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>> Carlee: Are you working efficiently as a leader? Hi, I'm Carlee Myers, your friendly stress management expert. And this month we are working less to achieve more. And because we're talking about that, I brought on an amazing guest, Erin Owen, who draws nearly twenty five years of professional experience, ranging from organizational change management consulting to leadership coaching, in which she has consulted with and coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, business leaders and private individuals for more than 15 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. She takes a unique East meets west, plus somatic coaching approach to helping clients work more effectively or helping clients more effectively manage their professional lives, grow their leadership capacity and resilience, and lead healthier, happier, more productive lives. Now, Erin, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here.
>> Erin: Thank you, Carlee, excited to be with you today.
>> Carlee: Absolutely. So I'm curious, why is it important to you to be efficient in your career as a leader?
>> Erin: Absolutely. So I own my own business. I run every aspect of the operation, including client service and coaching clients. But I'm also a busy mom. I have two kids that I'm raising I'm involved in the community. I'm a volunteer on two boards. I don't have time to waste.
>> Carlee: I hear like I when I when you say that, I think of that that viral video that went live a few probably in the early 2000s that's like ain't nobody got time for that.
>> Erin: Totally. Yes. So good. And the reality of my clients. They're busy leaders, their directors, V.P.s, C-suite leaders, business owners. They don't have time to waste either. So I have by definition, my personal experience and my coaching experience become an expert on how you can be more productive by doing less. And I actually talk on the topic of how to access your higher gear. And in that, I talk about time management strategies that you and anyone can use to be more productive in less time. And it was fun to be invited to talk about this topic today, because years ago I used to teach an online course on the topic of boosting your performance by utilizing the power of doing less. So this is really relevant for me and I love talking about it.
>> Carlee: I'm I'm super excited, too, to pull on your expertise and see what we can learn today.
>> Erin: Great. Good. Well, I wanted to share three tips for those listening. And one of these comes from my book, which is now it's in the second edition on Amazon. It's called Refuel, Recharge and Re-energize, basically how you can take back control of your time and energy. So the first tip I wanted to share, was pretty simple, but not necessarily easy to uphold. It is. Are you ready? Drum roll, please.
>> Carlee: Da da da da
>> Erin: You have to say no to opportunities that do not support your vision. Say no to what does not support your vision. So that means you get lots of requests to be involved in things, to be on a committee and be on a team and bake cookies for the school or whatever it is you're doing. But if that's not what you want to be doing, then you need to direct your time and energy elsewhere.
>> Carlee: That's huge. I mean, I think if we even go a step backward, we got to figure out what our vision is first so that we can say no. But this is something that, you know, I use. This is very affirming for me because I use this in my like you likes my life plan, my five year plan. Like everything boils down to like, what is it that I want to do before I die? What I want to do with five years, what like everything else is unnecessary and it's causing that extra stress. That's a firm belief that I have. So this is really affirming for me.
>> Erin: Think of it like maybe you believe in God. Maybe you think a universe source, however you believe. But think about the fact that what you're saying yes to you're asking for more of. So be careful what you say yes to and here say no to what doesn't align with your vision.
>> Carlee: I love that. That's a that's a really great way. You're just attracting more of what you say yes to for sure.
>> Erin: Yeah. And the second tip I wanted to offer today was really an invitation to pay attention to your own personal energy levels and the different kinds of energy that you have. And notice that you have different kinds of work, energy, sexual libido, energy, friend time Energy, exercise, energy. It's all going to be different. And most of us have really low energy mid afternoon between 2 and 4 p.m. That is a fact. And so the tip is don't schedule anything during your low energy periods of the day. Right. So don't schedule a meeting in which you need everyone to be present and creative at 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon and you're going to get zilch in return.
>> Carlee: Yes. I feel like for me, I've learned that my sometimes I do some later afternoon appointments. I'm good at like 2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. because I've just had lunch. But when I hit like six, six o'clock, 6:30, there is I am struggling. So I don't take appointments at that time anymore.
>> Erin: Yes.
>> Carlee: So how do you like maybe for those of us at home that don't know when they're low energy periods are what do you recommend to try to figure that out? Yeah.
>> Erin: You can track. Take a simple log on your notes app or on a piece of paper and notice. When do you zone out? When do you notice that you're repeating things when usually you're more efficient and creative at doing them? And see if you can notice a pattern across days, across weeks. Usually it becomes clear pretty quickly what your peak times are for like creative writing versus working out. And one of my clients, the chief marketing officer, she actually decided to move up her daily workout to 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon. And then she would come back to work refreshed and have another couple hours to put in rather than waste three hours at the end of the day doing really nothing.
>> Carlee: Yeah, it's funny. This makes me think of a colleague that I used to work with who at around 3 30 would she would call it window clicking she would just like her mind was like, Oh, I need to get work done. But all she would do is open her email, close her email, open the other window, close it up. She would just click around to different windows and she's like, OK, I need to do I need to step away because this is not doing anything.
>> Erin: Perfect example of what what your listeners can listen or watch or listen to observe in themselves for when it's just not working.
>> Carlee: Yeah.
>> Erin: So the third tip I wanted to offer today is simple. It's called One Touch and this comes from my book, Refuel, Recharge and Re Energize. And the idea is that you only touch each text message. Each alert. Each email. Whatever it is, you only touch it once. Don't reread it. Just deal with it. If you know you're gonna delete it, delete it if you need to read it and give a greater attention. File it in a to do or urgent folder where you can give it your present mind attention. But we spend so much time and energy unnecessarily repeating activities and we are wasting hours of our lives doing that. So practice one touch to be much more efficient and get a lot more done doing less.
>> Carlee: Oh my goodness. This reminds me of another story. Someone was telling me that they had they were out with friends. They were on they were there was like a lull in the conversation. So she pulled up her email and she checked the email and it was important and she read it. But of course, she was out to drinks. She wasn't going to respond to it right now. And what did that do for her? First of all, it created worry because now she knows what the email says. Two, it created like the urgency. Oh, my gosh, I have to do this. And she ended up leaving her night. And then still not responding until Monday. And so that email ended up taking up her entire weekend rather than just saying, oh, this email, first of all, probably not check. Don't check that email while you're out with friends. But
>> Erin: Perfect example, because that really invites president mind attention to your activities. So don't mindlessly check your voicemail. Open your e-mail, check your Facebook messages, whatever that is. Be there when you're ready to give it attention. And you know, that reminds me. Your listeners may not be aware that at the beginning of each year, I offer this New Year planning assessment. And it's a great way to take a look at your work domain, your home domain and your self domain to say what's going well, what do I want to work at work on this year and how can I prioritize and be more intentional so I'm getting more return on the investment of time and energy? And just for your listeners, I have set up a 50 percent discount code. Stress Less, stress less is the code and they can find it on the services page at Erin Owen dot com the New Year planning assessment.
>> Carlee: Perfect. Oh, my goodness. So we want to know in the comments below what areas of your career are dragging you down? Now, if you don't know the answer to that, then we I totally expect you to go check out Erin's New Year planning assessment. She's going to help you work through all of that. Again, the code is Stress Less and the link will be in the show notes to make your life easier. Now, we are in January as well, and we in January, you know, The Stress Less Company, we do some free online training. So we want to invite you to a very special online training, How to Break Free From Busy and Stress Less. It's happening on January twenty ninth at 1:00 p.m. The link will be in the show notes. So make sure to register for that.
>> Erin: That sounds fantastic.
>> Carlee: Thank you. Thank you. We are so, so excited about that. Now, this concludes this episode of The Stress Less Show. If you enjoy this week's episode, give us a big old thumbs up and hit that follow or subscribe button. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.