Session Snippets: How to (really) Manage Your Time

“I need to create a daily schedule for the next 3 months so that I know what I’m doing,” my client said definitively as she sat down for our session.

This was in response to my opening question, “what are we working towards today?” Creating an agenda is the first part of every coaching session. Even seasoned clients can take up to 15 minutes workshopping what we are going to be discussing.

Creating the agenda is also one of the client’s main responsibilities. They choose the direction of every session. In this session, it was a great sign that my client had a clear idea of what she wanted to achieve by the end.

However, one of my responsibilities as a coach is to ensure that the agenda the client creates actually meets the need that the client is looking to address in that session. The agenda they bring is the strategy they use to address that need. Before spending our session completely zoned in on creating a schedule, I wanted to double check that there were no other lingering needs surrounding the client that day.

I am being certified through the Institute of Integrative Intelligence, and my methodology follows coaching the client to integration. This means that the problem the client is experiencing connects to other parts of their current life and is also a thread following their personal self development. So by understanding how this problem impacts the client’s life currently, I can coach the client towards solving this problem across their life. In this case, I surmised that the client was experiencing an imbalance in her life related to time. When I encounter a problem related to balancing different aspects of a client’s life, I focus on the relationship that the client has to the problem. So I asked the question:

This question led to the first “aha” moment of the session. “Aha” moments are one of the most exciting moments in a coaching session where the client’s face lights up with the realization that two seemingly disparate details were actually the core of the problem. The client learns more about themself, their motivations, and the blockers to answering the problem on their own. “Aha” moments can’t come from a directive question. If I lead you to a solution by offering unsolicited advice, those are usually “mhm, yeah sure, I’ll think about that” moments. Instead, “aha” moments come from true coaching questions. I can’t predict or engineer an “aha” moment, so it is a real treat when it happens.

Her answer:

My client had recently left a full time job to pursue her passion. In this career shift, she wanted to regain control of her time by creating a schedule, but hadn’t yet paused to consider what her overall relationship with time was and how it changed now that she left an activity that took up a significant amount of her time.

I invited her to think about her relationship with time and through that we discussed not only her relationship to time in general, but her relationship to the time she is spending right now. The deeper we got into her self-inquiry, we discovered themes of self-trust, identity, fear, passion, drive, excitement, rest, community, and the need for support.

The agenda shifted too: we didn’t end up making the daily schedule, but she didn’t feel the need to have one. Instead, we came up with 3 main goals for her next 3 months along with some actions she could take to meet those goals. She had confidence in how she was already spending her time, and the self-trust that she was going to reach her goals on her own timeline.

She left with a sense of freedom and focus along with concrete next steps. She knew what she wanted to do and she knew that her time was hers to spend.

As a coach, I don’t resolve the problem. That’s the client’s job. I’m here to generalize the problem to the client, to build a self-sustaining client so that eventually they can solve their own problems without me. In this case, the client won’t need to come back to me every 3 months to create a new schedule. Instead, she can confidently evaluate her progress and design her next plan whenever she’s ready.

If this client story resonated with you, remember that lasting change comes from having the right support, strategy, and accountability to turn insight into action.

That’s exactly what I help my coaching clients do. If you’re ready to start creating change, I’d love to connect. Explore my current offerings or schedule a complimentary discovery call.