Hey, Procrastinator: Even You Can Harness the Power of Time Magic

It’s the one thing we never have unbearable of: that warmed-over and non-renewable resource, time. Behold, though, two new time magicians on the scene to help you turn that slippery stream of time lanugo the phlebotomize into something increasingly viscous and meaningful. Meet Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst, authors of Time Magic, a resource that not only shares methods on amplifying creativity and honing your productivity, but moreover incorporates wellness tips on making the life you’ve got… the weightier one possible. Melissa took the time (pun intended) to share with us her inspiration in penning the project with her husband, tips for getting started, and some of her favorite time management hacks.

Wanderlust: Your typesetting is chock full of totally accessible, and easy-to-enact methods that take the friction out of so many daily tasks. But as you well know, humans scrutinizingly unchangingly opt to alimony doing things the way they’ve been doing them, despite knowing that a habit shift might reap rewards. What do you say to folks who have the reluctance for that first output of effort to make change, whether that’s downloading a new task management app, or raising a new mindset? How would you encourage them to get over that first hump, and into a new lane?

Melissa Ambrosini: If you’re feeling reluctant to make a change, it’s important to unclose your feelings and not write-up yourself up. Transpiration can be challenging and uncomfortable, so it’s perfectly natural to finger some resistance to it at first. At the same time, transpiration can moreover lead to personal growth and evolution. It’s the underpass from where you are now to where you want to be, so it’s worth persisting!

Getting your mindset right can be a very helpful first step (which is why we spend a whole installment on it in the book). In particular, raising a growth mindset is critical. This ways having an integrated understanding that your skills in this zone are not fixed, they can improve. Research shows that having this mindset can radically increase your odds of successfully creating change.

Another helpful tip is to start with a habit or skill that appeals to you or that plays to your natural strengths, and to unravel it lanugo into manageable chunks. So start small, and when you start to stack up some wins, you can slowly add in increasingly and increasingly shifts.

WL: You and Nick have a varied and deep preliminaries exploring wellness and guiding your polity to optimizing their lives. What was the moment when you realized that crystallizing your learnings into a typesetting focused on time management would be the most potent way to slaver your magic?

MA: If you’d told either of us a few years ago that we’d one day write a typesetting well-nigh time and how to spend it, we probably would have had a good giggle. Without all, we weren’t good with time! And we never had unbearable of it—Nick was a single dad headed towards exhaustion with zero time for his son, while I was an overwhelmed people-pleaser whose time was unchangingly eaten up by other people’s priorities.

When our relationship began increasingly than a decade ago, so too began our journey of waffly our relationship with time—not just so that we could “get increasingly done”, but moreover so that we could create a spacious life that unliable plenty of time for the activities and people we love.

Eventually, we got so good at optimizing our time that the people virtually us (friends, family, followers) began asking us “How the heck do you do it?!”

We didn’t realize we were doing anything special, but they could see that we were getting superhuman amounts of work washed-up while still having a joy-filled, meaningful life.

So without getting asked that same question then and again, we finally realized we needed to capture all the tools and techniques that had wilt second nature to us in one place, so that others could goody from them too. So that’s when the idea for Time Magic really took hold.

WL: Focus (and honing skills related to focus) are a recurring theme in the book. It feels particularly important for this digital generation, growing up in a world of technology and notifications, to practice discernment and learn how to bring their sustentation to one thing. What translating do you have for parents, teachers, and caregivers virtually the weightier method(s) to help littles flex the muscle of focus?

MA: Our daughter is two. One of the ways we build the skill of focus with her is to not interrupt her self-directed play. If you start paying sustentation to this, it’s unquestionably quite funny how often we, as adults, finger the need to insert ourselves into our children’s solo play. It’s usually washed-up with the weightier of intentions, but one unfortunate side effect is that it can unravel their spritz and stifle them from towers the nuts-and-bolts skill of focus. So of course, we do plenty of play with our daughter, but if she’s doing something on her own, we do our weightier to not splinter her concentration and let her explore the world in an uninterrupted way.

WL: What’s the one single time-saving hack that’s made the biggest difference in your life?

MA: The one, single time-saving hack that’s made the biggest difference in my life is the deep understanding that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. It was a huge turning point for me when I truly understood that life isn’t just well-nigh the big moments and the ‘important’ days; life is now, in the random minutes and hours we are gifted every day. It is incredibly empowering when you finally get, on a heart and soul level, that by stuff intentional with how you spend small units of time (your minutes, hours and days), you can transpiration how the whole of your life plays out, and ensure that you’re creating a life that’s aligned with your highest values and vision.

On a increasingly specific level, the productivity system we developed—Tick or Flick™—has freed up so much mental bandwidth, taken so much stress off my plate, and ensured that I get the right things washed-up each day. It’s an epically powerful system that’s elegant in its simplicity. If your smart-ass feels overwhelmed, or if you find yourself forgetting tasks or missing deadlines, I highly recommend giving it a shot!

WL: You and Nick worked together to write this book, so unmistakably you uncurl on the weightier ways to make the most of your time together as partners. How important is it for someone’s principal partners (spouse, merchantry partner, co-parents, roommates, etc) to get on the same page with these methodologies?

MA: It obviously makes life easier when you’re on the same page as your spouse, colleagues or superabound well-nigh your tideway to things like time management, planning and organization. But if they have variegated views from you, don’t let that stop you from taking action. There are so many habits and techniques you can implement by yourself to enhance and optimize your time, so take whoopee and lead by example. (When they see how much you’re getting done, and with so little stress and fuss, you might just convert them!)

That said, people are unliable to have variegated approaches and there is no one size fits all. When you encounter a situation where differing approaches are resulting in tension, harness the power of what I undeniability ‘CCC’ — Crystal Well-spoken Communication. Communicate openly, transparently and without ego to ensure that everyone is well-spoken on their responsibilities and timeframes, plane if they’re using variegated methods to reach the finish line.

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Karina Mackenzie is writer, producer, and wearer of many hats at Wanderlust. As Sr. Director of Programming & Content she books talent and designs experiences for Wanderlust events, curates the Wanderlust TV platform, and moreover contributes editorial pieces as a writer, creates content for social and video projects. Without over a decade of working in the yogic realm, she still can’t do a handstand yonder from the wall.

She served for 5 years on the workbench of non-profit, Yoga Foster (now Wellemental), whose mission is to make mindfulness elementary in public schools wideness America, and co-chaired the Green Wellness committee in Brooklyn public school when her kids were wee.

She now lives in the woods of New England with her two favorite small humans and husband, learning (clumsily) how to lean into country life.

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