Candace Spears
- Nov 24, 2019
- 6 min read

Ep 158: Remaining calm and focused when people are WASTING your TIME

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I swear to you when you get focused on what you want to do with your life, how you spend your time, you may find yourself, upset or frustrated when your time is wasted on BS. This BS can be classified as dealing with talkers who keep talking about doing something, and involve you in it, but never get it into motion. Being involved in conversations that have no productive outcome, it's meaningless, and you really can care less. Or even, getting caught in office politics at the 9-to-5 and meaningless power struggles over projects and initiatives that you know don't translate to the scale and magnitude of the impact you could be working on for your own business vision.

In this episode we'll talk about...

Ways to keep your own attitude and response in check
Top 3 time-wasters
How to navigate out of a time-wasting situation

When you know that your time is being wasted, you can feel it right? And the reality is you can feel when your time is being wasted, there's usually some little voice in your head or some tenseness in your muscles that says, "Oh my gosh, I have other things that I need to do." So I think the very important thing in that moment for us is that we keep our own attitudes and responses in check. And when I say that, I don't mean that we sit there and allow our time to continue to be wasted. But what I mean is that, our next action that we take is one that will yield results. We'll maintain relationships, we'll be constructive for how you move forward. So one of the things I think about when keeping my attitude and my response in check, sometimes when people are wasting my time, my instant reaction is, "What do you need? Like how can I help you?" And I realize that that sometimes comes off in a cold manner. So I try not to do that, but I think in the moment when people are talking to you or engaging you or you happen to be surrounded in a conversation, there are two things to think about depending on where you are, meaning are you in your 9-to-5? Are you in the community? Are you amongst family? I think this makes a difference.

So I'm going to say that if you're in your 9-to-5 and you find yourself caught in a time wasting situation, one of the things that you should always keep in mind is that your current situation. Entrepreneurship is the journey that you're on and full time entrepreneurship. Then currently your 9-to-5 is a means to an end. So keep that perspective in mind. But overall, regardless of whether you're in your 9-to-5, or with the community, or with family, I don't want to call it deep, but it's on an interpersonal level, we should keep in mind is that people just have something that they want to achieve. These conversations, they have some end goal and it may not seem clear, it may not always be positive, but they have some end goal that they're headed towards. It's important for us to understand what that might be so that we can properly adjust our attitude or our responses in the right way.

Now there are a few different situations that we might find ourselves in, or what I like to call some top time wasters that we should look out for. The first one I think is gossiping and gossipers, gossipers, gossipers and gossipers. So to me, and as much as I love to get my dose of reality TV every now and then, here's something interesting, every now and then I am not big on gossiping. I think it is a waste of time. And not only that, I feel some kind of way hearing other people talk about other people in negative connotations unless I know it to be true. Have had an experience of my own. I feel some type of way about that. So gossipers is the first thing to steer clear of. The second one that I would put at the top of my list are meetings that are infinitely about planning. So think about it doesn't even have to just be in your 9-to-5. It can be your community, it can be anywhere.

Having a consistent number of meetings in which every time we meet we're talking about the actions that we're going to take. There is never any action happening in the meeting. There is never actually anything moving forward from the meeting. We just keep talking about what we're going to do, waste of time. Now my third one, that tops the list and this one bothers me, but I think there's a shared responsibility on us to help resolve it and that's true for all of them but this one in particular. So that is people who will not be clear with me on the role they'd like for me to play in their project, in their initiative, in their event, whatever it is. Not having that clarity for me is frustrating and is a waste of time. And it should feel like a waste of time for you too. Because when we're not clear about what we should be doing and what our expectations are, either it causes us to turn or go down, pass it. We don't have to go down, or it sometimes causes us to have less than stellar relationships because our expectations weren't aligned and we were never clear what we were supposed to be delivering. What was our end of the bargain, whatever it is, right? So those are the top three things that I say are big on the timely, seamless, gossiping, infinite planning meetings, and people who will not be clear with you on the role made like for you to play.

When we're not clear about what we should be doing and what our expectations are, either it causes us to turn or go down. (Click to tweet)

Now, when we think about getting out of time-wasting situations, all of this is well and good. We can recognize when our time is being wasted. We recognize that other people have some agenda, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but we should understand what it is. Now the question is how do we get ourselves out of the time-wasting situation? It's great we can identify, but how are we going to move forward from here? And there are two things that I've been trying to think about to get myself out of these situations.

The first one is mastering the ability to say no and to walk away from things. Especially if you are born with more of a people-pleasing nature to yourself or you want people to feel at ease, you feel connected to people. I'm one of those people. You're very aware of other people's emotions and you don't want them to be sad or offended or hurt or whatever. It's easy for us to get trapped into that. To the infinite planning meetings, to hearing all the gossip stories. It's easy to be set in that, but the more that we can learn to say no because there's a greater end in front of us that we want to get to. So we need our time, the easier it is to start to navigate ourselves out of that situation. So thinking about saying no is one thing, but you know the whole piece about thinking where you want to go long term and this journey that you're on. If we can keep the perspective that we need our time and protect our time because it's going to help us get to this end that we see, whether that's serving more people, having a life of freedom, being in control, being able to call your own shots, being able to taste this passion, chase that passion when we can keep our visions in perspective. I think that both makes it easier to say no and easier for us to get clarity for the role that we should be playing in things so that we make sure that our time is maximized because it's important to the outcomes that we want for ourselves.

So take all this in mind, but I do want you to stay calm. Okay? I do want you to stay calm when you're in a time-wasting situation, but stay calm and stay aware of what other people are aiming for while your time is being wasted. Stay aware of what your own vision is. Build up your courage to say no and understand the expectations that other people have for you.