Speaker 1: 0:10

Hey there, I'm Jenny Perez. I'm a wife, mom and small business owner and although I love being all of those things, I'm at the point where I feel like there's something more to life outside of those roles. Does that sound like you? If you're in search of that extra magic, craving a dose of positivity, purpose and real talk on being worthy, capable and able, you're in the right place. Let's kick off this journey together. Ignite that spark, radiate some positivity and discover what makes your life and business truly shine. Ready to jump in. Let's spark some radiance together. Hello, and welcome back to the Sparking Radiance podcast. I'm Jenny Perez. Thank you for being here with me.

Speaker 1: 0:57

So have you ever gotten feedback from maybe a family member, friend or significant other or spouse, and the feedback that they gave you stung, but you knew they were right. That's the worst, right. So that recently happened to me. So my husband and I, we were kind of chatting, doing our pillow talk at night the other night, and you know a lot of the times when at the end of the night it's my time to refocus, to kind of regroup, to relax, to kind of prepare for the next day mentally. And one of the things that I mentioned to him, or I seem to mention to him is that a lot of times I feel there's not enough time in the day to get everything done like business wise, family wise, and we've talked about this before. This is a struggle for me where I'm kind of all over the place from time to time and my husband, trying to be as sweet as he can when he says this and he says I'm going to tell you something he's like, but keep in mind, when I tell you this, I'm also telling this to myself. So he kind of wanted to lessen the blow. But one of the things that he said was he said that you know, jen, the reason why you don't have so much time in the day he's like it's because you let the day control you. You don't control the day. And when he said that it stung and it was eye opening for me and in that split second I realized and I acknowledged that he was right.

Speaker 1: 2:26

A lot of the times my day runs me. I don't run my day and I feel I don't have enough time in the day is because I'm all over the place, because, again, it's running me, there's no structure and if there is structure it's not structure that I keep for a long time and I'll give you some examples as we talk today. But with that feedback, it kind of made me think about why do I feel this way? I feel this way because I don't have structure. I feel like I run out of time every day because I don't have structure. I feel that I don't get my tasks completed to my standards or to my liking because I am not structured. It all comes down to structure.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Operating without a structure in place is kind of like operating without a foundation. I have nothing to fall back on. And I kind of can equate this to like a roller coaster right, when the day runs itself, it's going to throw at me different things. It's going to make me go up, make me go down. My emotions are going to be all over the place. But if I had a clear, linear foundation to go back to, I don't think I'd experience so many highs and so many lows throughout the day. And if they did come, like I said, I have something solid, something concrete to fall back on. And I'm sharing this with you guys about myself, because I've taken on more tasks recently. Like my husband says, I do it to myself. I don't know why.

Speaker 1: 4:03

I think, in a little bit of a ways, some of us business owners, maybe some of us, stay at home moms, you know, professionals we kind of thrive in chaos, right, that's actually is counterproductive. And I say this because I think about. I've heard this before from I've read this in books and I've heard this from some friends that are super successful. But one of the things that they say is, if you ask any successful person, you ask any CEO, any executive you know, randomly, what are you doing on Thursday per se at 2pm, and they will have a response for you. They will tell you on Thursday at 2pm I'm going to be doing this. And they do that is because they live by structure, they live by a foundation, by something to fall back on, because in this world, in our business, our home, in even just, you know, being on our phones, being in our cars, you know, watching television, we are constantly distracted. We're distracted by things, or sometimes people, that are searching and wanting our attention, and it's so easy to get distracted and allow the day to take over, take over your plan.

Speaker 1: 5:36

So, with that feedback from my husband, I wanted to do a little bit more research on that, because this is an area that I need to improve in, and I know when I say this that maybe this may resonate with some of you where you have these feelings, like I have, that there's not enough time in the day to get everything done. And here's the thing. So, granted, we've talked about this before where we can't get 100%, we can't be 100% at all times, that we know that's nearly impossible, but we can use tools to possibly be as close to that as possible, right? So what tools can we look into together to kind of help that help bring that foundation, have something again to fall back on, to remind us, to kind of get us back on track? Right, we have an outline, and just think about that.

Speaker 1: 6:25

When we're in a learning environment or a learning setting, typically your speaker is going to have an outline of where they have the direction, of where they would like the conversation to go or what they're trying to teach, right? But because they know that distraction is inevitable and they have again that foundation to fall back on. And I think let's look at a tool that I actually kind of was researching. When my husband pointed that out to me, it's like, yeah, he is absolutely right, I got to get better at this. I got to get better at this. If I want to keep growing and supporting this Sparking Radiance podcast, if I want to keep growing my business, if I want to keep growing you know my business if I want to keep growing my relationships, I have to be very strategic about it, because they are not going to get the best in the full version of my energies and efforts if I don't do that. So I looked up something. I had kind of heard this on another podcast before and I've kind of seen this in books as well.

Speaker 1: 7:24

But there's this concept called time blocking. Ok, and what time blocking is and for some of you, you may have heard this before, but for some of us, this is the first time we're hearing this, and that's OK. Maybe for some of us it'll be a reminder. But what time blocking is? It's a time management technique that involves scheduling your day into blocks for specific tasks. So the goal of time blocking is to help us increase productivity by helping you focus on a task without distractions. Okay, so I will give myself some credit.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Within this last year, one of the things that I saw after was growth, and I will say that I've done a great job with time blocking. That first hour of my day and I've talked about this before that first hour of my day is my time. It's my time to meditate, to read, to journal, just to take the time to grow in some way. I've been strategic about setting my alarm for that. I've been strategic about making sure that I create an environment that I'll be able to grow in that timeframe and I've committed to that and I'm very proud of that.

Speaker 1: 8:32

But after that my day then has no structure. So then kids are awake, dogs are awake, husbands awake, lunches are made. It's chaos. Are we going to make the bell in time some mornings? Right, but from there I have no structure. When I reflect back on that, what I do understand is, if I know I'm preparing myself. So the night before I go to bed I'm setting that alarm clock, I'm having the coffee in a machine set and ready before I go to bed, because I know how valuable that short time that I have to myself that one, you know, anywhere from 45 to an hour to myself I have to take full advantage of that time and that is my focus. Now, how can I apply that same type of time blocking to other areas of my life.

Speaker 1: 9:25

So here are some benefits of time blocking. Okay, so it helps with prioritizing. Time blocking helps us prioritize, you know, tasks that are important, that need our immediate attention. It gives us structure. Obviously it structures to make things easier for us to focus and get things done. It also helps us you can actually narrow it down. There's something called batching. I'm going to talk about that a little bit. More Batching within the time blocking allows us to do smaller tasks that you know, if we kind of delay they don't get done.

Speaker 1: 9:58

We can also do day theming and that is, you know specific days that are set aside for certain tasks, right? So, for example, sunday for a lot of us I know in our household, is our family day. Like, we tend to not focus on business, we tend to do things that together, as a family, that is our focus. So we typically won't take phone calls. We typically won't take phone calls, we typically won't look at emails, because the day, the theme for that day, is all about family. So time blocking.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Let's dive in a little bit more about time blocking and here's some of the research that I found on time block. An article I found was written by Sherry Gordon in the Very Well Mind online article and one of the thing, and it was posted on September 18th of 2023,. It's titled Want to be more productive Use time blocking to keep your day stress free. Say goodbye to procrastination and multitasking. And in her article she notes that why time blocking actually helps us get more stuff done, and what it does. It says taking control of your time by scheduling or breaking it into chunks or blocks may help you be more productive, and the easiest and most effective way to do it is through time blocking, sometimes referred to as monotasking or time chunking.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Time blocking is a time management technique where you block off a period of time to complete a particular task. So, for instance, instead of checking your phone every time you get an email or social media notification, you block off a specific time throughout the day to return phone calls, respond to emails and check social media. You're essentially setting aside specific blocks of time to complete important tasks or projects. In the end, your schedule is broken into chunks of time where you are focusing on one task or project at a time. This type of time management not only makes your to-do list more manageable, but it also gives you more control over your day and helps you prioritize your tasks. Time blocking also improves your focus and deters procrastination. At the end of the day, you feel like you've actually accomplished something.

Speaker 1: 12:05

The cool thing about that article or what stood out to me which made was kind of gave me an aha moment and I think a lot of us are guilty of this is the checking our phone constantly or checking our email or our social media notifications. If we set that aside for a certain time of the day, we'll still be able to have that same enjoyment of possibly you know setting. I'm going to set myself 30 minutes to respond to emails. I'm going to set myself 15 minutes to check my social media and then if depending on how many phone calls I received, I'm going to set any you know a certain time to respond or return phone calls and text messages. So that in itself is a very powerful tool.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Listening to a podcast by Leah Hermosi and she says one of the things that she's found useful is to avoid this trap of the phone is, during certain work hours she will take her phone and she will actually put it in a drawer or put it in another room, completely right, so that she wouldn't have the temptation, because it's very easy Once we hear those bings. You know our phones are designed to grab our attention or to distract us or pull us away from what we're doing. So keeping it in a separate space and abiding during that block like this hour that maybe I'm focusing on preparing my presentation, or maybe this hour that I'm studying, or this hour that I'm spending with my children I'm going to take that phone and I'm going to put it in a completely different, another room so that it's not a distraction for me. But I think that's very key when you're looking to focus, you know when you're deciding what to block off and when and how.

Speaker 1: 13:55

The other interesting thing about the article that it mentioned is you know a lot of us think that we can multitask. You know I can, especially as mothers. You know we kind of are wired that we have to. But surprisingly this article notes, according to a study, that you know only 2.5% of people can really multitask. Most of us just believe we can. So it's like the other. You know what is that? What percentage is that? The other percentages that's left like we really don't have the true capability to do it.

Speaker 1: 14:27

So the article mentions here many people believe that they could do multiple things at once and do them all well, but research has shown that only 2.5% of people are able to multitask effectively. So, basically, the rest of us are just believing that we're good multitaskers but in fact, when we're trying to do more than one thing, like texting and driving, or writing an important email, or returning a client's phone call, it basically compromises our ability to do both, and I know this has happened to me before, or maybe to some of to you as well. If I'm texting but I'm also having a conversation, I might put what I'm having the conversation about in the text. My brain can't differentiate, you know, between the two. Let's take a look here as well. This article mentions that there was a 2013 study at the University of Utah that people who try to multitask at once are more easily distracted, they're less productive, they make more errors and they score lower on recall tests. And this one I'm probably really guilty of, in the sense that if I'm on a very important Zoom call and there are certain things that I need to pay attention to if I'm trying to multitask like if I'm trying to respond to an email and then I have that Zoom up, that meeting up and I'm not listening with all of my attention. I mean, it's so easy for information to just kind of slip away. It's kind of like in one ear and out the other. I may have heard what they said, but did I really understand what they said? And that in essence creates a redundancy of now I have to go back to the notes, now I have to ask the question. Then they may have already covered it right. So it's trying to be multitasking. Trying to have those two things or do multiple things at one time is not necessarily as effective. So a very, very interesting article. I'm going to try to put this in the show notes. I'm going to get better about putting what I find, what I read in the show notes, who I reference as well. I'll do my best to get better at that.

Speaker 1: 16:32

But time blocking some examples, really time blocking. There's a couple of ways that you can do it. Some people do it weekly, some people do it daily, like maybe they'll do it the night before the next day of how they plan to have their days mapped out. For a lot of us, especially those of us with children, you know the majority of our day. A lot of that day is already mapped out for us right? We know, from 7 am to 8 am, this is breakfast, this is the morning rituals, this is taking the kids to school, this is the commute to work. You know this is their schedule. We kind of mirror that and then we can then take from. Okay, when I pick them up from school, you know the kids return from school, we talk about their day, we prep dinner, we do homework, we do cleanup. Those things return from school. We talk about their day, we prep dinner, we do homework, we do cleanup. Those things can all be prioritized in there as well.

Speaker 1: 17:29

And I think a lot of people have gotten really good at blocking certain areas of their life. So let me give you the example of for those of you that meal prep, hats off to you because I know that takes a lot of work. Those of you that meal prep maybe like on Saturdays and Sunday I do see that you know on my social media and circle of friends and things like that but hats off to you because you're blocking out. You're basically pre-preparing yourself for you. Basically you're blocking out Saturday to take care of the rest of the week and that's very smart because it takes out that energy. I know for me, for example, this the struggle of having to think of what I'm going to make for dinner from, sometimes, you know, planning out menus. That's helpful as well. That's a form of task batching right.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Block out times of your day where you're, you know, wanting to protect your focus, and I really think that that's what time blocking comes down to is protecting our focus, because we are so easily distracted, so easily distracted. Protect that time. That time is valuable. If there's things that you want to focus on, if it's your health, protect that time. You have it written down, you have it set in concrete that from 10 am to 11 am, I'm focusing on my health. I'm focusing on maybe using meal prep, maybe doing that time for meal prep for the rest of the day or the week, or I'm focusing on that time to be at the out that time. Protect that time to get that task done, because there are so many more benefits by doing that than not doing it. And the article ends by saying so. What does this mean? So, effective use of time blocking can help you take control of your day, focus your attention ward off procrastination. That's for sure If you continue to see it coming up right Things to do on your list. At times it may seem trial and error to create a blueprint that works for you, but with a little practice, a small dose of patience, you can become a pro at no time right, and just trying it in a certain area of your life will definitely have far more beneficial benefits than it being taken away.

Speaker 1: 19:41

So let's talk a little bit more about batching. So batching is a subset of time blocking. So batching is a productivity strategy where you group similar tasks together and you complete them in that dedicated time. So what this technique does is it helps minimize the load, the mental load, of switching from task to task. So it basically makes you more efficient and more focused. And so here are some examples of how it works. So you can basically Take similar tasks, so tasks that are similar, you can kind of put them together or during certain times where, for example, if it requires a certain focus of you mental state like if you work on these tasks together because you don't want to get interrupted and batching what it does is it helps us increase our efficiency because it allows us to focus on one type of task where you can complete it more quickly and with better quality than if you were just switching from task to task in different types of work. Right, like, for example, if I am going to be folding laundry, I might want to add to that batching because maybe clean out the laundry room to that task, because it's similar, right, I can get both done at the same time. I wouldn't want to add to that fold laundry, clean the laundry room or maybe dust the laundry room and then check my emails. Those don't batch together.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Let me try to think of another example that some of us are guilty of, myself included. For example, if I want to maybe focus on my health, I want to maybe batch something together. I might say in the morning I'm going to batch together. I wake up, I do my prayer, my meditation, my reading, and then maybe I'll go for a morning walk because that's part of my health, that's part of my mental, my physical health. I'm going to batch those two together. I'm not going to say I'm going to focus on my mental health in the morning and then I'm going to go do something physical and then I'm going to. You know, maybe do prepare my presentation right, because I am skipping. You know there's no connection between the two. But just you want to batch smaller, similar tasks together. That way they get done because your focus is on that particular test, because they're similar in nature.

Speaker 1: 22:16

Okay, so some examples. We talked about this already. But, like the email management, like setting aside in social media and text messages and calls, set aside certain times of the day, like maybe at 1030 or when I get into the office, it's when I first check my emails At this time, two hours later, I check my emails. At this time, two hours later, I check my emails, and then maybe another two hours later, I check my emails. I don't allow the email to dictate my, my flow or my focus by checking them throughout the day. Okay, so I set that time across because then I can eliminate it. Because how many times has this happened to you Cause I know it's happened to me before where you're working on one email, you're working on a response to something and then all of a sudden, boom, you get another email and then you're just distracted by that and then it keeps going and then you're clicking somewhere else and you're looking something else up and it's a quick way to get diverted from your focus. So the other thing is. I've seen this before.

Speaker 1: 23:11

Some examples of batching you can do meetings and calls on certain days, like, for example, in our office, our meeting time, our team meeting time, is scheduled for the same day, every week at the same time. Okay, we all get alerts on that. That's blocked out. That time is dedicated to that. So we're not going to be scheduling any other types of meetings in that time. We're not going to be doing other things scheduled during that time. So that time is set aside for meetings and calls. And this is important when dealing with clients as well. You're setting that time like this is the time that I have available and respecting their time, because that's the time that you're going to set aside for them.

Speaker 1: 23:48

But then the same thing since they're respecting yours, errands and administrative tasks, you want to batch those together as well. So I like this example because I always think of like, think of our parents and our grandparents. You know when they would set aside and they'd say I'm taking that time to write out the checks, to do my bills, and they would batch them all together. Right, I'm going to pay the light bill, I'm going to pay the gas bill, I'll pay the mortgage, and they would batch those admin tasks together. I maybe may focus on during that time because I have the paperwork out. I may batch together, looking maybe at my declaration, my homeowner's declaration, right, because it's related. It's something that will require my attention. But, kind of mapping together those errands and tasks. It reminds me, you know, I think of my parents and grandparents, you know, sitting down and writing the check. They were doing those administrative tasks together.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Other examples maybe like running, when we have certain time set aside to run errands, right, we are. When we have a block of time to go to the grocery store, maybe get gas, go to the post office, do an Amazon return, we're going to batch those times out as well. Like this is our time to do the admin tasks. I know for a lot of us that Amazon return takes up a lot of time and that we definitely need to batch, at least especially in my household, right, because then we can get easily distracted, can get randomly placed it throughout the day when it should have been batched. But keeping those tasks together, you know, and it's very easy for us to get sidetracked when we're doing those admin or errand tasks, to be like oh well, maybe I'll stop at Starbucks, you know, or maybe I'll you know, stop through Target, which is, you know, for a lot of us, myself included, you know is a huge distraction, right?

Speaker 1: 25:38

So during that, you know, if you set aside yourself an hour to 30 minutes, you stick to that particular errand or task in its entirety to keep you focused on that. Social media, of course we've talked about that. You know allocating a certain time of that, for many of us it's. You know, we're usually on our phones the first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. You know, allocating and sticking to that throughout the day of like, you know I'm going to be on, I'll allow myself this break, this mental break, to be on my phone, you know, for 30, 15 to 30 minutes and stick to it, set an alarm on it, batch that time to preserve your focus.

Speaker 1: 26:17

So, benefits of batching you're reducing distraction. We know that because you're focusing on similar tasks without interruption. Your cognitive level, so the way of your thinking, it's level because you're not switching between tasks, focusing on the same type of task. It saves time, right, because you're not being distracted. You know going from task to task and your brain having to readjust itself with the transition, but it also enhances the quality. So batching helps you concentrate at your peak level for that particular task You're just going to get. You're going to produce a better quality of work right, because, like going back to our grandparents of them writing the check and our parents writing that check, you know a mistake can happen if they're trying to cook dinner, write the check and fold the laundry right, versus if they had the check writing, had their full attention. The likelihood of it being done incorrectly is severe. It lessens. It lessens because it has 100% of the focus.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So here is our activity for the week. I want you to pick one area in your life that you currently feel you don't have enough time to achieve, just like myself, that I had. That I explained in the beginning. Pick one area in your life that you want to focus on. So it could be your health, it could be your finances, it could be your relationships, it could be your business. Pick something that you feel that you want to work on and I want you to batch out. Batch out that time or set aside that time to focus on that activity only. So, if we're focusing on our health, we're going to batch out 30 minutes to an hour just to focus that. Put that on the calendar for this entire week and I want you to put it somewhere. Put it on an electronic calendar, put it on a physical calendar, put it on your phone, put it somewhere, set an alarm for yourself that say, for example, from 8 a 8.30am I'm taking my walk. Put that down somewhere, because we're going to try this technique of teaching ourselves to kind of playing with it, to allow ourselves to just dedicate ourselves to completing that task, and what will happen is, if we commit to that that first week, then the second week we can add something else on and then add something else on.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Some of you are going to like this concept and dive right full on into it. Just do a simple Google search of time blocking, and there are so many resources available. There's people that have color coding maps already pre-filled for us and all we have to do is just put in the tasks that we have to do. But for those of us that need to take that first step, I'm probably going to be one of those ones that need to take that first step and do something. A little bit more small is I've already started committing to one task. Now I'm going to add on another task and commit to it and block it off, or some of us. It could be as simple. As you know, I'm committing to blocking off the time of when I get home from work. The first thing I do is I put away my phone and I give my full attention to my family and to those around me. That could be a commitment. The first hour that I get home, I'm going to block off that time to dedicate to my family and they have my full attention.

Speaker 1: 29:32

So our activity is to pick whatever you feel you're struggling in and I want you to block off a time, and it doesn't have to be an hour, it doesn't have to be 30 minutes, it could be 10 minutes, maybe it's 10 minutes. I need to block off every day to just breathe, to focus on my breathing, to calm my stress. To you know, work down my blood pressure, focus on my breathing to calm my stress, to work down my blood pressure, things like that. So, something small, commit to something small and then continue to add on to it. My goal is obviously for you to be able to continue to add on and I would love to hear about what you did and how you added on to it, but focus on one small step and then build upon there the blocks.

Speaker 1: 30:19

So, to give you a visualization of these concepts, I think back to a training that I heard from a business brother of ours my husband and myself, stephen that he had mentioned, and he gave the example of the vase and the rock, the sand and the water. Okay, so each of us, we have a rock, we have rocks in our lives, we have sand in our lives and we have water in our lives. Okay, so think of a huge vase. Okay, if you had to fill up a vase of the rock, the sand and the water, we all have a 24 hour period, so that vase represents a-hour period. Now, if I were to pour 100% of the water that I had into that vase and it was full to the top, if I were to try to add sand or rock to it, what's going to happen? It's going to overflow. Same thing if I were to fill it up with sand and I try to add water or rocks to it, what's going to happen? It's going to overflow.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Okay, but what the rock and the sand and the water represent is that the rock represents our priorities, our most productive priorities in our lives. The sand represents our minor priorities and the water represents maybe something that doesn't have any kind of priority right. So if we were to place the in our 24 hour period, if we were to place the rocks first, it all matters on how we place them in. So if we put our rocks first, so our rocks could be things like spending time with our families, focusing on our business, focusing on our health. Those are our rocks. If we set those into the vase first and then we add our smaller things, like sand, our minor productivity, so we pour in some sand into there and we add maybe you know, making sure my bills are paid on time, running errands, meal prepping, things like that, those would be the things that go in next. And then, lastly, kind of like the fun things, right, like the things that are kind of the icing on top, you know, maybe watching our favorite television show or you know doing something fun and entertaining the water, that kind of brings some fun into our lives. We pour that in.

Speaker 1: 32:27

But it really what the analogy that he mentioned comes down to is. It comes down to the order in which we place into the vase, because we can actually fit more if we put those big things, those big priorities first, then we add the minor priorities, which is the sand second and then the water obviously goes last. But if we try to do the other way around, it's inevitable we're going to end up, you know, like myself saying at the end of the day, man, I had no time today to do anything. Well, guess what? If I change my focus, if I block that time, if I set aside what my priorities are to get done first, I'll get far more done. You know, guys, I'm sharing this with you because maybe there's some of you that just needed to hear, that needed to get reminded of that. And I am being honest with you and as part of the growth, I'm acknowledging that. But I do appreciate you blocking out this time right to be with me.

Speaker 1: 33:19

And just keep in mind Sparking Radiance episodes a new one drops every Thursday, 9 am, central Standard Time. So, guys, thank you for being with me, thank you for blocking out this time to be with me. I'm excited to hear what you were able one thing you were able to commit to to put down, what you were able one thing you were able to commit to to put down and I encourage you to continue to add on things to that list. Add on those rocks. So, with that said, guys, thanks for listening. Make sure you're following us on sparkingradiance. If you enjoyed this message or you need somebody else to hear this message, make sure you share. Thanks so much. Until next time, love y'all. Remember. Keep sparking that radiance from within. Until next time, shine on.