How to prioritize like a pro

Okay. Recording a solo show in the car today. Um, hilarious. I'm seeing in the video that there's these Kleenexes. You guys, if you have not gotten them yet, there are Kleenex boxes, quite unquote, that fit in your cup holder. Total game changer. There's nothing that makes me more annoyed than when a fresh box of Kleenexes has been stomped on by a bunch of barbarians getting in and out of my car.

So little, mom hack, get these Kleenex boxes that fit your cup holder. They're like circles. It's like a water bottle size. It's amazing.

Uh, it's homecoming season in our house and my high school freshman went to homecoming. It was so fun. I'm just loving this high school stage. I had moms tell me that the middle school drama just does not follow you into high school and it is so true. It has just been such a great transition for her and her words. It's like everybody just cares a lot less about. Um, everybody else likes it in a good way. And I'm sure it's just part of maturing and coming into yourself and all of those things. It has been just pretty lovely. It was very fun. So we were sitting around our Island after homecoming or before I think it was.

And I was like, Oh, I'm so excited. I'm talking about who was the homecoming queen. That's what it was. And I said, well, guess who was the homecoming queen in our house. My family is a bunch of savages, and my oldest says to the family, well, not dad. I was like, that's right. It was me. I was so confused. And she says, um, how many people are in your class, mom?

And I was like 70 or something. She goes, so you beat out like 30 people. They are so not impressed with me. It is hilarious. She's so dry. Like literally nothing, nothing. I cannot do anything for her to be like, mom, you're amazing. It's the Sauder genes running very deep in our family. So it makes me laugh.

I don't know if your kids are nice to you. My kids are nice to me. Just generally unimpressed with me, which is probably better. Um, okay.

I just spoke at a women's conference like a week ago and I was asked a question from the audience that I thought would be a good conversation for the podcast today.

And that question was, how do you know what to say yes to? Or how do you know what to say no to? Like how, how do you know? And my mind kept spinning on this topic because it's really important.

The only non-renewable resource in our lives is time. Like we cannot make more of it. There's nothing that we can do to change the fact that time is going by every single minute.

as you have an abundance of opportunity, as you have an abundance of people in your life, as you have an abundance of interests, as you have an abundance of just opportunity, your like primary job becomes. Protecting your most precious resource. And that is time. And as I thought about this question, a few things came to mind.

if you don't know what to say yes to, or you don't know what to say no to know that that is a hundred percent a you problem. And I see that as really good news. Like it's a total you problem because what that means is that you don't know what your priorities are.

And that is really big. Problem. Because if you don't know what your priorities are, your priorities become what other people want from you or of you. And so without an understanding of what your priorities are, you are literally like a leaf blowing in the wind, moving towards the thing that has the most amount of gravitas.

That could be you're chasing your ego. That could be just. You've got somebody who's really bossy in your life telling you what to do. That could be that you're just blindly going through the same things that you were doing last year or the year before that, the year before that, and not actually taking intentional stack of what are my priorities?

What are my priorities for me? What are my priorities in the context of my goals? What are the priorities in the context of what my family needs from me, the people around me need from me, how I want to serve them and show up for them. Um, what does that look like? If you do not have a firm grasp on your priorities, I assure you, you're going to look back in life with some amount of regret because you compromised what you wanted.

Either if it's not explicitly stated like what you wanted, subconsciously or what you wanted, empirically, never got explicit about it such that you could make sure of your behaviors and your choices. Is in the way you are resourcing your life with a line to those things that you want.

That's a really big deal. Think about it. If you're sitting in a conference and you raise your hand, you're asking, I knew nothing about this woman's life. How do I say no, what to say yes to, and how do I know what to say no to? I don't have any idea how to practically tell you what I can tell you is that you've got to get clear on what you want.

I'll give you an example. In this season of my life, I've been transparent about. Wanting to work towards a place where I have more calendar flexibility with where my kids are at. My older kids are going all over the place. My daughter will have volleyball games that start like 30 minutes away at 5. 30.

Like I have to have flexibility. It's something I really want. So there's a, there are things I'm saying no to as a result of that choice, that priority to want to be more flexible. Some is I'm saying no to speaking opportunities that are really difficult to get to. Like if they require more than one night away, it's pretty much a hard pass because that is too expensive from a time perspective with where my family is at.

Another choice that I've made is I'm going to roll off of at least all of my not for profit boards. So I have chosen for that not to be like, Hey, I'm going to be done next month. You can do that too. I'm going to see my terms out that works for what I need to happen. But that choice of I'm going to roll off of my not for profit boards make it really easy for me.

When somebody reaches out and asks me, would you be interested in serving on a board? It makes it really easy for me to say, no, this is a choice that I've made. Right now that doesn't fit inside of my priorities. Thanks so much for thinking of me. Let me know if you'd like me to recommend somebody else.

And maybe it creates an opportunity for somebody on my team at element three to be able to step into a board role. And maybe that's part of their development plan. And like it is a big win for them. So that for me helps me get really clear about what I say yes and what I say no to. And I can tell you from personal experience, whenever I let my ego be the thing that was deciding whether or not I said yes or no to things.

Then that got me into a real bunch of external busyness. And those things that I said I cared the most about, like my family and my husband and my marriage, those things became very neglected because my ego is what was choosing. It's what was picking what I said yes to and what I said no to. I think that in this season of planning, I shared this on a previous episode, but one of the things I'm doing before I set my own priorities for next year is going around and asking each of my stakeholders.

So my husband and I are going away in November. I want to ask him, what are your priorities for me? Not your priorities, but what are your, like,I don't even like the word expectations, but like what agreements what investment do we want to make in our marriage? How do we want to mutually show up for one another? What do we think this next year is going to bring? How can I show up well for you so that you feel my love and you feel my intention in our relationship?

Like that's what I mean. And I'm going to ask that of my girls of each one of them. what makes you feel love for me? How do I be sure that I'm serving them in a way that is meaningful and not just like, This stuff in my head that I think I have to do. and then I'll do that of the board that I'm on, the companies that I, am invested in and I element three as I'm the c e o.

Like what do they most need from me? And from that, then I'll be able to take stock of, well, what are my priorities for the coming year? I may not be able to say yes to every single thing that each one of those, I'll say constituents in my life, like things I love and people who love me. I may not be able to show up for all of those in exactly the way that if I lived in a universe all by myself, that I would be able to, but knowing that early and looking at those agreements in the context of one another, I think is a really powerful part of setting priorities, setting intention for the next year and getting back to the question I let here with, which is like, what do you say yes to?

And what do you say no to?

I've been, Putting a lot of thought around these two ideas of the difference between implicit expectations and explicit agreements. Implicit expectations and explicit agreements. and I would say right now, if I didn't go through this exercise with each of the, key parties in my life.

I want to understand what are your implicit expectations? What are the implied expectations that you have of my time next year so that we can move it from that to very explicit agreements, a very clearly understood thing that we both can recall. We both know what it means. We both know what it's going to look like.

when we get there, when we deliver on it and in its agreement, I believe I can do that. And they are depending on me to do that. Like the agreement is a really, really key part of doing life well with anyone. and I see it a lot as I'm working on this own the ordinary, this, online course that I'm working on for two career homes.

I'm seeing this all across. It's like trying to manage the home. I have these implicit expectations, things like I expect the girls to have their rooms clean every Saturday. Now, they don't need to agree to that in the same way that like as an adult. To, like, consenting adults coming into a conversation.

But what I do need them to understand is what are the things that I would like for them to do, versus the things that I am, like, that we have an agreement that this is going to happen. Because I like for them to help me cook. Like, that's fun for me. I like it when my girls are in the kitchen for me.

That's a implied expectation. If you guys are home, I'd rather you guys help me cook than just sit and watch TV. But, I'm not gonna like, get mad. I don't feel like they're violating, I guess an agreement that we have. but, if I've told the girls that they need to clean the car out every single week or every other week, I am not in the business of reminding them a thousand times.

Your job, once we have an agreement, is to put the mechanisms in place to manage those things so that we don't violate that agreement. And I think that goes into our, professional lives. To me, I've seen that in my personal life all the time. I was talking to my sister about this idea that related to friends.

Sometimes we have really implicit expectations of friendships, but they never really agreed to be that to us. They never really agreed for that to be the case and, I don't know, this thinking construct of implicit expectations versus explicit agreements has been really a helpful framework for me to move past just like I love flying around the world and being like, everybody needs to come to my worldview to say like, have I actually communicated that?

Have I got clear with myself about what I want? Have I been articulate to that person about what to me a good agreement looks like and have they stepped into shared ownership of that thing taking place? Like what a way more powerful way to live life.

So. one more key thought on this conference

it was a conference with a couple hundred women up in South Bend, Indiana. And that's like Notre Dame world up there. And there was, A woman who spoke her name is Muffet McGraw and I feel like such an idiot. I had no idea who she was. but she's like incredibly accomplished women's basketball coach.

She was the head coach of the Notre Dame girls basketball team up there for like forever. She won three or four national championships, like just like wildly achieved. Um, and so she has been a strong advocate of women her entire career worked, In inspiring, encouraging, developing young women in those like really important years in college and She was asked just kind of like what generally is her advice to young women and her answer was incredible I love this word picture.

She said it's not the senior prom ladies We need to not wait for people to invite us to the dance We need to not wait for people to invite us to the table and I thought that was really Good advice. I know for me, there's times where I like it when people notice that I'm good. I like when people notice that I'm smart.

I like it when people notice that I'm talented. But I do that often by putting myself in a situation like serving on a board or on a committee or on a work team. and showing like by working beside them, Hey, look, I can hold my part. I'm organized. I'll come through for you. I have good ideas and through the process of working beside people, I will kind of get myself in the ring of consideration for different roles, different things like that.

And I think that I want to continue to grow in my courage of saying. Well, how about me or pursuing, like when I meet with people saying, Hey, I'm really looking to expand my speaking career right now. Do you know of places where my voice, my perspective might be valuable? And could you make an introduction is a totally different, like a proactive way of kind of putting myself out there versus just saying, Hey, I'm going to speak.

And people in the audience, if they think that I'm good, they will. Um, bring me into conferences and they will recommend me to their bosses or something, but I'm going to let that happen organically. So I think it's so good to be good. And I think the way that we show up is obviously going to create a flywheel effect of getting, pulled into new things, but having the courage to say, I'm going to put myself at the table.

I'm going to put my hat in the ring. I'm going to be the one who kind of first puts my name on the ballot, so to speak. I think it'd be difficult to do. And I don't know that that's unique to women. it's probably just part of growing in your own confidence in your own competence, but I thought that was such a great word fixture.

Like it's not the senior prom ladies, we don't have to get waited to ask to come to the dance. And, uh, it made me smile. And if you know the way that she talks, it's like. She's like full time coach all the time and you feel like yes. Yes. I'm gonna go do that right now. Yes. Yes love it Yes, I am never gonna wait for somebody to put my name in the hat again.

I'm gonna go ahead and do it Yes, I sort of felt like that like that on the inside. She's a riot.

So Anyway some food for thought where in your life Do

you need to put your name on the ballot?

I hope you're enjoying fall. I know our house is certainly alive with football games and fall parties with friends. It's super fun. Love this season. And, one of the things I put in my newsletter, I'll give you this verbal hint because the, holiday madness is not too far away.

Two things. One, right now, get all your appointments on the schedule. Like hair appointment, Botox, facial, whatever you need to do. Get it on the calendar now. Two reasons. One, it's gonna get super full. Even though you're a regular, all the people who like, kind of, you know, glam up on the holidays, like the schedules are gonna get super full.

So get everything scheduled through the end of the year. Second thing, for sure you're gonna have a holiday party to go to. Christmas party, fancy dress, like whatever. Find an outfit. Like before you need it, don't add that stress to like the week of December 7th when you're so tired of all retail and humanity and everything in the world.

Like do it now. It's October. Go buy it now. You'll have it in the, in the closet. You'll be so glad. They'll be like, Tiffany, thank you so much. You made that party so much better, but you're going to have one thing that you have to go to. office party. something with your spouse, Christmas program at church, whatever it looks like, you're going to be so glad.

You're going to thank me so much. okay, that's all.

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