105. The Energy Audit: Where Your Time, Attention, and Self-Trust Are Really Going

Holly Toscanini: Welcome back to How to Lose the Wait I'm your host Holly Toscanini and I want to start today with a question. How many times have you told yourself you'd start something and then you didn't do it? And not because you forgot and certainly not because you stopped caring, but because by the time you got to that part of your day, there was just simply nothing left. tank was empty. If that sounds familiar, I want to offer you something that might be both a little annoying and genuinely freeing. The problem usually isn't time. Most of us have more time than we think. The problem is energy, where it's going, who's getting it, and what's quietly draining it in ways we haven't even stopped to notice. Today's episode is a workshop more than a conversation. I'm gonna walk you through what I call an energy audit, a simple honest look at where your time and attention are actually going and why that someday project of yours keeps getting filed under not yet. We're gonna cover three main places energy tends to leak. And this is where it's going to get a little personal. We're also going to do a seven day tracking practice that takes about three minutes a day. And then we're going to turn what you find into one real decision and one 30 minute start session for the thing you've been waiting to begin. No overhaul, no dramatic reinvention, just a clear picture and one small move. So grab a notebook if you can. And if you're driving, just listen, but Bookmark this and come back to this episode because it works better when you actually do it. All right, let's start with the part that tends to catch people off guard. Here is something I hear constantly. I just don't have time. And I believe that women say this in complete good faith. It feels true, but when I sit with someone and we actually look at where their days are going, what I find almost every time is that time isn't really the issue. What's happening is more like this. The time exists, but by the time it arrives, the person is already gone. You're emotionally depleted, you're decision fatigued, and you're running on whatever's left after everyone and everything, everything else has taken their share. The someday project doesn't happen because it requires something more. Energy, presence, creative attention, and that's already been spent. And here's what makes this particularly hard for midlife women. We're often managing not just our own lives, but the emotional temperature of the people around us. We're tracking how our partner is doing, how our kids are doing, maybe even what our parents need, and how our team is feeling. And we're absorbing stress that really isn't even ours. And we're doing it so automatically that we don't even register it as work. But it is work. It's invisible, constant, and costs something. So when I say I'm too tired to write, to create, to pursue the thing, What we're often really saying is I've given everything I have to everyone else and there's nothing left for me. That's not a time management problem. That's an energy allocation problem. And those really require different solutions. So the goal of this episode is to help you see where your energy is actually going, not where you think it's going and find at least one place where you can reclaim just a little bit of it. Because you don't need a full tank to start. You just need enough to get your engine running. And in my experience, there are three main places where our energy tends to leak the most. And I think of them as the three P's, people, patterns, and promises. Now, the first is people, not people in general. Most of us genuinely love the people in our lives, but there are relationships that cost significantly more than they give. And a lot of us have been so trained to prioritize other people's comfort. that we've stopped even noticing the cost. A people drain can look like being someone's emotional, ⁓ default emotional support person, right? Always available, always absorbing, rarely reciprocated. And it can look a lot like a family dynamic where you tend to manage everyone's reaction so things don't boil over. It can also look like a friendship that feels oddly one-sided when you think about it honestly. or a work relationship that comes with so much emotional labor that you leave every interaction feeling scrapped out. The question I want you to sit with today isn't, are these people bad? Because of course they're not. The question is, after you spend time with this person, do you have more energy or do you have less? Do you feel more like yourself or less? The answer is data. Now the second drain is patterns. And those are the habits that slowly drain your attention and quietly keep you in the same loop. Doom scrolling when you're already depleted, because it's easier than sitting with your own thoughts, however uncomfortable they might be. Or maybe for you, it's overthinking decisions instead of just making them. Or perfectionism, that version that looks like high standards, but is actually a way of never actually having to start because you can't fail what you haven't begun, right? or maybe for you it's saying yes automatically and then spending the next three days dreading the thing you agreed to do. None of these are moral failures. They're just coping strategies that made sense at some point and have just outlived their usefulness. But they do cost you, mostly in time, but also in the background hum of self-criticism that follows them. Now the third drain, and this is the one that tends to land the hardest, is the promises you make to yourself and don't keep. I'll rest tonight. And then you don't. I'll stop checking my email at six. And then you don't. I'll start the thing I wanted to do this weekend. And then you don't. Each of these broken micro agreements feels small in the moment, but they add up into something significant, a quiet erosion of self-trust. Your nervous system starts to learn that your own word just isn't reliable. That when you say you're going to do something for yourself, it's probably not going to happen. And that's not just disappointing, it's destabilizing. Because when you don't trust yourself, everything feels harder. Every decision gets second-guessed. Every new commitment feels like another promise you might not keep. And this is why the Someday Project stalls out. Not because you don't care, but because somewhere underneath the not enough time story is a quieter one. I've let myself down enough times that I'm not sure I believe myself anymore. But the good news is that this can change and it changes through very small acts, not grand ones, which brings us to the practical part. This is your one assignment for the next week. And I want to underscore that it takes about three minutes a day. This is certainly not another thing to add to an already full plate. It's three minutes of paying attention to something you're already living. So here's what you're going to start tracking. At the end of the day, write down four things. First, The top two or three moments are interactions that drained you. Not a comprehensive list, just the ones that really stood out, like the meeting that left you feeling flat or the conversation that cost you or the hour you spent scrolling instead of resting because you were too tired to make a better choice. Second, one or two moments that gave you energy. Now these matter just as much and a lot of women skip them because they feel minor. They're not like the 10 minute walk that cleared your head or the conversation where you laughed unexpectedly. or the quiet coffee before anybody else in the house woke up. Write those down too. Third, if you make a promise to yourself today, even a tiny one, did you keep it? If not, what got in the way? Not so you can judge yourself, but so you can start to see the pattern. Is it a planning problem? Is it a boundaries problem? Is it something else? And fourth, this one is my favorite, write down one moment when you felt like yourself. Not performing, not managing, not holding things together, just you. For some women, this part is hard. Not because the moment didn't happen, but because it's been so long since they were paying attention to it that it takes a few days to notice. And that's okay. Keep going. After seven days, you'll have something genuinely useful. A picture of your actual energy life, not the one you imagine you have. And that picture is going to tell you things that a thousand productivity tips never could. It'll show you which relationships are costing you the most, which patterns are running on autopilot, and where even in small, quiet ways, you're already nourishing yourself, because that part matters too. You're looking for what to protect, not just change. After seven days, sit down with your log and look for three things. I think of this as the go, shrink, and grow decision. And it sounds simple because it is. Simple is what actually gets used. So first, what's one thing that's just gotta go? This is something that is draining energy you can't really afford to spend right now. And that honestly doesn't need to be there. A recurring commitment that no longer fits your life. ⁓ A group chat that leaves you irritated every single time you open it. Or a habit that you keep defaulting to that reliably makes you feel worse. I wanna be clear that this doesn't have to be dramatic. Going can simply mean just quietly stopping it, opting out, not renewing. Sometimes, It's just closing a tab you've had open for eight months. Second, what's one thing that needs to shrink? This is something you're not going to eliminate. Maybe it's a relationship that matters or a work responsibility or a family obligation, but that you're currently giving more of yourself to than it actually requires. Somewhere you could do maybe 70 % of what you're currently doing and be just as effective. Like where are you over contributing out of habit, anxiety, or the fear of what happens if you pull back even a little bit? Shrinking is where most of the sustainable change happens in my personal experience because it doesn't require a confrontation or a dramatic exit. It just requires deciding to give a little less in one specific place and watching to see if the world actually falls apart. It usually doesn't. And third, what is one thing that needs to grow? This is the part your future self is waiting for. It might be quiet time. It might be creative work. It might be a relationship that nourishes you that you've been neglecting because everyone else and their needs keep crowding it out. Or it might be the someday project, that thing you've been talking about, thinking about, dreaming about, and reliably not starting. And this is where I want to spend the last few minutes because I think it's the most important part. Whatever your someday project is, the book you want to write, the business you want to start, the class you want to take, the creative practice you want to start up again. Maybe even the conversation you keep not having. I want you to commit to one 30 minute start session this week, not a 30 minute work session, a start session. There's a difference. A work session implies progress, output, something to show. A start session has one simple goal, break the seal on the thing to move from, I'm going to do this someday to I have now touched this thing with my hands. And here's how I would structure it. Spend the first five minutes just getting oriented. Clear the physical space. Decide what starting actually means today. Write down the one specific thing you're gonna do in the next 20 minutes. Not everything, one thing. Then spend 20 minutes doing it. Write the first paragraph. Send that email you've been drafting in your head. Sign up for the class. Open the document and type whatever comes out. Draw the first sketch, make the call. Whatever it might be, messy is fine. Incomplete is fine. This is a start, not. a finish. Then spend the last five minutes writing down what you learned and what the next tiny step, the next micro action might be. Not a project plan, just the next thing. Because one of the reasons some day projects stall is that each session ends without a ⁓ clear next step. So the next time you sit down, you have to re-figure out where you were and that friction is usually enough to make you decide today isn't the day after all, right? Now reason this works is not because 30 minutes is a magic number. It's because keeping this one promise to yourself, starting when you said you would, doing the thing you said you would do, it sends a message to your nervous system that your word means something. Trust, especially self-trust, is built exactly the same way. Not through grand gestures, but through small repeated proof that you show up for yourself. And every time you do, the next time gets a little easier. Not dramatically easier, but enough. And here's what I want you to walk away with today. You, my friend, are not lazy, and you are certainly not unmotivated, and you're not someone who just doesn't follow through either. You didn't get where you are being that way, right? You are someone whose energy has been over-allocated for a very long time, probably to people and patterns and everyone else's needs. And the result is that thing you actually want to build keeps getting pushed to the back of the line. This energy audit isn't about finding more willpower either. It's about seeing clearly where your energy is going so you can make one or two intentional decisions to redirect it. So here's what I'd love for you to do this week. Start the seven day energy log, three minutes at the end of each day, drains, gains, promises kept or broken, one moment where you felt like yourself. And then schedule your 30 minute start session. Put it on your calendar like it's a meeting you can't move because it is. It's a meeting with the version of you who stops waiting and starts moving. Now, if you want help getting clearer on where you are right now and what your most important next step is, I've got a little something for you. It's called the five minute midlife confidence quiz, and it's gonna give you a personalized picture of where you are in your reinvention journey, along with a specific action plan delivered to your inbox. It takes only five minutes and it's absolutely free. And the women who have taken it tell me it's one of the clearest things they've done in a while. not because it tells them something they didn't know about themselves, but because it helps them name what they've been circling. You can find it in the show notes. Take the quiz, schedule your 30 minute start session. Just start the thing. Not because the timing is perfect, it's never gonna be, but because you've been waiting long enough. Thank you for being here with me today and until next time, protect your energy like it means something, because it does. And remember, there's nothing left to wait for. Until next time, bye for now.