Note: this transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.

[00:00:00] Olivia: Are you searching for a time management system that actually works that you can stick to? Have you got a track record of buying a planner and then not actually using it? , [00:00:10] do you need a system that helps you focus on what matters each day, and that will help move the needle towards what you wanna achieve in your life.

If you’re interested in discovering [00:00:20] what actually works from a person who it doesn’t come naturally to, who has ADHD and who has found a system that is really [00:00:30] helping, then stick. I, I get it. And this episode is for you. Hi, I’m Olivia. I support entrepreneurs with big dreams to create [00:00:40] podcasts that attract their ideal client, that feeds their social media and helps them live the life they want while feeling confident and supported.

Hey, my name is [00:00:50] Olivia DeSouza. I’m dedicated to helping multi-passionate entrepreneurs turn their dreams into reality by building a career and a life they. And making a [00:01:00] positive impact in the world. I’m the podcast and social media manager, a singer songwriter, a kid’s music creator, a Felic, our wife and a mom.

I’m the [00:01:10] secret weapon behind many six and seven figure entrepreneurs helping them shine a line and call in the people they are here to serve. And now I’m here to help you. This podcast is here [00:01:20] to help you learn and be inspired. We’ll learn about podcasting, lead generation, business, and all about the real life stories of people behind the.

Just like you [00:01:30] think of it as a place to hang out with your like-minded business bestie who gets what it’s like. So grab a cup and hit subscribe so we can hang out. Again, this is Magnetic Pod, [00:01:40] the podcast. I am here and I’m ready to be brave. Cannot miss me. I’ll stand on every stage. I’m available [00:01:50] for my.

Before we dive in, remember to hit the subscribe button so that you get all the [00:02:00] tips and the hacks and the stories that will help inspire and teach you how to achieve the things that you want in your life and in your business. It’s so weird. It was only [00:02:10] late last year that I was diagnosed with adhd, and now I feel like I’m talking about it quite a bit in my podcast, and I guess it’s because.

It affects [00:02:20] everything and it’s changed how I view the world and it’s changed how I approach things that I have just kept trying to get better at in the past. And then, [00:02:30] but without knowing this missing piece of information, it just shifted how I look at things. And it’s been actually very helpful to get the diagnosis.

And once I had that, it made [00:02:40] me think, oh, okay. So in that case, if this is the way I am and the way my brain. Then what? So instead of trying to follow [00:02:50] advice from other people, I would now filter it through the lens of, yes, but will that work for me? Given what I know, I’m like, so I invite you to do the same.

Will this work for you? [00:03:00] Given what you know your tendencies are, could this be a thing that could help you? And hopefully some of these things that I share with you, if you feel inside that, [00:03:10] ah, yes, that’s what I’ve been looking for. , then that’s the filter to go through. So one of the things that people with A D H D can struggle with is [00:03:20] prioritizing have all these goals, but then how do I get to them?

What are the little steps and what do I do each day, month, season, year? [00:03:30] To get to where I wanna go, what do I do first? What’s important? There’s always the emergency stuff. There’s always the client work that needs to happen. There’s always the [00:03:40] family issues. How do you prioritize and what do you do first?

And the other thing that happens if you have ADHD is that when you put your attention to something that reminds you of 10 other [00:03:50] things, you’ll be doing something and you go. that reminds me of this I should do and that, and then if I should do that, and then I should probably do that too. Or maybe I should do that now before I forget.

Oh, [00:04:00] and then you hop around doing a bit of everything rather than a lot of one thing and getting that one thing finished properly. But somehow just simply realizing [00:04:10] this, that this was a thing, just knowing that somehow was enough to help me make some progress. So I’m gonna talk about the time management tools.

[00:04:20] Use now. So people with ADHD are notorious for buying planners and then not using them. And I found this was amazing cuz I knew this was a thing with me. And to realize that there’s a whole of [00:04:30] people who can relate to this is kind of kind of cool in a way. , at least I’m not alone and I know that there’s a reason.

So for me, I [00:04:40] knew that, I guess everyone’s different. Some people actually prefer paper planners, but I knew for me and my track record that a paper planner will [00:04:50] not work for me because it’s a thing that I have to keep track of, which for me is a headache. I’d have to carry it with me all the time. I don’t always have a handbag.

I don’t like what [00:05:00] sizes are gonna be that I, I don’t even like carrying a handbag. I don’t wanna have too many things in my pockets. It’s gotta be near me when I need it. And if [00:05:10] plans change, then that will do my head in, because then am I gonna just scribble all over the place? Do I always have to have a pencil with me as well?

And pencils get lost, get taken by [00:05:20] the children get, or I might have left it somewhere like it’s just a book and a pen and a pencil and an eraser that I have to keep with me. Just [00:05:30] doesn’t work for me. It’s just too hard. . So I knew I had to be digital. I tend to be digital. I like playing. I like creating graphics.

I like playing in Canberra. I like moving things [00:05:40] around, dig digitally. So I had to find something and I looked into Motion, the Motion app, and look, that might be a great app, [00:05:50] but to be honest, I couldn’t get it working straight away. And, uh, the seven day trial ran out and I didn’t wanna have to pay for something that I didn’t know [00:06:00] how to use.

I, it didn’t just immediately work for me. Uh, and then I tried another program called Suns [00:06:10] Sun, Samma. Oh gosh, goodness. I should have checked how to say that. Let me just find it on the internet. Somebody’s saying it. I wanna show you a way that you can move through your work [00:06:20] days with focus and tension and fulfillment.

Enter sma, sma, sma, Isma. That’s all I needed to know. Thank you. [00:06:30] So I found a tool called Sun Samma, and from day one I just started using it. I actually. Found it quite [00:06:40] user friendly. I always was craving something where I could just move. tasks and things around visually, and I [00:06:50] know in theory you kind of can in Google calendars or Apple calendars, you can create events, but I just found it clunky and sometimes I would play with Canva and I like [00:07:00] Canva, but I thought, I wonder if I can create a CA planner in Canva and just move graphic things around.

But even that, Clunky for what I wanted. [00:07:10] Uh, and then I found Sun Samma and I would find that I could write the tasks in there that I wanted to do, and you can allocate how much time you think they’re [00:07:20] going to take, and you can pop them into your calendar for the day. And then what I love is that you can click a play [00:07:30] button, which is the focus button, and then the timer starts while you work on that thing.

And the effect that has, it really helps you focus. Your mind, [00:07:40] it makes it abundantly clear to you that time is passing and that that time is passing, whether you spend the time on the thing or you don’t. The time is still passing [00:07:50] and if you don’t have that measure, you might go, oh, I’ll just quickly do this thing.

I’ll just quickly do that thing. We tend to be bad at realizing that time is not elastic. I don’t think that’s [00:08:00] even an ADHD thing. I think that’s broadly, you know, people impinge on each other’s time sometimes because we. Feel like we can squeeze and stretch and [00:08:10] do these things, but the time goes and it’s gone.

And if you are, especially if you find that you are, you can only work, you’ve got kids at school. If you have kids at home who aren’t at school [00:08:20] yet, if you are the one who has to try and squeeze in time here and there, you can’t afford to, uh, to waste it. [00:08:30] So by having this focus mode, it lets you know that the time’s passing.

So you see your AC. Planned time that you thought the task was going to take, [00:08:40] the actual time that the task really does take, which is often more than we think it’s going to be. [00:08:50] So it helps you get an idea of how, how long things actually take. But that it just helps with the focus, I find so. [00:09:00] The other thing it does is that you can categorize the tasks that you’re doing, so you can see where your time is going.

So you do these, these little hashtags and you, they’re can [00:09:10] be in different colors. So you can see that, uh, you can classify something as work, you can create. This is my content creation. This is my client work. This [00:09:20] is, uh, admin. This is communicating with my team. This is client, uh, client [00:09:30] communication time, any of those things.

Networking. You can have it all there. You can have personal stuff on there. Exercise, so it’s all categorized. So when you get to the end of the [00:09:40] day, you, you get a day in review. and you can see what you spent your time on where it went. And you can see this little graph. It’s got the colors. Uh, [00:09:50] and so it just is really good for, for clarity.

So the thing with, uh, SMA is that it is, it doesn’t claim to be anything more than a daily planner. [00:10:00] It’s not, not build as being your long-term planning solution, as in for long-term strategies, uh, over months and years. It’s [00:10:10] one day at a time. This is what you do today. But I found that I wanted a way to make it that, because I knew the way my brain works is if.[00:10:20]

If it’s not there in the thing that I’m looking at and working with every day, then if I do it on some separate planner or tool or something, then it’ll just sit there being meaning [00:10:30] meaningless. I need it to be in my face. So the thing you can do with Sun Sam is you can also integrate it with things like your project management tools, Trello and [00:10:40] whatever else.

I do have it integrated, but I have not, I’ve decided not to actually. Use the integration. For me personally, I don’t want everything in my [00:10:50] face, . I don’t want everything coming through on Trello, sort of where do I wanna put this? So I haven’t used that, perhaps down the track. I will. But [00:11:00] my hack and my way of using it is that I’ve decided that I will do the long-term things in the Google Calendar because it syncs with Google Calendars anyway.

And then you see on your calendar, and then I sync my [00:11:10] Google calendar with my. Apple iPhone, um, so that it’s on all my calendars, but if I put it in the Google calendar, then what I do is that [00:11:20] I’ll go like once every four weeks, I’m gonna focus on content creation for me and doing these podcast videos.

And uh, and then once every four weeks I will. [00:11:30] work on my kids’ music stuff, uh, Libby kids, the animation stuff is happening and I wanna spend a bit of time and allocate time for that. And then, you know, there’s certain times where I’m [00:11:40] focusing on getting ahead with, with client work as far as planning their, their social media and stuff out, uh, for the next month or two.

[00:11:50] And so there’s cycles of doing everything. I, it might be every four weeks or so that I will have. Weeks of focus. And so then they’ll come up because this is my [00:12:00] Google calendar, I will see it in Sansa because they’re integrated and, and you can also do things like that in San Samma. And the other thing [00:12:10] you can do too, is you can set objectives.

Objectives for the day, objectives for the week. And so that’s how I kind of marry it up and turn it into my. [00:12:20] long-term planning as well, and then when you do a task too, you can link it to your objective so that I’m doing this content creation because it [00:12:30] is part of my overall goal to get ahead with.

Making sure my client’s stuff is all planned ahead of time and that kind of thing. It just really helps with focus to have all those tools [00:12:40] there and I just love that I can put things up for longer term planning in the Google Calendar and have it come up and be in my face in the thing that I use every day, which [00:12:50] is Sun Summa.

So I will put a link to Suns Summa. I haven’t set up any affiliate links, although I don’t promise down the track. I might because I really love it, so I probably should . [00:13:00] The other thing is, uh, and I had a client who I won’t name cuz it’s uh, out of respect for her privacy, obviously. [00:13:10] But she did say to me that she had this dilemma.

I wish you thought there’s certain people in her family who, who don’t think of her work as a proper real. who think of it as [00:13:20] some little cute hobby and then therefore can be unreliable or you know, just imposed on her time. And [00:13:30] so there was a couple of things that came to mind with that, cuz I can relate to elements myself in terms [00:13:40] of, sometimes I wonder whether the way people treat our.

Business is, it’s all them and maybe it’s just all them and it’s not [00:13:50] fair. Is some of it us? Is some of it that we haven’t set? The tone? Is some of it that we are nervous to stand up and [00:14:00] really represent our business? Are we scared that? Are we scared of whether we’ll fail or succeed or what people will think?[00:14:10]

Are we scared to correct them and say, oh, I’m busy. I’m working. Like where does that come from? Who starts it? And regardless of who starts it, [00:14:20] do we confidently and matter-of-factly say, oh, I’m working. Are we confident enough in what we do and in our businesses to treat it seriously and [00:14:30] see it as serious and put that message out there, whether or not that’s the vibe that we’re getting from other people.

That’s part of it. And the other thing that reminded me [00:14:40] when she was telling me this, About phone settings because you mentioned being on a phone call, helping [00:14:50] someone and losing a chunk of time, and so that reminded me to set up my work settings on my iPhone. So on my iPhone, I have got the work [00:15:00] function between nine and 2:00 PM.

Only certain family members or my kids’ school childcare center [00:15:10] only, they can ring. No one else will be able to get through and only work related apps will work in those hours. So that’s [00:15:20] another thing to think about. Have you set up. Structures in place to support you and your precious little windows of time that you have.

So that’s where I’m at at the moment [00:15:30] and my time management and planning journey. So this is a big deal for me because like I said, it’s not something comes easy for me. So that’s kind of why I thought it might be valuable for [00:15:40] me to share it because if someone who’s supernaturally all Marie Condo is super organized, tells you.

time management [00:15:50] skills and that just isn’t you, then maybe that’s not the thing that’s gonna help you. And maybe if you’re like me and it doesn’t necessarily come [00:16:00] naturally, then maybe me sharing, Hey, this is what’s helping me. Maybe it’ll help you too. Let me know what you do, what works for you. Let’s help each other.

Let’s have a [00:16:10] conversation and let me know what you want to talk about in future episodes. You can contact me via I. At Libby Music Media, L I V [00:16:20] V, I remember hit the subscribe button so I can see you next time. Bye.[00:16:30]

I am here and I’m be brave. Every stage. I’m[00:16:40]

people.