Episode 40 - Hidden Time Drains: How High-Achieving Women Can Reclaim 17+ Hours Per Week
Welcome to Episode 40 of the Time for Living Podcast!
TRANSCRIPT
show notes
If you've ever felt like you're working harder than ever but getting less done—while wondering where all your time actually goes—this episode is exactly what you need. Today, we're uncovering the hidden time drains that are costing high-achieving women nearly 1,000 hours per year and the simple three-step system to reclaim control of your schedule so you can finally make progress on what matters most.
What You’ll Learn:
Why you're losing 2.5 hours daily to "hidden time drains" and how this adds up to $45,500 worth of lost time annually
The three most common time thieves stealing from ambitious women: • The People-Pleasing Thief: How saying yes to everyone else means saying no to your priorities • The Perfectionist Thief: Why spending extra time "perfecting" tasks hits diminishing returns after 80% • The Distraction Thief: How constant task-switching is costing you focus and flow
The TIME Method: A practical 3-step framework to Track your time reality, Identify your personal time thieves, and Minimize them with strategic boundaries
The One Hour Rescue Mission: An immediate challenge you can implement today to protect time for what actually moves the needle in your life
By the end of this episode, you'll have a clear action plan to stop feeling like you're spinning your wheels and start making meaningful progress on your goals and dreams.
Free Resource:
Ready to discover exactly where your time is disappearing? Download your free Hidden Time Finder: 21 Places Busy Women Lose Hours Daily and How to Fix It. You'll get specific strategies for each time drain plus practical solutions you can implement immediately: timeforliving.co/timefinder
Join my email list at timeforliving.co for weekly quick-win tips, exclusive resources, and a supportive community of ambitious women who get it.
Let’s Connect:
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Final Thought:
Your time is your life—it's the one resource you can never get more of. Stop letting it slip through the cracks and start protecting it like the valuable asset it is. Pick one time thief from today's episode and create a boundary around it this week. Because you didn't become successful by accident, and you have everything it takes to create the life you actually want to be living. You've got this!
TRANSCRIPT - Hidden Time Drains: How High-Achieving Women Can Reclaim 17+ Hours Per Week
IntroductioN
Hey there! Welcome back to Time For Living or if you’re new here, welcome to the Time For Living family. I'm so glad you're here with me today because what I'm about to share with you is going to blow your mind – and honestly, it might make you a little mad too.
Can I be real with you for a second? Have you ever thought, "I feel like I'm working harder than I ever have, but I'm getting less done than ever. Where is all my time going?" This is the number one thing I hear from the amazing women I work with, and honestly? It describes the experience of literally every single ambitious woman I know. Including me, if I'm being honest.
You know that feeling, right? You wake up with the best intentions. You've got your coffee (or tea if you’re me), your to-do list, maybe you've even done some morning journaling. You're ready to tackle the day. But then somehow, someway, it's 6 PM and you're sitting there thinking, "What did I actually accomplish today?"
You're not alone in this. In fact, I've been doing some research – okay, maybe it's more like obsessing – over why this keeps happening to successful, capable women like you and me. And what I discovered is going to change everything for you.
Here's the thing: You're not bad at time management. You're not disorganized. You're not failing. What's happening to you is real, it's measurable, and it's costing you way more than just a few lost hours here and there.
I'm talking about time theft. And no, I don't mean someone is literally stealing time from your calendar – though honestly, sometimes it feels like that, doesn't it? I'm talking about something much more sneaky that's been happening right under your nose.
By the end of our time together today, you're going to know exactly what's been sabotaging your best efforts, how much it's actually costing you – and I'm talking real dollars here – and most importantly, how to put a stop to it starting today.
Why This Problem Exists
Okay, so let me tell you what I discovered when I started really paying attention to this pattern, and honestly? The numbers are going to put time into perspective.
The average high-achieving woman is losing about 2.5 hours every single day to "hidden time drains." Now, 2.5 hours might not sound like much, but let's do the math together.
That's 17.5 hours per week. That's 910 hours per year. That's literally 22 full work weeks of lost time annually.
But here's where it gets really eye-opening. If you make $100,000 a year, that's roughly $50 an hour of your professional value. So we're looking at $45,500 worth of your time that's just... disappearing. Every. Single. Year.
Now, I'm not saying you should work those extra hours – that's not what this is about. What I'm saying is that this time could be going toward the things that actually matter to you. Your side business. Your health. Your relationships. That book you want to write. That course you want to take. Those dreams you keep pushing to "someday."
And here's what really breaks my heart: Most of the women I work with don't even realize it's happening. They think they're just "bad at time management" or "not organized enough." But that's not what this is at all.
But here's what's really happening, and this is where it gets interesting. These aren't random interruptions or distractions. They follow patterns. And once you see the patterns, you can't unsee them.
The first pattern I noticed: We're saying yes to everything except what matters most to us. You know how this goes. Someone asks if you can take on a project, attend a meeting, help with something that's "really quick." And because you're competent and capable, you say yes. But every yes to someone else's priority is a no to your own.
The second pattern: We're perfectionist-ing ourselves into paralysis. You spend 45 minutes on an email that needed 10. You redo a presentation that was already great. You research every possible option before making a simple decision. I see this all the time with my clients – they're so afraid of making the wrong choice that they spend more time deciding than doing.
The third pattern, and this one hit me hard: We're treating our energy like it's unlimited. We work through lunch, skip breaks, stay up late to "catch up," and then wonder why everything feels so much harder the next day. When your energy tank is empty, every task takes twice as long.
Here's what I want you to understand: This isn't your fault. You weren't taught this stuff in business school or leadership training. Nobody sits you down and says, "Hey, here's how to protect your time like the valuable asset it is."
But that's exactly what we're going to change today.
3-Step Practical Strategy
Alright, let's fix this. I'm going to give you a simple three-step framework that you can start using immediately. I call it the TIME method – Track, Identify, and Minimize.
Step 1: Track Your Time Reality
For the next week – just one week – I want you to track your time in 30-minute chunks. But here's the key difference from other time tracking advice you've probably heard: I also want you to note how you feel after each activity.
Use a simple scale of 1 to 5. How energized do you feel? How aligned does this feel with your priorities? You're not looking for perfection here – you're looking for patterns.
Here's what you'll probably discover, because I see this with every single client: There are activities that drain you that you didn't even realize were draining you. And there are pockets of time where you're incredibly productive that you can learn to protect and expand.
Step 2: Identify Your Personal Time Thieves
Once you have that data, you're going to identify your top three time thieves. These are going to be different for everyone, but here are the most common ones I see:
The people-pleasing thief: This shows up as saying yes when you mean no, taking on projects that aren't yours, letting meetings run over because you don't want to seem rude.
The perfectionist thief: Spending way too much time on tasks that hit diminishing returns after the first 80% of effort.
The distraction thief: This isn't just social media – though that's part of it. It's the constant switching between tasks, the notifications training your brain to expect interruption, the inability to focus deeply on one thing.
Here's your assignment: Pick just one. The one that's costing you the most time or energy. We're going to focus there first.
Step 3: Minimize With Strategic Boundaries
Now comes the part that feels scary but is actually the most liberating: You're going to create "strategic boundaries."
If your biggest thief is people-pleasing, your boundary might be: "Let me check my calendar and get back to you" instead of immediately saying yes to requests. This gives you time to think about whether this aligns with your priorities.
If it's perfectionism, your boundary might be setting a timer. Give yourself a specific amount of time for tasks that tend to expand, and when the timer goes off, you're done. Good enough is often better than perfect when perfect means you don't have time for anything else.
If it's distraction, your boundary might be creating "focus fortresses" – specific times when your phone is on airplane mode, your email is closed, and you're working on one thing only.
The beautiful thing about this approach is that you're not trying to overhaul your entire life overnight. You're making one strategic change that creates a ripple effect across everything else.
One Hour Rescue Mission
Okay, I want to give you a challenge that you can do right now, today, that will give you immediate results.
It's the "One Hour Rescue Mission."
Here's how it works: Look at your calendar for tomorrow. Find one hour – just one – that you can protect. Maybe it's the first hour of your day before everyone else wakes up. Maybe it's during lunch instead of scrolling your phone. Maybe it's in the evening instead of mindlessly scrolling.
During that one hour, you're going to work on something that actually moves the needle in your life. Not busy work. Not other people's priorities. Something that's important to you but keeps getting pushed to "someday."
Maybe it's working on that business idea you've been thinking about. Maybe it's applying for that job. Maybe it's writing in the journal that's been sitting empty on your nightstand. Maybe it's researching that course you want to take.
Here's what I know about you: You didn't become successful by accident. You've got the skills and the drive to make things happen. You just need to protect the time to actually do it.
And I want you to know that this feeling you have – like you're spinning your wheels despite working harder than ever – it's not permanent. It's not who you are. It's just a pattern that can be changed.
When my clients start implementing these strategies, the transformation is honestly incredible. They get their evenings back. They stop feeling guilty about taking breaks. They start making progress on the things that actually matter to them.
One client told me, "I finally feel like I'm living my life instead of just surviving it." Another said, "I didn't realize how much mental energy I was spending on things that weren't even my responsibility."
If you want to go deeper with this – and I really hope you do – I've created something that's going to completely change how you see your time.
It's called the Hidden Time Finder: 21 Places Busy Women Lose Hours Daily, and when I say this will shock you, I mean it. We're talking about the sneaky time thieves that are literally stealing 17+ hours from your week without you even realizing it.
This isn't just another time management checklist. This is a complete audit that reveals exactly where your precious hours are disappearing – including the ones that will make you go 'Oh my gosh, THAT'S where my time goes!' these 21 time leaks show up over and over again.
You'll get the complete audit plus quick-fix solutions for each leak, so you can start reclaiming hours immediately. Some of my clients save 10+ hours in their first week just from identifying their top 3 time thieves.
Grab it right now at timeforliving.co/timefinder – it's completely free, and the link is in the show notes. Trust me, this is the wake-up call you didn't know you needed.
Your time is your life. It's the one resource you can never get more of. It's time to start treating it that way.
I believe in you. I believe in your dreams. And I believe you have everything it takes to create the life you actually want to be living.
Thanks for spending your time with me today. Until next week, keep making time for what matters most.