BONUS: Protect your work-time (the secret to being more productive)

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In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m wrapping up my special mini-series on the four essential priorities for creating real, lasting work-life balance. We’re talking about the final one - uninterrupted work time and why it’s the secret weapon that keeps you from working nights and weekends, feeling constantly behind, and sacrificing your personal life for your job. I’m sharing how to protect it, why it matters, and the mindset shifts you’ll need to finally feel calm, in control, and satisfied with your work—without giving up your ambition.

Topics in this episode:

  • The fourth essential priority for work-life balance: uninterrupted work time 

  • Why mid-career managers feel constantly behind and how to stop it 

  • The illusion of “flexible” work hours and why it’s hurting you 

  • Three steps to protecting your work time: clarity, confidence, control 

  • Tools, strategies, and real-life examples to help you follow through

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Welcome to this special mini-series of the ambitious and balanced working moms podcast. In my work as a coach over the last eight years, I have had thousands of conversations with working moms, and what I have found are the ones that have been able to thrive at both the boardroom and at bed time, have one thing in common. They focus on four key priorities that support sustainable fulfilling work-life balance. These are the very same priorities that I coach on in my ambitious and balanced program. 

In this series, I'm giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what they are, why they matter, and how they create real transformation. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or like something needs to change but you're not sure what, this series is your starting place. If you're ready to go deeper, the next round of ambitious and balanced is open for enrollment right now. You can head to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced to learn more and grab your spot. Are you ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

The Four Essential Priorities for Work-Life Balance

Hello, hello, working moms. We are in the final episode of this mini-series where we have been focusing on the four essential priorities that are the foundation of a balanced life. We have arrived at the last one.

So far, we've talked about the priority of being off work, scheduling in time for yourself, and having kid-focused, fill-their-love-tank time with your kids. And this last one is uninterrupted work time.

These four priorities are the foundation of a balanced life. Time and time again, when my clients are able to figure out how to make each one of these happen in their way, and stay committed to them, then work-life balance becomes easy and sustainable.

Why Uninterrupted Work Time Matters

Let's talk about this fourth one: uninterrupted work time. This is the time that you have literally blocked in your calendar to get your work done.

Because so often women in the Ambitious and Balanced program come in and they're like, “Hey, when do I actually get my work done?” Because a lot of their calendars are filled with meetings all day, every day, and it feels like their schedule is just not their own.

They feel like they can't control their work hours, that people are always needing things from them. And it makes sense—when you're midway in your career, and you're likely in some sort of middle management role, you have people below you and of course you have bosses above you. You’re the middleman of communication, and everybody needs you all of the time.

Reactive Mode vs. Leading Your Calendar

When you become a manager, you're not just responsible for your own work—you’re responsible for your team’s work as well. And it just feels like your to-do list grows and grows and grows.

The things that are important to you—like your own work, the things you need to get done—they go to the back burner because so many other people need things from you.

And when that happens, you still have to get to your to-do list at some point. So when do you do it? You do it in your off time. You do it during after hours, after the kids are asleep, when you wake up early, you work on the weekends.

If you don't have protected time on your calendar to get your work done, you are essentially operating in reactive mode—doing the things that are most urgent and most pressing, but not necessarily the most important, not necessarily the most impactful.

And what happens when you're operating in reaction mode and not really getting your to-dos done? You feel chronically behind. You never feel satisfied with your work. You always feel like you're letting people down or people are waiting on you.

And so for a lot of my clients, they tell me there are things on their to-do list that have been there for months. Things like SOPs, training manuals, goals, project scopes, quarterly evaluations—things that if they did them, would make a huge difference to their team, to themselves, and of course, to the company.

So learning how to schedule and keep uninterrupted work time has you leading your calendar instead of your calendar leading you.

The Power of Protecting Uninterrupted Work Time

So what happens when you learn how to set uninterrupted work time and keep it is your brain actually starts to calm down, because it trusts that there is actual time that you have set aside to get things done.

You end your workday feeling more satisfied, or your workweek feeling more satisfied. You feel more valuable in your role, more essential in your role. You become a better leader because you're actually focusing on the strategic things that need to get done—the things that are really gonna pay off.

And your company values you more, because you're thinking more strategically and making time for the things that matter most.

You cannot experience work-life balance and feel chronically behind, and feel like you're not doing your job. You can't experience work-life balance and not feel satisfied in the work that you do. You have to take back control of your work calendar, and it starts with scheduling in your uninterrupted work time.

I remember one of my clients in the last program—this was like the hardest thing for her to keep. She would schedule in this time, and then she would constantly let a meeting with a client or someone overtake that time.

And so then she would have to find time in her personal time to get the work done that she had planned to get done in the time that she had set aside, but then didn’t keep to it. And it was just frustrating. It was a frustrating cycle, because her work was always sort of bleeding over into her personal family time, and it was causing a lot of imbalance.

Overcoming the Fear of Protecting Your Work Time

And so as we started to coach together on this, and really dig in—like what was really going on, and what was holding her back from keeping this as a priority—a lot of fear came up.

Fear of feeling guilty for turning down meetings with clients. Fears of disappointing people. And if she said no, the pushback that she was gonna get. Literal fear and panic would come over her body at the thought of turning someone away, where she could just schedule over that uninterrupted work time that she had set aside.

This is probably true for you too, right? Saying no and protecting your work time when you know it's going to inconvenience someone else, or make somebody else disappointed or frustrated—that's really, really hard and uncomfortable to do.

And of course, there are lots of ways of doing that and ways to let someone down or prepare people for your protected work time that will make it easier and less uncomfortable.

But at the end of the day, your satisfaction, your calmness—it’s all worth it.

The Illusion of Flexible Work Time (and Why It’s Hurting Balance)

Other challenges that I see that get in the way of protecting your uninterrupted work time—and this is a big one really—it’s the illusion that your work time is flexible.

Let me say that again. One of the things that gets in the way of you protecting your uninterrupted work time is the illusion that your work time is flexible.

Meaning your brain thinks that it's an okay solution to just work during your off time, right? It's okay to take that client meeting now, or any of those last-minute requests, or those “hey, do you have five minutes?” that really turn into 30 minutes or an hour—because you'll just work a little later tonight after the kids are asleep, right?

You're under the illusion that you have an endless amount of time (or at least awake time) to work. And while it's true that you could do that—you could sacrifice your off-work time—let’s be clear: it's not just your off-work time.

What you're really sacrificing is time with your spouse, time to work out, time to get a good night’s sleep, resting your brain, preparation for tomorrow, and having a life outside of work.

I mean, sure, you could sacrifice those things and take that last-minute meeting request and schedule over your uninterrupted work time. But I bet in the long term, it's not really gonna be worth it.

It isn’t for my clients. You're under the illusion that your work time is endless and endlessly flexible—and it’s not, at least not in a balanced life.

How I Coach Clients to Hold Their Priorities

So let's talk about how I coach on this inside the Ambitious and Balanced program and the process, right? I've said this before: there are three steps that I teach my clients over the course of our three months together on how to hold to their priorities.

They literally learn to hone those skills over and over and over again, and to make their priorities their own, and actually keep to their priorities. I teach them a whole host of tools to manage their mindset and their emotions, and so they always become someone that follows through.

Step One: Clarity in Scheduling Uninterrupted Work Time

And the basis of the process is this. Step one in prioritizing your uninterrupted work time, in this case, is to make a decision on when you’re going to make that happen and put it in your calendar.

Is it one block of time in your week—like one big chunk, four hours or so? Or is it a couple of two-hour chunks that are happening at different times of the week?

Is it roughly four hours that you need, or eight hours that you need? Does it need to be in the morning when your mind is sharper, or in the afternoon when you have fewer meetings?

There might be some trial and error here, but it starts with a decision—a block of time that you put in your calendar starting immediately. Step one is clarity.

Step Two: Confidence in Protecting Your Time

Step two is confidence. And look, here’s the thing: your brain is going to want to argue with you.

When that last-minute meeting request comes in and someone pops into your office and is like, “Hey, do you have five minutes?”—your brain is gonna freak out a little bit and tell you: “You're not a good enough manager if you don’t have an open-door policy. You're not very good at your job if you don’t take that meeting. You're rude, you're inconveniencing everyone if you don’t meet at that time.”

Your brain is gonna offer a lot of fear, anxiety, and pressure to schedule over this time.

And you have to believe in yourself and the value that you offer, and the value of this time, and the value of what you bring to your company, to your team, and to your leadership—even when your brain offers those types of stories.

What I like to tell my clients is that you have to develop a cheerleading voice inside of your head at all times. So that even when other people are potentially disappointed or frustrated, you still know that you know that you know that you are amazing, you are good at your job, and you are worthy of the position that you’re in.

Step Three: Control—Protecting Your Uninterrupted Work Time

So step one is clarity, step two is confidence, and the last one is control.

I want you to protect this uninterrupted work time like it’s your kid’s doctor’s appointment. Of course, there are gonna be exceptions to that. I know it’s not black and white—there are situations when you’re gonna compromise on your uninterrupted work time. But that should be the exception, not the rule.

I want you to protect this time as if everything depended on it. Because in a lot of ways, it does. Your entire work-life balance depends on you being able to feel in control of your to-do list and actually getting through it.

And in order to do that, you have to be able to manage all of the emotions, the fear-driven mindsets that are gonna come up in this moment when you are forced to protect this time.

The Toolkit for Following Through

So in this program, I actually give you a toolkit. That’s what I like to call it. It’s a whole host of tools to handle this moment.

I teach you the Pivot Protocol that helps you manage your emotions during this time. I teach you the Daily Kickstart that helps you not have so many of these swirly, fear-ridden mindsets every day. I teach you Thought Adoption so that you actually start thinking on purpose and convincing yourself of how important this time is.

I teach you a bunch of two-minute reset ideas so that even when your brain starts to spiral and go down a path it doesn’t want to go down, you have tools to lean into to get yourself back on track immediately.

I also provide meditations that you can tap into in the moment if that’s helpful to you. An entire toolkit—to help you learn how to be someone that follows through.

I would love to tell you that every time you put a two-hour block of time in your calendar, you’re gonna keep to it. I would love to tell you that it’s gonna be easy to deny that meeting request from your team member who wants to schedule it during that time. I would love to tell you that you will be able to context switch quickly from something you’ve been working on into this uninterrupted work time.

But the reality is, those things happen over time. In the beginning, you’re just gonna have to be willing to do the uncomfortable thing and say no, and hold to that time, and protect it like it’s your life.

And I’m gonna give you all of the tools to make that as supportive and easy as possible.

The Power of Community in the Ambitious and Balanced Program

Now, if you didn't know, the ambitious and balanced program has an app actually where we connect with each other between calls, which is a place where you can reach out to connect with me around coaching. You can ask other women, we can like crowdsource ideas for you so that in that moment, when you're literally feeling frozen, while you try to hold to your uninterrupted work time and you're sort of panicking, you can actually reach out for support and get some feedback immediately.

That's one of the most amazing things about this program actually is that you're in a group with other women that totally get it, right? That struggle in the same way that you do, that feel hardwired to just get more and more and more done and always prioritize productivity and who are all working to reverse their overworking habits and prioritize themselves and their family without losing their productivity and success at work.

It's powerful to be in a group of other working moms. And if you're surrounded by like stay-at-home moms or women that work part-time and you don't have examples of other women, powerful women that are looking to create this work-life balance like you, then this program is meant for you.

The Investment in the Ambitious and Balanced Program

If you don't know, the investment to this program is $2,000 and you can pay that in a variety of different payment plans to make that more accessible for you. I don't want you to have another day that goes by where you're feeling like you can't have both, right?

This program is teaching you how to have the working mom life that you absolutely love—where you wake up every day fulfilled by your job and feel like you're giving your kids their best. It is entirely possible.

Proven Results and Ongoing Support

You're getting back time for yourself. You're gonna start feeling like yourself again. You'll feel calm. You'll be less snappy with your kids. You'll be more efficient with your time. You'll smile more. You'll be more spontaneous. You'll stop thinking about work as much. You'll be just as successful as you are right now in your job.

Now I have coached hundreds of moms through this process. It is proven, it is efficient. You will literally move from feeling like a two or three on the work-life balance scale to like a seven or eight in just three months. That's a huge shift, right?

And for all of my graduates of the program, there's an opportunity to continue to meet with me every month where we have an open coaching call for anyone that has been through the program where you can continue to get coached. We can continue to lean in to what you need and to continue the forward progress to make sure that your work-life balance is sustainable all the time.

Next Steps: Book Your Consultation Call

So your next step in joining the next cohort—where the virtual classroom is opening up Monday, August 18th and our weekly calls start in September—your next step is to reach out and book a consultation call with me.

I wanna make sure that you are the right person for this program because I only take 10 into the program. It is highly curated and I have no doubt if you're listening right now and this resonates with you, it is definitely going to be the program for you. But I just wanna make sure.

So we're gonna hop on a 30-minute call, talk about where you're at, talk about all of the details of the program, and make sure you're the perfect fit.

To book that call, you can go to the show notes and grab a link to book the call. You can get more information at my website, rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced.

My friends, I love you just so much. Thank you so much for being on this mini-series journey with me where you are learning about the four essential priorities that are the foundation of a balanced life. I hope that you have taken so much away from the series as I have in creating this. Until next week, let's get to it.

Join the Next Cohort of Ambitious and Balanced

If you're listening to this thinking, "Yes, I want this kind of balance, but I have no idea how to get there," I want to personally invite you to join the next cohort of Ambitious and Balanced.

This is my signature group coaching program for working moms who want to stop overworking, stop people pleasing, and finally start prioritizing themselves without sacrificing their ambition or success.

You'll walk away in this program with tools to switch out of work mode and be fully present at home, to make decisions without guilt, to enjoy time for yourself without checking your inbox, and finally to feel like you're in control of your life again.

A Proven Program That Fills Fast

One of my clients that graduated from the program recently said, "This is the first time I felt like me since becoming a mom." And that's the power of this program.

But listen, materials are going out Monday, August 17th, and we start in September. Only 10 women will be accepted, and once it's full, it's full.

If your whole body just said, “Ugh, I need a program like this,” then go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced to get all the details and to save your spot.

Balance isn't just possible, it's closer than you think. Are you ready? Let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson