Ep 47: Don't just manage time - CREATE it

In this episode, Assia breaks down the radical shift from simply managing your time to creating more of it. This isn’t about fancy planners or color-coded calendars — this is about eliminating the noise, delegating like a boss, and setting ruthless boundaries so you can finally stop drowning in busywork. If you’re tired of feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, this episode is your wake-up call.

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Transcript

1:18

Welcome to the She Busy Podcast, where I teach female entrepreneurs how to embrace their CEO mindset, streamline their operations, and reclaim their time and freedom. Hey there. My name is Sia Mahmud. I'm an entrepreneur, children's book author, business consultant, mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend, and boss. And I'm on a mission to help you grow a wildly successful business and still have plenty of time to enjoy the life you want. If you're feeling trapped in your success, overwhelmed by the demands of your business and struggling to find balance, you are in the right place. I've been there, and I'm here to help you break free from the hamster wheel, but becoming the CEO, your business and your life deserved. Doesn't happen by accident. It takes intention and purpose, and that's exactly what I want to teach you in this podcast. So let's dive right in. Hello and welcome back to She Busy. My name's aia. I'm your host, and today I think today's topic and episode might just change the way that you think about time in general, specifically your time because we're not talking about time management because. While that's important, that's not my expertise, and that's why you need to listen to one of my most recent episodes with the amazing Laura Davis, and she talked about time management. That's her expertise. That's her field. So if you haven't listened to that, make sure you do. She gives some amazing tips and hacks. But my expertise, however, is about creating more time. As an entrepreneur, it's about not wasting time. And trust me, these are two very different things. Just because you own a business doesn't mean you're good at deciding what to spend your time on. You. You become an entrepreneur and there's no one telling you that, Hey, these are the things that you need to do to move the needle forward. So many entrepreneurs, most entrepreneurs, especially those in the early years, but even many, many seasoned entrepreneurs are actually choosing the wrong things to work on. And that is why so many of us feel like we're drowning instead of thriving. So let's get into it. Time management versus time creation. Right? Let's break this down. Time management. That's about scheduling. It's about productivity hacks. It's about making sure that your calendar is color coded and your to-do list is prioritized. Great, fine, cool. Love it. And it's so needed, but time creation is about something way bigger. It's about removing the things from your plate that shouldn't be there in the first place. It's about getting clear on what actually moves the needle and then eliminating, delegating or straight up just ignoring everything else. Because let's be real, most of the things that we're spending our time on, they don't matter. Not really. They feel important, they feel urgent, but they aren't actually moving the business forward in any significant way. And that's where we mess up the mistakes that entrepreneurs make with their time, I see it all the time and and I've done it myself. I still continue to do it, and that's the thing. That's why this. Idea of optimizing your business and your operations and your backend and making sure that you build out this time. This is something that is not a set it and forget it. You have to be continually working because we will fill our time. Regardless, we're gonna fill our time, whether we have a little bit of it or a lot of it. It's kind of like if you have a, almost like a space in your home, sometimes there's people that have countertops and there's always something kind of on the countertop. If you don't stop yourself, if you're not intentional about putting things on the countertop just like that, we'll fill our calendars, right? So even if you do do the work and make the time, I still have to struggle, or I still do struggle with this and I have to go back in. Audit my time. We're gonna talk about that in a second. But I have to go back in and figure out, okay, where am I adding stuff that doesn't need to be added? So this mistake, it, it, it can lead you to a point where you're wasting your time. And, and that's how we are out here playing ourselves, right? We're saying yes to too much because every client request, every opportunity, every project. Yes, yes, yes. And before we know it, our schedules are packed with the things we thought we had to do, but really many of them are distractions. Sometimes just having that white space on the calendar once we're able to make it, or even if you're not able to make it and make it, you say you just have a, a small white space on your calendar and someone asks you for a coffee or, or some sort of project that you guys can work on together and, and then you're like, oh my God, yes, I, I would love to do that. Now your calendar's completely packed. We love that. I don't know if there's like she busy, right? Because I don't know if we love that idea of keeping our calendars full. Sometimes there's that addiction to making sure that we have something to do at all times, but at the end of the day, we confuse busy with productive because just because your day is full or your calendar is full, it doesn't make it mean that you're actually making progress. You could be busy all day and still be broke. Right? I mean, that's that what I said, and that's the thing about everything that I talk about is that you being busy with tasks. It's not helping. It's not helping you. It's not helping your business. It's not helping you build the life or the business that you want. And then we also, we hold on to tasks that we should have let go of. How many times are you gonna hear me talk about delegating? Probably a billion because I know so many people till this day, so many entrepreneurs, especially women entrepreneurs, that don't understand that just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should be doing it. Just because you've always done it doesn't mean you still need to. And then if you're like me, there are times where even if you've passed on the task and you've delegated well, or you think you've delegated well, people still find ways to creep in, right? Your team's gonna find ways or the people that your contractors, the people you work with, are gonna find ways to almost make you do the work right, make you make it easier on them, and nobody realizes it's not malicious, or at least most of the time, make sure you know who you're hiring. But they'll bring you in. They'll suck you right in to help them with a problem that they should have the tools and the resources to solve. So again, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should be doing it. So how do we create more time in our life and in our business, right? How do we fix this? How do we actually create more time? I probably talked about each and every one of these prior, but not in the idea of building new time for yourself. And number one will always be my number one piece of advice will always be to audit your time. Take a hard look at where your time is actually going. If you don't know, then track it for a week. I have many different ways that I recommend people do this. Reach out if this is something that you're, you, you're interested in and you should be. You should be auditing your time. Then you'll be shocked at how much time is actually slipping away on things that don't matter. And I actually, so I regularly audit my time because again, you have to be continuously doing checkpoints. And I have my team audit their time. I actually, right now, I'm currently working on my team, um, did their time audits. I had my whole admin team do time audits for the last, or for about a week. And then now we're building out, okay, what are the tasks we can eliminate? What are the tasks that should be on one person's plate and not everyone's plate? What are some of the tasks that we can automate? What is taking up all of your time? Right? Because if you don't audit your time, it's kinda, I, I actually had a staff meeting. And every time I have a staff meeting or every time I meet with my team, you'll realize that sometimes people work around something and make it take more time. I had a, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast before. It was, it was several months ago, but I had a, a team member who, we have two computers at the front desk and both of them should be connected. We have have this ginormous printer. Um, and she was like, oh, well I have to. Email, whatever I wanna print from my computer to the other computer, and then I have to go over there and print it from there because my, my printer's not working or the printer's not working on my computer. And I'm like, wait, what? Like that is way too much time wasted. And you know what the solution was? They just call the printer company whose number's on the printer and get it reconnected because something was going on with the connection issue or there was some sort of connection issue. And it's like we do that, right? We all do that. That we're like, okay, well I'm just gonna do it this one time. I'll just email it to myself and print it from there.'cause I'm in a hurry. And then we, and then we start to build that habit of doing things the wrong way that take longer and you don't realize it because now it's built in. So unless you audit your time, you're not going to be able to figure out what is the stuff that you're spending. Too much time on the wrong time on shouldn't be spending any time on. It shouldn't even be something that you're doing. It shouldn't even be something that anyone's doing, and that's the only way to figure it out. So I'll harp on this. Audit your time all day, every day. I think it's seriously, seriously important. And number two, how do you create more time? You eliminate the non-essentials. You have to be ruthless, and I struggle with this too. If it's not moving the business forward or bringing you real joy, you have to cut it. Just because you've always done something doesn't mean you need to be keep, you need to keep doing it. Just because someone needs something from you doesn't mean you have to do that. Actually, I, I recently had to come to terms with this is I was starting to have a lot of people be like, Hey, can I have coffee? Can I have you wanna have coffee? You wanna grab some, some coffee? And, and I had to be more strategic. I mean, my time with coffees was slipping away. And it's like not. I would love to have coffee with everyone if I could and, and meet new people and expand my horizons, but sometimes you have to decide that, wait, am I filling my white space because I can. Is this essential in moving my business or my life forward? And a lot of times it's not. Majority of the time it's not. Sometimes you just feel bad, someone asks you to go to coffee and you do it. And I'm not saying that to anyone I've had coffee with recently, but I've had to be like, oh, you know what? I, I can't, like, I can't because at the end of the day, like the way the time works, and we all know this, but it's hard to sometimes grasp the concept. But if we're spending our time on something, we're taking it away from somewhere else. We're not, we're not able to create time, actual time. Unless we do these things, like eliminating what we don't need to be doing. Or number three, to create more time delegating. You cannot grow if you are the bottleneck of your business or your life, period. You have to hire, help outsource tasks and trust people to do their jobs. And if you haven't downloaded my delegation guide, seriously, you need to go for it. Do it. I can't believe you haven't yet. If you're still listening to this podcast and you're this many episodes in. But the other thing too about delegating, it's one of those things where almost people don't realize that it doesn't just work on your team, it works in your relationships. It works with your partner. These are the same things that, same kind of concepts that I use to work with my husband on. Like, Hey, these are the things that I need help with. And so that. Delegation guide is gonna break it down step by step. But look at looking at it as an actual process, not just passing tasks off, but looking at it as a process that makes you and the person that you're delegating to successful, and you can use it on your husband. And then number four is you have to set boundaries. That's kinda what I was talking about with the, with the coffee chest. But in general, you have to set firm boundaries because time is your most valuable asset. You have to protect it. You have to say no without guilt. Or at least some guilt. And yes, that's even to clients, even to people that you like. Even the people that you wanna be able to spend time with or do things with, you have to be able to protect your time because time is also energy. And if you're creating time, you don't want to be giving up energy by filling it in with the wrong things. And then number five is only focus on high impact work. If it's not making money, it's not moving the business forward. It's not fuel your mission, it's not helping you spend more time on the things that you love. It's probably not worth your time. Right? And you have to, you have to be the one to figure out what that is, or you know come to me and we'll figure it out together. But you have to be able to figure out what is making your business money, what is allowing you to be able to spend more time with your kids or your husband, or your friends or your parents? What is moving your business and your life forward? What's fueling your personal and professional mission and focus on that. And, and finally, you have to, you just have to own your time as a CEO. That's not on the list, but you just have to own your time as a CEO because at the end of the day, your business will only grow as fast as you do. That's the thing. Being an entrepreneur your job should be to continue to grow, to learn to get better. Because you're not done just'cause you became an entrepreneur, you're not done. And if you're out here wasting time on low impact tasks, you're trying to do everything yourself, you're saying yes to the wrong things, you are capping your potential before you even get started. So let this be your wake up call. Don't even bother learning to manage your time. If you don't start learning to create more of it. Focus on what actually moves the needle. Let go of the things that don't. You deserve that. Isn't that what this is all about? Isn't that why you're sitting here listening to this episode and you made it all the way here? You listen to this podcast, so I hope that resonated. That's all I have for you today. Shoot me a dm. Ask me what my time audit strategy, if you wanna know, download my delegation blueprint, and if you need someone to help hold you accountable or help you, guide you on how to be able to create more time, or what are the things you need to be focusing on, then hit me up. Otherwise, until next time, Thank you for tuning in to the She Busy Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. For more inspiration, strategies and support on your journey to freedom and success, make sure to hit the subscribe button, follow me on social media and visit my website. All the links are in the show notes. And remember, you have the power to create the life and business you've always dreamed of, but it won't happen on accident. Here's to your success and freedom. Until next time.