How to Get Ish Done: The 3 Pillars of Time Management with Anna De Salvo
Welcome to episode 62 of The Determined Mom Show. I am here with Anna De Salvo, and she is a life productivity coach. I’m excited to have you here because you will be sharing with us how to get ish done and sharing the three pillars of time management, which we all so desperately need to get our lives in order and everything running smoothly.
I’m passionate about time management because it allows us to have the space and the time not to feel like we’re frantic all the time, and that’s really why I started the whole journey in the first place. How do I do everything and still show up to be all the things?
And you’re talking to a group of moms, so it makes sense. If it were like anybody else, they’d be like; I’m trying to understand what you mean by that. Do all the things and be all the things over time as we build our businesses; I think that’s what many of our goals are.
To be able to do all the things and be all the things. Be a mom. Be accomplished and then have a balanced life. So let’s get started by learning a little bit more about you and how you got started in being able to transition to working from home as a productivity coach.
So it was many years in the making. I remember laying on the couch, just being completely overwhelmed and exhausted. The laundry piled up, my to-do list ran in the back of my mind, and my daughter approached me and asked me what was for dinner. And I lost it if you want to be honest.
It was not one of my shining moments in motherhood. It was one of those moments where I was like, you know what? Something needs to change. I have been an elementary teacher, teacher throughout my career, and it has led me to work many hours. There are many jokes about how much teachers work and the burnout, but it’s so real.
I was working 60-plus hours a week. I was away from home all the time. I was bringing work home all the time. And so it was kind of at that point where I started thinking, okay, there has to be something better than this. And I started thinking about how can I use my skills differently.
I have a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in business. And so I started thinking about all the things I’d experienced over my life, and I have a unique path in motherhood and how I can utilize that to help. So over several years, my business transitioned from I was a coach for introverted teacher moms.
I coached preschool teachers, teaching them how to open their own. Because I had built several businesses throughout my life within other people’s education models. And then, finally, in this whole moment where I had that turning point, I had invested in a coach in programs, and I was like learning about time management, productivity, and efficiency.
And I was slowly creating space in my life, eventually leading me to think. I can help other people. I’m killing it at this. Like, I can help other people with this. And so, you know, time management is what I do, but I am passionate about helping women create the space so that they can start moving towards that life that they really want.
And it’s been several years in the making that I’m finally transitioning out of teaching and into my work from home. That’s awesome. So I have a question for you about that. When you had the moment on the couch with your daughter, was that before or after you hired your coach? It was before I hired my coach.
We must have this rock bottom moment for any motivation to change, and I’ve had many of those over my life. We can think about it if we all look back on our lives when we were set up with something when we moved to make a change in our life.
After that moment, I decided to; I started looking around like what was possible. I found a program that spoke to my overwhelm, my balance, issues, and work-life balance, and a story that resonated with me about missing out on so many things in your kids’ lives because you had to work.
I admire the fact that you were a teacher and that you did all of those things for the kids. I know there’s, like, the heart of a teacher is different than that of anyone else because you have to have a specific heart and mentality and all of these things to do that and to give those.
All of you. And I truly appreciate that, and thank you for doing that for the little kids. And it, being a teacher, it’s one of those things that I’m always going to be, even now in my practice; that is what I ultimately do because my heart isn’t for people empowering people.
Kids or adults, to understand that they have everything within them. And it’s really about bringing and learning some tools and how to make them work in your life. And you do that in education, and you do that in your coaching practice. So, either way, it’s like I still get to use the same skills.
How do we do it? How do we do it? One of the things I always like to ask people when we start out in a time management journey is, what do you, would you do with an extra hour a day? And before we even start, Create the time we all crave it.
Many it’s one of the top things many people talk to me about; I need better time management. And I always like to find out why. You know, what do you, what do you want to do with that time? And most women say they’d like to read, work out, meditate, or do something for themselves that’s outside.
Did I feed the kids? Those kinds of things, but I, they’re feeling right now, especially, and that’s one of the things like work-from-home life. , we see it glamorized, but we are seeing it right now with many people, or at least during stay-at-home time with many people. They’re like, do I want to work at home?
On other days they’re more flexible. And, of course, throughout working with somebody, the goal is to have enough flexibility in your task. In the beginning, it is harder to distinguish the things that have to get done versus the things that may be flexible, but working with somebody helps with that. In contrast, time management is managing your time and how long things take and moving it around so that you can get all of your tasks done.
I feel terrible at the end of the day. You know, when I started my time management, I did. I wanted to be able to work out. I just wanted an hour a day that I could work out. But it was more about moving things around so that I could know-how how long certain tasks take so that I could, you know, have a little bit more time to do something.
Because we know that takes a little bit of time as business owners. And also just like how to get them and just be able to offload some of the tasks. I built a delegation model that describes how we wean ourselves into delegation. That’s a free tool that I have on my website.
I have several free tools. I have a time journal that speaks to that first pillar. Know where our time is going. As I said, it can be somewhere other than where every minute is on paper. In the beginning, I recommend that, but I find it more practical for people to find a way for the tool to work for them.
And, you know, I can let you know if I have tools or if coaching is good for you. or if maybe I have a blog post that might be or a video that I’ve already done that I can direct you to, that kind of stuff. So I like to provide as many practical tips as possible because if we can’t, we would just be doing it if it was that easy.
And so it’s like, what can we do right now today? And what is that one little thing you can take away today and start doing to get more time, be less overwhelmed, or have more balance in your day? And so it’s just anna desalvo.com is your website. So you can find Anna there, and I will link to your group and your website in the show notes.
What is your favorite thing about being able to work from home and be there for you? I love being able to do something with my kid spontaneously. So like, I love being able at; my husband’s hold away in his Zoom meetings right now cause he works from home too, you know?
I think my kids are, are feeling that same way. As I have a little bit more, it’s mainly because I don’t have to get them on the bus and get them on, you know, do the showering, and I mean they shower at night, but. Doing their hair and doing the, you know, like all of that morning routine.
It’s just me getting ready now, and they call themselves ready and have an hour to do it and like it’s nice in, and you know it during the whole process of many people coming home. It’s a gift if we can take the opportunity. This is a gift to take an opportunity. To enjoy those moments of slowing down and not being so stressed and not so busy all the time, what can we cultivate in the future that continues to inspire us to do that?