Mindful Time Management for the Busy SLP. My name is Theresa Harp and, as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnt out and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in.
Hello SLPs, welcome to Episode 18 of the podcast, where today I'm talking about my Time Buckets System for scheduling, planning, time management, all of that fun stuff. So that's what we're talking about today, and I want to invite you to stay on until the end of the episode, because when I am finished talking about this system and how you can use it, I do have some exciting news to share. So make sure you hang on to the end and listen to that, because you're not going to want to miss it.
So The Time Buckets System is something that I created several years ago and it's kind of evolved over time, but I created it really for myself and this was, I think, at the beginning of my kind of pivot from a speech pathologist to a time management coach. This is like when this was all sort of happening for me during COVID is when I first came up with this concept and then I've sort of tweaked it and modified it over time and it's evolved a bit, but I really wanted to share it with you today because I think it's going to be really useful for those of you who are moms and SLPs and you're working to manage your time in all these different areas of your life. So I think this will make a little bit more sense as you listen. But I want to give you a little bit of the backstory about how this came about.
So I don't remember exactly when this was. I think it was in the early COVID stages and maybe I was just returning to work after COVID and I had just had my fourth baby a few months before the pandemic started here and I was feeling, I remember feeling like there was this intense, heavy mental load that was like this running To Do List in my brain of all of these items, all these things that I had to get done, that I felt like I had to get done and they were just running through my head just constantly. I'm sure all of you who are listening can relate. Right, I'm like “Okay, I got to pick up dinner. I got to pick up chicken for dinner tonight. Oh, I didn't schedule the dentist appointments for the kids yet, I didn't respond to the invitation to that birthday party. Oh yeah, birthdays, I've got a birthday gift that I have to get for my son. I never updated the show notes from my last podcast episode. Oh yeah, speaking of podcast episodes, I wanted to order a new microphone…” So you can kind of see how our brains are. Like playing ping pong. It's just going back and forth from all of the different things that we're thinking about and for me, I felt like I was being pulled in a million different directions and I just knew that there was something was going to slip through the cracks, like something was going to a ball was going to get dropped, something was going to get missed, and the pressure of that was exhausting and I knew I needed a way to sort of organize all of this information in my head and to be able to use it, to be able to access it, to be able to have, like you know, a place where I could go and look at it and know exactly what had to get done, because otherwise I was just in reactive mode and I was going from one thing to the next. I would sit down to do work, and then I would remember that I needed to do something for the kids and I would get up and I would go do that and then, you know, I would remember I needed to make a phone call, and so then I would go do that and it was all over the place, right. And whether that is, you know, ADD, whether that's mom brain, whether that's just, you know, women, there's so many different ways that you could look at this and there's so many different reasons why that might be happening. But I know that it happened to me and I know that it happens to all of you.
So in order to sort of get a hold of all of that, so to speak, I came up with The Time Buckets System. So what I'm going to do is give you an overview of this system. There's three steps to it. I'm going to walk you through each step, but what I want you to do is, when you are listening to this and you're not driving and not running around, there is a link in the show notes that takes you to a downloadable free resource that talks about what I'm talking about here on the podcast. So make sure you download that because it will give you this overview in that resource and it gives you the the worksheets to actually do this yourself. Okay, so I just want to make sure that you know that that resource is there and, again, the link for that is in the show notes, all right? So now that I got that out of the way, let me talk you through each of the three steps, okay.
So the first step to using this Time Bucket System is to do, if you know me, this will not surprise you, to do a brain dump. So what I'm going to encourage you to do is when you can either take the free resource, open up the free resource in the show notes, or just grab a piece of paper and brain dump either all of the tasks that are on your mental to-do list, or, if you don't have a running to-do list in your brain, then you can brain dump the things that you spend your time on, and I would encourage you to do this by sort of walking yourself through your day. Every day might look different, that's okay, but just sort of walk yourself through any given day and write down the things that you spend your time on. And the things that I want you to put on your list are tasks. So the tasks that you spend your time on. But I still also want you to write down things that you spend your time doing that maybe there isn't like an end result. So, for example, making school lunches, that is something that it's a task. There is an end result, there's a “check done” spot of that task. Right, you do it, it's done. But I also want you to write down the things that you spend your time on that maybe there is no end product, it's just something that you spend time doing. So, for example, I don't know, watching a show, reading a book I suppose you could say there's an end result with that, but you hopefully get the idea going out to lunch with friends, the things that you just like to spend your time doing. So you're going to brain dump either the tasks on your mental to-do list or the things that you spend your time doing in a day, once you've done that, once you've done that.
Actually, let me pause here for a moment. Somebody shared recently another SLP maybe she's listening. She was talking about how she's trying to use brain dumps with her private practice, with her employees, and how some employees were sharing resistance to doing a brain dump because they didn't want to see all of the tasks. They didn't want to see all of those things on a list. They were feeling that doing that would actually be counterproductive because it would make them more overwhelmed rather than less. What I will say to that is you know you, and so if that is the case for you, then don't do this. Then this may not be the system for you, but what I would challenge you if you feel like that's you, what I would challenge you a little bit on is ask yourself what is the mental load of keeping these things in my brain. What is the cost of just having these things in my brain, or even the cost of having them in my brain and trying really hard not to have them in my brain, like, oh, don't think about that. Okay, yeah, don't think about that evaluation report you have to write. Oh, don't think about that hard client that you have to plan a session for and you don't know what you're doing. I would wager a bet that you probably have those things running through your mind already causing you stress, and so just think about that a little bit and see if that resonates with you. Okay, but for those of you that are on board with a good brain dump, that's what you're going to do. That's step number one.
Another thing I would say is don't worry about missing things on this list. You're going to think of a million more things as you go, so you can always go back and add them to the brain dump. The point of this exercise is not to have absolutely everything on the list. That's unrealistic and unnecessary, quite frankly. The point of the exercise is to have the general frequent flyers, so to speak, that come up for you and your to-do lists and your tasks, and to enable you to see the things that you're spending time on and to start identifying areas where maybe you have either too much going on or you don't have enough happening, and you might be wondering well, how could that be? I definitely have way too much going on, but bear with me, it'll make more sense when we get to step two, which is where we're headed now.
So let's talk about step two. Once you have that brain dump finished, you're going to start to categorize these things, and this is when you start creating your buckets. So the buckets are essentially categories of things that you spend your time on. So everyone's buckets are going to look a little bit different, and that's the beauty of The Time Buckets System is that it can be individualized. So my buckets, my time categories, might be a little bit different than yours, and one of the ways that you're going to figure this out is by looking at the tasks that are showing up for you, because these are the things that are sort of your recurring activities, your weekly or daily routines and things that you just have to do over and over, plus the things that maybe you do every once in a while, like scheduling I don't know annual doctor's appointments or flu shots or stuff like that. So my Time Bucket categories I'm going to give them to you so that maybe this helps you conceptualize this a little bit more easily. But my categories are business, so that's it's really work. So I put all my work tasks in one bucket. I've got my household bucket, so the routines and the tasks and things that I have to do to run the house, that's things like you know doing laundry and you know cleaning toilets or whatever other things you have to do to run your house cleaning out filters of, like you know, the HVAC system or the I don't know whatever, like daily or weekly or monthly or quarterly things that you have to do to keep your house running. Okay, my third bucket is my family, so that those are the things like spending time with the kids, taking them to practice, like driving them wherever they need to go, making appointments for them, those kinds of things. And then my fourth bucket is Me, so things that I spend my time on for myself, like reading, watching a show, exercising, you know, spending time with friends, family, whatever. It's the things that I do for me. And what I noticed when I brain dumped and I started to categorize, when I actually put the tasks into those buckets, I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I could very quickly see number one, where my time was going, and number two, which quote unquote buckets were too full and which buckets were too empty. So this is what I was talking about a couple of minutes ago, where, when I did this, the family bucket, I mean, it was just it was overflowing. There were so many things that I had to do in order to, you know, do all of the, all the things that it requires to have four kids that you're taking care of, and and so that bucket was very, very full versus my Me bucket—I think it had three things: I think it had exercise, it had maybe reading and I have to say I have not done a whole lot of reading this year, but in the past I do read pretty, not not a ton, but a good amount. It's a nice stress relief for me, sort of like my break, and I think maybe the I don't even remember what the third thing was maybe, you know, watching shows, resting, whatever. Okay, so that bucket was definitely not full at all and it was…it was an eye opener because I realized, number one, I wasn't giving enough to myself, and that's a topic for a whole other episode, and number two, I realized very quickly why I felt so overwhelmed, and it also made me identify things that needed to be delegated, things that needed to be eliminated. Like, do I really have to, I don't know, do the landscaping in the house? Like, do the weeding and the mowing and whatever do it? Like, do I really need to do that? Is that something that someone else can do? Is that something that maybe we just don't do right now, like maybe that's just not a thing. We do the bare minimum, obviously we need to mow the lawn, but or someone needs to mow the lawn, but maybe we don't need to be mulching all the trees, right? So it helps you to sort of identify things that you don't want to do yourself anymore and you want to have somebody else do that, or and or. You just don't want to do it all. You just don't want to do right now at all, like it's just not going to happen, okay. So I encourage you to start thinking about what your categories are. Once you look at your brain dump, you're going to start figuring out what are the big categories that you spend your time on. Okay, so, for those of you that own a private practice, that's probably going to be one bucket is your private practice and there's going to be so much stuff in that bucket to take, you know, take care of, keep track of and all that stuff right. Then you might maybe you have a bucket for maybe you're caring for a family member you know a parent, and that takes up a good amount of time. That could be its own bucket, right, and I want to say that there really is no right or wrong way to do this. I think you have to. You know yourself and I think you have to really think about how your brain works and what makes the most sense for you. So don't worry about getting this right or getting this wrong, because there really is no right or wrong, it's just whatever is right for you.
Okay, so once you have your buckets with your categories, you're going to use those for planning. So what I do when it comes—this is step three—what I do with those time buckets is, at the beginning of the week I sit down and I have those buckets just sort of empty on a piece of paper and I look ahead to the week. I look at the schedule and I say, okay, what is going on for my coaching business, what's going on for my grad students, for the you know, the grad class that I teach? What's going on for my family, what's going on for me, what's got to get done in the house? And I start brain dumping all the things that need to happen in. I just start writing them out in the bucket that it goes with. So I see, okay, we've got, I've got to finish the Halloween costumes, because that's coming up. I need to order candy for Halloween. I need to get a birthday gift. I need to send out birthday invitations. Oh, that means I need to make the invitation first so that I can send it, which means I also need to have the guest list. I got to write down who's being invited to the birthday party. I need to edit a couple of podcast episodes, you know, edit the transcripts, edit the show notes. I need to finish the sales page for the digital, the virtual planning events. I need to what else? Return the library book that I checked out but never read, so I just. It helps me to focus my brain and really think about what has to get done that week. Okay, and then I have that out on paper. I can see it there, it's out of my brain. It just lightens my load and then I'm able to look at the days and figure out when those tasks are going to get done. Now, sometimes what I do is actually plug those tasks into my calendar. Other times I might just look at my calendar and plug a bucket on the calendar. So I might say, okay, 8am to 9.30am is the household bucket, and so I'll see on my Google calendar “House Bucket” from 8am to 9.30am, and then I'll look at what I had written down in that bucket and say, oh, okay, right, that means do a load of laundry, that means order the new shower curtain rod and that means pack the lunches for school the next day. And so 8 to 9.30am that's what I'm doing, right. So you can do it that way or, like I said, you can just plug the tasks in individually into your day. You have to, again, do what works best for you. I really like the idea of just putting the bucket on the calendar and then, with my Google calendar, in the “location” tab or the location section, when you're adding a new event, when I get to the location, instead of putting in an address, I just type out the tasks that have to get done and then I see them when I look at my Google calendar. It's like a neat little hack. So I like doing it that way because it's essentially like time blocking, but you have to do what works best for you.
Okay, so just to overview, or review, rather, the three steps of the time bucket system: Step number one is your brain dumping the tasks. Step number two is your categorizing them into your buckets. That's when you're creating your buckets, and step number three is you start plugging them in or scheduling them during the week.
Okay, so make sure you download the free resource. Come on over to the SLP Support Group on Facebook and tell us what your time buckets are, talk us through what you're working on. And then I mentioned one last thing. I mentioned that at the end of the episode, I did have some exciting news and I want to fill you in a little bit about that. There's actually two things to share. Number one if you're listening to this episode live, then it is about, let's see, three to three days before, the live virtual planning event for 2024. So I also have a link in the show notes to sign up for that. If you're interested in purchasing a ticket, it's going to be a really fun event. Where we get to. I'll walk you through how I plan my year. You're going to get access to the digital planner for Q1 of 2024. You're going to…it's going to walk you through a reflection of 2023. It's going to walk you through how to create your time buckets. It's going to walk you through identifying your values and needs and then, in the workshop, we are going to actually start outlining what your goals are for each of your time buckets and when you're going to be working on them in 2024. So in one day, you really get to walk away with a very clear, detailed plan for what you're focusing on in the new year. So it's a really great opportunity to come up with a plan before all of the craziness happens with November and December, like holidays and, just you know, life gets nutty. So make sure you sign up for that If that's something that is exciting and interesting for you. And then the other thing I wanted to share is that I'm actually working on a project for a class that I'm taking, and so, as part of this course, I'm opening up three slots for three new clients, and this is something that I've never done before. This is not anything like that's my time management coaching. This is actually an opportunity where we can work together for three three sessions for free, where I'm going to walk you through this time bucket system one on one, where we can sit down together and create it so that if you have any questions or roadblocks that you hit, I'm there to talk you through it and we can figure out how to take this system and individualize it for you. So what I want to do with three clients is number one create the time bucket system for you and we're going to modify it in a way that works for you and your brain. So there's lots of different ways that that that can look like, but it depends on it depends on you, quite frankly. It depends on what you're looking for and how you learn best and what kind of system you want to create. And then we're going to you're going to practice implementing it and you're going to take it. You're going to implement it at home, in your business, in your private practice, wherever, and then we're going to come back again for a third session together and review and see what we need to tweak, see how you know we need to modify it so that we can really finalize a way to make this system work for you and your individual time demands. Okay, so if that sounds like something you're interested in, there's a link to learn more. It's in the show notes. Again, this is free. It's only for three clients. I only have enough slots for three people, so make sure if you're interested in learning more. There's no obligation, there's no sales pitch. There's absolutely nothing. It's just purely for me to help you and, quite frankly, you'll be helping me because it is again something that I'm doing for a course that I'm taking. Make sure you click the link in the show notes for that if you want to find out more. But that is all I have for you for today's episode. Make sure you again check out the resource for the time bucket system and come on over to the SLP support group where you'll get able. You'll be able to connect with other listeners and other SLPs. And, last but not least, come on over for the virtual event. Join us for the live virtual planning event that's happening on Friday, October 27th. Tickets are on sale now For $97. You get a full day of planning. You'll have your whole year mapped out. You'll have free access to a Q1 planner for 2024. And for the entire 2024 virtual planner. Once that is released, you'll get access to it before everybody else. So join me. Hope to see you there and I will talk to you all next week. Bye.
*Please note that this transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.