July 9, 2025 • 24 mins
Time management expert Kelly Nolan shares strategies for succeeding at work and life
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode will be a longer one part of the series
where I interview fascinating people about how they take their
days from great to awesome and any advice they have
(00:23):
for the rest of us. So today I am excited
to be interviewing Kelly Nolan. Kelly is a time management
expert and the host of the Bright Method podcast. So, Kelly,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy
to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, excited to have you. So tell our listeners a
little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sure thing, My name's Kelly Nolan. I was a patent
litigator for years and had been decently organized up until
that point of my life, and quickly got overwhelmed when
I became an attorney and I looked for help, didn't
really find anything. That's stuck at the time, and slowly
pieced together my own weird little time management system and
kept practicing law. I thought I was kind of creating
(01:00):
a system to get me where everybody else was, and
it wasn't here till years later that I realized other
people felt the way I felt, And so that's the
time management system I teach now, the Bright Method. In addition,
I'm married to any our physician, so I get very
wacky ever changing schedules. We have two little girls, a
seven year old and a three and a half year old,
and our original baby, our black lab Alice.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That sounds wonderful, so a full house as well.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's interesting when you say you know you were feeling overwhelmed,
What was it that made you overwhelmed? I mean, is
it the volume of incoming stuff, the requests like weird hours?
I mean, what was it that? Yeah, when people say
they're overwhelmed, what do they tend to mean? I think
it was the.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
First time in my life I just felt like the
input kind of outstepped what my systems could keep track of.
I love paper planners. I'd loved them all the way
through law school. I had worked before becoming a lawyer,
but usually in a little bit more maybe manageable settings
where people were kind of like looking out for your
work and helping you manage that. And when you become
(02:02):
an attorney, especially in big law, like I worked for
multiple different partners, so no one really had eyes on
everything I was doing. It was up to me to
manage my workload. But I didn't also really realize that.
It sounds silly, but you're just you're like assuming that
what the work coming at you is reasonable, or else
they wouldn't ask you to do it. And so there
was that the volume of email went up exponentially based
(02:23):
on anything I dealt with. And I'm managing multiple matters
that have no relation to each other, so you know,
deadlines are set without worrying about what's going on in
my other matters. And it's just a sheer amount of
volume of managing clients and you know, documents and information
and all this kind of stuff. And then the expectation
that you know you're really supposed to be on. You know,
(02:45):
as a junior associate in big law firm, your job
is make everybody else's life easier. And so there was
just a lot of demand. And I will say that
when I say overwhelmed, I looked like I had it together.
I hit deadlines. You know, it wasn't like I was
a mess, but inside it's how I felt. I just
felt stretched, way too thin, anxious I was going to
drop a ball. I'd be like out with friends and
(03:06):
not able to focus on their stories because I'd be
worrying about work and I just was like, this cannot be.
I reject that this is what adult life feels like.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Well, what do most people get wrong? Like when they
have a high volume of work? What are they doing
wrong as they're managing it?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You know that took me a while. I mean for
a long time, I really blamed myself. I'd had these
systems that got me far, and I was kind of like, well,
these systems work, so it must be me, and I
think what I So for a long time I beat
up myself. I was like a character flaw in my head,
where in reality it was just a system failure that
couldn't keep up anymore. And I think that the biggest
(03:41):
thing we get wrong on time management is assuming we
should know how to do it naturally, and so when
we struggle, we blame ourselves and in reality we just
need to change some things up. In terms of what
to change up, I just think that the amount that
we juggle in our heads is amazing but also weighs
down our brain from the stuff that we should be
(04:03):
doing with it. And so a starting point that I
like to work on with clients. That I had to
do myself is just get it all out of your
head and into a tool that helps you manage time,
because all of these things come back to time, and
for me, that's I really lean on a digital calendar now,
despite being a paper lover. I just think that it
really helps with that organization in an efficient way, and
(04:24):
it's really getting everything out of your head into the calendar,
so you know down to yes, the tasks that we
do at work, but also when do you shower and
get ready? When do you cook meals? When if you
have little kids, do you do bed and bath time
with kids? If you have older kids, when do you
do homework? What are all the activities when you drive?
Between all the activities? Like lay it all out, because
I think that that gives you a better sense of
(04:46):
what your actual capacity is to take on anything else.
And I think that's the tricky part is when I
was drowning at work, I knew I was drowning. I
knew that I was overwhelmed, but I didn't know if
it was reasonable for me to feel that way given
my workload. And it wasn't until I made everything in
my life and everything in work visual that I had
(05:07):
a more objective understanding of what my workload was in
relation to my capacity, which helped me manage my workload
and also helped me feel far more confident in drawing
workload boundaries at work and dealing with the pushback and
managing that.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Well, what is it about a digital calendar that makes
that more effective? I mean, I can tell you I
use a paper calendar, and I know I'm a bit
of a dinosaur that way. I mean, people send me
invites like calendar invites. I'm like, they go somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I just but you know, I tend to manage my
life on paper and that has worked for me. But honestly,
I know if I were in a big corporation that
would just be a no go. But what is it
about the digital part, as opposed to it being a
necessary evil being in an organization that you think helps
make it easier to organize yourself?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, first things first, I never my position is not
everybody should be using my method. So paper is working
for you know, obviously you and anyone listening stick with it.
You know, I'm not saying no, you should use mine
if you have struggled with it, and you were like
me who had used paper and it just couldn't keep up.
To your point, I mean, half of my work was
on already in an outlook calendar being scheduled for me
(06:15):
and moved around, and it just became inefficient to also
write it on paper and keep up with it. There.
There are a couple of reasons. One, the communication factor
is awesome. So you know, obviously in a work environment,
digital allows you to send calendar invites, share calendars, all
that kind of stuff, and you can do that at
home as well. So I particularly work with women, and
that helps a lot with sharing the mental load is
(06:35):
having these calendars that partners also see, so you're not
like the house I think a lot of women tend
to still be very generally speaking in heterosexual couples, tend
to be the quarterbacks of the calendar and the house management.
But they're also not the secretaries and the keeper, like
the only person who has the information when you'd use digital,
you know, going to the calendaring, like the invisible to
(06:58):
do list stuff. I was talking about something that you can,
you know, schedule repetitively every workday or every Monday Wednesday,
Thursday or all that kind of stuff, and then drag
them around and move them around as you need. I'm
a very firm proponent of flexible time blocking and moving
things around. But I just find that if you were
going to write out, let's say, shower and get ready
every day when you're gonna do it, that would get
(07:19):
really tedious at a calendar, in a paper calendar, and
I would not judge you for being like, this is
a waste of my time. But you can do that
easily in a digital one and then move it around
other things like backups is one thing. I've had a
client who lost a paper planner and that stinks, you know,
And there are just some other reasons like that, But
on the whole, it's just that, like, for me, that
(07:40):
efficiency of calendaring everything and being able to move it
around quickly into new plans is really where a digital
calendar really shines.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, well, it's getting at this idea that all tasks
take time, and so you have to give them a time.
And if there isn't a time within your twenty four
hour day and one hundred and sixty eight hour week,
well we have a problem.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So we're gonna take a quick ad break, and then
I will be back with more from Kelly Nolan. Well,
I am back talking with Kelly Nolan, who is a
time management expert. She's the founder of the Bright Method,
which we are now going to talk about. We've been
learning about, you know, calendaring all our stuff, and I
(08:19):
know that that is a important first step in this,
but why don't you talk about what the Bright method
is so people have a sense of what you're talking
about here?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Sure thing? So I think that a tricky part with
time management that I know you know, Laura, is I
think a lot of these concepts are talked about as
if they're relatively easy, and then you go to implement
it can be kind of challenging. And so really what
the Bright Method is is walking people through how to
use a lot of these tools at our disposal. You know,
I'm a tennis player. I wouldn't give you a top
(08:47):
of the line tennis racket and be like now you're set,
Like you have to learn the strategy and like how
you will employ it to have success. And so basically
what we do is we leverage digital calendars, whether it's Outlook, Google, Apple,
some combination of them, and then walk through kind of
four pillars. The first pillar is getting clear on that
invisible to do list. I already talked about calendaring that
(09:08):
out and also setting up the calendar to be able
to do that. That can be its own headache and
my least favorite part of it, but it is what
it is. So we tackle it at the outset and
then really get clear on those invisible to dos and
make sure your baseline works, and also issue spot challenges
and adapt those so you might You know, it could
be something as simple as, oh, I'm trying to squeeze
(09:29):
an hour and a half of stuff into an hour
every morning, and that's why every morning feels the way
it does. And if I showered the night before four
times a week, that would be great, and then it
just kind of frees up space. The next step is
doing somewhat the same in the work environment, so figuring
out email, when you hold meetings, the repetitive work things
you do, like if you know, set up for board
meetings or you know, do financial reviews at times, like
(09:51):
building out those repetitive work tasks, and then again that
then shows you the white space of what actual time
you have to give to the more one off stuff,
assuming you have white space. I know a lot of
people in corporate America are like, it's like a whole
day of meetings. I don't have any white space. But
then we can work on blocking availability to give you
that white space in there. That then in the third
(10:12):
pillar we turn to the one off to dos and
start filling in that white space with the plans of
what you're going to do. And I'll just note here
that when people talk time blocking, this is often where
people start. They take their to do list and very
understandably start time blocking. But if you have an accountant
for all the things that we talked about before, that
can lead to a lot of frustration because you calendar
(10:33):
eight hours of beautiful things to do, but you never
had eight hours to begin with to do it. And
so that helps with that element of it. And then
the final component is planning. I teach a couple different
planning sessions. The main one is a weekly planning session,
where essentially you take all the inputs that have flown
at you over the course of a week, calendar them out,
and then review the next two weeks. And it's also
(10:54):
in that first step you know time to check in
on all your major projects, look ahead at major deadlines,
make sure you've act everything out so you have game
plans laid out in your calendar to hit those, and
then really I like smoothing out the next two weeks
at a time, just so that you know you're looking
ahead a little bit farther than just the next week.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, So let's talk about a couple of things with here.
I mean, one is, we're trying to calendar everything, and
as we all know, life changes and and you know,
we had white space from two to four in the afternoon,
and then the magic happens and there's no white space
between two and four beca something you know, urgent came
(11:33):
up that we have to deal with. So how do
how often do we need to recalibrate? Like how far
can we plan out with these things? I mean, what
what do we do to make sure that we are
giving tasks time but acknowledging that we cannot one hundred
percent control what time will be available.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Absolutely absolutely, So one of the big things I would
say is just like take a step, and this is
not perfect. It's not going to like solve all the issues.
You know, a sick kid home for or five days
is going to derail the best of plans, but we
do what we can. And in a lot of work environments,
a lot of people spend their day dealing with the curveballs,
the fires, the reactive stuff, and there are different ways
(12:13):
we can get at that. I really like thinking about,
especially for people managers, that might be where your value is.
Your company wants you in that firefighting role versus the
headstone work, and so we just need to acknowledge where
our value is. First of all, we can work to
eliminate some of the curve balls, but it's not realistic
to eliminate all of them. So what I like doing
(12:33):
is thinking about even though the curveballs are unpredictable in substance,
they are predictable and that we know they're coming usually
not Again, it's harder in the personal life, but in
our work life. Most people will say I deal with
thirty minutes of curveballs a day. I deal with five
hours of curveballs a day. But there's some sort of
awareness of how many curveballs hours of curveballs you might
(12:57):
deal with, and so we just plot those into the calendar.
And I know that sounds weird, but essentially what I
like doing is making visual your curve balls three hours,
five hours, two hours, half an hour, whatever it is,
and kind of putting it towards the end of your day.
And you can move them around as those blocks, as
like meetings get booked or things like that. But it's
(13:17):
a visual reminder to you that about that much time
of curveballs is coming, and do not fill up the
rest of the day or else this plan, you know,
isn't going to work. And if you don't have it
every day, some people more like you know, it's more
like three to four hours a week, and so maybe
block a Thursday afternoon and all this curveball is is
obviously you're not only dealing with curve balls at the
(13:39):
end of your day or on Thursday afternoons, but you're
building in the cushion in the rest of your schedule
for everything else to get pushed into as they go.
So again, it's just in one of those things we're
making visual that we usually are trying to juggle in
our head that kind of trips us up when we're
planning well.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And of course the million dollar question there is how
do I create open space for this this buffer. I
mean a lot of people are very booked. As you said,
you get everything out of your head, you may realize
that you're dealing with many tasks that could occupy all
eight or more hours of the day. So what should
we do to set boundaries or to get more open
(14:16):
space in our schedules.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, one is just to start blocking it now and
know that if you block it now and repeat it
on a weekly basis over time, hopefully it shakes out.
I will say it depends on the culture. I have
had clients who've had to instead of blocking like a
two hour block for focused heads down work, they'll block
four half hour blocks, so they look like meetings and
(14:39):
are a little bit more camouflaged and less people are
apt to take it over. I wish that weren't the case,
but you know, we work with reality here and so
there's that I will. But you know, a lot of
people I work with realize, whether it's meetings taking up
your time or just sheer workload volume, that they have
too much on their plate, and it's the first time.
I mean that is the simple elegance of any calendar
(15:01):
you use, paper or digital. If those boxes don't fit
in a day, you're objectively trying to do too much
and so making it all visual can flag that for you.
When that happens, I like people starting to think about
the conversation. I mean, if you can make the decisions
you know, to latter like go for it. A lot
of people have to have conversations with leadership around workload
(15:23):
and really getting clear on you know, as I sit
here today, this is what I view as like our
departments or our companies or whatever's top priority, these are
the three projects that will serve that I therefore recommend
we you know, work on these. We table these for
you know, next quarter, six months from now, whatever it is.
This will free up you know, ten hours a day
for me, for my team whatever to really ensure that
(15:44):
we hit the you know, knock these projects out of
the park and see what they say. You know, I've
had I've been pleasantly surprised at how many clients go
to their bosses and have those conversations and the bosses
are like, I had no idea you were in this
many meetings every day, or I didn't know you had
twelve priorities set across four departments that are pulling on
our department and help them prioritize I've also had clients
(16:07):
and I've been in it myself where they're like, figure
it out, and that answer, while very frustrating to hear,
it does something to your brain. You stop, you know, selling,
like putting work as your number one when you're like,
these people are not going to work. Look out for me.
I gotta start redefining what success looks like for me.
I'm not saying you have to leave. I know in
this work environment it's totally wacky, but there are It
(16:29):
just does something to you in terms of what you
are willing to do for a company that's not if
you know that you cannot you literally cannot win by
their rules. So you define your own rules of what
winning looks like.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Absolutely, well, we should always be defining our own rules
of what wedding looks like. Big fan of that around here.
All right, We're going to take one more quick ad
break and then I will be back with more from
Kelly Nolan. Well, I am back with Kelly Nolan, who
is the time management expert and the founder of the
Bright Method. So Kelly, let's pivot to you and your
(17:04):
own personal productivity practices. I'm curious if you have any
routines that help make you more productive.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
You know, I think about routines. A lot of mine
are born out of the principle of just like embracing
reality and the reality of my own brain myself. I
think a lot of times we demand that we change
and you know, get more discipline and all that kind
of stuff, and for me, that's never been very effective,
and so it's more like, Okay, my brain is not
going to remember all this stuff on my own. And
(17:31):
that's where the bright method came out of. Another one is,
you know, social media and phones are highly addictive, and
they're designed to be by a lot of very smart people.
And so instead of just demanding I have more discipline
and failing at that every day and beating myself up,
it's using also other apps that are designed to help.
So I personally love opal Opa l it blocks me
(17:54):
out of social media. I have it blocked me out
of Instagram, Facebook, and I also Safari browser every day
from four fifteen I think to five thirty when I
want to be really focused on my kids, and eight
pm to five am to protect my sleep. And so
it's just you know, acknowledging I don't do this on
my own, so let me help myself out doing it.
(18:15):
And the last thing that came to mind is I
was thinking about this was you know, in terms of
just building these routines and figuring out what fits in
your life, is just really acknowledging what phase of life
you're in. You know, For me, working out has always
been the first thing to go when life gets busy.
I think part of it's because I hold myself to
the standard of working out when I was in my
twenties of you know, working out at five am and
doing Class Pass in Boston, and so just switching up
(18:37):
to like fifteen minute at home workouts, it's not, you know,
the gold star that I wanted in my twenties, but
there are a lot of fifteen minute workouts that can
kick your tush in that time and it's really effective.
And so a lot of my routines are just building
around embracing reality and then getting creative about where I
still want to go.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Well, you mentioned that your blackout time on your device
as it's eight to five am, which sounds like an
early start. Do you do you have a morning routine
that's that's part of your schedule.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
You know, I have always been and I always don't
like this as someone works in time management, because it's
so cliche, as like, I've always been such a morning person.
I've also been a very early to bed person. I
remember my mom in high school looking at me in
bed at like eight or eight thirty. I was already asleep,
and she's like, how are you going to go to college?
I'm like, I don't know. I just like going to bed,
and so I do wake up very early. I don't
(19:29):
my alarm set for like six twenty five because I
do prioritize sleep in this phase of life with little kids,
I just that is my priority is sleep. But I
do tend to naturally wake up around five or so,
and so I kind of follow my energy. I used
to work out then Now I actually do like doing
the creative fun parts of my job in those early
mornings and just enjoying a hot cup of coffee in
(19:50):
the house is dark, It's like such a dreamy time.
And in terms of morning routine, I don't have a
full routine, but I have those non negotiables, you know,
feed the kids, feed the dog, and do the dishwasher,
pack up the bags, and then I use alarms to
hit the school bus. Or now that we're transitioning into summer,
like get us in the car for summer camps and
all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Absolutely, well, I was just curious because, yeah, we with
a podcast called Before Breakfast. We have a lot of
people who are definitely into their morning routines and including
listening to this, which is part of a lot of
people's morning routines. So I always ask my guests a
question of what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah? I think for me, you know, while I teach
this and I live and breathe it, it's always one
of those things you have to like catch yourself and
iterate on. I think that I can be having a
great day, but what doesn't let it be awesome is
usually my brain being consumed by a lot of different
things and not being fully present on you know, the
(20:53):
little magics in the day. I don't mean, like, you know,
my day's pretty boring. You know, I'm a mom the
little kids. It's nothing like super exciting. But even like
a three minute hot shower is pretty glorious, or a
ten minute walk outside with my dog in this weather
is amazing. But I can easily think my way to
not absorbing that. And so I've heard people on your
(21:13):
podcast talk about that like really absorbing the wonderful parts
of your day, and I fully agree with that. For me,
in order to be able to do that, though, it
really is taking all those thoughts that are buzzing around
in my head and getting them out. So whether that's
paper and pen or Siri, if I'm on the go,
I'll use like Apple reminders just to capture ideas and
(21:35):
then know that I have time calendar to go to
all those places and like hunt and gather them and
then bridge them into either my calendar or wherever I
keep like content ideas or just strategy ideas. And so
I guess my point is whether you use a system
like mine or something else, having a clear system that
(21:56):
you use to get things out of your head, park
them where they need to go, and then ridge them
into however you manage your task in time is to
me the first that's like the game changing step, so
that I can let things go and then absorb my
day and make it awesome. Whenever I've tried to be
like stop thinking about that or whatever, it just doesn't work.
I need to be able to get it out of
my head because I don't trust that my brain will
(22:16):
remember it. And I think that's what we do. We
like ruminate on things in the hopes of remembering to
do them. And so if you can help yourself get
there outside of your brain, then that's how to me.
I take a day from great.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
To awesome, amazing, amazing, And what's something you are looking
forward to now?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Candidly, I am in a really good I am not
someone who romanticizes motherhood. I think it's very hard in
a lot of ways. So just know that's the context.
My kids now are seven and three and a half,
and I do feel like we're hitting a really fun
age where I just have more energy too, and so
this summer I'm really looking forward to that. It's really
(22:53):
fun to hang out with the kids. But I also
love what I do, and I get to start my
program again in September and work with a lot of
awesome people and you know, nerd out with them on
how to make all of this work in their industries,
and they're with their families and everybody's life looks different,
and it's really fun for me to like puzzle and
tailor how to make it work for them, so I
look forward to that too.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, yeah, totally with you that as kids get older
they just get more fun. Do you mean babies are adorable?
I love babies. I had five of them, but I
you know, I love when they become so much their
own people and you can interact with them more and
totally thanks together. Yeah, absolutely so, Kelly. Where can people
find you?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I am most active on Instagram. It's at underscore Kelley
Nolan Underscore, and my website is Kelleynolan dot com. I have,
you know, a free program there. I also have the
podcast The Bright Method podcast. If people like nerding out
on this, which I imagine if you're here you do.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, absolutely, we all do. All right, Well, Kelly, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone
for listening. If you have feedback about this or any
other episode, you can always reach me at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
(24:15):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(24:37):
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode will be a longer one part of the series
where I interview fascinating people about how they take their
days from great to awesome and any advice they have
(00:23):
for the rest of us. So today I am excited
to be interviewing Kelly Nolan. Kelly is a time management
expert and the host of the Bright Method podcast. So, Kelly,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy
to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, excited to have you. So tell our listeners a
little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sure thing, My name's Kelly Nolan. I was a patent
litigator for years and had been decently organized up until
that point of my life, and quickly got overwhelmed when
I became an attorney and I looked for help, didn't
really find anything. That's stuck at the time, and slowly
pieced together my own weird little time management system and
kept practicing law. I thought I was kind of creating
(01:00):
a system to get me where everybody else was, and
it wasn't here till years later that I realized other
people felt the way I felt, And so that's the
time management system I teach now, the Bright Method. In addition,
I'm married to any our physician, so I get very
wacky ever changing schedules. We have two little girls, a
seven year old and a three and a half year old,
and our original baby, our black lab Alice.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That sounds wonderful, so a full house as well.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's interesting when you say you know you were feeling overwhelmed,
What was it that made you overwhelmed? I mean, is
it the volume of incoming stuff, the requests like weird hours?
I mean, what was it that? Yeah, when people say
they're overwhelmed, what do they tend to mean? I think
it was the.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
First time in my life I just felt like the
input kind of outstepped what my systems could keep track of.
I love paper planners. I'd loved them all the way
through law school. I had worked before becoming a lawyer,
but usually in a little bit more maybe manageable settings
where people were kind of like looking out for your
work and helping you manage that. And when you become
(02:02):
an attorney, especially in big law, like I worked for
multiple different partners, so no one really had eyes on
everything I was doing. It was up to me to
manage my workload. But I didn't also really realize that.
It sounds silly, but you're just you're like assuming that
what the work coming at you is reasonable, or else
they wouldn't ask you to do it. And so there
was that the volume of email went up exponentially based
(02:23):
on anything I dealt with. And I'm managing multiple matters
that have no relation to each other, so you know,
deadlines are set without worrying about what's going on in
my other matters. And it's just a sheer amount of
volume of managing clients and you know, documents and information
and all this kind of stuff. And then the expectation
that you know you're really supposed to be on. You know,
(02:45):
as a junior associate in big law firm, your job
is make everybody else's life easier. And so there was
just a lot of demand. And I will say that
when I say overwhelmed, I looked like I had it together.
I hit deadlines. You know, it wasn't like I was
a mess, but inside it's how I felt. I just
felt stretched, way too thin, anxious I was going to
drop a ball. I'd be like out with friends and
(03:06):
not able to focus on their stories because I'd be
worrying about work and I just was like, this cannot be.
I reject that this is what adult life feels like.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Well, what do most people get wrong? Like when they
have a high volume of work? What are they doing
wrong as they're managing it?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You know that took me a while. I mean for
a long time, I really blamed myself. I'd had these
systems that got me far, and I was kind of like, well,
these systems work, so it must be me, and I
think what I So for a long time I beat
up myself. I was like a character flaw in my head,
where in reality it was just a system failure that
couldn't keep up anymore. And I think that the biggest
(03:41):
thing we get wrong on time management is assuming we
should know how to do it naturally, and so when
we struggle, we blame ourselves and in reality we just
need to change some things up. In terms of what
to change up, I just think that the amount that
we juggle in our heads is amazing but also weighs
down our brain from the stuff that we should be
(04:03):
doing with it. And so a starting point that I
like to work on with clients. That I had to
do myself is just get it all out of your
head and into a tool that helps you manage time,
because all of these things come back to time, and
for me, that's I really lean on a digital calendar now,
despite being a paper lover. I just think that it
really helps with that organization in an efficient way, and
(04:24):
it's really getting everything out of your head into the calendar,
so you know down to yes, the tasks that we
do at work, but also when do you shower and
get ready? When do you cook meals? When if you
have little kids, do you do bed and bath time
with kids? If you have older kids, when do you
do homework? What are all the activities when you drive?
Between all the activities? Like lay it all out, because
I think that that gives you a better sense of
(04:46):
what your actual capacity is to take on anything else.
And I think that's the tricky part is when I
was drowning at work, I knew I was drowning. I
knew that I was overwhelmed, but I didn't know if
it was reasonable for me to feel that way given
my workload. And it wasn't until I made everything in
my life and everything in work visual that I had
(05:07):
a more objective understanding of what my workload was in
relation to my capacity, which helped me manage my workload
and also helped me feel far more confident in drawing
workload boundaries at work and dealing with the pushback and
managing that.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Well, what is it about a digital calendar that makes
that more effective? I mean, I can tell you I
use a paper calendar, and I know I'm a bit
of a dinosaur that way. I mean, people send me
invites like calendar invites. I'm like, they go somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I just but you know, I tend to manage my
life on paper and that has worked for me. But honestly,
I know if I were in a big corporation that
would just be a no go. But what is it
about the digital part, as opposed to it being a
necessary evil being in an organization that you think helps
make it easier to organize yourself?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, first things first, I never my position is not
everybody should be using my method. So paper is working
for you know, obviously you and anyone listening stick with it.
You know, I'm not saying no, you should use mine
if you have struggled with it, and you were like
me who had used paper and it just couldn't keep up.
To your point, I mean, half of my work was
on already in an outlook calendar being scheduled for me
(06:15):
and moved around, and it just became inefficient to also
write it on paper and keep up with it. There.
There are a couple of reasons. One, the communication factor
is awesome. So you know, obviously in a work environment,
digital allows you to send calendar invites, share calendars, all
that kind of stuff, and you can do that at
home as well. So I particularly work with women, and
that helps a lot with sharing the mental load is
(06:35):
having these calendars that partners also see, so you're not
like the house I think a lot of women tend
to still be very generally speaking in heterosexual couples, tend
to be the quarterbacks of the calendar and the house management.
But they're also not the secretaries and the keeper, like
the only person who has the information when you'd use digital,
you know, going to the calendaring, like the invisible to
(06:58):
do list stuff. I was talking about something that you can,
you know, schedule repetitively every workday or every Monday Wednesday,
Thursday or all that kind of stuff, and then drag
them around and move them around as you need. I'm
a very firm proponent of flexible time blocking and moving
things around. But I just find that if you were
going to write out, let's say, shower and get ready
every day when you're gonna do it, that would get
(07:19):
really tedious at a calendar, in a paper calendar, and
I would not judge you for being like, this is
a waste of my time. But you can do that
easily in a digital one and then move it around
other things like backups is one thing. I've had a
client who lost a paper planner and that stinks, you know,
And there are just some other reasons like that, But
on the whole, it's just that, like, for me, that
(07:40):
efficiency of calendaring everything and being able to move it
around quickly into new plans is really where a digital
calendar really shines.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, well, it's getting at this idea that all tasks
take time, and so you have to give them a time.
And if there isn't a time within your twenty four
hour day and one hundred and sixty eight hour week,
well we have a problem.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So we're gonna take a quick ad break, and then
I will be back with more from Kelly Nolan. Well,
I am back talking with Kelly Nolan, who is a
time management expert. She's the founder of the Bright Method,
which we are now going to talk about. We've been
learning about, you know, calendaring all our stuff, and I
(08:19):
know that that is a important first step in this,
but why don't you talk about what the Bright method
is so people have a sense of what you're talking
about here?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Sure thing? So I think that a tricky part with
time management that I know you know, Laura, is I
think a lot of these concepts are talked about as
if they're relatively easy, and then you go to implement
it can be kind of challenging. And so really what
the Bright Method is is walking people through how to
use a lot of these tools at our disposal. You know,
I'm a tennis player. I wouldn't give you a top
(08:47):
of the line tennis racket and be like now you're set,
Like you have to learn the strategy and like how
you will employ it to have success. And so basically
what we do is we leverage digital calendars, whether it's Outlook, Google, Apple,
some combination of them, and then walk through kind of
four pillars. The first pillar is getting clear on that
invisible to do list. I already talked about calendaring that
(09:08):
out and also setting up the calendar to be able
to do that. That can be its own headache and
my least favorite part of it, but it is what
it is. So we tackle it at the outset and
then really get clear on those invisible to dos and
make sure your baseline works, and also issue spot challenges
and adapt those so you might You know, it could
be something as simple as, oh, I'm trying to squeeze
(09:29):
an hour and a half of stuff into an hour
every morning, and that's why every morning feels the way
it does. And if I showered the night before four
times a week, that would be great, and then it
just kind of frees up space. The next step is
doing somewhat the same in the work environment, so figuring
out email, when you hold meetings, the repetitive work things
you do, like if you know, set up for board
meetings or you know, do financial reviews at times, like
(09:51):
building out those repetitive work tasks, and then again that
then shows you the white space of what actual time
you have to give to the more one off stuff,
assuming you have white space. I know a lot of
people in corporate America are like, it's like a whole
day of meetings. I don't have any white space. But
then we can work on blocking availability to give you
that white space in there. That then in the third
(10:12):
pillar we turn to the one off to dos and
start filling in that white space with the plans of
what you're going to do. And I'll just note here
that when people talk time blocking, this is often where
people start. They take their to do list and very
understandably start time blocking. But if you have an accountant
for all the things that we talked about before, that
can lead to a lot of frustration because you calendar
(10:33):
eight hours of beautiful things to do, but you never
had eight hours to begin with to do it. And
so that helps with that element of it. And then
the final component is planning. I teach a couple different
planning sessions. The main one is a weekly planning session,
where essentially you take all the inputs that have flown
at you over the course of a week, calendar them out,
and then review the next two weeks. And it's also
(10:54):
in that first step you know time to check in
on all your major projects, look ahead at major deadlines,
make sure you've act everything out so you have game
plans laid out in your calendar to hit those, and
then really I like smoothing out the next two weeks
at a time, just so that you know you're looking
ahead a little bit farther than just the next week.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, So let's talk about a couple of things with here.
I mean, one is, we're trying to calendar everything, and
as we all know, life changes and and you know,
we had white space from two to four in the afternoon,
and then the magic happens and there's no white space
between two and four beca something you know, urgent came
(11:33):
up that we have to deal with. So how do
how often do we need to recalibrate? Like how far
can we plan out with these things? I mean, what
what do we do to make sure that we are
giving tasks time but acknowledging that we cannot one hundred
percent control what time will be available.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Absolutely absolutely, So one of the big things I would
say is just like take a step, and this is
not perfect. It's not going to like solve all the issues.
You know, a sick kid home for or five days
is going to derail the best of plans, but we
do what we can. And in a lot of work environments,
a lot of people spend their day dealing with the curveballs,
the fires, the reactive stuff, and there are different ways
(12:13):
we can get at that. I really like thinking about,
especially for people managers, that might be where your value is.
Your company wants you in that firefighting role versus the
headstone work, and so we just need to acknowledge where
our value is. First of all, we can work to
eliminate some of the curve balls, but it's not realistic
to eliminate all of them. So what I like doing
(12:33):
is thinking about even though the curveballs are unpredictable in substance,
they are predictable and that we know they're coming usually
not Again, it's harder in the personal life, but in
our work life. Most people will say I deal with
thirty minutes of curveballs a day. I deal with five
hours of curveballs a day. But there's some sort of
awareness of how many curveballs hours of curveballs you might
(12:57):
deal with, and so we just plot those into the calendar.
And I know that sounds weird, but essentially what I
like doing is making visual your curve balls three hours,
five hours, two hours, half an hour, whatever it is,
and kind of putting it towards the end of your day.
And you can move them around as those blocks, as
like meetings get booked or things like that. But it's
(13:17):
a visual reminder to you that about that much time
of curveballs is coming, and do not fill up the
rest of the day or else this plan, you know,
isn't going to work. And if you don't have it
every day, some people more like you know, it's more
like three to four hours a week, and so maybe
block a Thursday afternoon and all this curveball is is
obviously you're not only dealing with curve balls at the
(13:39):
end of your day or on Thursday afternoons, but you're
building in the cushion in the rest of your schedule
for everything else to get pushed into as they go.
So again, it's just in one of those things we're
making visual that we usually are trying to juggle in
our head that kind of trips us up when we're
planning well.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And of course the million dollar question there is how
do I create open space for this this buffer. I
mean a lot of people are very booked. As you said,
you get everything out of your head, you may realize
that you're dealing with many tasks that could occupy all
eight or more hours of the day. So what should
we do to set boundaries or to get more open
(14:16):
space in our schedules.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, one is just to start blocking it now and
know that if you block it now and repeat it
on a weekly basis over time, hopefully it shakes out.
I will say it depends on the culture. I have
had clients who've had to instead of blocking like a
two hour block for focused heads down work, they'll block
four half hour blocks, so they look like meetings and
(14:39):
are a little bit more camouflaged and less people are
apt to take it over. I wish that weren't the case,
but you know, we work with reality here and so
there's that I will. But you know, a lot of
people I work with realize, whether it's meetings taking up
your time or just sheer workload volume, that they have
too much on their plate, and it's the first time.
I mean that is the simple elegance of any calendar
(15:01):
you use, paper or digital. If those boxes don't fit
in a day, you're objectively trying to do too much
and so making it all visual can flag that for you.
When that happens, I like people starting to think about
the conversation. I mean, if you can make the decisions
you know, to latter like go for it. A lot
of people have to have conversations with leadership around workload
(15:23):
and really getting clear on you know, as I sit
here today, this is what I view as like our
departments or our companies or whatever's top priority, these are
the three projects that will serve that I therefore recommend
we you know, work on these. We table these for
you know, next quarter, six months from now, whatever it is.
This will free up you know, ten hours a day
for me, for my team whatever to really ensure that
(15:44):
we hit the you know, knock these projects out of
the park and see what they say. You know, I've
had I've been pleasantly surprised at how many clients go
to their bosses and have those conversations and the bosses
are like, I had no idea you were in this
many meetings every day, or I didn't know you had
twelve priorities set across four departments that are pulling on
our department and help them prioritize I've also had clients
(16:07):
and I've been in it myself where they're like, figure
it out, and that answer, while very frustrating to hear,
it does something to your brain. You stop, you know, selling,
like putting work as your number one when you're like,
these people are not going to work. Look out for me.
I gotta start redefining what success looks like for me.
I'm not saying you have to leave. I know in
this work environment it's totally wacky, but there are It
(16:29):
just does something to you in terms of what you
are willing to do for a company that's not if
you know that you cannot you literally cannot win by
their rules. So you define your own rules of what
winning looks like.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Absolutely, well, we should always be defining our own rules
of what wedding looks like. Big fan of that around here.
All right, We're going to take one more quick ad
break and then I will be back with more from
Kelly Nolan. Well, I am back with Kelly Nolan, who
is the time management expert and the founder of the
Bright Method. So Kelly, let's pivot to you and your
(17:04):
own personal productivity practices. I'm curious if you have any
routines that help make you more productive.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
You know, I think about routines. A lot of mine
are born out of the principle of just like embracing
reality and the reality of my own brain myself. I
think a lot of times we demand that we change
and you know, get more discipline and all that kind
of stuff, and for me, that's never been very effective,
and so it's more like, Okay, my brain is not
going to remember all this stuff on my own. And
(17:31):
that's where the bright method came out of. Another one is,
you know, social media and phones are highly addictive, and
they're designed to be by a lot of very smart people.
And so instead of just demanding I have more discipline
and failing at that every day and beating myself up,
it's using also other apps that are designed to help.
So I personally love opal Opa l it blocks me
(17:54):
out of social media. I have it blocked me out
of Instagram, Facebook, and I also Safari browser every day
from four fifteen I think to five thirty when I
want to be really focused on my kids, and eight
pm to five am to protect my sleep. And so
it's just you know, acknowledging I don't do this on
my own, so let me help myself out doing it.
(18:15):
And the last thing that came to mind is I
was thinking about this was you know, in terms of
just building these routines and figuring out what fits in
your life, is just really acknowledging what phase of life
you're in. You know, For me, working out has always
been the first thing to go when life gets busy.
I think part of it's because I hold myself to
the standard of working out when I was in my
twenties of you know, working out at five am and
doing Class Pass in Boston, and so just switching up
(18:37):
to like fifteen minute at home workouts, it's not, you know,
the gold star that I wanted in my twenties, but
there are a lot of fifteen minute workouts that can
kick your tush in that time and it's really effective.
And so a lot of my routines are just building
around embracing reality and then getting creative about where I
still want to go.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Well, you mentioned that your blackout time on your device
as it's eight to five am, which sounds like an
early start. Do you do you have a morning routine
that's that's part of your schedule.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
You know, I have always been and I always don't
like this as someone works in time management, because it's
so cliche, as like, I've always been such a morning person.
I've also been a very early to bed person. I
remember my mom in high school looking at me in
bed at like eight or eight thirty. I was already asleep,
and she's like, how are you going to go to college?
I'm like, I don't know. I just like going to bed,
and so I do wake up very early. I don't
(19:29):
my alarm set for like six twenty five because I
do prioritize sleep in this phase of life with little kids,
I just that is my priority is sleep. But I
do tend to naturally wake up around five or so,
and so I kind of follow my energy. I used
to work out then Now I actually do like doing
the creative fun parts of my job in those early
mornings and just enjoying a hot cup of coffee in
(19:50):
the house is dark, It's like such a dreamy time.
And in terms of morning routine, I don't have a
full routine, but I have those non negotiables, you know,
feed the kids, feed the dog, and do the dishwasher,
pack up the bags, and then I use alarms to
hit the school bus. Or now that we're transitioning into summer,
like get us in the car for summer camps and
all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Absolutely, well, I was just curious because, yeah, we with
a podcast called Before Breakfast. We have a lot of
people who are definitely into their morning routines and including
listening to this, which is part of a lot of
people's morning routines. So I always ask my guests a
question of what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah? I think for me, you know, while I teach
this and I live and breathe it, it's always one
of those things you have to like catch yourself and
iterate on. I think that I can be having a
great day, but what doesn't let it be awesome is
usually my brain being consumed by a lot of different
things and not being fully present on you know, the
(20:53):
little magics in the day. I don't mean, like, you know,
my day's pretty boring. You know, I'm a mom the
little kids. It's nothing like super exciting. But even like
a three minute hot shower is pretty glorious, or a
ten minute walk outside with my dog in this weather
is amazing. But I can easily think my way to
not absorbing that. And so I've heard people on your
(21:13):
podcast talk about that like really absorbing the wonderful parts
of your day, and I fully agree with that. For me,
in order to be able to do that, though, it
really is taking all those thoughts that are buzzing around
in my head and getting them out. So whether that's
paper and pen or Siri, if I'm on the go,
I'll use like Apple reminders just to capture ideas and
(21:35):
then know that I have time calendar to go to
all those places and like hunt and gather them and
then bridge them into either my calendar or wherever I
keep like content ideas or just strategy ideas. And so
I guess my point is whether you use a system
like mine or something else, having a clear system that
(21:56):
you use to get things out of your head, park
them where they need to go, and then ridge them
into however you manage your task in time is to
me the first that's like the game changing step, so
that I can let things go and then absorb my
day and make it awesome. Whenever I've tried to be
like stop thinking about that or whatever, it just doesn't work.
I need to be able to get it out of
my head because I don't trust that my brain will
(22:16):
remember it. And I think that's what we do. We
like ruminate on things in the hopes of remembering to
do them. And so if you can help yourself get
there outside of your brain, then that's how to me.
I take a day from great.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
To awesome, amazing, amazing, And what's something you are looking
forward to now?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Candidly, I am in a really good I am not
someone who romanticizes motherhood. I think it's very hard in
a lot of ways. So just know that's the context.
My kids now are seven and three and a half,
and I do feel like we're hitting a really fun
age where I just have more energy too, and so
this summer I'm really looking forward to that. It's really
(22:53):
fun to hang out with the kids. But I also
love what I do, and I get to start my
program again in September and work with a lot of
awesome people and you know, nerd out with them on
how to make all of this work in their industries,
and they're with their families and everybody's life looks different,
and it's really fun for me to like puzzle and
tailor how to make it work for them, so I
look forward to that too.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, yeah, totally with you that as kids get older
they just get more fun. Do you mean babies are adorable?
I love babies. I had five of them, but I
you know, I love when they become so much their
own people and you can interact with them more and
totally thanks together. Yeah, absolutely so, Kelly. Where can people
find you?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I am most active on Instagram. It's at underscore Kelley
Nolan Underscore, and my website is Kelleynolan dot com. I have,
you know, a free program there. I also have the
podcast The Bright Method podcast. If people like nerding out
on this, which I imagine if you're here you do.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, absolutely, we all do. All right, Well, Kelly, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone
for listening. If you have feedback about this or any
other episode, you can always reach me at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
(24:15):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(24:37):
your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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