Ep. 28 - How To Do Twice As Much In Half The Time

[00:00:00] Kent Thalman: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Kent 

[00:00:01]Anna Thalman: [00:00:01] and I'm in my pajamas today. 

[00:00:03] Kent Thalman: [00:00:03] Yeah. And this is film and family. If you're a filmmaker and you're ready to take your relationship with yourself and your film career to the next level, you're in the right place. Hit subscribe to never miss an episode. 

[00:00:14] Anna Thalman: [00:00:14] Let's jump right in. 

[00:00:16]Kent Thalman: [00:00:16] All right. Well, thanks for coming to this episode. Called, how to do twice as much in half the time. Does that sound ridiculous? Hopefully it does, but it doesn't because hopefully if you're listening, you actually believe that that's possible that you're going to learn that this time around. So we just want to talk a little bit about this idea of powerful, exponential time, power, time management if you will. And. We want to do this sort of as a prepper for the course, that is going to be part of the film and family program this month for members only. 

[00:00:54]Anna Thalman: [00:00:54] Sorry, I'm still just enjoying this pajama thing. I don't know why you didn't tell me earlier that it is so comfortable. [00:01:00] I should do this every time. It's a beautiful thing. I feel like it's really cozy and intimate. Maybe, maybe I'll share things I wouldn't share. Hmm. If I was still in my work clothes.

[00:01:13]Kent Thalman: [00:01:13] Yeah. Well, 

[00:01:15] Anna Thalman: [00:01:15] so I actually did, also, before we jump in, want to update you guys on our film, because we told you we would have updates as we go along and we are getting very close to shooting. We've got three weeks 

[00:01:29] Kent Thalman: [00:01:29] two and a half. 

[00:01:30] Anna Thalman: [00:01:30] Two and a half 

[00:01:31] Kent Thalman: [00:01:31] Before actors fly out

[00:01:32]Anna Thalman: [00:01:32] Yeah. So we're looking at buying tickets soon. We are getting down into some of the more nitty gritty details and it's all coming together really nicely. It's I mean, there's still work to do. 

[00:01:47]Kent Thalman: [00:01:47] I would not Put it that way. 

[00:01:49] Anna Thalman: [00:01:49] I feel good. 

[00:01:51] Kent Thalman: [00:01:51] I would not say this is coming together really nicely.

[00:01:53] What I mean to say is, it is a giant tidal wave before us that we need to sail through. And, uh, [00:02:00] it's a lot work, 

[00:02:01] Anna Thalman: [00:02:01] I guess that can be your thought about it. To me, I'm just like, wow, this is actually happening. Like 

[00:02:06] Kent Thalman: [00:02:06] it's exciting. 

[00:02:07] Anna Thalman: [00:02:07] We wanted to shoot a thing with the train and. We might actually get to shoot the thing with the train and we wanted to shoot with an airplane and 

[00:02:13] Kent Thalman: [00:02:13] Oh yeah, the airplanes. Good to go. 

[00:02:14] Anna Thalman: [00:02:14] We've got the airplane. That's all ready. 

[00:02:16] Kent Thalman: [00:02:16] That's a big deal.

[00:02:17]Anna Thalman: [00:02:17] we wanted to fly out actors and they're all set. We have our main actors picked out and ready to go. So yeah, I guess I'm kind of just living in the miracle still of this is still happening. Like. Who was it that said they're always just waiting for it to fall.

[00:02:35] Kent Thalman: [00:02:35] That was Damien Chazelle

[00:02:35] Anna Thalman: [00:02:35] Was it Damien Chazelle?

[00:02:36]Kent Thalman: [00:02:36] Yeah. He said when he was doing La La Land, he was like, first day of shooting, he was like, wait, Yeah, Nick, no one's pulled the plug

[00:02:42] Anna Thalman: [00:02:42] No one's shutting us down?

[00:02:42] Kent Thalman: [00:02:42] No, one's pulled the plug yet. I thought for sure, we weren't going to get to this point anyway, a wonder with that thought that he did get to that point. so yeah, that's lots of craziness. And so on that note, With the feature film on top of everything else we have to do. Anna and I are still recording this [00:03:00] podcast, which is a small drop in the bucket. But the podcast is also not just representing, Invisible Mansion Pictures, but the film and family program. And Anna's still running that program and coaching, and I'm still running, a, Commercial video business. And we have a lot of clients right now, and a lot of demand and it's more than I could handle all by myself, even without the feature film. And so we are kind of in the fire here. And I don't say that to say that we're stressed out. And today in particular, I feel like we're really starting to get on top of it all. So we want to share some of those powerful time thoughts. Time, paradigms and time, resources of knowledge. That will start to unlock that for you. And we're going to do a little bit of that here, and you're going to learn a lot in the podcast. but if you want this to really become efficacious in your life, we really recommend jumping in becoming a part of the film and family program and, [00:04:00] getting January's course, which is going to be released in the next week. about this exact topic in greater detail with a little bit more actionable, sort of detailed layout.

[00:04:11] Anna Thalman: [00:04:11] Yeah. So I don't know that we've talked that much about the film and family membership. I kind of mention it at the end sometimes, but

[00:04:18] Kent Thalman: [00:04:18] Everytime

[00:04:18]Anna Thalman: [00:04:18] it's a lifetime membership. so you pay once and then you're in it and you have that support for life. And it's like, no one left behind, right? If you're in this and you want to make a feature film, or you want the results that we have, we're going to help you get them. And we're going to stick with you until you do. And we're seeing people have a lot of success, including ourselves. It's very exciting. I do feel like it's different than any other programs that I'm seeing out there. It's not just like, here's a camera. Let me teach you how to use it and how to put it on a tripod and 

[00:04:49] Kent Thalman: [00:04:49] important skills to learn by the way.

[00:04:50] Anna Thalman: [00:04:50] Good stuff to know. That's not what we're doing here. It's a little different, I won't get too much into that, but yeah, the how to get twice as much done in [00:05:00] half the time is, January's course. There's a new course every month. so if you have questions and you are in the program, you will be able to bring all your questions there and we're going to go deep into this topic.

[00:05:13] Kent Thalman: [00:05:13] So Anna, why don't you talk a little bit about, you were telling me a little bit about this before we started recording. on that note, who is this for? Because we talk a lot about film, right? We think a lot about our film careers, but there's a flip side to that. And I feel like, Could you paint the picture a little bit about who this type of time management would be really powerful for specifically? 

[00:05:34]Anna Thalman: [00:05:34] Yeah. So. I think that a typical time management course might be fine. If you're someone who works a very steady nine to five job, your life is very regular. but we quickly learned, cause I love to study time management. I read a lot of books about it and I've. Pretty much figured out a good system for myself when I was a single person and 

[00:05:54] Kent Thalman: [00:05:54] in your normal life

[00:05:55] Anna Thalman: [00:05:55] my life was pretty normal. And then I got married and then we had [00:06:00] kids and we were in school and we were trying to make movies. And suddenly it was very hard to plan because the only consistency was

[00:06:07] Kent Thalman: [00:06:07] kids

[00:06:08] Anna Thalman: [00:06:08] inconsistency. And so if you. Have kids and you're constantly interrupted or you have to be on call or you're doing different shoots and your schedule never looks the same. 

[00:06:18] Kent Thalman: [00:06:18] Or if you have kids, 

[00:06:21] Anna Thalman: [00:06:21] if you're working crazy hours, 12 hour workdays, or even if you're just someone. Who doesn't believe you have time to pursue this because you've got a family to provide for you have a day job. You can't quit right now, or you're a stay-at-home mom. There's a lot of people who feel like time is what's holding them back. And this course is designed for you. if you're in that boat 

[00:06:42] Kent Thalman: [00:06:42] And we'll probably do courses on money management and thoughts around money, but often people think money is what's holding them back. But I think 

[00:06:49] Anna Thalman: [00:06:49] that's another one, yeah

[00:06:50] Kent Thalman: [00:06:50] just as much. we have scarcity around time and something that Brooke Castillo talks about that I think is really powerful is this hierarchy of investments. And it [00:07:00] actually shows us just how important time is when you look at this hierarchy and how important this course is within that hierarchy. The bottom of the three in this hierarchy of priorities that we should be investing in is money. That's at the very bottom. 

[00:07:15] Anna Thalman: [00:07:15] I think a lot of people think that's the top. 

[00:07:16] Kent Thalman: [00:07:16] Yeah. I think we 

[00:07:17] Anna Thalman: [00:07:17] you think of investments. You think of money. 

[00:07:19] Kent Thalman: [00:07:19] The word investment Was all synonymous with growing money, right. And it's not that money. Isn't important. It's that it's at the bottom of that hierarchy. And if you actually want more money, you should not put that on the top of your hierarchy because money is unlimited. There's an unlimited amount of money in the world it reminds me of the Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He says, "There are five golden tickets and they were only ever be five only a fool would trade it for something as common as money. They make more of it every day." Anyway. so money that it's unlimited, you can make as much infinite amounts of money. there's no gold standard anymore. So, we can make as many dollars as we want. 

[00:07:59] Anna Thalman: [00:07:59] there's no [00:08:00] ceiling

[00:08:00] Kent Thalman: [00:08:00] and. frankly, it's, really great to have money, but you've seen people get lots of money and lose it really fast. So money. If you ignore the other two in this hierarchy that are above money, doesn't sustain itself. so while it's important, There's something that's more important. And that one up above that is time, because time is limited. Everyone has a fixed 24 hours per day. Don't even start talking to me

[00:08:28] Anna Thalman: [00:08:28] it's the great equalizer

[00:08:29]Kent Thalman: [00:08:29] about interstellar or black holes or relativity. Let's just assume that most of us are not traveling near speed of light and that time is consistently the same forever on. And so. Email us, if you think that's different in your case, and I'd be really interested in meeting you. so time is, this great equalizer economically in terms of time, no one has more or less than anyone else. And then the most important one is your mind, knowledge and your [00:09:00] brain as Brooke wood say, I think, and that's because let's say we took every last cent away from, since we're talking about film. Steven Spielberg. How long do you think he'd be broke? I don't think he'd be broke very long because he'd start a production company. He'd start in producing movies. He'd start directing movies because of the knowledge he has, the guy is a master and anyone would pay anything for the knowledge that he has. And as long as you have that knowledge, you can leverage that in powerful, creative ways. And this course is knowledge about time. Time management and how you're going to get the most out of it. So I just want to preface it with that. And hopefully I've painted the picture in a convincing enough way that you can see the value in investing, not just in our course, but in investing in your mind and in time over money and invest in money, invest in money, please be a responsible financial steward over what you have, but. How do you do that? If you're not investing in your mind and how [00:10:00] do you do that? If you don't have time, to manage your money, sometimes we don't manage our money or clean our rooms or do our dishes because we feel like we don't have time so let's talk about that

[00:10:07] Anna Thalman: [00:10:07] well, and that's why it is an investment. And that's one of the basic first things about time management that people have to understand. I think sometimes we believe that, the way to get the most done is to just create a to-do list and burn through as many items as you can on that list. 

[00:10:22] Kent Thalman: [00:10:22] With Tons of motivation, see our episode on motivation. 

[00:10:25] Anna Thalman: [00:10:25] And you don't want to waste any time planning, but. The investment that you make in planning is really going to save you way more time in the backend, which a lot of you probably know, but again, that's why we bring it up. Yeah. 

[00:10:39] Kent Thalman: [00:10:39] Insert trite, inspirational quote by Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn't say it's trite. There's a lot of wisdom to this quote. "If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I would spend the first two sharpening the blade". Anyone who actually sharpens blades realizes that it does take two hours to get a really sharp blade. I heard someone [00:11:00] on Facebook. Tell a little story about a guy who was a lumberjack and he was angry that he works just as hard as this other dude. And he went to his boss and said, why is he making twice as much money as me? And he says, because he chops down more than twice as many trees as you do. And he said, How is that possible? I work just as hard as him. And so he said, I'm going to chop down as many trees as that guy does. And he just works his butt off. And he goes from chopping down like a quarter of, as many as this guy chops down to like half as many and he's giving it his all, he just never takes a break and he just chops chops, chops. And then he asks the guy, how is it possible that you're still chopping down more trees than me every single day? And he says, I sharpen my blade between every tree. I take a break and sharpen my blade, every single tree anyway, shout out to, uh, Jacob Shamblin, good friend of mine, his old, his older brother and I were close in high school and, still are, so kind of a neat little story, similar to the Abraham Lincoln thing, but yeah, planning and planning [00:12:00] is also somewhat of a platitude. Sometimes we just use that word, like plan set goals. But man, that is a craft. It's a craft that I've been learning for, probably from high school, through my entire young adulthood, really trying to hone these skills of planning and time management has been a challenge and we're really starting to dial it in and seeing massive results as we're starting to really kind of just dial it in, you know, and get that, technique, a part of our lives.

[00:12:29] Anna Thalman: [00:12:29] Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I don't know what I do without you. Cause you're so good at like, just coming up with these quotes and remembering them

[00:12:36] Kent Thalman: [00:12:36] like, Liam Hemsworth's character in  Isn't It Romantic. It's just, I just have all these ideas, all these, all these quotes in the back of my head. That's my Liam Hemsworth impersonation.

[00:12:48] Anna Thalman: [00:12:48] Oh man. 

[00:12:49] Kent Thalman: [00:12:49] It's probably not a very good one. 

[00:12:50] Anna Thalman: [00:12:50] Well, and we've been talking recently also about. This idea that time is a luxury that's becoming more and more common. And that idea that like you [00:13:00] have to work really hard and long hours to have a really. high paying job or a really luxurious lifestyle is just not the case anymore. And in fact, it's becoming more of a middle-class kind of attitude to work hard and work long hours. And we see the wealthy higher class, hiring stuff out and working fewer hours and using their time very, very well. So that the few hours that they are working. Are extremely useful and extremely valuable. And then they get to spend a lot of time enjoying their life, nurturing their most important relationships. And then we're in this industry. That's film where you get these. super, highly paid celebrities. And yet they're still working 12 hour days. I think that's going to shift and we, we really want that to shift because 

[00:13:55] Kent Thalman: [00:13:55] we're young and small enough to make that kind of disruption to be honest.

[00:13:59] Anna Thalman: [00:13:59] Well i just think, [00:14:00] you know, this, course is also for you. If you feel like you're so busy working your film job, that you don't actually have time to watch films, or you don't have time to be. Living the kind of lifestyle that you want, where you're healthy, you're sleeping, exercising, eating, healthy, nurturing your relationships.

[00:14:18] Kent Thalman: [00:14:18] So Imagine a life where you have time to exercise and sleep, whatever your body needs and take care of your children and spouse and make the money that you need to in your work. And. Be making feature films. Hopefully those last two are the same thing, right? So we're trying to shift you to where your life can become that, and you can be dating or spending time with your family or making the money you need. All those things can co-exist in a life. If you can learn to manage these time things. So let's start jumping into some principles here because we're, getting into the episode here [00:15:00] and I want to make sure we cover a few of these things. We're not going to really cover everything we cover in the course, but let's just wet your palate a little bit and, leave you. With some things that you can apply, even just at the end of this podcast and watch them kind of start to affect your mind and you know, they're exciting. So, 

[00:15:16] Anna Thalman: [00:15:16] so, this might look different for everyone a little bit. You can season to taste, for yourself, but. I think it'd be good if we start just by explaining some context of our story and how we came up with and found the method that we use now, it's kind of a combination of places, but this still is the number one question we get asked, even by our friends, we had some friends over just the other day and they were asking the same question again. Wait, so how do you 

[00:15:42] Kent Thalman: [00:15:42] Do this

[00:15:42] Anna Thalman: [00:15:42] make movies and commercials and do this film and family program and homeschool your kids and do. 

[00:15:49] Kent Thalman: [00:15:49] life coach your private clients 

[00:15:51] Anna Thalman: [00:15:51] Airbnb and like all these random things that we do 

[00:15:53] Kent Thalman: [00:15:53] and yeah, homeschool your kids, did we mention that 

[00:15:55] Anna Thalman: [00:15:55] still have time to have friends over and then relax. And We went to the [00:16:00] zoo

[00:16:00] Kent Thalman: [00:16:00] And we serve in our church and everything. And it's not like it's super easy. I'm not going to like paint this picture that like, your life will suddenly be easy, but it will be. More accomplished. 

[00:16:09] Anna Thalman: [00:16:09] It's rich in a different way

[00:16:11]Kent Thalman: [00:16:11] Yep, rich in a different, I like that. so, 

[00:16:13] Anna Thalman: [00:16:13] so yeah, 

[00:16:14] Kent Thalman: [00:16:14] so we're going to go over that, context a little bit, and we're going over the four quadrants, which we'll clarify, and then we'll go over some of the, to do listing versus calendaring. And then we'll 

[00:16:22] Anna Thalman: [00:16:22] We'll give you the short version of our process. So You can start getting going on that. 

[00:16:27] Kent Thalman: [00:16:27] So the principle about the, uh, so the quadrants, sorry, the context first is, not a principle, so. we started our marriage basically with this vision of we're going to homeschool our kids just because we want to, we don't have a strong dog upon that. So if you're public schooling your kids power to you, thank goodness for public schools 

[00:16:47] Anna Thalman: [00:16:47] we were both public schooled

[00:16:48] Kent Thalman: [00:16:48] and public education. Yeah We technically, yeah. we, so we were on hopes for our kids, we were, we both wanted to make movies and we both wanted to be self-employed. And [00:17:00] already, it was like, how's that all gonna work out and then midway through marriage so far. Anna got really into life coaching and we're just like, we'll throw that into the mix. And you start throwing all these things into the pot and you're like, what? This is literally an impossibility. How do you homeschool your kids? And if your kids are never away at school, this great comedian said, "we really quickly found out that when we were homeschooling our kids. They never leave." And so you don't have that. how are you possibly both going to work? So now we actually both work four hour days Anna works four hours. I work four hours. We trade off. we actually have hired an assistant, but that assistant never watches our kids. 

[00:17:38] Anna Thalman: [00:17:38] we raise our kids. So you know

[00:17:39] Kent Thalman: [00:17:39] And that assistant is a new thing. So it's not like 

[00:17:41] Anna Thalman: [00:17:41] Kent Gets as much time with the kids as I do. during the day, like during our Workday. 

[00:17:45] Kent Thalman: [00:17:45] Yep. 

[00:17:46] Anna Thalman: [00:17:46] He's single handedly provided for our family for years working part-time so he is getting twice as much done as most people do in half the time. And, I've done a lot of pivoting and stuff in my career has been [00:18:00] a little crazier, but, But yeah, we definitely get a lot done and we see even now as we're hiring people on, sometimes it's like, wow, we really do use that time very well. And, I think people are used to letting those eight hours kind of just 

[00:18:16] Kent Thalman: [00:18:16] roll through yeah. A little bit maybe, but even people who work really hard for eight hours, I still think that there's an efficiency that happens when you limit yourself down to I make money for only four hours a day. It's kind of powerful. So we have moved toward this semi impossible looking thing, and it's just slowly come to pass if you will. 

[00:18:39]Anna Thalman: [00:18:39] So I would say there's kind of been maybe three or four steps that I want to talk about that have kind of developed and been a big deal. So first was weekly planning. We started doing a weekly plan because we realized we didn't have a set time to just talk about our goals and talk about our approach to life. You know, he and I might be on [00:19:00] different pages about parenting and, about our goals. And so we wanted some time to be accountable to each other and to just really look at all the areas of our life and what we're working on. 

[00:19:10] Kent Thalman: [00:19:10] And I would describe marriage as a companionship is a really great lots of good words, but in this case, Accountability can be nice. Some people hire accountability, coaches, which I think have value, but, I think a marriage does that just fine without paying money, I guess. I shouldn't say 

[00:19:27] Anna Thalman: [00:19:27] it's not even really accountability as much as just intentionally taking this time, 

[00:19:32]Kent Thalman: [00:19:32] And just having a partner. That's why I call it a companionship. having someone that like. I remember when I got married, I thought this is great. I'm going to have like another me and we're going to be able to just kind of double our efforts. And then we had kids and we were like, Oh my gosh, I got twice as big. And I got like three times as small, because like, those kids just eat everything away. But, that partnership, when you really do leverage it to its full extent, that's what weekly planning can do. You synthesize and sort of unify. That [00:20:00] part now, if you're not married, that's okay. 

[00:20:02] Anna Thalman: [00:20:02] I was going to say that I was gonna say, you don't need a partner to do this process. However, if you have a partner and you're collaborating together, you probably need this process even more

[00:20:11] Kent Thalman: [00:20:11] exactly yeah

[00:20:12]Anna Thalman: [00:20:12] because you have to coordinate both your schedules together.

[00:20:14] Kent Thalman: [00:20:14] But if You're still single or you're flying solo, or your spouse has just no interest in doing this with you. This is still has monumental value. but it especially has value when there's someone that you kind of need to unify. Your efforts with. So, 

[00:20:28] Anna Thalman: [00:20:28] so initially the weekly planning was just, we outlined the areas of our life.

[00:20:33] We wanted to talk about, and we would talk about them each week. And we'd say, how are we doing in our relationship with God? How are we doing in our relationship with each other? How about our kids? How about our home? And I don't know if we started out prioritizing, 

[00:20:47] Kent Thalman: [00:20:47] we talked about work and finance and we tried to prioritize them, but those priorities. Clarified and shifted over time. 

[00:20:52] Anna Thalman: [00:20:52] Now that list is in a priority order. So that's another beautiful thing about this is that if you plan according to a [00:21:00] priority order, and that doesn't mean that you know that at the beginning of the week, you do all of your top priority things first. It just means that when you're planning your calendar,

[00:21:11] Kent Thalman: [00:21:11] That's what you put into your calendar first, 

[00:21:13] Anna Thalman: [00:21:13] the top priorities go in first.

[00:21:15] Kent Thalman: [00:21:15] Even if you Know you're going to do it Friday and you're planning on a Saturday and you're saying, okay, this is going to happen next Friday. I'm still putting it there in the calendar before I plan all the lower things. 

[00:21:24] Anna Thalman: [00:21:24] And that's really like, if you've heard of that analogy of the glass, jar with the rocks and sand and water, like 

[00:21:30] Kent Thalman: [00:21:30] Stephen R. Covey

[00:21:31] Anna Thalman: [00:21:31] Yeah. If you put in the water and sand first, and then you try to fit the big rocks, they don't fit. But if you put the big rocks in first, then you can fit the sand and water in between the gaps, same thing. Even if you don't fit all of your things into the week, you know, the big rocks are in there, you know, that the most important things to you are going to get done.

[00:21:50]Kent Thalman: [00:21:50] anything that doesn't fit is just water. 

[00:21:51] Anna Thalman: [00:21:51] Yeah. It just, 

[00:21:52] Kent Thalman: [00:21:52] it just pours out and you're like, okay who cares. 

[00:21:54] Anna Thalman: [00:21:54] If it doesn't Fill the gaps. It's like, you don't really miss it as much. It's sort of the. Excess in your life. 

[00:21:59] Kent Thalman: [00:21:59] So I'm going to go over those [00:22:00] quadrants, which I think is also a Stephen R Covey thing. those quadrants, cause this is really the same topic are made up of two things, urgency and importance.

[00:22:12] So if you imagine one side of the quadrant being urgency and the other side being importance, you're going to see these four categories emerge, not urgent and not important. Not urgent, but important urgent, but not important and urgent and important. So most people live most of their lives doing the urgent things. So the urgent and important, and the urgent and not important things, but the most effective people spend their lives doing. Spend their lives. What I mean by that is they spend a majority of their time living in the quadrant that is not urgent, but important. That was kind of different for me. When I first [00:23:00] heard that, I thought, Oh, wouldn't it be the urgent and important, but the thing is, is that since they're doing the important things, they don't ever become urgent or most of the time they're not becoming urgent because they're doing them first. So it's never like, Oh my gosh, I forgot about this hugely important thing. Some of us spend our whole lives doing that. We're just always like, Oh, I forgot about this deadline. I forgot about this really important thing. And we're always doing that. But the most effective people spend, you know, 50, 60, 70% of their time doing the, not urgent, but important things. And so this is sort of an actionable strategy as to how to get into that quadrant, where you're kind of feeling like you're, you've got a leg up on your. Priorities that are rushing toward you. If you know what I mean 

[00:23:43] Anna Thalman: [00:23:43] Yeah eventually nothing is urgent. Yeah. I mean, if there's an emergency 

[00:23:47] Kent Thalman: [00:23:47] in utopia, 

[00:23:48] Anna Thalman: [00:23:48] yeah

[00:23:48] Kent Thalman: [00:23:48] there will always be the urgent things that happen in life period. But we're shifting the balance so that a majority of our time is spent not addressing urgent emergencies or urgent things. 

[00:23:58] Anna Thalman: [00:23:58] And we all know that, like, 

[00:24:00] [00:24:00] Kent Thalman: [00:24:00] I don't want to paint that unrealistic picture. That Nothing urgent will ever happen to you again, 

[00:24:03] Anna Thalman: [00:24:03] I can't guarantee that that's for sure, but, I do feel like when you have that plan, you're able to be flexible for the times when. Things are urgent because you have a plan so you can just move stuff around. 

[00:24:15] Kent Thalman: [00:24:15] Yep. 

[00:24:15]Anna Thalman: [00:24:15] a lot of people believe if they plan, then they can't be spontaneous or free. And the opposite is true. You can just move stuff around, you can replan how you want and you don't have to worry the whole time that you're missing something that you're building up. This backlog of work. You'll never be able to catch up that you've got all these urgent deadlines. You're losing quality because you're rushing to get things done. It's like, if you're going on a road trip somewhere, And you just put something in the GPS and it's programmed and it's like, okay. The GPS is going to tell me when I need to turn, I can just enjoy the ride and follow the instructions as they come.

[00:24:49] Kent Thalman: [00:24:49] And I can detour if I want to, because, 

[00:24:51] Anna Thalman: [00:24:51] and if I want to, yeah. Add a detour to stop and use the bathroom or get some food, I can do that. 

[00:24:55] Kent Thalman: [00:24:55] Then you hop back on. You know 

[00:24:57] Anna Thalman: [00:24:57] As opposed to, I think a lot of people do [00:25:00] live their life this way, where they're like, Oh, my gosh, I think there's an exit coming, but everyone's moving so fast and I haven't checked and I'm driving and I can't see and like, Oh my gosh, did I miss it? I might've missed it oh shoot. Now I'm gonna have to go back. This is dangerous. And that's just not as enjoyable of a way to live. And obviously I'm not really talking about driving. I'm talking about how you live your life. I think a lot of us are like just trying to store things in our brain and your brain is not a storage. Drive your brain is like, 

[00:25:30] Kent Thalman: [00:25:30] It's bad at storing things

[00:25:31] Anna Thalman: [00:25:31] what is that? What is the difference between the long, like on your computer? There's like short term storage 

[00:25:38] Kent Thalman: [00:25:38] RAM random access memory. 

[00:25:40] Anna Thalman: [00:25:40] That's the short term. 

[00:25:41] Kent Thalman: [00:25:41] I guess you could think of it that way 

[00:25:43] Anna Thalman: [00:25:43] Okay your brain is like that 

[00:25:44] Kent Thalman: [00:25:44] I'm not a computer expert. So we might be spewing nonsense right now. 

[00:25:47] Anna Thalman: [00:25:47] Sorry, It's true. we Might be whatever is the short term one if it's RAM.

[00:25:50] Kent Thalman: [00:25:50] Yeah, that's right. 

[00:25:52] Anna Thalman: [00:25:52] Yes. Your brain is, it can only remember on average seven things at one time. So if five of those things [00:26:00] are things you have to pick up at the grocery store and you're trying to remember those five things. You don't have a lot of space in your brain to, Be focusing on what you're doing right in front of you. And if your kids needing your help and then there's some noise going on, just like that. Noise, probably heard that little notification. it just gets overwhelmed pretty quickly, but you can put that down onto paper and then you have a lot of freed up brain space. 

[00:26:28] Kent Thalman: [00:26:28] Yeah. Yeah. And being able to roll with those punches in life and roll with those unforeseeable. That's a result of planning and that ability is absolutely paramount for people with kids. And it's absolutely paramount for filmmakers because. Film is this, you know, I've heard my friend say he's like I was in real estate and that's got a lot of moving parts and he says, but I got into film and that's like 500 moving parts. And he's like, it's a lot of moving parts. And so every time something goes wrong, it just feels like it's a constant state of [00:27:00] emergency. and so being able to plan effectively and then roll and improvise effectively are two extremely important. And. Very related skills and, David O. Russell, director of Silver Linings playbook, The Fighter, American Hustle, he talks about he said, you have to make a choice. If you don't make a choice, you can't see the spontaneous opportunities on set. Because you're just, your mind is everywhere, but once you've just said, this is what we're going to shoot, and this is how we're going to do it. You get there and you're like, no, it's not, there's this great thing over here. And there's this great opportunity over there He said but you can't see that. You just can't see it. If you haven't really chosen very strongly, this is how we're going to make it, you know? so let's go into a little bit about, 

[00:27:47] Anna Thalman: [00:27:47] Yeah, I don't want to talk too long, but I do have one more thing. And then let's just describe how you do this. So I just also think this is really relevant because we're changing the way that we're making films. Like our goal with this film that we're [00:28:00] creating is not just to release a new film, but to release a new way of making films. 

[00:28:04] Kent Thalman: [00:28:04] Yeah. 

[00:28:05] Anna Thalman: [00:28:05] So we're very intentionally planning our time to allow for balance even during production. So even during production, we're going to be working six to eight hour days, and we're going to be very efficient with the time that we have, but we're also going to have time to like, Watch movies spend time with our family. What were you gonna say? 

[00:28:26]Kent Thalman: [00:28:26] Anyway? I feel like Babe Ruth right now, this is a really important comment yeah. Yeah. When he sticks his bat down and he, his bat bat down and he points, you know, up into the, for left bleachers calls his shot. We're like, we're going to make a move at six hours a day anyway, and everyone goes nonsense and then he does it. That's all I wanted to say. 

[00:28:50] Anna Thalman: [00:28:50] We will let you know how that goes because it's still experimental and we're figuring it out. But so far it's feeling pretty good. and yeah, I'm excited. [00:29:00] so let's get into how to do this. We're going to do the basic steps and then if you're in the lifetime membership, you'll get all the details. 

[00:29:08] Kent Thalman: [00:29:08] So Anna started by just now saying. She didn't start by saying it, but she just said your brain is not a storage mechanism. It's not good at it. it takes a long time to commit something to long storage in your brain. And, one single thing takes a ton of practice to commit to long-term storage. So, If you have a ton of stuff to commit, you don't want your, your weekly to-do list to be in long-term storage because next week you won't need to remember all that stuff.

[00:29:34] Anna Thalman: [00:29:34] What if you bogged down your computer with all this stuff, it slows everything down. Right? 

[00:29:38] Kent Thalman: [00:29:38] Yeah exactly And so what isn't excellent storage mechanism is paper. 

[00:29:44] Anna Thalman: [00:29:44] Yes. 

[00:29:45] Kent Thalman: [00:29:45] Notepads digital now works too great. So what you want to do is take everything that's in your brain and just dump it. On to paper. So every single thing that you can possibly think of that I need to do this coming week. And think in all [00:30:00] the categories of your life, think about like, what do I need to do to strengthen my, whatever your personal sense of spirituality is your relationships with your family members, the most important relationships to you wherever you're at in your life. You know, if you're, whether you have a spouse of 50 years or you're trying to date, you know, and then also include your film career and your goals and whatever jobs and clients and, 

[00:30:23] Anna Thalman: [00:30:23] it's one huge brain dump. And you just keep asking yourself, what else, what else? It doesn't have to be just this week. Everything you want to get done, 

[00:30:30] Kent Thalman: [00:30:30] take care of my apartment. Or 

[00:30:31] Anna Thalman: [00:30:31] even if it's like, I really want to go on a vacation in five years. Write it down like everything. And just until you can't think of a single other thing, I actually like to keep an ongoing list during the week as well. So if I think of something during the list, I'll throw it on my phone, on my to-do list. I don't look at it again until my dump. And then I just add it to the dump so that it's not taking up space during my week. 

[00:30:56] Kent Thalman: [00:30:56] so this is the to-do list dump. So you. [00:31:00] Dump the to-do list on your paper or what have you. And then it is very important that you, you could do these in either order. I think it'd make most sense to first cross out anything you do not want to do. If you look at it and you just go, can I delegate this? Or can I delete this? could I just get away with not doing this is it really that important you're trying to cross out those unimportant things from that quadrant. So you're limiting that side of the quadrant, right? And then you're shifting it so that now you only have two urgent and important and unurgent and important. So what you're going to do is you're going to prioritize those 

[00:31:40] Anna Thalman: [00:31:40] but not according to urgency or importance. That's. Not something I even think about when I do my download, to be honest.

[00:31:47] Kent Thalman: [00:31:47] So what is it?

[00:31:48] Anna Thalman: [00:31:48] So it's according to your priorities. So now you categorize according to these priorities and these priorities should cover everything in your life so that everything on your list fits [00:32:00] into one of the categories. 

[00:32:01] Kent Thalman: [00:32:01] For example, Our top priority is our relationship with God. Our second is our relationship with each other and our marriage. And our third is our relationship with our children. You notice we haven't gotten to film or work in finance or money or anything yet. 

[00:32:13] Anna Thalman: [00:32:13] And even before that, It's health. It's our home. It's our 

[00:32:16] Kent Thalman: [00:32:16] Yeah health, I think comes before 

[00:32:17] Anna Thalman: [00:32:17] work and finance, 

[00:32:18] Kent Thalman: [00:32:18] Yeah work and finance. I think work and finance might even come before like home management stuff, but 

[00:32:22] Anna Thalman: [00:32:22] your list might be a little different than mine.

[00:32:23] Kent Thalman: [00:32:23] Well anyway, well but we do this together every week. So, yeah. So you go through those first, you fill up those categories and you prioritize it according to category, but within categories you prioritize each thing as well. correct. 

[00:32:36] Anna Thalman: [00:32:36] You can, yeah. If there's things that are higher on the list, put them higher on the list 

[00:32:40] Kent Thalman: [00:32:40] I would just write numbers next to each item.

[00:32:42] Anna Thalman: [00:32:42] Yeah. So that's kind of what we do next. Um, you can color code, you can do numbers. However is easiest. If you're on a computer or phone where you can just move things around. 

[00:32:51] Kent Thalman: [00:32:51] can be nice. 

[00:32:52] Anna Thalman: [00:32:52] That can be nice. So 

[00:32:53] Kent Thalman: [00:32:53] you could slice little thin strips of paper and move those around as well. 

[00:32:56] Anna Thalman: [00:32:56] First is the messy dump. Then you like put it into piles, [00:33:00] you know, clean it and organize it. And then you're going to write down how long you want to give yourself for each thing. And you decide this ahead of time, because otherwise it will take up the amount of space. That you give it. So if you 

[00:33:14] Kent Thalman: [00:33:14] that's a principle of time management things take as long as you plan for them to take. I think there's obviously some exception to that rule, but I have definitely seen emails take 45 minutes to write, prove me wrong. I think probably at least half of you listening to this podcast can say, yeah, I've taken 45 minutes to write an email that I thought was really important. And I just overly agonized over and I could have definitely written it in 10, 

[00:33:37] Anna Thalman: [00:33:37] Well and there's no judgment. If you want 45 minutes to write an email, that's fine. 

[00:33:40] Kent Thalman: [00:33:40] Right. 

[00:33:41] Anna Thalman: [00:33:41] But just decide this is how much time I'm giving myself and I'll be done, when you're in school and, or in a job where you have a deadline. Even if you are getting up to that deadline, you're going to find a way to get it done, whatever quality it is, 

[00:33:56] Kent Thalman: [00:33:56] you just throw in whatever you have.

[00:33:57] Anna Thalman: [00:33:57] You just do the best you can with what you have. [00:34:00] And the more you actually follow this and are strict with yourself on it. And you stay within your time limit, you are teaching your brain to get things done during that amount of time. And you're also going to be able to get better at planning. It you'll know how long things start to take.

[00:34:15] Kent Thalman: [00:34:15] Disclaimer. This is totally natural. If at first you're like this doesn't work. I gave myself this much time and I went way over and I'm going to give up on this ridiculous thing that Kent and, Anna told me in this silly podcast. I definitely experienced that. And sometimes I still do, but you'll notice that the more you practice, the better you'll get at it and you'll see yourself hit that Mark more and more over time and over time. I mean, You might have to discipline yourself for a year or two before you start to see yourself consistently hitting this stuff, you know, I'm going to plan this much time to do it. And you do it in that much time, or you do it less time. And as you start to see that happen a year or two might sound like a long time, but that will change every year. You have of life afterwards. [00:35:00] And so you'll look back on your life and you'll thank. Us, for, you know, 

[00:35:06] Anna Thalman: [00:35:06] thank yourself. Yeah. Thank you. 

[00:35:07] Kent Thalman: [00:35:07] That's really, what you'll do is you'll say I used this time that I was given to the best of my abilities, insert another quote that just popped into my head that has, I have thought about it since I was a young, young teenager." A man can be young in years. But old in hours, if he has lost no time", I've thought about that my whole life. I didn't know how to do it, but now we're teaching you how. So, a man can be young in years, but old in hours, if he has lost no time. 

[00:35:39] Anna Thalman: [00:35:39] Another really good thing to do when you're starting out is just to keep a log. for a few days before you do this, and you will learn so much about 

[00:35:49] Kent Thalman: [00:35:49] that was revolutionary for us, 

[00:35:50] Anna Thalman: [00:35:50] you'll learn about where you're losing time, how long things are taking you, what percentages of your time are going to, what areas of your life. It's just really enlightening to like record [00:36:00] everything you do for a few days and how long it took you. And you'll start to see. Where you're at, 

[00:36:06] Kent Thalman: [00:36:06] that was explosive. We were doing some personal finance education courses, through our church actually. And. That was part of the requirements was to log every single dollar that comes in and out. And we started to see Oh, where everything is going. And we had to do that in order to budget because our income is like, our, time it's unpredictable. is we don't have like 

[00:36:27] Anna Thalman: [00:36:27] not consistent 

[00:36:28] Kent Thalman: [00:36:28] set schedule and we didn't have a set income cause we are self employed and it was all over the place. And so we were like, how could we possibly make a budget? How do we possibly make a budget? If we don't know how much money we're going to make each month? Sound familiar. Have we possibly plan?

[00:36:41] Anna Thalman: [00:36:41] Well and We tried to make budgets and then it was like, we could not stay within them. We weren't predicting a lot of things, 

[00:36:47] Kent Thalman: [00:36:47] We were just guessing you know? And so, I mean, that's that, does that sound familiar? And when you look at time, We say we don't have a nine to five schedule. We don't have a normal looking life. It's just always in flux. How do we possibly have a [00:37:00] schedule, which is like a time budget. If we don't know what everything's going to look like beforehand. And so, once we logged all of our expenses and income revenues, It suddenly became clearer and clearer, like, okay, we know how to budget. We know how we can get tight. And it just gave us a much better starting point and it clarified over months and months of practice. but it was a much better starting point before we were just shooting in the dark and then suddenly it hit us. And we said, we need to do this with our time because our time was just as unpredictable. So we started logging. Every hour, every thing that we did and how long it took. And suddenly we said, okay, we have a pretty clear picture of what this is. And so yeah, logging for a week or two will blow your mind because you'll say, wow, I had no idea that a majority of my time was going to this. And then I was doing these other things for so little time. It's enlightening. 

[00:37:54] Anna Thalman: [00:37:54] Yeah. so I'm just going to wrap up here really quick with the rest of the steps. So once you've [00:38:00] organized your list, you've written down how much time you're going to give yourself for each thing. Then you're going to go in priority order and put it all on your calendar. So the top priorities go on the calendar first. You plan them in advance. So if there's a deadline, you don't want to plan it right before the deadline, although it can be helpful to procrastinate a little bit, push it out a little bit. Cause sometimes when you know, something's coming, you can kind of be thinking on it until it comes You don't have to do everything right up front. When you are able to like schedule weeks in advance, you can sometimes give yourself some time to let it stew in the background. That can be useful. But anyway, it all goes on the calendar. and then this is the beautiful thing. And Brooke Castillo teaches this. This is her throw away the to-do list is what she calls it. And that's exactly what you do is you take that list and you crumple it up and you throw it away and it's gone. It's all on the calendar. It's all planned for the week and you don't have to think about it any more, or look at this long list of [00:39:00] things anymore. And eventually as you get good at following your calendar, you know, that you're done, putting it on the calendar is as good as done. And you start to build this relationship of trust with yourself and with other people where, you know, you can say you're going to do something and you know, it's going to happen and you can count on you. To make those things happen. 

[00:39:22] Kent Thalman: [00:39:22] And you might notice that when you actually plan a balanced life into a week, a lot less of it is spent trying to make money. Then you might think most of us spend eight, 10, 12, 14. If you're going over time on a film set hours, just making money. I'm trying to get our careers forward, but a career is one small part of a life. And so that might surprise you. You might say, wow, this looks very different. Now it might not look that way immediately. 

[00:39:49] Anna Thalman: [00:39:49] it does take some time sometimes to catch up if you've got a big backlog of history, not doing this, but once you get to a pretty steady place, what's also beautiful as you start to [00:40:00] plan in. Spare time for you, like free time or things you want to do. We've been really enjoying taking piano lessons and practicing piano in the evenings. Yeah. A lot more. I'm really enjoying that. I'm getting time 

[00:40:14] Kent Thalman: [00:40:14] I did practice today 

[00:40:15] Anna Thalman: [00:40:15] On the weekend to do home projects. We're having friends over, 

[00:40:19] Kent Thalman: [00:40:19] we're recording this podcast

[00:40:20] Anna Thalman: [00:40:20] having time to take a nap and relax.

[00:40:22]Kent Thalman: [00:40:22] we don't have most days by the way. 

[00:40:24] Anna Thalman: [00:40:24] Yeah. But on Sunday I get a nap and that's really nice. 

[00:40:27] Kent Thalman: [00:40:27] You're welcome. 

[00:40:28] Anna Thalman: [00:40:28] So all of this is because we plan in advance and we can get stuff done and have time for it. 

[00:40:34]Kent Thalman: [00:40:34] and when crazy urgent emergencies, like things happen, which they do. And that's okay. You still know that you're getting the most important things done and that you have a plan and that when you're deviating from it, you're doing it intentionally. You're not just living life by the seat of your pants sort of life dictating to you what you're going to do when. You can live just a little more intentionally and feel a little more ownership over your [00:41:00] own agency and the direction of your own life. So let's wrap it up. We want to invite you to join the film and family program. Get this full course and access to it where we're going to go into even more detail. 

[00:41:13] Anna Thalman: [00:41:13] We're going to talk. I mean, we don't have time to do this today, but just so you know, some of the things that the course will cover, that we didn't get to are how to be flexible with kids by planning. You know, sometimes it's just two or three more, two times or three times as much time to get stuff done. But we'll talk about that. We'll talk about what to do when something doesn't get done on your calendar and how to move forward from that. We'll talk about, The very detailed specifics of this process. We'll talk about evaluating your calendar and like how you can keep an ongoing sort of log to see how you're doing. and just a lot more detailed on these topics so

[00:41:47] Kent Thalman: [00:41:47] and the more powerful thoughts around time itself, which that's what we're all about. Those thoughts are truly the most valuable part of the course. And [00:42:00] hopefully we've shared some of those that are very, very powerful in this, episode, but. Once again, the reason those thoughts are the most valuable part of the course is because that's the top. Investment category, which is your mind. And when you understand those principles of truth in your mind, and they are stored into that long-term memory, your to-do list, not stored in your long-term memory. Then you have power over your time. And when you have power over your time, You have power over your money and that's the way it works 

[00:42:27] Anna Thalman: [00:42:27] your life managing your time is managing your life. it's a big part of creating the life you want to have, and that all starts in your mind with your beliefs around time and how you approach it. So 

[00:42:38] Kent Thalman: [00:42:38] awesome

[00:42:38] Anna Thalman: [00:42:38] definitely we'll get into that. yeah. 

[00:42:41] Kent Thalman: [00:42:41] Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and we really hope you like what you're learning on this podcast. If so you could give us a compliment by giving us a five-star review or referral is always, share this with your friends. If you know anyone that you'd know that you think could be, benefiting from either this specific episode, which [00:43:00] I mean who any human that lives in the fourth dimension of time in a linear fashion. You can refer that to those people that, you know, that fit, that category. So, and, five star reviews are helpful because you know, it just helps. So, 

[00:43:13] Anna Thalman: [00:43:13] and we've already mentioned the film and family lifetime membership for more information about that, you can click the link in the show notes to learn some more. And thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. 

[00:43:25] Kent Thalman: [00:43:25] Bye 

[00:43:26] Anna Thalman: [00:43:26] bye.