Women on Instagram shared their biggest work time management pain points with me. Let's cover three of them today!

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

When US society talks about time management, the conversation often assumes the goals of productivity and efficiency. Do more in less time. Move faster. Cram it all in. But here’s the truth I want to unpack today: I believe our real goal for time management (at least for people similar to me) is more peace of mind and clarity and less stress, and less stress isn’t always efficient — and that’s okay.

Today's episode digs into:

• Why American productivity culture gets it wrong by idolizing efficiency as the key to getting the life you want.

• How to reframe your goal so that calm and breathing space (not constant speed) drive your decisions.

• Why creating margin in your day — even if it’s “inefficient” — leads to better quality work, more joy, and less burnout.

• Three practical strategies to help you implement this shift:

  1. Build in padding to your calendar (for commutes, deadlines, and transitions).

  2. Let go of commitments to make space for that padding.

  3. Ask grounding questions like “How do I want my life to feel?” and “What do I want the pace of my life to be?”

As I share in this episode, I still want to do a lot — from running a business to raising kids to having a full life outside of work. But the only way I can do it with any joy is by optimizing for less stress, not more efficiency.

If you’ve ever felt like productivity hacks left you running faster but enjoying less, this episode will give you a fresh, practical framework: optimize for breathing space, not efficiency.

Enrollment for the Bright Method program opens September 10 at 10:00 AM CST. With this 10-week system, you’ll learn how to bring these ideas into your own life using a realistic, calendar-based approach that accounts for everything — personal and professional. Learn more at kellynolan.com/bright.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

Career transitions aren’t just about the potential new job — they ripple into every part of your life. In this episode, I sit down with Sarah Wagoner, a certified leadership and transformation coach, to talk about navigating career changes while also accounting for the realities of your whole life — from raising young kids to caring for aging parents.

We dig into:

• Why you can’t separate your career from your personal life (and how ignoring this leads to burnout).

• The “moment of awakening” many women hit when work no longer feels aligned — often triggered by a new baby, health crisis, or family shift.

• How to use an energy inventory to understand what lights you up at work — and what drains you.

• The importance of knowing your values during your current phase (because values shift!) and using them to guide decisions at work and home.

• Boundaries as a filter — not a wall — and what that looks like in practice for professional women.

• Examples of how Sarah’s clients have designed their careers and leadership roles to fit their real lives — including moving into leadership roles, taking consulting contracts, and saying no to roles that didn’t align.

I especially love Sarah’s approach because it parallels how I teach time management for working moms and professional women: your calendar has to reflect your whole life – the personal and the professional (not just work) – for it to work because your time and energy are limited, and your plans for both have to work together as one has an impact on the other.

If you’re in a season of asking:

• Is this job still right for me?

• Do I even want to move up, or do I miss the individual contributor work I used to love?

• How do I juggle my career and the demands of family life without burning out?

…this episode is for you.

Sarah shares practical tools, grounded strategies, and thought-provoking questions to help you re-meet yourself after big life changes — so your career actually supports the life you want in this chapter.

To connect with Sarah, you can find her at:

• On her website, www.sarahwagoner.com
• On Instagram: @sarahwagonercoaching
• On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahkwagonercareerandleadershipcoach/

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

On Instagram, someone shared that their biggest work time management painpoint was this:

"Hard time focusing during short periods. Brain thinks I need an hour chunk to start. Such a loss."

I very much get this feeling. Let's talk about three things that might help.

Also: my full Bright Method program opens for enrollment on September 10 at 10am CST. Learn all about it here, and let me know if you have any questions!

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

This episode is geared toward the business owner (e.g., attorneys running their own firms, physicians or therapists running their own practices, architects or interior designers running their own businesses) – though I suspect everyone can get something out of it.

As business owners, how we spend our time has an impact on how much revenue and profit we experience. To discuss that with far more expertise than I have, I'm thrilled to have Shanna Skidmore—a business strategist and former Fortune 100 financial advisor—on the podcast to talk about how to build a business in a way that honors your time, your energy, and your life outside of work.

We get into:

• How time and finances intersect in business

• How to define what “enough” looks like for you—and how to use that to guide your business decisions

• How to shift how you use your time in light of your "enough" number and where your time and finances currently stand

• How building processes to help you with workflows and client communications can help – even if you don't want to raise your rates, and so much more.

To learn more about Shanna Skidmore & her wonderful work:

• Here website: shannaskidmore.com,
• More about her podcast, Consider the Wildflowers: shannaskidmore.com/podcast
• Watch her free webinar: shannaskidmore.com/watch

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Kelly's Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow Kelly on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

Click here to get the free back-to-school guide!

Note: The Bright Method is not just for moms, and I try to have most episodes of this podcast apply to everyone – regardless of whether they have kids. But sometimes, the time management challenges associated with kids need to be addressed, so this is one of those episodes. If you are kid-free, feel free to skip this one and tune back in for the next!

Back-to-school season is coming—whether your kids are starting in early August or later (and feel free to save this one for later if you're not ready to think about it yet).

In this episode, I'll walk you through how to make the transition into the school year less stressful, less scramble-y, and more calm. Plus, it'll help you get back to enjoying the rest of your summer knowing you're on top of the upcoming back-to-school season.

Whether you’re already feeling the low hum of logistical stress about supply lists, new routines, haircuts, and first-day emotions—or you’re someone who doesn’t think about it and then ends up scrambling later—this episode will help.

I walk through:

• Why calendaring back-to-school tasks now will help you actually enjoy the rest of your summer more

• Why it’s worth starting with a blank sheet of paper before diving into the guide

• The benefit of calendaring out emotions around transitions (with a powerful story from a client about how it helped her stay calm during a kindergartner meltdown)

• What to do if you already feel like you’ve “missed the boat” on something like a haircut (hint: how to make sure it doesn’t happen again next year)

• A super practical tip from a fellow mom on what to do if a behavior or concern is bothering you now (but may resolve itself soon)

• How to use your calendar to help you have important conversations with your kids—and remember to actually follow through

All of this is a small peek into how the Bright Method works: making the invisible visible, creating clarity through realistic planning, and helping you enjoy the now without dropping the ball later.

→ Grab the free back-to-school calendar guide I mention in this episode: https://kellynolan.com/back-to-school
→ Try the free five-day program (Reset & Refresh): https://kellynolan.com/refresh
→ Explore the full Bright Method program or join the waitlist for September enrollment: https://kellynolan.com/the-bright-method-time-management-course-with-kelly-nolan

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

In this episode, let's discuss what to do when everyone wants your time, so you struggle to find time to dig into the strategic, big-picture work that you know is important.

We talk about:

• Some of my more standard advice—like shutting your door for a focus block or going dark on Slack

• What to try if those tactics aren't working for you

• Why it might make sense to “take a day off” (or 1/2 or 3/4 day off) ... and then not actually take it off & use it for strategic work.

If you’re in a leadership role and feel like you're constantly putting out fires but never getting to that higher-level strategic thinking, I really hope this helps. This episode is designed to help you protect time for that work—so your time use actually matches the leadership role you're in.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.

Ever say yes to something—like a board role, a volunteer opportunity, or a work project—only to find yourself totally overrun with email, meetings, travel, and curveballs that just keep on coming?

Today, I’m talking about how something called the “Diderot Effect” can help us understand time management challenges like this. Originally coined in the consumerism space, the Diderot Effect refers to the domino effect that can happen when one new purchase leads to another and another—like a new dressing gown triggering a living room makeover or a new iPhone triggering all the accessories.

When it comes to time, we do something similar. We say yes to one thing—and suddenly find ourselves buried in the cascade of responsibilities that come with it. In short, it’s the Diderot Effect of time management. And in this episode, I share how you can use this idea to:

• More realistically estimate the true time cost of a new commitment

• Say yes with eyes wide open—and with more informed consent

• Own your decision (and ride the curveballs more steadily)

• And as a corollary, reduce the curveballs in your life

Plus, I touch on the distinction between maker and manager roles, why I think a lot of this comes back to workload, and a great place to start if your days are full of firefighting.

It’s a short episode—but I think it packs a punch.

Resources mentioned:

• Listen to Episode 23 for more on the maker vs. manager distinction

Thanks for being here!

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.