Every ring, ping, buzz, and haptic triggers the involuntary part of your brain. The same part wired to respond to sirens and babies crying. Your brain hasn't figured out in 30 years that a Slack or Teams message isn't a survival threat. And even when you think you're ignoring it, you're not. You're making a micro decision Every. Single. Time. Why it matters: 150 emails and chat messages a day add up to 150 microdecisions before you've touched your actual work Decision fatigue follows you home...
18 days ago • 1 min read
...cue the events, AND the connections. I keynoted Reclaim Your Workday and led an Email Extinguisher breakout at the National Society of Accounting Cooperatives conference in Nashville last week. What I love most about these events isn't the stage time. It's the conversations in between. I'm an extrovert, so staying for meals, general sessions, and entertainment isn't an obligation; it's my favorite part. I hear how businesses run, what keeps people up at night, and what problems still need...
22 days ago • 3 min read
Most meeting advice starts too late. Teams shorten meetings, clean up agendas, and tweak invite lists without asking the more important question: should the meeting happen at all? In the latest episode of the Health-Powered Productivity Podcast, I share why meeting overload is usually not a meeting problem. It's a prioritization problem. Why it Matters: Poor meeting culture steals time from high-priority work. Constant interruptions make real focus harder. Better meeting habits can't fix...
25 days ago • 1 min read
Last week, we wrapped the Reclaim Your Workday Action Club pilot, and it exceeded my expectations in the best possible way. This cohort wasn’t about tips. People implemented theme days, stopped “checking email all day,” built vacation buffer days, and started protecting focus blocks. One participant told me, “I took the first vacation I can remember where I didn’t think about work.” Heck Yeah! For an eight-week program, the attendance and completed commitments were well above industry...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Most people who struggle with reading books don’t hate reading. They've been told the wrong way to read. If you have ADHD or a short attention span and reading feels hard, it’s not a discipline problem. It’s a design problem. In the latest episode of the Health-Powered Productivity Podcast, I teach you how to redesign reading so it works with your brain instead of against it. Why it matters Shame kills habits Stillness kills focus for many ADHD or neurodivergent brains Completion of a book is...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Could not have asked for a better welcome... One of my top three personal priorities this year was launching a Little Free Library at my house. We were still adding books when Geron, neighborhood teen mentor, walked by and was so excited to find a book he had read and loved as a child. He left with three new books and brought back replacements. Within 20 minutes, a mom drove by only to turn right back around after her kids shouted that there was a library. She has six children, and they also...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
If priorities aren’t visible, teams optimize everything and outcomes thin. Why it matters Rework and burnout are prioritization problems Decision load is an expensive tax on focus Guardrails protect people and results What you’ll learn Altitude + Top Three Method for Prioritization at Strategic/Operational/Ground levels The 85% capacity bar and forced tradeoffs Kill-first meetings, single-owner decisions, public scoreboard Tactics inside Publish your Top Three at every altitude Convert or cut...
2 months ago • 1 min read
My Little Free Library is finally ready to launch, and I’m ridiculously excited. My handy husband has spent the last month building it, and this weekend we’ll officially open it up to the neighborhood. It’s one of my Top Three personal priorities for the year, so this one feels extra good. To celebrate, I hosted a Books & Banter party with six girlfriends. Everyone brought one book to swap and one to donate, and we answered two questions: What was a pivotal book you read as a child? What’s...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Long lines at the airport last week gave me a timely reminder of a leadership problem I see everywhere at work. Leaders sometimes fix what’s visible instead of what’s broken. The result is just better optics, not better outcomes. There’s a reason this topic is hitting a nerve. Asana reports that knowledge workers spend 60% of their time on “work about work,” and Microsoft reports that employees are interrupted every two minutes by meetings, emails, or pings. That is not a time-management...
2 months ago • 1 min read