the bossbabe podcast - 369. Productivity Expert On How to Eliminate Procrastination, Manage Your Inbox + Be Productive Working At Home w/ Laura Mae Martin (Google Productivity Expert)

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Today Lindsay is joined by Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor, Laura Mae Martin! Laura share’s her advice on how to overcome procrastination, optimizing your inbox with Gmail, stopping unnecessary meetings + calendar hygiene, finding time and space for yourself while being a productive mama!  TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 02:27 - What is Uptime? 03:39 - Productivity at Google 05:39 - Inbox Management 14:30 - Tips for Maintaining Focus 18:48 - Giving Youself Grace 27:11 - Setting Boundaries 28:08 - Keeping Meetings Meaningful 33:46 - Scheduling Social Checkups 35:43 - Remote Working 42:53 - Motherhood and Work 48:18 - Busy is Not Important 51:20 - Wrapping Up! RESOURCES + LINKS Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More. Bossbabe’s NEW Free Guide: Attract Your Dream Coaching Clients  Laura’s Book - Uptime - A Practical Guide To Personal Productivity + Wellbeing FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Lindsay Roselle: @lindsayroselle Laura Mae Martin: @lauramaemartin

I'll get on the call with people and say, I'm at the perfect level of commitment. Then it throws people off so much. They actually like are taken aback. Like, why are you talking that way? Because it's so normal to use the other language. Back to back, slammed, so busy, overcommitted. Yeah. Oh, that's so good.

My dad was like the OG work from home person starting in like 1996. I asked him like, why did you never take your laptop out of your office? He told me that it started because he had to be plugged into ethernet. For all the Gen Z people, the ethernet was what you used to get the internet through. You had to plug a cord into your laptop. I equate bringing work into your home, like inviting your in-laws over. You would not wake up first thing in the morning and invite them into your bed. Neither should you with work and neither should you with email. So smart. I love that. It's such a good hack. Exactly.

Hello, this is Lindsay. Welcome back to the show. Today, I sat down with Laura Mae Martin, who is the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google, and she is also the author of a new book called Uptime, A Practical Guide to Personal Wellbeing and Productivity. This conversation was so, so good. I literally have six or seven pages of notes, things I want to implement myself personally, things I want to implement at Boss Babe, all about time management, productivity. We talked about meetings. We talked about tech-free Tuesdays and breaking the addiction to the first thing you do in the morning being work, the last thing you do at night being work. Talked all about like the remote work environment and how working from home actually might harm your productivity and how to make that better.

We of course talked about motherhood and parenting and how time seems to shrink and accelerate as a parent. And I was left with lots of really actionable things I can go do literally today in my inbox, in my to-do list, in my rhythms of my day to feel so much more productive and feel like I actually own my own time. So this was a really, really good conversation and I really hope you enjoy. Hello, welcome to the Boss Babe podcast. I'm here, I'm Lindsay. This is Lindsay that you're listening to. And I'm here today with Laura Mae Martin, who is the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google and just wrote a book called Uptime, A Practical Guide to Personal Wellbeing and Productivity,

which Natalie and I are so thrilled to read. And like we were talking about before we hit record, Laura, that I think productivity and time management is like the entrepreneur's crux, right? It's something that maybe we don't talk about that much, but it's so, so important. So I'm really excited that you're here and for this conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so excited. So as we jump in, this word uptime, I was reading through everything before we chatted and I was like, this is such a good way of thinking about time management.

So can you give a little bit of background on the word itself and also how you came into being an expert at this and how you think about uptime and time management. Yeah. So uptime in the computer world is the time that your device is on and productive and working and doing its best. And so that's how I define uptime in the book for you and your personal life that everyone knows that feeling where you're kind of like, wow, I'm on top of it. I'm getting things done. I'm feeling good. I'm having new ideas. And, you know, this is the book is about how to both find and sustain that and in your work and personal life. And so the way that it all came about was, you know, I've been at Google about 14 years and started doing all of these trainings on the side of my role. I was a salesperson, but I was training

other people how to manage their email and time. And it just was such a need that people wanted to fill. And I ended up developing the productivity at Google program. And so for the last eight or nine years, I've been doing that and executive coaching and all of these tactics are things that I teach others. I'm so, I'm so intrigued because I think from the outside, you know, at Boss Babe, we work with a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of small business owners, people that are either working by themselves or maybe have a small team. And so when we think about productivity at Google, I'm sure I'm like everybody else. I'm like, oh my gosh, I think of Google as being the ultimate in leading the way

in technology. There must be industry leading productivity and time management practices in a company that size. So in your learning there and like how you came into the role, what were the, where was the need showing up? Like what were the weaknesses? What wasn't working that started to stick out that you were like, hey, we need to start implementing some of these things that you're now famous for and have written this book about? Yeah, I think, like you said, as a company, we're super productive. So as far as, you know, output and products and all of the things that are churning and moving so fast, like any tech company. And I think just the interest and hunger came from personal productivity. So it's that little piece of how do I find the ways that I work best and I become productive?

And those aren't the same for every person. And so I think that the, you know, there wasn't any big downfalls like across the board, everyone is, you know, doing this, but it was more, everyone is feeling the pressure of lots of priorities and lots of demands on their time. So really figuring out, you know, where to spend time and where to find that freedom in their calendar to think and develop and create, because it's really easy to bypass that when, you know, you have all these meetings and that's another big one meetings, you know, when, when to meet, how to meet, how to make meetings good and how to make sure they're a good use of everyone's time.

And then of course, email, I think email was, you know, the first thing that really took off in my program and my, my email training, because emails just, whether you're an entrepreneur or a Google worker or a parent, you're in your email and it's personal and it's there all the time and you have to manage it. And so I think that that's always like my gateway into the rest of productivity because it's such a personal piece for people. Yeah. I'm sitting as you're talking, I'm like, my email. And I think we're in this land now in 2024 where most of us have multiple email inboxes. We've got one for work. We've got one for personal. If you've got kids, you know that you've signed up for like 7 million notifications from school and that's got to get

managed somewhere. Inbox management. So this is something, is there in your experience a best practice? And if there is, what's, here's where I'm coming from. I've read so many, like, this is how to manage your inbox. Use these labels. And we all use Gmail, most of us. We use Gmail at Boss Babe. And Gmail makes it easy with labels and folders and all these things. And I think, when I think about inbox management, I think about, okay, I'm going to set up a system, but then I have to stick to the system. And if I get, if I even let one or two days go by, my inbox is now full and it feels overwhelming to come back to the system. So is there a best practice and what is it? And then if you're like some of these people that have a thousand emails sitting in their inbox and they, it's so overwhelming to think about going back

and starting, where do you start? Like, what's the one thing we need to start with? I love that you guys use Gmail. Obviously I do too. And that's what I coach on most of the time. So when we're talking about email, I like to start with super simple steps because sometimes that overhaul can feel overwhelming. So I have a three-step program and this is on my website. You can sign up for it for free because I had it sent to you. But the first step is to eliminate the things you don't need. So everyone thinks, oh, I have so many emails in my inbox, but I don't open any of them. Well, they're still using a little piece of your energy. Every time you see that bold subject line and you have to read through it, it's still using your energy. So a simple way to do this is to search the word unsubscribe. If the word unsubscribe is in the

email, it typically means it was not sent directly to you and is some kind of promotion. And now Gmail has the ability where right when you open that email, you can unsubscribe from within the email. You don't have to go to the website or anything like that. You just press unsubscribe. So that's the first thing. And if you only did that, that would still lighten your load. The second piece is labeling the things you do need to see that are important. So like you said, you know, your, your emails are coming from your kid's school. I have those looking differently in my inbox. So I have a filter that says, if it's from my kid's school, then automatically put this label on it. So I can quickly scan my inbox and say, Oh, there's a couple of, you know, blue emails. I'm sure it's just from the school and open them that way.

Similarly, when my manager emails me directly, that looks different than when he emails the whole company, because if I'm in between meetings and I want to pick up on that. So taking the time to set a couple of those filter rules in order to see what you need to. And then the last piece is the management, because that's just kind of what you're seeing and you can survive that way, but I don't think you can thrive and email that way. So the last step is really important. And it's what I call the laundry method. And this is something I've been teaching for 10 or more years at Google. And I still have people reach out to me almost daily saying, oh, I'm so excited to see you wrote a book. I still use your system from nine years ago. So

it's something that sticks time and time again. I've been told that. And it's basically, we all know how to use laundry. And this is thinking of your email the same way. So you're taking everything out of the inbox, maybe once a day, you're putting it in baskets based on what you have to do with it next. So things I need to fold, things I need to hang, socks I need to match. Instead, it's things I need to review, things I need to respond, things I need to read. And then you're setting aside time to do that. So where we get stuck is kind of sorting and answering at the same time. You're like, oh, you know, I need to put this in the basket of things I'm full, but then I'll just hang this shirt and walk it all the way up to my closet and come all the way. Well, no, you're never going to get to the end of the dryer that way. And so you really have to be strategic about saying, I'm

going to sort it. And then it can pile up. There's times when you'll have lots of clothes in your dryer, but you still have these baskets. You still have an idea of what's in there. You have a system you can constantly go back to. And most importantly, you can match your energy with those things. So if I'm in a meeting and it ends early and I have five minutes, that's a great time to go into my read baskets, just industry news. I kind of want to browse through and it's all organized there for me. So it's setting your future self up with your email. And it's, you know, I describe in the book, literal settings like auto advance. And in Gmail, it's called multiple inboxes. It gives you that dashboard view. So you can see all of your, your laundry baskets at once. I'm literally writing notes for my EA, multiple inboxes. I need this, Tessa.

This is so helpful. And you can, I know you can get this right off your website and obviously go deeper in the book, but these are the kinds of tools that I think are, you know, we, it's not the sexy stuff, you know, it's like we teach funnels and we teach social media and virality and like all these things at Boss Babe that are about kind of adding more to your plate in a way, like getting more visibility, inviting more people into your world. And we don't often talk about, well, what happens when you get, you know, 40 lead emails, you've got, you've got a funnel set up and you're getting all these emails about people entering your funnel. And it's, it can be so overwhelming. And you said something that I want to dig into because I am such a nerd on nervous system and the mental load. And you said the bold, you know, when an email pops in and it's in the bold font, your brain has this automatic reaction to it, right? And I think we can all relate to that as people with inboxes where over the last decade or two as email has become so prolific, we are so attuned to like the nervous system,

dopamine hit of like, ooh, new email, ooh, new notification. Um, and I'm someone, I wonder what your thoughts are on this. I've turned off all like outgoing, all push notifications. So even on my, my Gmail inbox, I don't have on my iPhone, I don't have the little red circles turned on and I don't get any pop-up notifications and I don't get any sound notifications. Um, but even then I still find find myself compulsively opening that app or when I'm on my laptop, going to that screen. And so can you talk a little bit about the science and what's going on in your brain that we're so... When we talk about time and productivity, why does it feel so hard to stay focused? Like why are, why is the bold little new email in my

Gmail inbox so distracting that I want to go look at it, even though I'm trying to focus on something else? Yeah. So it's such a good way of putting it. And I think, you know, we kind of get into that video game mode. Like you said, it's like pow, pow, pow, new email. And that's so much more rewarding for our brain than to really sit down and work on a big project with no distractions. And so, you know, I think part of it is customizing. So like you've already done, and I think I did like notification November last year on my newsletter and said, every week, we're going to pick something that where you take the time to actually customize. Cause a lot of times we don't realize that we're getting all these notifications.

We never take the time to do that. So for example, with Gmail, you can even customize. If you have that VIP label, you could say only notify me when an email comes to that VIP label. So now you're getting really in the weeds of this is what I want to see, this is what I don't. So you want to make sure you're setting yourself up for that. And then I think the second piece is just realizing and the app on your phone, I've done tricks for myself where in my email app, I had a mindfulness app, and I replaced them. And so then I found that every time I was going to that spot with my email app, I had a mindfulness app and I replaced them. And so then I found that every time I was going to that spot with my email, I'd open it and it was a quote about taking a deep breath or something. And I was just kind of tricking myself into breaking that

habit. But I also have now I have for social media on my own phone, I have a schedule as if I'm like a child that it's locked on my phone and only my husband has the password. So it's just like doing that for a week. And now I don't even open it because I forget sometimes between my time when I'm allowed to use it, 7.30 to 9. I actually am like, oh, I haven't even opened that today. So I've set up those systems for myself. But like you said, it's so much about that focus piece. And time management is always the buzzword. And people are saying, I need more time. Well, you have 9 to 10. And all of sudden it's nine Oh three, you're getting started nine, 12, you know, nine Oh seven, you get a text message, you go back, it's nine, 10, you get a

quick chat. You answer one email. Finally, you open the project document, you work a little bit, you get another chat, you know, now it's nine 45. You're like, Oh my gosh, I haven't done anything. It's almost 10. I don't even have time to work. So we've all had that where it wasn't the time. The time was there. It was really more about our focus during that time. And so I really stress in the book, time is important, but time will come because when you look at your energy, so let's say that you know you do your best work in the morning, don't schedule that hour of work between four and five. You know you're going to be low energy and it's not setting yourself up for success. And then two, almost treat yourself like a child. I say like child proof your workspace, like go around and say, what could I get into here if I'm trying to focus?

Take your phone across the room, close the email tab, almost bore yourself into focus. And then you'll realize that time comes because then it only took 33 minutes to do that thing you said an hour for. And so it's more about that than it is about finding all this time. Yeah. I'm like, I need to get better with my time hygiene. Is it true? I'm assuming you know this because you've done the research and stuff. But like this phenomenon that we see, it's a joke on social media.

And I even like joke about myself doing this where it took me, it took me like three weeks to do a five minute task. And you're like, when you just finally sit down and do it, you're like, oh, that took five minutes. But you also get this like big rush of, of like fulfillment. Cause you're like, yes, I got it done. But then the shame spiral starts because you're like, wait a second. I literally procrastinated this for three weeks and it took five minutes. What else is on my calendar? You know, and one of the productivity methods I tried was looking at all my tasks and saying, OK, this is my to-do list for the week. What are five-minute tasks?

What are 20-minute tasks? And what are like an hour or longer, you know, and trying to set myself up for success in exactly this way. And I still fell into the trap of, okay, I set aside an hour of focus time to get five, five minute tasks done, which the math, like math, 25 minutes of time to get, or six minutes of time to get 25 minutes of stuff done. And I still get, it seems like I don't have enough time. I fall into what you're talking about, where all of a sudden it's a 9.45 and I'm somehow my brain went from five minute task to distraction to like turn, you know, notification that got me. So what are some of your like your hacks on either that where like categorizing projects or when

you're when you've turned off all the notifications, you've done all the app hacks, like how do you set up environments for focus? And, you know, is there a way to help your brain stay on track even with five minute tasks? Yeah, that's a great question. And what you're talking about is something I talk about in the book. So one thing I recommend is listing out snack size to do's, which are things that the quick things where you're like this meeting ended early. Now I don't have to search for something. I can make this quick call. So doing that. And then when you write out your to-do list, actually adding the estimated amount of time. And one of the quotes in the book is, you know, the better you are estimating how long things take, the more productive

you'll be because you're, you're better at slotting that. So one thing I did when I was, and I have an entire chapter on procrastination. I'm super passionate about that and all the little hacks, not just like, not the big picture ideas, like truly, I can't get this, I can't do this. What can I do? So in that chapter, I talk a lot about taking the time to time things that are regular. So for the dishwasher, I would just dread unloading it. I was like, why do I'm dreading it so much? And then I timed myself, it takes four minutes and it just lowered the resistance I had to that task. Now I think, do I have four minutes? Yes, I can do this real quick. So, so doing things like that or acting like your own assistant. So sometimes when we separate the setting up of things and the doing of things, so let's say that I've been wanting to bake these muffins. This just happened to me.

The bananas I wanted to put in them were just going bad. And I was like, oh, I just really need to make these. And so I just kept not doing it. And so one night I just set out the muffins, the muffin tin, the bananas. So I had the blender, you know, all the ingredients on the counter. And I went to bed. When I came back down, I was like, oh, everything's already set out. Of course, I'll make them.

I'm not going to put this all away. And then I made them. And so it's just splitting those things out. And I do that for work sessions, I kind of look at objectively, I say, Okay, what can I close? What can I get rid of? I got a snack, then I walk away, then I come back and make it easier. But to your question about what's like the big hack to just make that easier. In the at the end of the book, I talk about meditation, because I really feel like that's the that's the fastest way instead of having to, you know about meditation, because I really feel like that's the, that's the fastest way instead of having to, you know, it's kind of like running around. And every time a child opens

the knife door being like, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. You know, it's like every socket you have to react to, that's how you're dealing with distractions. But instead, you can kind of just figure out how to put the child in a completely safe space. And that's meditation, it's, it's rising above so that you have that practice and you start to realize, wow, I've been staring at this for so long, really focused, or I'm listening so intently in this meeting, you almost surprise yourself. It's the focus muscle being trained every single day. It's that mental workout, mental hygiene, so that all these things just become easier. Yeah. I love that. We talk a

lot about meditation and mindfulness and the nervous system with everything in entrepreneurship and Bosby, because I think it is the hidden secret. And, and, and as you study people who are super, super successful, which I'm sure you have as being part of Google. And obviously we know a lot of people who are super successful that are part of Google, that these are things that they do, you know, and it's, it's like, they never, it's not sexy. It's not talked about. It's not like the big thing that everybody says is what led to their success, but it is their daily rhythm. It's the practice. It's like doing the same thing every morning. And what you said, which I love is like, you have to build this practice of attention and we live in dopamine nation, you know, where we,

we don't nothing really like so much of our life is, is conditioning us not to pay attention or to pay attention to a lot of things at once, or to pay attention to, you know, a lot of things for 10 seconds at a time. And so this, this practice of attention, whether it's mindfulness or meditation or, or however we come at it, I think time management becomes the foundation of also the ability to sell, the ability to show up, the ability to be confident in our businesses and all these other things that lead to our success as entrepreneurs. And the other thing that I was writing down as you were talking was, I think when we look at procrastination, I know I've been guilty of this and I hear it a lot in our community, is as we procrastinate and as we then become aware of this feeling of like, I am my own worst enemy. I'm in my own way. I'm the one causing me not to be successful. As we kind of take responsibility for our own role and not being able to get done what we'd like to get done, it's very easy to go down this like shame spiral or

really turn it into negative self-talk, which then kind of alchemizes for some of us into we give up, you know, and it really was a time management problem. It wasn't that your product wasn't working. It wasn't that you were able to get followers on social media. It wasn't that you couldn't make enough money. It was like, you fundamentally didn't know how to manage time. And because you weren't spending time effectively, you couldn't get those things done. And, and whether that's like people come to that or not, I see this happen again and again, where kind of the lack of success holistically gets blamed on procrastination or, or inability to manage not having enough time. So how do you, how do you kind of combat that negative self-talk that can pick up around?

I'm such a procrastinator. I don't have enough time and kind of interrupt that cycle and really have some like quick, quick tools to get you right back into, okay, maybe you did just like go down a rabbit hole on TikTok for five minutes scrolling. How can you immediately snap back in? And I, and I, the snack size, you know, the, the snack size tasks is such a great one, but are there other tools that are kind of those snap back moments of like, ah, like you caught yourself scrolling, you caught yourself distracted, jump right back into productivity and kind of reset that cycle. Yeah. I think giving yourself grace is the biggest piece. And, you know, somebody who read the book and told me, they were like, you just gave me permission to like, you know, it's okay if there's something I don't want to do at a certain time. And I was so happy because that I was why I was't want to do at a certain time. And I was so happy

because that was why I was trying to get that across in the book. And I think one of the biggest things is just about knowing your own energy. And I talk about that a lot. So like when I, one example is I worked with an executive and she had all, she was on the West coast. And so I asked her, when is your, when do you feel your best? When do you feel in your uptime? And she said, the mornings. And then I said, when do you you feel in your uptime? And she said, the mornings. And then I said, when do you do most of your focus work? And she said, after the workday's over, usually at night. And I'm just feeling drained. And I'm feeling unmotivated.

And I'm meeting with all these East Coast people in the morning. So I don't have time to do that work. So she's beating up on herself maybe because she's feeling drained, doesn't have energy to do that work, when really the problem is that she's using her peak productivity time to meet with people. And so one simple shift we did was just make one or two days a week free during that morning time and shift some of her meetings later as possible. And she immediately felt motivated to do those things she wasn't at night. And so just realizing that sometimes like not all time slots are created equal. So I always say if you're sitting down

to do something and you feel like, oh, it means that, you know, that is the wrong time to do it. So when you look at the task on your, you know, on your to do list, you might ask yourself, what is the perfect time for me to do this? When do I really feel like doing this? And then plan accordingly, because so much of feeling that I don't, I'm not doing this. I don't want to do it. I'm not doing a good job. It's just that it's slotted at the wrong time. So that one simple shift can make a difference ahead of time. But there are obviously going to be times it happens to me where all of a sudden you're like, gosh, I just, you know, I just blew through that hour or whatever it is. And I think the best way to snap back from that

is starting small. So when we look at something huge on our list, like build this presentation, that's really big. That feels huge. And that's why it keeps getting carried. It's because our brain has this resistance to that activity. So instead, I call it Swiss cheesing. You just keep poking holes until you say something

or write something on your list that feels good. So it might be just open the document and make the title slide. Okay, now I can do that. And of course, I'm probably going to continue creating once I've done that, and maybe not, but I've lowered the resistance now to get myself started. So anytime you're feeling that overwhelmment, it's just about finding what your brain is attracted to do at that time and starting there because that's the easiest way to move past that daunting feeling. Yeah. Oh, that's so good. It makes me think of this thing we teach in Vosvabe called rhythm. And we teach that, you know, we have templates for this and it never surprises. Well, no, it always surprises me how many people, the light bulb goes on when you're like, you have permission to build your time into a rhythm, especially if you're an entrepreneur and you work from home. But even if you don't, you know, and you're still,

and you're working in an environment where you're working for someone else or you have to go into a workplace, you still can craft a rhythm, which I think is what you're saying around the days of the week, the time of day. If you've got a side hustle that you're doing on the off hours, even if a certain amount of your time during the day is dedicated in a strict schedule because of your work or whatever, you still have some rhythmic energy that you have domain over in other times of the day. And we have templates for this inside of our programs, but it, it is, it's always this awakening people have of like, oh, right. I guess we naturally prescribed to, we have to kind of be responsive versus I can protect my own time. I can set my own rhythm and I will then be more productive and be more helpful, more able to contribute to my business, to my job, whatever it may be, if I'm working in my best energy.

And I think that is such a good lesson in your book and in general around, you know, you have permission to manage your energy. You have permission to schedule your time. And if you have to take certain meetings at certain times, okay, but maybe that's only two days a week. Right. And I think as an entrepreneur, I was just going to say, I kept the entrepreneur lens in mind because I have a couple of friends who are entrepreneurs and moms. And one example I give in the book that I loved, it's actually in the book about boundary setting, but it's about my photographer for our family. And I reached out to her and I said, oh, I'd really love to do pictures in the morning

because that's when my kids are off school. And she wrote back and she, the point of the boundary chapter is that she framed it in the positive. So she didn't say, I don't do pictures in the morning. She said, I do pictures in the afternoon or on weekend mornings. And the way she framed it kind of took me away from what she's not doing. And she said, I do my best editing in the mornings. And so I reserve that time for editing. And you know what? She's an amazing photographer and the pictures look great. And I'm, I'm respecting her now because she took

the time to know that about herself and she's going to edit my pictures in the morning and they're going to be beautiful because of it. And if she had just taken anyone's time slot that they threw out, she wouldn't be as good of a photographer. So, you know, my friend that's an entrepreneur explained how hard it is to set those boundaries because you feel like you're saying, I'm saying, no, you know, I should be at the whim because I'm, it's just me and I'm hustling. And I think that, you know, that photographer example is a great showing of somebody setting a boundary positively, it working and then, you know, her being a better worker because of it. Yeah. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one

platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible.

I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Yeah, saying no was something I wanted to talk about, but and you mentioned it and I love that framing in the like, instead of saying I don't do it this way because that feels like saying no, which can be uncomfortable. It's like, I do this, this is when I am available and here's why. And just the positive psychology of that to be like, people probably are more responsive to, I do my best work in the afternoons and on the Sunday mornings. So I'd love to book with you then. And you're like, great. I only want

your best work, of course. And it makes me think about with saying no. And then you mentioned meetings earlier. And I think meetings become one of these things. Maybe solopreneurs don't have as many meetings, but things can feel like meetings or setting meetings with yourself to get something done. But if you're working in a team environment, meetings can become this thing that feels like it's the excuse for lack of productivity. I feel myself doing this sometimes where I'm like, I was on Zoom all day today. I couldn't even get to my inbox. And I imagine at Google, there's lots of meetings, but there's probably good meeting hygiene. So what are some of the

things if the listener is in a environment where they are, you know, in a lot of meetings or they're part of a team that has a lot of meetings, what are some of the ways to manage meetings and best practices with meetings? I'm so passionate about this. I'm a big like most meetings could be emails person. And so we love loom too. At Boss Babe, we've learned that loom works so well. And Natalie, if you listen to Natalie talk, I mean, she's even using loom now in sales funnels and stuff because it's amazing, you know, and I know all kinds of Zoom does it too with these little snippets, but we're, yeah, instead of having a meeting and all having to get on Zoom and listen to someone talk, it's like, hey, here's my thoughts on this. Change this, change this, change this. And you can send them a three minute loom that they can watch at 1.5 speed. I'm like, oh my God, this is revolutionary. And I come from a corporate background where, yeah, I mean, half the work

week was just sitting in meetings run by other people where your part was 10 minutes of the hour, but you had to stay for the whole thing. And it's like this just kind of institutional thing that happens in American culture, I guess. But it doesn't have to, right? And so, yeah, I'd love to hear how you think about meetings. Yeah. I was just telling this story how I saw a co-worker of mine in New York. And he was like, oh, I've been meeting to catch up with you. And I was going to add a meeting to your calendar.

But I knew if it didn't have an agenda, you would decline. And I was just like, I love that. I've created that brand because that's how I am. That's how ferociously protective of my time I am. And I think that meetings is just one of those big things, like you said, that can encroach on your time. And so in the book, I talk about, you know, the first thing is identifying why you're having the meeting in the first place. And so for the loom example you're giving, that would be considered information sharing. And that almost always can be done over an email. So the other types are connection, brainstorm, and decision. And those are sometimes best in a meeting.

That's not as easy to do over email. But if you're scheduling an information sharing meeting, you should ask yourself, why can this not be done via email or Loom and not waste people's time? And so that's one of the tactics. And then, you know, all the way down to using an egg timer. So people stay on time. And I think one of the biggest ones is keeping meetings, what I call meaningful. And so a lot of times we set a meeting, a regular check-in with someone, and then we spend the whole time in between the meetings, emailing them and chatting about things and, and, you know, stopping them in the hall. And now the

meeting becomes irrelevant. So if you want a regular check-in with someone, make it totally worth their time. And, you know, if you're a meeting owner, I also recommend doing the Goldilocks tests each quarter, asking people, is this too long, too short? Is it too frequent, not frequent enough? Just write, you know, you want to get that feedback. What are people saying behind the meetings back? What are they talking about in the hallway? That was such a long meeting. Or, you know, you want to flush that out if you're the meeting owner, because half the time people are, you know, attending meetings because they think the person wants them there. Meanwhile, they were only invited because the person thought that they wouldn't want to attend. So there's just so many inefficiencies. And, you know, I think that meetings should be an

excellent use of time. And I give an example of a meeting I was in and everything this person did to make it so that I never missed it. I was never late. Every time I lost that meeting, I was like, wow, that was such a good use of my time. And so I really go into that in the book. Yeah. Okay. I love that. We're pretty, I feel like at Boss Babe, we do exactly what you just said. Like every quarter we look at all of our bigger meetings that are recurring and say, are all the people on here? Did they still need to be on here? You know, is this the right length of time?

Are we covering the things that we're intending to cover? Do we get distracted? And then also we, we do the human side too, where it's like one of our weekly meetings was starting to feel like very cold where we just like would all get on and just run through the slide. And, and we didn't take the time to kind of check in and it's our Monday morning team meeting, you know, and Natalie and I were like, you know what, like, this is feeling a little bit like we're just rushing through it and just trying to check the box. And we're really, we've tried to be really intentional at BossFave about like, we don't do

anything, especially culture wise, we don't do anything that's like a check of a box. And so if the meeting is just going to be all of us running through it really quick, then it doesn't need to be a meeting. We could just do that in a loom. But if it's our Monday morning team check-in meeting, it needs to be the team checking in because we all work remotely. So let's make sure when we jump in, we're not jumping right into, okay, here's the KPIs from last week and blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, how was your weekend? You know, and since we've really put more intention there, the meeting actually goes faster. And also people are really engaged in what everyone else is saying. And so I feel like then it is more productive in that way too. So I love this. And I think it's, if you're running

any kind of team, it's so important to have those check-ins and to make sure that, yeah, they don't become what you're saying, where it's like, we are in such constant contact that the tendency would be the meeting becomes irrelevant, but we keep it on the calendar. Right. Kind of like that subscription that you're signed up for every month. So it's great that you do that check-in and you'll really like in the book, my team did the same thing. We were like, wow, we're in all these one-off meetings, but we don't make time for that social connection. And so we started a social-only catch-up at the beginning of the week. And we kept it, it was during COVID, but we kept it. And we even had an agenda for that. So it was bring your

favorite 30-minute meal, bring your favorite items that you get at Costco, share your pet or your child, do a crib style tour of your house. So it was still structured. It wasn't just, you know, let's all chat and it, but it was so fun and we all looked forward to it. And like you said, it made the rest of our meetings go well. So it was, we all took turns coming up with agenda items and it just became like the one fun thing we all connected and look forward to. And it made the rest of the business meetings, you know, be more productive. So it was really fun. I love that. I'm writing that down. We were starting, if any of my team's listening, you're getting a little bit of a preview, but we're, we're starting something like that in Boss Babe where we're once a month, we're going to bring in like an outside person to teach us

something like completely unrelated to entrepreneurship. Like the first one we're doing is sourdough, sourdough making, but it, you know, and, and it was this conversation Natalie and I had where it's like, okay, it's another, it's another meeting. We're asking our whole entire team to prioritize for the week, but it's such a fun experience to have together. And it really gets us out of the normal rhythm of our weeks. And, you know, we, it's one of those things where somebody said it on one of our social check-ins, you know, where they're like,

oh, I'm just getting into sourdough and it's so hard. And I wish I, I need like coached on it. And I was like, this little light bulb went off. Like, these are cool little things, but I just wrote yours down. Cause I'm like, Ooh, like your favorite Costco items. I would love to know what some of our team members or like a crib style tour. We did self-care September and each week was like emotional self-care, physical self-care. We brought like our favorite products. I think I listed them all in the book because I just like loved, loved that we were still coming up with agendas because my team was like, we know you won't attend if we don't have an agenda. So no, it's so smart. I love that. It's such a good hack. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I can't wait.

So that, so as you were talking, I'm like, Ooh, okay. A little tangent remote work. So this is a big topic that I feel like comes up in our, I mean, we have a fully remote team. So Natalie and I talk about it a lot internally, but also when I look at modern entrepreneurship and online business, which is most of our, our listeners, um, we're working at home a lot, you know, or at a co-working space or and whether we're solo and we're working with, we're collaborating with some contractors or we do have a team, we're often working from home or we're working from an environment that's not necessarily a work environment, I guess is the best way to put it. And I was just listening to a podcast on my way home this

morning and they were talking about working in the living room or the dining room and then having like your partner, your kids come home and, and, and it, it causing you to be like frustrated that you get interrupted, but you're working in an environment that's not the work, not a quote unquote work environment. And so I think this is something that obviously exploded during COVID where now a lot of us have, you know, the quote unquote luxury of working from home, but maybe haven't created workspaces or, or we migrate around our house a lot. Like part of the day I work at the kitchen table, part of the day I sit in the couch, part of the day I do go to my home office. What effect does like working from home had on global productivity? And I'd love to hear from

the Google standpoint, I'm sure we've seen the headlines of Google's asking everyone to come back to the office. Oh, wait, no, Google says you can still work from home. And how we all kind of as entrepreneurs measure against big companies, which is totally not a fair comparison. And if we are a remote worker slash we are a entrepreneur working from home, how do we set ourselves up for success at home? Because it is obviously distracting. And like you were talking about laundry and comparing it to laundry, I'm like, oh, I need to go do some laundry. Yeah, I think like you said, during the pandemic, it became everyone working from home and then you're living at work and where are the boundaries? And so I think that part of it is you setting those

boundaries for yourself. I give the example of my dad was like the OG work from home person starting in like 1996. I don't know why he was always work from home. And I asked him like, why did you never take your laptop out of your office? Like you were so very like separated work and home. You never had a problem with it. He told me that it started because he had to be plugged into ethernet and then he just treated it that way. So he was like, when I was in my office, it was mental. So we have that mobility. For all the Gen Z people, the ethernet was what you used to get the internet through. You had to plug a cord into your laptop. Yep. And it anchored you. Yes,

exactly. I'm dating myself. But I think that, you know, that was just a funny way of, you know, that's how it started. And so we can migrate around our house, but like I said, we need to have boundaries. So I equate bringing work into your home, like inviting your in-laws over. You would not wake up first thing in the morning and invite them into your bed. Neither should you with work and neither should you with email. You would not hang out with them every single night until the absolute last moment you go to sleep. Neither should you with work. And so there is some benefit with having separate spots. And I talk about a whole chapter called hotspots and especially for an entrepreneur. And I was

actually remote for a year before COVID. So I feel like I got all this good data and research around it before it became what everyone had to do. But hotspots is based on the brain psychology of state dependency. So it's that your brain is associating more than just what you're doing, but also where you are. It's the reason that a lot of authors write their book at the same spot because their brain just starts thinking about those characters as soon as they're in that coffee shop in that seat. And so if you are moving around your house, you want to be intentional about it. Like I do email, you know, I email my new clients from outside on my porch. Then I always do my photo editing at my desk. And then, so your brain is switching into those modes and easily, you know, slipping into that. But similarly, you want to have not spots and that's to protect your brain. And so like you said, you maybe you're bringing your laptop into the living room and here and here and here. And now all of your brain has stored your living room while you're stressed about work. And that's data that it always is keeping now. So I talk about in my primary bedroom, we had a

side area that was kind of like a waste. It was just weird. It was small, but we ended up putting an oversized chair there and a coffee machine on a table. And my kids now call it the cozy corner. And I have no TV, no clocks. I've never once brought a device into that corner. And when I go to sit, I've only drink coffee, meditate or read, or just sit there, whatever I want to do. And so when I'm feeling stressed, I can go sit in that corner and I instantly feel, ah, because I've never brought work there. And so if I'm feeling stressed, I can go sit in that corner and I instantly feel, ah, because I've never brought work there. And so if you are working from home, you want to be sure that you have those spots, whether

it's a cozy corner, your bedroom, maybe your living room, somewhere where you'd never, even if you're working, maybe it's your commute. Maybe when you get in your car, you feel, ah, because you only ever do what you want to do and listen to music. And so you have to create those spaces for your brain because otherwise it's just all blurred together and you don't get that lift. Yeah, that makes sense. I have one of those too. And it is so like nervous system rooted, like that tangible feeling of when you go to the place that you've designated as kind of the the respite from everything else that you truly are able you feel like the physical sensation of relaxation which I do think is such

an important thing for remote work I've learned this working from home for the last 10 years too where you know dogs and kids and packages getting dropped off and like notifications and dishwashers and laundry and all these things and it's like I have to have a place that I can go and and like notifications and dishwashers and laundry and all these things. And it's like, I have to have a place that I can go and, and like con context switch. It's like the transitions. I I've read a lot about context switching and transitions and how working from home has really changed a lot of things for, for people because we used to commute. And so you had this like transition time to context switch between work and parenting or work and partnership or work and, you know, hobby or exercise or whatever the thing that you were going to do next. And now it's like constant, like I'm working, but I'm also doing laundry. And then my kids are

around and like context switching every 30 seconds instead of, you know, from nine to five and then from five 30 to nine. And so I've learned being the nervous system nerd that I am, that I need a place that can be like, since I don't have a commute, it can be the transition. And I turn on music, I journal, you know, whatever I do, but it is my transition place. And I do, I loved that in your book around, we have to have spots that our brain can attach to a certain feeling. And then from a productivity standpoint, you can have, yeah, maybe it's the one coffee shop you write the book at. And then it's the one chair at your dining room table that you do power hour, knock out the five minute tasks because it's right next to the coffee or whatever it is. I think that like anchoring of the brain is so important. And it's the nuance too of,

of giving yourself to stay in a certain context before you move again. The other thing, okay, so this is the last part that I wanted to talk about and are not our whole audience or parents, but I do think, you know, at least half of us are mothers and or parents of some kind. And, and I, I know from my own experience, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast and just in general and boss babe that, you know, time, time was like a whole separate concept concept before I became a mother. And now that I'm a mother, I'm like, Jesus, did I have a lot of time? Like, what did I do with all my time? Because now I feel like kids have just, I have, I don't know, I still have 24

hours in the day, but somehow 24 hours in the day goes three times as fast as it used to. And I know there's all kinds of brain psychology for why it feels that way. And then I talk a lot about the mother load, which is like this additional mental load that mothers carry that's not even really tangible. It's just like, I mean, you have three kids too. And it's this idea of like, do you know where all three of your kids are at this very moment? Like, of course you do. And I, you know, I know where my two kids are at this very moment. And, and though I don't actively think about that, it is on my mind, you know? And so what is some of like in your research and in working with so many high achieving, high performing people over the years. Mothers specifically,

you know, what additional mental load are we under that really impacts how we manage time and how we think about time? And then in your experience as a mother, having young kids and knowing all of this stuff before you became a mother, how have you really either changed or adapted how you look at time because of being a parent? I love the term mother load because I just say the increased mental load. And, you know, I was, I was actually just, I looked up top 25 productivity books the other day on Goodreads and the first 25 are written by men. I'm trying to break that when this launches, but I was like, what is going on there? What is going on? I was like, maybe women are just too busy actually doing the things to write the book

about it. But, you know, I feel like especially mothers, it's just so much additional context that is in your brain all the time. Like you said, it's what am I doing for work? What's for dinner? What am I getting for the birthday party this weekend? It's just constantly going on. And so I think the big thing I talk about throughout the whole book is that there is

no personal you and then work you and then mom you. There's one brain. There's one pie of time. And so everything I talk about is managing all of that. It's saying I have a list here that, you know, when I talk about the main list and list making, it's like, no, I have things on there that are both work related and birthday party, you know, gifts I need to buy because that's what's going on in my brain. And I have to honor that. I can't try to split it up. I need to really manage myself as a person and look at all my time that way. And similarly, when I'm setting priorities, I need to be realistic. So when I had a baby, I had to say, okay, that's going to take some other things off my plate. There's only

one me. I can't keep my other work priorities. This now knocks one of my priorities off and I need to adjust that. And so I think like you said, when you add kids, you just start to see how much your time isn't your own as much anymore, but also you find ways to keep that sense of self. So something that I do now, and of course, before I had kids, this was the whole morning. I just made a wonderful morning routine. It was so relaxing, you know, but now I have to be really intentional about that. So I really recommend not having your first commitment be what wakes you up. And so if that is your child, try setting your alarm for even five minutes before. I now do 30 and I call it the Laura 30. And it's like my most protected time of the day. I set my alarm

for 30 minutes before my baby wakes up and I just do whatever I want. I don't set an agenda. I, sometimes I journal, sometimes I just drink my coffee in silence and stare at a wall, which as we know, as moms can be self-care in itself. Sometimes I work out if I'm not going to be able to, but that is such my protected time. And I fill up my own energy and then I'm able to hand out more of it the rest of the day. And so before I was doing that, I felt like, oh, I'm tumbling into the day the minute someone comes in my room and says, mom, and that's just not a good way to start. And so it requires some shifting here and there. But I think that the more intentional you are about it,

and then I teach those habits to my kids. You know, my daughter sees me do that for myself. And I say, maybe if you want to do that, when you wake up in the morning, you can. And so we need to set that example as, you know, self-care is a priority because that's what makes me a better mom, a better worker. Yeah. I'm like thinking, I feel like I used to be more disciplined about that when they were little, surprisingly, because I was so fried that I, that was the only time I got, especially during COVID when everyone was home, you know, and now that they're a little bit older, they sleep slightly later. And I do feel like I've gotten to this point of like, now I'm just letting them wake me

up. And that feels, it does feel like you start in, you start in the scramble versus starting like with a little bit of agency in your own time. And I also love what you said about setting an example and having that like awareness of we also get to teach our children how to not grow up to be stressed out, overcommitted, procrastinating people that constantly blame not enough time. Because I like thinking back on my own parents, I'm like, God, I feel like I heard that a lot, too. Like we don't have time to do that today or like there's no time. And I talk about busy is not important at the very beginning of the chapter, because I feel like that that was like an alternate title option for the book, because I think we do that in a culture, we do that in our companies, we do that in our families, where we use the terms, back to back slammed, so busy, over committed. And so I actually

try to go aggressively the other direction, I'll get on the call with people and say, I'm at the perfect level of commitment, or I'm, I'm totally balanced. I'm not actually that busy. I'm totally balanced. And it throws people off so much, they actually like are taken aback. Like, why are you talking that way? Because it's so normal to use the other language. So I think that, you know, that's kind of the first step is being aware of what you're perpetuating and then starting to shift that, whether you're talking to your kids or your team and just make balance the new busy, make balance cool, you know? And so I think that's, you know think that was one of the top things I wanted to get across in the book. Oh my God, I love that. Natalie always says, don't be a busy idiot,

and how a lot of us in our businesses can feel like busy idiots. We're spending so much time on stuff and we're like, why isn't this working? I don't feel like anything works. I don't understand any of this. And it's like, well, because you're trying to do so many things at once and you're not doing any of them with mastery and, and now they all become like interference with each other versus picking one or one thing at a time or waiting, you know, like, I think there's this thing too, that I feel like you're getting at that I feel in my nervous system, which is like, we don't have to do everything right now, you know, and we can have big goals. We can have big dreams. We can want to do all these things in our life and we don't have to say yes to all of them

at the same time. And I do feel like, I don't know, millennial conditioning, hopefully Gen Z is not this way, but like millennial conditioning that I remember growing up was like, you have to do, you can do anything, Lindsay. So you should be doing it all right now. You know, like it's how I heard it. And I think then motherhood adds to that and and you really do have to do like a lot of things right now because you have to keep kids alive and so there's this this feeling of like when an opportunity comes I have to say yes or when I have the idea in my business I have to do it right now or when I when I see someone else teaching something I need to learn it all right now and implement it all right now you know and we're big proponents at Boss Babe of like, just picking one thing, like pick

one thing, do that well, and then do the next thing, you know, and, and I think all this time management and productivity stuff is the perfect foundational layer for people to really pay attention to. Because if you've got the practices you've talked to us about today in place, and then you go to say, I'm going to do this one new thing in my business and I'm going to do it really, really well. And then I feel like what you just said is an option then where you're like, I'm actually totally balanced. Like, yeah, I've got some stuff that's a challenge. I've got some stuff that feels edgy and hard that I want to procrastinate, but I have the space to figure it out versus how I think a lot of us come at our businesses where it's like, I need to procrastinate, but I have the space to figure it out versus how I think a lot of us

come at our businesses where it's like, I need to do it all right now. You start every day with this frantic energy. We're waking up to our phones. We're going to bed to our phones. And it's really, really hard to get to this like freedom and spaciousness that you talk about in the book. So, okay. Well, this is, I have like pages and pages of notes, So I will definitely be consuming the book when it releases. Can you tell us a little bit more about the book and when it'll be out and how we can find it? Yeah. So it's called Uptime Practical Guide to Productivity and Wellbeing.

And it comes out April 2nd, so Tuesday. And it's anywhere books are sold. Amazing. Yeah. I think it's a great read for anybody. And these are tools that you don't like, probably you would say this too, listening to you today, you don't have to implement them all at once, you know, pick the ones that work best and, uh, and take a little

bit of your time back and allow, like find this feeling of ease and freedom, I think is what we're big proponents of. And I feel that came through really clearly in our conversation. Yeah, that's uptime. Yes, I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Yeah, thank you.