Ep #97: Checking Your Time Scarcity Mindset

Hello, Empowered Principals, welcome to episode 97.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast, a not so typical, educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy, by refining your most powerful tool: your mind. Here’s your host, certified life coach, Angela Kelly Robeck.

Well hello there, my empowered leaders. How are you doing? I’m so happy to be here with you, I really, really am. I’m really happy to be back home, back into my routine, and back into creating and recording the podcast for you.

I have so much going on and I’m thrilled about it. I’m having so much fun, meeting so many people, and getting out there and really spreading the word on support for school leaders.

I just returned from a two-week tour in Morocco. I had the distinct opportunity to travel with a group of school superintendents from the American Association of School Administrators. And we were visiting schools throughout the country of Morocco. It was unbelievable.

For those of you who are on my email list, I shared with you some of the photos and my experiences on the trip. And if you’re not on the email list, what’s up with that? Be sure to join in because the Empowered Principal community is the first to get dibs on everything I offer, on the trainings, the free trainings, the webinars, the free resources I provide, anything new I’ve got coming down the pipeline, they get first dibs.

So if you’re on the list – and guess what, it’s free, it will always be free, you can always join in at any time. I try not to overburden you with super long emails and a ton of emails. I just send out what I can when I can when I think it’s going to help you the most.

So, for example, I want to share with you that the doors are now open for my very first Empowered Principal mastermind group which is starting this January. And those who were on my list before November got first dibs to join in. So if you’re a school leader and you would love support and you would love to be involved in a community where we talk openly and honestly about the issues school leaders face while evolving ourselves and leveling up as leaders, I invite you to consider joining the Empowered Principal mastermind.

I really can’t wait to do this. I think it’s going to be an absolute blast. And because this is my first time offering it, I’m going to run it as a beta offer. I want to see if it works for people, so the people who join in this very first time, my early adopters should we say, you guys are going to get a reduced rate and we’re going to run it from January 1^st to June 1^st.

So it’s going to run the second half of the year. I’m going to cut it off in June so I can analyze how it went, get some feedback from the people who are involved, and try to tweak it so we can improve it for the school year. And then I’m going to run one each school year so that you have an opportunity to get coaching, to get mentorship, to get support, to get consultation on whatever it is that you’re dealing with as a school leader.

So for more information, just head over to my website, angelakellycoaching.com and click on the tab that says EP Mastermind, alright?  So I’m back from Morocco, so happy to be here, and let me tell you guys, the business traveling doesn’t end there.

This has been the year of travel for me. I love it and I’m exhausted. So as this episode airs, I’m going to actually be in Seattle, Washington. I’ve been asked to provide a keynote speech for the very first annual WELL Conference which is women in education leading and learning. And it’s being hosted by the Association of Washington School Principals, AWSP.

I’m so excited to be presenting to the school leaders of Washington State. I just can’t wait to meet all of those wonderful women. Being able to offer insight and support is absolutely what I life for. And I want to give a special shout-out and thank you to my friend and fellow author Lesley Moffat. She is the author of I Love My Job but It’s Killing Me.

Lesley is amazing. She is a high school music director and teacher. She wrote a book specifically for music teachers about how to love your job and not have it kill you. And I can remember, I was in band, I was in orchestra, I was in choir, I was in all the musical things and I remember how much effort and energy and love and passion my teachers put into – we were there for late nights for jazz band. We stayed out late for practicing when we were in marching band, going to pep band for all the basketball games.

We were going to – in choir, we were doing the musicals and in orchestra we were in the pit orchestra. Like, these people put their lives literally on the line in the sense of they’re at school 24/7. So if you’re a band teacher or you know somebody who’s a band teacher, check out Lesley’s book, I Love My Job but It’s Killing Me.

And why I’m so grateful for Lesley is that she introduced me to a woman named Gina Yonts is the associate director of AWSP up there in Seattle and she contacted me, we became instant friends over the phone, and no I am flying to stay with her for a few days, going to do the keynote, going to be on a podcast up there. And I just love these women. They’re so full of energy and enthusiasm for supporting fellow school leaders and educators.

I absolutely love them. And right after I present in Washington, I’m flying directly from Seattle all the way over to Maryland to attend the ASCD school leadership conference. So if any of you are going to be over there at the school leadership conference in Maryland, it is the second week of November, please reach out, let me know that you’ll be there.  I would love to meet you in person.

I’m so excited about this trip, not just because of the conference, let me tell you, but because one of my very dear friends in the world, her name is Emily, she lived out in California and just recently moved with her brand new husband to Maryland and I’m going to stay with her while I’m attending the conference. So I’m all up in this. This is what empowered leadership looks like, you guys. I hope you’re having just as much fun as I am in all that you are doing at your schools.

And on that note, let me say, wow, it’s November.  Can you believe it? I’m guessing, for most of you, you’re at the very near end of your first trimester, or if you’re on semesters, you’re not far off from being a third to a half of the way done, depending on when you started.  It amazed me how much work the first half of the school year is, and also how quickly it goes by.

So as a principal, I know, you’re busy getting set up for the year, meeting to talk about the year, you’re calming parents about the year, you’re supporting your new staff and it feels like you personally have very little time to breathe, let alone go to the bathroom or eat lunch, right, guys?

So I know we joke about being so busy and that we can’t stop for even 60 seconds, but unfortunately, if we don’t intentionally and consciously slow ourselves down for a bit and start to address our mindset around time, we can find ourselves in a constant state of stress and panic, which typically thrusts us into wanting to work more, wanting to work longer and harder and we work ourselves into the ground.

And it’s right around this time of year where our energy is at an all-time low and our doubt is at an all-time high. This is what we call the dip. October, November, it’s the dip. It’s right before the holidays. You’ve been hauling it really hard from August on, but that Thanksgiving break’s just out of reach, right?

And when you think about how much time you have left in the school year, you can get very discouraged. So most likely, you haven’t accomplished nearly what you thought you would by this point in the year and you might be feeling like, no matter how hard you’re working, there’s somebody out there who’s not happy, the emails are never stopping, and you’re wondering if you’re having any real impact.

And so I want to share with you, I understand this and I completely empathize with you. When we are in the middle of something so challenging, the story in our brain about it feels very, very, very true. It’s like that movie Jumanji. If you were in Jumanji and you’re dropping into the game of school leadership, all of the scary things in the game that is school and school leadership, they feel very real and very true.

So when I tell you that your stress about time and productivity is just a story in your mind, it can feel almost condescending. And I know that my coach would say that to me, “That’s just a thought you’re having,” and I thought, hey lady, easy for you to say, you’re not doing what I’m doing every single day. You have it easy being a coach, you’re not dealing with crazy parents and staff members who don’t play nice and all the district mandates and all the meetings and all the emails.

I get it. I was there and I said the same things to her as you’re thinking about what I’m saying to you right now. But here’s what I now know. I now understand, because I’ve been through it, that you can be in any situation and you can believe that it’s terrible and overwhelming and time consuming.

I know this because I’ve had my own battles with time scarcity as a business owner. I left the district thinking, “I’m going to have so much time,” and guess what, I purposely shared my schedule with you to let you know, you can change your situation, you can go from one thing to the next and you will create the same result by feeling so busy because you believe that, no matter what you’re doing, you’re busy.

It’s always going to feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time and not enough resources and that you need to get it all done. Does that sound familiar? I’m dealing with it, I’m in it right now with you. So it doesn’t matter if you’re leading a school or you’re running a business. The problem about time is in your mind.

So this belief in time scarcity is what we need to address, whether we’re a teacher, a school leader, a mom, a nurse, and engineer, whatever you do in the world, our society has collectively agreed that regardless of what we’re doing for work, we all believe that we’re really busy.  My husband says it all the time, too much not enough time, what do we need?  More time.

So, this one belief has personally caused me so much suffering. And it’s coupled with thoughts like, I need to get it all done, I’ll get approval if I get everything done and I do it well. Those combinations, not enough time, too much to do, but I need to get it all done, is conflicting, right? And this whole idea about what will others think of me if I do it or don’t do it, that combination was really deadly for me and it put me in a spin cycle of putting out more and more effort but feeling less and less effective and efficient.

And because this collective belief about time is so powerful, although it serves no one for the better, we’re going to address it as school leaders. So, number one, we can feel a sense of relief for ourselves and number two, we can model and teach and apply this mindset, not just in our jobs, but we can share it with our staff and our students, so let’s dive in.

Let’s talk about time mindset. Have you stopped to take stock of your mind’s thoughts around time? Like, really slowed yourself down? Not saying, “Yeah, I know it’s in my mind, but, but…” or I get it cognitively or intellectually. No, slowing down, taking a look at how many times a day you say things like, I’ve got so much to do, oh my gosh, I can’t get to everything, and I mean to get to these things but I just can’t seem to get into the classrooms. There’s no way I can get it all done. There’s more coming at me, and the ever popular, I’m really busy.

I used to say that as a buffer for people not to bother me or not to put one more thing on my plate. I can’t talk right now, I’m really busy. I’ve really got to address this, I’m so busy.  And I want to address this I’m so busy thought for a minute.

I am the first person to admit that, most of the time, school leaders do actually have a lot on their plate, much more than people realize or think that they do. There are really high expectations of school leaders and it feels like you’re expected to do so many different things. And you are.

Like, let’s just acknowledge it for what it is. You are being asked to do too much. Let’s acknowledge that. But with that being acknowledged, I also have to call myself and y’all out by saying that I do think there is a part of our brains that love the busy.

We didn’t go into education to be bored or to sit around. We like to be busy. My guess is that you’re a quick start like me, you have high energy, you’re enthusiastic, you like to move your body, you like to be busy, mentally, physically, energetically. And as school leaders, it’s almost like we believe that if we’re not being busy or that our schedule isn’t packed to the ends, then we’re not doing the job to the best of our ability.

It’s like we believe that we have to be overwhelmed as part of being the school leader, or if we’re not then we’re not being a good school leader. Overwhelm has to be a part of the job. Because think about it, we don’t have to say we’re so bust. We don’t have to say that. It’s possible to look at our calendar, take note of what we have planned for the day, and then during that time, give each item our full attention until the end of the day. We don’t have to make the day dramatic and mean that we’re all too busy or so busy or so overwhelmed. We can take out the mental drama and just give ourselves the time and attention for one thing at a time on the time that we’ve scheduled it for the day.

I think one of the reasons we feel so overwhelmed and exhausted is that we fill every single minute of our day with some kind of task. We don’t take into account breaks, interruptions, and time just to think and plan and problem solve, which is why we don’t take breaks and we get frustrated at interruptions and then we feel rushed and overwhelmed when we need to solve a problem or create a plan of action.

We schedule, schedule, schedule minute to minute to minute, meeting to meeting to meeting, task to task and we don’t take into account the part that’s called human life, which means you have to take a restroom break at some point, you do need to fuel your body and eat. Sometimes you need to stop and ponder when you’re problem solving.

A meeting runs over, then you’re late to the next one. We don’t plan for all of that, which happens every single day, and then we’re mad about it, we’re frustrated about it. And I’m here to say that our industry, the field of education, has an incredible scarcity mindset.

We tend to focus on all that we don’t have versus all that we do have. We spend so much time talking about the time we don’t have, the resources we still need, the money we don’t receive and the results that we haven’t yet achieved.

So, spending a lot of energy on the lack – and to me, I’m thinking, is it any wonder that we fully believe we don’t have enough time? We’re spending so much time convincing ourselves that we have lack and we have scarcity that, of course, we believe that all of this is true.

However, the belief that there’s too much to do and not enough time, in isolation, just that one belief, is not the reason that we feel so stressed about time. The reason we feel so stressed about time is that we believe that thought to be true, and at the same time, we also believe that we should be able to be getting everything done all at once.

We put 10 things on the schedule for the day and we honestly buy into the belief, I should get these all done because they’re on my calendar for the day. So if we only believed that there was too much to do and not enough time but we didn’t judge ourselves for it, then we wouldn’t be worried.

We would say, yep, there’s too much to do and not enough time. I’m going to do what I can and move on. I’m not going to judge the fact I didn’t get things done. There’s just too much to do and there’s not enough time. Okay, let’s allow that and accept it.

But what we believe instead is there’s too much to do and not enough time, and this is a major problem because what I need to do is I need to get all of these things done because I want to feel accomplished and I want others to think I’m a competent leader. We tie in the expectation and the assumption that it’s our job and our responsibility to get more done than we’re actually able to get done so we feel badly that we’re not doing more and it makes us feel incompetent or that we’re not capable of being in this job.

So, the way that we think about time and interact with time, it comes from a set of collective beliefs that we have culturally adopted as a society, and specifically as a society of educators, within our bubble of education. Our parents teach us about time, but they learn it from their parents. It’s a societal cultural collective story that we’ve bought into regarding time.

The reason I believe that time mindset is a cultural belief system is that not all cultures think and feel about time the same way that we do. So I’ve just been in morocco and I can tell you with certainty, they do not feel the pressures around time that we do. They think differently about time. They’re much more present in the moment.

And for those of you who are on the list, you saw the photos of the kids and I talked about the joy and even though they had nothing, they felt joy in their hearts, they felt love, they have energy, excitement, it was amazing.

And let me tell you another thing about cultural beliefs about time. I have a couple of friends who are Latina and we love to joke with one another about our differences in time mindset. So, when I tell them what time we’re going to get together like I’ll call them up and say, hey, meet at my house at 6pm, and be there at that time. When I say that to them, they’re like, sure what can I bring? They get ready, get together, and at six o clock, I’m waiting for them to show up because when somebody tells me six o’ clock, I try to be there right around six.

And what happens is that one of my girlfriends in particular always runs late. Both of them run a little bit late, but there’s one that really runs late. She shall not be named but I’m going to visit her in Maryland. And you know what, she’s not trying to be disrespectful at all.  She’s honestly just doing her thing and getting there when she gets there.

And we lovingly joke about it and call it Mexican time because she is Mexican and she teases me, like, “Hey girl, if you want me to be here at seven then you better tell me the party starts at six. And if you want me to be here at six, you better tell me the party starts at five because that’s how my family rolls, it’s Mexican time, don’t you know?”

But all joking aside, I’m sure you’ve had that experience of interacting with people from different cultures, or even different families where their relationship with time is very different than your own. And when it comes to educators, we tend to have a scarcity mindset around time.

As a teacher and a principal, I felt like I never had enough time.  I mean, I just brainstormed a list of what we tend to believe about time and you might not think these, but these are what I thought and what my colleagues thought and consistently what my clients tend to talk about.

There’s too much to do and not enough time. People expect me to get everything done. I need to do it all perfectly right to the best of my ability. I want to give lots of time and attention to it because it needs to be done perfectly. I’m so busy. I need to be busy. If I’m not busy then I’m not doing my job, I’m not keeping up, I’m missing something. At the very least, I should look busy. I need to be the one who does it, meaning you feel the need to control, you won’t give it up, you won’t delegate, it won’t get done correctly if you don’t do it yourself. That’s a popular one.

I need to hurry, I need to rush. I need to multitask and I need to get a lot done. We really believe that. I need to better manage my time. I can’t take time off.  I can’t leave early or even I can’t leave on time, whatever that means, right. Work should come first, think about that and how it relates to our time.

And then finally, there’s always work to do, so that means I can’t prioritize or schedule in time for myself, let alone have some fun, be with my friends and family, have some downtime, or god forbid take a vacation, right, because there’s too much work to do.

This series of beliefs around time perpetuate a very scarce mindset. We think we need more time in order to get more done, so what we do is we jump on that merry-go-round that there’s not enough, we need more, we do this with all kinds of resources; time, money, materials, teachers, technology, successful kids, talent. We think there’s not enough.

We’ve created an insatiable desire for more and it has us chasing our tails instead of focused on doing the work we want to do. When we believe that we need more of something, we spend our time and energy thinking about it, talking about it, and ultimately we use the resources we so desperately want spinning and wanting more of it versus just getting down to business, getting intentional about how we’re going to use it, acknowledging there’s too much and not enough time, allowing that to be true.

What we end up doing is we create the result of not having enough time because we’re spending our time and focus believing we don’t have enough time. It’s insanity. Hey, and I’m right there with you. So there’s no judgments going on here. I’m just calling out our crazy brains and our crazy behaviors.

So, what about emotions around time? All of these stories that we’ve collectively agreed to be true, leaving us stressed, overwhelmed, worried, fearful, unproductive, ineffective, defeated, exhausted and rushed day after day after day. And you already know and feel the long-term effects of those ongoing thoughts and emotions. It’s exhausting. You want to give up. You want to question your purpose. And as you know, our emotions stem from thoughts we believe to be true.

Have any of you heard of Byron Katie? For those of you who don’t know her – I’m in love with her, she is amazing – she is an author and a thought leader who created a thought inquiry process that she simply named The Work. And one of the ideas that love is that she says, “Any thought that feels terrible is a lie.”

So when we wake up in the morning and we’re thinking all the thoughts, there’s too much to do and not enough time and we feel terrible and we feel anxious and we hesitate wanting to go into work, Katie suggests that the thought that there’s so much to do and not enough time is a lie because it feels terrible.

She says it’s not true. And I love this concept because whenever I’m consumed with a negative emotion, especially I tend to worry a lot in the night, I have extreme anxiety, panic, fears, overwhelm. But when I’m feeling those emotions, I know that they are a signal to explore what thoughts are creating those emotions, to see if I can find any truth in the opposite of that thought.

It has brought me so much peace in my life so many times. So in the case of time, what my brain wants to believe – and trust me, I am working on time scarcity thoughts every single day. I’m not out of the woods yet, which is why I can speak to you so brutally honestly about this.

My brain believes that I don’t have enough time to get to all the things that I want to accomplish. And underneath that belief is another belief that I need to get all the tasks done as soon as possible, like I’m putting time limits on my time.

And I think that once they’re done, then I’m going to feel better, then I’m going to feel relief. And when I look at the list of to-dos and I put them on the calendar, and I see mathematically that there’s more to do than the one day will allow and I think that I should be able to do more and get more done than I do, that is when I feel the stress. So if I stop and question if the thoughts I need to get more done or too much to do and not enough time, when I really stop and say is that true, is it 100% true?

What if everything I got done today was perfect, the perfect amount that I needed to get done and I closed the computer for the night and I enjoyed my evening without working? What would that be like? What would that feel like?

And I start to feel joy. I start to feel relief. I start to feel pleasure. Just pausing long enough to question if that thought is actually true or maybe it’s a little fib that my brain is telling me can calm me down. So be mindful of the emotional state that you’re in when you think about the work and the amount of time you have to complete it.

Use your emotions as a signal to pause and question your thoughts. Ask yourself why these thoughts feel so true and what is it that you think you’re gaining by continuing to believe that you don’t have time. That thought is not serving you and it’s absolutely not true.

So, what are we really after here? What you’ll find below the surface story of I need more time and there’s not enough time and there’s so much to do, that whole story, there at a deeper level, a more subconscious level is another story that’s driving that surface story about time.

Let’s think about this; why do you want to accomplish more? We say we don’t have enough time to get it all done, but what does getting it all done really mean? Why do we want to get it all done? What’s the outcome in it for us to get everything done? And what would happen to us if we actually got it all done?

There wouldn’t be anything to do, right? So just have fun with this and question this and find what it is your brain wants from you. And what you’ll see is that it wants to feel accomplished, it wants to feel successful, it loves that dopamine hit of checking off the boxes. It wants to believe that we’re good at our jobs, that we’re productive, effective, that we’re having an impact.

And two, we want others to believe – we want to believe that others believe that we are good at our jobs. We feel good when we think that other people think we’re good and we want that affirmation.

Finally, we want to believe that we’re making a difference when we accomplish our work, that there’s purpose and meaning and contribution behind getting it all done. So at the end of the day, what we’re really after when we talk about time is accomplishment, contribution, approval, connection, certainty, all of those emotions are what we’re really after.

There’s a caveat here. There are people who will say they’re very busy and they feel time is scarce but they thrive on it. They love being busy. And when you ask them how they feel, they say words like energized, motivated, eager, excited, determined, valued, important when they’re busy. They like to be challenged with a problem that they feel is insurmountable.

However, if you look more closely into the difference between the two people, they both think time is scarce, but one has positive emotion associated with it, the other has negative. What you’ll see is that the person who’s truly feeling the positive and energetic emotions has different thoughts about her time scarcity than the person who’s feeling tired and overwhelmed.

The person who is feeling energized, if you asked her, she’s going to say, yes, there’s definitely not enough time. But she’s coming from the mindset that I love what I do so much the time flies by and it just seems to vanish into thin air and I wish I had more time to do what I love.

And I felt this way when I was teaching. I loved teaching most days and every day I would look up at the clock and think, “Wow, how is it two o’clock already?” I was so engaged with my students and with teaching that it felt like there was never enough time to do everything I wanted to do. But of course, at the same time, I was also happy to pack them up and deliver them to their parents until the next morning.

But if you had asked me back then, what I would have said was, oh my gosh, it never seems like I have enough time to get to it all. But I didn’t really believe that I didn’t have enough time. What I meant by gosh there’s not enough time was that I loved everything I was doing with my class and I just wanted to have more time with them and be with them more. I loved it. We were so busy having fun and learning that the time just slipped by.

However, on the flipside, when there’s somebody who is unhappy about the time, when they really feel they don’t have enough time and they’re unhappy and they’re not accomplished, that is when the stress kicks in. So there’s a little shift in when we say there’s not enough time and what emotion comes from that thought. There are two different ways to go with this.

So when time really stresses us out is when we believe that we should be accomplishing more than we can in a given amount of time. Or we believe that we should be doing something different with our time, or finally that we just don’t like what we’re doing with our time.

And it’s when we have conflicting thoughts that our brain and our body go into discomfort. And this is true with anything you are unhappy about. You think something or someone should be different than they are and that conflict in your brain is the foundation of stress. So, it is possible to consider alternate time mindsets, and I really want to encourage you to play around with this.

You know that feeling when you go on vacation and you wake up and you have no agenda, no alarms, no place to be, and no one to answer to? There’s nothing but time? That feeling of pure freedom when you get up when you want, you have the full day ahead of you and you can do whatever you please? That is available to you even at work.

If the situation of time were the problem, then time would always feel like a problem. You would go on vacation and you would be panicked that there’s not enough time for a vacation. You wouldn’t ever stop worrying about time. So time is not the problem. It’s the way we think about time that’s the problem.

So let me leave you with this; what if all the thoughts around time were flipped on their backs, the opposite were true? Allow your brain to play with this and go into the space where the following thoughts are possible. What would it feel like if it were absolutely true that time is abundant, that there’s plenty of time, that you as a leader are doing enough, you’re doing the perfect amount of work, that you can always adjust your approach if need be? You can be intentional with your time, that more time is not better, and that you have all the time you need.

What if those were true? Settle into that. Wouldn’t that feel incredible to just know the amount of time is the time I have, it’s enough time, I’m going to practice believing that time is abundant and that I am doing all that I can and I am enough as a school leader.

Everything you’ve ever learned about time must be unlearned. So play with that this week. Let me know how it goes. I would love to hear your time mindset. Have a great week.

Hey there, my fellow educator. Are you yearning to go a little further with these concepts and learn how to apply them in your everyday work situations? Do you want to feel understood and more connected with likeminded school leaders? If so, I’m super excited to offer you, for the very first time ever, the Empowered Principal Mastermind.

It’s a safe space where we can talk about the real issues that you face on a daily basis and support you in evolving your leadership and your life to the next level. For more information, simply go to angelakellycoahcing.com and click on, “EP Mastermind.” We start this January. I can’t wait to see you on the inside.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit www.angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.