SHOW NOTES

Who of us doesn’t want to spend more time on things we enjoy, find fulfilling or that contribute positively to things we want for our lives? 

It's not a problem spending time on something that may not bring us a 'productive' outcome if we're using that time for pure enjoyment.

But, if we're using it doing something we don't want to be doing, thinking that it will create an outcome we want - which is not actually the case - then we'll likely want to change that.

Gaining knowledge and awareness of these things and then intentionally choosing how we use and spend our time means we're more likely to create outcomes that align with our own personal goals AND have us experience more enjoyment in our lives.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

• Episode 69: Perfect Vs. Productive 
   
• Follow Rock Solid Study on Facebook
   
• Follow Rock Solid Study on Instagram
   
• Have your teen trained by me in the 10WGT: 10 Week Grade Transformation Program
   
• Get the Free Parent Guide: 3 Huge Mistakes (Even Smart!) Students Make in Exams and Assignments - and how to fix them immediately so your teen confidently achieves their best ever grades.

TRANSCRIPT:
 

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode number 76 - Intentional time use - choosing how we use and spend our time so that we create better outcomes according to our own personal goals and so we experience more enjoyment in our lives, according to what motivates us, brings us happiness and more fulfilment. And I say 'we' here, rather than your teen, because honestly, I think this is one we can all use, parents, students and me too - who of us doesn’t want to spend more time on things we enjoy, find fulfilling or contribute positively to things we want for our lives? 

Hey VIPs - how are you? I am super-well which is a good job because I’m recording this ahead of a HUGE week. When this episode drops, I’ll be right in it. I’ve just completed exam marker training for this year’s paper and started some of the early script marking. And I’ve already got so much just from the question wording, the mark scheme and a few scripts I’ve marked that I want to share with you and your teens, so lots more to come on that, including my annual exam marker video diary - so make sure you’re on my email list for updates and releases etc. 

And segue to how we spend and use our time - today I want to share really a bit of a reflection with you, based on a change I’ve experimented with in my own life and a conversation I had with a 10WGT student and her mum on a recent consult that really struck a chord in me and got me thinking. 

I think we can all agree that we have finite time. Time is one of the few things in life we cannot make more of.  We can sometimes claim some back so to speak by using certain services or systems or time-saving processes or technology, but we can’t create or generate more of it.  Side-note, if you want a good book recommendation on that, I’m in the middle of reading 4000 weeks right now. It’s by Oliver Burkeman and I’m really liking it. Ironically I probably won’t actually read much of it this week, because - I won’t have the time, Ha! But, what’s in the book isn’t what this episode is about. It’s more that I’ve come to read the book as a result of what I’m going to talk about here.

If we can’t control time - we can’t slow it down, speed it up or make more of it, the best we can do is use what we have intentionally. And to do that, we have to have some awareness. Awareness around the choices we have - as well as the decisions within those choices that we make and how we’re making them. And awareness of what we enjoy, what serves us, and what fulfils us. 

When it comes to your teen’s study, there will be some subjects or topics they enjoy and some they don’t. There will be some types of tasks they actually like and enjoy completing and some they don’t. There will be some types of assessments that they just get and can complete smoothly and some they don’t. And the interesting but not exactly newsflash thing here is that we all like or enjoy different things. And thank goodness that’s the case! So many reasons that that’s a great thing.

The point here is… that knowing this, and knowing these things about ourselves for ourselves can be helpful in deciding where we want to or need to spend our time and energy. I often talk about helping students spend less time studying. But I also know that some students genuinely enjoy studying. Or they at least enjoy some of the processes or topics. My mum will tell you that I used to love completing maths worksheets back when I was in the early years of primary school. I would actually ask for more and bring them home and happily sit doing them.  My nephew loves sweeping the floor. And my sister just wishes that he was better at it, because sweeping and cleaning is NOT something she wants to spend her time doing.

The point is, that we want to optimise for the things we enjoy or that create good outcomes for us.  My sister doesn’t love sweeping, but she does love the outcome - a clean home. 

I’ll share with you a very recent and topical example of this for myself. At the start of this year, my husband and I decided that we would try to create a better work-life balance for ourselves. We often get told that we work too hard  - I’ll get back to those words ‘too hard’ in a moment and a) we started to think ‘maybe they’re right, and 
b) honestly, I think I’m sometimes too good at the delayed gratification thing. I’m very good at working hard and putting off fun now in order to create outcomes I want in the future - in this case  a successful growing business and a meaningful contribution to students beyond the ones I see in classrooms. 

So, in the name of ‘enjoying more of life now’, we decided that we would have at least one full day at the weekend where we don’t even open a laptop, and that we wouldn’t work after dinner. I also cut down my availability for relief teaching so that I could get more of my Rock Solid Study work done on those days and free up my evenings and weekends. I didn’t want to reduce anything about Rock Solid Study, so I reduced my relief teaching instead. 

Now, for a few weeks it was kinda fun. I definitely enjoyed the novelty of taking the dog for a walk on a couple of weekday mornings each week and grabbing a coffee by the water after the gym rather than rushing to get ready for school and back out the door. 
And it was kinda nice for a while to veg out and watch TV of an evening. Though, on reflection, I think it was the novelty of it all that was initially fun and appealing. 

Because, here’s what I found happening after a while:

I had less urgency around getting tasks done efficiently, because now, I had more time to do them in, and so what would have taken me an hour or two before, would sometimes take me a day.  And we both got bored of watching terrible TV. We quickly exhausted anything we actually wanted to watch and so ended up scrolling lists or programs sometimes without eventually even watching anything. 

I lost a bit of the zing and energy that I have when I have to push a bit harder. 
And most of all - I realised - I like to work hard. AND I’m one of those lucky people who actually enjoys their work. I love training students in exam technique. I love dissecting essay questions and then feeding back on the essay that’s been written on coaching calls. I love explaining concepts to you, the parents on webinars. In fact, one of my very FAVOURITE things to do is to take more detailed or complex or vague concepts and systematising them or teaching them in a way that makes sense and is useful. And I actually love making presentation slides. I like a lot of the geeky stuff that others think sounds terrible. Let’s be honest, the signs were there when I’d bring home Maths worksheets for fun! 

So, when friends would ask what I got up to at the weekend and the answer previously was that I spent the weekend doing external exam marking, or planning out a webinar, they’d tell me I shouldn’t work so hard. Because to them, that probably DID sound terrible.

Do I also like things that other people would also think sound good? Of course, I love going out for breakfast, I love taking a beer or a bottle of wine down to the beach or the water in the evening, I love going for a good walk and coffee with friends. Though I also have a friend who hates walking. She’d rather just do the coffee. So that’s what I mean - we’re all different. 

So, even though yes, I work a lot. For me, working a lot is actually NOT a bad thing. A ‘better’ in quote marks life for me, doesn’t not necessarily mean getting a ‘better’ work-life balance.  And so after doing this for about 6 or 7 months - I did give it a good go - I’ve since gone back to more relief teaching, and working more if or when I want to. 

I know I could just take up a new hobby or something, but I already have something that I enjoy, that challenges me and has me grow and creates good outcomes for me and my business. Sometimes I’m in the mood to work after dinner. And I actually LIKE to be busy. I like that feeling of energy and productivity when I give myself a fuller calendar and to-do list. It’s just good to know. It’s awareness of me versus other people’s experiences or opinions.

And so I wondered if it might be useful or interesting for your teen to consider this for themselves or for you to consider what this means for them. And this may well be the case for your teen. They might WANT to spend their time on study-related tasks or topics. And that’s all good. The issue is when they are spending time and energy on things that they don’t want to be doing AND won’t get them an outcome they want.

For example they might want to spend twice as long making that powerpoint look beautiful, just because they enjoy the design aspect, or just like the process of creating aesthetically pleasing creations, even though they know it won’t get them any marks.
I just don’t want them doing that if it’s because they’re putting off something else they need to be doing that WILL directly impact an outcome they want. And I certainly don’t want them doing it if they don’t enjoy it AND don’t realise it won’t make any difference to their result. 

This came up on a consult I had recently with a 10WGT student and her mum. 
This senior student was telling me that she really enjoys reading and researching academic articles and journal papers. I think it was particularly for History, but the subject doesn’t really matter. 

The point is, many students would tell me they hate that type of research. That it feels arduous and for them, not fun. So for those students, I’d be focusing on making sure they have the most efficient and effective steps and systems to get that research done - to a high level to create the outcome they want - but in the most direct way so that they don’t spend any more time on it than they need to.  But this student actually enjoyed doing that, she liked spending her time on it. This wasn’t something that she wanted to stop spending time on in her study, even though she likely was spending more time on these sorts of assignments or research projects than she needs to.

What we instead made a plan to focus on was making sure she had the skills to analyse that research at the highest levels of criteria. That she was discerning in which evidence she eventually selected. AND we spent time figuring out what the weak links were in her study, that were holding her back in the results she wanted so that she could ALSO spend time fixing up and honing those. I even had Gemma our Success Manager and English Focus Coach talk to me about this recently, and she told me how after proof-checking episode 69 - Perfection Vs Productive, she then thought of me as she’d spent an hour that day making pretty labels for her folders in her office and how she could’ve just written basic ones with a Sharpie and had it done in 5 minutes. The thing was - if she enjoyed making the labels and enjoys having them to look at, then all good. But, if she was actually doing it instead of something she’d have enjoyed more, or something that she might not enjoy but was putting off, that would’ve given her a more impactful or valuable outcome than the good looking folders, if she was actually avoiding another task that actually, would’ve given more benefit, then, maybe it wasn’t the best use of time and that’s just something to be aware of for future.

So, a couple of self-reflection questions that might be helpful here could be:

Am I spending more time on this because this is what I really want to and choose to spend my time on right now? Or is it because I’m putting off something else that actually need to be or should be doing? Or even, am I not doing something or spending time on something I do want to be doing, just because of other people’s opinions or their own personal preferences?

Hence where the title for this episode came up. Intentional use of time. 
If your teen enjoys studying hard, maybe it’s not a problem that they spend a lot of their time studying. If they don’t enjoy it, then yes, take action to make it more efficient and strategic.

Of course, I’m not saying we need to evaluate every minute of our day, but for certain things if we got just a little bit more aware and a little bit more intentional about what we’re spending our time on and why then maybe we could create more enjoyment, better outcomes and hey maybe even a better life - both NOW and in the future. And just as it was for me, sometimes we need to go there to figure it out. Turns out, even though I have sometimes gotten into overwhelm or moaned to my husband about having too much to do, I actually thrive on that at least a little bit. I like the buzz of needing to work efficiently, having to problem solve and prioritise. I still like vegging out in front of the TV every now and then, but less than I thought I would. And yes, I also still love Maths, love teaching and love building and growing Rock Solid Study. Phew - good to know!

I hope you and your teen have a happy, fulfilled and productive rest of your week and I’ll see you back here next week for another episode. 

Bye!