It's too easy to fall to the bottom of the to do list when you run your own business.

In today's episode I want to chat about the importance of scheduling you first and extending the values in your business towards you, the business owner too.

Take a listen and then take action - put you and what's important to you on the schedule. I’d love to hear how you go.

Let's dive in.

Links, resources & mentions

• Ep 16 How to feel less time poor

• James Olivia Chu Hillman

Episode Transcript

Laura Jean 0:04

Hello Hello and welcome to episode 18 of the dietitian values Podcast. Today, I'm talking to you or want to talk to you about scheduling, and not just any type of scheduling in your business but scheduling, you first. So let's dive in. When I talk to my clients, or anyone really about a values based business, there's a really important person, that your values have to extend towards in your business, and that is you, a values based business, a human centred business centres, the human in the business as well. So if you are in business and you are thinking about your values and how you can create messaging that, you know, talks about your values how you can create spaces that uphold your values for the humans you work with, that is an essential part of a values based business. but it's also essential that you consider yourself when you're thinking about how you show up in your values in your business, and one part of that, or one way you can actually do that is by scheduling you first.

So typically when we think of how we schedule our time, often what we do is that we schedule in what we see as the most quote unquote important or quote unquote, urgent and we fill up our time with those kind of things we fill up our time with busy, busy work, and then what can often happen is we don't have time for the things that we say are important, and a values based business and values based life is one where your actions are aligned with your values, where you live into the values that you are saying, are important to you. And when you schedule or when you allow your schedule to be filled up by everyone else's agenda by what other people think is important or what you think you should, which is always a red flag do, then often what can happen is the time available for you, for what's important to you, disappears, it gets taken up by all these other things by other people's agendas, basically. And whether that's the humans you are working with, whether that's humans you're collaborating with or whether that's our cultural social agenda for work in business and what you should do. And so when you start to think about running a values based business and you're getting clear on your values, it's super important that you think about how that includes you and how your, the way that you work, and the time that you're spending around work allows for you to have time for you because one of the main reasons I imagine that you are wanting to run your own business or do your own thing, is so that you have flexibility. so that you can still be able to do the things that are important to you, rather than being, you know, chained to kind of like a nine to five or nine to six kind of office based job or clinic based job, I mean maybe some of your business is in a clinic, and look in sometimes when you're first starting out in business. Absolutely. There's things that take more time and take up more of your time, then perhaps you want them to going forward. However, there's still opportunity to schedule in what's important to you, and there's obviously I've said that the one of the main reasons this is important is because if you are working in a values based business, you need to extend your values to, so if you have values around. You know how people how you know that impact on how you spend your time. So that's one part of it.

The other thing or there's another couple of things that are important. And when we are, you know, spending all our time on potentially other people's agendas or other people's values. It's really easy to get burnt out. When you spend a lot of time working in your business and on your business. And if it is not aligned with your values or not aligned with goals that are based in your values, then it's easy to get burnt out, and if your business does not allow, you know, does not include you in that values alignment equation, then again it's easy to get burnt out because you might be running a business that is really important to you that aligns with your passions and your values. However if you are not extending those values towards yourself in, in you know in your, you know, hustling, or I mean maybe your values include hustling I'm not sure but I have an inkling if you're hanging around here, they probably don't. But if you are focused, you know, on, on how your values go outwards then it's easier to be burnt out, and if you are, you know, following those cultural social business norms around how we spend our time when we're an entrepreneur when we're a business owner, then it's super easy to get burnt out. And so that's one of the pieces why scheduling your for yourself first is important so one is around, extending your values to yourself one is around, avoiding burnout.

And the other thing is around finding joy, which helps with both those things, finding joy, and often the things that are joyful or the things that light us up and fill us up and, you know, basically recognise all of our humaneness you know the human that you are beyond the dietitian or the insert other profession there, the human that you are beyond your business the human that you are beyond the work you do with clients to to recognise that full spectrum the full version of you as a human, versus just those small categories that you fall into, and part of that's finding your joy and scheduling time for that and creating time for that. And I talked on the podcast, a couple of episodes ago, around being time poor versus having time priorities, I'll link to that in the show notes because that's a good place to start if you are hearing me talking and thinking, Where am I gonna find the time Laura, I am already busy as it is like, I have no time and I don't know what you're talking about how am I gonna schedule myself first. So if that's the struggle for you or if you're feeling like a bit of resistance or feeling some sort of way about this conversation, because you think you're, you know what's coming up for you is around time and maybe feeling like there's, not enough time. I'd absolutely recommend having a listen to that one and I'll put the link in the show notes so head over to dietician values.com forward slash podcast, and you can find the show notes. And there will be the link to that episode which was episode 16 I'm pretty sure, but don't quote me on it. So that talks about how you can look at your time priorities, which of course links into how we spend our time on our , in relation to your values. So, finding joy and finding joy is so important for so many reasons. One is just that humans are actually built to enjoy things you know we're not, we're not put on, you know so many memes around this you know we're not put on this earth to, You know, to basically work, and then that's it or to yet, pay bills you know work pay the bills and and die, basically. So, we're here to have joy, we're here to enjoy. otherwise, like I said, What's the point. So, finding joy is important, like I said it, it creates space for all the parts of you as a human, it just adds enjoyment to your day to day and if you're not enjoying your day to day then you know it's really time to evaluate what the heck you're up to. To add joy because, you know, think about when you have when you are immersed in joy or when you're enjoying things, it creates space for you to, to be yourself so there's that full humaneness and often when we return to work or return to other tasks, after being immersed in joy and things that we find joyful and things that fill us up and things that help us to, to grow or to learn and unlearn, then we're actually, I don't know about you but I tend to find I feel more energised I feel like I have more energy versus when I'm grinding grinding grinding. I never grind, grind, grind, I shouldn't say that because it's not true. I never do that. When it comes to work. But when we are coming, you know, when you come back from, from, you know, time spent, filling yourself up. Time spent connecting to what's important to time spent around your joy, then it gives you more energy gives you more, you know headspace gives you more, you know, I find myself, it gives me more ideas, it gives me more connection to myself and connection to what's important. And then that re energises me for my the work that I put out in the world and my business. And looking if you follow, you know, follow me along on Instagram, you know, one of my pockets of joy every day is to sit down, have an iced coffee time. It's a bit of me time it symbolises you know a bit of a breather in my day, it's, it's, it's a tool that I use around not tool so much but you know it's a strategy that I use with the kids to just kind of symbolise to them that this is my space, because I want them to understand that I'm more than just Mum, I'm human with my own needs and that's important for me to have time for my needs, so you know they know iced coffee times a time when it's just about me. You know, they don't always, you know they are little so they're still learning. But the reason I use that as an example is because when I have that time in the day and when that's respected when that's honoured by myself, as well as other people, but most importantly by myself. Then I'm able to come back to my time with the kids or back to my work or whatever it might be energised and also when I'm going through my tasks you know maybe getting through a couple of things on the to do list in the morning, I've kind of got that there's that anticipation and,of something coming up which also helps as well, but not so much as a reward, but just as yeah no, this thing's coming in the day so there's that anticipation of joy and connection to myself, which is so important. So that's a way you can be thinking about, about this about joy about scheduling your time.

So what kind of things might you be scheduling, you know, how would you schedule you first. so it can be really big picture can be macro so it can be looking at the whole year and scheduling in the time that you want to take off, scheduling in. You know if you have a weekly kind of, you know if there's a class you wanted to do, or if you want to go on a retreat or if you want to go away. Earlier in the year I did like a two night stay, I went, just by myself, and had two nights away and, and, you know, did some lovely things just for me and did a bit of time, you know, immersing myself into work stuff that I really love and enjoy. And it was, it was so awesome. I highly recommend it. But that was something I'd scheduled in, you know, earlier in the year is like I want to have that I'm hoping to schedule another one in. We're currently in lockdown in New South Wales where I am in Australia so maybe I'm not sure, hopefully before the end of the year but, you know, life has a way of making other plans sometimes. But yeah, so it can be that macro thing so scheduling things if you want to take a couple of weekends away if you want to you know do a certain thing if you want to say take a class that runs on a Friday afternoon if you've got a, you know if it's important to you to go and, you know, have a haircut, um, you know, just giving an example some random examples but things that are really important to you, things that support you to feel taken care of, and also things that move you towards your values. So for me, one of my values which I talk a lot about because it, It helps kind of ground where, you know, as an example is around wise, wise use, and conservation of resources, including me, myself, and so there's lots of things that I schedule in like my daily iced coffee. Where I schedule in, you know, time with friends to fill up when I'm not in lockdown that two day break that I talked about were scheduled in different things that are important to me, and making sure that they are a priority in my schedule that work doesn't just fill up and take up and that they're not things they're not afterthoughts you know it's not fill the day, fill the schedule fill the time with all of these other things and then add that in. So you can start at that macro level, like I said, so the whole year and think about those big picture things that you might want to do across the year, and then you can bring it in, even shorter so like what's weekly things that you would like to do, is there anything daily that you would like to have in, like I've got iced coffee, or maybe it's a walk maybe it's in your body movement, maybe it's a meditation, maybe it's something like you know maybe you're learning an instrument that maybe it's doing some art or creative stuff. Maybe it's sitting down and doing some drawing, you know, maybe it's using colouring, you know, whatever it might be, maybe it is scheduling in the things the other things that are important that help you to support, you know, living into your value so maybe it's things like again pre lockdown, my daughter has an assembly every second Friday afternoon at school so that was scheduled in you know that's something that's important, scheduling, me and the things that are important to me first. And then, allowing and then creating, you know, feeding the work feeding the other things around that. Because part of a values based business is one that supports, like I said the human at the centre of that business to thrive in. also one that creates that allows that human, me you, us to extend our values to ourselves, not just to the humans we work with not just to the referrers and the collaborators and the people we engage with not just to our audience, or our community but actually extend them to ourselves, because a values based business is, is that whole thing, you know, you can't be, well you can, but it's not a true values based business you're not truly living in your values if you're not actually including you in that equation.

So this is an opportunity to sit down with your values, to think about what brings you joy, and to look at your time where you're spending your time and as I said go really nicely with the episode I did on time poor and time priorities around. Where are you, where's the time for you. How are you, are you scheduling that in first or not. And if you aren't, then getting into the habit of doing that and maybe it's just picking one thing so maybe like me like it's just a daily iced coffee time, or maybe it's the bigger picture thing so maybe it's starting with okay well I just get in the habit of scheduling, maybe it's school holidays off with the kids, or maybe it's that maybe the idea of going on a two night solo retreat sounds really good to you too, so maybe it's scheduling one of those in, I highly recommend it. Maybe it's like, you know, like I said if there's a course that you want to do, you've been eyeing that off and taking it maybe it's taking half a day off a week to make sure that you go to see your GP to seek to therapy to, you know, making sure you're getting your medication scripts filled those things that take care of you and scheduling those is, and yes some of its like, kind of, you know what I would class as like everyday self care stuff so kind of boring, potentially boring things like, Yeah, going to therapy, you know, i kind of like that, and then going to therapy, or you know doing those kinds of things but maybe it's also, you know, fun creative things like a class on on watercolour painting, maybe it's a class on fermentation, maybe it's a, it's a cooking class and online cooking class if you're in lockdown somewhere. So, scheduling things in for you. So think about it, sit down with your values, sit down with your, you know, a list, and maybe it's creating a list of things that help you to find joy, look at your schedule, and look, and just be honest with yourself, are you scheduling things in that are important to you, are you making time for you, and getting in the habit of scheduling that in first and allowing work to go around that. Because the thing that I suspect about you dear listener, is that you are probably somebody who occasionally, or maybe regularly, can allow their boundaries to be bent, can allow work to encroach on things, can allow your schedule to be flexed a little bit to squeeze people in to accommodate to allow. And the unfortunate thing with being like that. Is that you, me, we miss out. And so creating those boundaries are not about... James Olivia Chu Hillman, who I obviously talk about a lot, because they are so so so wise, talks about boundaries. Boundaries are just basically the representation of you, honouring your commitments to yourself. So if you are committed to something if something is important to you and I'd hazard a guess your values are, then your boundaries support you to live into that commitment. And that is something really important when you talk about how you extend your values to yourself because the boundaries create the space for you to actually honour and live into that versus often what we, we, I say we because I do this too, can do is, is flex those boundaries when it comes to us when it comes to our needs, and we might hold really firm on those boundaries when it comes to honouring client time honouring the humans we're working with honouring those external like deadlines for things that we have to get out to somebody else, honouring that sort of thing but maybe not always great at honouring the things that extend our values to ourselves, just a guess.

So, that's something I just want to put out there if this is something that resonates for you, then I would love to hear from you if this is something you want support around around scheduling around looking at that big picture stuff in your business. Don't forget, I do provide one to one coaching and support around this so that's always there. If it's just something you'd love to have a conversation about or ask more questions about then obviously go over to the comments section on the post for this podcast episode or slide into my DMs. If you want to talk about it, and hash some things out or if you've got questions or again like I said if you want some more practical support about your particular situation and how, how that works like how you can, how it actually comes together, then do reach out because that is something I can support you with. So, getting clear on your values - super important, bringing your values into your business - essential, extending those values towards yourself - basically the stuff that values based living is made of or founded on.

So I really would encourage you or invite you to consider how you schedule you first how you extend your values towards yourself and where there might be room to potentially, you know, work on that a little bit, strengthen up those boundaries, and make sure that you are, you know, you're actually just as important and centred in your business as all of the other humans that your business supports. So that's it for me, Head over to @dietitianvalues on Instagram, and leave a comment in the comment section or send me a DM, if you've got questions comments or concerns, and until next time, Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai