Episode 161: Prioritizing Your Ditch the Classroom Journey So You Can Quit Teaching for Good

Full Episode Transcription:

(00:07):
It’s here. We are officially launched! Teacher Turned… the book is finally here. I’m so, so excited to celebrate with you guys. This book was placed on my heart by God last fall. We got it done. It is out there and I’m so excited for you guys to get your hands on it. All you have to do to grab your copy as go to teacherturnedfreelancer.com/book, grab your copy whether you want the Kindle version or print. It’s there for you, and when you grab your copy, you’ll be entered into our five day giveaway happening this week. It started yesterday, February 20th, and it’s going through this Friday, February 24th over in our free Facebook community. So make sure you’re in there. If you’re not already, I know a ton of you are. That’s at facebook.com/groups/ditchtheclassroom, but I cannot wait to give back to you guys as you support the launch of this book.

(02:19):
Now, I wanna talk to you guys about an excuse that I hear over and over again. I wanna do _ , but I just don’t have the time. You guys, this is the same excuse that leaves people stuck where they are wishing that they could follow the dreams that God has placed on their hearts, but wondering how they’re ever gonna be able to do them with everything else on their plate. I wanna give you a little bit of tough love for a second, and I want you to remember that if something truly matters, you’re gonna make time for it. I get that being a teacher, a mom, and a woman in general means that your plate is overflowing with never ending to-do lists, and by the time your head hits the pillow each night, you’re exhausted and stressed over having to do it all again the next day. But what if God is challenging you to lay down some of those to-dos and instead pursue the dream that he’s blessed you with? What if he’s asking you to take a step of faith, set aside what doesn’t really matter and pursue what does? Ya’ll, if you wanna get to the land that God has waiting for you, you can’t stay stuck in the wilderness of where you are. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t really wanna be wandering around trying to figure out my purpose for 40 years like the people of Israel did. So let’s just face it, you’re not gonna find another second in your day if you keep going the way that you are.

(03:49):
We have to prioritize our time and give it to what really matters. Our faith, our families, and the calling that God has given us. So there are two key ways that we can learn how to delegate time each day to the things in our lives that count, and I wanna share those with you. Number one, audit your time. The first step towards finding more time in your day in order to pursue your God-given purpose is to do a time audit. So I wanna challenge you to take a good hard look at where you are spending or wasting your time and where you could adjust things in your life in order to find pockets of time to start your journey out of teaching. I wanna ask you if you really tried, could you find the time? Take a moment, sit down and analyze yourself and analyze your life and ask yourself, where am I hemorrhaging time?

(04:44):
Where am I wasting it? What could I do better with my time? Could you then find the time you need to pursue your goals? If you’re determined to hold onto the life that you already have being stuck in the classroom but not being fulfilled by it, then you can absolutely keep all your reasons or excuses of why you can’t find the time to pursue God’s purpose for you. However, if you’re ready to start making changes today that’ll lead you towards creating your dream life outside of teaching, then your next step is to take a serious look at how you can use your time more effectively. So I’m gonna challenge you to do a time audit for the next seven days. I want you to write down every single thing you do from the moment you get up until the time you go to bed. I recommend keeping track of this in a document on your phone since you’re likely to always have that with you.

(05:36):
And when you’re doing this, I want you to be as specific as possible. So for example, I may write down that from 7:18 AM to 7:48 AM I was scrolling Instagram. Then I would continue to do that for everything that I did throughout the day and repeat that for seven days. Now, the biggest challenge with this task is not altering your usual activities and being honest with yourself. If you usually scroll on your phone for two hours a day, don’t cut that out. During this exercise, you want an honest look at how you’re actually using your time. So just do what you usually do and then write it down in your time audit document. Then at the end of those seven days, I want you to sit down and total up how much time you spent each day in the different categories of your life, whether that’s your marriage, your kids, your job, mindless, scrolling, errands, whatever it is.

(06:32):
Then I want you to analyze which areas of your life you’re spending time in unintentionally. Notice that I didn’t say where you’re spending the most time. If you’re spending the most time intentionally pouring into your kids, then I believe that’s time well spent. But if you’re consistently looking up from your phone wondering where the last 45 minutes went, that’s unintentional time wasted. So keep an eye out for these five popular time sucks. Number one, you guys know what it’s going to be. Social media. If you’re spending 30 minutes a day scrolling through social media, that’s 182 hours a year. Do you see where that time could be used more effectively? If you notice that you’re spending a lot of time mindlessly scrolling on social, I want you to ask yourself what it would look like if instead of browsing through Instagram as soon as you wake up.

(07:27):
What if you hopped on your laptop and spent half an hour looking for new positions outside of teaching that align with you? Or maybe you’re trying to build your true passion as a side hustle while you’re still teaching? What if instead of scrolling, you spent those 30 minutes working on an income generating task, that’ll take you one step closer to quitting teaching. All right, the second big time sec I see is checking your email. I also like to call this putting out fires. So do you constantly find yourself checking your email 20 times a day worrying about a student’s parents emailing you or looking out for an email from admin? I wanna challenge you to set one specific time to check your email each day. You could dedicate 20 minutes at lunchtime or right before you leave the classroom at the end of the day to just knock it all out instead of eating up your mental energy as well as your time.

(08:20):
Third time suck is watching tv. Now, I’m not saying you need to give up all of your relaxation time of watching your favorite shows because you guys deserve to relax, but I am saying that you should plan intentional time to watch one or two shows instead of binging a whole series as a way to avoid anything else. Fourth time suck is errands. Do you find yourself running 10 million errands throughout the week? I want you to ask yourself, how could you condense those down? Could you order some stuff online so you don’t have to spend that time at the store? Could you give yourself one two hour block each week to knock out all of your errands? That would greatly reduce it and allow you to give that time to what’s actually important? Next one is meal planning slash prepping. So how much time are you spending figuring out what to eat each week?

(09:15):
Could you spend one day making a bunch of meals? That way you don’t have to spend that time every other day making a new meal or heating it up. If you’ve already got the meal made, your family members can heat it up for themselves. Another question I have is, could you delicate meal planning to a family member two or three nights a week? Then that would clear your plate to pour into God’s purpose for you? Now, listen, I’m not saying you have to cut all of these things out of your day. You definitely deserve some time to relax and unwind. But when you take a hard look at where you’re hemorrhaging your time, I am fairly certain that you’ll find chunks of wasted time that you could reduce down or remove altogether and dedicate to your journey out of teaching. I’d also like to note that if you complete this time audit and you tell me, “Arianna, I really do not have the time, I am going all day long”, then I have one thing to tell you. You are doing to much. If you are saying yes to too many different things, but not the things that are the most important to you, like spending time with your kids or pursuing your God-given purpose, then you are saying no to the most important things. If you really can’t find time anywhere in your day to build your dream life, maybe it’s time to start saying no to some things that are less important. Instead of saying, I wish I had the time to do blank, I want you to flip the script and say, where could I make the time to do this? Because this is so important to me. You guys, it’d be easy to listen to this episode and just continue on with your life, but I want to hold you accountable to actually complete this audit of your time. So I wanna challenge you to take a screenshot of your time audit and post it in our Ditch the Classroom community.

(11:07):
You can find that Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/ditchtheclassroom, and I cannot wait to celebrate with you as you complete your time audit. All right? Your next step after you do that time audit is to create a plan. Now, remember, I think I said it on last episode, you don’t need to eat the whole elephant at once. Lot of times we think we don’t have the time to hit a big goal, so we don’t even try. But what if instead, we broke our goal down into bite size chunks and planned out time each week to accomplish those smaller tasks. So I want you to take a moment, grab a piece of paper and write this down. If it’s important enough, I will make the time. If not, I’ll make an excuse. Go ahead, pause this episode, write it down. Then I want you to post this paper somewhere where you can see it multiple times a day.

(12:05):
You have to prioritize what is important to you and spend your time intentionally on those things. In order to do that, you need to have a plan for how to spend your time each day. The best way to do this is by using a planner and planning out your week. So I recommend using a paper planner, and you can find my favorite planner over at teacherturnedfreelancer.com/resources. Studies have shown that when you write something down, you are much more likely to remember it and accomplish it. The biggest argument I hear from the women I serve is that they don’t like using a planner because it makes them feel stuck and like they have no flexibility. I honestly think that the opposite is true. When you use a planner, you’re literally getting everything out of your brain so that you have more freedom and space in there.

(13:00):
So a planner is not meant to be a dictator. It is meant to be a guide that supports you in accomplishing the things that are most important to you. Now, looking at a blank planner each week can be somewhat overwhelming. So I wanna guide you through seven quick steps for filling out your planner. Step number one, first and foremost, make time for your faith. Time with God is the number one priority. We cannot expect to get clear on our purpose if we’re not spending time growing closer to the one who gave us that purpose. So in your planner, I want you to write down the time each day that you’re gonna spend praying, reading your Bible, or even just sitting in his presence. This does not have to take a ton of time. Even 15 minutes would be amazing. I personally love spending my time with God in the mornings, but you could also do it in the evening after the kids go to bed or in the middle of the day as a bit of a breath of fresh air in your hectic schedule.

(13:59):
Step number two for your planner is to prioritize your family. You wanna make sure you’re planning in that intentional date night with your spouse, time focused on each of your kids, any family activities that are on the calendar. Make sure that your family’s prioritized in your schedule by plugging those events into your planner. Then step number three is to focus on your health. So you cannot expect to have any energy for the things in your life that truly matter. If you’re not prioritizing your health, exercise and meal planning / prepping would be the next items added into your planner. Then step number four is your purpose work. I know what you’re thinking. I’m talking to you all about purpose. Yet it’s the fourth thing in the list for planning my week, you guys, I want you to remember that we’re not only worried about discovering our purpose outside of teaching, but I also wanna make sure that you are living your life more intentionally and doing the things that really matter to you.

(15:04):
So after you fit in your time with God, after you’ve prioritized your family and your health, then you’re going to plan in time to pursue God’s purpose for you. Now, do you have a one hour block, three days a week that you could dedicate to this? Great. Do you have one night a week that your spouse can be in charge of dinner in bedtime so you can spend four solid hours focusing on tasks that will draw you closer to your goal of quitting teaching? That’s awesome. Block it into your planner. Okay. Step number five is to plan in the extras extra things in your to-do list that don’t fit into the one of the four categories I just mentioned are just that extra tasks that don’t really make a big impact on your overall life. Those should go into your planner last and only if there’s room.

(15:56):
One way to prioritize the order of tackling such tasks would be to write them all in a list and then write a one next to the ones that are most pertinent. So maybe they have a due date that they need to be done by, or they’re just kind of driving you crazy. Then write a two next to the extra tasks that are somewhat important, but they don’t have a specific deadline. Then you’re gonna write a three next to the tasks that aren’t really that important. Now, I recommend giving yourself a two hour time block each week to dedicate to these tasks. During that time, focus on accomplishing as much as you can, starting with the ones on your list, and then working through the twos and threes as you have time. If you don’t have time, those can wait until next week. Now, step number six is to make time for white space.

(16:53):
One of the biggest excuses I hear about why women don’t want to use a planner is because they spend all this time planning out their week, and then something happens and it all goes down the drain. I want you to remember the pieces of your day don’t have to stay in their exact timeframes. It is totally okay if things end up getting shuffled around a bit, and this is why I recommend keeping some white space in your day. That way, you can adjust your schedule if needed, and if you don’t need to adjust, then you just earned yourself some time to sit on your butt and chill. All right. Step number seven, check for alignment. You need to check and make sure that the tasks you’ve planned in your week are ultimately getting you to where you want to be, or better yet where God is calling you to go.

(17:47):
So take a moment to look at every task that you write in your planner and ask yourself, are these tasks helping me prioritize my faith, my family, or my health? Are they allowing me to live my life intentionally? Are they helping me pursue my God-given purpose? Is my schedule allowing me to dedicate the time? I’m going to need to be able to do that? And if the answer to any of those questions is no, then it’s time to delete that task or delegate it to someone else. You have to make sure that you are creating a life that you love every day, one that’s in alignment with where God wants you to be. All right, y’all, I pray that God would show you where you’re using your time unintentionally, and I pray that he opens your eyes and helps you dedicate your time to those things in your life that are precious to you, like your family, your faith, and your God-given purpose.

(18:42):
I ask that he remove anything from your life that isn’t needed so that you can go where he is calling you to go Real quick, just wanna remind you, the Teacher Turned … book is officially live and out in the world. Go grab your copy at teacherturnedfreelancer.com/book. Come join us in our free Facebook community to participate in our five day giveaway. We’ve got going on this week to celebrate the book launch. Cannot wait to see you there. It’s at facebook.com/groups/ditchtheclassroom. I just love celebrating with you guys, and I’m just super excited, put a lot of hard work into this for you and can’t wait to celebrate with you over there. All right, y’all, I love you so much, and we will see you next time.