165 Work + Life Harmony Podcast Celebrates 3 Years! Your Questions Answered

Work + Life Harmony podcast officially hit 3 years!

I'm Megan Sumrell, host of the Work + Life Harmony podcast and creator of the TOP Program and TOP Planner. I'm also a mom and wife, and just like you, I'm juggling all the things while running multiple businesses and a family. I started the Work + Life Harmony podcast because I wanted to help women like you master their time, planning, and organization so they could live a life of harmony.

On this fun episode, I went live and invited my audience to join and ask me any questions, and I mean any! From one of the most unexpected or unusual subjects I've covered on the podcast to what have been my most embarrassing moments. Join the fun and listen in to this celebratory episode.

Listen to the episode here!

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I’d be honored and grateful if you would head over to iTunes to leave a review and let other female entrepreneurs know what you learned! While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:04]
Welcome to the Work Life Harmony podcast. I'm your host, Megan Sumrell, and the creator of the Top program and top Planner, teaching all things time management, organization, and productivity for women. I'm also a mom and wife, and just like you, I'm juggling hashtag all the things while running multiple businesses and a family. Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out.

[00:00:25]
There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. This is your show to learn from me and other amazing women how to master your time, planning, and organization, to skyrocket your productivity so you can have Worklife Harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you. And if you're new here, I'd love to get you started with my Work Life Harmony assessment.

[00:00:49]
All you have to do is DM me on Instagram at Megan summerl with the word Harmony, and my team will send it right over.

[00:00:59]
All right, everyone, here we are, celebrating the three year anniversary of the Work Life Harmony podcast. I am tickled pink that so many of you opted to come here, celebrate with me, join in on the fun. We've been collecting questions from so many of you over the last several days. Some of them have made me chuckle. It's a great variety of some time management stuff, some personal stuff.

[00:01:26]
And if you have a question you want me to answer that you did not submit ahead of time, please do not hesitate to open up the Q and A. If you're with me here live, celebrating and throw any questions that you want me to answer in the Q and A there as well, and I will be happy to tackle those. I'm going to get started on a couple of our questions, and then I am going to pause to announce a winner of a $50 Amazon gift card as a thank you for submitting reviews and your feedback on the podcast as well. Thank you, Sandy, so much. Before I jump into the questions, I'm going to give this super, super fast story of just how this podcast came to be.

[00:02:04]
So, again, I just mentioned on it was actually Sunday night, today's, Tuesday here. That was the official three year anniversary of the launch of the podcast. But obviously, it took me a couple months to actually have it ready to turn live. And so shortly after really going all in on this Worklife Harmony movement, I started getting requests from women inside of my Top program, just wanting more regular content. And so several people said, when are you going to start a podcast?

[00:02:33]
When you're going to start a podcast? And it had been in the back of my mind. And as I teach inside the Top program, I always teach about how we keep a backlog of stuff that we want to work on we keep it prioritized and over the months, slowly but surely, this idea of starting a podcast worked its way up until it was at the top of the list. I knew absolutely nothing about podcasting when I decided to go for it. So it was one of those dreams of mine that required a lot of research, a lot of mistakes, a lot of bumps in the road.

[00:03:04]
When I go back and listen to some of those first early podcasts, you cringe a little bit. I feel like we have come such a long way here together over the last three years. And I just want to thank you for continuing to tune in with me each week. I'm proud of the fact that since we've launched, we have not missed one week. Every Tuesday morning, we drop a new episode here in the podcast.

[00:03:26]
I do want to give a shout out to the amazing David. He has edited every single podcast episode of mine from its inception. So David, when you're listening to this, shout out to you and also a big thank you to all the amazing women that work with me here at the The Pink Bee. None of this would be possible without them. Thank you, Mimi.

[00:03:46]
I am proud of that. Alright, so let's dive into some of your questions. I'm going to tackle the ones that were sent ahead of time and then I'm going to shift gears over here to the Q and A. These are in no particular order and I have kept track of all of the ones that were submitted here. So let's go ahead and get started.

[00:04:05]
This first question makes me laugh because it's something I hate. It says, what does your meal planning look like? Do you do this weekly or monthly? Do you meal prep ahead of time? I hate meal planning.

[00:04:17]
I hate meal prep. I'm usually pretty honest about that. I have tried many things about doing meal prep or like, hey, on Sunday you do a bunch of stuff in the kitchen. That is my definition of health. So I do not do meal prep on the weekends like that.

[00:04:32]
That said, my husband and I do typically sit down on Sunday and plan out what our dinners are going to be like Sunday through Thursday night. Get a whole grocery list together, make sure we have food for breakfast and lunch, and try and go to the grocery store once on Sunday and that gets us through to the following Friday. We do try and cook things that we can leverage our leftovers and all of that. I am married to an amazing cook, so we do kind of split some of the regular weeknight cooking, but I don't enjoy it. I don't like the cooking, I don't like the meal planning, I don't like the meal prep.

[00:05:05]
Truth be told, I would happily throw in a frozen microwave dinner every single night and be totally content with that. Let's see. I love this question. What has been your most unexpected or unusual podcast subject? I get pitched a lot of topics and unusual subjects and if they have nothing to do with time management, organizational productivity, we kind of gloss over it.

[00:05:31]
But I think one of the most interesting ones that was pitched and you guys have heard the episodes, it's something I'd never heard of was when someone reached out to me wanting to talk about this concept of cycle thinking and productivity, how women with our monthly cycles actually impacts our productivity. And I thought that was something really interesting and something I learned a lot from. So I really probably picked that. Let's see another question. Hubby has planned a lot of travel for us in the upcoming months.

[00:05:58]
How do I plan times in between best so I don't feel like I'm always in catch up mode when home, piles of mail, etc. So I will tell you one of the things I train a lot on around travel to make sure there's nothing worse than going on a trip, especially when it's vacation and then coming home and feeling like what was the point? It just wasn't worth it because there's so much waiting for us. I always do what I call book ending my trips. So if I am leaving on a Tuesday, as soon as I know that trip is booked, I will block my calendar on Monday to prevent any appointments or meetings coming in.

[00:06:32]
So I know I have all day to kind of prep and get things ready to go and then I do the same on the return. So if I were to fly home on a Thursday, say I will block all day Friday, preventing any appointments, calendar, anything coming into my schedule, so that I always know that my first day back from a trip is really to get through the mail. The email just my goal is always that first full day home to feel like at the end of the day, like, okay, I know what needs to happen, and I have a good weekly plan ahead of me. I hope that was helpful. Let's see, you said we could ask you anything.

[00:07:08]
How did the color pink and the bee become your signatures for worklife harmony? And another question came in similar to this that said, the pink B is a unique name for your business. How did that come about? So I have always loved the color pink. I actually did a podcast episode on why I like pink so much, but it is a color that I love.

[00:07:29]
I wish that I feel like there becomes when girls are little or kids are little, it's okay to say you love the color pink, but then suddenly you become an adult and it's considered like a sign of weakness or something. I think that's absolutely nuts. I think pink is incredibly powerful. I love all shades of it. I feel like between the soft pinks and the hot pinks, it catches all of my moods and I love just that very feminine, caring side that I think of when I think of pink.

[00:07:56]
Meaning I love that you love pink as well. Now, the bee actually came about so several years ago, I was the cofounder of a software company that was called My Beehive. And so we picked that name after doing a lot of research on bees, the hive community, all of that. And I was very connected to everything that the bee and the queen bee symbolized. And so I started, you know, people started sending me bees stuff and I loved it.

[00:08:25]
That software company was sunsetted. But my love of bees continued on. And so when the time came for me to no longer just run this business as my own name, I decided to take two things that I loved, that I feel really represent a lot of what we talk about here in the Worklife Harmony community by bringing in pink and the bee. And so the The Pink Bee came to be no pun intended. The one tricky thing with it is it's really hard to find things that are bees that are pink, right?

[00:08:59]
So when I can find something that has a bee and actually isn't pink, I absolutely love it. Alright, how do you stay motivated on long projects? Motivation is always such an interesting thing to talk about because let's face it, nobody else can really motivate us but ourselves. And I will be the first to admit, I do not always stay motivated on long projects. I am human, guys.

[00:09:26]
There are days where I don't and I'll be honest and say I might be in the middle of a long project and I'm like, I'm not doing it today. I will say what I feel is a real key to my success on actually completing those longer projects, even ones that I don't love every step of the way is twofold, one and how I plan for them. I am really good and it's what I teach in a program as well about not overbooking and over scheduling and getting unrealistic. So I would rather take three months to get something done and finish it, not feeling exhausted than getting it done in five weeks time and feeling absolutely miserable at the end of it. And so that kind of ties into the second thing of how I stay motivated is, again, I really work very hard not to overbook or over commit because I know for me, one of the things that will suck my motivation out is when I'm feeling like there's just too much.

[00:10:27]
My weekly plan, my schedule, always surprises people when they see it. It's very light, but because it's very light, it allows me to stay laser focused on the things that need to get done instead of juggling 20 things at once. So I would say it really is a mixture of how I plan for it, how I don't overbook, and then how I'm not trying to juggle too many things at once that can absolutely zap your motivation as well. All right, this question is thank you for saying this. It says, I really like your haircut.

[00:11:03]
Have you always worn short hair? Is your hair thicker? Fine. I have tremendously thick hair. Whenever I go in for a haircut, they actually use thinning shears.

[00:11:12]
He says he usually will take out up to 60% of my hair. I have very, very thick hair. It has not always been worn short. When my husband and I got married 16 years ago, I would say my hair was all the way down the chest area. I had long hair when my daughter was born, and it was just a lot.

[00:11:33]
And so I just kind of started cutting it shorter and shorter and always wanted short, like, really short hair, but was nervous to do it. And so I finally got up to a bob, and I remember when my daughter was about three, three or four, that I cut it off when she was heavy. Princess Gage and I came in from into the house from getting my hair cut, and she took one look at me and started sobbing because she said it wasn't beautiful anymore. But again, that's the three or four year old princess you she's fine with my hair now. I'm not sure if I'll ever grow it back out.

[00:12:04]
I really do love the short hair. All right, so someone mentioned saying this question is one I really want answered. How do you regain momentum when a project has stalled? I think that there are some similarities here in the question on how do you stay motivated on long projects, but there are other ones where it's just flatout stalled out. Right.

[00:12:28]
So maybe you had momentum going, and something externally came in and made you like you had to stop. Right. And the longer we step away from being a momentum on something, the harder it can be for us to come back and get that momentum going. So one of the things that I teach and that I do again, anything I teach people to do, I do myself. So the little kind of one pager that I will work through whenever I'm working on a big project and I'm breaking it out and getting a plan in place, the very first thing that gets written down is why I want to do this and how I will feel when it's done.

[00:13:08]
And so if I am lacking motivation or if something is stalled out and now I've kind of, like, got to reinvigorate myself to reengage, I go back and read what I wrote down on why is this important to me, why am I doing it, and how will I feel when it actually gets completed? Now, if I've had to take a long step away, sometimes it's hard to get that momentum going. So when I'm getting it back into my weekly plan, I may choose to start small. I may just say, you know what? I'm only going to spend 1 hour on it this week, and then next week be able to spend two, and then possibly be able to spend three.

[00:13:47]
So I'll kind of build it back up as I go. But the real key for me is always putting the thought around why I'm doing something and then how I will feel when it's done. And I will read that over and over and over, okay, someone did write in and ask me to share what is my most embarrassing moment. And it was funny because when I saw that, I couldn't think of any yet. I know I've had a million embarrassing moments in my life.

[00:14:18]
So this evening, my husband and I were making dinner, and I was like, yeah, I don't know what to say for my most embarrassing moment. And he's like, I do. So he reminded me of one. And yeah, I would say this tops my list of most embarrassing moments. Actually, I guess my husband and I were married, but it was before my daughter was born.

[00:14:37]
And at that time I was in a consulting position, and so I was traveling a lot. So I was spending upwards of three weeks of every month on the road. So I usually have one week at home, three weeks on the road. And so I got my travel routine down pat, my luggage miles, getting in and out of airports, get in out of hotels really quickly, and I believe I was in Texas on a trip. And I have used for years an electric toothbrush, the oral B electric toothbrush.

[00:15:05]
I love that toothbrush. I love it so much I travel with it. You may see where this is going, you may not. So it was one morning, I was packing up, leaving the hotel, so I was going to the climate, and I was going to be going to the airport that night. So I had my luggage all packed up, and I had a little rolling bag and my little toy tree carryon bag over my shoulder.

[00:15:24]
And I got into the elevator at the hotel, going down to get breakfast, and it stopped on the next floor, and this huge group of all men came into the elevator. So I'm squished into the back corner, and there's probably like, eight men in full on suits. I was dressed in a suit as well, crammed into the elevator, and my elbow got kind of jostled into the back corner, and my elbow hit the on button for my electric toothbrush. However, imagine you're in an elevator full of men, and you're the only woman, and all of a sudden, a quiet vibration noise starts emanating from the ladies bag in the back, and everybody froze, didn't know what to do. And so I finally just quietly said, it's just my toothbrush.

[00:16:14]
And everybody started laughing and I think I was 50 shades of red. But I would say that is probably one of my most embarrassing moments. Still makes me chuckle to think about it today. Alright, another question here. Just imagine that one next time you guys travel and you're in an elevator and be careful how you pack your electric toothbrush.

[00:16:36]
Okay? So question. When you are working on your weekly plan, how do you look at your backlog and prioritize your tasks by what needs done that week versus the next week? I really struggle with prioritizing because at times everything seems urgent and important. I think that this is honestly at the crux of what everybody battles with.

[00:16:56]
Right? And the longer we rinse and repeat our weekly planning process, the ultimate goal is to spend as little amount of our time as possible in that place of urgent and instead just be working on things that are important but not last minute. Does it always work that way? Of course not, guys. Life happens.

[00:17:16]
But because I have been doing this for so long, if you were to just go in and do weekly planning for one or two weeks and then step away from it, chances are when you come back, you're going to have a lot of urgent things on your list. But my backlog of things is always in priority order and what's at the top of the list are things that are time sensitive and important. So if something is due in the next two to three weeks, it's going to be at the top of my list. So that when I'm doing my weekly planning, the things that take the top priority for my time is anything that has an impending due date from there with the space that is left, then I will be plugging in with things that are important but don't have impending due dates. Now, sometimes, like, if I've been on a long trip or something and I come back, I may spend two weeks where a lot of my time is really working in that priority one zone before I'm kind of caught up.

[00:18:14]
But when you start to get really good at monthly planning and quarterly planning and you're looking really far out, that is really the kind of final pieces that helps you with your weekly planning so that you get to a point where you really are looking way ahead with our plans. So they all kind of work together. I know that's a little bit of a fuzzy answer, but so much of that is really packed into the entire framework that we teach inside the top program. All right, I do want to take a pause here and announce actually no, we're into our winner here towards the end because I'm not quite sure if she's on Live or not. I'll see if I can check in a little bit.

[00:18:57]
All right, so another question just said, what does my family makeup look like? Immediate family and beyond. I think I'm understanding this question. So you guys all know I have one daughter, she's twelve and my husband. So it's the three of us and our crazy dog Queso here at home.

[00:19:16]
I am the youngest of three, so I have two older sisters. My mom and my dad lives here in North Carolina and my middle sister lives here as well. And then my oldest sister lives up in Virginia. We are all very close. We still are.

[00:19:31]
My two sisters are my two best friends. I am very excited. Next week they will all be here in my home with me for Thanksgiving, which is fantastic. I have well, let's see if I can find a my husband's family and my family. I've got two nieces, 12345 nephews when I marry both my husband's family and mine.

[00:19:53]
And I think one of my crazy fun facts about my family is both of my parents are only children, so I actually don't have any first cousins or aunt or uncles. But I've got tons of second cousins and my daughter has I don't even know how many third cousins through my mom side of the family. So our immediate family is really nice and small. I will be coming back to the Chat here after I get through. We have just a couple more questions that came in ahead of time.

[00:20:18]
All right. I love this question from Tia. It's a little longer, but I think a lot of you will be able to relate to this. I would love to hear more about how as a work at home mom, how I've been able to blend business and home life so beautifully. I appreciate that you say it so beautifully, but believe me, every day it's not beautiful.

[00:20:34]
All right. Work in progress. So wondering how you blend them so you have time for both without feeling like you're shortchanging one or the other. She shared. I have a twelve year old daughter and you'd think that while she was at school I'd be able to get more accomplished, but I find I'm constantly dropping my own stuff without a second thought if anyone needs anything right from me.

[00:20:54]
And I think a lot of people can relate to that because it feels like it's all the time. Right? I feel as if I'm not doing my job as a mother, wife or chief bottle washer unless I take care of all the things first before settling into work on my own goals. And then I have no time or energy left. I feel everything that you are saying, truly.

[00:21:14]
And I see some folks here on Live sharing in the Chat. I can still relate. That was me many years ago. Whatever I was currently working on. I was feeling guilty about what wasn't getting done when I was in Monmouth.

[00:21:27]
I was feeling guilty about work when I was at work. I was feeling guilty about home stuff and so I felt like and this is really the reason where this work life harmony movement for me came from the minute I recognized that I was never a priority in my own life because I was so busy trying to quote, balance, meaning giving equal to everything. What that translated to I was giving equal to absolutely everybody and nothing for myself. So the real shift for me and how I and again, I am a work in progress here as well. I use the systems I teach because if I don't, it will fall apart from me.

[00:22:11]
So some of the key things that have really helped me over the years get better and better at blending this and having harmony is recognizing no two weeks ever look the same for me in terms of where my time and focus is going. I give myself permission to really some weeks lean heavier into work stuff and other weeks need to step back based on priorities. And those priorities are a combination of what is important to me and responsibilities to family and work as well. So part of that for me includes I have pockets of time every day just for myself. If I don't have a little space in between kind of moving from role to role throughout the day, the wheels will fall off for me.

[00:23:11]
And it's not much. It's just little 15 minutes chunks here and there in the evening, it's usually about 20 minutes after dinner and that is what helps me restore and recoup my energy throughout the day. Another huge factor for me is my morning routine. This is why I include training in that inside the Top program. For those of you there, finding the right morning routine for you and your personality type will 100% change your entire day.

[00:23:42]
Days where if something so crazy were to happen that I didn't get any of my morning routine the rest of the day, no matter how great my banana is, will not function right. I really do attribute a great, tremendous key to success for me in making sure that I am doing the activities in the morning that serve me first before I serve anybody else. So anyone at home that is juggling work, kids, all of that, I am for you. And it doesn't need to be an hour or whatever, it can even just be five or ten minutes to create a space for yourself every morning that is solely for you before you are in service to others. Because when you can start your day with that, it's also sending a message and the rest of your family is seeing that you deserve it as well.

[00:24:32]
And that time for you is really, really important. Now, again, this is not meant to be a pitch for the Top program, but the way in which I blend the both so well together isn't how I'm doing my weekly planning if I were not setting, if I were just planning DayToday, it would be an absolute holy disaster. So the weekly planning and the monthly planning are what absolutely keeps me in check to help me constantly be redefining each week what that harmony is going to look like. And I love watching other women in the community as they start to really match your weekly and monthly planning, they start to get their rhythms going as well. And it really is life changing.

[00:25:15]
And some folks that are here live are saying that they can relate and that shit sometimes ain't easy. Very well said. Yes. Let's see. Another question similar to this is we'd love to hear your perspective as a mother of a middle schooler and an uber productive business owner on how to find a way to put yourself higher up on the list without feeling stressed and anxious about it.

[00:25:38]
Again, work in progress over here, but I've certainly come a long way. First and foremost is recognizing you are worthy of dedicated time and priorities. Just because in this example you are a mom does not mean that you don't ever get have the right to come first. I'm going to share a little story with you. I think I shared it before.

[00:26:07]
It's been a while though, so we had a real pivotal moment in our family. I think my daughter was eight at the time and things were going a lot smoother. This was maybe five ish. She's a little bit younger, maybe five ish years ago. So I've been in this framework for a while.

[00:26:23]
And I was tucking her in to go to bed one night and she said as I was leaving her room, you know, that like, sweet, sweet, you're almost out the door. Like freedom after a long day. And she said, mom, you're like, yeah. And she said, Sometimes I feel like you like work more than being with me. Yeah.

[00:26:45]
Any moms out there? That was like dagger to the heart when she said that. It hurt. It hurt a lot. And I paused for a minute and went back in and sat down on the side of her bed.

[00:26:57]
And before jumping into like, you want to go into defense mode, thankfully a little voice spoke to me and just said, Just ask why. So I asked her and I said, Why do you feel that way? And so she said, and we've been playing cards that day. We played a lot of crazy ace. And she said, sometimes I feel like you would rather go do a project at your computer than play another game of cards with me.

[00:27:21]
And we have had a moment that day where we've been playing cards for a while. And I told her we have to buy an hour to play game and then I need to go do something at my desk for 30 minutes. So it was fresh on her mind from that day. She. Did not like that.

[00:27:33]
We had to end playing cards, and it was time for me to go get something done for work for about 30 minutes. And so my daughter obviously calls me mom. My husband calls me Megan. And so I explained it to her this way. And so I said, you know, before I met your dad, I was just Megan.

[00:27:50]
Like, everybody just called me Megan. And I told her a bunch of stuff that I like to do for fun things, how I occupied my time when I was just me. I said, and then I married your dad, and he calls Megan. And so then there were things that Megan would do. We'd go on dates and do some fun stuff together.

[00:28:07]
He was teaching me how to golf. But does that mean that Megan just didn't exist anymore? And she's like, well, no. I said, absolutely. I said, I still did the things that I love to do, but then I did some new stuff.

[00:28:18]
Now. It's Meg's. So then several years later, you were born, and so now I got to be mom. But just because mom was now in the picture, should that mean that Megan doesn't exist and Megan doesn't exist anymore? Now, I'll be honest, she had to sit on that one for a few minutes because I knew in her heart she was thinking, heck, yeah, it should be.

[00:28:37]
None of those exist. I just want you to be mom all the time. But it spurred a really good conversation by kind of showing her there are different parts of my life that all have meaning and purpose to me. And so I told her, I said, I love playing cards with you, but also I really love what I do for work. And sometimes I might have been working on a project for a really long time, and I'm so close to finishing.

[00:29:00]
So I said, Imagine if today when we were playing cards, we were right in the heat of the moment, and we knew the game was going to end soon. And I just said we're done. And we never went back and finished it, so that wouldn't feel so good. So sometimes I'm so close to something like that at work that, yes, in that moment, after we've been playing cards for 1 hour, guess what? I actually would rather go finish that project than play cards for another 30 minutes.

[00:29:24]
Now, did she like the answer necessarily? No. But it's given us a really good tool at home that we all still use sometimes when we're all together. And I will say to my family, hey, guys, I just need to go be Megan for about 20 minutes, and then Megan mom is going to be right back. But I honestly would tell you, having the conversation with your children about priorities, because I certainly don't want my daughter to grow up and potentially become a mom one day and never prioritize herself right.

[00:29:58]
I would not wish that for her. So I am hoping that by having these conversations with her now and that by prioritizing me parts of me every single day, that I am showing her that she can have the same as well. And so my wish for you, for whoever wrote this in, is to say you should put yourself at the very top of your list for part of every single day and it should be done without any guilt, stress or anxiety associated with it. Because let's face it, you are a better you when you put yourself first and it allows you to serve others so much better. Right.

[00:30:52]
If I'm feeling stressed or anxious, guess what, I'm not my best self. Right. Who is? And so is it always easy? No, but it is incredibly important that you do that.

[00:31:07]
And I mean, there's some bumps. There's always going to be bumps. There are times where I'm doing something, you know, my family doesn't like it because they want me to be fully with them. But again, this is I know I'm always going to come back to my weekly planning but we have a really great communication sticky note thing in our kitchen where everybody sees these are the key important things going on this week and everybody's on there, we see that everybody is being prioritized. So my hope for you is that you will find a way tomorrow to prioritize you and do it guilt free and use it as an opportunity to have that conversation with everybody in your household.

[00:31:46]
Right. Because everybody should learn to always make sure that there are parts of their life where they are prioritizing themselves. I get a little emotional about that because I'm still a work in progress on that, but I know how incredibly life changing it is when you do that and how important it is and we as women sometimes have a really hard time with it. Right. Alright, another question.

[00:32:09]
What are some podcasts I listen to or people I follow for advice? And the second part of that is do you have a mentor or how did you learn all you know? So let's take a look at what I'm currently listening to here on my phone. Podcast wise. I jump in and out.

[00:32:23]
Sometimes I'll find one and I binge it and I get stuck on it for a really long time. I do love Glenn Doyle's podcast. We can do hard things. I've shared with you all my wrist tattoo that ties back to my niece as well for the love of her book. I do listen to on the business side.

[00:32:40]
Also, I listen to some James Web Moore, the Mind Your Business podcast. I love that. I will listen to some of Russell Brenson's marketing secrets. I have brought Rachel Bailey on our show before. She is a parenting coach and her podcast, Your Parenting Long Game is exceptional.

[00:32:57]
Katie Joy Wells I love her maximized minimalist podcast, Oprah's, Super Soul Conversations, I love those as well. And then two other business ones that I don't listen to all of them, but I do love. Colin Boy's. Expert edge and well oil operations with Stacy Tushell. I also love Mel Robbins.

[00:33:16]
I tend to listen to all of her stuff. I follow her quite a bit as well as far as and I'm always looking for new, fun and interesting ones. As far as do I have a mentor or how did I learn all I know. So yeah, I've lost mentors when it comes to time management, organization and productivity, I don't have a particular mentor for that. It really ties into my background.

[00:33:43]
So I spent over 20 years in the corporate It space where I really leaned into a zone of genius around continuous improvement, process improvement and optimizations. So I served as a software quality architect. I would go into large software teams and basically create harmony out of chaos. We would throw away all the systems and processes they were using to get their products out the door and I would rebuild them from scratch to do them better, faster, cheaper. So over the course of that career, I had a number of certifications.

[00:34:14]
I've been through a good gazillion, different productivity trainings, time management trainings, project management, certifications. And so it's a culmination of all of that, all of the key principles, techniques, brain science, etc. That then I just shifted and said, hey, instead of putting this into software teams, how about I take all these same principles, tools, techniques, brain, science, etc. And apply it to managing calendar and time. So there is no specific mentor there, but it is over 20 years of experience, training, expertise, certifications, all of that.

[00:34:57]
So this framework that I've built is not just like hey, just kind of threw it together. It has a lot of chops and education behind it. As far as a mentor on the business side, yes. So I do follow again a lot of the podcasts that I mentioned and I spent three years in Stacey Trisha's Highlevel Mastermind for business owners. I can't say enough amazing things about that experience.

[00:35:24]
She's phenomenal. And then thankfully I have been blessed to connect with a lot of other female business owners and we do a lot of gettogethers item events, all that kind of stuff. OK, that is what I have some stuff that was sent in ahead of time, but we've still got time here. So I'm going to jump into the chat and the Q and A. Before we do that though, I do want to announce the winner of the $50 Amazon gift card.

[00:35:51]
So our winner for submitting a review of the podcast is Pearl Webcurr. So perl. If you are listening, please send an email to our team. You can just email [email protected] and make sure that we have the right email address for you and we are going to get you that $50 Amazon gift card as a thank you. Alright, let's hop into the Q and A here.

[00:36:19]
I think I already answered. Why did you choose the name the Pink B? So I think we are covered there. All right, so we've got a question from Kimberly. I've recently been given a second full time job supporting over 350 people that are super needy.

[00:36:33]
That sounds exhausting. I have no time to do a time audit and not allowed to work overtime. I'm afraid of dropping the ball and I need a nap after work just to be able to stay up till nine and be here for my son. I'm drowning and ready for a mental breakdown. OK, Kimberly, first, I am sending you a huge, huge hug.

[00:36:54]
This sounds like a very, very hard place to be right now. Any time we get in a place where we feel like I don't even have time to do a time on it, I don't even have time to look at all of it because I'm so busy. I know that this is hard to hear, but that more than anything is a sign that we need to we're overbooked, we're over scheduled and we're going to have to make choices about what we can no longer do. Now, I'm not necessarily saying a time on it is the right thing for you to do right now, although I think it's the easiest way to see where there are some clear wins of stuff to get rid of. And a time on it can simply be keeping like a weekly spread in front of you, just paper and pencil and it can just take a couple of seconds every hour to just write down where that time was spent or even what role that you are in.

[00:37:48]
I would also very much have a conversation any time when I was working in corporate and got to the point where my responsibilities at work were ones that I did not feel were reasonable for me to be able to do in the allotted time was a great opportunity for me to sit down with my supervisor with the conversation of I want to make sure that I am working on things in your priority order. And so I would 100% look to bring in your boss, your supervisor, your manager, whoever that is, and say, hey, I want to make sure I'm feeling very overtaxed and I want to make sure that I'm spending my time each day on the things that are most important. And when you can go through that exercise and list out everything that's on your plate, sometimes the person that is our boss or whoever oftentimes doesn't have that level of insight into just how much we're juggling. And it could be that is a great place to start to open the door of the conversation of there's too much on my plate right now. See, Mimi is asking how did the one notebook about.

[00:39:01]
So Mimi is referring to my one notebook challenge, which guys, we finished our annual planning for the company, and we are going to do it again next year because it seems to be one that you all love. I came about actually teaching it and sharing it all with you when I was actually at a coffee shop one day and someone commented on my notebook. And I like, oh, my gosh, I love to collect notebooks too. And I was like, I know, I love them too. And this woman, very innocently said, how many of them do you have at all times?

[00:39:31]
And she didn't know who I was. I was just there working at Kennedy's. I said, well, one. She's like, what do you mean one? And so we got to talking, and I was telling her why I only had one.

[00:39:41]
And she was like, you're blowing my mind. And so I was like, it was one of those things that I've been doing it for so long, it never occurred to me that this was something that might help other people. So after talking with her, I sat on it for a while and we did the first one notebook challenge, I don't know, maybe 18 months ago, and everybody loved it. So again, that was just something I've been doing for years at work. So I don't even remember inherently being taught that it was just one of the things I did.

[00:40:09]
Let's see, interesting question. I'm not sure how to so the question is, how do you see life entirely? I'm not sure I know even how to answer that. But a follow up question is, how do you see challenges and how have you been able to cope? Again, I'm not quite sure.

[00:40:24]
I want to make sure I get the flavor of this, but for me, if I were to just answer the question, how do I see challenges? Well, first, when a big challenge comes in, again, I'm human. I don't like it. My initial reaction is like but I know that on the other side of it, challenges are an opportunity to learn. Sometimes it's learning what I should be doing.

[00:40:50]
Sometimes it's learning what I should not be doing. I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, every time a challenge comes my way. I just love it because I know it's going to be amazing and I'm going to learn so much. On the other end. They're called challenges for a reason, right?

[00:41:05]
But I do between the support of my family, my faith, I do really know and believe for me that there has not been any challenge. I haven't faced that. On the back end of it, I haven't learned a lot. It doesn't mean that there are some that are still hard to think about. I'm not quite sure if that answers it.

[00:41:27]
It's a deep question there. OOH, I like this one. Where do you see yourself when you're celebrating your six years. So this is our three year work life harmony. Three more years from now.

[00:41:39]
My dream is that, well, obviously the Work Life Harmony podcast is still here. We're doing another live episode. And who knows, maybe if it's actually in person, wouldn't that be amazing? It would be a live in person celebrations. I am still continuing to serve as the CEO of the Pink B in three years.

[00:41:57]
My desire is that I work three days a week, 5 hours a day. That is it. And that the Pink B is a household name when it comes to planning, time management organization. We have big plans for the entire top planner aspect of the business. I don't want to tell you where I see that in three years because I want some of it to be a surprise, but kind of tied to the article that a local news channel just did.

[00:42:23]
I shared with you guys on my email list about I love it. They said, is this the Marie Kondo of time management? So for me, my dream is if I were to tell you I'm going to go Marie Kondo my closet. Like, people know what that means, right? I want people to be able to say, I'm going to go Meg and Summer on my calendar, or I'm going to go be my calendar.

[00:42:41]
I don't know what verb it is. And people will know what that means because this framework, the system, these tools are out there for the masses. So that's my dream. Let's see, TV is a time sucker for me. Do you plan TV time or just have a block of unscheduled time that might fit TV time into the mix?

[00:43:00]
Y'all I love TV. I know it goes against everything productivity people teach, and that's how I unwind and refuel. So, yeah, we tend to watch a TV show every night as a family before bedtime, and then I read some before bed. But yeah, so I do not work in the evenings. This is a special exception for our live event.

[00:43:20]
So, yeah, it's not tons of it, but I do I love me a good Netflix binge and I'm there with you. And then another question with the podcast that I listen to, do they get scheduled in on my plan? No. So for me, listening to podcasts is an area where I multitask. I tend to listen to them when I exercise or if I'm doing chores around the house.

[00:43:40]
So as long as my body's doing something that doesn't need focused attention, that's when I tune into audiobooks and podcasts, sometimes even just in my bathroom in the morning, getting ready, all the podcasts going, all right, let me hop into the chat, then I'll come back into the Q and A. We still have about 15 minutes here. Let me make sure I have not missed anything. Thank you for all the congratulations, everybody. I appreciate that.

[00:44:05]
Yes. And you guys see, I moved my Structures Freedom sign some of the comments in the chat that sincerely Structures Freedom. It absolutely is. And Katie, I'm glad I didn't realize it was you that had submitted the question. She said, It kills me that as soon as you reread the question I submitted, I knew the answer you were going to give.

[00:44:24]
So I guess I am a little bit of a broken record there. All right, so an extension of the prioritization conversation we were having, a question says, I have so many important but not urgent tasks, meaning they're important, but they don't have a due date. Each week I end up doing urgent things and maybe get to one or two of the important, and the log just keeps getting bigger. So that's remote. This is why I call it a backlog.

[00:44:49]
Or you can call it your Placeholder, your things that are on your Mind list or whatever. I have, as of my last count, 160 things on my backlog, of things that I think about, that I might want to do, that I'd love to get started on. Are they all going to get done? No, of course not. Right?

[00:45:08]
I mean, that list is overflowing, but what's interesting is, over the years, things come off that list because something that sounds really cool in the moment when I realize it's not the top priority six months later, I might be like, I don't think that makes sense anymore. And so for me, it's just that holding ground, right, of these are all the things I'm thinking about that I might want to spend my time on in this moment, in this week and this month, in this season. What is most important, what feels most important, and then I view that whole list of all the other stuff as my I just don't want to forget about it space. It's not I have to get it done space. I don't want to forget about it, but it's not as important as what I've decided to work on.

[00:45:53]
And I think when we can come at it from that angle is just most people have all that stuff swirling in their head. Most people, which you guys are not because you're top people, right. Most people don't have that place to keep it all where they can visually see it. If they did, everybody would have lists like that, right? Unless you're just stagnant and not wanting to do anything.

[00:46:17]
So I think it's the key for that. Kelly, is going to be changing your mindset of how you view that and what that list means. I hope that helps. Barbara is asking, where do I keep my weekly checklist and what activities are listed there? So I keep my personal weekly checklist in Trello, the business, our pinky business, has all of our recurring routines and checklists in a piece of software called Click Up.

[00:46:44]
That's our project management software for the team. But I keep mine and check in trello some of the activities that are in there, it ranges from everything, from things I have to do for cleaning my dog's ears to scheduling emails that need to go out to updating some of my favorite things for the newsletter. What are some other ones that are on there? So many of them are on autopilot recording a podcast. I'm always recording ahead on that.

[00:47:14]
So most of the stuff on my weekly checklist these days are business related. The personal stuff that's on my weekly checklist is pretty small because most of the personal stuff I do, I don't need the reminder of the checklist. It's already scheduled in there. It's already part of existing routines or habits. Let's see.

[00:47:34]
Good. I'm glad that was I don't know what you guys are saying. It was a great explanation. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm glad that that was a good explanation. Let's see.

[00:47:42]
Yes. Everyone's saying pearl. Congrats. All right. Another message.

[00:47:45]
Anna is saying, my child is five. Is he too young for this explanation? Oh, I think you're talking about the prioritization. Is there a different way to say it for him to better understand? Now, again, I am not a parenting expert.

[00:47:57]
I don't think it's too little to explain that, ever. I don't think it's ever too young to start the conversations with our kids as saying everybody, we all would have time together, but then everybody also has things for themselves. Right. And each kid is so different that, again, I don't want to give really bad advice on how to have that conversation with your child. Another good thing can be.

[00:48:23]
And so I do this a lot with my daughter. OK, we're going to sit down for 45 minutes and we're going to do this game. And then I'm going to go do whatever for 30 minutes. So I think even stepping into the moment with the boundary, you could even use a timer or a number. We're going to play four rounds of crazy eights, and then I'm going to go for 20 minutes and do blah, blah, blah, and then I'm all yours.

[00:48:44]
Again. So I think a lot of it is just when they're really young is setting those boundaries and communicating them clearly. Because if it's all of a sudden we're done and they were having so much fun, that's what it makes it hard, right? Yeah. I would love for all of you guys to come visit North Carolina.

[00:49:00]
I would love to hold an event here. I live right outside the downtown Raleigh area. I'm in a little town called Carrie. And so, yeah, maybe one day we'll have some big, fun live event. Let's see.

[00:49:10]
Christie's asking, is there info on the one notebook within the top program? No, but I do have it in my app. So if you download the pink B app, the Pink B is just all one word. It's in the App Store and Google Play. One of the little trainings in there is a replay of the last one notebook challenge that we did.

[00:49:26]
So that is in there, and you can get an introduction to it there for you. Rita is asking, where do I keep that backlog list? So my personal one, again, I keep it in Trello. So I keep my checklist on my backlog in Trello. Again, for the business our backlog is in, click up the question asking me, do I schedule every single one of the tasks on my checklist every week?

[00:49:48]
You bet you that's exactly why the checklist is there. Now, there may be a week because I'm on travel or something. Like one of the things on my work checklist is I schedule time every week to go do a quick live training in my free Facebook group. So when I'm doing my weekly plan for the week and I see that item for instance, last week I was on travel, I saw that I was on travel and said, this is not happening this week. So it was an intentional choice of mine to say I'm not doing this this week.

[00:50:17]
But then the following week I'm doing my weekly planning and I see that checklist, then I jump right back in. So, yes, there may be weeks where intentionally it's not getting scheduled, but on regular weeks, that's exactly what the checklist is there for. Holy cow. Guys, I think we're caught up on questions. Oh, wait, one more that I see coming in that says, I know this is a pretty broad question, but how do I quote, let it go?

[00:50:43]
Well, just channel your inner Elsa. Just kidding. How can I not let my circumstances dictate my happiness and mental well being? My former optimistic outlook has been replaced, and I'm really stuck on how to get it back. Just as I feel I'm on the right path, I'm faced with yet another obstacle that seems insurmountable, and I am sending you a big hug as well.

[00:51:03]
Thank you for being honest and open enough to ask this. Again, this is not necessarily my zone of genius, so I am not an expert. And whenever I get questions like this, I typically refer people to the amazing Mindy Heebner. I work with her on mindset. I work with her on a personal level for all of that work as well.

[00:51:22]
She's amazing. But I will tell you one of the things that helps me when I'm in a season of life where it just feels like, man, the hits just keep coming, right? And I like to consider myself a pretty optimistic person. I try and stay positive, but sometimes we have a stage or a season of life where it's really, really hard. Those are the times when I really lean into one of the simple things that I lean into is a gratitude journal.

[00:51:53]
And for me, what that looks like is just to be a pad of paper. Hey, here's an excuse for you to actually go get another notebook. Because it's not a notebook, it's a journal. So it's different. And I keep this on my nightstand.

[00:52:07]
And when I get into bed every night, I have to write down three things I'm grateful for that happened that day. Because there is actual brain science around. If we are thinking of that and physically writing it down right before we go into bed, it will help change a lot of what is going on in between our ears. Then in the morning when I'm getting out of bed, I pick it up and I read the three things I wrote down from the night before. So at least I'm ending my day with recognizing gratitude.

[00:52:39]
And then I am starting my day being thankful for that. Those three things that happened the day before, and sometimes just that little bit when done, consistently starts to build on itself. So I would encourage you, if you have not tried that before, to give it a go. It's free, it's fast, and it really can be tremendously impactful and it's kind of interesting to go back and look at them later in life as well. Let's see, we got another question saying, any tips on how to prevent social media from being a major time thief?

[00:53:19]
Yes to the yes. Katie even replied in there. I've got a phone training in the Pink B app. I was just going to say that. So that app I just mentioned that has the one notebook challenge, there's a training in there on how to set up your phone to minimize distractions.

[00:53:32]
The number one thing that you need to do at all, smartphones, whether you're an Android or an iPhone user, I'm an iPhone person. They all have the capability for you to go into your phone and set limits on apps, app usage, time, however you want to do it. So what's cool is when I first set up my appliances, this gives you the chance to think, how much time am I willing to say I'm okay spending on, let's say, Facebook or Instagram? Those are the two biggest social media outlets. So maybe you decide, you know what?

[00:54:04]
I am okay if I spend 20 minutes a day on Facebook and 20 minutes a day on Instagram, I'm just throwing out random numbers here. You can then go into your phone and set an appliance to say you get 20 minutes a day on each. Now, here's what's cool. Let's say you're out. You pick up your phone, you're like, I don't know what to do.

[00:54:22]
So I'm going to start scrolling and you're looking at Reels and Instagram because God knows I do love some good Reels. What will happen is, if that time limit has hit, the thing is going to pop up and it's going to say, you've hit your app limit for the day, and then the app actually. Looks dark on your screen when you hit it. Now you can like, tap on it and say ignore and continue using. But, man, the first time that happened to me, I was like, wow, I hit my 20 minutes limit already.

[00:54:53]
I didn't want to say ignore. I want to keep going. It was astounding to me how quick I reached that. I will tell you now, it is very, very rare that I ever get a notification on my phone saying I hit my limits because I've been doing it for so long that my brain, I have reprogrammed my brain not to instinctively go do the social media scroll. So definitely check out the training in the app.

[00:55:23]
Kimberley saying, how do I create reels? That is not my wheelhouse. That is not something I train or teach on. There's a ton of experts out there that can do that. But it is something my sisters and I do enjoy doing, is sending each other some of our favorite reels.

[00:55:35]
All right, everyone, we are hitting up here at the end of our hour. I just want to tell you, it means, please know for those of you that are here live with me, I don't take that lightly. It means so much to me that you are finding value in all of the content that I create, that my team helps create, that we put out there. I do not take it lightly. When you choose to spend your most precious commodity, your time with me, it means so, so much.

[00:56:07]
So please know I am committed to continuing my learning, my research, etc. So that I can continue to come here and deliver content, support all of you. The Work Life Harmony podcast is excited for what we have coming here in year four. And for those of you here live, we are going to package this up and it will be released in the podcast next week, so you'll be able to come back and listen to all of it. And again, congratulations to Pearl for winning her $50 Amazon gift card.

[00:56:38]
And here's to an amazing end to 2022 together and an even better 2023. Most importantly, here's to work Life Harmony for everyone. Thank you, guys.

[00:56:55]
Getting on top of all things time management, organization and productivity doesn't have to stop just because this episode is over. If you want onetap access to all of my training and current top podcasts, go to the App Store or Google Play and download the Pink B apps. One word the pink b. It is jam packed with simple yet powerful tips and strategies to get you out of overwhelm and into Harmony. And if you have a question you want me to COVID in a future episode, go to itunes and ask your question in the podcast review section.

[00:57:26]
And while you're there, don't forget to leave a five star review.