Kate Christie - Me First

Praise for Kate Christie

We brought together an incredible line-up of international business owners and speakers to inspire our audience of 400+ British female entrepreneurs to back themselves and keep creating amazing businesses. Kate Christie from Time Stylers absolutely met our brief. She is an expert in time investment and an incredibly dynamic speaker. The feedback from all of our audiences was overwhelmingly positive. Kate is an absolute professional.

Ciara Fitzgerald, Innovation and Business Adviser Team Manager, Enterprise Europe Network, Newable

Some speakers are all hype and little substance. Not Kate Christie her content was gold. She showed the audience how to create an extra 30 hours of productive time every month without having to work more hours. Think about that: 30 hours is an extra two or three days that can be used for family time, or for producing results and more income. If time is money, an extra 30 hours per month, 360 hours per year, is worth a fortune to a focused professional. You can understand why our audience took notes furiously!

Gary Pittard, CEO, Pittard

Kate Christie a time saving dynamo a super hero of time management and getting organised.

Kochies Business Builders

We needed a dynamic and engaging speaker to present to our Women in Business customers. A colleague recommended Kate to us and she was both insightful and inspirational. With her vibrant and fun personality, Kate connected with our audience immediately and delivered content that they could use when they get back to their office. Kate was very easy to work with. She delivered clear, strong and practical messages with humour and certainly retained the attention of our guests.

Erika Perkins,
Regional General Manager,
Westpac Retail Banking Victoria

Praise for Me Time

As a mum with a portfolio career, I always burn the candle at both ends. This book made me pause and then hit the Me First button for self care.

Anoushka

Any working mum knows how hard it is to find Me Time. In this book youll find practical strategies to help you recover time for you. Great read and practical tips you can implement immediately.

Caroline

This is a great guide, especially for working moms. Personally I find it really hard to find Me time as I need to take care of my own business and my child. However, this book gives great time-management tips. Kate knows what she is talking about. This book is a must read!

Cynthia

We all want more time - finally a book that delivers!

Katrina

I am a huge fan of Kate Christies work - she is open, honest, funny, and 100 per cent practical - nothing is sugar coated. And when you are a busy mum, wife, professional (and the other 100 hats we wear), you need to hear it straight.

Emma

Work & life are such a juggle and to gain time back to do whats really important is gold. A great read!

Jane

Finally, a book that gives me permission to add Me! to the list of important people that I happily give my precious time and support to.

Sam

KATE
CHRISTIE

First published in 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064

Office also in Melbourne

John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2020

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-730-38400-7

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover design by Wiley

Disclaimer

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

To time-poor women everywhere, its time to start thinking
about your time the way you think about your money:
as a precious, enormously valuable and limited
resource that needs to be consciously invested for
the greatest possible return.

And in memory of Jane Christina Ferris, my beautiful
mum and greatest fan. I miss you.

I published my first book Me Time: The professional womans guide to finding 30 guilt-free hours a month in 2014. It became a best-selling book and literally changed my life. However, a lot of additional life-changing and not-so-life-changing events have occurred in my life since 2014, all of which prompted me to update, enhance and push the concept of Me Time further to embrace a state of Me First:

• My marriage ended after 22 years, and I suddenly found myself a single mum to three teenagers. Everything I had planned for my future, our collective future was suddenly, and quite simply, gone. I personally needed to reframe.
• The Universe, which I must say I had never previously held much store in, was watching closely and decided to give my business a bit of a nudge thank you, Universe.
• My beautiful mum passed away and left a huge hole in our family.
• Having shared my framework The 5 SMART Steps with tens of thousands of people around the world, I have collected so many stories from amazing women, and so many incredible insights that I want to share with you. One of the best things about being an author of a self-help book, and working in an industry where your number-one goal is to educate and motivate people on how to change their lives for the better, is the number of people who willingly share their personal stories with you. It is validating for me, but more importantly, it provides me with so many extra data points I can share with you to help you on your own personal journey to taking control of your time.
• There is more time to be had. In Me Time I promised and delivered 30 hours of lost time a month. In Me First, if you are up for it, there is even more time up for grabs.
• After getting their lost time back, many of my clients want my help in framing the right goals for where they are going to invest their new-found time so I am going to share my goal-setting framework with you, too.

Me Time was a good start. It helped you reflect on your poor time habits, take control of your time by implementing better time habits and to find 30 hours of lost time a month. But its not enough. Because while you may have taken those tentative steps towards prioritising yourself some of the time, you continue to do so with a lot of guilt. Moreover, there is not much point in reclaiming hours of lost time if you are going to waste that time worrying that you are an imposter, that you should be doing better, or judging your self-worth based on someone elses opinion of you and your choices. Nor is it of value to find 30 hours of lost time if you are just going to fill those reclaimed hours doing more and more for others while neglecting yourself.