22 | Time Isn't The Problem...The Clock Is

If you’ve ever said “there’s just never enough time,” this episode is for you.

After five incredible weeks in Europe, including the most magical days in the Azores and Southern France, I'm finally sharing the lesson that hit me the hardest: we’re not actually short on time… we’re just living by someone else’s schedule.

In this episode, I unpack how our obsession with productivity, discipline, and the 9-to-5 hustle keeps us disconnected from the present moment, and from ourselves. I take you behind the scenes of a typical “island time” day and explain how letting go of the clock helped me reclaim my energy, creativity, and joy.

This is about more than just time management. It’s about nervous system regulation, rewiring our subconscious, honoring your own rhythm, and making peace with the slower seasons. Whether you’re a recovering perfectionist, a burnt-out achiever, or simply someone craving more freedom, this conversation will shift how you move through your day.

We cover:
• Why “slowing down” might be your secret productivity hack
• How presence creates the feeling of more time
• Deconditioning from guilt around when and how you work
• Living by your own rhythm instead of the universal, made-up schedule
• The power of new environments and your own lobster moment

If you’re ready to stop racing the clock and start reclaiming your time, hit play.

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Want to go deeper? Join the waitlist for my July live experience, Free to Roam—a journey for the woman who’s ready to explore, experiment, and become who she was meant to be (one messy step at a time).

Say HI on Instagram: @carlyschade

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Carly): Foreign welcome to Coffee with Carly, your weekly wake up call to a happier, healthier life. I'm your host, Carly Shade and I'm here to uncover how good life can get. Wow, it feels so good to be back. So some of you may know I spent the last five weeks in Europe and I had a lot of pre recorded and scheduled episodes while I was gone. Since I was taking the entire five weeks off, unheard of. But I just got back two days ago and it just feels so good to be back here with you. Even though it's still pre recorded for you guys, it feels good to just be here chatting with you all, recording, sharing some insights on my trip.

0:00:57 - (Carly): So like I said, it is time to kind of start reflecting right when we're in it, when we're on our trip or when you're just in, you know, a change in life, it's hard to really reflect while you're still in it. So I've been home just a few days. I had many, many hours of travel on the way home and was really starting to kind of digest everything I went through. And this trip was life changing for so many reasons.

0:01:24 - (Carly): But my favorite lesson that I want to share with you all today is about time and how this trip shifted my entire relationship. So before we dive in, if you are new here, welcome, welcome to Coffee with Carly. I'm Carly, obviously, maybe not so obvious. And my business is in life coaching and holistic wellness. So my focus is to just help other people build, build a life that they're proud of, right? One that's exciting, scary as hell, makes you feel alive.

0:01:55 - (Carly): It's one that, you know, through nervous system regulation, through these tools that I've learned, we can kind of stop shedding or stop doing what we're supposed to do and we can peel back the layers to like who we are and what we actually want. And so we bridge this idea of just like being building a life that's scary and exciting and makes you feel alive with this science based holistic wellness because it's all connected.

0:02:22 - (Carly): Okay? We are humans, we are dynamic, we are complex, we are all interconnected. And I am only available for growth as the whole woman. So that's what I do. And if you are new, there are a few ways that you can dive deeper into this world. So first, obviously subscribe, follow, make sure you leave a review and just follow along on all my podcast episodes, but you can also join my mailing list. So if you also want to be the first to know when new episodes come out or you just want some weekly insights and tips.

0:02:54 - (Carly): Join my mailing list. It's called the Weekly Brew, and the link for that is at the bottom of the show notes. It's also on my Instagram at Carly Shade. And secondly, I am so excited. Even if you're not new here, this is a new announcement. I am launching a live experience in July, and it's called Free to Roam. And it is all about the power of exploration and how to become who you are meant to be, one messy step at a time.

0:03:26 - (Carly): So if you've ever said something like, I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or you know that you're meant for more, you're just like, so uninspired by your life and you're ready to make a change, but you've been waiting for clarity. This is for you. Okay, so the date is to be determined, but it will be sometime in July. If you're already like, yep, Carly, I love ya. I don't know what this is, but I want to support you. I'm interested.

0:03:52 - (Carly): Hop on our wait list and just shoot me a DM on Instagram and I can send you the link for that so that you can get updates. When it's live, it will be free to join for those who attend live, and then it will be available for purchase afterwards. So it was inspired by my Scotland trip, which is the first part of this Euro trip. And it's going to be so, so good. So I'd love to see you there. Okay, so back to time.

0:04:18 - (Carly): Because I believe our relationship with time is probably one of the most important relationships we have. And this trip really helped me see that in a whole new way. So to paint a picture, here's what a typical day looked like. Let's say in Azores, like, every day was a little different. But like a typical day when I was visiting my friend in Portugal was like this. Okay, so we'd wake up around 10am, have a cup of tea and chat.

0:04:49 - (Carly): Then it'd be time. We're like, okay, let's make some oatmeal. And we kept chatting and then it was time for coffee. Because remember, ladies, we do not have coffee on an empty stomach. And we kept chatting and the next thing you know, it's 2:00pm and we're like, well, we're kind of hungry. So we decide to have a light lunch. And then finally around three or four, we decide to kind of quote, unquote, start our day.

0:05:12 - (Carly): So she lives in this beautiful forest, like, jungle, basically lots of land. So we Sharpened our machetes, and we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon clearing the path to this secret waterfall on her property. Yes, I literally lived in a fairy tale for the last five weeks. More on that later. But after that, we stopped and we swam in the waterfall. And then our bodies told us that we were hungry. So we headed back.

0:05:40 - (Carly): And next thing you know, we're picking veggies from her garden to make for dinner. And it is 9:30pm so we finally eat around 11:30pm and guess what? These were the most magical, relaxed, full days of my life. We were just really living intuitively. And I was just with her for five days, but it felt like we were together for a month. And this time with her. This second half of my trip, really, I feel. I'm so excited because I feel like I just graduated from my own teaching.

0:06:20 - (Carly): Like it was this final piece of the puzzle in my journey this last year and a half. And it was just this lived, felt, embodied experience of what I actually do help others through. And the key was that when we slow down, we actually speed up. Okay. When we are fully present in each moment, all of a sudden time is not lacking. And we stop saying there's just never enough time. And we actually feel like we are creating time. We are. We're the source of it.

0:06:55 - (Carly): But the thing is that we have been taught this universal yet made up schedule for time. Oh, it's time to start work at 9am Yep. Okay. We should be done at 5pm the only time that we allow ourselves has to be early in the morning. And then the only fun that we have that has to be after 5pm, right. We're constantly checking our watches. Oh, it's noon. I should eat lunch. Ah, it's 4:30. I should be finishing up.

0:07:23 - (Carly): Shoot, it's 9:00am I have to get to work. And when we do that, it pulls us out of the now. We're constantly checking, we're constantly looking ahead, we're constantly comparing where we are to this. Again, just like made up schedule of where we should be. And it disconnects us from this, the present. And that is the paradox here. Right. Remember that in slowing down, we actually speed up. Being present is the key to creating time.

0:07:57 - (Carly): And that's how we go from saying, I just don't have time to I've got all the time in the world. And when we really believe that, when we really start to live that our reality shifts. And all of a sudden five days feels like a month. All right, so I'm a big Fan of Seinfeld. Yes, I was a Seinfeld girl and not friends. Don't judge me. But for those who don't know, he's an amazing comedian. And he starts each of his shows, his episodes with like, a little standup bit.

0:08:30 - (Carly): And this just reminds me about one of my favorite ones where he talks about time, right? To kind of further prove my point here, he jokes about how when we never really want to be anywhere, right? We're always rushing. You're at home and you're like, man, I should get out. And then you're out and you're like, ah, you know, I should really be getting back, right? We're just. We're constantly comparing to what we should do again.

0:08:53 - (Carly): And he also talks about how obsessed with saving time we are, right? How can we be the most efficient in every aspect of our lives, every minute of our day, and we're so focused on saving time that we forget to actually enjoy it. But the best time, it's called wasted time, right? He actually even calls it garbage time. It's the moments that look unproductive but feel so deeply alive. And that brings me to the second part of what made this trip so impactful for me.

0:09:27 - (Carly): This was one of the hardest lessons that I've had to walk myself through when I became an entrepreneur, just stepping into a new way of living and a new identity. I left my job because I craved freedom. I craved the ability to move through my day with flow and intuition. I wanted to honor the natural rhythms of my body, of my cycle of being a woman. I also wanted to honor my creativity, right? Like, I wanted to work when I felt inspired.

0:09:56 - (Carly): And over the last few years, I've actually realized that I am a very creative person. But I'm guided by my energy. I can't just sit in a time block and produce, right? It comes to me when I'm in a flow, when I'm in inspiration. And I. When I am in the flow, I want to be in the flow. And fortunately, you know, a year and a half later, I'm here now. But it was not without struggle. There are still days, and there was a lot of days where I felt guilty if I started work at 12pm or if I'm working from 6 to 9pm, like really writing this amazing podcast episode, I would still tell myself, I, I'm being a workaholic, even if I had the whole day to myself.

0:10:41 - (Carly): And that's because I was still judging myself on this universal yet made up schedule. That is what nervous system wiring is. That is the subconscious programming that I've experienced from years of following the 9 to 5, the universal yet made up schedule we all force ourselves to follow. And so this trip, this trip to Europe was. I again, am so excited about it because I feel like it was the final piece of my own journey back to myself, back into a life that felt like mine.

0:11:16 - (Carly): Back into my body, right? Where I was able to make decisions not with my mind, but with my body. And that's how we make decisions that lead us to a life of fulfillment. Because our mind just wants to keep us safe, but our body is where the soul lives. And so that life that you are inspired by, that life that you're proud of, that comes by making decisions with our bodies. And so by putting myself in an entirely new environment, Portugal, France, all the above.

0:11:48 - (Carly): One where I could actually live, feel and experience what I teach, I finally embodied it, right? Like, I got to see someone else doing it first. I got to see my friends who have achieved it successfully and lived intuitively, right? They've slowed down to speed up. And that's also why mentorship matters. That's why environment matters, right? Like, my friends weren't necessarily my mentors, but I got to see it in someone else.

0:12:18 - (Carly): I got to see how. How it works, how it's possible. And then the environment, right, It's. It's really hard to heal in the same environment that made us sick. And that is why your lobster moment is so important. So if you haven't listened to episode one yet, make sure you go back and check it out, because that is where I introduced this idea of my coined term, the lobster moment. But in short, it's that moment of realization and truth, right? That first spark where you realize you've outgrown your old shell, your old environment, your old way of being.

0:12:52 - (Carly): And it means you have to leap. Sometimes movement is necessary, and you have to just plop yourself in a completely new space in order to embody the life that you're ready to live, okay? That's why we have to move before we feel ready. Because if we don't move, then we just keep ourselves sick. So I'm gonna leave you with this. If you feel like you are constantly racing the clock, if you're always behind, if you never feel like you have enough time, maybe it is not that you need more structure.

0:13:25 - (Carly): Maybe you don't need to buy a new planner. Maybe you don't need better time management. Maybe you don't need to just be more disciplined. Maybe you just need to be present. Maybe you need to stop checking the clock, maybe you need to trust that your own body has a rhythm, okay? And when you stop letting time and someone else's schedule dictate your life and you start letting presence lead, you don't lose time, you get it back, you become the source of it.

0:13:58 - (Carly): So if this landed with you, send it to a friend who's been craving a little ease, a little flow in their life who is experiencing the dissonance of wanting to live in freedom and then keeps comparing themselves to this universal yet made up schedule. And if you have not yet listened to episode one, I highly recommend it. It's the one labeled My Lobster Moment because this episod is really a continuation of that transformation and a little bit more about my story.

0:14:25 - (Carly): So as always everyone thank you for listening and like a good cup of coffee, stay bold, stay balanced and I will see you all next week.