“Productivity can be a trauma response.”

I’ll never forget the way time stood still the first time I read those words on Erica Chidi Cohen’s Instagram sometime in 2017.

My brain couldn’t explain the science behind it yet, but my body knew that this statement was true for me.

All the years of trying to strong arm my tasks into my days flashed before my eyes.

All the energy I spent as though enough elbow grease and effort would force them into a perfect Tetris-like alignment one day. If I just tried hard enough, was disciplined enough…I would finally achieve perfectly managed time.

Luckily (and painfully), my first experience of pregnancy, birth, and the first year of motherhood had taken my endless quest for a perfectly managed schedule in which I achieved pinnacle productivity off the menu for me.

In the meantime, I’d downloaded a far more sustainable, loving, effective approach to navigating my time and tasks. One sourced from (instead of working in opposition to) my body.

But until the moment I read the words above, I hadn’t seen how the way I’d approached my work and time wasn’t simply a healthy, obvious strategy for an ambitious woman such as myself that I simply no longer had the bandwidth for as a new mom.

Nope. My quest for productivity was, in fact, a trauma response.

The good news?

The approach to getting the important things done that I received in the year after I became a mom has helped me reach my goals more easily and with less stress and effort than when I was in my “manipulating time” era.

Plus, it’s helped me know precisely what to prioritize and when…and to have the right kind of energy to do it without feeling spent and harried all the time.

The time management system that felt like a desperately needed life-raft when I was adrift at sea, still in the untethered, postpartum haze 13 months after my first daughter was born?

Cyclical Planning

When my period came back, my baby was 13 months old, I was still nursing, and I was still experiencing a ton of anxiety and insomnia. (Sleep when your baby sleeps my ass 😂.)

I started paying attention to my period for the first time since I first got it at the age of 12.

I don’t know why I grabbed onto my cyclical nature as a much needed tether at that moment, but I did, and I’m grateful.

I started a simple journaling practice every night.

I would write down what day of my cycle I was on (day 1 is the day you start bleeding), I would write down which of the 4 phases I was in (Menstrual, Follicular, Ovulation, or Luteal), what phase the moon was in, and I would make a note or two about how I was feeling, particularly energetically and emotionally.

I was raised by a woman who taught me about my cyclical nature, that each phase of the menstrual cycle was like a phase of the moon and one of the seasons, and that the rhythm of the feminine ensured that there was a prime time during the month for every kind of task we might need to do.

I’d just been so brainwashed by the linear-time-oriented, productivity-crazed patriarchy that until I’d been brought to my knees by my old ways not working anymore, I’d always felt I was “too busy” to pay attention to my cyclical nature.

I no longer had a choice, though.

The way I’d worked up until this point in my life wasn’t gonna work anymore.

Little by little, I started to focus on the kinds of tasks I felt hormonally primed for during each phase of my cycle. I started noting the New Moons and Full Moons, planting seeds and bringing to mind what I wanted to let go of in concert with the waxing and waning cycles.

Shocker of all shocker, despite years of trying, we had our first 7-figure year a year after I re-organized the way I related to and planned my time from linear to cyclical.

I was getting way more of what mattered done and I could easily let go of the stuff that didn’t matter anyway.

I had more free time than before and I wasn’t as tired.

And, most important of all, my anxiety and insomnia vanished.

I found myself reconnected to the core essence of myself. I felt grounded. On purpose. Safe. Powerful.

If you’re still trying to jam your tasks into your days using all the “work harder” programming you can muster to fit it all in, there’s a better way.

And your body’s always known how to do it.

Next week I’ll give you some tips on how to make this work in your life, but for now just know this:

You can get all the stuff that matters done and it doesn’t have to feel so hard.

In fact, it can feel like an exhale.

The system to make it work is the very same one that’s responsible for the fact that you exist.

And it’s easier to master than any productivity hack you’ve tried to lay over your nature before.

This system is your nature, in fact.

Can’t wait to dive deeper with you next week!

Love,
Kate