Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #101| Why Over-Structuring Your Schedule Could Be Holding You Back and Hurting Your Productivity

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#101| Why Over-Structuring Your Schedule Could Be Holding You Back and Hurting Your Productivity · Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing

• 0:00
  Michelle Gauthier: Imagine if opening your email gave you a feeling of ahhhhhhh, instead of making you want to get up from your desk and run in the other direction.
• 0:08
  Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
• 0:20
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
• 0:25
  Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
• 0:37
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for joining.
• 0:40
  Michelle Gauthier: Today we're going to be talking to a very interesting guest named Jésabel DC.
• 0:44
  Michelle Gauthier: She is a digital organization expert - who even knew that was a thing, but what a brilliant job.
• 0:49
  Michelle Gauthier: She helps overwhelmed working women transform our digital clutter into calm and efficient systems.
• 0:56
  Michelle Gauthier: So today you're going to learn about how to create a cohesive system across your calendar and your emails and your files, so that they're all in sync, why the best way to start is to start with your calendar to unlock more time and energy, and then simple, fun tips like digital nesting, to make your digital space reflect you and spark joy instead of just being.
• 1:19
  Michelle Gauthier: 'Ugh, I opened my email'.
• 1:21
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, we're going to jump in in one second.
• 1:22
  Michelle Gauthier: But before we do, I want to remind you if you haven't already register for the 2025 Your Best Year class, this class is an awesome way to plan your year.
• 1:33
  Michelle Gauthier: You can just go through the rest of the holidays, through the new year without even worrying about it.
• 1:37
  Michelle Gauthier: Then you join this class, you will prioritize what areas you want to work on for the year and we will come up with a complete blueprint for you to follow for the rest of the year to hit all of the goals that you have for yourself.
• 1:49
  Michelle Gauthier: The link is in the show notes.
• 1:50
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, let's jump in.
• 1:52
  Michelle Gauthier: Let's say hello to Jésabel DC, and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.
• 1:59
  Michelle Gauthier: When I heard from your PR person and they were pitching me about the kinds of stuff that you talk about, I immediately replied yes, this is a perfect fit.
• 2:06
  Michelle Gauthier: I would absolutely love to have her on the podcast.
• 2:08
  Michelle Gauthier: So I'm really excited to talk to you, because this is an audience full of overwhelmed working women and we're always talking about time management and how to make things more efficient, and it sounds like you have some really great solutions for us.
• 2:24
  Michelle Gauthier: So tell us a little bit about your business and how you got there.
• 2:29
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, sure.
• 2:29
  Jésabel DC: Well, first, thanks for having me.
• 2:30
  Jésabel DC: My business is digital organization, but I focus a lot also on the simplicity and the visual design aspect of digital organization.
• 2:41
  Jésabel DC: One of the main things that differentiates me from other digital organizers is that I like to focus on low tech.
• 2:48
  Jésabel DC: So, for example, a lot of people will gravitate towards complex systems like Notion, hoping and thinking that it will simplify their lives or help them organize, and they'll rely on those extra features.
• 3:02
  Jésabel DC: What tends to happen, or especially with the people that I work with who might be neurodivergent, or just very creative people, when presented with extra features, we just love to kind of use them or to try to see how we can use them, and then that'll distract from what the actual content or what the actual purpose of what we went in there for is.
• 3:18
  Jésabel DC: So my main thing is I really love to use low tech.
• 3:22
  Jésabel DC: So that means, let's say, for example, for a to-do list, gravitating less towards things like Notion and more towards things like a regular Apple Note, but to use visual cues like colors or even emojis to draw the eye to the right thing.
• 3:38
  Jésabel DC: So, yeah, that is what I do, and I began doing that during the pandemic, actually, which is when I had to pivot what I was doing, and I had an entrepreneur reach out to me asking for help organizing her inbox.
• 3:51
  Jésabel DC: It was actually her therapist that had recommended her to reach out to someone for help because of how much anxiety she was feeling in that space, which is something that I didn't even know was a thing.
• 4:00
  Jésabel DC: But I did it.
• 4:01
  Jésabel DC: I organized her inbox, I automated it and then, by the time that I was done, I was like, oh, I wonder if anyone else is feeling this way.
• 4:08
  Jésabel DC: So I put out this $20 ad in a newsletter, thinking maybe a couple people would reach out.
• 4:14
  Jésabel DC: But 16 people reached out to me from that one ad.
• 4:16
  Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
• 4:17
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that was a good return on your investment.
• 4:22
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, and it was also like this, like whoa, moment of like, okay, there are people who are spending a lot of time on their screens and their screens are giving them anxiety, like, literally the energy that they're receiving back is a lot of information overload, and so what they desperately want is to calm down that space.
• 4:39
  Jésabel DC: So that's where I began working in digital organization, but especially using creative visual aspects to organize.
• 4:48
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, oh my gosh, that's so cool.
• 4:49
  Michelle Gauthier: First of all, I didn't even know a digital organizer was a job.
• 4:52
  Michelle Gauthier: So what does that really mean?
• 4:54
  Michelle Gauthier: Do you focus just on email or do you do different kinds of digital organizing?
• 4:59
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 4:59
  Jésabel DC: So I started out with inboxes and then naturally my clients would be like, oh, okay, can we please do files, can we please do calendar, things like that?
• 5:08
  Jésabel DC: And at first I was like, yeah, absolutely, and we would work on one thing and then work on another.
• 5:12
  Jésabel DC: And very soon I realized that these actually really need to work together - it's an ecosystem.
• 5:17
  Jésabel DC: By looking at things, not compartmentalized, but looking at things how they work together, that's where a real system really starts to flow.
• 5:26
  Jésabel DC: Because since we're looking at things differently, we're looking at like the files are organized in this type of way, the calendar is organized in this type of way, we're using different colors for each thing, for the inbox labels, everything looks so complex.
• 5:40
  Jésabel DC: We open our laptops and we have to remember this system that we set up for ourselves in each one of them, whereas if we start to take this really simple color-coded system, use it throughout all platforms, it becomes a lot easier for your brain to remember where things are or what things are at a glance.
• 5:57
  Michelle Gauthier: That's amazing.
• 5:58
  Michelle Gauthier: I mean even just that tip alone to think across files, calendar and emails and have a color color coding system that's the same across each.
• 6:07
  Michelle Gauthier: I feel like one of the things we're always trying to work on with regards to overwhelm is not making decisions where you don't have to make a decision.
• 6:15
  Michelle Gauthier: So if you have to figure out every time, okay, now I'm in my email.
• 6:19
  Michelle Gauthier: Red means home stuff and blue means work stuff or whatever it is.
• 6:23
  Michelle Gauthier: Even that tip alone is really cool.
• 6:25
  Michelle Gauthier: Well, that is such a cool job that you created for yourself and I'm sure that's high demand.
• 6:29
  Michelle Gauthier: I've had lots of people ask me that type of question, so now I know where to send them.
• 6:33
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you.
• 6:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Do you work with people anywhere?
• 6:36
  Michelle Gauthier: Is it all remote?
• 6:38
  Jésabel DC: Yeah.
• 6:38
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, it's all remote.
• 6:39
  Jésabel DC: I have started doing a little bit of in-person, but essentially what I need is to see your screen so it actually works better virtually, yeah.
• 6:45
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, I bet that's true.
• 6:46
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay.
• 6:47
  Michelle Gauthier: Or if someone just wants to come to Montreal for a trip, they can go and meet you at a coffee shop and get their life organized.
• 6:54
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that sounds good too.
• 6:56
  Michelle Gauthier: That's a great option.
• 6:56
  Michelle Gauthier: So is this just like - tell me about you.
• 7:00
  Michelle Gauthier: Is this just a skill you naturally had?
• 7:03
  Michelle Gauthier: Was it very easy for you to organize your own inbox?
• 7:06
  Michelle Gauthier: And do you just have that kind of mind?
• 7:08
  Michelle Gauthier: Or how did you - why did that person reach out to you specifically when she needed help?
• 7:14
  Jésabel DC: That's a good question.
• 7:15
  Jésabel DC: I had just put out an ad saying that I could assist an entrepreneur with whatever.
• 7:19
  Jésabel DC: I had to quickly pivot.
• 7:20
  Jésabel DC: I didn't even think that this was going to be like - I was applying for jobs at this point.
• 7:24
  Jésabel DC: Okay, that just snowballed into something really cool.
• 7:28
  Jésabel DC: I am naturally so disorganized, and I think that this brings a really interesting point of view to my work, because most of the people that I work with are not like type A, really organized, anal people.
• 7:39
  Jésabel DC: No, they're very neurodivergent and creative and just messy, and we love chaos, but at some point, if we're going to have a good output, we really need to control our chaos a little bit, and so that's where it becomes easy for me to be like, we're not going to set up this rigid system that is inflexible, because it doesn't work for most people, and it doesn't work for people who are creative most of the time, because creatives like to be intuitive with their energy and with their time, and so that really kind of it's like a puzzle piece kind of went together there, where I was like, oh wow, these are really like my people.
• 8:16
  Jésabel DC: This is really what I can bring for them is the ability to create a structure that is flexible.
• 8:22
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, that's so cool.
• 8:23
  Michelle Gauthier: Have you worked with people who have ADHD?
• 8:26
  Jésabel DC: Oh yeah, 95% of the people that I work with have ADHD diagnosed, and then the other five are like, I'm pretty sure I have ADHD.
• 8:34
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, okay, I think that's just perfect, because if you're working with people like that all the time, you know, and I've had several clients with ADHD, they're so able to be creative and see these new solutions and sometimes go down a rabbit hole with one of those.
• 8:52
  Michelle Gauthier: So I think having a really simple solution that allows them to use that brain that they have and all the things that come naturally to them, but also helps stay organized, I think that's just an amazing idea.
• 9:07
  Michelle Gauthier: I talk a lot on the podcast about clutter and decluttering and we talk a little bit about digital.
• 9:13
  Michelle Gauthier: I mean, we're usually talking about houses or purses or cars or whatever, but we talk about digital too.
• 9:17
  Michelle Gauthier: And what you said really resonates with me, because I don't feel like I naturally have an organized brain.
• 9:22
  Michelle Gauthier: I have a brain that's always thinking of 10,000 different ideas, and so I am very organized as, like a survival strategy.
• 9:30
  Michelle Gauthier: E verything has a place, because if I don't put it back in that one place, I'll never find it again because I'm on to thinking about something else.
• 9:38
  Michelle Gauthier: So I think that's kind of the best place, when you're describing yourself, it's sort of the best place to come from, because you're not this person who has just a natural mind for organizing.
• 9:49
  Michelle Gauthier: You had to work at it, and so you can come up with a solution that will work for other people who are like that as well.
• 9:54
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yeah, that's really cool, and how fun that you just almost happened into this job.
• 10:01
  Michelle Gauthier: It was like the universe was telling you, here! Here's what you need to do.
• 10:05
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, no, it's so funny and a lot of the people who know me from before are like, you're a digital organizer?
• 10:15
  Jésabel DC: You organize?
• 10:15
  Jésabel DC: Yeah.
• 10:15
  Jésabel DC: I'm like, yes, yes, I do.
• 10:16
  Jésabel DC: And it's funny because, yeah, it's a skill, that - and I think that a lot of people don't think that too.
• 10:20
  Jésabel DC: It's almost like when someone does yoga and they're like, oh, I'm not flexible.
• 10:25
  Jésabel DC: It's like, well, that can be learned, that's a skill, that's something that you can actually work on and improve on, and organization is exactly that.
• 10:30
  Jésabel DC: Like you said, you had to learn it as a survival skill, and it's nice to learn it preemptively or to learn it in different ways, but know that you can learn it, know that you can change that.
• 10:46
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, absolutely, and I think it's such a good feeling when you're getting ready to go do something and you know exactly where the thing is that you need and you know exactly how to find it, and then you start getting that feedback from your brain of like, oh, this feels good, it's worth being organized, I can get so much more done and I feel so much, so good about myself and all those things.
• 11:01
  Michelle Gauthier: So, tell us, if our goal on this podcast is to always let the listener walk away with some specific tips that they can use in order to implement whatever we're talking about that day, where should they start if they're feeling out of control with their calendar or their email?
• 11:20
  Jésabel DC: Okay, calendar is where I would always start.
• 11:22
  Jésabel DC: Oh, okay, yeah, this is because someone will come to me and be like, okay, my files are disorganized, my inbox, I'm so behind, and my calendar is a mess, and it's like, okay, well, in order to deal with all those things, you actually need time.
• 11:37
  Jésabel DC: And where are we going to get your time?
• 11:39
  Jésabel DC: We're going to get it by taking control of your calendar, of your schedule, and so I - and the important things to start with is, first of all, all of your time commitments need to be on your calendar, and I'm not just talking about appointments.
• 11:55
  Jésabel DC: The biggest mistake that people make is that they'll just have their appointments.
• 11:59
  Jésabel DC: There's a lot of invisible labor that women have, and it makes it so that we arrive at the end of the day and we're like, I feel like a failure, I've done nothing.
• 12:08
  Jésabel DC: And then it's like, okay, log everything that you've done, and not in a crazy way, just in like a okay, this chunk was admin, this chunk was housework.
• 12:18
  Jésabel DC: And then at the end of your day, you're like, oh wow, actually that's a lot, that's a lot.
• 12:23
  Jésabel DC: No wonder I'm tired.
• 12:24
  Jésabel DC: And so it changes from I'm a failure, I did nothing to, no wonder I'm tired.
• 12:29
  Jésabel DC: The problem is still not solved, because it's like, okay, if you're not able to, at the end of your day, you still feel like a failure because you haven't done what you wanted to do with your time.
• 12:37
  Jésabel DC: But at least now you know that you were productive.
• 12:39
  Jésabel DC: You just might not have had time to be productive on what you needed to be productive on.
• 12:42
  Jésabel DC: So now comes the other thing.
• 12:44
  Jésabel DC: Now that you have actually logged all of your commitments, do you need to cut back on some, or find ways to cut back on them?
• 12:50
  Jésabel DC: And that's the difficult part, because we have what we have to take care of and we only have control over so much in the sense of minimizing them.
• 12:56
  Jésabel DC: That's where things like time blocking, like task batching, will come to play.
• 13:01
  Jésabel DC: That's really where we can try to get our time back.
• 13:05
  Jésabel DC: For me, task batching is one of the most important things, so that's when you would take all of your common tasks and do them at the same time, rather than tasks switch back and forth from one thing to another, because you're using a lot of - it's not just your time, too -
• 13:17
  Jésabel DC: it takes a lot of time to switch from one thing to another, like laundry to email, to answering a call to this, to that.
• 13:22
  Jésabel DC: It also takes a lot of energy.
• 13:24
  Jésabel DC: Your brain gets so tired because you're going from one space to another your work brain to your administrative brain, to maybe your mom brain, and this and that, and it's like whoa, your brain's tired.
• 13:37
  Jésabel DC: So what you want to try to do is you want to spend a chunk of your day doing the same thing and stay in that, and then that's going to help you with your time and with your energy.
• 13:45
  Jésabel DC: That's the biggest place that you can go and cut on time.
• 13:48
  Michelle Gauthier: I think it's a great idea to start there, make the time and then know where you're going to spend your time.
• 13:55
  Michelle Gauthier: And I have had to learn that in being an entrepreneur.
• 13:58
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm not sure about you, but I now have a day where I don't see any clients.
• 14:02
  Michelle Gauthier: In fact, it's today, it's Tuesday, when we're recording this and I just only work on my podcast and writing things and whatever, and just being in that zone for the day feels so good.
• 14:12
  Michelle Gauthier: I feel like it's way better than trying to do podcast interviews in between clients.
• 14:17
  Michelle Gauthier: And, like you said, your brain has to totally switch over, get into a different mode physically, switch to a different microphone, get out different documents, all that stuff.
• 14:26
  Michelle Gauthier: So I love that.
• 14:27
  Michelle Gauthier: That's so great.
• 14:28
  Michelle Gauthier: One thing you mentioned in our previous conversation was the idea of digital nesting.
• 14:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Tell us what that is and how the listeners can use that.
• 14:40
  Jésabel DC: Digital nesting is a term that I coined, so based off of nesting in general.
• 14:46
  Jésabel DC: So when a human or an animal is pregnant and they are about to have a baby, they need to modify their physical environment in order to make their environment more supportive for the arrival of their new baby.
• 14:59
  Jésabel DC: And, essentially, when you're in your digital world, what happens is that we kind of just take the environment that we have and we're like, okay, I guess it is what it is, without actually thinking, how can I make this environment more adapted to me?
• 15:12
  Jésabel DC: How can I modify it so that I work better in here, I have less stress in this environment?
• 15:18
  Jésabel DC: Digital environments are very text heavy.
• 15:19
  Jésabel DC: They're very ugly, they're very aggressive.
• 15:22
  Jésabel DC: Almost when you look at them it doesn't make us feel good, like, I'm sure, if you did a brain scan while you were looking at your inbox, it wouldn't look pretty.
• 15:29
  Jésabel DC: It wouldn't be sparkling in there.
• 15:34
  Jésabel DC: It's very, very stressful, and so what I like to do is I like to bring visual elements as much as possible.
• 15:39
  Jésabel DC: So first, in the settings, I just want to encourage everybody to play around with any settings anywhere you are anything, whether that's notifications, turning them off, seeing what you can do with them In your inbox.
• 15:51
  Jésabel DC: I have this free 8-minute workshop and it's literally just 10 settings that you change in your Gmail inbox and it minimizes the visuals by 50%.
• 16:00
  Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh, I'm going to do that as soon as we're finished here, because I have messed around with it, trying to make it look not it's way too many words and I ended up using a different email browser to read my Gmail, just so it could look prettier.
• 16:13
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
• 16:14
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, okay, we'll definitely link that in the show notes.
• 16:17
  Jésabel DC: I love encouraging people to play around in their settings.
• 16:19
  Jésabel DC: Any platform, just never assume that it is what it is.
• 16:23
  Jésabel DC: There's always something, even little tiny tweaks, that you can do to make it more visually less stressful.
• 16:29
  Jésabel DC: And then there's the adding of colors and visuals.
• 16:32
  Jésabel DC: For me, I have my brand is early 2000s themed, and the reason why I do that is because nostalgia really creates this dopamine hit for people.
• 16:41
  Jésabel DC: And it's not that all my clients will use those kinds of colors.
• 16:45
  Jésabel DC: They'll use the kind of colors that appeal to them.
• 16:47
  Jésabel DC: Some are more minimal, some are more this, some are more that.
• 16:49
  Jésabel DC: It has to reflect you.
• 16:50
  Jésabel DC: But when you open your laptop, when you open your calendar, it has to reflect who you are and it has to spark joy.
• 16:56
  Jésabel DC: I use the analogy a lot of like this is like your agenda when you were in eighth grade.
• 17:01
  Jésabel DC: You get an agenda.
• 17:03
  Jésabel DC: You're not just going to leave it like that and then write in it with like a gray pencil.
• 17:07
  Jésabel DC: There are stickers.
• 17:08
  Jésabel DC: You're going to get that pen with the pink poof, You're going to do all of it, Everything.
• 17:14
  Jésabel DC: And it sparks joy to open up that agenda and for some reason I think everyone can resonate with this, the joy you felt of having that one appointment that you have when you're a kid and putting it in there feels so good.
• 17:27
  Jésabel DC: And I want to make sure that your calendar feels the same exact way.
• 17:30
  Jésabel DC: It needs to be so visually appealing that it really feels like an early 2000s digital notebook when you were a kid and almost in a playful way of like hey, this isn't so serious.
• 17:40
  Jésabel DC: Like, yeah, your schedule might be like, like you look at it and you're like, oh, that's a lot for one person to be doing.
• 17:47
  Jésabel DC: But then it's like use nice colors and it's not just about the colors, obviously.
• 17:52
  Jésabel DC: Play around with it.
• 17:52
  Jésabel DC: Make sure that you're doing the right things at the right time.
• 17:55
  Jésabel DC: Make sure that you're adding buffers.
• 18:01
  Jésabel DC: Make sure that your lived experience feels good when you're scheduling.
• 18:03
  Jésabel DC: I think there's a lot of discrepancy between the things that we plan and then the lived experience of what that actually looks like lived out.
• 18:08
  Jésabel DC: And that would be my other tip for when you're looking at your calendar and you want to make sure that you are living it in the right way.
• 18:17
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that makes sense.
• 18:19
  Michelle Gauthier: So I want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
• 18:21
  Michelle Gauthier: The way that I'm interpreting that is to say, if I redo my calendar and I schedule - one thing that I did, I was trying to batch client times, and so I batched it where I had six clients in a row and I have 10 minutes between, because they're 50-minute sessions, and it looks good, and I felt good about it.
• 18:41
  Michelle Gauthier: And then I actually did it, and I'm like that's way too much.
• 18:44
  Michelle Gauthier: Is that what you're talking about.
• 18:45
  Michelle Gauthier: Exactly?
• 18:46
  Michelle Gauthier: You plan it, but then, when you actually do it, you have to see how it feels, because maybe it feels differently.
• 18:52
  Michelle Gauthier: I thought that would be totally doable, and in my corporate job I would often have like eight or nine meetings in a row and I can't say I liked it, but I could definitely do it.
• 19:01
  Michelle Gauthier: So I thought six, that's not so bad, but it's totally different kind of energy, a different kind of listening.
• 19:07
  Michelle Gauthier: I wanted time in between.
• 19:09
  Michelle Gauthier: I wanted to be sure I could take care of myself, like eat lunch, for example, so I can think clearly.
• 19:14
  Michelle Gauthier: So I overshot, which is what I do, and I realized that though and now I don't schedule more than four in a day.
• 19:24
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, that's exactly it.
• 19:25
  Jésabel DC: Because I would go into a client's calendar, look at those meetings back to back and then be like, when are you eating?
• 19:30
  Jésabel DC: Like you just said, you identified it when you lived it, right?
• 19:33
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, and a lot of times it's just adding buffer to things.
• 19:36
  Jésabel DC: Adding unnecessary buffer feels really good.
• 19:40
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, even just to have an hour in between, like having two sessions, hour, two sessions.
• 19:45
  Michelle Gauthier: Then I can eat a lunch without feeling rushed, I might do some other work, or I might lie on my couch and read for a while, or whatever, and it does, it feels so nice, but my body and my soul weren't used to not rushing, and so I transitioned over to what I was used to instead of thinking, how do I want to feel now?
• 20:06
  Michelle Gauthier: And so I had to switch that up for myself.
• 20:09
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, you have a word that you use in your podcast description that I really love: composed.
• 20:13
  Jésabel DC: I don't use that word, but I feel like I should be using that word.
• 20:18
  Jésabel DC: It's beautiful.
• 20:18
  Jésabel DC: That is how you should be feeling going from one thing to another.
• 20:21
  Jésabel DC: It's that composure that you have when you're like I've had enough time to stop this one thing and then start this other thing and make sure that I was taken care of in the meantime.
• 20:30
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, exactly, instead of like still chewing food and like trying to pull up the document of the person who I'm going to talk to.
• 20:37
  Michelle Gauthier: And I hate that feeling.
• 20:39
  Michelle Gauthier: I hate that rush when you're rushing into really anything, and I've had to teach myself that like, it doesn't have to be that way.
• 20:47
  Michelle Gauthier: I created that kind of lifestyle for myself and now I can create the other, the opposite, yes, the opposite of that.
• 20:56
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's great.
• 20:58
  Michelle Gauthier: So what do you think about time blocking?
• 21:01
  Michelle Gauthier: That's a question that I get a lot is to people to say can you help me time block my schedule?
• 21:06
  Michelle Gauthier: What do you think about that?
• 21:09
  Jésabel DC: I love time blocking.
• 21:10
  Jésabel DC: My biggest advice, though, is, when people think of time blocking, it creates a firm structure that I think a lot of people are scared of, and then they'll schedule things for themselves, not hit all of them, leave that on their calendar as is, and then their calendar becomes a reflection of their quote-unquote failures that they weren't able to attain.
• 21:30
  Jésabel DC: They weren't able to do what they said that they would do, and that's my biggest problem with time blocking without the extra knowledge that it needs to be flexible.
• 21:39
  Jésabel DC: So what I have my clients do is I'll have them time block, but then I'll have them adjust as their day goes by to what actually happened.
• 21:47
  Jésabel DC: So, essentially, their calendar is a backlog of what happened.
• 21:50
  Jésabel DC: Okay, that'll help, first of all, with the invisible labor, because it was like, I thought that I would have time to do X amount of admin today, but it's like, actually, I forgot I have an event tonight and I didn't do my laundry, so something like that.
• 22:03
  Jésabel DC: Things will pop up and it's like it wasn't just doing whatever, or maybe actually I needed a break.
• 22:09
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, so even put that break in the calendar.
• 22:12
  Jésabel DC: That's important, because you actually do need rest.
• 22:14
  Jésabel DC: So just to put what actually happened, then your calendar becomes an account of what you accomplished, not what you wanted to and then didn't is really important, and also because if you're not hitting something, like if you're not doing one of the time blocks that you wanted to do, you can move it and be flexible in that way and really play with it around a lot.
• 22:33
  Jésabel DC: This is why it becomes important to love the space that you're in and to find joy in your calendar, because if you're going to take control of your life, you actually need to be spending a lot of time in your calendar.
• 22:42
  Jésabel DC: Mine is always open.
• 22:43
  Jésabel DC: It's a tab on my laptop that is always open alongside of my tasks.
• 22:51
  Jésabel DC: So I have my tasks on an Apple Note, and so one fourth of my screen is an Apple Note with my to-dos, and then the other part is my calendar.
• 22:59
  Jésabel DC: And this is another huge tip - look at your to-do list alongside your calendar.
• 23:05
  Jésabel DC: Have it be seen at the same time, because then you can start to plug things in and be realistic about what you need to be doing that day, because if you're looking at your schedule, you're only really looking at appointments.
• 23:14
  Jésabel DC: This is why people are always putting out task fires and they're behind on the things that they need to do is because plugging that in becomes two separate things, so they need to be one thing, like the time/ task ecosystem is one ecosystem.
• 23:25
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes, like those tasks should have the same weight as the appointments, not necessarily the same priority, but like they should have the space on the calendar.
• 23:36
  Michelle Gauthier: I often challenge my clients to do something similar, where they write down all their tasks and then they actually put all those tasks, including absolutely everything that they have to do for that week, put it on the calendar.
• 23:50
  Michelle Gauthier: And I just had one of my clients text me the other Sunday because she was doing it on a Sunday, she's like.
• 23:54
  Michelle Gauthier: no wonder I'm so exhausted.
• 23:56
  Michelle Gauthier: I have more than half of the things that I am supposed to accomplish this week, I literally don't have a place for.
• 24:04
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, exactly, that is what this is supposed to show you.
• 24:06
  Michelle Gauthier: And then instead, at the end of the week, like you said, you feel like crap because you didn't get it done.
• 24:11
  Michelle Gauthier: But if you do that, you're like well, I can't, this is impossible.
• 24:14
  Michelle Gauthier: So at least I know I'm going to try to get 40% of it done or whatever it is.
• 24:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, one of the things I liked in your description was how you said that you have a very soft, flexible, human approach, which to me, is sort of the opposite of technology that's not soft or flexible or human.
• 24:34
  Michelle Gauthier: So I love your tips about using colors and emojis and really thinking about how we're going to make the visuals look.
• 24:42
  Michelle Gauthier: What are some other ways that your approach the soft, flexible, human approach shows up in the things that you teach your clients?
• 24:51
  Jésabel DC: Well, first of all, I think, just the way that I do it, I don't do it with the idea of like, let's be more productive, let's hustle, and I think that there's like that like male dominated aspect of it which is like do more, be more, and it's like do less.
• 25:07
  Jésabel DC: We're doing a lot, we're tired.
• 25:09
  Jésabel DC: I just encourage people to schedule in breaks a lot.
• 25:14
  Jésabel DC: And I think something else too.
• 25:15
  Jésabel DC: Another one of my favorite tips, which is on like the soft productive side, is, like you know, like in terms of task batching, if you're going to be doing all of your, let's say, all of your admin or all of your invoices in one shot and you hate it.
• 25:29
  Jésabel DC: Like invoices are something people usually really hate sending out, it's like a lot of energy there.
• 25:32
  Jésabel DC: Go to your favorite cafe.
• 25:34
  Jésabel DC: Like, literally merge it with something fun and just shift the way that you're doing things so that it actually becomes fun.
• 25:40
  Jésabel DC: We have a lot of control over what we see visually on our screens and where we are and what we're doing.
• 25:47
  Jésabel DC: If we're working from home, we have more flexibility than we do before.
• 25:50
  Jésabel DC: Or if we're entrepreneurs, we have more flexibility.
• 25:52
  Jésabel DC: So it's like, let's modify.
• 25:55
  Jésabel DC: This again goes with digital nesting - let's modify whatever we can so that our environments and the way that we're doing things is more adapted to us.
• 26:02
  Jésabel DC: Because we can, because we have control over them.
• 26:06
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
• 26:07
  Michelle Gauthier: Do you have an Instagram that's full of pretty digital spaces and great tips like this?
• 26:12
  Michelle Gauthier: I do.
• 26:13
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I want to follow it.
• 26:15
  Michelle Gauthier: What is it?
• 26:17
  Jésabel DC: It's thelifestylelab.
• 26:18
  Jésabel DC: co, so thelifestylelab.
• 26:19
  Jésabel DC: co.
• 26:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay great, I'm totally going to follow that.
• 26:23
  Michelle Gauthier: And then, if people are really picking up what you're putting down here, where can they find a class from you or follow you or work with you.
• 26:32
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, so either at the lifestyle lab.
• 26:34
  Jésabel DC: co website or Instagram you can find the links to, I have two classes.
• 26:39
  Jésabel DC: I have one on inbox organization, and then I have one that I just launched with Girlboss, actually in partnership with them, on calendar organization.
• 26:48
  Jésabel DC: And then I also do one-on-one sessions via Zoom.
• 26:50
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay, great, and do your one-on-one sessions.
• 26:53
  Michelle Gauthier: Is it just one session or do you work with people over time until they get everything organized?
• 26:59
  Jésabel DC: Typically, it's multiple sessions.
• 27:01
  Jésabel DC: I have done just one session where, for example, it could be an add-on to a class as well.
• 27:08
  Jésabel DC: I have a lot of people who take my calendar class and then we'll do a one-on-one for the calendar, but then typically, if we're working on the digital ecosystem as a whole, it'll be a few sessions or more.
• 27:14
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay, cool.
• 27:15
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
• 27:16
  Michelle Gauthier: So we'll put all those links in the show notes.
• 27:18
  Michelle Gauthier: Those all sound like wonderful classes, and I think about the long-term effects.
• 27:22
  Michelle Gauthier: If you don't hate your inbox anymore and you don't hate your email and you know how to use your calendar, I mean your whole life would feel so much better.
• 27:31
  Jésabel DC: Oh yeah, yeah, it becomes more enjoyable, yeah absolutely.
• 27:35
  Michelle Gauthier: I have two questions that I ask every guest who comes on the podcast, and I'd love to ask those to you.
• 27:42
  Michelle Gauthier: The first one is what is something that you do when you feel overwhelmed to make yourself feel better?
• 27:50
  Jésabel DC: I brain dump everything.
• 27:53
  Michelle Gauthier: And what does that look like for you?
• 27:54
  Michelle Gauthier: Is that like digital or journaled, or yeah?
• 27:58
  Jésabel DC: Paper works better for some reason.
• 28:00
  Jésabel DC: I mean like analog, just pen and paper just works really well.
• 28:04
  Jésabel DC: I'll just brain dump everything, because when you're holding things in your head, you're really going from one thing to another and you're kind of spinning.
• 28:12
  Jésabel DC: So say, for example, I might feel like there's an infinite amount of stuff that I'm stressing out about, but that's just because I'm rotating through all of them.
• 28:19
  Jésabel DC: But if I put them on paper, I'm done right.
• 28:21
  Jésabel DC: I list the 10 things I'm stressed out about that I'm like, oh, that's it.
• 28:24
  Jésabel DC: I guess I'm just spinning from one thing to another, but it's only 10 things.
• 28:29
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yeah, I just read the other day that that was a really good tip for getting back to sleep too.
• 28:33
  Michelle Gauthier: If you wake up and you're lying there with spinning thoughts, just to sit up and actually write them down and then be like, okay, I'm going to address these in the morning.
• 28:42
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that, okay.
• 28:44
  Michelle Gauthier: And then the second one is along the theme of do less, which is one of my favorite books.
• 28:49
  Michelle Gauthier: Have you read that book, Kate Northrup?
• 28:51
  Michelle Gauthier: I've not.
• 28:51
  Michelle Gauthier: No, oh, it's so good.
• 28:53
  Michelle Gauthier: What is something that you do in order to do less or to save time?
• 28:58
  Michelle Gauthier: Probably everything you do digitally.
• 29:01
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, a little bit of like.
• 29:02
  Michelle Gauthier: Wait, this is my work.
• 29:08
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, yeah, you're like ditto what I just said for the past 20 minutes.
• 29:11
  Jésabel DC: No, but for real, though, I spend a lot of time in my calendar looking at how I can - I don't like the word optimize, it's not optimization, although I think it is, but I don't like that word.
• 29:18
  Jésabel DC: I just look at my calendar and see like, for example, this week it's my birthday week.
• 29:23
  Jésabel DC: I have to do drop off and pick up for my niece, which wasn't expected.
• 29:26
  Jésabel DC: I have podcast recordings, I have a workshop that I'm giving.
• 29:32
  Jésabel DC: This is plus the work that I have to usually do, and those are just plus.
• 29:36
  Jésabel DC: And so this week I was like whoa, I was looking at my calendar and I was like, I cannot actually do all of this.
• 29:40
  Jésabel DC: But then it's like, yes, I can with my time, but it's actually energetically, I think I couldn't handle all of it.
• 29:45
  Jésabel DC: And so there was just this one thing, for example, small example, I'm not, I haven't driven a lot in the city and so I have to go and do pick up and drop off for my niece.
• 29:55
  Jésabel DC: She's an hour, it's an hour and a half there and back, twice a day.
• 29:58
  Jésabel DC: And so I was like, okay, this is stressing me out a lot because I have to take the highway, and so all I did was I was like oh, it actually just takes me 10 more minutes to cut through the city instead of taking the highway and so actually it's not saving me time, but it's saving me this mental load of like if I take a wrong turn on the highway, it's going to take me half an hour more.
• 30:17
  Jésabel DC: Yeah, and it's that stress.
• 30:18
  Jésabel DC: I was just spinning and I was like, wait, why don't I just cut through the city?
• 30:21
  Jésabel DC: It'll take me 10 minutes more, my energy will be less, I'll be less stressed, and so I think these are the kind of things that when I look at my calendar, I'm like how can I lower the energy of my week versus also the time?
• 30:33
  Jésabel DC: But energy is also really important.
• 30:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, I think that's a great example, because you're saying it actually took more time, but it's worth it because it takes - then your energy remains calm and you can actually enjoy the pickup instead of having to be stressed out about it.
• 30:47
  Michelle Gauthier: That's a great example.
• 30:48
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, wonderful.
• 30:49
  Michelle Gauthier: Well, I'm super excited for everybody to go take your class and do the free.
• 30:53
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm seriously going to do the free thing right now and make my inbox beautiful.
• 30:58
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much for being with us today.
• 31:00
  Michelle Gauthier: I really enjoyed our conversation.
• 31:02
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much.
• 31:03
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much for listening today, and don't forget to sign up for the your Best Year 2025 class.
• 31:11
  Michelle Gauthier: The link is in the show notes.
• 31:12
  Michelle Gauthier: The cost is $25.
• 31:14
  Michelle Gauthier: It will be the best $25 you've spent, especially since you probably just spent a bunch of your money on other people.
• 31:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Spend $25 on yourself and get yourself the year that you want to have.
• 31:24
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
• 31:32
  Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
• 31:36
  Michelle Gauthier: com.
• 31:38
  Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.