Episode 105 - I Never Needed More Hours. I Needed to Aim Them.

Welcome to Episode 105 of the Time for Living Podcast!

TRANSCRIPT

show notes

What if the thing standing between you and your dream isn't a shortage of time at all? What if it's that your hours have never been pointed anywhere you chose?

This one is personal: the years I ran on empty, a job by day and our business by night, then becoming a mom and selling before we felt ready. If you're an ambitious woman with a dream still waiting for its turn, this is for you.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why busy can look like work ethic on the outside and feel like proof on the inside

• The two things that changed everything for me: what I protect and what I let go of

• The simple boundary I still use for every decision: clarity for each area of life, time for each area, then protecting that time

• Why adding fifteen minutes to your dream works when adding a big chunk breaks straight away

• Why the hard things you've already done inside a full life prove you can do this

Resources:

Ready to take action? Grab the free Anchor Map at timeforliving.co/anchormap. It shows where your pockets of time really land and helps you plant one 15-minute anchor for your dream.

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeforlivingco/

• Email: hello@timeforliving.co

Final Thought:

You don't need a bigger life to start. You need to aim the one you have.

TRANSCRIPT - I Never Needed More Hours. I Needed to Aim Them.

INTRODUCTION

So, today's episode is a bit different. At the end of the last one, I promised I'd tell you what building and then selling our first business taught me about time, so that's what we're doing today.

And the short version is this. The hours mattered. They still do. I look at mine every single week. But what changed everything was where I pointed them.

And if you didn't catch the last episode, that's completely fine, you don't need it for this one. The only bit that matters here is this: you don't have to get your whole life sorted before you're allowed to start on your dream.

Before I get into it, though, think about the thing you'd love to be doing, the dream that keeps getting pushed to someday. What's the reason you give yourself for not doing it yet? I'm guessing it's time. There just isn't enough of it. Your days are full before they've even started. And somewhere in the back of your mind there's a quiet deal you've made with yourself: once things calm down, once I've got more time, then I'll get to it.

I made that exact deal with myself for years. So today I'm not starting with a framework. I'm just going to tell you what happened, and I think you might see a little bit of yourself in my story.

The Years I Ran on Empty

Let me take you back to the start.

Straight out of university, I applied for a graduate job. Not just any job. The one I thought was my dream job, the one I'd pictured my whole life being built around. And I didn't get it.

I'm telling you that part on purpose, because it shaped everything that came after, and I didn't see it for years.

So I went a different way. I worked in big corporations, and later in family startups, and those jobs taught me more than I realised at the time. They shaped how I'd go on to run and grow our own business. Because alongside them, we started one. And here's what a normal day looked like. I'd work my job all day, and then I'd come home and work on our business. Every day. That was the shape of my life.

There was no time for workouts. Cleaning was the absolute minimum, whatever it took to keep the house from falling over. Friends would invite me out and I'd say no, not because I didn't want to see them, but because I was too tired to be good company. The tank was empty by Wednesday and I kept driving on it anyway.

Now, I want to be clear about something, because this isn't a story about a job I hated or a business I didn't want. I liked my job. I liked that business. The work itself was good. That's part of what made the pace so easy to keep going. When you like what you're doing, running flat out feels like commitment, not a problem.

But here's what I can see now, looking back.

Busy was doing two jobs for me. The first was survival. It felt like the only way to get where I wanted to go, like if I slowed down for even a week, everything would slip. And the second job, the one I never would have admitted to at the time, was proof. Proof that I was good enough. Proof that the people who hadn't picked me for that graduate job had got it wrong.

I think, if I'm really truthful, the busyness was numbing something. That little voice that said you didn't make the cut. As long as I was moving, I didn't have to sit still long enough to hear it. So I kept moving. More hours, more effort, more doing. I was trying to earn my way to the outcome I felt was meant to be mine in the first place.

On the outside, busy looked like my work ethic. On the inside, it was my proof.

And maybe you've never been turned down for anything, but I wonder if some of that sounds familiar. The feeling that if you just do more, you'll finally be enough. That rest is something you get once you've proved yourself. That if you're not exhausted, you're probably not trying hard enough.

If that's you, I want to say this clearly. There is nothing wrong with you for running like that. It made complete sense. It made sense to me for years. You were doing the best you could with what you believed about your own worth. That's not a flaw. It's just a belief that's been in charge for a while, and beliefs can change.

When More Stopped Being the Point

So what changed?

It wasn't a lightning bolt. It was slower than that, and it started before my son was born.

The road to becoming a mom wasn't easy for me, and that season made me slow down in a way nothing else had. I left my job and put everything into the one business. For the first time, I wasn't working two full days inside one.

And then my boy arrived.

And something became very clear, very quickly. As a family, we couldn't keep running at that pace and be as present as we wanted to be. Not both. The business, the way it was built, the way we'd been running it, was designed by a woman who needed to prove something. It wasn't designed for a woman who wanted to be there for bath time.

I want to say this carefully, because it matters. The business wasn't wrong. It just didn't fit anymore. The life had changed shape, and the work needed to change with it.

And then, in one of those moments where it feels like the stars line up, a buyer came along.

It was before we were ready. We hadn't planned it. If you'd asked me the month before, I'd have told you we'd sell one day, maybe, eventually, when the timing was perfect.

But we sat with it, and we asked ourselves a simple question. If we say no, will someone else come along in the timeframe we actually want? And the answer was probably not.

So we said yes.

I won't pretend that was easy. Something you've built with your own hands becomes part of how you see yourself, and for me it was tangled up with all that proving. Letting it go meant letting go of a version of me who needed it. But when we held the decision up against what we actually wanted our days to look like with our son, it wasn't close.

We didn't sell because it was the perfect moment. We sold because we finally knew what we were protecting.

And I think that's the part I most want you to hear. For years, I'd been measuring my life in hours. How many I had, how many I'd worked, how many more I could squeeze out. The decision to sell wasn't about hours at all. It was about aim. We knew what we wanted our time to go to, and that clarity made a very big, very scary decision surprisingly simple.

It Was Never More Hours. It Was Where I Aimed Them

Here's what growing and selling that business actually taught me about time.

I never needed more hours. I needed to aim the ones I had.

Back in the go go go years, I had the same twenty-four hours I have now. I wasn't short on time. I was spending all of it proving something, and there was nothing left over for my health, my friends, or the life I said I wanted. The hours were there. They just weren't pointed anywhere I'd chosen.

So two things changed, and they're both still true in my life today.

The first is what I protect. Family comes first. Over more. Over everything. That's not a nice sentiment on a mug; it's the first filter every decision goes through. If a new opportunity costs my family the presence we chose, it's a no, however shiny it looks.

The second is what I let go of. And the big one was the need to do more. More was my default for so long. More hours, more projects, more yes. Letting go of more didn't mean letting go of ambition. It meant only the important things got a place. Everything else could wait, or go.

And out of those two things came the boundary I still use for every single decision. It's simple, and it's the most useful thing I own.

Get crystal clear on what you want in every area of your life. Your family, your work, your home, your health, and the dream you keep putting off. Then decide how many hours each of those areas gets. And then protect those hours.

Let me show you what that could look like for someone who isn't me. Picture a woman who works four days a week, has two kids, and has wanted to get back to painting for about six years. Her list might say: family, every evening after five and most of the weekend. Work, the four days. Home, a few hours, shared out. Health, three walks. And her painting? Right now, zero. So she doesn't give it an afternoon. She gives it fifteen minutes. Saturday morning, while her partner does the swimming lessons.

Fifteen minutes doesn't sound like much. But it's fifteen minutes more than it's had in six years. And the moment it's written down next to everything else, it stops being a someday and starts being a Saturday.

That's what deciding the hours does. Every area still gets looked after. Nothing gets dropped on the floor. The dream just finally gets a line of its own, instead of waiting for whatever's left.

I still look at the hours. I'm still very goal driven; that part of me didn't go anywhere. The difference is that no single area gets to eat the others anymore. My work gets its hours. My family gets theirs. My own health and my own dreams get theirs. Nothing runs on empty to pay for something else.

That's what aiming your hours does. It's not less life. It's life with the energy going where you chose.

And I'll tell you what that looks like for me now, day to day. I build Time For Living inside school hours. When the school day ends, my work day ends. I work in small blocks, fifteen minutes at a time, and those blocks are aimed before I sit down. And here's the part that still surprises me. I get more of what matters done now than I ever did in the years when I worked every waking hour. Not because I found more time. Because I stopped spending it on proving.

And about that graduate job I didn't get. I used to carry it like a weight. Now I'm grateful for it. If I'd got it, I don't think our business would ever have existed, and I'd never have learned any of this. Not getting picked led me here. It led me to boundaries I'd never have found on the path I thought I wanted.

You've Done a Hard Thing Before

Now, I've been talking about me for a while, so let me turn this around, because this story isn't really about me. It's about what you already know.

You've done something hard inside a full life before.

Maybe you got through a degree while working. Maybe you brought a newborn home and somehow kept a household running on four hours of broken sleep. Maybe you held a job together through a season when everything else was falling apart. Maybe you moved house, or started over, or cared for someone you love while still showing up for everyone else.

However it looked for you, I'd bet you didn't get through it by finding more hours. Nobody handed you a longer day. You got through it because, for that season, you knew exactly what mattered. You aimed what you had at it. And you let a whole lot of other things go without a second thought.

So here's what I want you to sit with. If you did a hard thing inside a full life once, then the full life isn't the reason your dream is still on the shelf. The full life was there last time too. The difference is that last time, the thing mattered enough that you aimed your hours at it without asking permission.

And please hear me on this. If your dream hasn't had its turn yet, that isn't laziness, and it isn't a sign you don't want it enough. It's just that nobody has ever sat you down and asked how many hours it gets. Not your boss, not your family, and maybe not even you. It's been waiting for the leftovers, and a full life doesn't have leftovers. That's not your fault. It's just what happens when a dream never gets its own place on the list.

Aim the Hours You Already Have

So here's the one thing I'd love you to do this week, and it's small.

Take a piece of paper, or the notes app on your phone. Write down the areas of your life. Family. Work. Home. Your health. And your dream, whatever it is for you. Then, next to each one, write how much time you currently spend on it in a normal week. Not the ideal. The real number. For your dream, that might be zero, and that's fine.

Then add fifteen minutes to your dream. Just fifteen. Not an hour, not a whole evening. I know it's tempting to go big, but a large chunk dropped into a week that's already packed breaks the moment it starts, and then it feels like proof you can't do it. Fifteen minutes fits. Fifteen minutes holds. Circle it. That's the time you protect this week.

And last, look at the list and name one "more" you could let go of to make room for it. One extra, one yes you didn't need to say, one standard that's higher than it has to be. You don't have to do anything about it yet. Just name it.

That's it. When you've written the list and circled your fifteen minutes, you're done.

And if you'd like a hand finding where that fifteen minutes could live in your real day, this is exactly what the Anchor Map walks you through. It's free, you name the dream you want more room for, it shows you where your pockets of time really land, and it has you plant one 15-minute anchor in your actual day. About five minutes, at timeforliving.co/anchormap.

I never needed more hours. I needed to aim the ones I had.

And I think that's the quiet relief in all of this. You don't have to wait for a bigger life, or an emptier calendar, or a season where everyone needs you a little less. The hours you have right now are enough to start, once they're pointed somewhere you chose. That's what gave me back my evenings, my health, and the chance to be there for my boy in the moments I'd never get again. And it's what could give you back room for the dream you've been quietly carrying, inside the life you already love.

Next week, we look at the other side of this: the eighty twenty rule, for work and for home. Because a small slice of what fills your day is doing most of the heavy lifting, and the rest is just filling space. Once you can see which is which, a lot of it gets to go, and what you let go becomes room for your dreams.

Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week.