episode 214: the most important life skill nobody is talking about
Ever feel like you're constantly running out of time, energy, or focus? You’re not imagining it—it’s real, and it’s why you feel stretched so thin. In this episode of The Diet Diaries, I break down the time, energy & attention "pie"—a powerful visual to help you understand where your resources are going (and why you’re feeling so drained).
🔹 Why your time and energy are finite (but you treat them like they’re unlimited)
🔹 The sneaky drains stealing your focus—without you even realizing it
🔹 How to reallocate your resources so you can actually make the changes you want
This is the mindset shift no one teaches you (but should). Plus, I share a simple way to map out your own pie and start making shifts today. Press play and let’s get into it.
And here's the link to your free Attention Audit worksheet!
If you're not on my email list and want to be so you can get all the details about the 1:1 coaching spots opening up this week, add your name here.
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Welcome back. It's the Diet Diaries. You probably already know that. You probably know what podcast you're listening to. It's funny, like the little repetitive things that we say. Um, so thank you for listening. I always want to say that's never repetitive or it is, but it's always intentional and thoughtful because I really appreciate, uh, your time, energy, and attention, which is what I'm actually going to talk about today.
Uh, a little meta there. Before I do that, so today, this episode's coming out on Monday, February 3rd. Um, and today is the first day that you can schedule a consultation if you are on my email list, uh, for one to one coaching. Um, and right now I'm opening that only up to people on my email list. Um, and Those folks are also getting a special rate, um, for one to one coaching.
So it's not too late to do that because you've got all this week to book the consults or to get it on the schedule. You don't have to do it this week. You just have to schedule this week. Hopefully that makes [00:02:00] sense. Um, so you can still add your name to the email list, get the email with a link to schedule, um, and have the opportunity to do that.
I have space for three to five new one to one clients, um, and those coaching. that coaching would start, um, towards the end of this month, early March. Um, And we work together for a minimum of six months. That's just the minimum amount of time it takes to really make changes and have them be long term, um, and really get the results that you are after.
So um, those 30 day, four week, six week challenges like are not really going to get you where you want to go for a lot of different reasons. So anyway, um, okay, let's dive in and talk about time, energy, and attention, which is one of the things that. Okay. In coaching, I find myself talking about and working with clients on so much.
Um, because they are invisible resources that are finite [00:03:00] and something that we barely ever think about. Uh, because we can't see them. We can't touch them or taste them or, uh, kind of notice them physically, but they are what basically dictate and control our ability to make progress, to change, um, to really get anything done.
And the thing about time, energy, and attention is they are finite. And I think that is one of the most important concepts to understand about this is they are finite. But we think that they are infinite. So here's what I mean, especially with energy, right? We, my favorite visual for this is thinking of a pie, a pie.
And we are cutting slices of our pie, and each slice of that pie is a piece of our time, a piece of our energy, a piece of our attention, right? You can only cut so many pieces of pie before the pie is gone. [00:04:00] Now to allocate more energy and time, time, energy, and attention to more things, What do you do? You cut smaller and smaller pieces of pie.
The pie doesn't get bigger, the pieces get smaller. And I think that is the crux of it. The pie does not get bigger, the pieces get smaller. But the problem is we think the pie gets bigger. We think we can just keep adding more and adding more and adding more, and our time, energy, and attention will expand to accommodate that.
But it doesn't. The time, energy, and attention is finite, which means we have to work on how we allocate or the sizes of those pieces of pie. If you want to have more time, energy, and attention for something, you don't get a bigger pie. You have to take a piece of A slice, a piece of a slice, and reallocate it to another slice.
So again, I think this visual imagery is super, super helpful to understand the concept of finite versus infinite, [00:05:00] and where our time, energy, and attention comes from. Because think about this. are really, really stressed out. It's, immediately, if you are stressed out, if you've got work stuff going on, your kids are homesick, you have a big deadline coming up, um, you have a sick parent, like, whatever it is that's going on in your life, instantly, it becomes so much harder to do seemingly simple things like, Have protein at breakfast, or fit in a workout, or go to bed at 1030, right?
That stuff, which seems simple in concept, gets really hard to do, even if you've been doing it. Starting it fresh in a stressful situation is challenging, but let's say you've been doing those things, and then something kind of blows up and you're really stressed out. It becomes harder to do those things because you have a lot more time, energy, and attention now going towards that stressful thing.
A much bigger piece of your pie is now going towards something else. If your pie could just expand and get bigger, you would still be able to do those things with [00:06:00] no issue. The reason you can't do them or don't have as much capacity is because the pie doesn't get bigger. It just gets reallocated in a different way.
And that's That's just, that's human nature. That's human existence. That's not wrong or bad or a problem. It's a reality that we have to learn to work with. We have a total kind of misconception, denial about how this works. And then that's how we get into really shitty and hard situations where we're beating ourselves up, ripping ourselves apart.
Why can't I do this? Why aren't I doing this? Why is it so hard for me? I'm so lazy. No, you just don't understand the allocation of your time, energy, and attention. You don't understand that. And I don't mean that in like a mean way, you don't understand. No one ever talks about this. These are life skills.
They teach you like stupid, annoying math in school. No one teaches you this. No one talks about this. These are super important life skills. Quote unquote, soft skills. And understanding this concept is incredibly important because it really starts to, it becomes a tool to really become more objective.
about [00:07:00] what's happening in your life versus being so emotionally wrapped up in it. Not that you can just shut off those emotions, but again, I've talked about this a lot, this becomes a tool that you can use to respond to those emotions and be like, okay, hang on a second. Why am I ripping myself apart here?
I have a lot going on right now. I don't have as much time, energy, and attention to allocate to this thing I want to be doing. And so what can you do about that, right? It's just that this isn't me saying, Oh, something stressful is happening in your life. Just say fuck it because you've got no time, energy, and attention.
We have to start to maybe make some shifts. Maybe you, because you don't have as much time, energy, and attention, let's say, to go towards Meal prep every week. Maybe you do some takeout. Maybe you do some, um, like prepared foods. Maybe you change what you're meal prepping. Maybe you do, I don't know. I mean, this is so personalized, but we have to figure out how to modify that thing so that maybe it takes less time, energy, and attention so that it feels more doable, right?
If you figure, I'm gonna use another pie [00:08:00] analogy. Let's say you've got a quarter of a pie. Let's keep it real simple. And a quarter of that pie goes towards Cooking for your family and then now you have a huge project at work and your mother in law is really ill So you've got two really major stressful things.
Okay, your pie doesn't get bigger You've got to take half of that quarter piece of your pie that you use to cook for your family That time energy attention now has to go to the work project and dealing with taking care of your mother in law So now you've got an eighth of a piece of that pie in terms of time energy and attention to cook for your family So you have to accommodate.
You're not going to be able to do the same thing you were going to do. We have to accommodate. We don't do nothing. We have to figure out what is workable. This is kind of a something is better than nothing. Can your spouse jump in? Can you guys get takeout? Can you get some prepared foods from the local deli to kind of fill in the gap versus cooking everything, right?
And this is just a very kind of random example. Um, [00:09:00] but I just want to help you kind of You can start to think about these visuals, and I've had a couple clients do this, and it's actually, I'm thinking maybe I should make a worksheet for this, is to kind of sit down with your whole pie and start drawing into pieces what are, where does your time, energy, and attention go to, your kids, your job, day to day responsibilities, paying bills, your parents, um, like ma, if you're a mom, like mom responsibilities.
I mean there's so much but you could start to break it down into categories and as I'm talking about this I'm like this could be a really interesting exercise that maybe I can put some structure to for you guys. Which I will give some more thought to. Um, but, right, so the example I just gave is kind of a very, like, specific acute example where there's like a sudden shift in time, energy, and attention.
We are all walking around all day. With feeling frustrated that we're not able to do certain things that we want to do and that's not I'm talking more about kind [00:10:00] of like chronic things and by chronic I mean just like and first of all an unawareness that this is like how we sort of operate as humans Um, but just the way that we are currently using our time energy and attention, right?
You didn't you don't know what you don't know So now that you know You can start to pay attention and really sort of think about this concept and and what I'm what I'm getting at is is starting to identify what are like the sucks or the drains of your time, energy, and attention. What pieces of pie are not really giving you, are not really giving you a payoff, right?
Where are you allocating time, energy, and attention to things that are not really benefiting you? Because when you're doing that, that time, energy, and attention is getting pulled away from things that would benefit you. Because, again, the pie does not expand. The pie is the size of the pie, it doesn't change.
The pieces of the pie get smaller or bigger. And it is up to you to work on that. So if you are spending time, [00:11:00] energy, and attention on stuff that's not really helpful for you, there isn't then additional time, energy, and attention to do for the things that are helpful. The things that are helpful are then just not happening.
So you have to learn to reallocate the time, energy, and attention. Here I'm gonna, I'm gonna do another example, right? If you are staying up really late scrolling on your phone till like midnight, one o'clock in the morning, it doesn't even matter. Whatever late is for you. That could be late for you, that could be early for you.
Whatever late is for you. And so it's much harder for you to get up in the morning. And now you are sleeping in an additional 15, 20, who knows, 30 minutes in the morning. And that's impacting your ability to, let's say, pack your lunch or fit in a short walk, whatever it might be. That is a reallocation of time, energy, and attention, right?
That would be pretty simple and straightforward to kind of rework, but the reason you're not getting up in the morning is because the time, energy, and attention is finite. If it's going towards staying up late, scrolling on your phone,