Work + Life Harmony | Time Management, Organization and Planning for Overwhelmed Women

Years ago, I went to a full-day "best year yet" workshop at the end of the second week in January. I'm coachable to a fault, so I did every single exercise they gave us. I walked out with an enormous workbook and what I thought was a beautiful plan for my year.

That plan was basically useless before I'd even finished unpacking.

Part of the problem was that nobody in that room ever asked what my real life and my real capacity looked like. The other part was the timing. Every planner starts in January, every marketer is shouting "new year, new you" (my least favorite message ever), and so that's when most of us finally sit down to map out the next 12 months. Right after the six most demanding weeks of the year, with a full-blown holiday hangover.

If you've ever built a plan in January and watched it fall apart before spring, friend, this one's for you. I'm sharing why January quietly works against the plan you're trying to make, and when I do my annual planning so January gets to be just another month.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• What happens when you bring your holiday-hangover energy to your annual plan, and why pushing through anyway can backfire.
• Why the plan you make in early January is secretly built on the chaos of the last few weeks, and you won't even notice it happening.
• How January and a good chunk of February can be gone before your plan even gets started.
• The month I've been doing my annual planning for years instead, and what it changed about how my January feels.

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

If you love paper planners but your actual life has to be digital, you have probably felt stuck between two bad options. Go digital and lose everything you love about paper, or stay on paper and miss half of what your family adds to the shared calendar.

I have been recommending one tool for this for years, and today I got the founder on the show.

My guest is Katy Allen, the creator and owner of Artful Agenda, the only digital calendar software I give The Pink Bee stamp of approval to. Katy built it after she had to quit paper planners entirely, because her husband's tour schedule and her kids' schedules lived in Google Calendar and she was not about to do double entry. So she built the paper planner experience she missed, stickers and pretty layouts and all, on top of software that actually syncs.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• The difference between a digital planner and actual calendar software, and why that distinction changes everything about what you can do with it.
• The one feature Artful Agenda has that Google Calendar, iCal, and Outlook all get wrong
• What to do about the shared calendars you can't control, like the school or PTO calendar dumping every meeting onto your view.
• How to pull work, personal, and the kids' stuff out of three different calendar systems and see it in one place without picking a side.

Connect With Katy and Artful Agenda:

• Artful Agenda (affiliate link, includes a free trial): www.megansumrell.com/artful
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/artfulagenda
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/artfulagenda
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ArtfulAgenda

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

If you've looked at a calendar lately and counted the weeks between now and December 31st, you probably thought what I thought: that is so much time!

Then I actually counted. And the number on my calendar and the number I really have were nowhere close.

Planning your time is a lot like having a financial budget. And right now most of us are spending from an account we think is full, but it isn't.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• The four-step exercise I walked through to find out how many weeks I actually have left this year.
• The first thing I layered onto my calendar that instantly took 25% of my capacity off the table.
• Why knowing your real capacity is the opposite of scarcity.

Join Plan-a-Palooza: https://www.megansumrell.com/plan

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

Have you ever said out loud, "I wish I had a wife"? I know I have!

For years I thought the answer was to hire it out in pieces, so I had a nanny for my daughter and a cleaner coming every week. Then I'd look at whether a laundry service was worth it, or whether I could find somebody to walk the dogs on the days I just couldn't. By the time I added it all up, I was looking at eight or nine different people for eight or nine little pockets of my life and the math stopped making sense. And not one of them was taking the thinking off my plate.

Turns out there was a whole category of help I didn't know existed, and I really wish I'd known about it ten years ago.

My guest this week is Kelly Hubbell, founder and CEO of Sage Haus, and she's here to explain what a household manager actually is.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• What a house manager actually does, and why it is a completely different job than a nanny or a housekeeper.
• What this really costs, and the number of hours a week most families start with.
• The difference between handing off a task and handing off the thinking behind it, which is where most of us get stuck.
• Why this isn't only for households with young kids at home.

Mentioned in the episode:

Book an introductory call: sagehaus.com/pinkbee

Connect with Kelly + Sage Hause

• sagehaus.com
• linkedin.com/in/kellyhubbell
• instagram.com/mysagehaus

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

All I wanted to do was finish my daughter's baby book. Months 11 and 12 of her first year of life were the only thing left, maybe eight pages, and I wrote it on my list almost every other week for three years. 

It never got done. But you know what did get done? Just about everything for everybody else.

I know you have one of these. It's the project that needs a free weekend, or two full days, or a few months of real effort. You can look at your calendar two months out and see wide open space where it could finally happen, and then those two months arrive, and puff, the space is gone. So you tell yourself you'll get to it "when things settle down", or "when this season is over", or "when I have time".

For three years I kept asking myself what was wrong with me. Where was my discipline, my willpower, whatever people call it. That wasn't it at all, and today I'm telling you what was actually going on, because I promise it's happening to you too.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• Why "when I have time" and "when things settle down" never actually show up.
• Where all that open space on your calendar disappears to 
• Why the projects nobody else is asking you for are always the first to fall off.

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

I teach planning for a living, and almost nothing I mapped out for this summer actually happened the way I planned it.

Since the middle of June I have been on 22 airplanes. Three of those trips were booked with about 48 hours notice, and three separate times I had to disappear from work completely and hand this business over to my team.

From the outside, that probably looks like a planning expert whose planning failed. And if you have ever watched your own plan go up in flames and thought "why do I even bother," this episode is for you. Because I hear women call themselves failures over this all the time, and it breaks my heart every single time. There is something happening here that almost nobody names, and once you see it, you stop measuring the year by whether the plan survived it.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• The three choices you get to make about anything you can't get to right now.
• What an annual plan is actually giving you, which is not the thing you think it is.
• The reason you can end a year nowhere near where you planned and still feel zero guilt about it.

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

If you have ever decided you're just not a confident person, this episode is going to change how you think about that. My inner critic gets real noisy sometimes, and I'm guessing yours does too. I hear this from women constantly, that you either have confidence or you don't, and if you don't, that's just your lot. Dr. Cindra Kamphoff is here to tell us that is not how it works, and what I loved is that she didn't just tell me confidence is something I can build. She handed me the tools to do it.

Cindra has a PhD in performance psychology, spent four years as the mental performance coach for the Minnesota Vikings, and runs the Mentally Strong Institute with a team of 15 coaches. Her whole message is that confidence is not something you're born with or without. It's a habit, which means it's something you get to keep growing. 

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why confidence disappears right when you need it most.
• How to stop replaying a mistake for three days straight.
• The three questions that shut down the voice saying you're not good enough.
• What the research says about why women hold back more than men.
• The two-minute habit that quietly rebuilds your belief in yourself.

Mentioned in the Episode:
Get Cindra's new book, The Confidence Habit: www.confidencetools.com

Connect With Dr. Cindra Kamphoff:

• www.cindrakamphoff.com
• www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff
• www.linkedin.com/in/cindrakamphoff
• www.facebook.com/drcindrakamphoff

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

Every household has one: the person who knows when the prescriptions are running low, when the pet food is almost out, which kid has a field trip on Thursday, and when the car is due for an oil change. That person is "the glue" and it's a job that never came with a job description.

The advice we all get is to ask for help...delegate, get something off your list. So you do it, and somehow you feel exactly as heavy as you did before. 

In this episode I am breaking down the difference between holding something and doing something, why those are two completely different jobs, and what has to actually change if you want the weight to move off you for good. 

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• What is still sitting on your plate after your partner does the exact thing you asked them to do.
• The measuring stick most women were handed growing up, and how it is different from the one our partners got.
• Why "what can I do to help" is the wrong question, and the one I actually want to hear instead.
• How to pick the first thing to hand over, and the two words that decide whether it sticks.

Mentioned in This Episode:

• A Better Share by Dr. Morgan Cutlip: https://drmorgancutlip.com/

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

It's back to school season, and if you're the one in your house tracking every form, portal, email, and schedule change, you already know what's coming. All that information lands at once, and it turns into chaos fast.

That first week or two back is overwhelming for two reasons: a huge amount of change hits all at once, and it's a total shift from your summer atmosphere to your school year atmosphere. In this episode, I'm sharing three systems I put into place every single year to get ahead of that overwhelm, not to prevent the chaos, but to make sure I'm not the one carrying it all by myself for the rest of the year.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• Where I tell every piece of incoming information to go so it stops living in five different places at once.
• The one weekly appointment with myself that keeps me from reacting to every email and notification the moment it lands.
• Why I intentionally leave a window of my calendar blank the first week and weekend of school, and what that protects me from.
• The tool at the center of our house that means my family stops asking me what day it is.

Resources Mentioned:

• TOP for Students digital course: https://megansumrall.com/student
• Episode 251 - Family Communication Center setup: www.megansumrell.com/blog/how-to-create-an-effective-family-communication-center-with-the-skylight-calendar
• Episode 312 - Family meetings: www.megansumrell.com/blog/family-meetings-that-actually-work-with-christy-keating
• YouTube Skylight Calendar Tutorial: https://youtu.be/85fSKIYyTi0

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell

Time management, planning, cooking. These are fundamental life skills that we don't get taught in school, and if we're honest, not always at home either. Today I'm bringing back one of my favorite guests to talk about the one we haven't covered yet: teaching teens how to actually cook, not just survive on cereal and takeout.

Katie Kimball has been teaching families how to cook for 17 years, and she just launched an entire new program built specifically for teens. I wanted her back on the show because this conversation goes somewhere I didn't expect. We don't just talk about recipes. We get into why teens need a completely different approach than little kids, what to do if you think your teen already missed their window, and the mental health payoff that comes from a teen knowing they can actually feed themselves.

In This Episode, I'll Cover:

• Why it's never too late to start, even if your teen has never touched a stove.
• The three things every teen needs before they'll actually take over in the kitchen, and what happens when you skip one.
• What cooking has to do with your teen's anxiety.
• How to know if your teen is ready to go solo in the kitchen, or if they need you standing beside them first.

Grab the free Teens Cook Real Food sample lesson: https://www.raisinghealthyfamilies.com/worklife

Connect with Katie:
www.raisinghealthyfamilies.com
www.instagram.com/raisinghealthyfamilies
www.facebook.com/kidscookrealfood
www.youtube.com/@KatieKimball

________________________________

💻 Free Training

Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you?
 You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you.
 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining

________________________________

📱 Get The Pink Bee App

Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place.
 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu

________________________________

Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

www.megansumrell.com
www.instagram.com/megansumrell
www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee
www.facebook.com/megansumrell