How to protect your time & energy in the midst of busyness & chaos

How is your week going?

As a psychologist, I used to teach people about stress and time management. Then, there came a point in my life where I desperately needed to practice what I preached.

As a mother, a serial entrepreneur who's built four businesses, and now a trusted advisor to some of the busiest and most driven women in the world, I've made it my business to become an expert in regaining (or maintaining) control of your schedule, time, and energy so that you can live a rich life and build a powerful career.

If you subscribe to my Monday's Mindset Reset email , you know that building a life and a career on your terms is an ongoing practice, not a one-step process.

One size does not fit all!

There are dozens of practices and habits you can put in place to live and work better. Some will work for you, and some won't. Some will naturally fit in your life, and others you'll need to work to implement and maintain.

So, if something you've tried isn't quite working, don't give up on yourself or the practice itself.

Instead, examine what's working and what's not and iterate accordingly.

I've had far too many conversations with taxed and tired women who feel convinced that a) nothing works or b) there's something wrong with them.

Today, I'm sharing the top 3 practices I've developed to 1) mitigate stress, 2) remain driven and hard at work, 3) combat fatigue, and, generally speaking, 4) build a thriving career without sacrificing fulfillment.

1. Know thyself

How good are you at recognizing stress?

As someone who's spent 20+ years working with stressed and burnt-out humans, I've discovered that most people are TERRIBLE at identifying subtle stress cues but great at noticing complete burnout & exhaustion.

That means you start to take action only once you near breakdown levels. It's much harder to recover from stress that's been allowed to fester in that way.

The solution is to notice not only the red flags (the warning signs of impending doom) but also the pink flags (the subtle signs of impending danger).

To do this well, I've developed a practice called the 5-step check-in , which allows me to regularly evaluate my stress levels, assess the triggers, and address problems in under 5 minutes. Noteworthy women know this process well, as we start many of our community calls with a 5-step check-in .

2. Own your time

Time is precious. I am constantly evaluating how best I spend it - examining what taxes and what boosts me and revising my schedule accordingly. Five years ago, I started taking every other Friday off from coaching. Every other Friday became every Friday and then turned into Fridays and Mondays. Ideally, I use that time to write, work on behind-the-scenes tasks for my business, and connect in person with my network. Unfortunately, I began scheduling more and more non-coaching meetings during those days and lost those big productive blocks of time.

Last year, I instituted morning Focus Time and stopped taking in-person meetings before 10 a.m. Those first 90 minutes of my day are just about enough time to catch up on email, set my daily intentions, and address any pressing needs for Noteworthy women.

For the past two months, I've been ending my days with the words: "I'm so tired," or " I just need, like, a week off to catch up on [x]." That's unacceptable. It speaks to a misfit between my schedule and my demands. So, I've made another schedule change for 2025.

I'm time-blocking coaching in half-day increments from Tuesday to Thursday, increasing my focus time to 4.5 hours on coaching days. Monday afternoons and Friday mornings will be dedicated to new connections and networking, and the other half of those days will be uninterruptable focus time.

I hope this new schedule will help me stay more energized, focused, and effective. But I know that if it doesn't, I own my time, and I can make changes to meet my needs, not just other people's schedules.

3. Be honest

I'm really good at setting solid intentions and identifying powerful strategies to exercise those intentions. I'm not too bad at establishing a practice and keeping it going for a while. Where I run into trouble is when life gets chaotic (for good or bad reasons).

That's why I've consciously curated several accountability partners, which include: 1) business coach, Jessica Yarbrough , 2) energy and mindset coach, Lisa Gornall , 3) my 100k Club coaching community - led by Rich Litvin , 4) several individual coaches whom I mastermind with either in person or via Zoom, and 5) last but not least, my friends & family.

Each individual and community keeps me accountable. Because they experience different sides of me, they can quickly and very effectively point out when I'm slipping and hold me accountable to my vision of elite success and deep fulfillment.

How do you stay focused and fulfilled?

I started this newsletter by saying there are dozens of ways to restore balance and reclaim control.

What works for you when life gets chaotic? HIT REPLY and let me know, I'd love to learn from you.

On your terms and timeline, here are 3 ways I can help you

1. Become a Noteworthy Leader - I only work with 15 1:1 clients at a time.

We currently have 2 openings for women who want to start coaching in Q4 and 5 spots open for women interested in starting in Q1 of 2025.

If you're a status quo challenger, highly ambitious, leading at the top of your game (or close to it), ready to commit to massive success without sacrificing personal satisfaction, and you want the support, counsel, insight, and advice of an elite coach, NOW IS THE TIME to schedule a connection call.

2. Experience the Power Pause - Join me Monday mornings for a free 15-minute LinkedIn Live event where I'll present you with some of the big questions Noteworthy women are asking themselves to step out of their gilded cages and build careers and lives that work for them

3. Back to Me - Four Proven strategies to reclaim control and restore balance:

• Discover the simple strategy to end every day accomplished and satisfied
• Learn a quick and effective way to reduce stress while increasing productivity
• Set better boundaries without guilt
• Redefine what right for you looks like to show up more effectively

Back to Me will show you where you might be going wrong in these areas and what balance and reclaiming your life can look like.

Grab your copy of my e-book Back To Me and get on the list to receive a free copy of the Executive edition when it comes out in 2025.

Ready to massively level up your leadership and your life outside the office?

Subscribe to my newsletter, and get challenged weekly to show up better for those you serve and for yourself.

Worldwide, smart, ambitious executive women work three times as hard for a fraction of the influence they deserve.

Excellence-driven, they show up fully for everyone, all the time, and discover that high-level success can come at too high a cost if you don't have the right systems or support.

I've made it my mission to help women in senior leadership show up with authority, own their value, leverage their influence, and make a meaningful impact without sacrificing everything on the altar of success.

I lead this work through Noteworthy, an exclusive executive coaching and consulting firm that advances senior executive women in STEM and finance and supports companies that seek to retain, elevate, and attract them.

This work has transformed the lives of hundreds of executive women in the US and Europe and changed workplaces for the better at scores of companies ranging in size from agile start-up to Fortune 100.

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• Jump on a 20-minute connect call here.
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