Part of realistic and effective time management is acknowledging how limited time is, which can be frustrating. Let's talk about some approaches to take to make us less focused on the frustration and more focused on what we do about it.

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

-- To take my free 5-day program, the Reset and Refresh, click here: https://kellynolan.com/reset-refresh.

I also share actionable bite-sized time management strategies on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/_kellynolan_/. Come hang out with me there!

If you're struggling with time management, a critical thing to realize is that your time management struggles are not a character flaw – they're just symptoms of you using a system you likely learned around middle school to manage your ever-more-complicated life. Let's talk about it – and what to do about it. 

To jump into a Bright Method program, click here.

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

When you're scrambling to hit deadlines, it's smart to take a step back and ask, "Where are all of these deadlines coming from?" Many deadlines come from us, which is great news because anything in our control is easier to fix. Let's talk about how to give ourselves more breathing space at work.

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

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To learn more about and sign up for the Bright Method 8-week program, click here: https://kellynolan.com/the-bright-method-time-management-course-with-kelly-nolan.

Ever hit a wall of exhaustion and then beat yourself up for not being productive? In this episode of the Bright Method podcast, I dig into how to work with your natural energy levels—rather than fight them—so you can approach time management in a more realistic and sustainable way.

We’ll cover:

• How to identify your baseline energy patterns—daily, weekly, and even seasonally

• The key mindset shift of “matchmaking” your high- and low-energy tasks to the right time of day or week

• How to plan for energy “disruptors” like big meetings, medical appointments, or even fun events that still leave you drained

• Practical ideas for what to do during low-energy windows (especially if you can’t just take the afternoon off)

• Why observing your energy—without judgment—is a powerful first step, especially if you're not sure where to start

Plus, I share how this concept has played out in my own life and what it looks like inside the Bright Method system, where we use digital calendars not just to manage time, but to help tailor your plans to you—your focus, your energy, your real life.

If you want to bring more intention and ease to your life, this episode will help you do just that—without needing to overhaul your entire lifestyle or become a morning person.

Referenced episodes:

• Ep. 9: Strategies to get more ease in your life
• Ep. 17: Why white space is actually NOT helping you get more breathing space
• Ep. 19: Know a hard work seasons is coming up? Let's make Future You's life easier (including building in recovery time) 

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

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.

If you're like most of the women I work with, your relationships, including your friendships, are the most important parts of your life – more important than work or home logistics. 

Even when friendships are a top priority, it can be hard to consistently show up the way we want to. Life gets busy, and despite our best intentions, remembering to call a friend or text them during a tough or joyful moment often slips through the cracks. If that resonates with you, you’re not alone—and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad friend. It just means your brain can’t do it all on its own.

In this episode, I share calendar-based time management strategies that help me and many of my clients be the kinds of friends we truly want to be, especially during busy or emotionally draining seasons of life. We talk about:

• Why expecting your brain to remember it all is unrealistic

• How to use your digital calendar to show up consistently in your friendships

• What "friendship maintenance" looks like and how to calendar it in a flexible, non-overwhelming way

• How to support a friend going through a hard time (or a celebratory one!) with intention

• Why this isn’t about “shoulds”—but about showing up in the ways you genuinely want to

• The power of adjusting your expectations to match reality without guilt

If you want to feel confident and proud of how you show up in your relationships—without expecting your brain to carry the full load—I hope this episode gives you practical tools to do that.

A full transcript of this episode is available on my website about two weeks after the episode is published. To find it, click here and select the episode.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.

Whether you want to decide some long-term plans now or NOT, this episode is for you. 

You can download the accompanying guide (including more examples than I shared in the episode) here. 

In this episode, I walk through how I approach long-term planning and goal setting in a realistic, pressure-free way. I don’t believe every woman has to be constantly striving to improve—and that can make traditional New Year’s resolutions feel out of step with real life.

So I share:

• Why January might not be the best time to set goals (and what to try instead)

• The three caveats I want you to keep in mind before diving into goal setting

• Why I believe not having goals is totally okay

• How asking “how do I want my life to feel?” can ground your planning in what truly matters

• What it looks like to brainstorm from that place and identify just one goal to focus on

• How to use your calendar (in a Bright Method way!) to bring that goal to life

• How to assess unexpected opportunities as they pop up throughout the year—through the lens of how you want your life to feel

Whether your goal is tangible and action-oriented (like training for a race) or more internal (like drinking less or listening more), I walk through how to make it actionable with your calendar—and, more importantly, how to adjust and not overcommit. Because even if you’re not “doing” a big thing, you’re still doing a lot. Let’s give that credit—and get realistic about what one more thing would actually take.

I also mention: 

• Episode 25 of this podcast, "Current reality first – and then add in the aspirational change,"
• Podcast episodes from Goli's Lessons from a Quitter podcast:
  • "Picking Your One Goal" (Apple; Spotify)
  • "Replay: Side Effect of Going After Your Goal" (Apple; Spotify)
• Bonus tool (not mentioned in episode) for long-term planning: this blog article

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.

I do NOT break out my calendar every time I get an idea of something I need/want to do and find the perfect home for it in there. That's just not realistic for me – or, likely, you. 

In this episode, I walk through how I personally capture to-dos when they pop into my brain—whether I’m sitting at my desk, juggling kids, driving in the car, or even lying in bed—and how I make sure those to-dos don’t just live on scraps of paper and in my Notes app forever.

I’ll also share:

• Why I don’t immediately put every task into my digital calendar

• What “bridging” means and why it’s a core part of the Bright Method system

• My favorite tools (including the imperfect magic of Siri) for capturing tasks on the go

• A strategy to stop late-night logistics from keeping you awake

• The difference between capturing a task and actually bringing it to life

We all live in the real world. This episode helps you find a capturing system that matches how your life actually works—and ensures that important tasks don’t fall through the cracks.

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.

If you’ve recently stepped into a leadership position—or want to be ready for the next opportunity—this conversation with Jodi Flynn is a must-listen. Jodi is the CEO and founder of Women Taking the Lead, where she helps organizations and individuals close the gender parity gap by developing more women into senior leadership roles.

In this episode, Jodi and I dive into the critical mindset shifts that need to happen when you move from being a doer to being a leader. We explore:

• Why high achievers often struggle with the transition to leadership

• How to redefine “busy” and protect your focus (even when you're managing a team)

• The hidden saboteurs that may be driving your overwhelm

• Why saying “yes” to everything actually makes you look less ready for leadership

• How to lead your team effectively without micromanaging or holding them back

• What strong leadership really looks like when it comes to protecting your time

• How to manage the balance between being approachable and getting your own work done

We also talk about the role of women as “emotional caretakers” in organizations, and how to set respectful boundaries while still showing up for your team.

If you’re a manager, a newly promoted executive, or simply want to feel more confident leading your team, this episode will give you practical tools and mindset shifts to get there. Jodi’s mix of mindset coaching and leadership development blends beautifully with the time management strategies I teach, and I’m so excited for you to hear from her.

🔗 Learn more about Jodi Flynn and her work at womentakingthelead.com 🔗 Take her free leadership inventory: https://womentakingthelead.com/leadership-abilities-inventory/ 🔗 Connect with Jodi on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jodiflynn

Other resources you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.

If you’ve ever had your workday derailed by a coworker who “just swings by” your office or pings you for a “quick call” that turns into 20–30 minutes, this episode is for you. In this episode of the Bright Method Podcast, I’m diving into how to handle interruptions from those well-meaning—but time-consuming—colleagues I call “swingerbyers.”

We’ll cover simple, practical strategies you can implement to both prevent and manage these interruptions. From setting standing meetings and communication boundaries to using visual cues like door signs and headphones, you’ll leave with actionable tools to protect your time and focus.

We’ll also talk about how, as women in the workplace, we're often the “safe space” person in the office, and how to handle emotional unloads from coworkers.

And we'll talk about how to gracefully exit conversations that are dragging on too long and how to use friendly phrases and even movement (like getting up to grab coffee) to signal wrap-up time.

If you’re a hybrid employee, I share tips to help you match your work environment to the type of work you need to get done—so you can optimize your productivity whether you're at home or in the office.

Whether you love your coworkers but need more focused time or you're drowning in daily interruptions, this episode gives you realistic ways to take back some control. Let’s help you stay on track, get your deep work done, and still be the kind, approachable colleague you want to be—just with a few more boundaries that work for you.

🎧 Mentioned in this episode: – Episode 12: The Manager-Maker Schedule (for matching work type to work environment)

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.

Outsourcing home responsibilities can stir up all kinds of emotions—money concerns, societal pressure to "do it all," and even our own internal narratives about what we should be able to handle. In this episode, I dig into the practical and emotional sides of outsourcing tasks at home so you can reclaim time, reduce stress, and focus more on what truly matters to you.

I break down three mindset barriers that often prevent us from getting help at home, including guilt around spending money, cultural messaging about financial responsibility, and the feeling that outsourcing is somehow failing at being able to do our roles. I also share a research-backed shift in perspective that helped me start valuing my time more than I used to—and how that shift has made a meaningful impact on my life and my happiness.

From there, I walk through a three-step framework to identify what’s draining your time and energy, evaluate your thoughts about those tasks, and explore creative outsourcing solutions.

I also dive into specific examples of home-related outsourcing—ranging from hiring a cleaner or laundry service to getting help with cooking or even working with a private chef. Whether you're cooking for yourself or a whole family, I offer a range of options so you can find something that works for your needs, budget, and values.

We also talk about “seasonal outsourcing”—making intentional decisions to outsource during particularly intense work or parenting seasons without feeling like it's a forever commitment. I also share ideas for outsourcing beyond the traditional, like hiring someone to hang holiday lights or help with birthday gift shopping.

My goal with this episode is to give you a nudge to rethink how you're spending your time, especially on repetitive, time-consuming home tasks that you don’t enjoy. Outsourcing isn't just about getting more done—it's about making space for what brings you joy, peace of mind, and rest.

If you're curious about outsourcing but unsure how to start—or if you're already outsourcing but want to do it more intentionally—this episode is for you.

Resources mentioned:

Time Smart by Ashley Whillans

We Should All Be Millionaries by Rachel Rodgers

Busy season episode: Episode 19 of this podcast

Links you might enjoy:

• 🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

• 📱 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.

• ✨ 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.