The Calendar Note That Started This
There's a note in my calendar that blocks off the entire last week of May. It says, "Last week of school. Do not plan anything!" All caps, lots of exclamation points. And when I click that reminder open, it says, "Be nice to yourself, Racheal, before planning anything else. There will be concerts and awards and kid stuff. Don't do anything extra this week. Remember, the twins get out by 1:00 most days."
This is a reminder I set for myself last year, and this is a practice that I have adopted over probably the last 25 years of my life, leaving notes for future me. Because somehow, even though my kids are now going into 11th and eighth grade, which is blowing my mind, we forget things that are gonna happen on a repeating basis. And when we forget those things, then we really overestimate the capacity that we actually have for our business.
So in this episode, I'm gonna share with you this little habit that I call notes to future me. This is a small habit. It doesn't require any additional technology or any additional tools, probably tools you already use, your calendar and the notes app in your phone.
This is how I protect my capacity, how I make sure I'm not overextending myself, and how I protect the parts of my life that are so incredibly important, my family, my health, my relationships and friendships. This is a small habit that helps me stay in alignment. And honestly, it's one of the small things that helps me make sure my business doesn't just take over my entire life, because I am fiercely protecting the things that matter most. Let's get into it.
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Hey CEO, Racheal Cook here, founder of The CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. We are following up last week's episode, where we did our mid-year review, by going into a habit I have developed for myself over the years, notes to future me.
I wanted to share this because we are about halfway through the year, right on the edge of summer. Summer break for kids, summer vacations, summer hours in our business, all of these things happening in the upcoming season. One of the things I do when I do my mid-year review is I really set myself up for success for the last half of the year.
So if you haven't listened to the episode about the mid-year review, it was the previous episode. You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts, and you can also download the free workbook I have for you if you go over to the show notes on the website at theceocollective.com. There's a whole workbook to do your mid-year review, and the last half of that workbook is looking through what's coming up in the final six months of the year.
And really, we're looking at that from a business perspective. What are you selling this month? How are you marketing? Those types of things we all need to be thinking through. But once you think through that, how do you make sure you're protecting your capacity to actually implement it? How are you making sure you're not overextending yourself?
Why Women Max Out Their Capacity
Overextending is so incredibly common, especially for women entrepreneurs, because for so many of us, we are juggling raising kids, we're caregiving for other folks in our lives, we are trying to take care of ourselves, we're trying to maintain our relationships and our friendships, all the things we have to navigate.
And if there's one thing I know about women, being one and working with literally thousands of women entrepreneurs, it's that we will put ourselves last on the list. We will put our business first, our clients first, our kids first, our family first. We will put everything first but ourselves, and then we find ourselves so exhausted because we've maxed out our capacity.
We've maxed out our mental capacity because we've been carrying everything in our head. The mental load is real. And just like in your business, if all of the things it takes to run your business are in your head and you don't have them documented somewhere, you are literally taking up brain space trying to keep all that information together.
The most valuable resource any small business owner has is all the processes and all the things you know about your business, and the only way to grow past yourself is to get it out of your head and into some sort of documented form so other people can support you with it. But that mental load extends beyond business. It's very heavy for those of us who have beautiful lives, beautifully full lives.
So we need to protect our mental load. We need to protect our emotional capacity, and that often gets stressed when we don't protect ourselves from ourselves. This is something I know as a highly ambitious woman, as someone who's always been a high achiever. Sometimes that little workaholic part of me can bulldoze over the part of me that really craves a slower pace of life, that really craves time to just rest and relax.
And that can be dangerous long term. So you have to protect yourself from yourself and protect your emotional capacity. Make sure you're doing the things that keep you grounded and help you take care of yourself.
And of course, we have to protect our time. As you continue to grow your business, your time becomes more and more valuable. One of the things that happens to a lot of women entrepreneurs is, because we tend to put ourselves last on the list, because we tend to say yes to everyone else's needs and ignore our own, we have to build habits that protect us from that people-pleasing part of ourselves. The part that will say, "Oh yeah, I'll do a meeting at this time," even though it's on your standing day off, or it's outside the times you really like to do any sort of meetings or calls. We tend to people-please to the extent that we just stretch ourselves way too thin.
Where Notes to Future Me Began
This is a little habit I started years ago, and really this habit started because I have multiple chronic illnesses. And with these chronic illnesses, I have symptoms that can be very debilitating. I have symptoms like brain fog.
When they flare up, I cannot think. I cannot focus. I cannot pay attention. I can be trying to read an amazing book, this is one of my favorite things in the world is to read, but when I'm having a lot of brain fog, I find myself just staring at the page and not actually able to stay focused enough to read and absorb what I'm taking in.
I will have migraines that are so terrible that I need to put a whole ice pack over my head. I have a cold head cap for when my migraines flare up. I have allergy and sinus flare-ups, especially in October and April. Those seasonal allergies can be so exhausting for me, and they can just take me out for days, where I really can't get out of bed. I get so incredibly drained.
So I started keeping notes to future me as a way to take care of myself, because when you're in that state of not being able to think straight, you don't know how to take care of yourself anymore. You just forget. It's like, somehow, even though these things seem so simple, you can't remember the steps to take, and it is so infuriating when the person you love, if you have a partner or a friend or somebody who's trying to support you through chronic illness, looks at you and says, "Well, how can I help?" And you're like, "I don't know. I can't even remember my name today." It's somehow the most infuriating thing.
So I started keeping notes to future me. Notes to future me for my chronic illness look like opening my notes app on days where I'm well and giving a note a title for the symptom I'm having, like on days you're having a migraine, and then writing in every single thing that helps me manage a migraine. Including where I keep my ice head cap, where the migraine meds are, the names of the meds, the doctor who fills those meds, where the pharmacy is so we can make sure we have them on hand.
I include the details for my chiropractor and my acupuncturist, anything that helps me get through a migraine as quickly as possible. And I save all these in the notes app on my phone. I found this is so helpful because, one, I don't have to think. I've already done the thinking. It's there in my notes app for these particular challenges I have.
But I also can share it with the people who support me. So my husband has these all as shared notes, so when I'm like, "Oh, I feel a migraine coming on," he knows exactly where to go to get all the details. Now, this might sound so silly. But the note to future me is a way to take care of future me. It's a way that current me, right now, is taking care of future me and making sure I'm not having to remember absolutely everything, and I'm protecting myself and my capacity.
Layering Notes Onto My Calendar
So the little notes in my notes app were the first step, and then as I became a mom, this habit expanded, because I started layering my calendar on top of it. My calendar is something I live and die by. Anyone who knows me well knows that I fiercely protect my calendar. I have an entire calendar SOP about how I run my calendar, and it is so drilled down to the days that are client-facing days versus the days that are deep work days.
On the client-facing days, my calendar SOP says the only times people can have calls with me are 9:00 AM, 10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, and 1:30 PM. It is that drilled in, so that I know they are spaced exactly where I need them and I can have a little bit of a break in between. I cap out the number of calls I do every single day when I'm doing client-facing days. I have a lot of things I've learned over the years about how I need to manage my calendar to take care of myself.
One of the things I started doing really early on with my calendar when I had my kids was leaving notes for future me in my calendar. The day-to-day life of having a family and running a business is so much to carry already, but there are things that are gonna happen on a regular basis that are so easy to forget, because maybe you only have to think about it once a year, but you're gonna have to think about it every year.
So an example of this. We are headed towards summer right now, so I have a note to future me in my calendar, it was actually in my calendar back in April, that said, "Pull down spring and summer clothes, go through kids' existing clothes, check bathing suits, check shoes, check all of these things," because that's when those things are available for sale, and we want the best selection. I want to make sure I'm not trying to pack for a vacation or a beach day and realize, oh my gosh, my kids don't have any flip-flops this year because they've outgrown them.
The same thing for the cooler months of the year. We don't get a lot of snow here in Richmond, Virginia. Our winters are pretty mild, but dang if these kids don't just keep growing out of everything. So again, I'll have a note for future me in my calendar earlier in the season saying, "Hey, Racheal, don't forget to check coats, snow pants, gloves, hats," all of those types of things. These little notes as a mom are just reminders for things I only really have to think about once a year. But if I don't have some way to remember, then what'll often happen, because this did happen to me, is we get a surprise snowstorm and my kids are bummed because no one has a pair of snow boots.
So this has been an ongoing little habit I continued to build as a mom. As things would come up on the calendar, if I knew this was gonna happen again, I would make a note to future me. When they were little, I started realizing things like, okay, sign-up for sports is in this time, even though the actual sport doesn't start until a couple months later. If we want to sign up for this sport, I have to sign up for it here. I'd make a note a year in advance saying, "Hey, soccer team signups are this month, not the month it actually starts."
When summer camp signups come out, guess what? It's not right before summer starts. It is months before, in January or February. So I'd leave a note for future me to start finding out about all the summer camps so we could actually get into them before they filled up.
The Notes on My Calendar Right Now
So this is a small little habit I have built for myself. It started with little notes for future me in my notes app about how to take care of myself. Then it started being notes in my calendar about things that are gonna come up again, probably on an annual or semi-annual basis. So here are a few notes that are on my calendar right now, because it's expanded now from reminders just about the kids to also things I need to remember to take care of myself.
Right now I'm looking at my calendar, and the last week of May is the last week of school, and as I shared in the opening of this episode, it says, "Last week of school. Do not plan anything." It's there to remind me that this is gonna be an atypical week. My kids are gonna have random things pop up that I need to make sure I'm available for, and I don't want to overschedule myself during this week.
Building Buffer Around Travel
I also have another note for myself, I'm clicking through my calendar real quick, in July, because we are getting ready to take the whole family on an amazing trip to Italy to celebrate my brother-in-law and soon-to-be sister-in-law's wedding. That trip is very exciting. We're super pumped about it. But I also know, almost a month in Italy, it would be really easy for the ambitious side of me, the side that's worried about how business has been going while I've kind of been out of pocket, to get back from that trip and feel like I've gotta jump right back into work.
But I know myself well enough now to know I need to build buffer before and after travel. I always need to build buffer before travel because, of course, you need to think about packing and all the things you need to get ready. But I really will need buffer when I get home from this trip, because it's a long return flight. We have to fly from Florence to London, then from London to Baltimore, then drive Baltimore back down to Richmond. So that is like a full day of travel, and as someone with chronic illness, I know that full day of travel is not gonna feel good on my body, so I need to ease back into work.
My note to my future self is there to block that time and make sure I am not overextending myself when I get home. I get home late on a Tuesday, so I have a note that goes across Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that says, "Easing back into work. You are returning from a month abroad. Do not commit to anything else. Only do your Q&A on Thursday in the CEO Collective. Keep the rest open so that you can reset the house, see the chiropractor, get a massage, and start fresh on Monday."
And I've already gone ahead and booked my appointments with my chiropractor and my massage therapist, because I know that will help me take care of myself after a travel day, which is really hard for people with chronic illness.
Protecting My Three-Day Weekends
I also have notes in my calendar about three-day weekends. I generally do not work on Fridays. That is my maintenance day, is what I think of it as. I hear from a lot of working parents that they really feel like the weekend isn't long enough. You really need a day to run errands, a day to do something fun with your family, and then a day to kind of do nothing. And that is absolutely true, especially as you have kids and all the activities that are going on, all the things they want to do on the weekend.
I swear my kids have a more active social life than I do, and until these kids get their licenses, which hopefully is gonna happen by next fall, I'm the mom taxi. I'm the one driving them around to hang out with their friends and do all the activities. So having my Fridays off is protected time. That is my time where, if I need to do anything for myself, see my doctor, get to a Pilates class, update anything that needs to be done around the house, that is my maintenance day. And making sure I do that really ensures I'm not doing it during the weekend. Instead, I can actually be present and have more fun with my family.
I have a note to future me, and this is actually so funny, because I had blocked this time off last year saying it was the last week of the quarter in September, and I like to take the last week of the quarter off. The weeks prior, I've been hosting the CEO retreat. I generally host a CEO retreat pretty consistently, every quarter. We do it in March. We do it in June. We do two in September and two in December, and usually they are the second and third Fridays of the month. And I like to take that last week of the quarter off so I can just have downtime.
This is protected time for me. This is when I kind of have my thinking time built in. I try to avoid having any appointments. I try to make sure this is time where I can just relax a little bit and regroup before a fresh quarter starts. And I had in my notes there, "Last week of the quarter off would be really great time for a girls trip."
I had written that last year at the end of September, and amazingly, one of my dear friends is hosting an incredible trip to New Orleans. When we were talking about her wanting to host this trip, I was like, "Well, I happen to have this last week of the month off," and lo and behold, there we are. We're gonna have a girls trip to New Orleans, which is gonna be incredible. I'm so excited about that. These little notes to future me help me protect the time off that's really valuable to me.
Seeing Your Real Capacity in One Place
It's valuable to me because it protects my maintenance days. It protects days where things are gonna be a little different than the norm, like that last week of school. And it also makes sure I can visually see the capacity I actually have on my calendar. I use my Google Calendar for everything.
I can see my calendar. In Google Calendar, you can have multiple calendars you can toggle on and off. So I can see my personal calendar. I can see our family calendar. I can see the full CEO Collective calendar. I can see my promotional calendar. I can see it all, and I can toggle it on and off, so I really can clearly see what my capacity actually looks like, what I actually have available.
That is so incredibly important, because it helps me make sure that when I am looking at the second half of the year, I'm really clear about what capacity I actually have available. If you have vacations planned over the summer, well, unless you're working through that vacation, you need to plan without that time. We're taking a month to go to Italy, and I had to block everything off, set myself up, put the systems in place, and have the visual reminders so I'm not over-committing and doing anything during that time. It would be so easy to say yes to, "Oh yeah, I'll continue to do this while I'm on the trip of a lifetime with my family." No, we're not doing that.
I have little notes to future me in my calendar using the tasks, and these are for things I just have to do one time, and I want to make sure I do them in advance. So for example, if I click forward in my calendar to October, I have a little task that says, "Order Xmas jammies. Here's everyone's sizes. Order from Target. Last year's were favorites."
Christmas jammies is something my mom loved to do, and, you know, I lost her in December. But because she was disabled and couldn't go to a store, I would always make sure to have this note for myself, usually at the beginning of October, that said, "Order Christmas jammies with Mom." This is a note I wrote for myself last year. I would go ahead and pre-select a few styles, sit down with her, and she would pick the style she liked the best, and then I would go ahead and order them as her big gift for the whole family.
Whole family meaning me and my family, my sisters and their families, my parents, and my grandma. So it was a lot of pajamas to order. I think when we count everybody up, it's something like 16 people. So we have to make sure we order them in advance, because Christmas jammies run out. They get out of stock very quickly, especially trying to get all the sizes you need. Having that little reminder to myself on my calendar ensured this happened, that I wasn't stressing out because things were selling out too fast, that I wasn't overwhelmed getting closer to the holidays, that I was doing it with plenty of time for everything to come in.
The Monthly Reset Checklist
Another note I keep in my calendar is my monthly reset. My monthly reset is the first of every month, or the first Monday of every month, and it's just a little note for myself that is a quick checklist for the things I need to update that month on the calendar. This is something I've found to be incredibly helpful, because again, it's so easy to put yourself last on the list. But if you, like me, have chronic illnesses and you really have to work at maintaining your energy, you have to do the things that keep you well.
And it's not Instagram self-care. These are the things that actually help me physically stay well enough to do the work I want to do, to spend time with my family, all of that. I have to be very diligent and very on top of it. But I can't depend on willpower, and I can't depend on me just remembering to do this, so it's an automated reminder in my calendar.
It's the first Monday of every single month. It says, "Monthly reset," and I have a little checklist in my notes app. The checklist says: first of the month, monthly reset, self-care to schedule, therapist, coach, personal training, Pilates or yoga, massage, chiropractor, acupuncture, float, haircut, facial, nails. Any of those self-care things that help me stay well, I want to run through that checklist and make sure they're actually scheduled in my calendar.
I have a note to look at my supplements and my prescriptions. Is there anything I need to order, anything I need to ask for a refill for? There's a little relationship section in my monthly reset. This is my definition of success, being able to prioritize these things. But if you aren't actively putting the time on the calendar, then you're hoping these things are gonna happen.
So for us, we decided we wanted to have at least two date nights a month. I like to have two friend dates a month, and this could look like a group of friends I play Mahjong with. This could be going out to dinner with friends. This could just be, "Hey, I'm gonna go here. Anybody want to co-work with me?" Having those things pre-booked in my calendar makes sure those actually happen. And also one or two networking events. That's where I'll check the calendar for all the different things happening around Richmond and make sure I'm signing up, RSVPing for the things I want to attend.
I will have some life operations things I need to double check. Reviewing our calendar for the month, double checking the kids' calendars, confirming cleaners, making sure the meal prep service or HelloFresh is ready to go. I have a little money section in this checklist, double checking that all of our bills are automated and auto-paid, double checking anything that isn't. This also includes double checking my parents' money and finances, because I manage all of that for them, so I'm double checking all of my dad's expenses. And then a little section just for me, just for fun. Is there anything I want to make space for this month? A creative project, a class, a personal growth type of thing I want to add into my calendar?
The reason this little monthly reset is so powerful, and having it as a reminder in my calendar the first Monday of every month, and then this full checklist in my notes app, is that it's the best way I have found to manage my capacity and help me stay proactive. It's helping me stay proactive without me having to rely on remembering everything, which just increases the mental load. It's popping up every single month, so it becomes so much easier to protect that time. The checklist, these little reminders, are what really help me stay on top of the things that matter most.
Your Calendar Is a Values Document
I wanted to share this with you because your calendar really is a reflection of your values if you're living in alignment. There's so much you can tell from somebody based on their calendar, based on what they have actually made time for. And so often I hear from people who say, "Well, I don't have time for this and I don't have time for that," and really that's an excuse. You would have time for it if you prioritized it. But it becomes harder when everyone else's needs fill up the calendar, when everything else takes priority over you.
I can't say my definition of success in my health and my wellbeing, especially as someone with chronic illness, is to be well enough to do the things I want to do, and then not prioritize the things that help me stay healthy, that help me stay well. If I'm not actually making space for it proactively in my calendar, it doesn't happen. I can't say my definition of success in my relationships is having quality time with my husband or with my kids if I'm not actually putting that time in my calendar.
It becomes so easy to say, "Well, I'm gonna have a four-day work week," and then, because you don't have a visual reminder that Fridays are off, because you haven't actually blocked every Friday, it becomes so easy to default to, "Oh, Friday's free. I can take that call. Friday's free. I can meet up with you then. Friday's free. I can do this."
Protecting Yourself From the Workaholic
I am a recovering workaholic, and I'm not gonna act like capitalism hasn't deeply affected me and the way I was raised, the whole work hard, rise and grind mentality I was raised with, that so many of us had baked in. I'm not gonna act like that doesn't pop up, like the little voice in my head saying, "Well, it's not a big deal if you just take this and say yes to this." It would quickly take over, though. I have to protect myself from myself. Undoing these habits takes a lot of intentionality.
If you want more space for yourself, you have to actually create the space. You have to actually block it off. I can't just say, "Well, I work 25 hours a week," and then on my calendar everything is open and available. I have to block it off to protect the time. That's why every single weekend I have blocked off Friday, and in fact I label them, this is a three-day weekend, this is a three-day weekend.
If I skip ahead to when school is out or when school's back in, there's plenty of weekends where it turns into a five-day weekend because the kids have a random couple days off school. For example, looking at the beginning of November, at least here where we live in Virginia, election day is the first Tuesday of November, and they use the schools as election polling places, so that Tuesday is always off. Our school system has made the Mondays off as a teacher work day, which means that becomes basically a five-day weekend for me, because I take off the Fridays before that weekend.
That is amazing. And I want to make sure that's an opportunity to go do something fun with my family. That could be a time to put in a little trip, to go spend time with my in-laws, to go see my sisters and have the kids see their cousins. But that only happens if I can visually see on my calendar that this time is blocked off. So having this reminder and having things purposefully blocked in my calendar, where when I'm looking at one calendar I can see the days I'm taking off and where things are happening, it protects me from me. It keeps me from overextending myself.
Why Summer Quietly Steals Capacity
Summer can be one of those slippery seasons where you quickly start to backslide. You start it with intention, going, "Okay, I'm gonna do all these amazing things with my family. I'm gonna do all this fun stuff with my kids. We're gonna go on this amazing vacation." And then reality sets in, and this is what I hear from so many other working moms. Reality sets in. They think they have the same capacity during the summer as they did when their kids were in school. That's likely not true.
Even if you have childcare during the summer, let's say your kids are going to day camps, and this is what I hear from my friends who have smaller kids, and of course I remember this season, it's so easy to be like, "Oh, they're gonna be in camp all summer." But the times are different now. You have to adapt and adjust around that. Whereas they might have been at school from, in my kids' case, 9:00 until 4:00, if they're in summer camps, they might only have camp from 9:00 to 12:00. Or if it's a different schedule and you've gotta go pick them up and drop them off, and pick them up and drop them off, that's additional interruption you have to navigate.
I learned this last summer the hard way, and so I made a note for future me. I had given up my office in downtown Richmond and I had been working from home. I gave up my office, I want to say it was the end of September 2024, and I wasn't sure I was gonna go rent another office space, because between the time I had opened my office and then decided to give it up, multiple amazing co-working spaces opened. So I was like, you know what, I'm probably not gonna go get another office space. There's plenty of new places I can go work from.
But I ended up working from home the whole school year. Because no one was home during the day, the minute my husband left the house with the kids to go do drop-off at 8:00, I now had all this time until the kids started arriving home at 3:30 and 4:30. But when summer came around, I realized there is no way I'm gonna get anything done with the kids home. There's no way. It's too many people in the house. It's too noisy. I was getting frustrated. I was getting overwhelmed.
So I made a note for future me to go ahead and plan to get a membership to Common House, the space I like to go co-work from, before school started, so I could get in the habit of going downtown to that co-working space instead of frustrating myself trying to get work done while kids were being kids. The house was busy and active and things were happening. So I made sure that little note for future me was in place, and it's in place already. It's already in place saying, "Hey, make sure you're planning the days you're gonna go to the co-working space," especially days where I know I need more quiet and I need to be able to lock into my work and not get distracted by my family. So I didn't have to figure this out again this year. It's already in my notes. It's already in my reminders as I'm setting up my summer schedule to decide the days I'm gonna go downtown, and it just saves me that little bit of frustration.
Planning for the Capacity You Have
You want to be thinking about your capacity more strategically and stop letting it happen by default. When I sit down with my mid-year review and I'm planning out the last six months of the year, I need to make sure I'm really clear about the capacity I actually have. And for me, the follow-up to that exercise is going through the last six months of the year in my calendar.
It's intentionally checking the kids' calendars and making sure any of the days they don't have school are in my calendar now. It's double-checking anything I need to know for the last six months and putting the reminders in my calendar if they're not there already. For example, the kids start school at the end of August, so I have a reminder to myself, the weekend before school starts, do yourself a favor, don't plan anything other than getting kids ready for school and pumping them up. I have a reminder the first day of school, this is pizza night. Keep it simple. They are exhausted. They are tired. They don't want to talk to you. They just want to eat something and go to bed. Make it easy. We are all tired, trying to get into our new routine.
This just helps capacity stop being an estimate. Because I've gone through this process for myself, and I have this little habit of, when things come up and I know they're gonna repeat, putting these notes to future me in my calendar and in my notes app, now I have a more accurate idea of what my capacity actually looks like. I can literally look at my calendar and see what I need to be considering to make sure I am not overextending myself. I can go in and set my availability so I don't have to say yes to people on days I have prioritized for myself and for my self-care.
Again, it is such a little habit, but once you get into it, you start to be grateful for past you, for past you taking care of future you, and past you making sure the things that make your life run easier and your business run easier are set in a way that you know you're going to remember them. You know you're gonna see this little note to future you in your calendar as you approach that month.
This is how you stop overextending yourself. This is how you start protecting your capacity. This is how you can make sure, as you're looking at your plan for the last half of the year, you can be really honest about the capacity you do have. If you're taking time off during the summer, going on vacation for a week or two weeks, that reduces the capacity you have, the time you have for working on your business, and you want to be strategic about that. You don't want to set yourself up for feeling like you have to be working on vacation. You don't want to set yourself up for feeling like, well, in order for me to take vacation, it means I need to work double the rest of the time. That is not sustainable. To me, that sounds terrible.
I'd rather build in more sustainability. I'd rather protect my capacity, and I'd rather make sure my plan is aligned with reality. If your plan is built on best case scenario, so I work 25 hours a week on average, but if my plan for the last half of the year required me to work 25 hours a week for 26 weeks straight, I am setting myself up for a lot of stress, because the reality is I don't have 26 weeks that I'm working. Not nearly.
When I look at my calendar for the last half of the year, I have to consider that I'll still be in Italy the first and second week of July. I have to remember that in August I'm taking a week to do cousin camp with my sisters. It's a fun little thing we've been doing where we bring all the kids and all of our families to our river house, and we make it a fun little week together. We call it cousin camp. It's so much fun. But that takes another week out of my capacity.
My last week of the quarter off in September, where I'm going on my girls trip to New Orleans, that's another week I'm not planning to work. When I get further into the end of the year, Thanksgiving break, that's a long stretch I'm not planning to work. The long weekend over Election Day, winter break. I need to be honest with myself. I don't have 26 weeks through the end of the year, because when I look at all of that, I probably really only have about 21 weeks total. That means I need to be more strategic. As I'm making my plans, I need to make sure I'm working with the capacity I actually have and not forcing myself to overwork because my ambition is driving the bus.
Letting the Inner Wise Woman Drive
I want my ambition there, but I also want the side of me that is taking care of me. I call this my inner wise woman. I want my inner wise woman to be driving the bus most of the time. I want my inner wise woman, the one who tells me on a regular basis, "You need to enjoy this life. You need to prioritize your family. You need to spend time with friends. You need to live in the moment. You need to be present," I want her driving the bus a whole lot more than I want my hyper-ambitious side to drive the bus.
Because I'm okay with growing in a more sustainable way. I know that if the ambitious side of me takes over, we will focus on work and ambition and growth, because it feeds that ego. When the inner wise woman is driving the bus and she's aligning her calendar with her real priorities, with her definition of success for her life and her family and her relationships and her health and her creativity and fun, when she does that for me, I actually enjoy my life a lot more. And the side effect is I enjoy my business a lot more, because I'm not pushing myself unnecessarily. I'm creating more balance for myself. I'm protecting myself from that ambitious side that is driving the bus.
Write One Note to Future You
So here's what I want to leave you with today. It's so easy to know that we need systems for our business, and then we don't really create those types of systems for our life. You need systems everywhere. I'm a systems fan, as you can tell. But the reason I love systems is because, as someone with chronic illness, as someone who is carrying a lot, I have found over and over again that getting these things out of my head and documented somewhere has made it so much easier in my life and in my business.
So you don't need to overcomplicate this. Like I said, I use my Google Calendar, and I use the notes app on my phone so I can share those notes. I want to encourage you to pick one note to future you that you are going to write. It could be something you need to remember for this season on your calendar. It could be a little checklist, like I told you about my little checklist for my migraines or for when I'm having a flare-up. Pick a little note for future you, and leave it for the version of you who's gonna need it next year.
You can go ahead and leave notes to future you for the last half of the year. You can skip ahead and write a note to future you for what you need to remember at the end of May or the beginning of June. And if you want the structured work version of this, if you want to go through the mid-year review, I encourage you to go listen to the mid-year review episode.
And if you're ready to go even deeper, then don't forget the CEO retreats are coming up, and we do have an on-demand version of the CEO retreat. I talk about capacity a lot in the CEO retreat, because I know how easy it is when you're in planning mode to plan as if everything is gonna be perfect, to plan as if it is always sunshine and rainbows. But the reality is, that's not how it works. So we need to plan for reality. We need to plan for the things that are gonna be coming up. We need to plan with your real capacity in mind.
Okay. Next Thursday's episode, we are gonna continue into this series, little things I'm doing, the way I'm thinking about this particular season, and how you can make sure you're being strategic about your business but also prioritizing the things that matter most to you in your life. I'm looking forward to it. I'll see you then.