The Productive Woman

Perfect productivity rules? Not for everyone! This discussion dives into the limitations of conventional advice, like only checking email twice a day. It emphasizes personalization and flexibility in productivity strategies, particularly for high-pressure jobs. Discover tips for effective time management, delegating responsibilities, and navigating those dreaded unproductive meetings. Plus, learn about Doodle as a nifty tool for scheduling and simplifying meet-ups. Embrace adaptability and find what truly works for you!

Many women feel isolated in their efforts to advance in their careers, learn the skills they need to accomplish their goals, and become the person they want to be. In this episode we'll talk about one solution: finding a mentor. We'll look at what mentoring is, what the benefits are (on both sides), how to find mentors, and some guidelines for successful mentoring relationships.

Very few of us have lives focused on just one thing. Most of us instead juggle multiple roles, and try to do well at all of them. Author, attorney, and homeschooling mom Cara Putman understands the challenges of a multifaceted life. Dubbed by a friend as the "Do-It-All Mom," Cara shares openly about the not-always-pretty realities of managing a busy life and a busy household, and encourages us to live our lives by grace, rejecting the temptation to compare ourselves to other women.

In an increasingly noisy world, one key to true productivity and to building a life of lasting significance and satisfaction is learning to identify and pursue only what's essential, purposely eliminating the nonessential from our lives to make room for what really matters. We can learn how by studying Greg McKeown's wise and profound book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

If you're struggling to make progress on accomplishing the things you care about, if you start lots of projects but don't finish many, perhaps you're feeling the effects of a lack of focus. For some of us, the biggest challenge to productivity is the temptation to chase too many rabbits. One tool that can help us sort through the options and stay focused on what really matters is to choose a theme word (or words) for the year.

One of the keys to being a productive woman is having a system in place to track and manage all the things we need to do in each area of responsibility. The options for task management systems and tools are as varied as we are. Nothing works for everyone, but there really is something that will work for each of us.

Is the life you're living an accident, or the result of conscious, purposeful choices? This episode features a conversation with tech podcaster (and retired aerospace engineer) Allison Sheridan about how important it is for women to make conscious choices about their life, and to acknowledge that the choices are theirs to make.

Sometimes our best-laid plans don't pan out. Failure can either paralyze us or propel us into growth and new beginnings. This week we consider some thoughts about how to recover--and learn--from failure.

Much of the quality of our life, including our productivity, depends on the habits we employ. In this episode we look at how schedules, routines, and rituals can help us establish habits that let us be more productive, achieve our goals, and build the life we want.

Why is it so hard to get ourselves to do the things we most want to do? Few things in life are more exasperating than the way we sometimes sabotage our own goals. In this episode we look at some of reasons we block our own success, and offer some suggestions to address those issues, get past that resistance, and accomplish the things that matter most.