Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Busy Moms

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Boundaries and Space: See your time as sacred and communicate these commitments and boundaries with others in your life by asking three questions about each thing on your list. No matter your circumstances, you’ll find productivity strategies here that will help you regain a greater sense of ease, purpose, peace, and control over your time and life. Body first, business second: When you tend to your body’s needs first, your brain and hormones are able to function optimally and you get more done in less time. Before you plan your week, identify what your body needs. She has 14 experiments in useful areas as sleep and asking for help, but the chapters are heavy on anecdotal stories from her online community that she plugs in and after the book, and low on actual detailed experiments. Plan your week with internal and external cycles in mind. Identify the vital few priorities. Eliminate, delegate, and outsource.

Einstein’s theory of relativity says that observing time is relative to the object. Essentially, time is relative to our experience of it. I read this book during a time when I was in the middle of my enlightened awareness about my addiction to stress and my breakup with busyness. After over a decade in high-stress environments that value busyness in the highest regard, that had become my programmed baseline. When I was less busy, I felt agitated and as though I shouldbe doing more. I would find ways to create stress, do unnecessary tasks, and overcommit to the non-essential. I had lost sight of the difference between busy and productive. Practice rest to be better at doing less. Periods of complete inactivity or non-productivity are required to recharge. Yoga Nidra is a shortcut to effective rest. How do men’s cycles work? How can we support the cycles of the men in our lives? (We really got into this one and answered it a way you probably wouldn’t expect.)Just as the launch was starting we made an offer on a house and flew to NYC for an amazing book release . Kate: You just make a date… you know what the other one I’ll just add that’s not in the book is, do an activity rather than just hanging out. There have been people in my life where we’re going to continue the relationship but I’ve realized it works really well to go to a museum or, honestly, do a project. Make a cake or something rather than just being in conversation.

On a regular basis (quarterly, annually, etc.), we should be taking time to refocus our vision, goals, habits, and actions. Spend time getting clear on your purpose, defining your vital few, and making a list of what matters to you. I like doing this quarterly, as the seasons change. It doesn't take more than an hour and it helps me get focused on my priorities for the season. Having clear priorities helps me from feeling overwhelmed when everything feels important. I know my appetite for life isn’t going to decrease. I love my enthusiasm and I don’t want it to dwindle. We paused for a minute after the launch ( because creation without the pause leads to burnout ) and then the summer took off at warp speed. In the end, I’m really grateful to the person who took my idea and sold it as her own. She helped me see that I was undervaluing it and that I needed to take it more seriously and get it out into the world.

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If you’ve had questions about how your energy cycles, productivity cycles, and creativity cycles work, I’m 99% sure we covered it in this episode. When it comes to social media, here’s how you can use your cyclical energy to get incredible momentum with ease: Marie: Great job. For anyone, if you don’t have it, please go get Do Less. You are going to love it. So many fun experiments to try, so that there is more joy and more love and more you to experience in the world. Thank you, Kate.

Marie: Then the question becomes, what part, if any, am I playing in allowing this particular dynamic to continue? The theory of relativity and Kairos tells us that when your perception of time changes, you feel as though you have more of it because the observer of the time has shifted, you actually do have more of it. We can bend time and stretch time by how we perceive it.I inhaled this book because it illuminates a language about women and work that I've lived by without realizing it. I've never felt more validated or less alone in the way I do work as a woman in the world. Marie: It kills polarity in relationships. If you are wanting to have that sexy time happen and that chemistry and that spark and you are just cutting your partner off, not a great way to have that love stay alive. But what if that notion is a lie? What if it’s a destructive, dangerous cultural myth that we need to break?

Time-bending is a practice where you can actually stretch the hours and minutes of your life through creating Kairos. In this book, you'll get the permission and tools to change the way you approach your life, and embrace living in tune with the cyclical nature of the feminine. By cutting out the extraneous busyness, you'll have more satisfaction and joy, and you'll let yourself be more often instead of doing all the time. Kate: See? That’s the thing, it’s so disempowering and I see it with parents a lot and I do this myself, so I’m not pointing fingers and I see it in relationship a lot, where we have this overinflated sense of self importance. In a way, it’s completely egotistical to think that if I don’t do it, no one else will or won’t do it as well as I could. In our culture, the way we work isn't working. Our addiction to busyness and obsession with always trying to do more leads us to feel like we're always failing our families, our careers, our spouses, and ourselves. Design your schedule around the cycles and seasons of our bodies and projects to get more done in less time while experiencing more flow, ease, and fun.

Your energy levels (and hormones if you have a period that’s unmedicated) are primed for focus and completion at this time. Utilize this energy to take a look at your analytics, see what kind of content your people are resonating with the most, and think about what you want to do less of on social and what you want to do more of in the next cycle.