Tools and systems I use to create space in my life

Tiffany Sauder: You guys, we are in the car together, like actually driving. So, this may be a little bit more the norm, and I feel like I need to tell you why. a mom, as you know, of four kids, and two of them, my oldest is going into high school, and my second one is in a travel sport. which just means she's like really serious about volleyball.

And so there's lots of practices, lots of coaching, all the things. And I'm literally in my car all the time. I have decided to outsource a lot of things in my life. And I have some people who help me with driving the kids to practice. But I've found as your kids get older, if you don't take them to practice, you don't see them. You don't know what's going on in their lives, you don't know who their friends are. Like, you don't know stuff because they're at school, they go to practice. Come home, homework, like no engagement. So it's like pretty important that I drive them around. And I'm in my car like two to three hours a day.

Easy, That's like fact number one. Fact number two is over the last few weeks, I have been feeling frustrated, grumpy and feeling like a victim to my own decisions and schedule. And I hate that feeling. just feeling like, Oh my word. Like I'm literally never on time anywhere. I'm not prepared.

I don't have the time to make good on agreements that I've made on other people, like just reacting to everything in my life. And I hate it. It's like a mess. And I wasn't sleeping well at night cause I was feeling just anxious about how I'm behind and I don't have time and my brain isn't working. Anyway, just like too much stuff, too much driving and everything was colliding. And so the first thing that I go to in my head is like, what can I quit? What can I stop doing to make capacity? And when I got to the place where I was like, I must have to stop the podcast. Like, I just don't have time for it anymore.

I don't have time to sit at a desk. I don't have time to like have nobody around me and it'd be quiet. I don't have time to do that stuff. And I was like, what if I would use my drive time, which sometimes I'm by myself, like right now in a more productive way.

And this idea of looking for an exchange of time, like driving. is like productive time. I'm driving to get one of my daughters right now. But it was unproductive in the sense of like, I'm not getting emails done. I'm not getting work done so that how can I use this time more productively?

And so I asked our production team, like, guys, can I record the podcast in the car? Can I do that? And they were like, yeah, totally We'll set you up. So here we are. So I'm telling you this long story in part because you're like literally gonna be coming along with me in my life right now, like, now.

This is how we're gonna do this. But also because I know there's things like this in your own life. Where you want to say yes to it or you've said yes to too many things and you have to shop your time like idle time for capacity to be able to do the things that you want to do.

If you want to live a life of and you are likely going to say yes to a lot of stuff. And I think the great challenge is to put the puzzle together in a way where you are maximizing your energy. In every domain so that the things that are hard can be hard and the things that are simple can be simple.

I want to do this podcast. When I started it, we were like at the very tail end of COVID. I was home all the stinking time. I had all the time in the world to sit at a desk in my home office and record podcasts. That was not a stretch in any capacity, but the ingredients have changed. My kids are older now.

My kids are more involved now. We've said yes to travel sports now. Like, Quincy is older. She's not just a baby that like, sleeps all day long. Needs my capacity in a different way. And so the ingredients around my life have changed. And you've got to make sure that you fit the other stuff into the new environment.

I want this podcast still to fit. I want creating content still to fit in my life. But my life is way more on the go than it has ever been in the history of my life on planet Earth. Way more on the go. And so I'm having to rethink the way that we eat as a family. I'm having to rethink the way I get my job done well as as a contributor to the things I'm a part of.

And I'm having to rethink the way that I record this podcast. And I am super excited. That I found a way to solve it in a way that like works really, really easily for me. I have like literally this twelve dollar clamp thing that I'm using for my phone that fits on the vent, it's not a fancy solve, but it works and it created capacity.

So another example of this idea of exchange of time in my life is when I Was like once and for all I'm gonna make this commitment to working out in the mornings is the only time that works consistently for me.

That was the decision. I am absolutely Always gonna work out in the morning. Otherwise, I'm telling you just does not work for my life So I was like, how do I make that happen for myself? I was like well when It's hard to get up in the morning. That's when I don't work out.

It's like, okay. Well, what makes it hard to get up in the morning? it makes it hard to get up in the morning when I've gone to bed late. Okay. Well, what makes me go to bed late the why I go to bed late or went to bed late was because I Was watching TV. I would finish my stuff no matter how late it was email or presentations and I would watch TV As my way to wind myself down, if I actually want to commit to working out, I have to stop watching TV that hour of literally not contributing in any productive way to my life at night, watching something stupid is taking time away from my goal in the morning of waking up early and exercising, doing something productive, myself, exchange of time.

Not everything can be eternally additive in a life of and. You have to figure out, sometimes stuff you're gonna have to say no to, but sometimes it's just resolving in the new environment in a way that you just have to like, be more flexible and agile, so. that was a long preamble to why I'm sitting in the car.

What else is going on in my life right now. One is, I'm exploring working on creating a course for two career families.

It's like the existence I have lived my whole life. My married life with kids is in a two career home. It's not what I grew up in. My mom was a stay at home mom. My grandmas were both stay at home moms. And so this world of a professional woman, I've like seen it on television. But... I haven't really seen it before I became one, like up close.

And so, solving for the things, like, where do you get help? what if you can't afford, outside parties? How do you stay invested in your marriage? How do you make sure that you have the time that's meaningful for yourself with your kids? Like, all that kind of stuff. how do you get all the house stuff done?

How do you figure out? How you solve for food, like everybody's eat three meals a day. Like it gets really hard to administratively pull all that stuff off. And so I've shared in an earlier episode that I'm exploring creating a course called own the ordinary, where I share the frameworks and tools and systems that I've used to create space for the extraordinary by having total command over the ordinary stuff in our lives.

I say total command. I also just started this podcast episode with like Hey, I was in a season where I was really frustrated, but I went to these tools, this exchange of time is one of them, and started to say, how do I shop my time for the things I want to do and take out some of the dead space. So anyways, but as I've been thinking through. Just like the beginning frameworks of what this could look like, this course. One of the observations that I have is that when my husband and I, my business and I, were going through a really tough season in like the 2018 ish time frame, one of my observations is my husband and I had to go to each other to solve the problem in our marriage.

The answer did not lie with my friends, like going out for drinks. The answers did not lie with my mom. The answers did not lie with a Bible study group. maybe those people could help me. And there was some accountability in that community, but ultimately I had to find the answers between my husband and I.

My observation is that I talk about vulnerability a lot, We are often times more vulnerable with less invested parties than the person who is most invested. Meaning, you get in a great big fight with somebody at work. You go home and tell your spouse everything that you feel about that. the person you got into that argument with at work. You don't share with them anything about, this is how that made me feel. you don't walk into truth at all with them.

You do that with coworkers, you do it with your spouse at home. you start to vent about it. I think sometimes we hide our vulnerability from the person. Who is most invested in the resolution, like the other side of it. When my husband and I's marriage was going through a hard time, was I most transparent and vulnerable with him about the way that I felt?

Or was it easier to be transparent and vulnerable with my girlfriends, with my mom, with my sister? So, as I was reflecting on it, it was just a reminder to me to be sure that I am having the courage to step into the discomfort required. To be really vulnerable with the person who can actually help me solve towards what it is that I need resolved or relationships that need resolved or things that need progress.

And I think sometimes we can feel like we've been vulnerable, but we've been vulnerable to. A party who is not at all invested in the resolution of what's happening, so. I think about vulnerability a lot. And so this is just like, I think a like, nuance in the crack of all of that that I was just thinking through, so.

Um, currently following a school bus, which makes me think about school starting in a couple of weeks. which for those of us who have kids that will be going back to school. Creates another change in the schedule, a reminder, at least in my world, I notice it takes three weeks for everybody to understand the new program and six weeks for everything to feel normal again.

So, it's gonna feel clumsy for a minute, understanding all the places everybody needs to go after school. sports start, meet the teacher night, new locker combinations, all that stuff. Takes three weeks to feel like it's normalized and then six weeks for our family to be like, and we're back.

Uh, thanks for listening. Thanks for driving along with me as I went from the office to my house. And, I'll talk to you soon.

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