I know this dance all too well. You start out your day with a lengthy to-do list. Feeling confident, you decide to tackle the first task, hoping to knock them all out as the day goes on. Before you know it, it’s 5 PM and you’ve completed 2 ½ things on your list. What gives? Where did you go wrong? What happened? If you’re feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in a day to check off each item on your seemingly never-ending to-do list, keep on reading (or click the play button on the player above). Kierra Asnaukas and I are discussing all things time management, productivity, and setting boundaries so you can be a more effective and productive entrepreneur.
Time Management, Productivity, and Setting Boundaries with Kierra Asnaukas
Kierra is a productivity coach who helps entrepreneurs conquer their chaotic schedules, set strong boundaries, and do the right things at the right time for the right reasons. She’s also the Amazon best-selling author of “Permission to Pivot Granted”.
But like many of us, Kierra held many job titles prior to becoming a fully-fledged productivity coach. She worked on a cruise ship, taught English in South Korea and Afghanistan, and owned every single one of her titles despite imposter syndrome.
So how did she confidently step into her role as a productivity coach right from the very beginning? By trusting herself to fulfill her promises. “I feel like confidence is really rooted in the promises we keep to ourselves. So the more promises we keep, the more confident we are.”
If imposter syndrome has ever gotten in your way, Kierra has some words of advice for you:
“As far as we all know, we only get one life. So we need to have that attitude that I’ll be damned if someone else tells me how to live it.”
A GREAT Morning Routine and an EASY Evening Routine
As Kierra constantly evolves into new phases of her life, her morning and evening routine evolves along with her. To give you an idea, Kierra’s routines evolve to support the different seasons of business and life that she’s in.
Currently, she starts off each morning with her GREAT morning routine.GREAT is an acronym for gratitude, reading, exercise, activate (boss mode), and talk. Here’s what the GREAT routine looks like in action:
- Gratitude: Kierra starts off each morning expressing gratitude for the things she has and the things to come.
- Reading: This is where she dives into a book she’s currently reading.
- Exercise: Kierra loves to get movement in her body. She doesn’t do a full-hour workout. Instead, she does something really quick to get her body moving.
- Activate (boss mode): Skincare. Affirmation. A pump-up, feel-good playlist… whatever it takes to get Kierra into stepping into her boss mode.
- Talk: Kierra then carves out some time to talk to her husband over coffee, just for a little chitchat.
Kierra’s GREAT morning routine kicks in before she dives into all her to-do’s for the day. Once she’s done, she wraps up with her EASY evening, which goes a little like this:
- Evaluate your effort: Did Kierra give this day what she said she was going to give it? Did she accomplish her needle-moving tasks?
- Abandon the day’s ambitions: She is done with work for the day at a certain time, no matter where those tasks currently stand.
- Serve yourself on a silver platter: Kierra pours a glass of wine, smokes a cigar with her husband, or maybe runs a bubble bath. She takes time to treat herself at the end of each day.
- Yield to the moon: This means by a certain time, she’s out and done for the day.
The CONQUER Your Chaos Blueprint
The reason why I highlighted Kierra’s morning and evening routines is because they’re important. You’ve heard many entrepreneurs sing the phrases of having a routine, and that’s because they work. However, the routine that works for you isn’t going to be the one that works for anyone else. If you want to conquer your chaos, manage your time wisely, and increase your productivity, you need a routine that works for you.
This is why Kierra created the CONQUER Your Chaos Blueprint. If you haven’t picked up on Kierra’s love for acronyms yet, you soon will. CONQUER stands for:
- Customize your routines
- Overcome your overwhelm
- Narrow your focus
- Quit prioritizing shallow tasks
- Up-level your systems
- Elevate and evaluate your environment
- Record Your Daily Efforts
Now let’s break each one of those steps down and how they can help you manage your time and be more productive.
Customize Your Routines
“This goes back to what we talked about not feeling the pressure to adopt the routines of famous people.” That includes Kierra’s. “Because you don’t have their team, you don’t have their exact lifestyle, you don’t have their same interests. And so it’s really important to customize your morning routines, your evening routines, your daily routines to fit you your lifestyle and what fills you up.”
Overcome Your Overwhelm
This is where you obliterate your overwhelm by setting strict boundaries.
“People don’t realize that the source of their overwhelm is usually just a lack of boundaries, non-existent boundaries. And when you don’t have boundaries with your spouse, your colleagues, your family, your kids, your social media, yourself, even your clients. That’s where the overwhelm is going to come from.”
Narrow Your Focus
What’s your zone of genius? How about the needle-moving tasks that only you can do? Identify those important tasks along with the shallow, delegatable, and automatable tasks.
“Narrowing your focus is all about assessing what you have going on. Because a lot of people are busy, but they’re not productive.”
Quit Prioritizing Shallow Tasks
Are you guilty of productive procrastination? The answer is most likely going to be yes. For example, email is the biggest form of productive procrastination.
“Quit prioritizing those shallow tasks (like emails). Because oftentimes, they’re taking away from the energy we could be using to actually do the zone of genius work and the needle-moving tasks.”
Up-Level Your Systems
“That’s all about establishing the right systems for your business. Which apps are you going to use to move the needle? What resources can you tap into to make your life easier?”
Analyze your process and routines and ask yourself, is there something that you do every single day in the same way? If the answer is yes, there must be a system out there to automate it.
Elevate and Evaluate Your Environment
A chaotic schedule is often fueled by a chaotic environment. Is your office space cluttered and disorganized? Or is your desk a foot away from your bed (encouraging nap times)? How about the people in your environment – are they weighing you down?
“Oftentimes the thing that’s holding us back is our chaotic environment. So what can you do to get control over this situation? What can you do to change your environment so that you can be a little bit more productive?”
Record Your Daily Efforts
Recording your daily efforts is the key to keeping you on track. Check-in with yourself to see if you’re completing your daily tasks and needle movers. How far along did you get on your tasks? Did you complete the tasks on your list for the day?
As Kierra says, “it’s just about checking in with yourself tracking your habits.”
Setting Boundaries with Social Media
The CONQUER Your Chaos Blueprint will help you set tighter boundaries to allow for more productivity and better time management. But what happens if social media is both a business tool and a huge distraction and timesuck? You know how it goes. As business owners, posting on social media consistently is important. So how do you navigate spending necessary time on social media versus falling into a 3-hour long scroll-athon?
Kierra says “it’s all about conscious consumption. It’s all about setting rules around how you engage with social media so that it doesn’t run you.”
If your goal is to post and engage, go ahead and use social media to post and engage. However, Kierra reminds you that scrolling just for fun is completely valid as well. Whatever the case, be intentional. Set a timer for how long you’re engaging and how long you want to indulge in social media content.
“If your intention is just to post and engage, then that should be the only thing you’re doing. If the intention is to engage with the people that follow you, or your friends and family members, then that needs to be your intention. And there needs to be a timeframe with that. It’s just taking control back, taking control and setting those boundaries.”
Managing your Time and Boosting Your Productivity Through Healthy Boundaries
We don’t realize how much time we’re letting slip through the cracks of our day. Our to-do lists keep getting longer and longer, and days seem shorter and shorter. If you find that your time is in need of more managing, or that your productivity could use a boost, it’s time to set some stronger, healthier boundaries. The tips that Kierra shares in this episode are easy to implement. But best of all, you’ll realize how much time you’re truly spending on tasks that don’t require your immediate and personal attention.
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RELEVANT LINKS:
Conquer Your Chaos Blueprint: https://conqueryourchaosblueprint.com/
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