Episode 46 - Strategic Time Auditing: The Framework That Gives Ambitious Professional Women 5+ Hours Back
Welcome to Episode 46 of the Time for Living Podcast!
TRANSCRIPT
show notes
Do you ever wonder where your time actually goes? If you're crushing it professionally but feel like you're drowning in your own success. Always busy but never making progress on what truly matters. This episode will transform how you think about your most precious resource. Learn the strategic framework that helps ambitious professional women reclaim 5+ hours every week without sacrificing career momentum.
What You’ll Learn:
Why tracking your time is the ultimate productivity hack
The simple 7-day audit that reveals where your time really goes
How to categorize activities into Essential, Growth, and Waste buckets
The 48-hour delegation challenge that frees up hours instantly
Strategic ways to eliminate time drains without eliminating joy
By the end of this episode, you'll have a clear roadmap to audit your time like the strategic professional you are and start making intentional choices about where your energy goes.
Free Resource:
Grab the Taking Control of Your Time Workbook, your guide to identifying exactly where your mental energy is going and how to reclaim it for what matters most: timeforliving.co/takingcontrol
Join my email list at timeforliving.co for weekly quick-win tips, exclusive resources, and a supportive community of ambitious women who get it.
READY FOR MORE:
Join the waitlist for The Time Aligned Blueprint - my 5-week program that takes you from scattered and reactive to systematically aligned across all areas of life. timeforliving.co/tab
Let’s Connect:
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Final Thought:
Your time is your most valuable asset - it's time to treat it with the same strategic intention you bring to everything else in your life. You deserve both success and a life you actually love.
TRANSCRIPT - Strategic Time Auditing: The Framework That Gives Ambitious Professional Women 5+ Hours Back
IntroductioN
Hey, beautiful humans! Welcome back to Time For Living! Or if you're new here, welcome to the podcast for ambitious professional women who refuse to choose between career success and a life they actually love.
I'm so glad you're here with me today, and I need to ask you something real quick - when's the last time you balanced your time budget? And I don't mean your financial budget - I mean your time budget.
Because here's what I know about you - you're crushing it professionally. You're strategic about the decisions that matter in your life. You research solutions before implementing them at work, you plan your career moves carefully, you probably have systems for managing your team and managing your home. But I'm willing to bet you have no idea where 40% of your time actually goes every week.
Think about that for a second. It's like having money mysteriously disappearing from your bank account, but instead of calling the bank, you just keep working harder to make more. Except with time, you can't make more - you can only get intentional about where it's going.
And I'm also willing to bet that right now, you're hoping I'm about to give you some magical productivity hack that'll instantly give you five more hours in your day. Trust me, I love a good hack too! I'm the queen of trying to find shortcuts and life hacks. But here's what I've learned - when it comes to time, the biggest hack is actually knowing where it's going in the first place.
Today, we're doing something that might feel a little uncomfortable, and honestly, a little tedious. We're going to audit your time like the successful businesswoman you are. And I know, I know - the word "audit" probably makes you want to close this podcast and find something more fun to listen to. And I know I talk about this a lot but stick with me, because we're going to find those hidden pockets of time that are just waiting to be reclaimed.
Because here's the truth - your dreams aren't too big. You're just not treating your time with the same care and intention you treat everything else in your life.
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
Let me paint a picture for you. It's Sunday night, and you're sitting there wondering where the weekend went. You had plans - big plans. You were going to meal prep, maybe read that book that's been sitting on your nightstand for three months, call your best friend back, finally organize that closet.
But somehow, you spent two hours "quickly checking" work emails that turned into a full rabbit hole of LinkedIn scrolling. You binge-watched an entire season of that show everyone's talking about - and look, I'm not judging because streaming platforms know exactly what they're doing with those "Next Episode" countdowns. You spent another hour looking for that one document you needed, only to find it exactly where it should have been if you'd looked there first.
Sound familiar?
Now, here's where it gets interesting. You'll say "I don't have time to work out" while simultaneously knowing every detail about your coworkers' vacation photos from three different social media platforms. You'll say "I don't have time to start that side business" but you can tell me exactly what happened in every episode of your favorite reality show.
And I'm not saying entertainment is bad - we all need to decompress. But there's a difference between intentional relaxation and mindless time consumption. There's a difference between choosing to watch a movie because you want to unwind, and finding yourself three hours deep into Instagram at 11pm wondering how you got there.
Here's what's really happening - you're treating your time like it's unlimited, but managing everything else in your life like the strategic professional you are. You wouldn't make important work decisions without data, but somehow we convince ourselves it's okay to spend time without that same awareness.
And I totally get the resistance to tracking your time. The thought of writing down every little thing you do probably makes you groan internally. You're thinking, "Great, now I need time to track my time? This sounds like more work, not less." You want me to just tell you the three things you can stop doing right now to magically get five hours back in your week.
But here's the thing - time is actually your most precious asset. It's the one resource you can never get back, never earn more of, never borrow from tomorrow. And just like you wouldn't make investment decisions without looking at your portfolio, you can't make good time decisions without knowing where your time is actually going.
Think about it this way - if someone was randomly taking $50 out of your bank account every day, you'd notice immediately and do something about it. But when activities randomly take 50 minutes out of your day without serving your goals? We just shrug and say we're "busy."
The truth is, most of us are spending time on things that aren't really serving us or our goals, and we don't even realize it's happening. We're busy, but we're not necessarily productive. And we're definitely not making time for the things that would actually light us up and move us toward our dreams.
THE TIME AUDIT
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to treat your time like the valuable resource it is and do a proper audit - just like you would with any other important asset in your life.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Ugh, an audit sounds so boring and time-consuming. Can't you just tell me to stop checking email so much and call it a day?" And honestly? I wish I could give you that magic bullet. I really do. Because I love a good shortcut as much as the next person.
But here's what I've learned after years of trying every productivity hack, every time management system, every "get more done in less time" strategy - they don't work long-term if you don't know where your time is actually going. It's like trying to follow a GPS without knowing your starting point. You might drive around for a while, but you're not getting anywhere fast.
Think of this as balancing your time budget. A time audit is like taking inventory of your most valuable resource, and trust me, this simple step can reveal so much about what's working for you and what's... well, not.
I remember when I first did this, I was convinced I was going to discover that I just needed more hours in the day. I was certain the problem was that I had too much to do and not enough time to do it. But what I actually discovered was that I was spending 45 minutes every morning just figuring out what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, and looking for my keys. I was spending another hour scrolling through online stores "just browsing" but never actually buying anything.
That's 1 hour and 45 minutes a day that I was basically sleepwalking through. Over a week, that's more than 12 hours - almost a day and a half!
And here's the beautiful part - once you have the data, you get to decide what to do with it. Knowledge is power, but only when you act on it. Maybe you decide that browsing time is sacred and you're keeping it. That's totally valid! But at least you're making a conscious choice instead of just letting it happen to you.
This isn't about becoming obsessed with every minute or turning into some hyper-scheduled robot. This is about getting the information you need to make smart decisions about your time, the same way you make smart decisions about your money or your career.
STRATEGY BREAKDOWN
STEP 1: TRACK EVERYTHING FOR ONE WEEK
Okay, let's rip the band-aid off. Here's what you're going to do for the next week - track how you spend your time every single day. Yup, I mean all of it, from personal activities to business tasks. From your morning coffee to your evening wind-down routine to that random 20-minute Instagram scroll. No cheating.
And I can already hear you sighing. "This sounds like so much work!" But here's the thing - this isn't about judging how you spend your time, it's about getting real with yourself.
You can keep it super simple by jotting it down in a paper journal, or use a time-tracking app if that's more your speed. Just be careful not to waste time finding "the perfect app." Pick a method that feels easy and stick with it.
I personally love just using the notes app on my phone or the time log on page 7 of my Taking Control of Your Time Workbook, I’ll link it in the show notes. Every time I switch tasks, I jot down the time and what I'm doing. "9:15am - checking email. 9:45am - got distracted by a news article. 10:30am - finally starting that presentation." Simple, no fancy systems required.
And yes, it feels weird at first. You might catch yourself thinking, "Do I really need to write down that I spent 15 minutes looking for my phone charger?" Yes. Yes, you do. Because those 15-minute chunks add up, and they're often where our time disappears.
STEP 2: DECLUTTER YOUR SCHEDULE
After a week of tracking, it's time to shine a light on the clutter. Sit down with a cup of coffee and review your time log - take a good, hard look at it. And I want you to approach this with curiosity, not judgment.
Ask yourself, "Where am I spending time on things that aren't really serving me or my goals?" Maybe it's that daily 30-minute rabbit hole of reading celebrity gossip. Maybe it's the hour you spend every morning deciding what to wear because your closet is a disaster. Maybe it's reorganizing your email folders for the third time this month instead of actually responding to important messages.
Decluttering your schedule means letting go of those tasks that don't align with where you want to go. Sometimes it takes courage to cut out the unnecessary, but think of all the time you'll free up for what truly matters.
Pay special attention to activities that are consuming way more time than they should. I call these "time black holes" - you know, when you sit down to "quickly check" social media and suddenly it's 45 minutes later and you have no idea what you even looked at.
For those of you running businesses or climbing the corporate ladder, time drains often look like spending hours on non-revenue-generating activities - hello, endless email checks - getting stuck in unproductive work cycles, responding to every Slack message immediately, or simply not having solid boundaries around your time.
STEP 3: TAKE ACTION
Now let's talk action, because awareness without action is just fancy procrastination. Make a commitment to yourself to review your daily tasks and split them into two piles: essential and non-essential.
Essential is anything that truly moves your life or career forward, or genuinely brings you joy and fulfillment. Non-essential is everything else - the busy work, the mindless scrolling, the tasks you do out of habit rather than intention.
Pick at least three non-essential tasks or habits to either eliminate or automate this week. Maybe it's that morning routine of checking every single social media platform before you even get out of bed. Maybe it's saying yes to every coffee meeting request even when they don't serve your goals. Maybe it's spending 20 minutes every day looking for your car keys because you never put them in the same place.
Trust me, you're going to love the feeling of clearing up space in your schedule for the things that really light you up.
STEP 4: DELEGATE WHAT YOU CAN
Here's where so many of us get stuck - we fall into the trap of believing we have to do it all. But guess what? We actually thrive when we collaborate and share the load.
Ask yourself, "What's one thing I can delegate to someone else?" Maybe it's grocery shopping - hello, grocery pickup or delivery. Maybe it's cleaning your house. Maybe it's finally hiring that virtual assistant you've been thinking about, or asking your partner to take over dinner planning two nights a week.
And here's the kicker - don't just think about it. Take action. Within the next 48 hours, delegate that task.
Even if you think you can't afford to delegate, ask yourself - what's your time worth? If you make $50 an hour at work, does it make sense to spend two hours cleaning your house instead of paying someone $100 to do it while you work on that project that could bring in $500?
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE
I want you to remember something - time is your most precious asset, so treat it with the care and intention it deserves.
This isn't about perfection. It's about awareness and intentional action. When you start tracking your time, you might be surprised by what you discover. You might realize you're spending 30 minutes every morning looking for things because you don't have systems in place. You might discover that "quick" phone calls are turning into hour-long conversations that derail your entire afternoon.
And you might discover some uncomfortable truths about your digital habits. Maybe you'll realize you're not actually enjoying that YouTube rabbit hole you fell into - you're just watching random videos because the algorithm keeps feeding you content. Or maybe you'll discover that you're using online shopping as a way to avoid working on that passion project you keep saying you don't have time for.
The goal isn't to eliminate every moment of spontaneity or relaxation. The goal is to make conscious choices about how you spend your time instead of just letting it happen to you.
Remember when you used to wonder where your money was going, and then you started paying attention to your spending and suddenly you could see that daily coffee habit was adding up? This is the same thing, but with time.
And if there are things you can automate, go for it. Set up automatic bill pay, use grocery pickup, batch your meal prep, create a launch pad by your door for keys and sunglasses. Just be mindful of not jumping on every shiny new app you see, as they can end up taking more time than they save.
Start small. Pick one area where you know you're wasting time and focus on that first. Maybe it's batching your email instead of checking it constantly. Maybe it's setting a timer for social media so that "quick check" doesn't turn into an hour-long scroll session.
SUMMARY
You got this! Seriously, you have everything it takes to take control of your time and create the life you want.
I know this feels like work. I know you were probably hoping for a magic productivity hack that would instantly give you five more hours in your week. But here's the truth - this IS the hack. Knowing where your time goes is the foundation that makes every other time management strategy actually work.
I've created The Taking Control of Your Time Workbook that walks you through this entire process with templates and worksheets to make tracking and analyzing your time super simple. You can grab it for free at timeforliving.co/takingcontrol I’ll link it in the show notes.
Don't wait for the "perfect" time to start this - because here's the truth: there will never be a perfect time. But there will be right now, and right now is when successful women take action.
Your time is valuable. Your dreams matter. And you deserve to live a life that lights you up, not just one that keeps you busy.
Thanks for listening to Time For Living. I'll see you next week, and remember - you don't have to choose between success and a life you love. You can have both.