2-5 Anchors, Waves, and Chains - TMM Module 2 Sun, 3/20 11:22PM 7:44 SUMMARY KEYWORDS reset, anchor, chain, day, build, talking, backup plan, activity, linger, earlier, lunch, adjust, routines, schedule, realistic, point, space, length, happen, meant SPEAKERS Patricia Sung Patricia Sung 00:00 Hey there successful mama. Welcome back to time management mastery module two. Now we're talking about the three elements that are in our analogy for our day. Patricia Sung 00:10 So the first one is our anchors, the anchor is your specific point where you're going to reset your day, this is where you're grounded, and you're staying in one spot to do the tasks. And then, you know, the waves are gonna have moves around. But here's where we're resetting our day. Patricia Sung 00:29 Your assignment for this week is to start looking at the patterns to your day, you may have really obvious ones set out especially if you are have older kids who are on a schedule like school schedule, or younger kids where you're specifically doing like meals with them all the time, your work might have really obvious start and end times school days like these are all points in your day where it's like a clear reset of your day. These are the points you're on to start looking at, where does it make sense for me to have a reset? Where can I build routines around that? Patricia Sung 00:59 It doesn't mean that every single time you have a repeating activity that you're going to build routines about it, you may not be able to do that, that might not be realistic. But I want you to start to think about like the divisions of your day. Remember, we're starting at your like, we wake up, activity happens, reset, activity happens reset, so we're looking at those reset points in our day. And we want to think about like it's a required stopping point. 

Patricia Sung 01:27 So like lunchtime, we got to feed our kids if they're at home with us, right. So that's a required stopping point, picking up your kids from school may be your required stopping point. And those are the times that we're going to build habits around them. When we think of lunchtime, this would look like okay, I'm going to need to start early enough that I can make food, eat food, clean some stuff up. This might be where I'm, you know, checking on laundry that I put in earlier, like things that are happening in that specific time, are we packing our bags for the activity that we're doing later in the day. Where's the time in my day where there's a break? Where I need to come in and reset, but I also had the space to do other things around it. Patricia Sung 02:16 If you're say running from pickup from school straight to like soccer practice, that's not an anchor time, because you don't have time to build things around it. That's not a realistic anchor for you. It'll keep in mind that you may have an anchor time that has very little space around it. For example, if you're a working mom doing like your traditional nine to five, at work, you may not have a lot of space in your lunch break to do a lot of stuff. But it is a required like at some point I need to take a break for my sanity. And maybe hopefully get some sunshine or whatever it is that you know needs to happen at your lunch break. But I want you to start to think about what do those reset times those anchors of your day look like? Me hold that thought before I get off on it. Patricia Sung 03:11 Okay, next element is are all those waves. There are always waves. We talked about this earlier, like some of them are big, some of them are small, some of them are going to in fact to affect us a lot. Some of them aren't going to really affect us at all right? We can plan for what we can. So things that we know are to be expected. We can have kind of like a backup plan in our head of we know like, if somebody were to be sick today, how do I need to modify my day in order to adjust for now staying home, which is going to look different? If you have you know, if you're staying at home versus if you're working or you're canceling appointments, are you you know, how are you adjusting? Do you need to have backup childcare on standby? Who are you going to call to help all these things? Like yes, we don't know when that day is going to happen. But what's our backup plan? Patricia Sung 04:03 A lot of times we don't think that far ahead on those things. And then when something disastrous happens and somebody breaks an arm we're like what to do, because we hadn't thought that through but those are things that we can plan for now we don't want to go down like the anxiety rabbit hole of all the terrible things that are going to happen because that is a very common with ADHD. This is more of a an action plan on how am I going to adjust my day if something throws me off. Like do I have to do some laundry today? Or can that wait for tomorrow? Do I have to pack lunch maybe we could buy like these are the the trade offs. Whereas you know 

Patricia Sung 04:42 if your kid is playing a sport and is super gross and muddy and dirty and like we can't go to bed like this, we have to do bath. These are the times where we're starting to think about what are the things that need to happen. What are the things that I that are movable if needed. And we're going to go more to depth on this later. But I just want you to start to think about this as the framework that we're aiming for. Patricia Sung 05:06 The third item is the third element to this are the chains that are attached to the anchors. Now, the chains are not dragging us down, they are there to protect us, they give us how much leeway we have, at this reset point. Like I mentioned earlier, some days we can linger a dinner and have a great conversation. Some days, we don't have time for that we have a practice to get to or we have a test tomorrow and you need to study we you not me, we, you have a big testimony study and like we can't linger it dinner, this there's things to do. Patricia Sung 05:42 So knowing when are the times where you have that space to to spend more time and your chain can be longer and your boat can sway further back and forth. And the days where like, we have a hard cutoff. And these are the times where we have to be extra, like prepared with timers, and what have you to keep us on track, as opposed to the days where we have more space. Patricia Sung 06:06 And then the other item here is that you know, when we think about the chain length of how much leeway we have in these reset times. Some people like to know that like we are eating at this time every day other people are like we need to eat at some point. This is meant to serve you if you're a more go with the flow person. I don't expect you to write in your schedule that you're going to eat at 1205. That's not a realistic thing for you. Patricia Sung 06:39 But if you have to be at a work meeting at one o'clock, then that means that we're going to have to be more stringent on our lunch time if you have to be at a dentist appointment at one. So that's what I'm talking about, like their various sizes, these chain lengths sometimes we have a lot of leeway. Sometimes we don't. And also knowing what our consequences are for have like if we're running behind in some ways like you know if we're all just going to a casual play at the park and we show up 30 minutes late it doesn't matter. And then there's other times where if you show up late to that doctor's appointment 30 minutes late they till you too bad so sad charge you a fee and until you to reschedule. 

Patricia Sung 07:15 So knowing where are those places where we we have the leeway and where we do. So I want you to think of the chains more as the only way to protect us when we have those hard cut offs and when we don't. They truly are meant to to keep us safe and not to drag us down. Patricia Sung 07:37 Okay. I'm going to pause there and then we'll talk about our activity for today.