How to Take Control of Your Time, Your To-Do List and Your Life in 2025

Jenni: Hi, welcome to the modern family finance podcast where we talk about all things money.

Jenni: Career and life. I'm Jenny, your host, and a San Francisco Bay Area financial planner serving women and LGBT professionals. So today we are diving into a topic that is on everyone's mind, especially my mind, which is taking control of your time, managing your to do list, and creating a life that feels both productive and fulfilling.

Jenni: And today we're talking to Alexis Hauselberger, who is a time management and productivity coach who specializes in helping people do exactly that. Alexis has made it her mission to empower people to do more and stress less. I need that. Through our coaching workshops and online courses, she's helped thousands of people take back control of her, of their time and their lives.

Jenni: So I'm really thrilled to have you on the show. Thanks for being here today, Alexis.

Alexis: Well, I'm excited to be here too, Jenny.

Jenni: Cool. Well, I'll just start with telling me how did you get into this work? And what was your background?

Alexis: So, I mean, my background, let's just say there, it wasn't a straight line. You know, of course I, in college, I just took classes I wanted and majored in something that was exciting to me. So I majored in existentialism, education theory, and studio art, which as we all know is the clearest career path to success, right? And I

Jenni: Maybe internal success.

Alexis: yeah. Internal

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: It was not very clear, you know, what I would do after that. And I, I fell into startups and I for, for 15 years or so, I worked in early stage startups doing essentially everything that wasn't sales and engineering. So operations, finance, HR, you know, interfacing with legal, like all of the stuff that runs a business that isn't the sales and engineering part. And. Over that time, I was in really like fast paced environments where there was always way more work to do than people to do the work. There were always people at the office at 10 PM. Like, sometimes people would sleep in the office. And I knew I didn't want that. Like, I wanted to be successful in work and in my career. And I also wanted My life, like the rest of my life outside of that was equally, if not more important to me than than that. And so I started kind of figuring out how do I set boundaries early? How do I create processes for myself? So that I am able to do the work that I need to get done and do it at a really high level and get promoted, et cetera.

Alexis: But. Also end at the end of the day and go home and enjoy my life and not work on weekends, et cetera. And so I was doing that. And eventually, you know, long story short, eventually, 1 of the CEOs that I worked for said, hey, do you think you could do a productivity workshop for our company just based on, you know, the stuff you already do? And I thought, yeah. Yeah, that sounds

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: fun. I would love to do that. And so I did that. And I think that just sparked something in me where I was like, Oh, this stuff that I'm doing, it has, it could have a greater reach than just me and my own life. And so many people had started coming to me. For that stuff that I realized, oh, there, there is maybe a market here for some skills that I have acquired that didn't necessarily come innately to me, but I've acquired over time that I could share with other people. And so that's how my, my coaching and consulting business was born. And then, of course, after that, a few years after that, I got diagnosed with ADHD and I was like, Oh, now it all makes sense why I was like, so interested in this and why I had to really work at those skills because they just didn't come naturally to me.

Jenni: Wow. Okay. I didn't know that. So, that's, that's an awesome origin story of how you got into this. And what kind of folks do you work with now?

Alexis: So I tend to work with people who are kind of mid to late career folks who are, you know, well, or well established in their career. Let's just say I find that most people fall into this camp of what I call successful, but got there by brute force. Right. So it's like they've achieved success in their career.

Alexis: Maybe other people looking in at them think they have it all together, but they don't feel like that at all. Like they feel like, well, I have it all together. Cause I work every night until 11 PM before like shutting my laptop before my eyes, you know, close by themselves. Or, you know, sure I've gotten here, but I haven't been to my kids.

Alexis: Little league game in the last five years, or my health is suffering, or I don't get any sleep, or I just feel really stressed and overwhelmed all the time. And they're looking for some help to kind of stay successful, but do so with a whole lot less stress. So, you know, if we want to kind of label these people, it tends to be like managers, executives.

Alexis: Founders entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers you know, people kind of in the professions typically that have families, but not always just people who have a lot on their plate. And a lot at risk, right? That they, that they are working towards.

Jenni: Yeah. So these high performance professionals, I love what you said about folks who got there by brute force folks who kind of gutted their way through it, right? When they come to you, like, what are some of the, what are the common struggles that you see?

Alexis: So, so many, but I think there there's one kind of really big mindset struggle. And I mindset is such a, I don't know, loaded term. It's a little woo woo, but like this, it really is, is that they think that somehow there's some way. They just haven't cracked the code, but they're going to be able to do everything,

Jenni: Hmm. I understand that. Yes. Yes.

Alexis: That is that is a mental hurdle that we actually have to get over before we can learn to prioritize in such a way that that makes sense. Because the reality is like you, me and everyone else, we can work 18 hours a day for the rest of our lives and there would still be more work tomorrow, right? Like we're not going to do everything. I mean, my to read book list, I'm never going to read all those books. It has like 500 things on it and it grows, you know, by three every day. Right. So I think that's a big hurdle. And then there are also just structural hurdles. Like so many of my clients, I mean, I was just meeting with a couple of VPs this morning that are doing some kind of group coaching with each other together. And they were both saying that they had, you know, last week, they each had 38 hours of meetings. Right. And so if you're trying to somehow handle your email and your slack or teams and get your actual work done, and you have almost 40 hours of meetings a week, like, that math doesn't math, right? Like, you're going to be working in the evening.

Alexis: And so really meetings are a huge issue. I think that just the volume. Stuff that comes out people is a big issue. And then a lot of times it's like people are they, they lack systems. I think this is a really big part of it where, you know, it's kind of like. Maybe in college, it was like, fairly easy for you to keep track of your stuff.

Alexis: And the early stages of your career, it was like, pretty easy for you to keep track of it. Maybe you had a. You know, notepad and you kept your to do list there and you kept the rest of this stuff in your brain. And then at a certain point, your responsibilities, your scope explodes and your old quote systems don't really work anymore.

Alexis: And you're not sure what to do.

Jenni: okay. There's so much to dig into here. Let's go back to the first thing you mentioned, which is like this belief. Cause I have this belief too. Like there's just some way to get everything I want to get done. Everybody else seems to be doing it. So clearly there's some path. Conceptually, I agree with you.

Jenni: Like there is no way, but why does it look like everybody else seems to be able to do it? And how do you help people with this mindset challenge?

Alexis: Yeah. So, so first thing is like, it seems that way because we like view people through their own social media or whatever, where they only tell us the good stuff. Right. But I guarantee you, nobody out there is. Like, has it all together and is always able to accomplish all the things that they want to accomplish. I will also say, like, this tends to be a problem that is. That people who are ambitious have.

Jenni: Mm hmm. Mm

Alexis: it's like, I don't work with a lot of people who don't have big ambitions and don't have a lot of things they want

Jenni: hmm.

Alexis: Right. Maybe if you don't have, if you're living just like a simple life and you, you don't have a lot of ambitions, maybe you are able to get through a lot

Jenni: Mm hmm.

Alexis: But I think we're, we're looking at like the curated view of people's lives of what they're willing to show us. We're not looking at the, the real view. So, you know. What we're seeing is not real,

Jenni: Yeah

Alexis: and then how do we help people with this? So I, so I think that the first, like, the first part is really just like talking through what, what are all the things that you wanted?

Alexis: What, what is what's going on? And what does your life actually look like? I often have my clients do a little time tracking when we start working together for just a week to see, like, where's your time really going, right? How long do things really take? What are you spending your time on that? Okay.

Alexis: You don't want to be, what are you spending your time on that? You do want to be like, where can we get a baseline? And I think that's pretty eyeopening for people. Like people, it's like, we all live in this world where we think we can get things done faster than we can. Right. And yes, I mean, like I have to learn these lessons every single day. And so I think part of it is we just start with the data and we say like, look, what's actually happening right now. And where do we want to make some tweaks and changes? and sometimes we use some tools like, like time blocking. We'll say like, let's just try to fit. Okay. You're, you say you want to do these 30 things today and you think you can do them. actually take it a little more granularly. How long do you think this one's going to take? Right. How long? I mean, even though we're, of course, underestimating Shirley, when we're doing that you find pretty quickly that, oh, of these 30 things you think you're going to be able to do, you probably only have time to do five of them. And. Once we get past the kind of reality of the situation, then we can learn to prioritize in such a way that, you know, you can feel good about the trade offs that you're making, because there will always be trade offs.

Jenni: So that's the hardest part, right? Like I'm gonna use myself as an example. I am a prime example of somebody who like thinks I can get 30 things done, but really I can only have five. I'm going to have these three meetings and then I'm going to go to the gym and then I'm going to Get ready for this podcast.

Jenni: And I'm going to, you know, I'd be like, it's like, I didn't have, I barely just made it here. Right. Cause I was trying to scrunch it all in. But the hard thing is what you said earlier, which is ambitious people want to do a lot of things. So to give up, like to make these trade offs feels really difficult.

Jenni: Like, well, I do want to spend an extra 20 minutes to do some more lifting, you know, or whatever it is. I do want to spend an extra 30 minutes to prepare for this meeting. So how do you like help people figure out how to make these trade offs?

Alexis: well, we use a lot of experimentation, right? Because I think that sometimes we have to like, try something out to see what feels better and what doesn't. And I talk a lot about this concept that I developed called a task realism, right? Which is really like, let's say you have time, let's just simplify it and say, Tomorrow you have time to do five things. Is it going to feel better to you to have decided the five things that you're going to do of all the things that are, that you could do have decided, like, these are really the most important five things for me to do and do those things. Or is it going to feel better for you to have 25 things on your list and do five of them? if you do the same five things, even if you chose the same five best things to do, in the first case, you feel really good about yourself. And then the second case, you feel terrible by yourself. We got the same things done, right? Or the same amount of things done. And so I think just talking through a lot of examples of this and getting people to experiment with task realism.

Alexis: Like, what does it feel like at the end of your day when you have pared it down, but you actually did the things you said you were going to do versus the alternative, which is where most of us are living and where we, you know, we're just pushing things from day to the next and feeling bad every day when we push, you know, the same 30 odd things.

Alexis: So I think. It kind of starts there and then it's not, it's not as if we're not ever going to be able to do those things.

Jenni: Mm.

Alexis: I can't do them all right now.

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: And then analogy that I like to use is around like reading, reading books. Like, let's just say that you have time to read 25 pages of a book a day.

Alexis: And that's like a lot for a lot of people. Right. But

Jenni: Mm hmm.

Alexis: amount of time, is it going to feel better to you to read five different books at once and read five pages of each one a day, and then eventually in six months, you'll finish them all. Or is it going to feel better to read 25 pages of one book? finish that book in a couple of weeks and then start the next one. Right. Like what, where, what will feel like you accomplished more right in the, I mean, in the end you still, you read 25 pages, right. But what feels better? And that's kind of what we're shooting for is like, you don't have to, you know, we're not saying you're never going to do this stuff.

Alexis: We're just saying like, let's do some of it now. some of it later

Jenni: Yeah,

Alexis: moving beyond this planning horizon of like today and tomorrow, and we're starting to think a little more broadly.

Jenni: right. I like that. I mean, I think a lot of times, what do they say? It's hard to make a lot of progress in a sh that you feel like you don't make any progress in a short amount of time, but over a long time, you can make some amazing progress.

Alexis: Right. Yeah.

Jenni: that this kind of goes into something you wrote about in one of your blog articles, which is that you don't need to be caught up to feel accomplished.

Jenni: And this article really resonated with me because that's where I personally get stuck a lot is like, I feel like I can't walk away till I'm done and therefore I'll end up, well, I think I only have a half an hour slot and I'm going over because I, I just cannot walk away. I don't know if you have seen this problem with your coaching clients, but like, you know, you don't, I don't feel good unless it's done.

Jenni: So, so how do you deal with people with this problem?

Alexis: Well, I think that part of it is like reckoning with that reality that like, it's not actually ever done when

Jenni: Hmm. Mm

Alexis: there in your last half hour of the day and you're trying to finish all those emails and you're getting them out the door. I guarantee you that by the time you finish the ones that you started with half an hour ago, there's more in there, right?

Alexis: Like more stuff has come in. And so just like, like email and. Dishes and laundry and all of this stuff. It's never going to be done. Right? Like, there's just, there's always more. And so, you know, a lot of times people are saying, like, well, I will get to the fun stuff of my life when I am done

Jenni: hmm.

Alexis: kind of obligation.

Alexis: Right? And I think that's, that's a hard way to look at it because you're never going to get to the fun stuff or you're never going to get to the fun stuff without guilt in

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: Whereas if you can say, I know it's not done, I know there will be more work tomorrow. And I'm going to take some time to prioritize some things that are important to me outside of this. Then, and if you do that over and over again, you start to kind of train yourself that it's actually okay.

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: Yeah,

Jenni: Well, and you mentioned one thing, guilt, right? Like I think this guilt of saying no to other people or maybe, you know, having to let people say, let people know that you're not gonna get it done. That trips up a lot of people. Maybe guilt for yourself that you haven't done enough. Right? Is this just like, look, this guilt is gonna happen and it's, and just let it pass?

Jenni: Or how do you help people navigate that guilt, which is very real, especially for women.

Alexis: yes. Yeah. I mean, so I think part of it is learning to set expectations

Jenni: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alexis: Right? Like I just like I can't do it. Right. It's just like accountability is my top is my top value. And like, I just. I can't even think of a time when I, I missed a deadline.

Alexis: Right. But it's because it's not because I'm working until midnight to make it happen. It's because I have set expectations so that I'm not like giving, I'm not overcommitting and

Jenni: Right.

Alexis: too much. Right. And so I think like the guilt often comes when we have not set expectations appropriately, or we we've done like best case scenario.

Alexis: All right. Like we've said, Oh yeah, I can get this to you on Tuesday or whatever. And in reality, we should probably be saying like, Oh, I think I can get it done on Tuesday. I can get that to you by the end of the week. Like, does that timing work for you? Because then you're giving yourself extra buffer, extra leeway for when things come up or take longer than you expect, which is always the case, right?

Alexis: Like things always take longer than we think unexpected things always come up. And then I think that some of the, you know, the guilt of there's often a lot of guilt of like, Okay. When I'm not with my kids, I feel guilty that I'm not working and answering those emails and then vice versa. Right? Like when I'm working too late, then I feel like I'm not spending time on myself or my family or what it is. And so I think that part of it also is deciding like what boundaries feel good and appropriate to you and testing them out.

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: Test, iteration

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: I'm not going to convince you by words that something will feel better. Right? But if you test it out, you may find that it does.

Jenni: Hmm. Can you give me some examples of boundaries or things that you or your clients have tried that have helped them with some of these mindset challenges, whether around guilt or just trying to do the 30 things and feeling like they can't get it done? Hmm.

Alexis: so there's a couple that I think are really easy interventions, simple to do that, that work really well. And especially around just like email and like that stuff comes up a lot, right? And teams messages and slack. And so 1 of them is to put an out of office reply when you're not planning to be in your inbox. So, for instance, I have an out of office reply. I work a 4 day work week these days, and I have an out of office reply that goes out. on Thursday at 5 p. m. or whenever I'm done working for the day. And it says, Hey, thanks so much for reaching out. I am working a four day work week these days. And so I'll be back in my inbox on Monday. If you know, and then it has like, you know, if you're looking for this, do this, whatever. There's a few things in there where they can self serve or, Hey, if it's a true emergency, reach out to my assistant and she can get, she can get to me. Right. And this does two things. Okay. One, it lets people know what to expect from me, right? And I don't feel guilty about that because they know what to expect. I'm setting that expectation, but it also keeps me in integrity, right? I'm not going to check my email on the weekend. If I've told people I'm not going to, because that would be that, that would be not an integrity for me. Right? So it's kind of this.

Alexis: Like self fulfilling prophecy in some ways, that people can do during the work day. Like if you are just like, I just want to turn those Slack notifications

Jenni: Hmm. Hmm.

Alexis: a couple of hours so that I can get this project done, that I really need to be working on change your status to heads down on a project until 4.

Alexis: 00 PM. When I emerge, I'll respond. And you would be surprised how much guilt that takes away, because I think lots of times, especially in like, I mean, so many of us are in remote and hybrid situations.

Jenni: Hmm. Hmm.

Alexis: think and to know that we're doing a good job and we're doing our work and, you know, that we're available and simply the act of telling people what we're doing can relieve us of that guilt.

Jenni: Hmm. I like that. Yeah, I mean, it's like a lot of these strategies and I feel like a lot of the challenge for ambitious people is not that they're lazing around, it's that they feel overwhelmed and unable to manage the things that they want to do. So yeah, I mean, any other like kind of these shifts or just tips that are helpful.

Jenni: I love both of them. The ideas that you have just putting out of office, even if it's just for like the one day that you're off, right? Because a lot of times you'll do it for like two weeks vacation, but not for that one day and then you'll feel bad about it.

Alexis: slow to respond.

Jenni: Right.

Alexis: will do like, Oh, you know what? I have, I'm like in meetings or all of most of this week, I'll just throw up a slow to respond out of office. Right? Just like give myself a little leeway, a little breathing room so that I don't have to like brush into my inbox in between every single meeting and just like make sure that I'm not missing something important. I think another big Thing that takes away or reduces that overwhelm is to use a some sort of task management system, right? To stop keeping stuff in your head. I think there is a huge amount of anxiety and overwhelm for people when they don't have a true. Trusted system, right? Something where they're putting all their stuff where they can where they can prioritize it, where they can move things out into the future. Because the reality is a lot of people are just working from a list, right? Like here's my list of 500 things that I need to do. And then every day I look at my list, I

Jenni: Mhm.

Alexis: I stare at my computer for a little while and I just like put randomly pick

Jenni: Are you videotaping me? Is this, this is my life.

Alexis: and then I, I work on it. Right. And no, I'm not videotaping you, but I just have had a lot of

Jenni: Yeah,

Alexis: with people.

Jenni: yeah.

Alexis: And so I think that a huge part of this is getting it all out there. Like the list is the first step, but then we actually need to figure out when we're going to do this stuff, like when we're going to prioritize this stuff in time. And I think getting it out of our head is really the first step. Because otherwise we just have this ball of anxiety in the back of our brains. That's like, I know I'm missing something. I just don't know what it is, when it's going to come back to bite me or how bad it's going to be. Right. And then we're waking up at 4.

Alexis: AM being like, Oh no, I didn't send that email or whatever. Right. We're, you know, our sleep deteriorates and it's kind of downward spiral. So, I mean, that's one of my, my, the first things that I work on with everybody is like, let's get stuff out of your brain. Let's get it into a system, like a trusted system and let's prioritize by date.

Jenni: Yes. I love that. Yeah. A trusted, true trusted system. It's GDD all the way, right? Good, good. Getting things done. Going back to kind of the boundaries and the trade offs too, right? Like you know, I guess yeah. One of my hypotheses is that for a lot of us ambitious or kind of growth oriented people, right, who really want to get better and be better, it's sometimes it's not even an issue of time management.

Jenni: It's an issue of maybe last time. It's not actually an issue of time management. It's an issue of, like, internal. Worthiness achieve overachieving, you know what I mean? Like insecurity management of like, if I'm not there on slack all the time, I'm not going to look good. If I don't go, you know, if I don't overprepare for this meeting, it's all going to fall apart.

Jenni: Like these kind of are these anxiety that causes people to kind of be overwhelmed and overwork and work 18 hours a day. You know, it's like, I'm sure you have experienced this in your coaching and your work. So what are some of the, like, what are some of the conversations or Or things that you do with, with this situation.

Alexis: Yeah. I mean, I am a, yes, I would say I work with a lot of perfectionists or

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: perfectionists. Right. And I think that one of the concepts that we really dive into a lot is the concept of good enough. And I feel very strongly good enough. It's my favorite concept. Right. And I don't think of it as settling at all.

Alexis: I think good enough gets a bad rap and we think of good enough as like, Oh yeah, it's good enough, but like, it's not great and whatever. And I actually think about it very differently. I think that. Yeah. Everything we do has a point. At which after good enough is going to be diminishing returns. Right? So it's like often, you know, the amount of time it takes you to get something from 0 to 90%.

Alexis: Right? It's going to take the same amount of time to get it from 90 to 100 or 99. We're never going to get to 100, right? But 99 and nobody's going to notice the difference. But you. Like you're the only one. And so sometimes it's like a matter of experimenting with that and just seeing like, what if I, what if I just pull it back and see what happens? I often think of it as different situations call for different amounts of good enough, right? So it's like, if you're a heart surgeon, good enough, when you're in surgery has to be really, really, really good. Right. you're writing an email to someone, like, it really needs to make sure that it has no punctuation or spelling errors, right?

Alexis: It needs to be professional. It needs to be clear. maybe use a couple of bullet points, but the reality is a lot of people will spend 45 minutes writing an email that, you know, studies show people spend about seconds reading an email, right? And so it, the, the mismatch is kind of there for the effort that we're putting into something.

Alexis: I always think of a, kind of like you know, like a pass fail test or a pass fail course. It's like, Hey, if I'm taking a pass fail test and I get more than 71%,

Jenni: Right.

Alexis: studied too hard. Like I'm somewhere else, right?

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: where's the pass fail for different things? And like, where in your life are you willing to lower the bar?

Alexis: Because we can't be at the high bar everywhere, right? Like, You can't have a spotless house and be the CEO and like show up to every single event and volunteer in your kid's class every single week and, and, and, and, and like, that's not going to work. So where are the places in your life where it's really important for you to achieve at that, that super high level.

Alexis: And then where are the parts of your life where it's actually okay to to lower the bar or to outsource or to, you know, to, to do something a little bit differently.

Jenni: Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's a great point. And it reminds me of my other question, which is like around outsourcing and around money, right? So I'm, I'm a financial planner. Some part of the, one of the sessions I do with my clients is a life planning meeting where we kind of reflect on are mortality, what we really want out of life.

Jenni: And what are some of the things that we would change? And very consistently, some of the things, the answers I get is I wish I had more time to spend with my loved ones. I wish I had more time to travel and explore. I wish I had more time to take care of my health except work is picking up all my time.

Jenni: Right? So that's usually cause I'm working with ambitious, you know, for kind of what you mentioned, mid to late, you know, between thirties to fifties people who are in the thick of their career, as well as their family and sandwich generation, all that. So where was I going with this? Oh, the question is like, what, one of the questions I ask people is like, are there ways in which money, which is kind of a stored, like, if you think about time as a resource, like money is also just another resource, right?

Jenni: Like how can we best use your money potentially to free up some of that time? What are your thoughts about that?

Alexis: Yeah, I, I am totally on board. I have similar conversations with,

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: clients where we talk about like, look, obviously we all have our own budgets. We all have our own, you know, thing, but where is where is money spent on something going to give you back time that will allow you to lead a more fulfilled life, fulfilled life without, you know, destroying your financial goals, right? So it's like, where, where does that happy medium live? Right. And so, you know, it's like, for me. I have a house cleaner who comes every two weeks and like does a deep clean. And, you know, I outsource the rest of the cleaning to my children, honestly but you know, that's, that's a place where I'm happy to spend money because otherwise cleaning my house would be like, like, it is so worth it to me if I look at the dollar is going out to the hours coming in.

Alexis: Or, you know, I even think about like getting groceries delivered in the same way. I feel like. Pre pandemic, I used to be like, no, no, no, I'm going to go to Costco. I'm not going to pay the additional 10 percent Instagram or you know, Instacart fee or whatever. And then I started realizing, oh, how much time am I getting?

Alexis: Like if I spend an extra 20 bucks getting my groceries delivered, but I didn't have to go to the stressful grocery store or like Costco on a weekend, actually really valuable. That's like, it's like a 20 fee I'm willing to pay, you know? that sort of thing. And so what I recommend that people do is think about not only where they can kind of outsource for money, but also are there places where they can like barter with other people or trade with other people?

Alexis: Like, I think that, you know, when my kids were little, we lived in a a condo and there were like three units in the building and there was another family that had similar aged kids to us. And we used to swap babysitting every other week. So Every other week, it'd be a movie night at our house, we'd feed all the kids dinner, and the other parents would go out, and then we'd swap. And we weren't spending any extra money, but we were getting a lot of time. so I think thinking outside the box of like, we have to do everything ourselves can be really valuable.

Jenni: Yeah, and I'll add to that, too. I also think that sometimes money can help you solve problems that, sure, if you spent enough time, you might be able to solve it, but if you've been trying and you're still stuck, take time management as an example, perhaps engaging in a life, you know, a group coaching or something like that can actually help you.

Jenni: Help you break through the barrier, right? So whether that's in time management or personal training, those kinds of things, it's like, yes, yes, I'll, I'll do it. But if you can't do it on your own, perhaps paying for some help can actually really help you break through that in a faster way.

Alexis: Totally. Yeah. I feel a hundred percent. And I do this in my own life. It's like when, when I am struggling with something and I'm like, yeah, I'm smart. I could figure it out, but do I want

Jenni: Right.

Alexis: do I want to pay some money to get some help, to hire an expert, to, you know, get some support there? Or, you know, this, I was thinking about my favorite example of this when you're talking, it's like, I always have clients and I had this, this, this, experience myself where I was like, Oh my God, I'm running out of like Google photo storage.

Jenni: Yeah,

Alexis: you know, call out the bad ones. And then I learned that to get like a terabyte of data from Google, it's like 20 a year. And I was like, solved. We're going to pay Google 20. And then I don't have to deal with this project.

Alexis: I didn't want to deal with in the first place.

Jenni: well that's exactly it. Sometimes we also go overboard to try to save money or do things that are actually not relevant, right? So, an example is like credit card hacking. Yes, credit card hacking, you can get great points and things like that, and that can make a lot of sense when you're not making a lot of money or just starting a career.

Jenni: But if you have a good salary and you're doing, you know what I mean, that might not be the best use of time. Perhaps just spend your time enjoying yourself or trying to get the promotion, like that's going to make you a lot more money than spending your time credit card hacking, as an example.

Alexis: Totally right. Or like the extreme couponing

Jenni: Yes.

Alexis: great, you did that, but now you just have a bunch of packaged food that you don't really want to eat

Jenni: You don't even want. Yes, absolutely. Okay, well, I'm going to pick your brain on your own personal life. Like, what does your own daily routine look like? And what are some of the adjustments that you've made that over these many years that you have felt working to work for you?

Alexis: Yeah. So, okay. So right now my, my life looks like, so I have two, I have two teenage boys. I have a husband, live in San Francisco, just like you. And I, my alarm goes off most days at 8 15 which is after my children go to school. I've spent a lot of time really kind of fostering their independence to the point where starting in middle school, they were like taking, taking public transit to

Jenni: Oh my god, this sounds like the holy grail. Okay, keep going.

Alexis: Making their own breakfast and making their own lunch and like getting themselves out the door. So this hasn't been forever, but you know, my kids are 14 and 16 and I would say for like the last two to three years, it's been like this. So my, my alarm goes off around 8 15. I'm a super night owl.

Alexis: Waking up has always been the hardest part of my day since I was like five years old. I snooze my alarm until like 8 35 and then I get up. You know, do whatever I need to do. Usually I have my first meetings or first starting my day around nine. And then I work like hard from like nine to usually five, five 30, sometimes six Monday through Thursday. and then I don't do any work at all. In the evenings or on the weekends, my Fridays are not a work day, but they are I would call them like a networking day in some ways. So they're like a networking learning day. I usually take the afternoon completely off and go to the pottery studio. Or, you know, do just do things for me or do doctor's appointments or whatever.

Alexis: And then I usually have a few, like, I call them work adjacent calls, but they're really just like, you know, calls with my work friends, like my, you know, my colleagues and things like that are going to coffee with someone. I spend a lot of time on hobbies. Like, I go to the pottery studio a few times a week.

Alexis: I knit, I crochet, I cook dinner from scratch every night because I love cooking. And yeah, it didn't always look like that, right? Like.

Jenni: And how do you kind of put back, like, it sounds like you got some clear boundaries, like, do you have a certain time in which no matter, even if you're not done, not caught up, because as you told me it's never going to happen anyways, do you just say, I'm shutting down? And even if you had more things to do Friday you just say, nope, I'm not going to do it.

Jenni: I'm going to like, you know what I mean? Cause that's, that's a challenge that I mean, I personally run into. It's like, sure, I had this time, but then I feel like if I don't get these things done, then I'm anxious. And then it's just going to catch up to me on Mondays. So I might as well give up my free Friday and do this stuff.

Jenni: You know, how do you, how do you deal with that?

Alexis: So, you know, it's been really interesting. So I, this, this concept of task realism that we talked about, right. I have been like really good at this for a long time and I just started doing the four day work week last year. And it took me about six months to. To get the right task realism for four days, right?

Alexis: Like I was just overestimating and overestimating and overestimating. And now I feel like I'm finally back to like, when I plan out my week for the most part, it's not like I, every single time I'm doing all the things that I said, but like 90 percent of the time I'm doing. I'm doing the things that I said I was going to do in the time that I allotted for them. And it's far fewer things than I would want to be doing. Right. But I know that for my my quality of life and for my mental health that trade off is worth it. And I am, I don't move as fast as I would want to in some ways, right? It's like, I, sure there's, I would love to be able to have a full another full days of work that I could smash in there without actually working another full day, you know? And so. What I usually do is if I realize like, Oh, something took me a lot longer, I reprioritize and I

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: what really needs to happen this week? What can wait? Like what's okay. If it actually waits. And, you know, I, I have a higher hierarchy of, of things where it's like, if I've committed something to someone else that's getting done, right. If it's some, like a project that I'm working on and it's taking a lot longer that that might get pushed to the next week and that's okay, because I found that that's the trade off that makes. Sense for me, like I am willing to move a little slower so that I have more time in the week where I'm doing things outside of work.

Alexis: And

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: as like, even someone who works for myself and I love my job,

Jenni: Hmm. Yeah.

Alexis: But I still have a lot of other things that, that I want to do. So I just reprioritize. I say, okay, this didn't happen. I'm a firm believer that like, we can only move forward. Like the only time you can do things is in the future. I can't go back into the past. And to your point of like, if I'm getting to the end of the day and Like I'm usually kind of taking stock of things around like three or four

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: okay, is there anything that I'm not going to accomplish today? If so, when does that need to move? Do I need to change, like reorient my day tomorrow to

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: for that?

Alexis: And so I'm doing some kind of like on the fly prioritization, but yeah, generally like I, the time I need to, I usually go for a run in the afternoon,

Jenni: Hmm.

Alexis: like five, five 30. And by the time that needs to happen, I'm done for the day. Cause I know after that it's, it's

Jenni: You're done. You're done.

Alexis: kids, it's

Jenni: That's

Alexis: sleep, you know, it's hanging out with my family.

Alexis: And so, yeah, I, I kind of pick a stopping time. It's not the same time every day, but I'm like, okay, this is the stopping time. And I think that have you ever heard of Parkinson's law that work expands to fill the time allotted?

Jenni: what I say about my children too, but yes. Mm

Alexis: I think about it like that, like giving myself a stopping time each day, even if it's slightly different that really helps me to contain the work because I may be less of a perfectionist if I know, okay, I can't just like keep iterating on this thing. I just got to get it out the door.

Jenni: hmm.

Alexis: it really helps with that.

Alexis: Not letting work just explain into everything. Cause I think if we don't have a stopping time or we have this idea that we'll just work until we get it done, it could expand into everything.

Jenni: Yeah. Well, okay. I'm gonna ask one. I want to dig a little more into how this actually looks like for you So task realism you mentioned 3 p. m. You kind of do assessment like on Sunday night Are you basically saying these are things I want to get done for the week and kind of the time block and the time?

Jenni: I think it'll take like what is that? What how do you actually be realistic about it?

Alexis: So I do that. But I do it on Thursdays. And when I worked a five day week, I did it on Fridays. So I'm a really big believer in end of week planning and end of day planning

Jenni: Mm

Alexis: beginning of week or beginning of the day.

Jenni: hmm.

Alexis: And so, yeah, so I spent about I did this this morning. I spent, during the focus session for my group.

Alexis: coaching program. Like we were all like, okay, what are we gonna work on? I was like, I'm gonna do my, my planning. And what I do during that time is I look at my task system. I look at my calendar side by side, and I start looking at the week ahead. And I'm time blocking things. I'm making sure that I have enough time for the things that I want to do. Almost every week when I do this, there's about 30 percent of the things that I have Like technically scheduled for next week that I am pushing because I realize that like I don't have time to do them next week. So I'm making those decisions. Some of those things are easy things to push. I'm like, yeah, I said I wanted to reach out to this person to network with them about whatever, but it's not really that important.

Alexis: I can push that out. And some of them are a little harder to be like, Oh, I really did want to do that thing,

Jenni: Yeah

Alexis: It's just not the priority for next week. And so I'm always thinking about this from a level of like. What can I actually accomplish? And of all the things that I want to accomplish, what are the things that are most important for me to get done next week to move things forward? And then at the end of every day, I'm usually doing a little bit of a I just call, I call it end of day planning, but I'm really just looking at the next day, looking at my task list. I'm

Jenni: Yeah.

Alexis: and I'm saying, What needs to move? Like, does anything need to shift based on what's happened?

Alexis: Or maybe, you know, maybe somebody scheduled a meeting and it over one of my time blocks and I need to move that around, et cetera.

Jenni: Yeah. Okay. That's actually very concrete. Cool. Well tell me kind of what you, how can people work with you? Mentioned group coaching. What does that look like and what are your offerings?

Alexis: Yeah. So I have a lot of ways that people can work with me, but the primary way is my coaching program. It's called time well spent. And this is a four month coaching program that has group coaching sessions and a really robust online course so that you can at your own pace to kind of learn all of the different modules and techniques and et cetera.

Alexis: We go through learning to know yourselves better exactly as you are. Because it's a lot easier to build strategies around who we are than trying to put ourselves into somebody else's box around task management, prioritization, planning Habit building all of our tools, like our email, our calendars, like all of this stuff efficiency and focus.

Alexis: So we really dive into all of the elements that help us to feel in control of our time and to make those choices that feel right so that we can start spending our time in in service of our own goals and values. And so that's a program that people can join any time of the year. I also have limited one on one coaching spots available. And then I also do a lot of work with corporate. So I will come in and do corporate workshops. And sometimes I do like bespoke coaching groups for companies as well.

Jenni: Gotcha. Awesome. All right. Well, I mean if, if people want to find you work and they go

Alexis: so they can go to my website, of course, Alexis com, but also I have a podcast called the do more stress less podcast. And that's a great way to their super short episodes are like 10 minutes. Usually that's a really great way to come into my world.

Jenni: that is awesome. Okay. Well, if you leave us with one message, what is one takeaway, one message that you hope people could take away about managing their time? What would it be?

Alexis: My one message is do not store it in your head. You'll be more stressed. Like get it out of your head. Yeah.

Jenni: Okay. I, I have learned a lot from this. So thank you so much. And may we all do more and stress less. Oh, no, that's not the that was not the motto, right? That was how to do it, right? Okay, two more stress ups. Okay, alright, got it. Got it. Cool. Thanks, Alexis. That is super helpful.