Thoughts Unlocked – You Have Enough Time

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“I don’t have time.”

We say it all the time. But what if time isn’t actually the problem?

In this episode of Thoughts Unlocked, I’m challenging the idea that we don’t have enough time. The real issue is often ownership.

When your calendar belongs to everyone else, your priorities get pushed aside. Strategy, thinking, relationships, rest, and the things that matter most become whatever time is left over.

You don’t need to find more time. You need to claim it.

I’ll share a simple challenge: find one hour on your calendar, block it, protect it, and make it yours. Because if you don’t choose how to spend your time, someone else will.

* Website

Timestamps:
00:01:54 – Time isn’t the problem, control is
00:03:59 – How access creates overwhelm
00:06:51 – The impact of open calendars on reactionary culture
00:11:42 – The power of strategic and intentional calendar management
00:15:35 – You don’t find time, you claim it
00:17:10 – Eliminate unnecessary meetings

Skot Waldron (00:05)
I’m Skot Waldron, and when I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the globe, helping leaders and teams communicate better, build trust faster, and actually enjoy working together. I know, who would have thought? I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot, I’ve spoken at national architectural firms, at their sales trainings, off sites for major pharmaceutical companies, and industry associations.

A thousand of attendees who have read my sessions. With 99% of them saying they found the sessions valuable. 97% saying they’d actually attend again. I’ve had caterers come up to me afterwards and thank me because they actually got something they could use when they went home or when they went back to their own jobs. I mean, if every keynote delivered those types of numbers, nobody would secretly be refreshing their email under the table. And let’s be honest, that’s a little bit of my nightmare, maybe a little bit of yours. Yeah, something that keeps me up at night.

If you’re an event planner, looking for a speaker who’s easy to work with and delivers actual value that people can take away and use on Monday. Let’s make your event unforgettable.

Welcome back to Thoughts Unlocked. I want to start with a phrase today that I hear all the time. And maybe you’ve said this phrase this week, and maybe you’ve said it today. Maybe you’re saying it in your head right now. I don’t know. But the phrase is this: I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time to look over that document. I don’t have time to work out. I don’t have time to think about that right now. I don’t have time to call that client. I don’t have time to go to that baseball game. I just don’t have time.

And I understand what people mean when they say it. I totally do. But the longer I’ve worked with leaders, the more I’ve become convinced that time usually isn’t the problem. Control is. Control. Most people they don’t feel overwhelmed because they lack the hours. Although people say, not enough hours in the day, just not enough hours in the day.

They feel overwhelmed because they don’t feel ownership of those hours. They feel controlled by those hours, right? Their calendar feels like it belongs to everybody else except them. They don’t feel like they have any control. Things keep plopping on them. Their boss makes demands of them. Their team makes demands of them. Their clients make demands of them. Their inbox don’t get me started on the email catastrophe that’s happening in our culture right now. Their notifications. Everybody gets some kind of vote of about time in their life, everybody gets access, everybody gets a piece. And then they wonder why they never have any time for the things that they want to do, the things that they think matter the most.

I was coaching this one leader recently who kept telling me that he didn’t have enough time to work on strategy stuff. Every session, just the same frustration, just no time. Finally, I actually had him pull out his calendar, which he was totally cool with. We looked at it and there, there it was. Meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. I know y’all feel me because that’s what we are, we are our meeting culture now. And then we make sure that then by the time we check our emails, we have, you know, 50, 100, 200 backed up. And we check those after we put the kids to bed or while we’re sitting there watching TV at night.

Or we get up super early so we can respond to emails right away as soon as we’ve woken up. Like, oh my gosh, what are we doing to ourselves? We have no thinking time, we have no planning time, no real preparation time, no, none of that like what white space, none of that space that we need to just be, no room to breathe.

His calendar, it honestly, y’all, it looked like what I would say, you know, an apartment building where every unit has been completely rented out. There’s no vacancy. There wasn’t a square foot left for him to block any time for himself, or what he deemed was important, or what he needed to work on. And here’s what hit me is that he was a victim of access. He was a victim of access. And he was treating himself as a victim of time. I don’t have enough time. Time is happening. This thing is happening to me. The clock keeps ticking. I can’t control the time.

But here’s what I want you to understand about this. One of my biggest frustrations in modern work culture is the completely open calendar, the completely visible calendar to everybody on your team. And if this is you, I’m talking to you. And you can throw this back at me, y’all, if y’all want. You can throw your beef back at me. Okay. But you know what I’m talking about. Someone opens up your calendar, they see an empty hour, and they immediately think, perfect. I’ll put my meeting in there with them because I have this deadline in a week and I need to like block out this time on their calendar so I can get my deadline done.

As if available means unclaimed, as if open means I’m free, as if white space is just unused, you know, whatever waiting to be occupied by somebody out there. Like I’m just sitting back with my open calendar, all my white space, my calendar. I’m just hoping and praying that somebody will please fill it up with all of their meetings, all of their needs. Because that’s what I’m here. I’m here to serve everybody else’s needs. Okay. I imagine this. Imagine walking into someone’s house and saying, hey, I noticed your guest room was empty. So, I moved my cousin in. Like, what? Nobody would want to do that. But somehow, we do this with calendars all the time. And we’re surprised when leaders feel overwhelmed.

One of my, I was talking to somebody yesterday and he said this. He’s like he’s watching some YouTube video about, you know, kids of the eighties and how they were thinking about the future. And he thought, and somebody in there was like, wait, are you telling me that we’re going to be able to see each other’s calendars and I can just put time on somebody else’s thing whenever I want to? Like that’s crazy. You know, are you telling me that people don’t ride their bikes out in their neighborhood anymore? What? And they just sit in and look at their phones? What? That’s crazy, I know. When you think about this whole new technological advancement, if you want to call it that, or whatever. 20, 30 years ago, this would have seemed ridiculous. But yet we allow it.

Open calendars create reactionary cultures. Let me tell you again. Open calendars create reactionary cultures. People stop planning their work and they start claiming each other’s time. And before long, we have all these response people becoming the most overwhelmed people or person on the planet, because the person who says yes, the fastest becomes the person with the least control. And that’s the problem. We want to accommodate doors always open policy. When you know come reach out to me. I want to be here for you. And so, we claim that this is the way that work should be.

No, I want you to have a doors closed policy. No, I want you to not be available all the time to everybody whenever they need you. I want you to be selective about your time. I want you to make choices about your time because that is much more empowering. Yes, are you going to disappoint people? Probably. Yes, are they going to get a little upset and rift? Hmm, they might. But choosing your time is what makes the thing that you’re choosing to do is so important and relevant. Because when you’re choosing to do that, you’re not choosing to do something else.

And this is what I think many leaders secretly believe that this is just a part of the job. I mean, leadership means being endlessly available, right? Constantly accessible. And that I need to always be responsive. I need to be always checking my email. Cause what if my boss emails me at 11 p.m. at night? I need to make sure I’m responding to that. Or what if you emailed me while I was sleeping? I need to make sure at 6 a.m. when I wake up, I roll out of bed. Maybe not even roll out of bed. Maybe I just pick up my phone, and I look at it and I see that my boss had a fire last night, just an emotional fire, right? And he’s venting at like midnight. And now I’m waking up feeling stress. Why did we wake up like this? Can y’all hear I’m miffed a little bit?

I’ve never seen a great leader whose primary contribution was attending more meetings. Like they said, my superpower is meeting attendance. No, never. I’ve never seen leaders. I’ve seen leaders create clarity, I’ve seen leaders build culture, I’ve seen them make difficult decisions, I’ve seen leaders think strategically, big picture, do all the things, but none of that happens when your entire day belongs to other people and reactionary things, putting out fire, fire, fire, that’s all you do is react all day. Your sympathetic nervous system is not meant to do that, okay? To just fires all day. Not just your obligations, your choices.

Now, before somebody out there gets upset with me, “Skot, I don’t control everything.” You know what? I know that. And neither do I. I know we all have commitments, we all have responsibilities, we all have deadlines, we have people counting on us. I’m not saying shut them out. I’m saying let’s be strategic and selective about what we are doing here. Even with those realities, though, there’s still choices. And ownership begins when we acknowledge them. I think one reason this matters so much, is because there is something deeply empowering about deciding where your time goes. Not every choice is exciting, y’all. Not every choice. Not because every choice is easy, but because you are choosing. You’re not drifting. You’re not reacting. You’re not surrendering every open space to the next calendar invitation because you are deciding.

Years ago, Stephen Covey, if y’all know Covey, he’s one of the godfathers of this whole leadership team culture development, talked about putting big rocks in first, right? The big rocks in the jar. If you try to put all the little rocks in a jar and then try to put the big rocks in, they don’t fit. But if you put the big rocks in there, but all the little rocks, you know, y’all have probably seen this before. It’s been around forever and ever.

Most people they do the opposite. They fill their calendars with like little pebbles, little tasks, little to-dos, and they wait for everybody to put these little 30-minute blocks of time on their calendar, then wonder why all the big important things aren’t fitting in, all the strategic thinking they need to do, the professional think, the professional development stuff they need to work on for themselves, the relationship building, you know, exercise, rest, and family. I mean, who would imagine that we would need to, you know, put some emphasis on those things? These things matter most. But get squeezed out. And then those are the scraps that remain.

So, I want you to open up your calendars right now, unless you’re driving. I don’t want you to do it tomorrow. I don’t want you to do it next week. I want you to do it today. And I want you to find one hour. Okay. One hour. And I want you to block it. I want you to protect it. I want you to defend it. Treat it like it’s the most important meeting of the week because you know what? It might just be. It’s your hour. You’ve chosen to block this out. You’ve chosen to take control of your calendar. So, I want you to block it out. Maybe block out lunch every day. So, nobody schedules a lunch meeting with you unless they come talk to you and then, you know, you have lunch together. Cool. Maybe it’s at 10 a.m. Maybe it’s four to five at the end of your day. So, you can sit and take care of a few things and do that. Maybe it’s that. When somebody asks for that time, let’s not automatically just give it away. Like, let’s ask ourselves what is this time intended for?

Every open space is available for interruption. Then you’re training everyone around you to believe that your priorities are negotiable. Like they’re just kind of there, maybe if you kind of maybe want to use them or do them. I want you to think about your priorities. And I want you to be in control of those priorities. And if you are going to you know, eliminate that block of time. I want you to second guess that. Maybe I just move it. So maybe we don’t delete that block of time if a meeting does pop an important thing happens. A client really needs something. I’m not saying ditch your clients. I’m not saying ditch your boss. I’m saying be selective, be in control of those things.

One of the healthiest leaders I know blocks two hours every Friday morning. There’s no meetings there. There’s no exceptions. There’s no emergencies. He even blocks it out. I call it Gear 5 time. It’s just for him. Door is closed. He gets permission to do that. And he blocks it out. People know that that’s his time. People know that he’s not to be interrupted at that time. And if he is, they better have a good reason for it. And there better be a fire and a literal fire. And he can address it at that point. Do you know what he does during those two hours, y’all? Do you know what? He does some strategy, he plans some things, he reflects, he does some thinking. It’s nothing flashy. It’s nothing like he’s going to blast it on LinkedIn of all the cool, crazy, productive things he’s doing. It’s just space.

How many of you would love just a little bit of space right now? Because that space has probably produced more value than half of the other meetings on his calendar when he comes back and goes, I don’t even know why I was in there, right? How many of you have had those meetings?

Here’s all the irony, right? Is that many of the leaders they spend their entire day responding to problems created by a lack of thinking time. Then they convince themselves that they don’t have time to think. See what I just did there? Their problem is that they lack thinking time, but then they don’t have time to think, right? It’s like, what are we doing here? Here’s what I’ve learned. You don’t find time, you claim it. I got to find some time for that. No, let’s claim the time. Stumbling into priorities, no, you schedule them. You don’t accidentally create what we call a meaningful life. It doesn’t accidentally happen. You don’t accidentally spend time with your children or your wife or your neighborhood community, whatever, or go to those meetings, or go do the things that you want to do with your clients. You intentionally allocate time towards them. Okay, towards that thing that you’re wanting to do.

So, I want you to think. Next time you say, I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time. I just don’t have time right now. Let’s stop. Okay. And think like, do you have time? Because I think you do. If your loved one came in with a nail stuck through their foot and said, “I need you right now.” Would you have time for that? Yes, you would. So, I saying I don’t have time is a lie. Okay. It is something you’re telling yourself to let go of either the guilt of not doing something else or you want to be the victim of a situation and say, hey, it’s not my fault. I just don’t have any time. I’ve got all these things, all these people demanding things of me. Like claim your time. Okay. Ask a different question. Are you saying I want, I’m choosing how to spend my time or is everyone else choosing for me? Because they will. If you don’t choose how to spend your time, everybody else will choose that for you.

Here is what I want you to think about. The real issue is not time. It’s ownership. Okay? It’s ownership. I don’t want you to think about busyness. I’m so busy, right? I want you to think about agency. And it’s not about availability. That’s not the problem either. It’s about intentionality. It’s about being more intentional with your time, with your space, with the empowerment that comes with choosing.

Thank you for listening to me vent on another episode of Thoughts Unlocked. This week, stop treating your calendar like it’s public property. I want you to protect time every day, if you can, every day. Create some white space. Get rid of some of those meetings that you don’t really have to be in. Go ahead, I dare you, get rid of just one meeting this week that you don’t have to be in. Give yourself permission to think before you react to things. Because most effective leaders aren’t the ones who give their time to everyone else. So, the ones who intentionally invest where it matters most.

And until next time, take ownership of your schedule. You’ll thank me for it. I need to thank myself, because I need to take ownership of my calendar sometimes. Make time for what matters, keep unlocking what’s possible.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay on Unlocked.