Ep #306: Monday Hour One

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo episode 306.

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Well hello, my friends. Welcome. Today, we have a very special podcast with two of my favorite people in the world Lauren Cash and Tyson Bradley. I almost call them Tyler. Sometimes, I just call Tyson Tyler. But he’s okay with it. He just goes with it. It’s fine.

I’ve asked them both onto the podcast because they are time management experts. They have helped me in creating the program Monday Hour One that we’re going to talk about on the podcast.

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Brooke: So, welcome to the podcast, you guys. Welcome, Lauren. Do you want to say a little bit of something about you?

Lauren: Yeah, thank you so much for having us on the podcast. It’s almost like an out of body experience being on the podcast that I’ve been listening to probably for four or five years. And I’ve had the honor of working for you for the last, over two years, in various capacities. And it’s been amazing. I totally was able to hone getting more things done in less time by applying the tools and then creating Monday Hour One, which is the weekly process for getting things done by using your calendar and throwing your to-do list away.

Brooke: Yes, that’s one of the things that’s so great is not only are Tyson and Lauren coaches through The Life Coach School, but they also both worked for me. So, I require that all of my employees use Monday Hour One when they’re working for me. So, they have not only learned the tools of coaching, but they’ve learned the tools of time management and combined them together. And I would say that they’re two of the best to be teaching it and to be coaching it. what do you think, Tyson, do you agree?

Tyson: Totally agree. And I would say that I had the same experience that Lauren had in, just, like five years ago, listening to this podcast. I never would have dreamed to come here, show up, and even work for you. And it’s kind of fun just to see the evolution and to come now to this point of all the work being done and recognizing all the value that we’ve been able to create in learning time management and making it simple for people to understand.

Brooke: Totally, I think time management sounds like such a boring thing, that we’re going to be talking about. It’s just like, time management, people don’t want to talk about it. But it is one of the most common complaints that I get. People feel like they don’t have enough time. Some people say that sometimes anyway, to me, my clients. But I think that doing something about it seems impossible for most people.

And so, it has been one of the most important things for me to, like, study myself because I feel like I’ve always been able to get a lot done in a short amount of time and to produce a lot of results quickly. So, one of the things that I did was really study myself and what I do to produce the results and then I asked Lauren and Tyson to help me create a program that we could teach to all of my students.

So, we spent an entire day recording the program that we use in The Life Coach School for our employees that I use personally myself, and now what we want to teach all of you. So, we’re going to go over what the program is briefly on this podcast, but truly, this is one of those things that we can talk about and you can understand intellectually, but you won’t truly get it until you do it.

It’s kind of like you can watch someone do a summersault, you can watch someone do a cartwheel and you can feel like you know how to do it, but you won’t ever be able to do it until you fail, you know, 100 times doing it first. So, that’s what we’re going to do on this podcast today. I’m super excited to have you both here because when the students sign up for the class, they’ll be able to see you and see you teaching it with me. But also, they can hear you here on the podcast talk about maybe your struggles with time management and how Monday Hour One helped you.

So, let’s start with you, Lauren. Why don’t you give us like a brief overview of what Monday Hour One is and just a summary of how someone would go about doing it. What does it look like?

Lauren: Yeah, so what it looks like is that, for the first hour of your workweek, so Monday, Hour One, hence the name, you are going to be emptying your brain and getting out, on paper, everything that you think you have to do or get done that week or in the future. And then you get to decide how long you’re going to take on each of those things. And then you put them on your calendar.

Ideally, I’ve been really – when we teach in the program – ideally you’re going to put it on a digital calendar and then you’re going to, at the end of putting everything from that sheet of paper that you think you want to get done that week and put it on your calendar, you’re then going to throw that sheet of paper away…

Brooke: Which is the most fun part.

Lauren: Which is the most fun part, as you’ll see in the program. I really love that part.

Brooke: Well, here’s the thing. I’m just going to slow you down just a little it because I think it’s so interesting. I was just talking to my husband about this. I was telling him, I said, I can always tell when someone’s really utilizing Monday Hour One and when someone isn’t because, when someone’s really utilizing it, they always get their work done. And when they don’t, when I say, “Hey this didn’t get done,” they always know exactly when it will get done.

So, when I talk to someone and I say, “Hey, you were going to do this project. It’s not done,” and they say, “It’s Tuesday at 11 I’m finishing it up,” I know they’re using Monday Hour One. When people aren’t using it, they’ll say, “But it’s on my list. I know I need to get it done. It’s on my list.” That subtle difference, people say, “Oh yeah, no, I do Monday Hour One. I write down everything I need to do.” But not throwing that list away before it’s done because it’s on your calendar is like the biggest indicator.

So, when you were talking about it, you make it sound super-easy. Just make a list of all the things you have to do and schedule them on the calendar. Tyson, maybe you can jump in. Why is that so challenging for people?

Tyson: Well, I was actually going to mention that that is probably the biggest challenge that people have is when I talk to my clients about what is your current planning process right now. And some are doing things on a daily basis, they’re reviewing their day. Some are just keeping their list. I was talking to one client the other day and they said, “Well I just kind of keep everything in my head.” That’s like a challenge because brains aren’t meant to store information. They’re meant to be processors.

Like, we analyze and we kind of process everything through. And so, even just the simple act of putting everything outside of you, outside of your brain, onto a piece of paper allows you to see it, and then transferring it to a calendar and getting it on there, I think people don’t do that because they don’t believe they will actually follow through on all their goals.

Brooke: That’s right, exactly. So, people don’t want to put stuff on the calendar because they don’t trust themselves to actually follow their calendar. And when I started teaching this to people, I’m like, “Okay, this is what you do. This is the process you go through.” It seems so obvious and simple to me, but that’s the feedback I got.

People were like, “Well I’ll put that on my calendar, but I’m not going to actually look at my calendar and do what’s there.” And I said, “Ah, that is the issue.” This issue isn’t about time management. This issue isn’t about which calendar you use – because people always want to now specifically what calendar I use. It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is, do you say you’re going to do something to yourself and then do you do it? And if the answer is no, that’s the problem we have to address.

So, one of the things I love about you both working with people on time is that you understand the mechanics of planning time and how to organize time and how to think about time. But you also understand the Model and how we think about ourselves and our relationship with ourselves. And so, ultimately, what I’ve discovered is that time management is really an indicator of how much you trust yourself, how much you honor your commitments, and how much you follow through for yourself.

So, Lauren, tell me a little bit, when you start working with people and they discover this for themselves, give me maybe an example, or maybe just talk about what you notice coming up for people.

Lauren: Definitely self-trust, like you said. But the other thing that relates to self-trust is that they think they can’t even say how long something is going to take or they have no idea how long they are giving certain tasks or projects. They have no awareness for how much time something is going to take them, or that they can even say they own that amount of time and say how long something will take them to get it done.

Brooke: So give me an example of that.

Lauren: Yeah, so one of my clients has a podcast and she says she doesn’t know how long the podcast is going to take her to record it and publish it every week. And so she…

Brooke: Okay, let’s stop right there for just a second because I think most of my listeners would agree that that’s valid, that, “Well, she doesn’t know how long. She’s never done it before.” And no one recognizes at first blush that that’s a relationship problem with yourself, that that’s something that you are abdicating to the world to decide for you.

So, one of the things that I think all of us coaches, and even those of us who are coaching ourselves, when we hear ourselves saying, “I don’t know what it will take,” or, “I don’t know how,” or, “I don’t know how long it will take,” that’s an indicator not of you don’t understand how long things take, but that you’re not taking responsibility for making sure that you get something done in a certain amount of time. And that’s a very subtle difference. So, how do you address that with them?

Lauren: Yeah, so we then – well, for this client, they actually had done it before. But you don’t need to have done something before to decide how long it’s going to take. For something that is more of like a mini project, like a podcast that has multiple steps, what we do is break that down and decide, how long am I going to create an outline for? 10 minutes, maybe. And then how long am I going to practice saying what I’m going to say and record it a couple of times ahead of time maybe, for this client? Maybe I’ll give myself 15 minutes to do that. I don’t know if it’s a short podcast or whatever…

Brooke: Okay, so let’s use that example. Let’s say, okay, it’s going to take me 15 minutes to do this thing. And then, a lot of people will come back and say, “You know, it didn’t take me 15 minutes. It took me 30 minutes. It took me an hour.” What do you say about that?

Lauren: So, what I say is that they didn’t hold themselves to how long it was going to take, so they made the decision at the time, when the timer should be going off, either actually or in their minds, at that moment they need to not allow basically the urge to continue with the task that they’re doing and move onto the next thing that they had on the calendar. And whatever the consequences are of that, reap that, because really, you’re lying to yourself and stealing from your next time block on your calendar.

Brooke: Guys, this is so huge. There’s so much I want to emphasize here because a lot of us believe that we need more time in our lives to get things done. And it sounds legit and you can get people to agree with you and it will steal every dream that you have. If you tell yourself, “If I had more time, I could write a book. If I had more time, I could get more clients. If I had more time, I could do higher quality work.

That sounds so legit and it gives all the authority of our lives to something external that is time, that doesn’t even actually really exist but as a concept in our mind. When we change that and we say, “Listen, I have one hour per day to create a 100K business. How much time is it going to take me to create a 100K business? An hour a day. That’s it. And you hold yourself to that.

Now, that’s extraordinary, but so are you. But when you abdicate that, “Well I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to run a business. I don’t know how much time I need. I don’t know what I need to do,” then you end up with a life of confusion and I-don’t-know and no success. And so, when Lauren’s coaching her client on how long it’s going to take to write the outline to a podcast, that seems boring. That seems uninteresting.

But when you notice that it’s a reflection on how powerful that client feels and how connected that client’s relationship is with herself, then you can see that working with someone on time management doesn’t just change how much time you have in your life. It changes how you think and feel about yourself. What do you think, Tyson, do you agree?

Tyson: I agree. I think the biggest and the subtle question is the difference between, how long will this take, which is very externally driven, versus how long do I want to give myself. Because, within that question is the decision, you know, “I’m going to give myself this much time and it’s going to be done,” and willing to do the B-minus work that’s been talked about on previous podcasts and that we talk about in the program too, just kind of the more mental concepts that really help you in actually fulfilling what you say you’re going to do.

Brooke: Okay, but Tyson, I want to give myself three hours to write my podcast outline because I don’t know how long it’s going to take me, so I want to give myself way more time than I think I need. What are your thoughts on that sort of shenanigan?

Tyson: Well, it’s funny because I was just talking to some students about this exact thing. And in my mind, it’s like, there’s this balance between planning too much and also having compassion on yourself. Because when people plan way too much that they can’t get it done or they just don’t get it done in the amount of time, it’s like they use their not getting it done as a way to judge themselves.

But on the flipside, if you’re too kind to yourself and saying three hours, like, challenging yourself so that you can focus, because if you give yourself too much time, you will fill the space. But if you are giving yourself a time that you really do believe you can do it and that is still challenging, then at least your brain’s engaged. And when you get to that moment, it’s like, “I have one hour, so it’s got to get done. Let’s do this.”

Brooke: Yes, and you don’t have time to be checking Facebook and making sure that your desktop is clean. You’re like, “I have 30 minutes to write this podcast outline. You know what I’m going to do? Write my podcast outline. That’s it. That’s all I have time to do.” And you create this focus by adding that gentle pressure to yourself that produces momentum.

So, when I think about my week, when I sit down and I say, “Okay, here’s everything that I need to do that’s in my brain,” and then I put it all on the calendar, here’s what happens; I immediately feel, as soon as I write the to-do list, I feel terrible because there’s so much to do and I’m never going to get it done and everything’s painful.

And we show you how to kind of go through that to-do list in the course so you can understand how to deal with those feelings. Then you schedule it on your calendar and you feel this huge sense of relief, but only if you trust yourself to follow your calendar. And so many of us don’t trust ourselves to follow our calendar. And that’s why I love time management as a vehicle to start believing in ourselves, to start trusting ourselves, to start honoring ourselves.

So, Tyson, for example, let’s say I put on my calendar on Wednesday that I am going to write a sales page copy for my upcoming event. So, I’m doing an event in March called How to Be Interesting. It’s a business workshop I’m creating in March, so stay tuned.

But I need to write the sales page for that. So, I put that on my calendar for Wednesday. And then I look on Wednesday at that time. What’s going to happen to me?

Tyson: You’re not going to want to do it.

Brooke: I am not going to want to write that sales page because there’s Facebook and there’s Instagram and there’s Netflix and my dogs want to go on a walk and I’m kind of hungry and I feel like maybe some music. Every single part of me is not going to want to do it. And part of honoring my relationship with myself is doing it because, if I had that appointment with Tyson and I was going to meet him for lunch, I wouldn’t just not show up. Why not? Why do we not show up for ourselves but we always show up for the people we’re committed to? What are your thoughts on that?

Tyson: You know, it’s interesting because there are so many excuses that the brain will offer. Sometimes, my brain likes to offer me, “Should I really be doing this?” It tries to go into confusion…

Brooke: It’s clever.

Tyson: Yeah, it tries to be clever about all of it. But I think the reason why it’s so easy for us to keep a commitment with someone else, whether it’s the fear of judgment of, like, not showing up for them and the pressure of that, but we just can so easily discount our own schedule because we’re with ourselves all the time and, “It’s okay…” we think it’s okay to give up on what we’ve planned for ourselves.

Brooke: And it’s okay to disappoint ourselves. We get used to just disappointing ourselves on the regular. And that’s where time management can really create a relationship with yourself where you feel honored and you feel like your time matters and you feel like you’re taking the ultimate in self-care.

Tyson: And I think that’s part of the problem too of people actually planning in the first place is because they don’t have that relationship with themselves. They’ve not followed through so many times that it’s like, what’s the point of planning if I’m not going to follow through.

Brooke: Right, it’s so good. And, Lauren, this might be something that you hear sometimes so I’m curious how you would address this; when I sit down to plan my week and I do my Monday Hour One and then I put everything in my calendar, it takes me an hour. And that’s because I’m really good at it now. For some people, it may take them longer than an hour in the beginning. And so, my argument is, I don’t have time. I have so much to do, why don’t I spend that hour actually accomplishing something instead of planning to accomplish something. What do you say to that, Lauren?

Lauren: Yeah, so I like to use the analogy of deciding that you need to head to a destination but not deciding to pull up your Google Maps or Apple Maps or Waze. So, you’re like, “Let’s just try to get there by, like, north, south, east, and west, and old school, like, on my horse…”

Brooke: That’s so good. That’s such a great example. Like, “Do you know how to get there?” “No, but we’re late so we better start getting there.” That’s exactly what we do. We’re late, we don’t have time to figure out the directions. We don’t have time to plan. We don’t have time to type – how many times have you felt like you don’t have time to type the address into Google Maps, you just have to start driving? That’s such a good example.

Lauren: And, I think a lot of people, they’re like, “I’m late to get this destination, but why are we even going there?” Like, a lot of my clients are doing projects that don’t even make sense for their goals. Like, are you wanting to be at whatever they’re doing? Somebody was, like, writing a book for somebody else when they really want to do this other career. So, I’m like, “Why are you even doing that project? Do you want to become an author?”

Brooke: That’s so good too. And that’s what we do in this process when we start writing down all the to-dos and all the things we want to do and all the things that we have put on the backburner. Part of Monday Hour One is bringing that all up and then asking ourselves why are we doing this, does this even matter to me? Does this make sense?

A lot of our actions that we want to do may be coming from thoughts that aren’t serving us, so being able to take the time to look at that, that’s super important and it’s such a great example. It’s like, first of all, I’m not even pulling up the map to know how to get there and I don’t even know why I’m going there. I’m just in the car driving, so I might as well keep going.

And nothing will steal your dreams faster than not managing your time and not honoring your relationship with yourself. So, we felt so strongly about this coaching and this process that we created a program for you. And it’s good. I’m just saying.

I do want to tell you that we shot it – we rented this house to shoot it in and there are a lot of really cool backgrounds that you’re going to enjoy seeing inside of the program. But I’m really excited for you to see Lauren and Tyson and me and the conversations that we have around time management. All three of us kind of geek out on it because we think it’s one of the superpowers of the universe. So, we share all of the secrets that I use in The Life Coach School and that we all use personally in order to get so much done.

So, I have a very special treat for all you Scholars. If you are already a Scholar, you will get Monday Hour One included. It will be in the Study Vault. It’s 100% yours for no additional anything because you’re a Scholar. You’re welcome. And you will also get Tyson teaching you, once a month, all of the tools that you will be learning in Monday Hour One, he will be showing you and helping you work on them live, because you will have questions, it’s all in the application. So, once a month, you’ll be able to work with him on that.

Now, some of you will even want to take it deeper. And you’ll want to work one on one or in a very small group working on this. I’ve had many of my master coaches, many of my mastermind participants work with Lauren or Tyson on this stuff in a very intimate environment and get a lot of direct feedback and a lot of, shall we say, loving coaching about honoring your commitments and your relationships with yourself. So, if you would like to work with Lauren directly, why don’t you tell them how they can do that, Lauren?

Lauren: Yeah, so just head over to thelaurencash.com – I always like to say my last name is like money. People always try to spell it like with a K or something I’m like, what are you talking about? It’s money…

Brooke: Its money. Lauren Cash, I love it. Okay, so thelaurencash.com right? And then tell them a little bit about what it would be like to work with you.

Lauren: Yeah, so if you worked with me, we’re going to be directly applying all of the Monday Hour One concepts. So, you’ll even be sending me screenshots of your calendar and we’ll be going over what’s going on, on Tuesday at two, when you decide not to do the thing on your calendar. What’s that coming from?

And I actually have had clients that are in session with me one on one saying, “Lauren, I came to you to work on time. Why are we talking about a thing that happened in college that, like, is the root issue to what I believe about myself and why I’m not getting stuff done and why I’m overworking and trying to prove my worth through what ‘m doing?”

So, we uncover all of that, that’s really holding you back on the belief level, using the Model. And also, tactically, like, working through what are you doing with your calendar, why do you have this on your calendar? And I love going even into, like, what is dinging on your computer when we’re in session? How do you get anything done?

Brooke: They’re so busted, I love it. I love it, it’s so good. Okay, what about you, Tyson? If they want to work with you, where should they go and what would that be like?

Tyson: Yeah, they can go to tysonbradley.me and what it’s like to work with me, it’s similar in that it’s a one to one experience and it’s one thing to talk about the practical application of here’s what you do, here’s how you plan, here’s the process that you can use. And sometimes, I’ve been even exploring, for those that have a really hard time, like, let’s learn how we can commit to one day, even one hour. Like, let’s learn how we can commit to honoring our calendar, honoring what we say we’re going to do, and then expound from there and recognizing that it’s one part application, the other part all your brain. Just like Lauren says, I talk with my clients on things that don’t relate to time management but are totally stopping them from doing what they say they’re going to do.

Brooke: Yeah, one of the things that I hear people say all the time about Monday Hour One and when they hear kind of conceptually what it is, they say, “I don’t want to be that tied down. I don’t want to be that scheduled. I don’t want to feel like I don’t have any freedom.” And I always laugh hysterically because I’m like, “No, no, you plan your freedom first.”

Most people that don’t have any freedom and don’t have any free time, it’s because the free time they are taking, they’re stealing it from themselves, so they can’t even enjoy it. they’re just saying, “I’m not going to do that thing. I’m going to do this other thing, so the whole time, they’re feeling guilty.

What we do in Monday Hour One is we schedule our free time and our lovely time and our pedicures and our workouts and all of the stuff that is most important to us, time with our loved ones first, and then everything else gets filled in. So, if you want to just check out Monday Hour One – let’s say maybe you’re not in Scholars, we don’t understand why, but let’s say you’re not in Scholars, you’re not quite ready or you don’t want to work with a coach right now, you can just go to thelifecoachschool.com and sign up for Monday Hour One right off of the website and get exposed to all of the concepts that we teach and you can start practicing.

If you need additional help, you can always get it inside of Scholars, or by working one on one with Lauren or Tyson. I highly recommend both of them. They have both gone through, of course, my coaching program and they’ve both worked for me and they are extraordinary employees.

And I will tell you, the reason why they’re extraordinary, the reason why their businesses are doing well and they’re doing well inside of The Life Coach School is because they follow Monday Hour One. That is not a joke. I’m not just saying that to promote this. That is exactly how we roll.

So, I appreciate you guys so much for coming on the podcast. I love you guys both so much and I’m excited for the people that get to work with you. So, thank you for coming on. Talk to you son Lauren.

Lauren: Thank you so much.

Brooke: Talk to you soon, Tyson, bye.

Tyson: Bye.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.