Have you wondered how we approach planning? Or what advice we give when we talk with friends about planning? Are you simply curious to know more about us?
For the final episode of this season of our podcast, we dive into questions we received from our community! They range from personal questions, to planner-related questions, to general productivity questions.
Join us for a laid back and fun conversation!
A few years ago, I read this crazy statistic that shocked me. It said the average person spends 5,000 hours in their lifetime looking for misplaced items. Ladies, that’s over 6 months solid spent feeling totally disorganized, simply trying to unblock your progress. I think the reason this hit me so hard was that I completely identified with this statistic. I knew it had to be accurate based on how I tended to feel in that season of my life. I also knew that this disorganized, fretful overwhelm was seriously holding me back from accomplishing the big goals I deeply cared about.
I realized I needed a hub for my brain—a one-stop home for #allthethings I was trying to juggle. I knew that if I could capture the important details of life in one place, then I could arrange the tasks I needed to do into my schedule, and my brain would have everything it needed to prioritize and stay intentional with my time. The Evergreen Planner was born out of this desire to finally feel truly organized.
Now, when I’m feeling spacey, I have a single place I can come back to in order to know what tasks I need to tackle next. This tool has saved me so much of the precious time that I used to waste spinning my wheels, and empowers me to be more present in my home, stay on top of my daily todos, and weekly make progress on those bigger goals and dreams that motivate me to stay intentional.
Last week, we talked about how to make sure your goals are clear and actionable, so that you can make significant progress whenever you have the time. Today, we’re going to talk about that time, about how to create a symbiotic relationship between your goals and your lifestyle so they mutually support each other over the long-haul.
Other goal setting systems might show you how to reverse-engineer your goal (what we talked about last week), but then they end there and wish you good luck. This system shows you how to look at your goal in the context of your daily life, and then make strategic shifts in your schedule in order to make space for this goal.
When I (Shelby) was seven months pregnant with my first, my husband and I decided that I would work from home. At the time, designing a planner was nowhere on my radar. I had a complex system of to-do lists and digital calendars that makes my head spin to think back on. But what was worse than my lack of a cohesive system of organization was my total lack of understanding about the concept of trade-offs.
That’s why, at seven months pregnant with my first baby, I signed the biggest freelancing contract I’d ever seen. Without fully realizing what I was doing, and with one tiny digital stroke of the pen, I had committed the next two years of my life to the completion of a very rigorous and mentally straining project that would teach me the concept of trade-offs through the hard knocks of experience.
On top of it all, I had a severe deficit in my personal time-management skills. Unsurprisingly, this turned into a years-long season of overwhelm that bubbled into every area of my life.
Even so, I have to admit that I am thankful for that insane season of life. It was genuinely good work (a dream project, really), and I learned SO, SO much from it.
If you’ve been following us for long, you are familiar with our favorite hashtag: #makespacetothrive. In a world full of hashtags, this may seem like nothing more than a snippet of motivation, a pithy phrase, or something fun to add on on top of photos. But for us, #makespacetothrive is a reminder of a key practice that moves us from overwhelm—to intentional living. It’s become such a core phrase, that when we were brainstorming names for our podcast, it easily made its way to the top of our list.
Listen to episode 5 on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.
Back in 2016, Shelby was living in a non-stop, head-down, shoulder-to-the-grindstone hustle. She and her husband supported their tiny family with a home business and were always behind on deadlines. Every moment taken to just sit down and breathe—even just to eat dinner together without multitasking work—invited a crushing air of guilt into the atmosphere.
But there seemed to be no way to simply hustle more. After brain-dumping a giant todo list that took up seven sheets of paper, Shelby realized she was going to have to upgrade her productivity strategy, or she and her husband would never get ahead of the train.
In her typical style, Shelby turned to Google to help her figure it out. Her husband gave her a couple of books he thought were relevant. They scheduled a meeting with a business mentor. Something, anything had to give. But every tip and tool she found seemed to yield a mere 1% improvement to their current situation. It just wasn’t enough to move the needle.
But then she found it. The missing piece. Shelby will tell you that learning this strategy radically altered how she approached her life in that season, and continues to be a practice she benefits from today. This is the element that has proved over and over again to be THE #1 strategy to consistent achievement and success in her life, and it’s one she’s found so many people completely miss.
And what was this missing ingredient? MARGIN.
Margin is planned white-space for your day, your week, your home, your brain—space to breathe in #allthethings.
In other words, margin gives you SPACE to thrive.
Margin looks like many simple things in our lives:
Margin transforms your schedule from a never-ending endurance race to a strategic agenda filled with life-giving rest periods. Margin helps you focus on what’s essential, and then protects your intention, so that you can truly show up in the things that matter most. Margin allows you time to process stuff instead of letting it build up and eat away at your mental bandwidth. With a lightened schedule, opportunities to be flexible, and a decluttered mind, margin exponentially reduces your stress—which in turn empowers you to be more creative, make more thoughtful decisions, and tackle complex problems with confidence and energy.
If you’ve been living a life based on hustling as much as you can from when you wake in the morning to when you crash at night, planning margin into your life will feel like a breath of fresh air. Slowing down is one of the easiest ways you can move yourself from a place of overwhelm, to a place of peace. When you begin by ensuring you’re well rested, well nourished (physically + otherwise), and you’ve distilled your commitments to the things that matter most, you are able to show up for the people and responsibilities in your life with zeal. You will bring a life-filled energy that simply cannot exist when you are run down by a never ending to-do list.
When you build margin into your days and weeks, you are giving yourself (+ your family) the space to truly thrive.
Listen to episode 5, all about margin, on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.
And if you haven’t already, please leave us a rating and review so others can find this life-giving content! We’re so thankful for you.