Breaking the Timeline by Shana Francis

Have you noticed the "get everything together before next year" pressure has already started? Winter arc, lock in, new you by January. I'm feeling it too, but this year I'm trying something different.

Instead of a 90-day challenge I'd probably fall off, I'm building a personal curriculum, using the same skills I use to design curriculums for a living. This is the introduction lesson to the first one: Close the Year Well, eight weekly lessons on one question: how do you want this year to end?

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor. I'm not coming at this as the expert. I'm doing the curriculum alongside you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why I'm skipping the winter arc and building a curriculum instead

- How the eight weeks work: one lesson every Thursday, plus a workbook with your homework

- What's coming up: what went well, who helped you, what you learned, your takeaways, a gentle picture of next year, and a letter from your future self

- Why "gentle" matters more than a perfect mood board

- The research behind coming back to the same ideas over spaced-out sessions

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your homework this week: write three words for how you'd like this year to end. They don't need to be polished. Then ask yourself how much effort you're actually going to put in to get there.

Get the free Week 1 workbook: https://newslettershanafrancis.substack.com/subscribe

Each lesson's workbook comes with the Substack article.

My recommended tools and kit (some links may be affiliate): https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial

https://shopmy.us/shop/shanafrancis

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What are your three words for how you want this year to end?

You've got a planner, you've got an app, maybe your own AI assistant, and a goal you wrote just before the first of January. And yet life still feels scattered. If you've ever rebuilt your productivity system for the third time, this episode is for you.

Here's what I've noticed, in my own life and in the people I work with: each system makes sense on its own, but none of them talk to each other. Your calendar doesn't know your energy has dropped. Your learning plan doesn't know work has suddenly got busy. So you end up as the hub in the middle, passing information between everything, every single time.

I talk through the Sunday-evening time-blocking routine I used to build, why it fell apart once fitness and content came into my life, and the question I started asking instead: what needs to exist around me to support the person I'm trying to become?

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why "how do I organise everything?" is the wrong starting question, and the one I ask now

- What I mean by a personal ecosystem, in plain terms: your skills, tools, habits, ideas and opportunities working together, so you're not relying on willpower alone

- Learning sideways, not just up: what a designer's prototype-and-test approach can teach you, and why "adapt" is the step most people skip

- Roots, growth and expansion, and how one piece of learning can turn into a skill, an idea, a conversation, an opportunity and income, unless the chain breaks at every join

- Why growth comes in seasons, and where AI fits: it supports your thinking, you still decide what matters

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Try the exercise from the end of the episode. Draw yourself in the middle of a blank page and write seven words around you like a clock: work, learning, money, people, systems, ideas, life. Draw lines between any two areas that affect each other. Then ask yourself: which area feels strong, which feels disconnected, and which takes more than it gives?

If you'd like a more structured version, my free Personal Ecosystem Assessment shows which areas are stronger and which might need some attention: https://ecomap.shanafrancis.com/

And if you want a paper home for the planning side, these are the planner inserts I use: https://shanafrancis.com/the-personal-ecosystem-planner-system

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

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Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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When you drew your page, which area felt the most disconnected? I'd genuinely like to know what you noticed.

The paper planner versus digital planner debate is back, and I'm an advocate for both. When I was teaching secondary PE, I couldn't always be at a screen, so a paper planner was simply the easiest thing. Later I moved everything into a Notion dashboard: tasks, content, brain dumps, reminders, the lot.

Over time I realised I was duplicating what was already in my head and my calendar, ignoring the alarms, and feeling worse on the days when rigid time blocks didn't match my energy. So in this episode I walk through what I use now: Obsidian as a digital second brain for ideas, learning and notes, and a paper agenda for the week's priorities and getting things done.

This isn't a "use my exact system" episode. It's how I decided which job belongs to which tool, so you can work out what fits your life.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why one app for everything turned into duplication for me, and what I tried before Obsidian

- What Obsidian is, and how linked notes help when you have lots of ideas that don't connect on their own

- Using AI as a thinking partner, and why I wanted those conversations saved in one place instead of copying them between apps

- What's actually in my agenda: a weekly (not daily) to-do list of tasks that take under an hour, goals across every area of life, and wellbeing pages

- The loop I use (capture, develop, filter, execute, reflect) and my simple rule: if future me needs to understand it, it goes digital; if present me needs to act on it, it goes on paper

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing for this week: pick one digital space and set up four areas: ideas, projects, learning and reference. Then make one weekly page with three questions: What are my three priorities? What's already fixed? What actually needs to happen this week? At the end of the week, add one more: What did I learn that's worth keeping?

The planner inserts I use are here. There are 500+ pages, and you don't need them all, so pick the ones that fit your life: https://shanafrancis.com/the-personal-ecosystem-planner-system

I also wrote about this on Substack: https://newslettershanafrancis.substack.com/p/paper-planner-or-digital-planner

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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What are you currently asking one tool, or your own head, to do that should really be two different jobs?

We spend years preparing people to qualify for a profession, and almost no time preparing them for what comes next. In this episode I talk about that gap, between getting qualified and actually becoming the person you want to be, and why it exists.

I've been on both sides of it. As a newly qualified PE teacher, I watched the regular check-ins and structure slowly fall away. Then my job took over the rest of my life, especially my friendships, and becoming Head of Year added even more. Now I see the same pattern in the people I support.

So we look at what actually helps you build yourself once nobody is setting the timetable for you: structure, learning from outside your own industry, competence and confidence, and reflection.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why the structure of school and training disappears once you qualify, and the knock-on effect on the rest of your life

- My early teaching years: early starts, late finishes, marking in my own time, and the friendships that quietly faded

- Borrowing skills from another industry, for example a manager learning from teachers how to run a briefing people actually remember

- Learning that sticks: repetition, a system around it, and a reason that genuinely excites you (for me, learning to edit and design)

- Competence and confidence don't arrive at the same time, plus a simple self-reflection routine: what I remember, what I noticed in others, what evidence I have, and what I'll do next time

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing this week: pick just one area (learning, competence and confidence, or reflection) and write a small action plan for building it into your week.

If you want to see which areas of your wider life need attention first, try the free Personal Ecosystem Assessment: https://ecomap.shanafrancis.com/

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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Which one are you working on first, and what's one thing you'll try this week?

Good work doesn't speak for itself, and it never has. In this episode I tell the story of the year I built something for around 200 people, supported it for nine months, and then sat in my review with almost nothing specific to say about it. Not because the work wasn't there, but because I couldn't retrieve it.

We start with two things that get handed out at work and are easy to confuse: praise, and praise with evidence underneath it. One feels lovely on a Friday afternoon. The other is what actually turns into a title, a pay rise or whatever you're working towards.

Then I look at what recent UK data says about people feeling stuck, what an older but well-known study found about performance ratings, and the one small habit I use now so my work doesn't depend on someone else's memory.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Praise versus "tangible" praise, and why one is handed out far more readily than the other

- What the Hays 2026 UK Salary & Recruiting Trends guide says about people planning to move jobs

- The build, the support around it, and the review meeting where I couldn't find the words

- What Scullen, Mount and Goff (2000) found about how much a rating reflects the rater rather than the person being rated, and the limits of that study

- Your one thing: a single recurring weekly reminder, inside something you already open every day, to record what you did and what it changed

CONTINUE EXPLORING

The three-line weekly record I use, with examples, is in the Breaking the Timeline newsletter: https://newslettershanafrancis.substack.com/subscribe

Mentioned in the episode:

Hays UK Salary & Recruiting Trends Guide 2026: https://www.hays.co.uk/salary-guide

Scullen, S. E., Mount, M. K., & Goff, M. (2000). Understanding the latent structure of job performance ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(6), 956 to 970: https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.6.956

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

What's the piece of work you're proudest of that you couldn't describe out loud in a room right now?

Have you ever said something honest at work and felt the room go completely still? Or told your manager you wanted more from something, maybe a raise, and somehow walked out looking restless? This episode is about the question I hear most from people early in their careers: how much of me goes into this?

When I trained to teach, I got two completely different messages. A visiting lecturer told us that if you smile before Christmas, you've already failed. Then one of my mentors in school laughed at that and told me to turn up exactly as I am. I can see where both came from, and for years I got the balance wrong, mostly because nobody ever defined what "being yourself at work" actually means.

So in this episode I split that phrase into two separate things, character and disclosure, and share the quick test I run before I say the honest thing, at work or online.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Character (how you speak, what you care about, what you refuse to do) versus disclosure (telling people about your life, your plans and your struggles), and why it's your character that builds your career

- Why disclosure outlives the context it was said in, and the moment a leader told me they'd watched an episode of my previous podcast

- Editing yourself versus erasing yourself: bringing your reasons and your evidence into a meeting, instead of either saying everything or saying nothing

- The three questions: does this need to be known, or do I need to be heard? Would I be comfortable with it in writing, read back to me in two years by someone who wasn't there? Am I giving information or giving leverage?

- What to be louder about instead: a weekly evidence record of what you did, what changed and how you'd prove it

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing this week: start your evidence record. Three lines, every week: what you did, what changed, and how you'd prove it.

And if you're building more than a career, the free Personal Ecosystem Assessment shows which areas of your life feel strong and which need some attention: https://ecomap.shanafrancis.com/

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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What do you actually want people to say about you when you're not in the room, and is that what you're currently sharing?

We might be the most scheduled, most optimised, most productivity-tracked generation of professionals there has ever been, and a lot of us are quietly exhausted by it. So are all these structures actually helping us achieve anything?

This episode is for anyone running a full life: a career, maybe a business or something on the side, study, hobbies, family and friends. Most productivity advice (time block everything, colour-code your calendar, write the perfect to-do list) wasn't designed for that many tracks at once. I share what happened when my own calendar went from three things to six, with a newsletter, a coaching business and a part-time master's added on, and what I changed.

Then we talk about lunch breaks (yes, really), and what it's like learning on the job and for the job at the same time.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- My old colour-coded Google Calendar with a to-do list under every event, and why it stopped working once I was juggling six things

- What I do now: five or six non-negotiables I can drag and drop around fixed meetings, starting each day with a mindset and movement check-in

- Why rolling unfinished tasks into the next day piles up by Sunday, and why I now only plan Monday

- An article on lunch breaks: why so many of us work through them, and why getting outside, even for ten minutes, is worth it

- Learning on the job versus learning for the job, and how I connected my master's in leadership and education to my day-to-day work instead of treating them as two separate things

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing this week: look back at your calendar or to-do list and take off anything that isn't serving you. Then take one proper break away from your desk, even if it's only ten minutes outside.

The lunch break article I talk about, from Stylist: https://www.stylist.co.uk/life/careers/how-to-ask-for-longer-lunch-break-boost-productivity/1086879

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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What's the one task you keep moving to tomorrow, and does it really need to be on your list at all?

Your body sends you a report card every single week: your energy, your concentration, how you show up in difficult meetings, how quickly you recover when something goes wrong. It's all data. And a lot of ambitious women I know are failing that assessment while blaming everything except the actual cause.

In this episode I look at why physical health keeps getting pushed down the list. Most of the conversation is framed either as self-care (the first thing to go when you're busy) or as elite performance content that isn't much use if you're 26 and just trying to get through the week. I want to frame it differently: your energy is a professional asset, in the same way your skills are.

Then I give you a simple framework for reading what your body is already telling you, so you can find where the leak is.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why "do I have time to prioritise my health?" becomes "can I actually afford not to?"

- The pattern I see in early career women who are doing everything right on paper and still hitting a wall, and what survival mode versus performance mode means

- Sleep quality, not quantity: whether you wake up recovered, or already tired and reaching for your phone

- Movement in your hardest weeks, not your easy ones, and why cutting it then turns a hard week into a hard month

- Midday fuel: why what you eat at lunch, and whether you eat at all, shapes who you are in the meeting at three

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing this week: look at all three (sleep quality, movement in hard weeks and midday fuel) and work out which one is making the most noise. You don't need to fix them all.

If you want to see how your energy connects to the rest of your life, the free Personal Ecosystem Assessment looks at the full picture: https://ecomap.shanafrancis.com/

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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Which of the three landed heaviest for you, the one where you read it and thought, "Yeah, okay, this is me"?

The CEO of OpenAI said recently that older people tend to use AI like a Google replacement, people in their 20s and 30s use it like a life adviser, and students use it like an operating system. I haven't been able to stop thinking about that, because I think he accidentally described three different relationships with the most powerful professional tool most of us have ever had.

This episode sat in my head for months, because I didn't want it to turn into another "ten AI prompts to save your week" video. It isn't one. I use AI every day across my teaching, my coaching and my content, and I'm not a tech person. What I want to talk about is a mindset: the difference between handing tasks to AI and using it to think better.

I share how I actually use Claude, what recent surveys suggest about who is using AI at work, and three shifts in how you relate to these tools.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why turning to AI before your manager isn't automatically progress, and how people can tell thinking that's been tested from thinking that's just been generated and accepted

- Mode one (task outsourcing) versus mode two (a thinking partnership), and why only one of them builds your capability

- How I use Claude with the full picture loaded in (previous scripts, content pillars, what's performed) so it pushes back on my ideas instead of writing for me

- Shift one: give context, not just commands, for example with projects that already know your goals and voice

- Shifts two and three: use AI to stress test a difficult conversation before you have it, and treat it as a long-term working relationship, not a one-off search

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing this week: pick one decision, conversation or piece of work coming up that matters. Instead of winging it, spend 20 minutes talking it through with AI properly. Bring the context, ask it to challenge you, and see what comes out.

If you want to see how your tools, energy and work fit together across your whole life, try the free Personal Ecosystem Assessment: https://ecomap.shanafrancis.com/

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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Be honest with yourself: are you using AI to think, or to avoid thinking? And if you try the 20-minute exercise, I'd love to hear what came out of it.

Have you ever walked out of an interview knowing you were prepared and could do the job, and still not got it? Or looked at someone else's career and wondered how they got there so fast?

This is the first Career in Focus, a monthly episode where I take one person whose career is worth studying and pull it apart, stage by stage. We start with Michaela Coel: from performing poetry at open mic nights in East London, to Chewing Gum, to I May Destroy You, which she made on her own terms after turning down a deal that would have meant giving up ownership of her work.

Underneath it all is one idea: being qualified and being hireable are two different skills. One is about what you know. The other is about how you are known. I walk through four principles from her career, with a diagnostic question for each one, so you can work out where your own gap is.

I'm Shana, a senior lecturer in teacher education and a CMI Level 7 leadership coach and mentor.

Some links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

- Why traditional advice (work hard, be reliable, keep your head down) teaches you to be good at your job, but not to be known for it

- Principle one, build the proof first: Chewing Gum Dreams opened the door, not the other way round. What are you building right now that shows what you can do, independent of your job title?

- Principle two, build from what makes you different: what do you keep minimising in applications and interviews that might be your strongest differentiator?

- Principle three, choose opportunities carefully: is this role building towards the version of you you're trying to become, or are you here because you were tired of looking?

- Principle four, articulate your thinking: her Edinburgh TV Festival lecture, and why your voice is part of your employability

CONTINUE EXPLORING

Your one thing this week: go back to the four questions, find the one that landed hardest, and take one step in that stage. Build one piece of proof, practise saying the thing you minimise plainly, make an honest assessment of the role in front of you, or share one piece of your thinking in public.

My recommended tools and kit: https://benable.com/shanafrancisofficial (some links may be affiliate)

CONNECT WITH ME

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanafrancisofficial

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shanafrancisofficial

Website: https://shanafrancis.com

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Which stage are you at right now: one, two, three or four?