Ep. 68 How to Clone Yourself – And Do All the Things

How to Clone Yourself – And Do All the Things

Do you constantly feel too busy to get it all done? Do you want to do “all the things” but can’t find the time?

Torie Mathis has the solution for you:

Clone yourself. Imagine being able to finally get it all done without the overwhelm and stress.

Coming from a recovering perfectionist, control-freak, and doer of all the things herself Torie has a step-by-step plan for you.

In this episode, Torie covers:
What to do when you’re too busy
What to do when there’s not enough time
How to do All the Things
Tips for Productivity
How to not Burnout
How to do a Time Audit
How to Delegate
How to Stop Perfectionism
How to Prioritize
How to Define Non-Negotiables
How to Batch
How to Develop Processes for Everything
How to Let it Go
How to Use Time Constraints
How to Hire Help
How to figure out what is important to you

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 68

Torie: [00:00:00] I wish I could just clone myself. Like you can.

Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host, Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today. So let’s get started. What’s up, guys? I’m your host, Torie Mathis. And I’m here today, on my own. Sean had to go today and do some stuff at the museum and, we gotta get this episode out.  So this’ll be my first single episode here.

And it’ll either be a great success. Or a hot mess who knows stay tuned. And then you’ll see. So today I wanted to talk to you about something that I think is super cool and that is if you’re like me, you’re super busy and have just way too much stuff to do. And so wouldn’t it be great to clone yourself?

And so I love this idea of cloning yourself and be able to get so much more done in your business, in your life, in everything you do. So if you want to clone yourself, this episode is definitely for you. So when we get started here, I first want to talk about something a little bit serious that we have to talk about when it comes to getting more done.

We all want to do all the things and, whereas that sounds really great. Why do we have to do all the things, you guys? We don’t need to do all the things. And if you’re anything like me, like you want to do it all. Like I want to be the supermom and I want to be that for my kids. And I want to run my business and I want to do all these things and I want to travel and I want to make all this food and I want to pet all the dogs, I want to do all the things, but then we gotta look and say like, why do we really feel like we need to do all the things.

And a bigger question is why do we think that it needs to be us? Like, why is it me? That has to be the one that does everything. And when I look at my own life, I see some things that I can tell why I do this. And I think that if you’re somebody that is super busy and has all these things to do.

That you may want to look at your life too and figure out where this is actually coming from. Let me give you an example. So first growing up, I was an only child. It was just me at home with my mom. And because of that I really have this independent streak in me that I can do whatever it is.

I can do it by myself. I can figure it out and where I think that’s really great. And it’s gotten me really far. I think it’s also been probably one of my biggest stumbling blocks because again like I want to do all the things and it’s gotta be me that does all the things. I don’t know if there’s this only child, like trying to prove yourself a thing or what it is.

 But it definitely is a huge part of who I am and how I get things done. And I don’t know. You’ll have to let me know is if you’re an only child like you do the same thing. Sean isn’t, Sean came from, a family of four kids. So things are a lot different for him and he definitely does not have this thing with him.

And another thing is my mom wanted me to be like this super strong, independent woman that didn’t need anybody else, could do whatever it is, that I needed to do. And she really instilled this in me at a really young age. And now that I have kids like looking back, I’m like, man, I can’t believe that I was home by myself at this age, or I’ve cooked these things or whatever it is.

There were probably a lot of things that I did and had responsibilities for way before other kids had. And again that definitely made me who I am and I think it made me really strong. But at the same time, you don’t have to do everything yourself. And it’s really taken me a lot of time to try to work through that and to be willing, to let other people help me.

I think that if I would have played more sports. In high school. I don’t know. Maybe that would have opened me up a little bit more to that team player and to see how cooperation can make more things happen. Because it’s true. Like teamwork makes the dream work, right? Like I tell my kids these things all the time, and that’s a reason why I really want my kids to go out and play some type of sports.

And do these things that are on teams and have these times that they’re forced to work with other kids or even adults and to work through these things that are difficult to do that,  the magic happens when you work with other people. I guess we’re all like that we want to.

Not put the same drama back onto our kids that we had. And so I definitely see that and the way I was raised and stuff that I do a little bit different and it’s crazy how like all of this stuff plays back out in my business and it ends up being like these shortcomings that are in my business.

And I guess in my life, another thing, and this is like the last, like little precursor before we get to cloning yourself. The other thing, and it’s something that drives me crazy. And if you watch the show, I have a lot of stuff that drives me crazy. And this is the super mom. Like I hate the fact that EV it is like the greatest thing.

If you’re a supermom, if you’re a go getter. If you’re the one that can tackle anything, it’s it was really pushed on everybody for us to multitask. Like multitasking was like the greatest thing ever. If you’re supermom you can cook, then you can clean and you can do all these things.

Yeah. Yup. All the things, where did this come from? If I could find the person that came up with this, all the things. So we all want to be like this super mom, this Pinterest worthy fantastic woman that, that does all the things. And then he goes into the dam. Mommy needs a drink and woo. Don’t get me started.

I mean, I can’t take that. I. Drives me crazy. You guys like mommy doesn’t have to be a supermom and mommy doesn’t need a drink. I’m going to leave that one there for right now. Maybe this one will be revisited. And the supermom goes into the high achiever and I went into this may 110% the hot, if you see that all the time on social media.

Like posters, like everybody blogs about it. It’s like the soup, like it’s White’s books about it, like the miracle morning and all these other things of what a super achiever, we all have to be super achievers. We all want to do all the things. What a super achiever’s morning looks and it’s like this super-achiever super successful.

The billionaire, the blah-blah-blah, they wake up at 4:00 AM and then they get all these things done before 7:00 AM. I totally ate that stuff up. I’m not going to lie. I, and this was probably about five or six years ago, got up at 5:00 AM before everybody else. At the time Riley was in kindergarten. And so he was the only kid that had to get up in the morning for school.

So before he got up for school, I got up, I did 10 minutes of meditation. I did 10 minutes of yoga. I did 10 minutes of writing in my journal and writing my goals and the vision for my life, all these things. I drank, a lemon, a whole big glass of lemon water with cayenne in it. And then I did 30 minutes of self-development, working on my business, like taking a course, something like that.

Then kiddo got up and I got him ready for school. I walked him to the bus stop. And then I ran walk, ran three miles every single morning, high achiever. Woo. And, I, I think part of the reason why I like totally bought into the whole entire thing was that. I was in the Army. And, people say like in the military, you get more done before, everybody gets up in the morning.

And so I’m like, this is me. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is how I’m going to be successful. This is how I do all the things. And you know what, getting up that early in the morning gets you and doing all the things, get you. It gets you to burn the fuck out because you cannot do all the things all the time.

It just doesn’t work. And I totally crashed. I totally burned. I got really sick. I was in bed for days like Sean, which crazy, because this is like a moment where like I did all the things to like I realized. I don’t need to do all the things. And Sean picked up some of these things and then Sean picked up a couple of other things and I was like, shit, Sean can do these things.

Like it doesn’t have to be supermom. Like it doesn’t have to be me. Sean can do these things. And if you’ve watched other episodes, we’ve talked about we have an episode about us working together and I realized that, not only does it not have to be me. Like it’s great for it to be somebody else that does this.

It’s great that Sean makes the kid’s lunches in the morning. The important part is I have to let go of my expectation of what lunch looks like. I don’t make lunches the same way Sean makes lunches. But if had asked him, he’ll tell you kids don’t complain. Like they don’t care. The kids eat, they eat good stuff.

It just looks different than I would do it. And so in figuring out that it didn’t have to be me, I had to let go with what my expectation was of what. All the things look like. And so now I know you’re like, but what about cloning yourself? Torie, we’re supposed to be talking about that okay. Let’s get to my steps for cloning yourself.

So once you work through all of these other things, then you’ll be ready to start this process. So the very first thing for cloning yourself is you really have to look at what am I really doing? And I think the best way to do this is a time audit. I know you’ve probably heard of these before, and maybe you’ve done one before, but even if you’ve already done it, do it now because things change.

You always have other things on your plate, you have different things going on. Your kids are at a different age, your business’s at a different place. So it’s really important that you do this again. So a time audit is when you take a sheet of paper and every half hour. Maybe if it, if you have a lot of things, maybe every 15 minutes, but every half hour you write down what you did.

Write down what you did how long it took you. 7:00 AM I got up? I knew it took me 20 minutes to get the kids ready to go to school. Drove the kids to school, got home, drank coffee, sat on Instagram for 30 minutes. Blah-blah-blah okay. So you go through and write down exactly what you’re doing and it works best.

If you could do this for a couple of days, a few days that way you can go through like your different schedules different days, or can be a little bit different and you really have to look at what you’re actually doing. So once you get to this point where you can see what you’re actually doing, take a look at it.

And do you find spots like when I’ve done this, I found that every once in a while, like my social media time is a little bit crazy. Like I’m checking it here and I’m checking it there and I’m doing it here. And it’s hard because I do social media for our clients. So I’m on social media all the time.

And then I have to be able to do social media for branding myself and promoting things that I do. I want you to watch this episode, so I need to go put those things out there. There is a difference between going on there for something specific and getting it done and. Like window shopping, right?

Just go into the store. If you go to the store and get what you need and you get out of there, that’s a lot different than not really having an agenda. Just checking stuff out. Like you could be in the store for three hours, walk out with nothing. Like you need to make sure that if you want to get things done, there’s no window shopping.

Or if you need if that’s your thing and you’re like, But Torie I need to wind down. I need my social media window shopping then. Later, like when we talk about these things, then schedule that as like 30 minutes a day, I have to go window shopping on social media. But only do it for 30 minutes.

Don’t do it all day throughout the entire day. So once you write down everything that you’ve been doing, you’re probably gonna find that there are some things that you probably should not be doing. We talked about social media and maybe like your Netflix and chill time is too much. Or maybe it’s not like maybe yours looks pretty good and you’re like, all these things are things I’m supposed to do.

I need to do this is what you know, I have to get done and everything. Then you really need to look at the things that maybe it doesn’t have to be you that does it. Now, let me give you an example. We talked about the fact that Sean took over some of those things back, six years ago, I had a nervous breakdown, but in the last couple of years, Sean took over something else and it has been the greatest thing.

I no longer grocery shop. I don’t grocery shop at all, every once in a while. I’ll go and pick something up. For the most part, I don’t do it. I don’t go to the grocery store. Sean does it. Now does Sean grocery shop, like I do know, and I’m the one that cooks. So I always thought I’m the one that cooks and I’m the one that does the meals.

So I need to be the one to grocery shop because then I can put meals together. Really, that wastes time and it makes you spend more money. So you do a little bit of pre-planning. I write a list. Sean the basics that we need to get. He knows what goes in the kids’ lunches. I don’t know.

If you asked me to go and get stuff for kids’ lunches, I’d probably screw it all up. Why? Because I have let this shit go. Like I don’t deal with it anymore. And so I make my list when he’s going to go to the store. Sometimes he doesn’t get everything. That’s fine. And a lot of times he gets stuff like that.

It’s he’s getting good at like, where things need to be filled in. Or we also, you were running out of this, we get the kids involved. What do you need at the store? Because I’m not managing your cereal. I don’t eat it. You need to let me know when you need cereal. Because I don’t want to like, let that be your thing so I can deal with my thing.

And so when you look at your list of all these things that you’re doing, like, where are some things that maybe it’s not you that does it let dinner go and let some let one of the older kids cook it. If you have an older kid, or let your husband cook dinner. Where else are these things that you can find that you can just let it’s not something you need to do.

You don’t have to do all the things. You don’t have to be a super mom. You don’t have to be a super boss or CEO, whatever it is that you’ve put this pressure on yourself to do. There are so many of these things that like it doesn’t. Have to be you. The other thing is I know a lot of parents, a lot of business owners end up getting asked to do all of these things.

And if you look at your schedule and if you look back at your schedule, there’s probably a lot of things on there that you probably should have said no to. Like one of the things that I started following Rachel Hollis a little, like a while back. And one of the things like the first thing that caught my eye that she said because I didn’t know who she was.

I’d seen her books weren’t really into it. And I watched some video of hers and she was like, you know what? I don’t want to go to PTA. I don’t want to be involved in my kids’ school, go to the event at the school and do all these things. And if you think that makes me a bad mom, I don’t care.

Cause I know I’m not a bad mom. And I’m like, dang, like that is so true. And I think we all need to figure out what these things are that like, it’s just not our thing. And don’t feel bad for saying no, if you don’t want to be that person if you don’t want to do those things like you don’t have to have your identity be taken away from you because you don’t go to PTA meetings.

Like I don’t do that either. There are other moms that probably would do a great job at that and they have time for it. They could like, if I did it, I would half ass it. Because I have so many other things going on. So whatever these things are that you’re doing for your friends or for your family, maybe for your kids, like it’s okay to say no, You also might see some things on your schedule that you’re like, why am I even doing this?

Sometimes we do things because we feel we have to, or we need to, or I don’t know like it’s so like maybe it’s the doing all the things, but there’s some things that you probably just, it’s dumb shit that you shouldn’t be doing. And it’s really easy that every once in a while, you step back and you’re like, You know what, that doesn’t bring me joy anymore.

I’m not going to do that. And it’s okay to stop doing stuff that you did and start doing something else. And this doesn’t mean that you have to explain it to anybody. You don’t owe anybody an explanation. Just don’t do it. And that’s okay. All so for the next way of cloning yourself, now that we’ve figured out what we’re doing and things that we shouldn’t be doing, things that we can delegate.

The next thing is to take a look at all of the things that you do need to do that you do want to do, right? Cause you need to find those things. Obviously, if you were watching this like you’re busy, you don’t have enough time. And so maybe you’re missing out on some things that you want to bring into your life that you want to do on a daily basis or a weekly basis.

Maybe you want to go to the gym more. Maybe you want to take a walk after dinner, but you just don’t feel like you have time. Maybe you want a date day with your spouse. I know there are things in there that you want to squeeze in, but you just not able to get it done. I and I totally get it.

I’ve been there. I, you gotta just step back right. And see what these things are because if you don’t actually address what these things are and figure out what these things are like, you’re always going to have there’s that missing part of your life. And we want to move on and feel like that we’re pretty satisfied with the things that we do and the direction that our life is going.

And so doing these types of audit type things and just taking a step back. This is the way that you need to go to get to where you want to be. So we need to look at all the things that, so we have, everything that we’re going to delegate, everything that we’re going to drop. Those are now off of our list.

Now we have left the things that we need to do and the things that need to be us. Cause we got rid of some stuff and then there are the things that are really important to us that we just don’t have time to do. And so this is the time that you really need to prioritize what it is that you want to do.

And if you like to, read seven habits of highly effective people, he talks about it in great detail with big rocks and little rocks. And basically, you need to figure out what your big rocks are, right. You need to figure out what these would I like to call non-negotiables. And if you’ve watched our episodes, we talk about this a lot because.

Drives us crazy. The people say they don’t have time to be healthy and they don’t have time to work out. And so this is something that we’ve really prioritized for ourselves. We really want to try to stay as healthy as we can for our kids for ourselves, so that when we’re older, we’re not completely falling apart.

Like we want to try to live the longest healthiest, best life that we can. And so in having that as one of our like guiding goals, working out and eating well is a super high priority, super non-negotiables for us. So those would be like our big rocks. And so those things are scheduled in before anything else also like for us, our kid events the kids go to karate, one kid goes to like these aerobatic, circus lessons.

Other kid does some coding. So those are big things too. Like I think it’s.  Important for the kids to be able to go and do these types of things. So those things also are scheduled. And then we have some other things in there that are scheduled. We try to go to lunch once a week, just to get out of the office, have a little date and do you know, something that’s a little bit different.

And so those things are scheduled. Those things are in there. Those things are our big rocks and things. Aren’t going to change those because if you let all the little things of the day go in. And change your day and rule your day, then you’re not going to get those important things done because it’s going to feel like it’s too much like shoving a big rock into a little hole in your schedule, doesn’t work.

But when you shove the little things in between the big rocks, like it just it works. It feels better. So you really have to prioritize what’s important. Be honest with yourself, don’t say what’s important to somebody else. What’s important to you. What are these things that you really need to feel that you need to get done?

And be honest with yourself. And so once you get those big things in, then you can start to let all of life, whether you have a business or, parenting, all those other things can like fit into your schedule. So the next thing that you can do that is a super cloning, a hack is to batch and I am a batch lover.

I drive Sean crazy because this is like one way that I think that we are very different and he’s not here today to respond. So maybe I shouldn’t talk too much about him, but he’s definitely like really different in how he gets things done. If he gets a task, he’ll go and do it and he wants to get it done and then move on to the next thing.

For me, I’m like how is this task, like other tasks that I have so that I can put it with those other tasks and get them done at the same time. And for me, that’s a lot quicker if I can do those things, because I have these big projects that I have that I work on and not a lot of, as much little things.

So if I can keep all my big things together, I can get more done. If I’m constantly switching from little thing to little thing, like I, then I have those days that I get nothing done. So batching like super works for me. And if you don’t really understand how batching works, think of it as doing your dishes.

So most of us, we like take our dishes and we put them in the dishwasher and then we turn the dishwasher on and it washes all of them at one time. That takes a lot less time than if you sat there every time you dirty to dish, you got your dish out, you took out the soap, you washed it and then, dried it and got it all ready to be put away.

If you did that every single time you used any dish, like it’s going to take a lot of time because you got to get out the soap and you gotta get out of the sponge and then you got to wash out the sink. There’s all of these other things that you have to do. You got to dry your hands off. All these other things you have to do that goes involved with washing a dish.

At first, when you look at it, you’re like it’s washing a dish. Who cares? Just wash the dish. But then when you add up all this extra time, the time that it takes before, the time that it takes after, and that you have to stop everything that you’re doing. Because like during the day I’ll rinse off my dish real quick, but I throw it in the sink.

I throw it in the one side of the sink and like that those are the dishes that are ready to get put into the dishwasher and putting stuff in the dishwasher. This is another thing that Torie doesn’t need to do. I’ll do it if like I’m the only one home or like people are there, but for the most part I don’t need to be the one that loads the dishwasher.

Or unloads the dishwasher. This is not a Torie task. Somebody else can do it. And so in, in doing these types of things and letting that go it’s really helped me that I don’t deal with the minutia of all these things. So if you. If you can understand, like the concept of doing the dishes or doing laundry, like every time you dirty something, you don’t wash that one item by itself.

No, you wait until there’s enough. Like items to throw in the laundry to do them all at the same time. And every single task that you’re doing can be done. Like this. It’s kinda people like clean their house on the weekend because if they did it all, like in the little teeny bits, it’s easier for them to take, Saturday morning and clean their house.

I know a lot of people that do that. I don’t do that, but I know there’s a lot of people that’s how they batch cleaning or batch these things that they need to get done, batch doing like your lawn maintenance or things that you need to do outside and in your personal life or in your business.

Batching is amazing. One thing that’s really helped me for batching is my email. I do not, I really try not to go and look in my email. All the time. I like try to get as much other stuff as I can done all my other items. And then I go and I’m like, okay, like the next 15 minutes, I’m going to go and hit like as many emails as I can.

And then they need to be done and get out of there. Go do stuff that actually moves me forward to the things that I want to get done because email does not move me anywhere. Sometimes. Oh my goodness, like if I get into email and I start answering every single email and dealing with every single email it can be hours before I ever get anything done.

And so if you can find those things that are time-wasters for you, I’m gonna talk about a way to deal with those things in the next one. But if you can find those things that you can batch those things together, just like the, you need 30 minutes of window shopping or social media, like rather than saying Oh, I’m just going to grab, go on real quick in between these things, rather than doing it like that.

Where a lot of times these things ends up taking longer. You say you’re going to be on social media. Five minutes, then you find something cool and you go down some rabbit hole, and then you’re on there, 45 minutes. So batching your social media window, shopping time, batching your emails, batching like tasks.

That’s really going to make it so that you’re more productive without feeling like super bogged down that you’re doing all the things all the time. So be that way. Even if we do want to do all the things you don’t want to feel like there’s 9,000 things that you’re doing, like you want to do all of the things, but have it being glamorous, right.

Crazy lady doing, because you’ll end up being that crazy person. And if you try to do all the things all the time if you’re dealing with marketing your company, there’s lots of different marketing things that are fantastic to batch things like updating your social media. Or if you want to, if you write articles or blog posts, maybe you write four or five and like you sit down and you’re like, this is the time and you write four or five at a time, and then you schedule them out.

Scheduling out emails that go out. Like when we do episodes like this, we try to do quite a few at one time. And then that’s like our episode day and that we just batch it out so that we’re not taking, every single day and, getting fully dressed and, getting the lights out and doing all of this stuff in the studio.

We tried to do it at one time and just get as many as we can out to find ways that you can batch and so that you can be more productive without feeling more overwhelmed because we don’t want, so the next thing to do is something that I learned in the army and it is amazing. And it is having some type of process having in the army.

We call it an SOP, which is a standard operating procedure. And in the military you have these things. So that if you died, like you’re on the battlefield, this is your job. And you died like in war, somebody could come in. And take your place like that. Like you’re not training somebody.

You’re not like getting people up to speed, like everything is in your SOP so that if something happens like you can’t stop everything and be like, wait a minute, Torie died, everybody stop. That can’t happen. So you have to be able to keep everything moving no matter what happens. And if you run your business and maybe some parts of your life like that, like it can be.

So satisfying and the kids say, do your kids say that everything is satisfying? Oh, mom, that’s so satisfying. But finding these things that you can find processes for is going to free up your time and be much more satisfying for you. So what are some of these things that you can do? I used to always call it like a recipes.

If you go out of town all the time, rather than every single time having to like, scramble fuck, what do I need? What do I need to get?  Where are all these different things, make yourself a recipe, like the going out of town recipe. So if you like traveled for business, you’re probably not doing that right now.

But everybody can think of this. If you’re going out of town for business, if you had some type of check sheet, some type of recipe that like, these are the things I have to have. These are the things. This is where my passport is. And it’s always in that spot. These are all the items that I have to bring.

These are all the things that I need to do before I go, rather than. Having to figure this out every time, if you just have it, that you go and you look at your SOP for going out of town. I know it sounds like a little bit like crazy. Like you’re like super anal organized, but there are just these times that you’ve got to give your brain a break.

Like I talk about like wearing black every day. And it’s not very often that I don’t just throw on a black shirt. I know there was a couple episodes ago that I have on a blue shirt and I watched him and I’m like, that doesn’t even look like me. Am I wearing a blue shirt? Like I do have a couple other things, but it’s so much easier for me to just grab.

Anything I grab out of the closet is going to go together because it’s a black shirt and whatever pants like I have on. So if you can think of these ways of making it so you don’t have to make decisions and you don’t have to think about it and figure it out again, then It’s going to save you so much time.

So find out these, figure out these ways that you can do this. Maybe it’s with something you don’t do really often in your business. I know for me like Sean and I super technical, like we’d like all the tech stuff we’d like figuring it out. In all of these things all the time. But if you have a task like that, that you need to do, why don’t just make yourself, or if you have a designer or somebody that’s like working with you, have them make you, this recipe have happen, make you this SOP so that all you have to do is pull that out and go, Oh yeah, go here, go there.

So you don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to email Torie and be like, Torie, how do I do this? You, you just know because  it’s all taken care of. And this takes a little bit of planning and a little bit of forethought, but Oh my gosh, the time that you’re going to save, trying to do all of the things it’s going to be fantastic.

So anything that you can do to break down the process and the great thing is that once you have the process, you don’t have to be the one that does it. Then you have it down, then you can be like, I can hire somebody. I can have, I have my partner do this. I make the grocery list. I have the recipe, then I can have Sean do it.

I don’t have to do it anymore. You can get it off your plate because you’ve already got the structure down. We do this a lot for clients. And I do this for Sean. Sean’s not a big designer. Like he can put some stuff together. But it looks like Sean put it together there, but if I can get him started and I can get the structure or I can get a couple of templates going for him and then I give it to him, like he can get everything done.

We do this with one of our employees as well. We have an assistant that does a lot of posting and different things for us. And so I set everything up ahead of time. I didn’t make the structure. I make the SOP. I figure out the details because that’s what I’m good at. I figured out the process and then I get it to a point where I can give it to her and then I don’t have to do it anymore.

Do you know how many years I did it? It was me doing every single blog post me doing everything for all of our clients. If I was still doing that now, like there’s no way I would have time to do anything. In fact, I didn’t have time to do anything until I figured this out. And so I’m always trying to find these ways What else can I do this?

Where can I, I’ve already figured it out now that I figured it out, I don’t have to do it anymore. We had another project. We Do all of the production for our clients podcast. So we get just raw audio files and then we go crazy and we do everything for it. And I, man, there were so many episodes.

I was the one that created it. I figured all of these things out and this is how we’re going to do it. So I developed this whole entire thing and then. I finally, one day I was like, why am I still doing this? This is like so great for Sean. Sean wants to get the one thing, do it real fast, do it perfect.

And then get it, move on to the next thing. You know how much time that saved me, because there’s a big difference. And I don’t know if I mentioned this, but there is a really big difference between trying to get it perfect and getting it good enough to be shipped out. Sean ship that shit.

I’m like, Oh my God, I would never let it out like that. It’s not really with our client work it’s like, we definitely have a different level, but like even stuff with the museum everyone’s home dang. Like I probably wouldn’t have, but then if you think about it, like people don’t care. Like I might nitpick some design thing or whatever, like it’s just me.

Having an expectation that nobody else has. So it’s really important to get out of that and just to be able to let stuff be done and move on to the next thing. So once I was able to give the podcast over to Sean, like Sean probably does now a better job. He’s probably more efficient. He’s got his own process built into there now that’s just something now that he does. And so you can do this with anything that you have. Once you have a process. And then you’re like, you look back a couple of years later and you’re like, dang, I can’t believe I used to load the dishwasher and empty it and go to the grocery store. And I can’t believe I spent all this time doing all the things that I didn’t mean to do.

Like you don’t have to do all of it, at all. You don’t have to be super mom. You don’t have to be number one high achiever. Doesn’t have to be that way, but you can still get everything done that you want to get done. I really believe that you can figure this out. You can get all the things done, but all of the things, like all of the things, remember the crazy, all the things like that’s different than all the things that really like that you need to get done that you want to get done.

Yeah, I worked through what all the things really means to you rather than just trying to be that person that does everything. Like you don’t get an award at the end of the day, you get stressed the fuck out. You get burned out, you get super sick and yeah, you can have a breakthrough through that stuff.

Or maybe it leads to more problems and you have a damn heart attack or something like it’s not worth the breakthrough when you can just be a little bit more offensive with this stuff and like figure this stuff out. Like it’s totally worth it. So the next one I have is like super cool. And that is giving yourself a time constraint.

There is a principle and you can look up and figure out what it’s called. I don’t remember. It’s not important. The principles what’s important. Is that anything that you do will fit the time that you give it? You give yourself all day to do a project. You’ll take all day, you give yourself an hour, you will figure it out and then you’ll figure out like, what really didn’t need to be done.

What is okay to just ship it? Like Sean, like just getting it done, is great. It’s better than anybody else could have done. If they did it themselves, like it is great. And it’s done, done is what matters. There’s a book that I really like a lean startup, I believe is the one that talks about shipping something out and getting it out into the audience.

In beta, like before it needs to be done. I know that, I think that’s the book that it is if it’s wrong, like in, in you’re watching like the video version of this, like I’ll totally put right. What the actual book is. So you might wanna check that out, but like they built the software and had all it’s the base camp guys.

They built the software and put it out and they didn’t even have a way to charge people. They didn’t even figure it out. Like they didn’t worry about it. Even though they had the software out for people to buy because they had 30 days. Like once somebody actually got the software and they got that client, like they had 30 days to figure it out.

So they didn’t worry about it. Until they needed to. So like figuring out how to constrain these things and time constraint is a great way to do it so that you can just get stuff out. Because so many times, man, I do this and I’m getting better. Like I worry about all these things that could come up, which is really great.

Like I, cause everyone’s while Sean’s Ooh, I didn’t think about that. And it’s a big thing. Like I’m like, like you probably should’ve thought about that. And so I’m really good at that. Finding like these little things of what if this happens? Or what if this happens? And so in projects and getting a little bit ahead of it is good.

And other times, like it’s fricking stupid. You guys we worry about all these things that, that these things are never going to happen. The situations never arise. And then we spent five days worrying about these things and details and putting together all the things and it doesn’t matter. So giving yourself a time constraint to do.

Just what needs to get done is super awesome. A really good example of this is let’s say that you need to clean your house. And so if you give yourself all of Saturday to clean your house, you’ll probably take all of Saturday to clean your house. I, for me have better ways to spend my Saturday when my kids are home, like then cleaning my house.

But if that’s your thing like, and you want to take all day Saturday, then you’ll take all day Saturday. But think about those times that like somebody calls and they’re coming over and you’re like, Oh, my gosh, like my house is crazy. And so everybody’s clean up and like you’re giving people orders and like doing all the things that just need to be done, what has to be done right now to get it good enough for this person to come over and not think that you’re a monster.

Is the house just as clean when you don’t want to be a monster? No, but you done it was good enough for them to come over and you felt good, right? Taking all day or getting it done quickly. And I’m not saying like race through every single thing, but try this like work with it with things like, if you have to write, let’s say you write articles for your blog.

If you need to do this and it takes you forever to do first batch it, do several of them. Second, like only give yourself so much time. It’s like me with email. I don’t everyone’s meant there’s so many. And I feel like I have to, and I’ll spend like all Monday, like that’s all I do is try to get through emails.

And then on Monday night I like look back at my Monday and I’m like, what a poopy day? I wasn’t cool. I didn’t move towards my goals. Did you know all these people care that I answered their email on Monday morning? They probably didn’t like they probably could have waited. And so I really try to do this with email.

I give myself time constraints, get done. What has to be done. Can this person wait like goo and move on to the things that really matter, because email doesn’t matter, cleaning the toilets perfectly every single Saturday, doesn’t matter. Get the kids to clean the toilets, delegate that shit. It doesn’t need to be, maybe the time that you could save cleaning the house.

Maybe you could hire a cleaner. Maybe you have a teenager that wants to clean houses or that could help you out with some stuff. There’s other ways that things can get done without them being you and there’s other things, or there’s other ways that things can get done without letting them take all day.

Why not try giving yourself a four day work week? Like why take five days to get all the things done? Try to get it done in four, try it for a month and see what happens. Maybe you’ll be wildly amazed that you can get things done in less time. If you let yourself get things done in less time. It’s like studying for a test, when we studied for a test we could’ve taken the two weeks before time and studied and spent all the time or we can cram for the day before, or maybe a couple of days before. And then we pass the test and you know what, in the end, the test high school tests, like if you look back now that fucker matter, no, like why spend all this time?

Things that don’t matter. I am not telling you to flunk tests. You got to pass them on, like you got to pass it. But we’ve got to really look and be realistic about what we can accomplish. So that we’re not crazy, right? Because we, you will run yourself into the ground. Like so much of us, so much, so many of us do it.

I run the only one and then you gotta be careful and not let it happen. So we really have to be realistic about not only the amount of things that we can do, but the amount of things that matter. You don’t have to stop doing all the things you don’t have to stop. Don’t stop watching Netflix. Don’t stop going on social media.

Like this stuff, like really matter that it’s taking up this much of your time. And if you don’t know how much time it’s taking, maybe you need to go do a time audit and really see where your time stands because your time’s important. It’s one of those resources that like you can’t get back. You can’t make more.

It’s really all you have, if you think about it, like your time. So how are you spending it? And I know we wanted to clone ourselves because we want to do all the things I want to do all the things to what’s worse I want to do them all perfect. But I can’t do all the things and I can’t do it all perfect. And really, it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect. All perfect is some messed up expectation that I’ve created that isn’t real, that doesn’t matter to anybody else. And so stepping back, being realistic about how things should be done about how well things should be done about whether it needs to be me that gets them done.

Like these are businesses important. So though we may not have cloned ourself. Exactly. We can get more things done that matter. We can get things done in a different way. And the last way that I have for you to clone yourself is and I talked about this a little bit is hire somebody, get help.

But the thing is that you cannot get your clone. Don’t go get somebody that is you don’t get you to do your you work because there’s stuff that you shouldn’t be doing because it’s not the best use of your time. It’s not the best use of your skills. So you don’t want to get a clone. You want to get a compliment.

If you think of building a puzzle, you don’t want puzzle pieces that are exactly the same, because they’re not going to fit together. You need to find compliments. For what you need to get done, and like I talk about, letting Sean do all these things, whether it’s stuff at home or, running things at work, like he’s my compliment.

He’s definitely not my clone though we are alike in like the craziest ways. Like we are so different in how we prioritize, how we get things done. That makes him a really great compliment to what. I need help with what I, as a business owner, as a mom, what I need to get done, which means what we need to get done.

He’s a great compliment for that. So don’t look for somebody that’s exactly like you look for those gaps. And so if there’s things that like you hate doing, like maybe you hate accounting or you hate cleaning the house or there’s these things that just make you not feel good, like you don’t have to be the one that does them most likely obviously there’s some things like we have to do, but so many of these things that we don’t want to do, like we can hire somebody, we can get the kids to help us.

We can get our spouse to help us. We can get a friend to help us. There’s other people that can do these things. And so when you’re looking at this list of all the things that you have to do, all the things that need to get done, pick out those things you don’t like. Pick out the things that like you dread, like you don’t have to be the one that does it.

I work with a lot of coaches and I hear this all the time that if you can coach, you can’t sell. And if you can sell you can’t coach. So if that’s you with your business, and you’re really great at doing the thing, which so many of us are, but then you’re not great at the sales part. Find somebody to do the sales.

Like it doesn’t have to be you really, it doesn’t. So if you find that you’re too busy and you just have so many things to do, and you don’t feel like the things that you’re doing are moving you towards your goal, and you say I wish I could just clone myself. Like you can, it’s a little bit different than you might have first imagined, but there is so much more.

That you can do so much more, that matters that you can do. It’s a different way of looking at the things that you have on your plate. Because though I know we all want to do all the things. Maybe we don’t like Sean doesn’t want to do all that. Why do I want to do all the things? I know that there are those out there.

We want to do all the things like, and if you want to do all the things, you can figure this out. And you can have a life that you love and you can run a business. That’s awesome. That makes you a shit ton of money and be close with your kids. This stuff can happen, but it takes a little planning.

A little forethought, figuring some of this stuff out. And these are ways that has helped me tremendously. And I hope that these ways help you tremendously so that you don’t have to go through some of the breakdowns and the getting sick and the things that, that it’s just not healthy. Like we don’t need to do these things for ourselves.

And I want you to have that life. So if you liked this episode, that’s awesome. I hope that you’ll join us with more wherever you’re listening to this, if you could drop us a comment or or maybe give us a review on our podcast, we’d really appreciate it. We’d love to get this into more hands and help more people.

That’s what we’re here for. So I’ll see you on the next one. Thanks.

You want to get smart tools to build your business. Go to  getsmartaf.com.