Time Audit 101: How to Track Your Hours and Finally See Where They Go with Lori Oberbroeckling

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 303. Today, I have a fantastic interview to share with you. It is with Lori Oberbroeckling, who happens to be one of my favorite people to talk with, interview, and to learn from. Lori is a wife and mom of 4 who also works as a leader in corporate America and who also runs her business supporting busy moms. She believes that moms shouldn't have to choose between a meaningful career, a fulfilling home life, and their own happiness. And she's an amazing role model in all 3 areas. She is the author of Secrets of Supermom: How Extraordinary Moms Succeed at Work and Home and How You Can Too.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:51]:
And she's also the host of the Secrets of Supermom podcast, where she shares real-life strategies, interviews experts, and helps moms rethink productivity in a way that actually works for their lives. In this episode, we talk about a fun experiment that she did recently called a time audit. And as a result of this experiment, we got to talk about topics such as invisible labor, energy management, and how in the heck Can we fit in all the things that we want to do and experience in our daily lives? She's got lots of answers and solutions for us. So let's go listen to this episode together now. Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm. So they could begin working to their potential.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:53]:
In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. Hi everyone, I am really, really excited today because I know I'm going to get a lesson from our special guest today, Lori Overbreckling. She is now in her second appearance here on the show. I'm very grateful for her time, her wisdom, her great attitude, and I know my current clients have also appreciated learning from her because I was able to repurpose some of the lessons that she's given my audience before to current clients. So thank you, Lori, for being here and always for your generosity.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:03:00]:
So fun. I'm so excited to be back. I think it's so great. And, and yes, I love to share with everybody that finds you because if they find you, I know that they are amazing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:10]:
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So we were just catching up just because a bunch of time has passed since that first episode. But the reason why this episode is happening is because I saw Lori on Instagram and she was talking about a time audit that she was doing in her own life. And of course, me being me, I was fascinated, curious, and then immediately asked her to come back on the show. So Lori, could you tell us the full story? Because I don't know the full story of that time audit.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:03:41]:
Yes. Well, okay, so special secret here. Nobody knows the full story because I didn't even tell my email list the full reason why I decided to do this. So I have done a time audit lots of times in my life. And so let me just baseline. A time audit is where I am tracking or you are tracking, and you might have done this before. You're tracking your time ideally every 15 minutes to see what are we doing with our time. Right? So we're trying to understand, am I making dinner? Am I doing laundry? Am I working? Am I having a meeting? Am I driving kids around? Am I feeding pets? Am I sleeping? Right? What am I doing with my time? And the goal is to get some information so you can make some decisions about your life, right? And I usually recommend that someone do, do a time audit 48 hours, ideally on 2 different days.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:04:32]:
So if you're going to do it on a weekend day, a weekday, right? Like a workday, then great. That usually gives you a good picture of what your time looks like, just kind of in general. So normally I say 48, maybe 72 hours. I never recommend a very long time, but let me tell you what I decided to do here. So I hadn't done one in a while, and this actually started with an argument with my husband because we were discussing how we spend our time and he believes that he does a certain amount of effort, and I believe that effort is different. The amount of time that he gives and that I give our home. And I said, you know what, this isn't even a worthy argument. All we have to do is track it, and then we will know what time we're spending, what effort we're giving, and then we can have a conversation about it.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:05:21]:
There's really no reason for us to argue when we don't even have data behind us. Now, he's a data nerd and I'm a data nerd, so these things go— are an easy fight for us to have and say, wait a second, let's just Let's just rely on the data. So that's the secret part that nobody knows, that that's how this really started and why I decided to do it again. But once I did 2 days, I went, you know what, this is not enough for me to really show what my normal week looks like. So you know what, I'm gonna do it for a whole week. So I did it for a whole 7 days, tracked every 15 minutes, if you can imagine. And I'm doing it on a regular old sheet of paper, y'all. I am not fancy.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:05:56]:
I don't have a tracker that I'm using. I'm not tracking my steps. I'm not putting this into AI. I'm using a regular old sheet of paper, writing every 15 minutes down what I did. And then I took that and I analyzed it. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. But that's the whole story behind why I did it and why it took me a little longer to do it this time than I do normally.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:15]:
Okay, I am fascinated. I cannot believe you did it for 7 days, but kudos to you. And also my one question is, what was the original reason for the argument?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:06:26]:
Yeah, we were talking about his time and my time, and I work a lot and like to be busy. He likes a lot of downtime, but the argument was really, if my downtime is spent being busy doing things I like to do, and your downtime is spent truly being down, right, watching TV or like really just chilling, right, hanging out, that's not my kind of downtime. But the downtime, my point was the downtime counts the same. Effort toward the family counts the same, whether it is driving a kid somewhere or making a dinner. Effort toward our own workday counts the same, whether I am, you know, having a meeting or doing an interview or writing a podcast or, you know, creating a new, a new strategy for an organization, right? It doesn't matter what we're doing. Those all sort of count the same. And so when we started talking about it, we were saying, I was saying our time was not the same, that there was more downtime on his side, less downtime on my side.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:23]:
Mm-hmm.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:07:24]:
Even though I constantly look busy in my actual movement of time. And so that's why we were kind of having this conversation and then me saying, wait a second, I can't prove how much actual, how many actual hours he spends to do these things. And he can't prove how much I spend. So why not having us have data? Now I'll give you a spoiler alert. He did not do it. He did not do the tracking that I did. He decided not to do it. And I said, well, that just answers the question about what you thought you would find in this data.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:07:53]:
And so we don't have to have this argument anymore because— We're gonna assume that I'm right. And, and I got to learn so many more things, so many unexpected nuggets that I was not expecting by starting this process.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:05]:
I love it. So the ladies who are listening now, you have a tool right at the get-go for having the upper hand in a time use argument. So I love that. Thank you for sharing the reason for the argument in the first place. I realized after I uttered the question that maybe that was a little bit personal.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:08:26]:
Oh my goodness, not at all. I didn't share it in the, like, widely, but I thought, you know, sometimes we have to share the reason that these things come out, right? Because it— I used the word unhinged when I shared this because it's a little unhinged to do a 7-day time audit. But I really wanted folks to understand, okay, my purpose was really to truly understand where these hours are going and, and have it be real so that I could have another conversation. But it became its own animal after I started to do it. So it didn't even matter that he didn't have data because I had so much more than I bargained for.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:59]:
Okay, wonderful. So what did you find after the first 2 days of tracking?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:09:08]:
Yeah, so I started tracking and the first thing that I realized was that I really had, I think we have lots of life buckets, But that I really had about 4 life buckets that made sense, right? So I had the bucket that went toward my day job and the bucket that went toward my business. So for those of you that haven't met me before, I work full-time in corporate America and I run a business. And so though it's all work time, to me, that's time spent differently. I'm spending it obviously to a different end, right? And, and so for me, tracking those things differently makes sense to me. I then had time that I was spending in service of my family. So that could be driving a child around, that could be helping a child with paperwork for the first week of school. I did this in the first week of school also, if that is another little unhinged tidbit. So I, that would, could be that.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:10:04]:
It could be making dinner, it could be vacuuming. It was in service of the family, basically things that didn't only impact me. And then my last bucket was things that just impact me. So I counted sleep as something that only impacts me, though if I have very little of it, I'm probably going to impact everybody else. But I counted sleep. I counted my workouts as things that only impact me. I counted any time I spent reading, any time I spent scrolling. I counted showering, getting ready, all of those things as the things that impact me.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:10:33]:
And by thinking about it that way, I highlighted— I went through and as I was going, I would highlight, this is the thing that only impacts me. This is a thing that's in service of the family. This is a thing that's for work. This is a thing that's for my business. And it really allowed me to see. And if you're looking at the visual, you can see I have them. I had things written and then I highlighted along the way. And by doing that, I was able to see quickly where my time was going.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:10:58]:
And then at the end, I did a full, like, true and honest calculation of where my time went.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:03]:
Okay, so what were the surprises? Maybe take us through The first few, and then I'm fascinated. Keep going.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:11:12]:
Yes. So I work a lot, and I knew it, and I have to track some billable time and then not completely billable time, but I have a pretty good idea about my work hours, and I work a lot, and that was true, and that was noticed, right? So not a surprise, but a confirmation that I didn't just think I worked a lot, right? It didn't just feel like I worked a lot. I absolutely work a lot. I work a lot of hours. And so that, not a surprise, but something that I knew I did. Now, I will tell you, one of the things that was a big surprise was, and if you follow along, you saw me share about this, or if you're ever on my email list, but I said I did this thing 14 times and I was not expecting it. And that 14 times was doing something for somebody else, but who I had already delegated to. So an example of that, my youngest son, he's 10, He cleans our litter box.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:12:04]:
He is the one that does the poop scooping for the kitten, right? And I cleaned the litter box one of the times that week. One of my 14 things was cleaning out the litter box. And I went, wait a second, there are 14 things on this list that I had already delegated to someone that was already somebody else's job, that they already knew it was their job, that they didn't even fight me on, right? Like, I didn't. I didn't have a 15-minute argument and then go do it. I just did it. And so, I started to think, huh, I wonder how often I just do somebody else's job because I notice it, because I can, because I'm right there and it's easy, because I don't want to have to remind somebody for the 14th time, because I don't want to get in an argument about something. I thought, I wonder how often I do this. And 14 times this particular week.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:12:56]:
But I think that it's so easy for us to do that, to just pick up the things that are actually already somebody else's and not in service to them. It's different if my— so my oldest daughter does theater. It's different if she comes directly home from high school, has to get completely ready for a performance, and then goes and performs until 10:00 PM. If I do her chores that week, that makes sense to me. I am doing that in service of her being able to do other things because she doesn't have available time. This was not that this week. This was not me supporting the family because they had lots of big things happening. It was just me noticing it, doing it, and not wanting to fight about it.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:13:36]:
And that's a different feel to me. That's something where I don't want to do that, right? I want everyone in the house to contribute and feel responsible to their things so that I can contribute and feel responsible for my things. And we can all have the downtime that we deserve.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:51]:
Wow. So it was surprising to you that this was labor that you were doing that you weren't necessarily even processing, it sounds like. Yes?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:14:01]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:02]:
Okay.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:14:03]:
Like I was just doing it. I just did it, wrote it down, like said, okay, did that, like kept moving through the day and then went, whoa, wait a second. How many of these? And then as I went through and counted at the end of the week, so I was not processing this throughout the life of the week. At the end of the week, I went, oh, I emptied the dishwasher. That's my daughter's job. Did kitty litter box. That's my son's job. Brought the trashes in.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:14:26]:
That's my other son's job, right? I went, oh my goodness, I'm picking up their tasks over and over and over again. And for no really good reason, right? It's, it would be just as easy for me to be, hey, don't forget to do the trashes than for me to do it on my own. And so that was something that I had to go, huh, what's going on here? Why, why are we doing these other things when This has already been delegated. It's already been, you know, handed over.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:53]:
What was the primary feeling you had upon realizing this?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:14:58]:
Yeah, I thought it, what it really was about me not wanting to fuss about it, right? Because I've noticed it needs to be done now, right? So now I know it needs to be done. Kitty litter box needs to be emptied. The dishes are clean, right? And it was me not wanting to have to go remind that other person. Because sometimes you remind a child and they say, sure, Mom, no problem, right? And sometimes, maybe more often, they go, ah, I don't want to, I'll do it later, right? And it becomes a fight or it becomes even just a fuss, right? Maybe not a fight, but sometimes I don't wanna fuss and I don't wanna mess with it. And that doesn't really do the children service because they need to know how to do things they don't wanna do, right? And they need to be able to push through that. Ick feeling of, ugh, I don't want to do that either, right? They need to be able to push through the procrastination or the other feelings that come up for them, and they have to learn that. And I have to also be able to have those hard conversations without letting it derail my day, without letting it get me overly frustrated. And so both of us need to be able to do those things.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:16:00]:
And so it is, it is more important for me to either leave it and wait for them to do it or ask for them to do it. Instead of me doing it for them.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:09]:
I have the curiosity, are your kids like you? Because you're a doer, you're an absolute doer. So is it that they're in training? Are some of them like you and very much go get 'em, go, go do it?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:16:22]:
Yeah, I have one that is very much like me, that is like, wants to be busy all the time, wants to just get stuff done, you know, like will make cookies and then clean up the whole kitchen because she knows that when you make cookies, you have to clean up the whole kitchen. And then others that, you know, they don't notice as much because they're just kind of living in their own world. So the other 3, maybe not quite so much. So more reminders for the other 3 than, than the oldest. But also, I think that's age-related. I think that is, you know, a lot of us don't want to do stuff, right? Like, you don't, you're not probably like, I am so excited to take out the trash tonight. I cannot wait. That's going to be the best part of my night, right? Nobody wants to do that.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:17:00]:
And so we'd rather leave it if we don't have to. And so I think sometimes it's not noticing it and sometimes it's just not wanting to and wanting to put it off till later.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:10]:
Yeah. Okay. So yes, the children are learning from how we're setting the household in real time. So then what ended up happening when you realized all of this and you realized that this was your downtime being taken?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:17:26]:
Yeah. So I, well, first I hadn't told them any of the things that I learned, but they do follow me online. So they saw what I had said in my Instagram post and they were like, wait, what's part 2? Tell us part 2. We have to know. So I told them and they were like, oh wow, really? Right. I, you know, I think they didn't even realize that I was picking up their stuff, right? Like doing their tasks. And so just being able to say, you know, I, was able to say, I did these things, right? Yes, but they are your responsibility, right? We all have chosen chores. We all have things that we're responsible for, and we all have to do those things so that we get to do the fun stuff, right? Everyone gets to do the fun stuff.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:18:07]:
The whole family, every single one of us deserves to get to do the fun stuff. And so I, I think they get it. I think they will still always push back on the things they don't want to do, but I think also that they get it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:18]:
Gotcha.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:18:19]:
Yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:20]:
So then they got the chores returned to them?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:18:25]:
So I had never really taken them away. So week 2, I went, okay, I have to do reminders or leave it, right? I can leave it and not ask and have them notice it on their own, or I can give them a reminder. Those are my 2 options, but not the doing it for them, right? So backing off and saying, wait a second, I am going to hold them accountable to doing these things. And so It has been better. That was the start of school. So it's been about a month since I did this time audit, and I have been working to continue to be better at that and not just pick up those things when I notice them.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:58]:
Okay, beautiful. Thank you for that great story. I love it how everybody was involved in the outcome and in the realization that, yeah, we're all, we're all kind of sharing time too. We're sharing energy, we're sharing space, we're sharing The fun, and we all have a role in creating the space for fun. So I love that lesson. Were there other lessons that you learned from the time audit that were surprising?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:19:24]:
Yeah. So I wasn't sure how much me time would show up, right? I, I told you I work a lot. I have a lot of kids. I have a lot of house things that have to be get done. I have a lot of that. And I thought, I wonder how much time that I'm actually going to spend giving to myself, just, just me time. So I will give you the exact number: 31.25 hours in that week. So in my 168 hours were things just for me.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:19:52]:
That was not including sleep. So sleep was separate from that. So I have sleep that was separate, and then 31.25 hours of waking time were things that were for me, whether that was getting ready or working out or, like I said, reading a book or scrolling. I'm not a TV watcher, so there was no TV time that week, though sometimes I'll sit and watch a show with my husband because he is a TV watcher. But it was those things. And I did realize that I hadn't cut those out. So I hadn't skipped a workout in order to work more, in order to take the kids somewhere, in order to do more in the house. So the, like, positive realization was that I do have things that are important to me and important to my health and my life.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:36]:
Mm-hmm.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:20:37]:
That I wasn't negotiating away, right? That I wasn't saying, oh, I'll skip this and I'll do that for someone else instead. I think old Lori would have done that. I think old Lori would have seen evidence of that maybe every single day. And current Lori, because she's been working on this stuff for a lot of years, said, wow, you kept all your workouts. You didn't skip that. You didn't skip that alone time. You didn't skip those walks you wanted to take, right? You didn't skip any of that. And so I had dinner with a friend one time on the Friday night of the week that I had tracked.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:21:09]:
So I looked at that and said, yeah, I do have a good amount of time that is spent towards things that are important to me, and I am not sacrificing those things in service of everything else in my life. So it felt, though it's not, quote, balanced, right? My time is absolutely not balanced. It feels like balance. Because I am able to serve the family, serve myself, and do the work that I love and want to be doing all at the same time.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:39]:
Okay. As we're talking, just in general, I'm thinking about our audience and I'm thinking that a lot of people who are listening are wondering, how do I get closer to what Lori is modeling in terms of This openness to what is possible, this creation of fun for the group and for the self, and for the idea that progress can be made in all sorts of different ways. So what helped you to do that gradual change so that you could protect your me time?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:22:17]:
Let's start there. I think so. I have done these time audits, not this long, crazy one, right? But I've done these shorter time audits a number of times. Because we have to be aware of the way that we're spending our time before we can start to make changes, right? So if I have no idea where my time is going, or if I am very distraught about where my time is going, my brain is probably telling me that certain, especially terrible things, take longer. The good things are probably taking less time in my mind, and I don't actually know. So when I do this, right, I absolutely, if you have never done a time audit, that's the first step. Do the time audit. We're not judging, we are just documenting.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:23:00]:
No judgment. We're not saying, now let's say you realize you waste 5 hours a day doing things you don't even like care to be doing, and then you get to make some changes. But that's not what we're looking for at first. We're just looking for an assessment. What is getting your waking hours? And I mean, and are you getting enough sleep? Because— If you're not, then that's the first thing to change. So it's that tracking it, looking at it, having the data, and then being able to go, oh, I do work way more than I want to, or, oh, I am in service of my family all day long and I have not one hour of things for me. I mean, even if that we're talking like, that's like a shower and curling your hair, right? Or putting on makeup or doing things that you like to do and feel good. So those things, when we start to see, then we can say, do I want to be spending my time differently? Because sometimes you might find, oh wow, I waste way more time than I really want to be wasting.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:23:55]:
No wonder I feel like I don't have time. I'm spending it doing things that are not really important to me. Now, I didn't have that resolution. I, I was able to see where I was spending my time in reality, but I also have been working on spending my time the way that I want to for a long time. I've been paying attention to this for a long time. And so, those are things that I had resolved a long time ago. There is no what I would call wasted time because I'm intentionally choosing all the time that I spend. And I love that.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:24:23]:
I want to intentionally choose. I want to pack a whole lifetime into a day. And that sounds amazing to me. You might want tons of downtime and realize, wow, I'm the kind of person that needs a lot of downtime and I'm not getting it. And no wonder I feel stressed and burnt out and overwhelmed. Maybe you realize that you've got 2 really solid hours with your kids, and that's— or with your partner, or with your roommate, or whomever you share space with. And you're like, man, that's great. Like, that actually feels really good.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:24:54]:
It doesn't need to be 12 hours in a day. It can be some really short, intentional time. When you start to just see those things, then that's when you can start to make the changes. And the little ones, like you said, Christine, It can be really, really small. It can be, ooh, what if I spent this 15 minutes in a different way? What if I spent this 30 minutes in a different way? Not a whole life upheaval. It's just those little bitty things that can make a super huge difference in the way you feel.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:21]:
Yeah, thank you for that. And I have 2 thoughts. I'm gonna probably forget the second one once I describe the first. The first is that I know that I, at some point in my career, oversaw some time audits of a group of people. And I remember noticing that they fell into camps where people really didn't see how much time was being wasted and that they actually had way more time at their disposal than they really knew. And then the other side where people were really crammed and the entire thing was filled and different colors and they were serving so many different family members and jobs and responsibilities in school. And that really the awareness that you're talking about is so key because we're in time while we're also trying to look at time and think about time and make use of time. But really being aware of what it's literally telling us and how we're using it is really important.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:25]:
And then there I go. I did forget the second thing. The second thing. somehow was related to the intentionality and the fact that we get to choose. But I think we get lost in exhaustion. Yeah. So can you maybe address that? You have a lot of energy. Do you always have a lot of energy?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:26:47]:
I do. I, I do. But, but again, you heard me say I build my life to have it, right? So I do workouts in order to have energy. I eat a certain way in order to have energy. I pay attention to my sleep in order to have energy. There, that was one of the days. So, I start my day, I'm gonna talk about intentionality and paying attention, but here's a good example. I start my day very early.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:27:10]:
I wake up at 4:00 AM every day. Everyone thinks that's horrifying, right? Well, this week I decided to take 2 4:00 AM meetings. And can you get up at 4:00 AM if you have a 4:00 AM meeting? No, you cannot. And so, you have to get up at 3:30 AM or maybe 3:15. And when I did that, I realized that even a couple of those in a week totally throw me. By Friday, I was very tired. I felt like my brain was just not firing at its full capacity. And I went, just that little bit of time is a huge impact because I've already optimized.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:27:44]:
I've already optimized. I'm already where I can manage and feel really great and get the amount of sleep that I need. And I can't go less than that. And you know what? I went, okay, look at me. I know this now. We're not doing any more of those meetings. And I have not done any since because I was paying attention. But that's what you get to do, right, is be intentional about saying, wow, I realized that on the days I get 9 hours of sleep or 8 hours of sleep or 7.5 or whatever it is for you, I feel way better.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:28:13]:
I realized that I was so energetic on that day and I had a totally heavy protein lunch. I realized that, wow, I felt so great and I took a break after my lunch hour and I talked to a friend on the phone. Like, finding those energy boosts, those things that actually drive us and get us excited and make us feel great throughout the day, we can find those by doing this time audit. And then we get to intentionally put them into our lives and we get to feel like that all the time. And that is really what I am looking to optimize. I want the energy You know, I have 1,000 passions and I want the energy to do all of them. And, I can't do that if I don't have those other things optimized as well as I can. Now, we all have off days and yucky days and tired days, right? It can't be perfect, but it can get close to how I want to feel on a regular basis.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:29:02]:
And, I am always looking to feel the way I want to feel.

Dr. Christine Li [00:29:06]:
Okay, good. So, for that person who is maybe more persistently exhausted, either because of a mood issue or because of overwhelm and an overpacked schedule and responsibilities. They may be on the other side of the spectrum from you. What would you say to them in terms of encouragement and just helping them with the first few steps of figuring things out?

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:29:34]:
Yeah, I think so. Just like when I saw, wow, a little bit of sleep made a huge difference to me and I didn't feel as good as I wanted to feel, right? You might look at your calendar and go, wow, I feel wildly overwhelmed because my schedule is wildly overwhelming, right? I have every minute packed. I have zero breaks. I have zero downtime. We call it white space in our group, right? We call it—

Dr. Christine Li [00:29:58]:
we—

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:29:58]:
I have no white space. I have no space where I can go, oh, what do I need right now? And give it to myself, right? So when you see that, then you can say, okay, What is one little thing I could change? Could I take away one thing? And maybe not forever. Maybe it's not, I'm going to delete this thing forever, but maybe it's, I'm going to delete this meeting for this month. Maybe it's that I'm going to not participate in this activity for the next round. Maybe that I, it's that I am going to ask for help for one thing, right? Have a neighbor do carpool with me, have a spouse help with one drive, right? One little thing where then I can replace that with a little bit of downtime, a little bit of reflection on what do I need right now and be able to give it to myself. And even those little things start to— we get to notice how we feel. And when we feel differently, it makes us want to do more of those and find more places to optimize a little bit better.

Dr. Christine Li [00:30:54]:
Yeah, I think I was really vibing with what you just said because of the concept of white space and Even if you can't get— let's say you can't arrange white space. I think the idea of really being intentional and thoughtful about how you're arranging the blocks really makes a difference. I know that was huge for me in my own time management recovery work to know that I have set this up in a way where I have the best chances for success. Instead of just really cramming everything in all the time and just assuming that I'm going to survive, because sometimes we don't make it out of the day.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:31:38]:
Yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:31:39]:
With flying colors. And with your system where you're really saying, we're going to be intentional, we have goals, we're going to watch our sleep and add to it if we need to, and we're not going to push beyond a certain working level because we're optimizing and it's okay. It's, it's our audit. It's our life. It's very personal to us. Like you said a few minutes ago.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:32:01]:
You want to feel good in the life you're living, right? You want to feel good in that life. And if you don't, then you get to look at it and you get to make the changes, right? It's the— I promise you everything on your calendar doesn't have to be done. So we get to say, all right, calendar, Like, we own you. We're gonna tell you what we get. And then when we start to feel that, and the more you feel it, the more you feel it, the more you want it, right? The more you wanna make it yours.

Dr. Christine Li [00:32:29]:
Yeah. And I love that I reached out over the internet to get you here again because of the time audit, right? To occasionally pause, really do a giant pause and reset and reflection because this is such a precious journey. And it is, every day is precious in this way. And you're worth the time. You're worth the argument. You're worth the conversation with the kids, right? And you're worth getting all the good things for you. So I, I anticipate I'm going to reach out to you in the future as I follow you on Instagram and everywhere else. Could you tell our listeners how to stay in touch with you? Instagram, other places? You got it.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:33:12]:
So secretsofsupermom.com is my website. That's where you can get on my email list if you didn't see any of this before and you want to start following along. I'm @secretsofsupermom on Instagram, really everywhere. But that's where you can find the post if you want to dig in a little deeper and see kind of how I shared. But those are the best places to find me.

Dr. Christine Li [00:33:31]:
Yeah, stay in touch with her and her energy and her techniques, which is wonderful. You have a free worksheet, I believe, as well.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:33:40]:
I do. I have a Master Your Time Toolkit and I love this toolkit and I've shared this toolkit for years because it's such a great toolkit. But guess what is inside of this toolkit? It is the time audit sheet. So if you're thinking, I want to do this time audit and I just want to make it easy, grab the Master Your Time Toolkit. You can pull the time audit out of that and you can write your time down. You could literally start today if you want, but you could start tomorrow. So easy. And, and see what you find.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:34:05]:
It's gonna be great.

Dr. Christine Li [00:34:06]:
It's gonna be great. Time is great. Let's get more of it and let's use it really wisely. To get that worksheet, you can go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/supermom. Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/supermom. I have a feeling you're gonna get a lot of requests for that audit. I'm fascinated. I am gonna cross my fingers and I hope that I do that because I think it's going to be really informative.

Dr. Christine Li [00:34:36]:
When you first started talking about it, I had this feeling of a little bit of panic fear thinking, whoa, what will I discover in it? But I'm sure it will be eye-opening no matter what I find. That's right.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:34:49]:
That's right. You get to find it and then you get to say, yeah, this is exactly how I want to be spending my time, or, hmm, I'm going to make a change. And that's okay too.

Dr. Christine Li [00:34:57]:
I love it. Let's do this, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much, Lori. It was great to see you and to learn from you again.

Lori Oberbroeckling [00:35:04]:
Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:35:06]:
All right, everyone, I will see you next time for another lesson on the Make Time for Success podcast. Take care. Good luck with your time. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure You get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, make time for success podcast dot com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach.

Dr. Christine Li [00:35:41]:
Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to, and let me know any topics. That you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.