Episode 36: Managing Your Mental Load & Invisible Tasks. Time Management Tips with Kelly Nolan.
Your boss asks you if you have the capacity to take on another project. You say yes but realize later you’ve taken on too much. When we are planning out our work we often forget about the invisible tasks and mental load that also take up time - leaving us feeling overwhelmed and like failures.
In this episode, time management strategies, Kelly Nolan, and I talk about:
How to determine your actual capacity instead of what you think it should be
Why mental load is adding to your overwhelm
How to account for invisible tasks
Why your calendar is the best place for your to-do list
Check out Kelly’s FREE 5 Reset & Refresh Program!
Full Transcript:
Welcome back to the Upgraded Leader Podcast. My name's Nicole Case and your host. As always, today I am so excited to be with my dear friend Kelly Nolan, and we are talking about all things time management and productivity, which I don't think you can have. I. Enough podcast episodes about this topic.
Like I just really don't think you can, especially with Kelly here, because I love her perspective on all of this, and so I'm so excited, Kelly, that you're here. Well, I'm thrilled. Thrilled. Thank you for having me. Yes, absolutely. So first, I just, I think your career journey is just so, so interesting, and I would just love, just if you could just tell us just kind of like where you got started and just kind of like how you've gotten to where you are today.
Sure thing. So I was a patent litigator in Boston and California, and up until that point in my life, I had been decently organized. I used paper planners and felt pretty good. And then I walked into practicing law and just got really overwhelmed pretty quickly. And on the outside I looked like I had it [00:01:00] together, but inside I was stretched.
You know, way too thin, just constantly worried I was gonna drop a ball. Uh, I would be like out at a meal with a friend and like trying to focus and like work thoughts would snag me and I'd be like over there in that corner in my head, but trying to look like I was engaged and I just wasn't enjoying like adult life as much as I wanted to.
Uh, and I looked for a lot of help out there in terms of time and task management and nothing release. Duck. Mm-hmm. And then slowly over time, I started piecing together my own little system, and then I kept practicing live. Like really, it was a system that helped me get to kind of where I thought other people were.
Mm-hmm. And so then I just kept practicing. And then it wasn't until years later that I found out, oh, other people, like feel the way I do. Um, and it kind of happened at around the same time that I also was starting to be unhappy practicing law. We had, I'd loved practicing in Boston, we'd moved to California for my husband's job, and it just wasn't.
In the same spot. And so I was like, you know what, let me try and see if people are interested in learning this. And it is what I've been doing since [00:02:00] 2017. I am the last person anyone would've thought would've jumped from the legal profession to especially run my own thing. Uh, it's like I wanted to be a lawyer since sixth grade.
So it definitely was a big left turn, but it's been awesome and I've really, really enjoyed it. Oh, I love that. I think, I think that's so interesting too. 'cause like, you know, nobody wakes up, you know, when they're six and is like, I wanna be a time management strategist. Right? Like, like nobody says that, but I, but I also love how you said that, like people thought that you had it all like together.
And I totally resonate with that because when I tell people that like, I am not a naturally organized person, they're really surprised by it. Yep. And I'm like, yeah, I. I've been white knuckling this whole thing for a long time and, and similar, like, I've just had to kind of like piece together systems just to kind of keep myself together because it's, it's been important to me to, to succeed and to continue to grow in my career and I knew that that would, I.
That, that would hold me back. [00:03:00] And so I have tried, like you said, I've tried absolutely everything. Paper planners, other courses, just all kinds of, just like different, you know, processes out there. But I love how you specifically describe the Bright Method, which is your, which is your process that, that you've put together.
You describe it as realistic time management, and I love that. So like talk, talk to us about how. This bright method is realistic and how that's different from maybe some other time management systems and processes that are out there? Well, I like emphasizing realistic because I think I, I mean it in two ways.
One is that it's, it's realistic in that it's doable for, and it's really designed for the professional working woman. So it's geared to be realistic for her. Um, it's also, by realistic, I mean, helps her be realistic on what her expectations are to get unin. Mm-hmm. Done in a day. And that can look different for a lot, you know, every person it can look different for.
But for you, like [00:04:00] I think what was tricky for me is when I was practicing law, people would swing by and be like, do you have the bandwidth to take this on? Do you have the capacity to take this on? And I didn't really know what that meant. Like I knew what they meant conceptually, but like from a practical standpoint, like how did I know how full my day was?
I dunno. And, or like, not even my day, like, you know, they're talking about. Taking on a months long case, like mm-hmm. How do I know if, if I have time for that? And so using a system like I teach has helped, you know, and I use, and live and Breathe has taught me of like, oh, okay, I have a more visual objective understanding of what my capacity is and what my workload is.
Mm-hmm. And now I can evaluate whether I have. The time and energy's availability to take something on in a realistic way so that I can keep my schedule realistic as well. So hopefully that wasn't too convoluted of an answer, but that's kind of what I emphasize with the realistic side of it. Yeah, no, I, I love that I, and that, that makes perfect sense for me because I know that that's probably the biggest piece that I struggle with, with time management is that like, I wanna take on [00:05:00] all the things.
I wanna do a lot of things like I. I like staying full and busy and have my hands in a lot of stuff, but like then I like tell myself like, oh yeah, I totally have time for all of that. And like my A D H D brain like cannot like. Like you said, can't conceptualize what? That can't really wrap my head around what does it actually mean to have the bandwidth.
Like I can't wrap my head around that. And I've always also struggled with the idea of like, how long does something actually take? Yep. You know, to do, like, I remember working at, um, I remember working at a job and I was shifting internally from one job to another one. And I needed to pass on my work to, I needed to trans transition my work to someone else.
And they like asked me to like, List out how long it took me to do certain things. I'm like, I don't know. Like that was like the, I remember that was the first time somebody asked me a question like that, and I'm like so confused by it. And then later in my career I worked for, um, a company like that. [00:06:00] The majority of their employees were billable and so they had to like track their time, like to down to the 15 minute.
And I'm like, I could not do that. Like, yeah. That like, I can't, again, I can't wrap my head around like trying to track my time down to that, that amount. Well, and, and even when you do, I mean, I come from the legal world where you're doing every six minutes. Mm-hmm. And like even when you track it, you still don't reflect back on how long did that ultimately take.
Mm-hmm. I mean, even when you're used to that, it's, it still catches you off guard when people ask things like that. Yeah. Or, or, or also even when I was tracking time, they'd be like, even to myself, if I was gonna draft a reply brief or something, I'd be like, I think that'll take me like, You know, 10 hours.
And then when I actually break down all the steps that go into that and guess those and we're better at guessing small things. Yeah. So guess like the bite-sized steps and add it up. It's like, oh, that's gonna take me like 30 hours to do. Okay. Like you just start reevaluating uhhuh and see time more realistically when you do things like that.
Yeah. But I completely [00:07:00] understand what you're talking about. Yeah, absolutely. So like, again, I end up. Inadvertently overextending myself, you know? Yeah. Not in it in some, you know, of course there's sometimes it's like guilt and stuff is in there, but a lot of times just because, oh yeah, that totally sounds doable.
And then I get into it and I'm like, oh, crap. Like totally bit off more than I can chew. Now I've overextended myself. So how do you actually figure out what your real capacity is versus. What you think it should be? What you think it should be? Yeah. Yeah. So obviously this is like a big topic, but I'll do my best to kind of give a good synopsis that's actually practical that you can run with too, is I'm a big believer that time is time is time is time.
Like our personal life and our professional life all draw on the same bank of time, so we have to look at them. Together and holistically, because think often we're tempted to, like, if we just get work under control, then you know things will be better, which is valid. I mean, we spend so much time that it would help, but to really have the help, it has to be [00:08:00] across all.
And so what I like to do is help people first unpack, I. They're invisible to-do list so that we have an understanding of what is your capacity to give to other things. And by your invisible to-do list, I mean, the things that we all do, especially think in your personal life, like mornings and evenings, and I don't mean like the perfect morning routine, that's not what I mean, but like what are you doing in the mornings and the evenings and maybe like midday for lunch or things like that, and what are all those bite-sized steps?
And I don't mean you have to like, Calendar, like brush teeth. But if it's like showering and getting ready, um, if you have kids like packing up lunches or getting kids out the door or whatever that might be, walking a dog. If you have a dog preparing meals, like, because that takes a solid amount of time.
So many of these things, I know it sounds silly to talk about calendaring them, but they never make it into a calendar. They never make it onto a to-do list, but they take up hours of our day, like hours and so. If you're not accounting for them, and instead you see all this white space in your calendar and you beat yourself up because you didn't [00:09:00] get eight hours of work done during, you know, before noon.
But in reality, you didn't have eight hours of work to give before noon. I'm just making this up, but you get the point then. You start getting a better understanding of where your time is already going and what time remains to give to other work. So that's like a first step. And we have invisible to-dos at work as well.
Like email. Email. We often don't calendar time for email, but it takes up hours of our day. So you've, I'm not saying you have to calendar, you know, the average worker spends like 2.6 hours on email and that was in 2012. My guess is it's way more now. Um, but. You know, if you are spending three hours a day on email, you don't need to calendar three hours a day, but could you calendar at least one hour a day to give you that time to really process email and then you can deal with it in nooks and crannies, like email lends itself well too, but those just thinking about what are all the invisible todos, what are all the things I'm doing that aren't on my calendar?
Mm-hmm. And let me start plotting them in. And that's the beautiful part of a digital [00:10:00] calendar. You just repeat it for the days that it makes sense. You can always move it if you wanna move it around. Um, but that can really help you start seeing, oh, these are all the things I'm doing that I wasn't appreciating that I was doing.
So that can really help give you a visual, more realistic understanding of what. Is the remaining capacity you have to give to the one-off things. The next step I would do is to then plot out what your current workload is, kind of, and that I, I hate making things sound easier than they are on the time management front, but you know, really breaking down your projects, plotting out all those bite-sized steps.
So you see, okay, this is my current workload right now. Mm-hmm. Build in some flex time because as we are all very bad at estimating how long things take. And so inevitably we're gonna underestimate, inevitably curve balls are happening. So plot out and physically block flex time in your calendar. And then the final thing I would say, 'cause I know we've been talking a while, is that when you get those new opportunities before you commit [00:11:00] or not commit, is plot out what you think the cost time-wise would be.
So if you're like, I think this will take me. Four hours a week to do this thing. I would plot out six hours a week for it. See where it would go. I mean, you can break it up into the steps, plot it out, and then, and you can always, this is again beautiful part of a digital calendar. You can always delete it, but you see, okay, tentative X, Y, Z project, X, Y, Z, volunteering position, whatever it might be.
And what I love about that is that one you see, Okay, do I have even the time to do this? Mm-hmm. But what else in my life would get booted if I took this on? And that can be, we never, we never are making decisions like this in a vacuum, but we kind of make the decision as if it was in a vacuum, as if it were in a vacuum.
And so it's helpful to see it interact with everything else in there to have, I mean, sometimes you just get that ick feeling when you see what else would have to move around and that there's your answer. And so that can be really helpful and, and it's a opportunity. You don't get to evaluate how you feel [00:12:00] without doing something like that sometimes.
Yeah. No, I love, I love all of that and like you and I have talked, like we do have a really similar approach to time management now, because again, I think my biggest struggle, I think it was really highlighted for me when I moved from my corporate job into the, into my business full-time and I was like, oh, I've got all of this time, you know?
Yep. I'm gonna totally be able to get a, a whole, a whole bunch of stuff done. And like that proved to not be true. And so I really realized that, okay, I need to, I need to figure something out. And so that's when I really started diving into this idea of time management, which is how I met you actually several years ago.
I heard you speak at an event on this top, on this very topic and um, and so this idea of, if we back up just a minute, the idea around calendaring your in the invisible stuff, that's important too. Like, like I, like I calendar, like gym, get ready time, like calendar that if I'm running errands, like I [00:13:00] calendar running errands because.
Because I think we do like, we like if we just put everything on a to-do list and we're like, oh yeah, I can totally get to those things today. And it's like, but if you have all of these other things that take up time like you, that's. You don't have the capacity to do it. And I think ca and I know for me, I'm a super, super visual person, so to have it in a calendar like that Yeah.
To say, listen, you only have 24 hours. Like you cannot make more of that. Like you just can't. Yeah. And so those things, um, those things take, take up. Like that precious resource of time. And so I think that, I think countering those, those invisible things, I think, um, is, is definitely important. The other thing for me, I'll say is it's like, it's not even just the indi invisible stuff.
It's that mental load to yes, that takes up it, it might not take up physical time, but it takes up. I don't know, like energy or like, it, it take, it takes up brain [00:14:00] space basically. Like if it's not on my physical calendar, it still takes up the brain space. Absolutely. And it absolute, it weighs on me. So like I've been, like for instance, I've been trying to make a dentist appointment for weeks for myself, and I keep forgetting to do it and.
It's like sitting right here. It's like sitting right here like, Nicole, you need to, you need to make this dentist this appointment. And I keep forgetting to do it. So then I beat myself up for, for, because like I know today's Friday we're recording this on a Friday. They're closed today, so I can't make it.
So I can't make it today, even if I wanted to, even when I got off this call and wanted to do it. So like, how do we handle. The mental load of some of these other things that, you know, that we need to take on, particularly as women, that we take like, you know, the gr you know, planning meals and making doctor's appointments and vacations, just whatever, all those other, like day-to-day I.
Yeah. Things that also just take up the mental space, not even the mental, not even the physical space on your calendar. Absolutely. I think [00:15:00] a real quick moment for me back when I first started kinda really developing this approach was just accepting my brain does not remember this stuff on its own and it, nor should it, like it has better things to do than be my like alarm clock, you know?
So, Really kind of thinking like, okay, the, the doc, the dentist, I always try and like kind of remove the judgment from it when I mm-hmm. 'cause I have those moments too, right, where I'm like, Ugh, if I had done this earlier, whatever, you know, whatever it might be, they're gonna happen still. But then instead of like beating myself up is just being like, okay, well I can't do it right now, so let me calendar time next.
Tuesday or Wednesday when the offices are open, then it works for me and I'll put that on my calendar now. So that just like gives me, I, I can weirdly let it go if I do that, I'm like, okay, yeah, now I have a reminder to do it when it's gonna work. I can always move it around a little bit, you know, when that time rolls around.
But now I have, I, I don't have to remember, like I can tell my brain, I don't have to remember to do it. But I love your point on a larger scale of the mental [00:16:00] load of this stuff, because I like to think of it like when you work with me, I will clutter up your calendar way more than it used to be. Mm-hmm.
But we are gonna lighten your mind. Like that is really what a lot of it comes down to. And what I love about that is you can see like, was this even realistic in the first place? Like we hold ourselves to this. Standard of like getting all this stuff done or mm-hmm. You know, showing up as this friend in this way or things like that where when we plot it all out in a calendar, we're like, whoa, this wasn't even gonna work at baseline without curve balls.
Yeah. And so that can be huge to figure out, so you can make adjustments. It's also a lot easier to delegate out to other people. So if you have a partner or you have a nanny, or you have a family member who could help with certain things, whatever it might be. Um, but definitely home partners as well. It, it's so valuable to lay everything out that you're trying to do so that it's still a load, but it's not just a mental load.
And then you are more empowered to say like, Hey, I need help with this specific thing. Mm-hmm. And this specific thing. And that would give a lot more freedom. Also [00:17:00] why I'm making it all visual. What I love too is I've had some clients who are like, I don't wanna overwhelm my partner by showing them this.
And I'm like, maybe they need to be a little overwhelmed with how much you are doing. So they understand why you're asking, Hey, can you do this thing and this thing? And that can, that can really help there. So just sharing that on the mental load as well is my goal is to help you. Like, and I think this approach in your approach, Nicole, lightens the mental load, but also helps you share the actual physical load as well.
More, um, in, in addition as well. No, that's such a good point. So first of all, like just calendar, link some, some, some of those mental load things. 'cause I even, I talk a lot about, um, just like journaling and stuff like that. Like when some something's in your head, it's chaos. But when you like, journal it out and like, it, it, there's some magic that happens there.
And so I think you're right that if you've got something that's like, again, weighing on, you put it on your calendar somewhere, you know, and then you're right, like. [00:18:00] It's there, like, you don't have to remember it. It's, it's in your calendar. Your calendar will will remind you of it. And so it's no longer a mental, it's no longer the mental load of, oh, I have to remember to do this.
And I actually really love what you said about like, my brain has better things to do Yeah. Than to be my alarm clock. Because, and I say this to clients all the time about like, whenever they're trying to prioritize their time and the tasks that they're working on, it's like I remind, I, I'm always asking 'em, what is it that you're paid to do?
What are you paid to do? Like your salary is paying you to be the strategic thought leader to think of the direction of this business. You know, whatever it is that you're paid to do. It's probably not to remember to, you know, set a meeting up with someone or to make a doctor's appointment or whatever, like, That's, that's what we have the machines for, right?
That's what for, let's utilize those. Yeah. And I, I, I, this is something that I'm always applying to new situations. So here, I'm just gonna give an example, and [00:19:00] this is gonna sound weird, but like I. My daughter is starting to ride the bus for the first time and it's weirdly stressing me out 'cause it's kind of stressful for her and you know, it is what it is.
Mm-hmm. I literally calendared last night. I'm like, we get I think 30 days to decide, like if we're gonna continue doing it. I got calendared two weeks from today, from yesterday. It was the first day and was like, how is it going? Reevaluate. And until then, I'm not making any decisions about it. I'm letting it go.
I'm still observing and taking in information of how it's going, but I've let myself off the hook of every single day, maybe every hour, 'cause of how stressful it is for me of constantly being like, should we be doing this? Should we be doing this? All this kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. I'm like, let it go. And I do this in my business all the time of, and you could do this in your career or whatever it is, is like, I'm thinking about doing this or.
I don't know if we should be taking on this project, or I don't even know if I wanna stay in this job or whatever it might wanna be, might want want it to be. And really kind of just trying to table it. I know it doesn't work perfectly. I'm again, real realistic. But if you can say, you know what, let me give [00:20:00] this new approach a month shot.
And then we'll reevaluate calendaring that saying, reevaluate this in like a month can really help you let it go exactly what you're talking about full of like journaling and then maybe bridge whatever's coming out of that journaling session for AMU from like an action standpoint and use that calendar to help you bring that to life a little bit more.
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So, One I get really excited about, like new time management and productivity strategies. And what I'm super guilty of is like spending a ton of time like creating this brand new system that I have never used ever in my life. And then like Monday morning rolls around and I like mess it up and then I'm like, Hmm, all done.
Yeah. So like, just forget it. You know? So what are, so that's a huge pitfall for me in terms of like trying to get a handle on, you know, Trying to get a handle on things. So what are some other potential pitfalls that people should be aware of when it comes to either embarking on a [00:21:00] new time management process or just, or just managing their time in general?
Yep. From a general standpoint, I'm a big fan of simplifying. So while, you know, I, I mean, I don't, just to be clear, I don't think time management is like easy or simple. I wish it were, I think we naturally think it should be, and therefore when we're not good at it, we shame ourselves instead of just acknowledging that we're time management's how we manage our entire life and all the things that go into it.
So it's, it's hard. That said, what I mean by simplifying is, Not having a paper planner and a wall calendar and to-do list and post-it notes. And a task management app. And a project management app. And we manage things in our heads and we have our inbox, like it's, don't look around my office right now.
Got, and my husband makes fun of me all the time. My husband actually just yesterday, who was up in my office and he is like, how's that new bulletin board coming? And like, it's like blank. And then I, and then he also got me a whiteboard. And it's blank. And then I have a year calendar over here on this one that I've done [00:22:00] nothing with.
It's, and then all the notebooks and an asana that I haven't looked at in a year. In a year. So yeah. Guilty. Yeah. So that's, and that's, and it's, it's so normal. Like no one taught us how to do this. So it's like there's truly no judgment. And that is exactly how I'm speaking from my own experience. Like that's what I was doing too.
And so what I really encourage you to do is like, go all in on. A system like a system, and you can bridge other things into it. So for example, we were talking about like if you like to journal or if you do use something like Asana or obviously we all use an email inbox and action items are gonna come into there.
Like you're gonna have action items come at you from other places. But bridging them always into a system and building into that system. Time to do that. So you know that I think we both love like a weekly planning session. And so using that weekly planning session to look up and say, okay, where are all my action items right now?
Do I have any meeting notes I haven't processed? [00:23:00] Have I gone through my email inbox and gotten everything from there? Just like kind of going through like, where are all the action items coming at? Me, grabbing them. Mm-hmm. Figuring out, okay, now when am I going to do them in my calendar? And just updating that calendar to be, uh, cohesive and, and, or I should say comprehensive is what I mean.
Yeah. Of all the things you wanna do. What I want you to hear though is that you shouldn't, don't expect yourself to feel the pressure of doing that all the time, because that's a really hard thing to keep up with. And we want, my goal is to help you actually get out there and live life and do the work and that kind of stuff, not just like constantly live in your calendar, making sure it's perfect.
And so what I love about that weekly planning session is, I teach looking ahead at the next two weeks, and so you kind of, you can just throw things into your calendar for, you know, I, I'm not gonna call that dentist for two more weeks, I just don't have the time or, and it's not that important. So let me throw that into two weeks from now, three weeks from now, and deal with it then, oh, I have this idea for this project.
I know we can't do that right now. Let me calendar out three weeks from now, consider starting [00:24:00] to do this, and if I don't wanna do it, I'll punt it out. You can throw stuff into that calendar for down the road, trusting that each week. You're gonna look ahead at the new next two weeks and smooth it out.
You might even look beyond that for deadlines. Um, so you might not be plotting out perfectly the next, you know, couple months, but you'll look ahead at maybe in the next month or two of deadlines and make sure that nothing's coming down the road. That will surprise you and then you smooth things out. So that's, I guess, just to kind of take a step back.
Simplifying down into one system can be hugely helpful. And then building in the maintenance time into that system to help make sure that it's working for you is great. And then you're really smart. Like everyone listening to this, my guess, is very smart. Yeah. And has their own judgment on this. Like if you need to do, if you live in a very fast paced environment at work, you know, you might need to also have another check-in session.
Another time a week so that you're readjusting your plan that you came up with for this week might have to be tweaked on Tuesday afternoon to accommodate changes that have happened. [00:25:00] You, you know, put your own twist on this, but. Simplify down into one system at occasional points. Go look for the other parts of things that you're using, but bring them back into this one system that you're using and then build in that maintenance system knowing that that front end work will have such major payoffs.
You're basically like corralling a lot of the decision making so that the rest of the time you're not in decision fatigue all the time. You just get to execute and do, do do. I love that. And I also, I will also say that when I started putting things like my to-dos onto the calendar, it was such a game changer so that I could move things around easily.
Yep. Because when things are on your to-do list, like you don't get the ability to move things around. That way. So like I, I will say I have felt a little bit less guilt when I look at my calendar. I'm like, Hmm, that block of time that, that I had absolutely for a task that's not gonna happen today. And I just drag it to some, a different spot.
Like, [00:26:00] again, easy peasy and like, and again, the mental load of, oh, I haven't done that thing yet, is like, that mental load is not there because I've just been able to just very easily drag it to something else. I could not agree more because I, I find that surprising. I think the reason I'm, I'm sorry. I was like all excited to talk and jump in, but the reason I find that so surprising is that.
When I first, like, when we talk about time blocking, some people really resist it because they're like, I don't wanna live my life according to boxes that looks super rigid and overstructured and I don't like it. And there are people who teach, put it in your calendar and then you live, you die by calendar.
Like, that's not my approach. And I, it's definitely not your approach either from the sound of it. Mm-hmm. And. What I am so surprised at is by using a system like this, I can be just as spontaneous as I used to be. I'm like, same thing. I'm like, ah, I don't really feel like doing that right now, but I actually enjoy the changed plans more because I can move it.
I might have to move something else into the current time to make it work, but very rarely can I not move it. Like very, very rarely can I be like, oh gosh, this really needs to happen [00:27:00] now. Often I can move it and I can see, okay, this new plan works. It's almost just like a neutral thing. Yeah. I'm like moving it.
I have a now new neutral plan and I can go take that nap or I can go do this different thing that I'm in the mood to do or things like that. And I don't have that guilt or anxiety of can it all still get done? And that is the really beautiful part of this. I could not agree with you more. I know I'm just like repeating what you said, but I really wanna drive it home.
Oh my gosh. We could, we could go on and on, obviously on this topic all day, and I want to like, Allow you to share, like how do you work with people to go deeper on this topic? Because again, like we could be here all day if we wanted to. So how do you, so how do you work with people on this, you know, even further?
Yeah. So I work with professional working women, so a lot of attorneys, women in. Corporate physicians, professors, people like that, and also small business owners. Um, on time management. I run eight week programs twice a year to [00:28:00] walk you step by step through the bright method and learning that. And it's kind of a lot of what we've been talking about today.
You know, really getting clear on the personal and the work and visible to dos, the repetitive tasks, how do you want that to go? When do you wanna hold meetings? All that kind of stuff. And then using a six step process to break down projects. So that you create that realistic game plan, have a better objective sense of your workload, and then really dig into that weekly planning session, which I do think is the cornerstone.
Mm-hmm. Of like any time management system is just having that opportunity to like look up from the. Look ahead and make sure you got it all before you dig back in. Yeah. Um, and then we really work for a couple weeks like building it, like just doing reps with the whole system altogether. Um, so, but if you're more interested in just getting the taste of it, I have a free five day program that people can check out that's called the Reset and Refresh.
You can find it at kelly nolan.com/refresh and it will just help give you very practical strategies through five days to give you a [00:29:00] taste of the whole brain method. I love that. Yeah, we'll definitely, we'll link that in the show note. Out on the website for everyone to go, uh, to go find that, that free five day course.
That sounds amazing. Um, So like, just where can everyone just kind of find you, just in general if they wanna, they wanna learn more and keep following along. Yeah. Well, I hang out most of the time on Instagram. Mm-hmm. So I'm at underscore Kelly Nolan underscore. Um, I know that we like connect on there as well.
And if you have any questions on any of this, if you cannot tell, I like truly loved nerding out on this stuff. So feel free to shoot me a message on there. Um, 'cause I really, really love like digging into it and also helping you really tailor it to you. Yeah. I think that time management is incredibly personal.
Mm-hmm. And even though I teach a system, Everyone tweaks it to have it match them and also match their life phase. 'cause our life, you know, I've used this since I was single as an attorney to dating and married as an attorney, to having two kids and a dog and now running a [00:30:00] business. Like, but it's, it's looked different at every phase of my life and it looks different for every client.
And so if you have questions on like, how would I make this work for me? Like, that's one of the most fun parts of my job, so. Awesome. Feel free to reach out there. Awesome. So good. So good. Kelly, thank you so much for I. Blocking the time to come and, and chat with us about this today. And so excited just to continue to dig in and, and learn more.
Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. It was a true pleasure. Really fun. Awesome. Thanks Kelly.
