02: Master Your Time with Alexis Haselberger

Chad:               If you feel that time keeps getting away from you. If you feel that you have all these overdue tasks, if you feel that there’s just not enough time to get everything done that you want to and and and your goals, keep slipping away. Today’s episode is for you. You’re going to learn how to get control of your times. You get things done so that you have less stress in your life and so that you’re not overworking in order to be more productive. So please join me in welcoming Alexis Hassle Burger to our show. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming on the show. We’re excited to hear today a lot about time management and skills that are going to help us move forward towards the goals that we have in our career. And first I want you to expand a little bit upon what I, I, I mentioned a little bit in our introduction and just kind of what is your story? What brought you to becoming a time management nerd and enthusiastic and if in an efficiency nerd, what brought you to this place of where you’re at now in your career? Sure, so my career has been entirely in startups,

Alexis:              so I’ve never worked at a company that was more than 40 people unless it got bought by another company and became more than that. Usually when I’ve started at a company, it’s been like two people, three people, and when you’re in that kind of environment and you’re trying to start a new company and a new venture, there are a million things to do and two or three people to do them and so you have to get really good at sort of reigning in the chaos and figuring out how to do that in a streamlined way that doesn’t make you burn out and make you crazy and also puts that company on path forward. And so over time, over the last 20 years or so of my career, what I realized, even though I might, my stated role as hr and operations is that what I’m really good at is getting things done. And so I recently decided to take that out of him in house environment and trying to bring that to them for people.

Chad:               That’s really great that you’re focusing in on your strengths because a part of, uh, finding your voice in her career is also discovering what are your strengths and what, what drives you, what makes you happy. And it seems like a lot of what you’re doing is you’re helping to connect systems and processes and departments together through those different systems and, and here at the show it’s all about connection and so we want to hear more about that. Um, and, and, and I like how you, you, you’re showing us that once we find our strengths we can always build upon that and we can add new skillsets into our career and we, we want to keep adding in new skillsets. But we need to start by finding what are my strengths right now and then how can I build from there. So, so what do you enjoy about where things are heading in your career right now?

Alexis:              I really liked the ability to be able to meet more people and bring these skills to more people. Because I think one thing that we, we don’t always realize when we’re noticing what arts strengths are, are those strengths that we have that come really easily to us. Those are not necessarily things that come easily to other people. And I think because, you know, often we’re in our own head and we’re not always outwardly looking, inwardly looking, we just think like, oh, this is easy for me, so it must be easy for other people too. And I think that that skills gap is actually where a lot of us can bring value to other people and that, you know, what comes really easily to meet doesn’t actually come that easily to other people. And so that’s how I can bring back that out.

Chad:               That’s really great. And it’s almost like you can also, uh, uh, fill in those puzzle pieces like were what comes easy to you, you now create one puzzle piece and accompany and then somebody else can, can bring in their strengths. So what’s easy to them and then you kinda adds those puzzle pieces all connect together now. Now things are really moving forward. Now that business really starts to move forward and the team continues to grow together.

Alexis:              Yeah. And recognizing those skills in each other. I mean, I think that’s, that’s one of the great things about working in startups and small companies is every person is not siloed. Everyone has to work together. Um, and you know, just because I made jaren operations, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have to participate in marketing or sales or other things just because you need to do that. And I can learn a lot from sales people who are great at connecting to people and who have no problem talking to strangers and things like that. You see how that is really helpful to them and how you can drink, bring those strengths and to your own life.

Chad:               That’s perfect. Tell us about your new business and your ventures with that and what are some of your goals with it?

Alexis:              Sure. So, um, my knew that this is a time management and Productivity Consulting and coaching business. And so what that means is I’m looking for either individuals who have really big lives are big work flags or companies who really want to send them their development dollars on ensuring that their employees are really productive without burning out. And I think, you know, something that we find in silicon valley where I work, um, and in startups is that you got a lot of young people who are willing to work 80 hours a week, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be doing because working 80 hours a week really does. It’s not the most productive thing. I mean, studies have shown that the longer and the day you work, you’re not actually working, you’re playing at the ping pong table or feeling resentful that you’re in the office for so many hours but you’re not actually getting more work done.

Alexis:              And so trying to help founders of these startups realize that that’s not the only path and that they could be taking a more productive path and then I can show them how to do that and work with those teams or those individuals to bring more value into their own lives. Because for me, you know, I have a family, I have interests outside of work. And that’s why time management and productivity is really important to me because I want to be able to get all of this stuff done that I have to get them and then still have a lot of time left to do all the things that I want to be.

Chad:               But I totally have experienced that. It’s A. I’m also building my own startup company and I’ve worked for startup companies as well and it’s very true that we, we get really passionate about what we’re trying to build and it’s easy to kind of put aside that life balance aspect and an overworked to the point where like you’re saying, yeah, we might be working 80 hours a week, but how many of those hours are focused productive hours, maybe 40, you know? And so whereas the rest is distraction. Tell me a little bit more about kind of how you’re achieving life balance and what, how does life balance connect to time management? And I’m in a little bit more about that because

Alexis:              are you familiar with the concept of segregator? It’s versus integrators? No. So segregated and integrator. It’s just a way of looking at the world in terms of how you like to have work life balance. So for some people work life balances that work in life are totally separated from each other and we call those people segregated and those are people who find it really easy to have very firm boundaries with. And then there are people who are integrators who do a lot better actually if they are sort of always checking their email or they just feel really stressed if they’re not able to connect in that way. Um, and so those are integrators and I think that everybody exists sort of on that spectrum somewhere and knowing where you are on that spectrum allows you to help figure out what makes sense for you in terms of setting your own boundaries with work.

Alexis:              And so for me, I’m pretty far towards the segregator ended up things, which means that I have pretty strong boundaries. Like I don’t check work email on weekends, I don’t check work email in the evening when I go on vacation I try to go to places where nobody can reach me. Um, I, you know, I like to, when I’m at work, I’m not doing my home to do this, I’m not checking call the, I’m not checking my email, but I’m at work. I’m 100 percent focused on work and when I’m at home I’m 100 percent focus on. And so for me that works best. I happened to be pretty pretty. I have for boundaries at work, which people are always surprised about, but you’d be surprised no one ever reached. Like if you don’t answer your work email at night, nothing bad happens. Typically somebody will find a way to reach you if they really need to talk to you.

Chad:               So I am, now that you say that I’m realizing that I’m a segregator. I, uh, I’ve always worked at home ever since I came out of college, so I literally have not had any experience not working at home and I found very quickly that I needed to separate my home and work life, which is even more difficult when you’re working at home and you physically are in the same space that you’re living your personal life. As I’ve kind of worked, wiggled my way through figuring out how to make it work at home, I’ve, I’ve had to separate just a straight line between my work life in my home life where I have a set schedule where I’m focusing on work, I’m answering emails at a certain time. I’m doing this at a certain time and then, you know, after you know, around 5:30 or so I’m done with work and now it’s.

Chad:               And now my focus is on my family because I, I realized that what happened for the first few months that I was working at home and really for the whole first year is that I would, you know, walk 10 feet from my Home Office to the living room, commute my way home, you know, in a couple of seconds. And I’d be hanging out with my wife and with my son. But I, my focus was still kind of on work. I was still thinking about work things. My cogs were still spinning and in my wife was the first one that pointed that out to me. She’s like, where are you? You know, it seemed like it, we can’t hide. It’s like, I like to see it. Like we, uh, we have this like projection screen where our focus is and people can’t really read our minds and see exactly where our focus is, but they know we’re not focused on them, you know, they know when we’re not with them.

Chad:               And so a part of managing my time is that I’ve had to learn how to deliberately tell myself, okay, I’m done with work. I’m now closing the conversation that I’ve had with work all day. I’m exiting my office, I’m now home and now I’m 100 percent focused on my family and, and my relationship with my wife has been able to improve because of that, because if that kept on going, I mean year after year that would really interfere with our marriage. Me Not being there, even though I was physically there. She didn’t just want a father and a husband that was just there physically. She needed my focus to be there. Um, and I’ve found that when I put my 100 percent focus on my family during the time that I’ve designated for my family, um, I, I feel much more focused when I am focused on work. It’s almost like when I don’t do that, when I’m trying to focus on work, my mind gets all split and it’s like, no, you need time for your family and Yada Yada Yada. And then I ended up having a half focus on everything.

Alexis:              Right. And then you have guilt on both fronts, right? When you’re at work and you’re thinking about family and stuff, you’re. Thank you. I’m not putting 100 percent towards my goals here. And when you’re thinking about your work email and your kids trying to tell you something that’s really important to them, you feel guilty there as well. So I mean it is interesting too because they say they did some study that could get google about segregated versus integrators and people who are segregated by nature are much happier with the way that they’re doing things. Like 50 percent of people who are integrators and during that would prefer to be segregated. It’s just that they have a hard time doing so and I think that technology being all around us makes it much harder to be an aggregator because one of my years ago, you left the office, you didn’t have a cell phone, you didn’t have a laptop, you know, you were, you were by. Do you follow those segregated?

Chad:               Yeah. No, totally. And that, that, uh, that kind of segues into something I wanted to talk about, about with how are you, um, you talk about how technology is, can make us all more likely to be integrators because we’re constantly getting interrupted by our technology. You know, we have an email or facebook notification pop up on our phone. How are you using technology to gain traction in your career and help you remain focused and help you manage your time, opposed to it just be a distraction. [inaudible].

Alexis:              So there are a couple things. So first thing is I turn off almost all push notifications on anything. I don’t have desktop notifications for anything. None of that. Like you have an email. Uh, I don’t have facebook notifications. There are a couple of things that I notice that text pops up and I get a notification about that, but for the most part if I can turn off the notification, I turn off the notification and I do that so that I get to control when I access these things because of what is happening. When you get a notification that you think, Oh, I’ve turned on that adaptation I want, but really you’re just interrupting yourself from whatever it is that you were wanting to be doing at that time. And so it’s, you’re physically switching your focus and studies out of the greater good science center in California have shown that every time we get distracted from the thing that we’re focused on, it takes on average 23 minutes to come around to the task again.

Alexis:              So notifications is a huge thing that I turn off. And then on. How does technology help me? Yeah. I’m a huge fan of different to do apps and productivity apps like that. So for me, because I’m a segregator, I have one system for work and I have another system for home. Um, and so I keep everything on a to do list. I think my note, my central tenant, what I tell everybody is never rely on your memory, like relying on your memory is the absolute worst thing that you can do because the moment you have these things flipping around in your head all the time, that means you’re not, you’re not able to focus on what you’re trying to do right now. And so if something has popped into my head more than once, it’s on list, like it’s not coming off that list and the lists are prioritized in one place so that I have everything I need to do in one single place and that I can sort it by date or whatever I needed to do. So those are the two primary ways that I use technology.

Chad:               That’s really helpful. Thank you. Yeah, I, I, I’ve noticed that uh, when, when I clear my head onto an APP or use my technology to organize my life, my to do list, my priorities, my schedule, all of that. I’m not just more focused as I’m doing tasks, but I’m also more focused as in communicating with people and I love to see the connection between those two things because if, if, uh, when we’re clear, we, we communicate better, we’re open, we’re able to listen to people better, our relationships improve, but also we’re able to manage your time better like you’re saying, and we’re able to, to focus on our tasks better and, and when we do that we get things done in time, we’d get more things done and when we follow through on all of our commitments, then people trust us more and kind of keep cycling back and we keep improving our relationships and those two things keep kind of reinforcing each other.

Chad:               So yeah, it’s a good virtuous cycle. Yeah, definitely. What I want to go back to, um, kind of what you said about the integrators and segregate segregated for a moment. Uh, you mentioned how um, a lot of the integrators who are more natural and integration, I’m kind of wish there was segregated because they’re realizing that they don’t like their mind being on all this stuff all the time. Um, in your experience, have you ever kind of met an integrator that is being an integrator in a healthy way or should all of us really figure out how to be more of a segregator?

Alexis:              I mean, I think so. I feel very firmly that there is no right way for everyone. I mean, I think that’s something that I use in my consulting and coaching practice all the time. Is that like, just because something works for me, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be tweaked for you or that you don’t need a slightly different way of thinking about it because everyone’s brains work differently. And so it doesn’t all work for all of us, but in terms of integrators and segregated, I think there’s a small, a smaller population of people who truly are integrators who really thrive that way. And I’m thinking a lot of ceos of major companies and things like that, they, it’s much harder for them to be as aggregator because their demands on their time are so great, but a lot of them also report being very stressed when they’re not able to not necessarily be working all the time, but know what’s going on at work.

Alexis:              Because there’s that. The other side of being an segregator right is that when you get back from a vacation, you have, you know, 200 emails that you have to look at. And that piece is really much more stressful for integrators. They prefer to kind of know what’s going on the whole time, even if they’re not really engaged in work. But I think it’s a much smaller number. I think that people feel this real sense of commitment or obligation to always be connected because that’s where the world has led us. And I think a lot of times people are afraid to say like, no, I prefer to separate thing. That’s how I work best. Because I think a lot of times people are just not competent enough to tell their boss that, right? Like, Hey, I, you know, I do better when I have time to disconnect, so I’m going to disconnect. Is that cool with you? Call me if you need something. I think that’s just a hard conversation for a lot of people that have, especially when they’re in the beginning of their career and they’re not super confident yet about their role in their ability.

Chad:               Do you think that, uh, when you, when you mentioned about how, you know, a lot of times ceos of bigger companies struggle the most because they’d rather just ongoingly be filtering through their emails and they keep getting interrupted and they want to know what’s going on and even if they’re on a vacation that they have a hard time separating from that. And I’ve seen that with people I’ve worked for where, you know, the, the, the, the boss I’m working for, it goes on vacation, but we’re continuing to communicate even while they’re gone. Um, and do you think that if a leader of a company had a team that he or she really trusted and delegated certain responsibilities because you’ve worked for different companies and have some experience seeing systems in place, do you think that if they were, if they delegated properly, that they would have an easier time maybe separating themselves when they do go on a vacation? If they have, if they do have that trust with their team?

Alexis:              So yes, I think so. But I think the other thing that I’ve seen really frequently with entrepreneurs is that letting go and giving up control is really difficult for them so that they still feel all the pressure on their own shoulders. So even if they’re able to delegate the work, they aren’t able to delegate the pressure and I think that prevents them from being able to sort of fully let go. But I also think that on the teams that I’ve been on and um, the companies I’ve worked for where that type of disconnection is a top down thing where the bosses say like, okay, you’re going on a vacation. Terrific. I’ll see you in two weeks and aren’t expecting you to check your email or you know, companies where it’s like, okay, everybody’s out of the office by 6:00 and I’m not expecting an email after 6:00. Those are the companies that I think people feel, uh, emotionally and psychologically the best at because they don’t have that internal struggle between like, this is what I want to do and, but up here the boss or the people above me are having a different set of expectations for me. And I think that expectation mismatch can really be damaging to people because then they get stuck and you know, okay, I’m obliged to do this thing but I really want to be acting in this other way.

Chad:               Yeah, that’s really insightful. Because yeah, if, if, if, if, if the CEO has a certain type of behavior, but if they’re also expecting the employees to behave that same way when they’re on vacation and so forth, but they don’t want to. And then there’s that disconnect. Whereas, you know, maybe it’s possible that, you know, the CEO could have his own behavior, but at the same time be like, okay, I respect that you as an employee don’t want any kind of work interruptions during their vacation and I’m okay with that. But it takes that communication to make sure you’re on the same page with how all that runs.

Alexis:              And also I think, you know, you actually do have to lead by example because I think the reality is if you’re CEO tells you it’s okay, don’t check email, I’m not expecting you to. But when they go on their own vacations, they’re checking email the whole time. In your mind you’re thinking like, are they really, is that true? And they really did they really believe that or like are they just saying that? But then they’re gonna think less of me when I come back. I haven’t been, you know. So I think it actually does require that you lead by example for employees to feel fully confident that this is an okay way to be.

Chad:               Right. Because I’ve experienced that too where I’ve felt kind of guilty because uh, you know, like I’ve had bosses where they’ve told me like when you’re on vacation, don’t feel like you have to, like they’ve actually told me that I don’t feel like you have to check email, don’t feel like you have to do that. It’s okay. You can just come to it on Monday or on the weekend or something when I’m not working. Um, but then when they didn’t behave that way, I did feel kind of this. I was playing this guessing game with myself of A. I wonder if like she’s a hoping that I actually do check it and that this is some tests and that maybe, you know, she’ll trust me more or he’ll trust me more if, if I end up staying in my work all the time and know it can kind of cause some weird tension there. On Your plane that guessing game with yourself.

Chad:               You mentioned something earlier about a kind of when you’re on the subject of kind of, you know, vacations and when you’re not working that life work balance about disconnecting. We need time to disconnect and that’s an interesting concept, how we, we need time where we’re focused and we are connected to what we’re trying to do at a certain, on a certain task at a certain time, but we need the time to also deliberately disconnect and that, like in my own experience, I’ve realized that if I don’t deliberately disconnected enough, I accidentally disconnected at the wrong times when I don’t want to be disconnecting and interferes with my career in that way. What, what is kind of your experience with that and what are some things that you’ve, uh, uh, how have you been able to kind of figure out a good balance for disconnection versus connection?

Alexis:              Yeah. So yeah, so I totally understand what you’re talking about. It like, isn’t that why we all have our best business thoughts in the shower? Right? It’s like you’re totally disconnecting and that’s why you’re getting some sort of idea that’s good. And that’s why we sleep. We sleep because we need to disconnect from our lives to be able to like actually be healthy. Um, but in terms of like, how did I actually do that? So I have a, I do two things, I ended up day and ended up planning sessions every day, so just in my calendar, the last 10 minutes of my work day is an end of day planning session and essentially what I’m doing during that time as I’m looking through my list and seeing what did I not get done today because the reality is that we’re never going to be able to get done everything that we wanted to get done.

Alexis:              It’s just not feasible. And I also feel like I, you know, I hate this idea of having overdue tasks, right? Because if you didn’t do it today, that just means it wasn’t a priority and it needs to be prioritized because what you did do was the things that were a priority today. So even though we wanted to get 30 things done and we only got 20, we focused on the 20 things that were the most had the highest prioritization. And so I’d spend that 10 minutes or so going through my task list that, you know, maybe I’ll realize, oh, that thing I wanted to do today, it actually really doesn’t need to be done until next week. And so push the data on that. Um, and I also do what I call the brain dump where I sit there and I’m, I like anything that’s been going on in my head or any notes that I’ve written down during the day.

Alexis:              I transfer all of that into my one single system for tasks essentially. And I reprioritize everything so that when I actually disconnect, when I closed my computer for the day, I’m totally sure that I haven’t missed anything. I’m not forgetting anything. I don’t have those work thoughts running around in my head and that when I start the next day, I already have a pre prioritized task list so I don’t have to waste any time. I’m figuring out what do I want to work on next, what I want to work on first. I’ve already done that. And so I can just hit the day running.

Chad:               Well, that totally just corrected my behavior. And I’m realizing something I need to change right now, because when you talked about how I hate the idea of overdue tasks, I hate overdue tasks, but I’m constantly telling myself that when I don’t accomplish certain tasks that I wanted to accomplish in that day, then now they’re overdue and then when they keep getting overdo, the stress keeps building and it’s just overwhelming. So I’m going to implement that starting tomorrow. That rather than getting into that guilt cycle, that if that I need to just tell myself at the end of the day, okay, well I got these 10 things done. I was hoping to get these 20 things done, but guess what? Those 10 things were the most important. So my day is complete. I can now disconnect, I can move on and now I can take those 10 things and move it into the next day or reorganize my priorities in whatever way, but to kind of be able to go to sleep. Knowing that I never have any overdue tasks. So that’s super helpful. How have you found your voice in your career and what does that. What does that mean to you to find your voice in their career?

Alexis:              So yeah, I think part of it is that I, you know, I had my career for 20 years or so. I never would have imagined where I ended up from where I started. I mean I majored in existentialism, Education Theory and Studio art and I ended up having a business career in hr and operations and nap time. And so these things are like very disconnected from each other. Um, but I think that I’ve sort of followed my gut on every job that I’ve taken. Essentially a lead me in the place that I am now. And I think that one thing that happens when finding your voice is just that you start to view yourself as an expert in a certain area. Right? I’m sort of over time you started working in this area, you’ve seen that other people will give you good feedback in this area and you start to really value yourself as an expert that can teach and show other people. And so once I found that I can help sort of many different people, it became easy for me to have a voice of authority essentially to help people come up with solutions for themselves.

Chad:               And that is one of the biggest things that I’ve struggled with is seeing myself as an expert in what I’m trying to accomplish in my career and because we talk ourselves out of it all the time, right? I mean, we, we, we get into a certain career path and then we, we see people who are ahead of us, but then we keep telling ourselves like an online expert at this I need, I need 30 years of experience before it can be an expert at this. And we, of course we’re going to have our own definitions of what it means to be an expert at something. Um, but it does as I really believe that everyone knows something that other people don’t know because of not only what they’ve studied, but also their experience in their life experience. So everyone is an expert at something. It’s not about comparing how many years of experience you have with this or that.

Chad:               Everyone, if they, if they, if they, if they talk themselves into it and realize that they are an expert in something and just because you’re an expert doesn’t mean now you’re perfect so you can keep getting to higher and higher levels of expertise, but it’s important that earlier on you start calling yourself an expert in this thing, whatever it is in your career so that you now have the confidence to keep getting better and better, but I think sometimes maybe we avoid calling herself an expert because then we think, oh, an expert. Once I’m an expert, I’m now at the end. I’m not perfect at it. I’m now done progressing. I’m now, you know, and, and so we kind of, we, we almost elevated too much to the point of like. Then we ended up never achieving it and we to keep talking ourselves out of career success because we have a hard time seeing herself as an expert. So thanks for making that connection between finding your voice in your career and seeing yourself as an expert in whatever it is you do. Because that’s, that’s, that’s a really important side of it. What is something that you’ve had to disconnect from maybe in your own habits or patterns or thoughts and what is one thing you’ve had to connect to in order to kind of get to the next stage in her career?

Alexis:              Sure. So I think that I was thinking about that and I think that like the thing that I had to disconnect from is simply the belief that I need stability and in job or working for another company because I, you know, I knew at this cell phone deployment part of this, um, I’ve always been a w two employee for a company. And while I’ve had, you know, not a lot of management because I’ve always, you know, I’ve always worked for startups that I’ve been kind of in control of my own domain. I have always had that paycheck coming in. And I think a big leap for me to sort of propel my career forward was to get out of that comfort zone and realize that it is possible for me to earn a living solely based on my own merits. Not through a paycheck that I’m, that I’m receiving from someone else.

Alexis:              To do work for them essentially. And so I think that’s, and I’m still, I’m not there 100 percent, I’m still working on working on disconnecting from that belief, but I’m getting there and I think that’s really important one for me as someone who sort of had, had that stability my entire career. And then I think the thing that I needed to connect to was that it also a belief, a belief that it isn’t narcissistic to talk about yourself if you’re trying to help other people. Right? Because I think I come from a, I don’t know, my background is such that like I would like to talk about myself. I don’t like to talk myself up, but that’s 100 percent necessary when you’re trying to start a new business and when the service that you’re trying to sell or the good that you’re trying to sell is essentially yourself and your expertise. And so that’s something that, uh, again, I’m still working hard to bring that belief into full existence in my world. And I think the only thing that helps us, that you just do it right. You just have to do it and realize that it doesn’t feel as bad or as smarmy as you thought going to.

Chad:               Yeah. No, I’ve,

Alexis:              I’ve, I’ve, I’ve struggled with that a lot because I, so like I growing up I’ve always, I, I was more shy and I tried so hard to avoid coming across as cocky or prideful that I ended up being pretty selfish because I was only a kind of thinking about myself in that way. But it’s okay to talk passionately about what I’m doing and what my goals are and, and what I love doing. But as long as I am maintain interest in the other person I’m talking to, then even as I talk about myself, um, it’s, I’m still interested in them and I’m still wanting to know what their value is and I still want to connect with them. And I’ve found that like when we are just really interested in the person we’re speaking with, they ended up asking us a lot of questions that prompt us to talk about ourselves.

Alexis:              But then in that moment we have to be willing to then speak up and speak confidently about our value because a part of finding our voice as well is being able to understand our own value and being able to express that to other people because if we can’t express our value to other people and no one’s going to hire us, you know, we’re going to be in an interview and the employer’s not gonna be able to see value in us if we don’t see any value in ourself and, and it really goes along way so. Right. And I also think that for me, what was helpful in sort of helping to establish that belief is that what I realized is like, I’m not necessarily trying to sell myself to all these people that I’m talking to, but if more people know about me and what I’m doing, then they might have some other connection where they’re talking to a friend of theirs and their friend is talking about how they’re struggling with time management. And because I’ve had that conversation with them, now they’re thinking back, oh wait, I know someone who could help you. And so I think for me, realizing that it’s like, it’s like seven layers of separation or whatever, that it’s not necessarily that I’m not interested necessarily in selling the person that I’m talking to you right now. I’m interested in more people knowing that I’m offering the skillset so that the people in their lives who might need it or their lives who might need it and going farther and farther out, become aware that this exists.

Chad:               That’s so funny. You mentioned that literally yesterday. I was in another interview where somebody had said that when you’re connecting with people, it’s important that you also think several levels out of who this person is going to connect you to who is going to connect you to this person. And you just mentioned it the same thing in a different way. And so that’s just really cool. Um, and so clearly there’s something, it’s something that I need to do better out because. And now that I’ve heard it a second time, I realized that I, I’ve really got to do better at this because sometimes I’m, I’m seeing just the one person I’m getting to know as the end point and sometimes that relationship is only a, a relationship that’s going to connect you to maybe another relationship that really is more longterm that it’s okay if we have these temporary relationships. Um, it doesn’t mean we end on a bad terms, it just means that, okay, we realized that our relationship was a temporary thing that helped us, that helped us both lead to other people that then connected us to other places. So,

Alexis:              or it doesn’t even need to be temporary, right? I mean, you can have a relationship with someone that they then connect you to other people and you still have a relationship now that have to be a business relationship, productive, whatever it is. I’m like, yeah, you don’t have to see that as the end and the beginning of something else. It’s just different levels.

Chad:               Yeah, definitely. Let’s in the next few minutes, let’s just close with a couple of quick a time management hacks that you’ve found are really helpful. It can be for business or it can be like home management related, but you know, two or three, uh, some time management tips you have for us.

Alexis:              Sure. So batch processing is sort of my number one tip and that can be applied to at home and work. And what that means essentially is grouping life tasks together. So for home management, let’s say like I do this in a number of ways, one of which is reakfast where my children, I make 30 breakfast Burritos, I phrase them, I put them in the freezer. Now my kids have several weeks worth of breakfast that they can pop out of the, you know, to pop out of the freezer, put in the toaster oven without my help and it took me 10 minutes. And then how can that be applied to business? So other ways, like only opened the mail once a week, like let it pile up and then take 10 minutes opening and processing the mail only to your email. A couple of times a day, so instead of being interrupted by email, constantly say that you’re going to do email at 10:00, 1:00 and 4:00, you’re going to spend, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes on it each time, but you’re not going to answer it.

Alexis:              And then the other time and these types of things help you not only stay in that same mindset for each type of tasks, which means that it’s happening more quickly and more efficiently, but it also helps you to save time in the long run because anytime you batch something, it’s going to take less, like to take more time than it would have to do one, but it’s going to take much less time overall. Uh, and then when I have sort of a one touch rule, which means that if I, I don’t check, I don’t look at email, if I don’t have time to deal with it, I don’t look at a response. Like I never want to be opening something and reading it and then putting it back again because they don’t have time to deal with it. I only want to be looking at something once, so if I don’t have time to deal with it, I don’t even look at it at all because if I start to look at it then it’s gonna start taking up some space in my mind and I don’t want that. Um, I guess. And then one more, one more. Last one. The two minute rule, which is if something takes less than two minutes, just do it now. Don’t put it on a to do list. Don’t you know it’s going to take you just as long as we put it on your to do list as it would to do it. You just do it and that saves a ton of time.

Chad:               That’s fantastic. Those are really, really great tips and I hope that all of you create some action steps to apply exactly what she would wear you. Alexis just taught us because that, those are some things I need to try is to, is to look. Because I did that all the time where I, I open an email and thinking, oh, you know, maybe I’ll have time for. And then I ended up not having time for it. Then sometimes I forget to even go back to it or now it’s taking up space in my mind like you said. Um, so that is really helpful. Thanks for sharing that with us. I mean I could spend all day talking to you about this because it seems like, you know, so much you have a lot of experience with, with systems and processes and time management and how to adjust your focus. And where can we find out more about you and connect to you so that we can benefit more from what you have to teach us.

Alexis:              Yes. So, um, my website is probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. It’s, of course my name is very hard to spell, but it’s Alexis Hassle Burger, that calm, which is a l e x I, s h a s e l b e r g e r Dot com. I know I need to come up with a much catchier title for people to remember it, but that’s probably the easiest. And then my email Alexis, Alexis. So I’d love to hear from anyone out there that you’d sell stuff.

Chad:               Perfect. Well thanks so much. Anyone out there, if you need some help with your time management, with your focus, getting contact with Alexis and she will absolutely help you connect your way to where you want to be. And I think you Alexis, for coming on our show today and hope you have a great day.