Managing It All (When You Actually Can't)

Speaker A: I looked at my camera this morning and just laughed. Not a funny laugh. The kind where you either laugh or you cry. So you pick. Laugh. Josh starts his senior year on August 18th. Band camp starts August 3rd. I'm co president of the band boosters this year, which means multiple events. I'm not just attending, I'm running. And we're still heavily involved in scouts. Ash is home with us, finishing out their last few classes, commuting to campus, and work. Work is actually going really well right now. I'm hitting a stride I've been chasing for months. The last part should feel like good news, and it is. But it's also the thing that makes this month heavier, not lighter, because there's no slow season to absorb the rest of it into. So. So today I want to talk about what you actually do when the calendar is full. You know, it doesn't even show everything. And there's no version of August where you get to opt out of any of it. Welcome to Beyond Product Management, where we look beyond the day to day of product work and focus on the real stuff that fuels your career. I'm Heather Miller, your host. I'm also the CEO, co founder and business and security strategist at, uh, PDRM Consulting. Will I help product leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners step into the strategic, visible, and impactful roles they, uh, deserve. Whether this is your first episode or you binge them all, I am so glad you're here. Here's the thing I have to keep reminding myself. A full calendar tells you time is accounted for. It doesn't actually tell you what actually left in you. You can look at a Tuesday and see band boosters meeting 6pm and it looks like one line. It doesn't show the mental load of being the person people text when something goes wrong. It doesn't show that Josh starting his senior year isn't just a date. It's the start of a whole emotional season for our family. It doesn't show that having Ash home and commuting means, uh, our house has a definition rhythm right now. And I actually love that. But it's still a, uh, variable. So when I say I look at my calendar and it's already full, what I mean is, even the honors version of my week understates the real one. Here the trap is thinking. The solution is a better calendar, A, uh, color coded system, a. Ah, a time blocking method. I've done all that. Let's be honest. One, I'm type A, and two, my kids are 22 and 16. We've been through all of helps with the margins. It does not solve for the fact that this is genuinely a lot of real important things happening all at once and no productivity system makes a lot of become not a lot. I want to sit in something that I think gets skipped in most how to manage at all content you can be doing well and be at capacity at the same time. Those aren't opposites, they're not even intention really. They're just both happening. I am um proud of where work is right now. I earned this stride and in the same breath band camp starts in five days and I'm co running boosters. My kid, my last kid is about to start their last year of high school and my other kid kid is navigating a weird in between season uh of still in college but home most content about having it all wants you to pick a story. Either you're thriving or you're drowning and you're supposed to perform whichever one fits the caption. I'm not interested in performing either one today. I'm interested in telling you the true thing which is both. Here's the thing. Most people feel kind of like this in the summer when the kids are home. But it's a lot. But I've always said for me it's band and scout season which is the fall. So what do you actually do with that? Not a five step framework. A few things I'm actually doing or trying to. 1. I stop asking the calendar to tell me what matters. The calendar shows commitments, not priorities. So I've already had to separate deliberately decide this month. If something has to give, what gives first for me right now. That's not family stuff. And it's not the boosters commitments I've already said yes to. It's the optional extras, the nice to do's. Those are what I'm quietly not adding. 2. I let good strides at work mean something different this month. Good stride doesn't have to mean sprinting. It can mean protecting the two or three things that actually move the needle and being honest about what waits. I'd rather have real momentum or fewer things than the illusion of momentum on all of the things. Which is why you're hearing us talk a lot about security besties and the critical services security assessments. Because those two things have real momentum. They make a difference for you as female entrepreneurs and business owners. You are getting something out of them. I can see it. We can see it. Three. I, uh, stopped trying to make the invisible load visible to everyone else. For a long time I thought if People just understood everything I was holding. It would feel lighter. It doesn't work that way. What actually helps is naming it to myself out loud, like I'm doing right now. Not so everyone fixes it, but so I stop pretending it isn't there. 4. I'm, um, letting co president mean co. This one's for anyone in a shared leadership role, volunteer or otherwise. The CO is not decorative. If there was ever a month to actually lean on that, this is it. I will say my co president and I work fantastically together. She and I were both vice presidents last year because our boosters actually splits the vice president role into two. And she and I worked very well together and we have been working side by side all summer and it has been fantastic. And there is no one I would rather go through this year together. She and I both have seniors and, uh, we will make this season a fantastic one. If you're in your own version of August right now, or it happens at another time, whatever that looks like for you, I don't have a tip that makes it lighter. What I have is this. It's allowed to be a lot. You're allowed to be proud of your work stride and tired from the school and the scouts and the boosters and the family logistics in the same week. They don't cancel each other out, and neither one makes the one other less true. You don't have to manage it all perfectly and you. You have to manage it honestly. That's a whole shift. But what I wanted to also say to you is give yourself permission to rest. Don't think that giving yourself time for yourself is any less important. I want to say this next part directly because I think it's easy to hear an episode like this and draw the wrong conclusion, that I'm too stretched too thin to take on anything new. That's not what's true, and it's not the vibe I want to put out into the world. My personal calendar is full. My professional capacity is not. Those are two completely different tanks. And honestly, the reason work is hitting a stride right now is because I built it that way on purpose so that a full family month doesn't automatically mean a full client month. Here's what actually looks like. I used the time I had in July to prep Ed. Emails are done for the whole month. In fact, we're even starting to prep them for September. Blog posts. Done. Again, starting to prep. September. Social calendar. Done. I finished it this morning. I'm finishing up podcasts this week, and if I'm lucky, I'LL even finish the post scheduled for this week too, for at least the two weeks of band camp. None of that is client work. It's the content. It's the back end, the stuff that keeps the business visible and running. I did it on purpose in July so that whatever time I did have in August isn't spent on any of that. It's protected for the work you'd actually hire me for. That's not on accident. That's the whole point of building a business that serves your life instead of consuming it. Basically what I did was is I spent a few more hours strategically so that I knew when I had to pull back in August, I was able to so what does that mean? I have room specifically to take on two fractional CPO spots in August. We have the ability to start approximately three new Critical Services security assessments per week in the month of August, and we are taking new members for the Security Besties community. If you sign up before the end of July 31, you get the founder rate pricing. It does go up to a double the price to $100 a month or thousand dollars per year as of August 1st. If you've been sitting on reaching out because you've assumed I was too busy or because you didn't want to be one more thing on my plate, I'm telling you now, you're not. Clients don't compete with Bandcamp for my attention. They're not in the same category of thing. If anything, this is a good month to start because you're working with someone who is currently practicing what she'd help you build real capacity planning and not just hoping it all works out. Even when it comes to security, we want your security to work when you're not there. So that's where I am. Bandcamp starts in a few days. Josh's senior year starts on the 18th. The calendar's full and I know it's not even showing me everything. Work is good and it's good on purpose. All of that at once. That's not a contradiction. That's just August and there's still room for you in it. Thanks for listening to a Beyond Product Management if any of this has resonated with you, I would love to connect on LinkedIn or Instagram and I'll see you on the next episode.