[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:06] DC: Time is one thing we can’t make more of, but we can make more of what we do with it. Welcome to Time Management Tips in 20, where productivity expert Sarah Ohanesian, Founder of SO Productive, helps you take back your day one smart habit at a time. In each episode, Sarah shares practical, proven strategies to help you prioritize what matters. Get out of overwhelm and get more done without working more hours. Because when you use your time with purpose, productivity becomes less about output and more about making space for what matters most at work and at home. Let’s begin. Your time starts now.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:55] DC: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Time Management Tips in 20. I am Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador, here with the time sherpa herself, Sarah Ohanesian from SO Productive. Hello, Sarah.
[0:01:08] SO: Hello. I love this title you’ve given me.
[0:01:11] DC: I love it, #TimeSherpa. Everybody needs a t-shirt. Okay, this is possibly the topic that will either make me cry or make me cheer, depending upon what we work out at the end. That is actually measuring time and assigning value to it. Now we underestimate how long things take and overestimate how much we can do. We just spoke about that in our previous podcast. If anyone hasn’t listened to that yet, you might want to just push pause and go back there. It will help you on this one. When time isn’t measured or valued accurately, projects can go over budget, clients can get frustrated. By the way, not just clients. I get frustrated when I’m doing work that I didn’t charge for, or whatever it might be. Burnout follows. I will also say, resentment, because why am I doing all this work for no money? I don’t just mean me.
We made it simple, I think. We divided the day into 24 hours. Then we decided that 12 of them would be what we refer to as daytime, when that thing in the sky is bright, and at nighttime, when it goes away, we call that nighttime, and we divided that into another 12 hours. We know how to measure time, but we constantly misjudge it. Why is that, Sarah Ohanesian?
[0:02:43] SO: We do. It’s really hard. There’s a variety of reasons, and can get into the science behind it. One of the exercises I do with clients when I’m speaking from a stage sometimes is I say, just count to 30 seconds. Close your eyes, open them, and look up when it’s been 30 seconds. People are all over the map. That’s just 30 seconds. We’re bad at managing time. It’s just a factual thing. I do a lot of work in the neurodiversity space, as well as you know. A lot of people with ADHD literally struggle with time. The concept of time is very, very hard. They have a concept of now and not now, but 30 minutes, very hard to conceptualize.
One, it’s just really, really hard, no matter what brain type you have, to conceptualize the passage of time. We know what 30 minutes can potentially feel like, but when we’re in that 30 minutes, it’s very hard for us to know how much time has passed. It is just hard. That is the fact of it. Deborah, one of the things that I like to make sure people do, then, since we’re bad at measuring time and conceptualizing time, is to track our time. That’s the easiest way to do it is to actually put the timer on and say, “All right, 30 minutes. I’m going to work on this thing for 30 minutes.” Put the timer on, go. Tracking time. Now, I know some people just got hives, because they really don’t like to do that, but it is a really, really valuable lesson when you’re starting to think about how much time do things actually take? I don’t know a better way than tracking it. Not forever. But if you spent a week tracking your time, you would actually learn a lot about how your normal work actually takes.
[0:04:21] DC: I got nothing. I think that’s the only way of doing it.
[0:04:25] SO: Look, I’m sorry. I know no one wants to do it, but it –
[0:04:27] DC: No. But you’re absolutely right, because you made me realize it’s deeper than not just knowing how long 30 minutes is. It’s knowing what you can accomplish in 30 minutes and different tasks in 30 minutes will take, I know, me a different amount of time. If it’s writing a post or something like that, it’s going to take me longer, because once it’s written and it’s out there, it’s there. I want to make sure that it’s clear and all the other stuff, if I’m writing 10 emails, it might take me 15 minutes, or one email could take me 30 if it’s a long thing. Understanding, tracking it, and then being able to say, “Okay, well, this job requires me to get on a couple of calls, then create summaries of the calls, action plans from there, and then proposals on how I can do something.”
If you’re tracking your time, I agree with you, then I know, okay, the last five times I did this, it took me an hour and a half to come up with the summary and the next step, so the way I can help somebody manifest their wishes and with a little buffer as we often, let me measure it last time.
[0:05:44] SO: Yeah. Deborah, you’re putting on a really good thing. A lot of times what people will do is look at their calendar and say, “I have a meeting that’s an hour.” That item takes an hour. They’re not accounting for maybe 10 minutes to get ready for the call, 15 minutes to digest the call, get the notes where they need to go. Again, AI can do a lot of this stuff, but we still, it takes us an hour call, might really be an hour and a half. Then oftentimes, I find people aren’t accounting for the work that comes out of a call, so they’re thinking, that was an hour meeting. Our brain says one hour, but the reality of that is actually two, or even three hours. Again, really hard to estimate. If you are going to track your time, go all in on that item from start to finish. There’s a lot of great tools out there to help you. You can just hit the start and stop button to get real accuracy.
[0:06:30] DC: A lot of times, we’re caught off guard by time bandits, which I think was one of our previous podcasts as well. Things like, “Hey, you got a second?” Or, “Hey, can you jump on this call? It’ll just take a few minutes.” Or, “Hi, can you put this in front of that other job? It’s only going to take five minutes,” and then all hell breaks loose. How do we account for that in our assigning real time to tasks?
[0:07:05] SO: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I like to say, double it, or define it. What I mean by that is when someone says, did you have a second? Clearly, that is not true. Our brains, because that’s what we hear, we say, “Oh, sure. This will only take a couple of seconds, a few minutes.” It never does. I would realistically think about, okay, if this person says, and again, you can push back a little bit and say, how much time do you think this is going to take? Can I have 30 minutes of your time? Double it. Really, that turns into an hour, because we know there’s going to be some buffer on other side of that.
The other thing to do is to define it, so we actually know, because we’ve done that tracking. I know every time Deborah pops her head into my office, it’s at least an hour. I’ve defined that. That’s just what it takes. I know this because we’ve worked together for so long, for example. If I’m not sure, I think it’s appropriate and fair to push back a little bit and say, “I’m in the middle of something, or I have a meeting coming up in about an hour. How long do you think you would need with me?” It’s appropriate to say, “I don’t have that time right now, but I’m happy to give you an hour tomorrow, or later this afternoon, whatever it is.”
I think we’re so nice that it’s easy for us to say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Come on in. Sit down, or I’ll answer the phone when you call.” Sometimes that’s what’s derailing our day. Really get into the habit of defining how long these interactions and these asks actually take.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:08:26] SO: I’m Sarah Ohanesian, keynote speaker and corporate trainer. When companies call me in, it’s because their people are overwhelmed, burned out, stretched thin, and trying to do too much with too little clarity. Through my keynotes and workshops, I help teams rebuild how they work with clarity, alignment, and momentum that drives meaningful results. You can book me for your next team retreat, all-hands meeting, or an association event. Learn more about how I help teams work better at sarahohanesian.com.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:09:03] DC: I would say that time, at least in the United States, is defined as money. Time is money. You hear it all the time. I don’t disagree with it. As a solopreneur, every hour of my day, if it’s not being applied to something, then I’m technically working for free. I’m working on my business, however you want to look at it. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that this is how it works. But you can’t just function that way. If time is money, and projects will go over budget when more time is added to it. It might not ever get charged to a client, because you made an agreement for something, but still, your business is losing money. I’m working till 10.00pm at night, because I did 20 other things that I should have followed my to-do list and not done. How do you balance all of that? Let’s get back to assigning value to these tasks.
[0:10:05] SO: It really helps. Again, nobody loves to think about the money side of this, but it actually is really helpful, conceptually. Deborah, I use it as a benchmark. Let’s say you work for someone else, you have a salary. This makes it a little bit easier to do. Think about how many hours you work in a normal week, and what is your salary? Divide that by the number of weeks, divide that by the number of hours, and that’s essentially your hourly rate for your salary, okay?
That helps us then to serve as a benchmark of, I am asked to do this item. Is it worth? Let’s just say your hourly rate is $100 an hour. My hourly rate is greater or less than the value of this task in front of me. This helps with personal and professional things, I found as well. Again, it’s just a benchmark. It’s just to help your gut have a realistic check on what is the value of my time? What is the value of the item I’m being asked to do? It just helps us to make a more calculated decision around those things.
[0:11:05] DC: I also think that that is a great way to – I don’t want to use the word prove, but I’m going to prove your worth to the company that you’re at, especially if you divide it up by the hours and you’re like, “Okay, my contribution to this project is this much time, which is this much of – and this is when I’m getting paid, and I actually should be getting paid more for what I’m doing for these projects.” That also goes back to our last podcast, where you said to track the time. It all matters. Okay, I like how this is –
[0:11:39] SO: Deborah, let me frame it, again, yes. I think people get stuck sometimes with this, but I would think about it, too, is perhaps, there’s someone on the team who doesn’t have that as much experience as you. It’s also a great opportunity to help them get their hourly rate higher. I shouldn’t be working on this project, because my hourly rate is here. What a tremendous opportunity to give someone else on the team an opportunity to grow and learn, and they take that on. Again, I like to think of this as like, if I’m not going to do it, I’m just helping somebody else elevate into their career and give them a future opportunity. Hopefully, that’s a framing that helps people.
[0:12:15] DC: It is. Depending upon how the company you work for, or if you work for yourself, how you use the money that comes in, you might actually make more money off that project if someone at a lower rate is doing it. I could give you a very simple example on that. You hire a junior freelance designer or a senior freelancer designer. I mean, it is apples and oranges in a salary there. It’s not even close. Somebody will just be happy to get a job and put it in their portfolio, and they’re very happy to come into an advertising agency. The senior person is like, “I’m not getting out of bed for less than $10,000.” They’re like, they know what they’re doing and that’s the end of it. That’s what they have decided that their worth is. We should all listen to those people and take it to heart.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:13:07] DC: Supporting professional growth is good for people, and it’s great for business. When you sponsor Girls Who Print, you’re helping to deliver mentorship, leadership development, and career advancement tools to women across the print industry. Our annual sponsorship packages are designed to fit companies of all sizes with benefits that align with your goals, support equitable workforce development in your company and the industry, and elevate your brand. If you’re ready to stand out and step up to support Girls Who Print, visit girlswhoprint.org and download our sponsorship packages today. Empower long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:13:52] DC: We are providing tips in our tips in 20 podcasts here, as it’s in the name. In this case, let us go for some tips for assigning real value to tasks. The first one, track to learn, not to punish.
[0:14:11] SO: Yeah. It is not a bad thing to track your time. As soon as a manager or a leader says, “We’re tracking our time,” and I’ve done a lot of work with marketing agencies, they’re like, “Oh, gosh. We’re being punished.” No. It is just a knowledge opportunity. It’s an opportunity to learn. You don’t have to track your time, hopefully, forever, but please take it as a learning opportunity. Just the framing around that should change a little bit. It’s not a bad thing.
[0:14:36] DC: It’s not just if a company asks you. I mean, I’m going to do it now because I want to understand how long it’s taking me to change a text on a website. I mean, things that I do all day, or worse, we just changed the Girls Who Print logo, and then you don’t realize how many places the Girls Who Print logo is, and then you keep discovering them. Unfortunately, I have to stop everything I’m doing to switch them out. I think it’s really important to at least set aside, instead of just saying, “Okay, I’m going to do this for half an hour,” and getting the ones you see, giving yourself an extra half an hour, and saying, now go find the ones you can’t see. There is ways of doing that, like in the image library and stuff like that. You can do it if you have the time. Okay. Talk about what is the double it or define it rule.
[0:15:27] SO: Yeah. If you’re not sure how much time things are going to take, give that gut check estimate. I think it’s going to be an hour. I would just double it right away. If you think it’s going to be an hour, call it two. If you think it’s going to be two, call it four. Just double it if you’re not sure. If you are sure, because you’ve tracked your time, now you can define it. You can either define it. But if you can’t define it, double it.
[0:15:48] DC: Okay. Now, putting a price tag on time. You gave some great examples on how to do that. Use your full salary, divide it by how many hours you work. By the way, if you divide it by the hours you work, not by some 40-hour-a-week thing that somebody thinks people only work 40 hours a week, but if you put the actual 50 or 60 you work, by the way, your hourly rate is going to go down. But it’s not just for teams. I work with designers who have to put a price on their time. I have to put a price on my time sometimes. If I’m going to a trade show, I’m going to speak, or they want me to cover something. It’s not easy to do. I will admit right now that a lot of times, I just go off what I think is the tolerance of the person on the other side, because I just want to make it fast and easy, because I don’t have the time to go back and forth 20 times to get an extra $100 approved, or an extra $500, which is not extra. Extra is a bad word there, but I think you understand what I mean.
Sometimes the manufacturers have a number. If you stay below that number, you’re good to go. The person you’re speaking to proves it. But the minute it goes even $1 over that number, it becomes a committee decision.
[0:17:13] SO: Right. Well, and Deborah, we’ve worked together on different in-person events, right, where I’ve been a speaker at some of your events. People see me speak for one hour and think, “Oh, my gosh. You make that much money to speak for an hour.” No, no, no. You are paying for months of me preparing and writing that speech, getting it together and getting on an airplane and being gone for two to three days. That’s why it costs what it costs. Again, for me, it helps me feel good about my hourly rate. Well, my hourly rate is going into the time I was in the Uber to get to the airport. That’s all contributing to that final bill. As someone who’s doing the work, it helps you know the true value, but it also helps you plan, and then it helps you, certainly make decisions.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:18:34] DC: I think it’s also important that value is communicated through numbers, whether it’s a project that a marketing company is doing, whether it’s a design that a designer is doing, whether it is a job that a printer is printing, or a speaker speaking somewhere, that your effectively saying, this is what we are worth. This is how much time it will take to get this from us. Nowadays, that’s a little bit of a shaky subject, because people are starting to get a little frugal with their budgets, especially around the end of the year, the beginning of the year, as we start entering holiday season, there are specific needs for things. How much flexibility is there in putting a price tag on time? What happens after you waiver one time?
[0:19:31] SO: That could be a whole other episode, Deborah. Again, for the purpose of today, I think what’s really important to take away is it’s helping to guide your decisions. I’m not saying I always work, get the value I want. Sometimes I work for a little bit less, and sometimes I work for a little bit more. What the tracking of the time and the measuring of the time and the value helps me to do, it helps me decide, what am I saying yes to and what am I saying no to? Because I know the value of time. You mentioned it a little bit earlier. The first thing that happens when we don’t value our own time is what? Resentment. That happens so fast. I could tell you, the second I say yes to something, if I’m like, “Shoot. I already resent that. Why did I do that?” Because I’m not honoring the value of my time.
If you get that gut feeling of I’m already resenting this thing, that’s a good signal. What happens when we lower the price, or we say yes to something we shouldn’t have? Resentment is the key red flag that you can be able to look out for.
[0:20:31] DC: Thank you so much for your time and attention, Sarah, and for everybody out there listening. Everything you need to connect with Sarah is in the show notes. Our next topic is going to be helping managers delegate better. I love this topic. Until then, everybody, time management long and prosper.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:20:51] DC: Thanks for listening to Time Management Tips in 20. To connect with Sarah at SO Productive and find links for any resources we mentioned in this episode, just check out the show notes. Remember, all the great programming from Podcasts From the Printerverse is streaming 24/7 on printfmradio.com, the world’s first Internet radio station dedicated to print and graphic communications. Until next time, time manage long and prosper.
[END]
