The Bright Method Podcast: Realistic Time Management and Productivity for Working Women & Working Moms

In this episode of the Bright Method Podcast, I'm joined by professional life coach Michelle Gauthier to explore a topic that deeply affects how we spend our time—people pleasing.

If you've ever said yes when you wanted to say no, or agreed to something before even thinking it through, this episode is for you. We break down:

• What people pleasing really is (hint: it's not just being nice)
• How to recognize it, even when it's subtle
• The emotional and physical cues that signal it's happening
• Why so many high-achieving women fall into this trap
• Practical strategies to pause before saying yes and evaluate requests with intention
• Michelle's "Love & Fit" test to help you assess whether a request is aligned with the life you want
• Specific phrases to use when you want to say no with kindness and confidence
• Tips for handling pushback when you do say no
• How to gamify the process and even calendar your "nos" so you can see how much time you're reclaiming

Michelle and I share examples from our personal and professional lives, including the awkward conversations we've had to navigate and the mental load that comes with trying to control how others perceive us. If you've ever resented someone for asking you to do something—because you felt like you "had" to say yes—this episode will help you step back, get curious, and reclaim your time.

Michelle Gauthier is the host of the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast and helps high-achieving women create calmer, more intentional lives through private coaching and group programs. She brings warmth, humor, and a down-to-earth approach to this powerful and all-too-relatable conversation.

Whether you're looking to set stronger boundaries at work, say no to another PTA role, or just want to stop defaulting to yes, you'll walk away from this episode with tools you can actually use—starting today.

Learn more about Michelle at www.michellegauthier.com, and listen to her podcast, Overwhelmed Working Woman, wherever you get your podcasts.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

>> Click here for the list.

Recently, I shared on Instagram that I re-did our wills, trusts, etc. in Minnesota. We'd done it in California, where we lived when our first daughter was born, and we amended there when our second was born. And then we needed to re-do them here.

When I shared, I got a lot of "ah I need to do that too" messages and questions about how to get started.

It also prompted other conversations around parts of adulting that we know are important but we don't do because they don't seem urgent and/or we don't know where to start, so we avoid them. I get it.

I also had someone ask me to to do a podcast episode on some of this stuff, so I started outlining it – and it got a bit unwieldy. So, this will be a two-part-er: This week's episode and next.

For the list of all the things discussed in the episode (remember: typo-ridden; function over perfection), click here.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

>> Click here for the list.

Recently, I shared on Instagram that I re-did our wills, trusts, etc. in Minnesota. We'd done it in California, where we lived when our first daughter was born, and we amended there when our second was born. And then we needed to re-do them here.

When I shared, I got a lot of "ah I need to do that too" messages and questions about how to get started.

It also prompted other conversations around parts of adulting that we know are important but we don't do because they don't seem urgent and/or we don't know where to start, so we avoid them. I get it.

I also had someone ask me to to do a podcast episode on some of this stuff, so I started outlining it – and it got a bit unwieldy. So, this will be a two-part-er: This week's episode and next.

For the list of all the things discussed in the episode (remember: typo-ridden; function over perfection), click here.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

I've had a few people ask me recently about time management during the newborn baby phase. Here are my random tips – take them or leave them!

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

Finances can be so tricky. I anticipate more conversations around budgeting, etc. (just like time, how we spend money matters just as much as what we make/have), and this is a wonderful kick off episode with Emilie Dayan Hill.

To learn more from Emilie:

• Click here to get the guide mentioned in the episode, and
• Click here to follow her on Instagram.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

Coming out of January and February, months when lots of curveballs hit, it's hard to motivate to plan after likely weeks of plans getting derailed. Let's talk about that frustration – AND why it's still worth planning (even when those plans later get derailed).

Ep. 8 gives you a high-level overview of my weekly planning session if you're curious.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

Sometimes, we realize we're the ones giving ourselves too-tight deadlines – either out of a desire to show how eager we are or because the sense of urgency makes us react too frantically. Instead of beating ourselves up for that tendency, let's talk about why this can actually be a great thing to realize – and what to do about it!

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

We've talked about how to handle sick kids at home (resources on that below), but what about all of the scheduled days off of school. Someone asked me to discuss those days, so let's do it!

Sick kid resources:

• Eps. 26 and 27 of this podcast (though missing some updated info in the article)
• This article - tip 1 contains the updated information

Other kid-related resources mentioned:

• What do working moms do in the summer - 12 practical strategies
• 13 strategies to plan for maternity leave
• Career or Kids: When to stay, leave, or scale down your career for kids – at least for now

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

Often, women I work with or talk to online share that, while they want to use the Bright Method, they resist implementation because of, what I can see, two buckets of very understandable reasons:

• They want to understand what the end result looks like before they start and they can't see it right now, and/or
• They know on some level that they have too much work for their available capacity, and there's part of them that doesn't want to really see it and the have to make tough calls and have tough conversations to deal with it.

Both make total sense. So, let's talk about them more.

Resources mentioned:

• Episode on calendaring your current reality first – and then calendaring in the more aspirational things you're trying to do: Episode 25 (one of my favorites!)
• "How I Structure My Day" series on Instagram
• Data Privacy Specialist
• Associate Dean of a Medical School
• Chief of Staff at a Tech Company
• College Professor with older kids with after-school sports.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.

So often, we calendar a deadline or an event and think either there's not much that goes into it or we'll just remember what do to for it. But when you actually write down everything that goes into it, it's a surprising lot of stuff, takes up more time than we realize, and the sheer volume of things explains why we forget to do some of it every time.

Let's talk workflows, their benefits, how to do them (simplicity is great!), and walk through an example relating to personal travel.

Resources mentioned:

• The travel checklist: https://kellynolan.com/travel-checklist
• The work travel podcast episode: ep. 46
• The article about how to check out of work for a vacation: https://kellynolan.com/vacation/ (please see the publish date – always cracks me up)

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website. To find it, click here and then select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 3-Day Time Management Program: Get three short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
• ✨ The full Bright Method™️ program: If you're ready for a full time management system that's realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It's helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time – and their peace of mind.
• 📱 Follow me on Instagram: Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women – like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.