Does your carefully planned week often get blown off course by Tuesday?
Do you feel like your diary belongs to everyone but you – filled with urgent client demands, last-minute partner requests, and endless firefighting? It’s easy to feel like a victim of your schedule, constantly reacting instead of proactively driving your day.
This feeling of having your time controlled by external forces is incredibly common for busy professionals, but it’s also a major barrier to focusing on what really matters for your career progression.
In this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast, you’ll challenge that ‘victim mindset’ and explore practical ways to start taking back control of your most precious resource – your time.
Listen to this episode to discover:
- The tough truth: Why you are ultimately in control of how you spend your time (even when it doesn’t feel like it!).
- Common ways you might be giving away control without realising it (and the underlying reasons, like firm culture, people-pleasing, or fear).
- Why simply accepting the chaos isn’t sustainable for reaching partnership.
- 6 actionable tactics to regain control
- Stop letting your diary dictate your priorities.
Tune in to learn how to move from feeling reactive and overwhelmed to proactively managing your time and making space for what truly matters on your path to partner.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello and welcome.
How often do you look at your diary and wonder whose day you’re actually living? And can you really get that much in? And when are you actually going to have time to go to the loo, get up away from your desk between calls and meetings?
Does it feel like your carefully laid plans get constantly derailed by last minute requests, urgent client demands or partners dropping things on you unexpectedly? You start the week intending to be proactive, maybe even carve out that crucial time for your career development or business development, like I always recommend. But by Tuesday lunchtime, you’re already feeling overwhelmed, reactive and like you’re just firefighting.
You feel like a victim of your diary, not the master of it.
If that resonates, you’re certainly not alone. This feeling of having your time hijacked is incredibly common in demanding professional services roles. But today we’re going to challenge that feeling and talk about how you can start taking back control.
This is the How To Make Partner, a podcast with me, Heather Townsend. I am the author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life.
In this podcast, I’ll be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress to Partner Academy. New episodes of the podcast are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right, let’s tackle this feeling of being out of control. Just stop a moment and think. How much easier would your life, your career progression be if you’re truly in control of your time? If partners, clients, even family members didn’t seem to sabotage your best intentions? Now, this might be a tough message, but here it is.
Only you can choose what you spend your time on.
Honestly, nobody’s forcing you. Your partners don’t have a gun to your head when they ask you to stay late. You do have a choice, however difficult or unpalatable it might seem in the moment. Far too often, bright, talented professionals fall into playing the victim when it comes to their workload and time. They let stuff get done to them, leading to unhealthy work habits and that constant feeling of being overwhelmed.
Does any of this sound familiar? Do you constantly, maybe, fail to set realistic expectations with clients about deadlines, leaving no buffer for things going wrong?
Avoid telling clients the consequences if they get information to you late and then fail to hold them to those consequences when it matters. Not set aside regular time to systematically delegate and follow up on that delegated work.
Do you hesitate to tell partners about the quality risk of rushing work late at night? Do you maybe yield to pressure to cancel planned holidays because of workload?
We’ve all been there. Maybe you stay silent when a partner’s disorganised style, like sitting on requests until they become urgently, constantly disrupts your own ability to plan. Now, if you mentally ticked yes to several of those, you’re not alone.
But it shows where you might be giving away control.
You know, in my experience, only a tiny minority in professional services firms have truly mastered being in control of their time. Now, let’s be real here. Before you think I’m suggesting career suicide by saying no to everything, let’s be pragmatic. When you are in professional services,
There are times when your time is not your own.
And actually making partner, progressing your career does require hard work. There are times you’ll need to pull out all the stops, say for a deal or a deadline. When you’ve carefully planned your day, interruptions will happen.
Normally after 10am when your partners and clients have sorted out their workload for the day. Life happens, kids get sick, you get sick. we need to accept and plan for these realities. This isn’t about eliminating demands. It’s about moving from a reactive victim stance to a proactive ownership mindset. So why do we fall into this trap?
Why does it happen so often? And actually often boils down to about six or seven things.
So number one, your firm’s culture. You know, an ingrained firm culture where commitment equals long hours and always being available. You know, when you’ve got that, working differently feels risky, like you’re not committed enough. And is this career, you know, it’s a career-limiting mood. Move.
Number two, fear of authority. A reluctance to challenge partners or clients on unrealistic expectations, fearing negative repercussions. You know, there are many firms where you don’t feel that you can challenge partners or clients.
Third thing, what about client service myths? I’ve heard this so often that clients must always feel like they’re the only client the firm has, even if that means setting impossible internal deadlines, that if your client knew what you would do to get that, they would be horrified. But, you know, number next one on the list, people pleasing.
And you know what? The professions really attract people pleasers.
You know, and these are people that are bad at saying no or setting boundaries. Visibility misconceptions, you know, and, you know, how often have you been thinking that if you’re working long hours or seem to be working long hours, this is how you’re going to get noticed positively.
And actually, there’s a little bit of a hint here, spoiler, mic drop moment. It often isn’t if you want to be seen as part of potential. Maybe there’s a fear of speaking up, you know, worrying that voicing concerns will be a black mark on your character or having past experiences where concerns were dismissed or belittled.
Most of us have had that manager, that partner that maybe we have felt dismissed or belittled by there when they’ve pushed back. And maybe just exhaustion, you know, simply being too tired to push back or think strategically about your time, so recognise these patterns is the first step.
In our partnership readiness assessment, it’s a free assessment, links in the show notes, actually shows that only 42% of ambitious professionals feel in control of their day. We’ve had over a thousand people do the partnership readiness assessment. Being in control is what allows you to focus on the stuff that actually progresses your career.
So how do you start taking back control?
And the seven points here, number one, shift your mindset. This was all part of episode two series one. Actively decide that you’re in control. Ditch that victim narrative and remind yourself daily how I spend my time is within my control. This internal mind shift is absolutely key. The next thing is use the flexibility you’ve got.
You know, the move towards hybrid working is a massive opportunity. And yes, firms are trying to get you back to three days, four days in the office. But even saying that, you’d likely have more choice now about where and how you work. So use it. Plan your working day around your most productive periods.
Are you a morning person? Protect that time for deep work. Take proper breaks. Don’t just replicate your old office habits at home. Or maybe if you’re working more in the office, some of your bad habits that you got into from working at home, like back-to-back calls. Third tip is to do proactive planning.
Using that default diary in episode number one, we discussed using a default diary or time blocking as it’s often known in the US. So schedule time, not just for client work, but for planning, delegation, business development and time to work on your career. You know, make appointments with yourself in the diary and keep them.
Point number four, you know, be good at setting expectations up front. So be realistic from the start with clients and partners about timelines, dependencies and potential consequences of delays. And remember to build in those buffers. Or as I like to say from my early career in supply chain management, back pocket time.
It’s so much easier to manage expectations proactively than reactively.
And then this is an important one. Learn to push back constructively. Remember how we talked about in the first episode in this series about saying no gracefully. Revisit those techniques, whether that’s redirecting them, negotiating, offering partial help or buying extra time.
Remember, it’s not about being difficult. It’s about managing your workload realistically and protecting priorities. Your partners, your clients would much prefer that you push back on the timescales than you say yes and don’t deliver. And then there’s systematic delegation, an absolutely key skill if you’re going to demonstrate your readiness for partnership. We talk about that in Chapter 5 of Poised for Partnership.
Effective delegation is key to freeing up your time. And that means diarising time specifically for planning delegation and following up. And really important, don’t just dump tasks. And the last point for taking back control is to hold others accountable gently. You know, if a client is consistently late with information, gently enforce the pre-agreed consequences.
If a partner’s disorganisation impacts you, find a constructive way to feed that back or manage it. For example, practically asking, is there anything coming down the track for Project X I can get started on?
Now, taking back control isn’t about working less hard necessarily. And I know it’s a cliche, but it’s about working smarter.
It’s about being more intentional. It’s about setting boundaries and shifting from feeling like things are happening to you to making conscious choices about how you invest your most valuable resource, your time. Feeling constantly reactive and like your diary is owned by somebody else is exhausting. But it’s a reality for many of us in the professions.
But it’s a major roadblock to career progression. Moving towards feeling in control requires a conscious mindset shift and the consistent application of practical strategies like boundary setting and proactive planning. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, I get it intellectually, but putting it in practice feels hard. I get it. The pressures are real.
And saying no or changing habits feels risky. Then that’s exactly what we designed the how to truly commit to moving your career forward course to address. Helps you build the confidence and practical skills to manage expectations, set boundaries effectively and implement time management strategies like having a default diary.
So you can move from feeling overwhelmed to feeling empowered and in control of your time.
Now, I’ve popped a link to buy the How to Truly Commit to Move Your Career Forward course directly in the show notes for the episode. This course is just one of over 12 on-demand courses in our Progress to Partner Academy.
Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership, and How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. So you can easily find them on Amazon.
And as a thank you for listening, there’s a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress to Partner Academy, where we cover topics like time management, delegation, setting boundaries, difficult conversations, and all the essential skills for taking control of your time and your career path.
Now that’s all for this episode of the How To Make Partner podcast.
What’s one small step you can take this week to feel more in control of your time?
Maybe it’s scheduling 30 minutes for planning or practising one way to push back constructively. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening.
Join my Progress To Partner Academy and access all my courses and use the code PODCASTBP10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
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