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Purposeful Productivity With Tanya Dalton

December 26, 2022

Reading Time: 4 minutes

How to Be Productive with a Purpose featuring Tanya Dalton

How many times have you thought, “I can do it all,” only to realize that you could NOT, in fact, do it all?  We’ve all been there. As mothers, business owners, and women operating in this world, we’re conditioned to believe that we have to do everything ourselves, or we’ve failed in some way.

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“Time is one of those precious commodities that we don’t think about until it’s gone.” 

When a conversation opens with this line… y’all know it’s going to be a good one! Tanya Dalton has worked hard to be conscious with her time and purposeful with her productivity, using what she calls “million-dollar minutes” to prioritize and hold on to the most important parts of her time. 

While life will never be perfectly structured, and there will always be messes, Tanya loves to time block her days while also allowing for flexibility. Because hyperstructure leaves no room for enjoyment! 

This was just one of the many amazing things Tanya and I chatted about. Keep reading to see what else we discussed! 

There’s Magic in the Detours

Most of the time, the detours in life lead you to what you’re really meant to be doing. If you’d told Tanya 10 years ago that she’d be an author and a podcaster, she would have thought you were crazy! 

But the thing about life is that most of us are moving so fast along the highway that we can’t even see our surroundings — it’s a complete blur. 

At some point, though, we take an off-ramp without even realizing it, and find ourselves at a dead stop, staring at a forest and a place we didn’t even know existed. 

These unplanned detours are the perfect moment to take a step back and reassess. Do you like where you are in life? Are you happy with where you’re going? 

Wearing All The Hats Isn’t a Good Thing

As a mom, author, podcaster, entrepreneur, wife, human… Tanya has a lot of hats. But the key for her is to never wear all those hats at once. When she’s at the office, she has her CEO hat on. When she comes home, though, that hat’s off, and the mom hat is on. 

The biggest secret is that you don’t have to do everything. Getting something done 80% well by someone else is so much better than having it done 100% by you (and risking lower quality)! 

Delegate and Automate Where You Can

A key lesson Tanya’s learned over the years is to create automations within her business and delegate where she can. Now, most people know this, but Tanya’s done something else with her automations. 

She’s figured out how to automate things at home

For example, laundry days. As moms, we all know that laundry can be the bane of our existence sometimes. When her kids were little, Tanya made Tuesday laundry day, and started teaching her kids how to sort and do the laundry. 

Now, this wasn’t instantaneous, but eventually, Tanya got her household to a place where she no longer had to do the laundry. Because Tuesday was known to be laundry day, her kids sort and do their laundry automatically. 

“Small Huge Movements”

One of Tanya’s favorite things is what she calls “small huge movements.” Like she did with her kids and laundry day, these are small things you can do every day that will eventually build up and take so much stress off your shoulders! 

And they’ll teach your kids life skills that will be so important later on. For example, my husband and I are teaching our three-year-old to fold towels and washcloths right now. We know we could do this so much faster, but in 10 years or more, these skills will pay off so hugely for her, us, and our entire family! 

This idea also goes for your work life. What are small things you can start teaching your team to do that will eventually become huge? 

I want to remind you all: you DON’T have to do it all! There are people out there who would love to do these things for you (and might just do it even better). 

Team Check-Ins

As part of her small huge moves, Tanya checks in with her team regularly and asks three things: what do they love doing, what do they dislike doing, and what do they wish they could do more of? 

You don’t need a giant team to do these things. When you work on your productivity through the lens of small huge movements, it allows you to do things at light speed. 

For example, Tanya used her small huge movements to scale her business to 7 figures… in under 18 months. 

The Multi-passionate Myth

We’re all multi-passionate. No one loves only one thing. However, Tanya notes that a lot of people will hide behind multi-passionate as a way to mask indecisiveness

See, when you have your hand in everything, you’re not able to give your full attention to anything. 

Instead, try to pull back and see where you can take yourself out of the equation. This doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t do something. It might mean you automating tasks and take the thinking out of it. 

If there’s one thing that I want to leave you with from my conversation with Tanya, it’s this: 

Even the biggest visions can be broken down into little steps. And when you take a big vision, back it up, and take it one step at a time, it’s not a matter of if you’ll get there… 

It’s a matter of when. 

Did you love this conversation? Let me know by leaving a review on the podcast — it helps others find It’s About Time and amazing guests like Tanya! 

In this episode, we talk about:

  • How to find magic in life’s detours
  • The problem with wearing all the hats, all the time
  • Small huge movements and why are they important
  • Creating structure for delegation in your home and your work 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

The Joy Of Missing Out

Tanya’s Website

Tanya’s Podcast – The Intentional Advantage


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