by Karen Skidmore | 11,24 | Ebb & Flow, Embodied Business
I’m feet up, watching Netflix, and when I hear the sound of my husband’s car on the driveway, I jump up and switch the TV off.
I was exhausted, feeling like an extra on The Walking Dead. I hadn’t slept through the night for months, waking up at 3 a.m. and finding myself downstairs reading until I finally nodded off at 6 a.m., just before I heard my husband get up and the morning ritual of kids’ breakfasts and school runs started. So resting on the sofa before starting dinner is a perfectly acceptable activity.
But why did I react this way?
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but hearing a family member come home while resting triggered me to jump up and pretend I wasn’t. It wasn’t a conscious decision; even though I was struggling with sleep, nerves on edge and brain fogged, I was hard-wired not to be caught resting.
During my burnout recovery in my 40s, I struggled with the advice, ‘You have to rest.’
I defined rest as sitting on the sofa, eating wotsits … the epitome of unproductive. And being unproductive was sinful.
I can now look back and see how strongly these word-hard stories of mine kept me from recovering from my burnout … I was hardwired to be productive at all times, so being caught with my feet up on the sofa was a bad thing.
Resisting rest is not normal
Today, I speak to hundreds of women (and men, too!) who tell me similar stories of resisting rest. It’s all too common now, to the point that we joke about it with our friends, which helps us normalise this behaviour, knowing that this Pavlov Dog’s reaction inflicts others.
But resisting rest is not normal.
It should never be normal to jump up when someone is having an afternoon nap, a quiet moment decompressing from back-to-back meetings, or resting on the sofa before the next job needs doing.
If our bodies need rest, we need to rest. If we don’t, we will get ill. Fact, yes?!
Rest is not a reward for hard work
Rest also needs to happen before we need it.
Another hard work story I see play out with many, myself included, back in my 40s, is that we can rest when we have performed. We can rest once the jobs are done, and our productivity levels mean that we are ahead of the tasks and now have time to rest.
I always return to Mother Nature and look at how seasons work. Our modern calendar puts Spring at the start of the seasons, with Winter at the end of the year. And yet, Mother Nature begins her incredible work in Winter, preparing the earth and drawing on its resources so she is ready to burst forward in Spring. Winter may feel like a dead month on the coldest, darkest days in December, but it’s far from dead because without these precious months of rest, recharge, and reallocation of resources, Spring could never happen.
I’m sure you know how you feel after a good night’s sleep and how much more productive and in flow your day is, so why not rest before the busy periods in your day?
Unravel your hard work stories
Resting during periods of illness ought to be essential, and you probably know this on a logical level. Yet our hard work stories prevent us from resting, even when we know we need to.
Some journalling questions to help you ponder on yours …
- How do you define productive?
- When do you feel most productive?
- Who taught you about resting (or not resting), and what did they say?
Many of our stories are given to us by our parents and peers growing up, so I invite you to go back to your teens and 20s, as well as your more recent decades, and reflect on how those around you perceive rest. You may find that your hard work story isn’t yours … find a thread and pull it. Unravel those stories that hardwire your ability to rest.
by Karen Skidmore | 11,24 | Ebb & Flow, Embodied Business
Being “busy” has been a badge of honour for many years. We’re surrounded by messages that equate busyness with productivity and worth, especially as women.
We often try to balance life, business, and family responsibilities: from work deadlines to family obligations, our days are filled to the brim, leaving little space to breathe, let alone feel genuinely fulfilled.
We now seek approval from others as we respond to questions such as ‘How are you?’ by telling each other, ‘I’m great—so busy.’
Busy has also become the barometer of our health – not by sharing how we feel or how our health is … but by our degree of busyness.
The illusion of “Doing More”
There’s a common belief that success lies in doing more, handling every task, and pushing through each day without missing a beat. But when we’re constantly trying to keep up, we lose connection with what truly matters: our wellbeing, our relationships, and our own sense of purpose.
Many of us experience the toll of this “always on” lifestyle in our bodies and minds. We become stressed, tired, and even physically unwell, accepting these as the costs of achieving our goals.
But should success require us to sacrifice our health and happiness?
For me, the answer eventually became a resounding no.
Why busyness fails us
There’s a reason so many women feel burnt out. When we prioritise busyness over intentional living, say yes too many times, and overcommit ourselves, we’re forced to ignore our bodies’ natural rhythms, pressing on even when exhausted.
We ignore niggles in our body, such as back twinges, bloating or skin conditions, and squish down emotions because we feel we don’t have to ‘deal with them’. And for anyone who has done this over a period of time, you know these niggles and squished down emotions have a habit of blowing up volcanically at a time when you least expect them to.
And as women, who often manage the bigger percentage blend of business, family, and home responsibilities, the toll can be even greater.
But the constant juggling isn’t just exhausting; it’s counterproductive.
Over time, our energy wanes, our focus blurs, and we become less effective in every area of our lives.
Embodiment as a path to aligned living
If busyness leads to burnout, what’s the alternative?
For me, the answer came through an unexpected yet life-changing practice: embodiment.
Embodiment is about reconnecting with our body’s natural wisdom, honouring our energy, and shifting from a mode of constant doing to one of intentional being.
Rather than viewing busyness as a measure of success, embodiment invites us to listen to our bodies, noticing when we need rest and feel energised. This approach brings a sense of alignment and allows us to be fully present in life and work.
When I began practising embodiment, I felt deeply uncomfortable, yet something inside me was crying out for it. I’ve always loved to dance, but it would always be in the kitchen with no one watching or after several glasses of wine if I were out with friends.
My first few sessions made me realise how unconnected I was in my body; my hips were stiff, I found finding a rhythm awkward, and I spent too much time worrying about what I looked like and whether I was ‘doing it right’.
But over time, I experienced an incredible shift.
I learnt to get out of my head and be more in tune with my body. My days became more energised, my priorities clearer, and my sense of fulfilment deeper. This wasn’t about doing less but creating a rhythm that allowed me to flow through life’s ups and downs and live in alignment with what mattered most.
How embodiment transforms our relationship with busyness
Embodiment isn’t about avoiding responsibility or stepping away from meaningful work; it’s about being more intentional with our energy.
Here are some of the shifts I’ve experienced—and now see in the women I work with—when we embrace embodiment to manage life and work with greater ease:
1. Listening to Your Energy Cycles
Each of us has natural ebb and flows in our energy, particularly women, because of our monthly hormone cycle and menstruation. Embodiment helps us recognise these cycles, allowing us to align our tasks with moments of high energy and honour our need for rest when it arises. This approach not only enhances productivity but also brings a sense of balance to our days.
2. Presence Over Multitasking
Busyness often leads to multitasking, splitting our focus and leaving us feeling scattered. I am not the only one who grew up believing that being a multi-tasker was a good skill to have. But as we get into our 40s and 50s, our brains simply can’t keep up with multiple tabs open, the same way that our phones and browsers slow down when too many apps or tabs are open.
Embodiment teaches us the value of presence. It allows us to bring our full attention to each moment, whether it’s a business task, time with loved ones, or simply a moment to breathe. This sense of presence makes our days feel fuller, not busier.
3. Honouring Rest as Essential
Rest is often seen as “wasted time” and something we do after we’ve put in the effort, but it’s essential to our wellbeing. You only need to look to professional athletes and see the importance they place on active rest as part of their training programmes to realise it’s critical to high performance.
Embodiment invites us to redefine rest and see it as a vital part of success, allowing us to recharge and return to our lives with greater clarity and resilience.
4. Embracing Intuition as our Guide
Busyness often pulls us into a reactive state, causing us to respond to demands rather than make choices aligned with our values. It keeps us in crisis management mode, which is great for crises … but not so great for everyday life.
Through embodiment, we learn to tune into our intuition and let it guide us. This helps us prioritise what truly matters and feel confident in saying no to what doesn’t serve us.
A New Way to Approach Success
Since embracing embodiment, I’ve found that success feels less like a never-ending to-do list and more like a fulfilling, intentional journey.
I no longer feel pressured to measure my worth by how busy I am. Yes, it’s been a hard habit for me to break because of the deep ‘hard work’ beliefs my body held, but it gets easier and takes me less time to course correct when I find myself getting deep into the busy trenches.
I spend more of my time now focused on creating a working week and month where I can allow my energy to flow naturally, where I’m present in both my work and personal life, and where I feel a deep sense of alignment.
This shift isn’t just for avoiding burnout; it’s a pathway to creating a life that feels whole, balanced, and aligned with who we are and gives us the resilience to dance with whatever life throws at us.
And it’s something every woman deserves to experience.
Your invitation to explore embodiment
If you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed by busyness and ready to try a new approach, I invite you to join me in exploring embodiment. I’m offering a series of beginner classes designed to help you reconnect with your body, manage your energy, and approach life with a balanced and intentional rhythm.
If you’re ready to let go of the endless cycle of busyness and step into a more aligned way of living, click here to learn more and reserve your place.
Success doesn’t have to mean constant busyness.
It’s time to release the idea that being busy equates to being successful and instead embrace a life that’s both fulfilling and sustainable. Embodiment offers a way forward, and I’d be honoured to share this journey with you as we create a new rhythm that honours our full selves—life, work, and all.
by Karen Skidmore | 03,24 | Business Planning, Ebb & Flow, Marketing Articles
Have you ever considered the timings of your monthly cycle when planning your business or deciding when to launch your next programme or speak at an event?
(Yes, this article is written for women, but if you’re a guy with women in your team, please read on because this is a serious post and can be incredibly enlightening if you’ve never considered this in your business!)
Cycle tracking is becoming an everyday conversation, at least with our clients.
It’s one of the ways you can track how your energy flows naturally and responds to external influences, such as what food we eat and how we look after our bodies, and since doing a lot of research in this area and bringing it into the work that we do with our clients, I’ve seen that creating sustainable business success is more than a well-put-together business plan or marketing funnel.
Being aware of what affects your energy and how you approach certain decisions in your business can help you design, create and run your business so your work fuels you rather than burns you out.
Why track your monthly cycle?
If you’ve ever tracked your cycle, you’ll know your energies have ebbs and flows.
I’m now post-menopausal, so I no longer have a monthly cycle; I tune into different things to track my energy flow now. But in the last few years of menstruating, I tracked my cycle to help plan my marketing campaigns and promotional events as it became a helpful barometer to tune into my ebb and flow of emotions, creativity and periodic stuck-ness.
I started to be aware of the exact dates of my cycle when my husband and I decided to start a family (ah, those fun days of taking one’s temperature to confirm ovulation days!). But it wasn’t until my adrenaline reached boiling point and my system crashed back in 2012 that I started seriously to research my peri-menopausal symptoms. I began to track my monthly cycles again.
Tracking my emotional and physical changes throughout the month helped me make sense of what was going on inside of me; the feeling of being out of control one week focused and in flow the next, often followed by a severe energy crash, irrational mood swings and my inner critic shouting down any great ideas I had for my business.
In my experience, knowing where I’ve been in my cycle at any given point in my working week has helped me enormously over the past few years to deal with things that haven’t gone according to plan … as well as helping me realise I wasn’t going mad; I’m simply a woman!
The four stages of your cycle
Your cycle has four distinct stages, each affecting your energy, emotions and physicality.
Of course, not every woman has a regular 28-day cycle; we all have our unique pattern, sometimes so irregular that it’s hard to track. But if you are still in menstrual flow, the first step in taking this approach with your business is to track and record how you feel and what symptoms you experience.
Plenty of apps to choose from today include tracking your symptoms and moods, too.
If you prefer a ‘paper’ version, I have a brilliant 28 Day Energy Tracker here that you can download for free.
Phase 1: Menstruation
Day 1 of your cycle is the first day of menses. I often found a massive sense of relief on this day, followed by a few days of general yuckiness, bloating and tiredness that worsened as I got older. It felt as if my body found it tougher each month to kick start the engine as I get closer to menopause each year.
Day 2 or 3 was a day I could have quite happily stayed in bed all day, and although walking and getting out and about brought relief, it was always vital for me to lower my pace and keep rested. I learnt from experience that to go full pelt during these days would have a knock-on effect of being knackered for weeks or even picking up a bug and getting ill. So, instead of pushing through with complex tasks, I leant back and took everything at a slower pace during these times. When I did this, it often turned out to be an incredibly productive time for me, as I pondered more, avoided making decisions and focused on creative projects such as writing, content and programme design.
Phase 2: Follicular
This phase usually lasts 7 to 10 days of your cycle, and it’s when your oestrogen and testosterone levels start to climb, getting you ready for ovulation.
I used to feel wonderful during this time, but as my peri-menopausal symptoms kicked in, the lack of oestrogen made this week tough for me for some months. It was often when I felt the most frustrated; I’d been used to surging ahead with plans and action-taking with my brain going full steam, but my body did not respond in this way in my last few years. And if I’d pushed through in my menstruation phase, I would feel a bit shit during this time!
Phase 3: Ovulatory
Lasting only a few days, your body produces your egg, and you may feel incredibly powerful; able to take on the world and say yes to everything.
It’s Mother Nature’s way of making you attractive to the opposite sex and ready to mate, of course, so this can be a fabulous time to run an event, negotiate with a new contract or even pick up the phone to prospect you’ve been putting off for an age.
Phase 4: Luteal
Typically lasting 12 to 16 days, this is the remainder of your cycle. Oestrogen and testosterone decline, and progesterone, the heat-inducing hormone, kicks in, preparing your body for a potential pregnancy. Often, you feel the most tired because Mother Nature is preparing you for ‘rest and nest’.
This phase can become an excellent time to brain dump to-do lists, clear up clutter and re-align yourself before taking action on any new projects or ideas.
And, of course, PMS can start to kick in towards the end of this last stage; from chronic back pain and stiff joints to raging anger and mood swings. So be aware that this can be a particularly stressful time to think straight or do projects such as the end-of-month accounting! So perhaps it is not the best time to reconcile your banking or respond to a negative comment on one of your Facebook posts.
What about you?
Every woman’s monthly cycle is unique to her. You will have your own symptoms and experiences; and some months go better than others. But the more aware you become of your cycle, the more effective and productive you can be in your business decisions and marketing activities.
And as marketing can be such an emotive part of your business, from deciding what price to sell at and whether to record a live video when all you want to do is climb into bed with a hot water bottle, here are some of the lessons I have learnt along the way of planning my marketing and my business around my cycles.
Lessons learnt from tracking my cycle
1. Stop beating yourself up
You can stop beating yourself up when you get frustrated something’s not working.
Being “on your period” is not about making excuses but when you are aware of how your body is responding to which hormones you are producing, it can clarify why you may be screaming at your laptop for deleting your file (because, quite obviously, it had nothing to do with you!).
2. Give yourself a break when you need it
You can give yourself a break when your body needs it most and plan to deliver your best work when you are at your best.
Planning a two-day event in the fourth week of your cycle may not the best time if you’re contending with stomach cramps and irritability so if you have control over your work calendar, choosing days in your follicular weeks could allow you to rock your best work in front of an audience.
3. Stop taking yourself so seriously
Nothing … and NOTHING … is more irritating than someone (AKA your partner) asking you if you’re PMSing … when you are PMSing.
I would often head this off at the pass once I became aware of my mood swings. When I got that first sign of irritability, I was off to check my period tracker, and then tell my husband and my children that I was on the way. I found that I could laugh about it if I were the one to bring it up first … funny how that happens!
4. Take days off when you need them
Running your own business gives you the enormous benefit of controlling your diary, so don’t make it more difficult for you or your team members than it needs to be. If you have a particularly bad PMS or find it tough on other days of your cycle, factor those days into your working calendar. Your body and brain will thank you for it when you come to your productive days, and you can turn up the energy dial.
In corporate life, taking a sick day for bad period pains can be challenging to negotiate, especially if it’s as regular as clockwork and it’s the same day of every month. Plus, trying to explain in a board meeting why your brain fog is so thick and why you have no idea why your sales figures are down this month may not go down well. However, I remember one lady who worked as a Communications Director for a small company. She began to add her cycle in her work diary after a conversation with me about his topic so she and her team could see her predicted cycle. This may be one step too far for you, but I believe the more we normalise our normal cycles as women, the better support we can get from others.
5. Get braver on your brave days
This was a game-changer for me!
Add this cycle time to your diary if you know you’re raring to go during your follicular week. Plan your sales days during this time. Or your business planning or creation of a new programme. Let Mother Nature help capitalise on these days and help you do your best work.
Making periods part of the business conversation
This topic of periods and hormonal cycles is incredibly important, and although it is easier to bring this topic up than it was a decade ago, I wish more people, men and women, could discuss this in the context of business.
As we grow into a more feminine world and more female leaders rise to the top, this topic must be discussed openly to enable us to develop and grow our businesses without burning out.
If there is one thing I’d love you to take action from reading this article, if you don’t already, it is that you start to track your cycle.
It can be as simple as writing in a journal, or if you prefer a piece of tech, then there are plenty of period tracker apps you can get for your phone (you get the added benefit of the apps automatically calculating your future due dates based on your cycle dates).
Or download my free 28 Day Energy Tracker.
Self-awareness is powerful; gathering evidence, rather than wondering what is going on with your energy roller coaster, can give you specific patterns to look out for and help you plan your marketing WITH your menstrual cycle rather than run your business against your natural ebb and flow.
POST EDIT: Originally published 17th January 2009. Updated and republished 5th March 2024.
by Karen Skidmore | 10,21 | Ebb & Flow, Leadership
Our work culture is not working for us anymore!
For the past thirty years, our obsession with doing more in less time has exponentially increased. The access to the first home computers and the World Wide Web has opened us to an endless stream of technology to make us more efficient. Today, our smartphones can tell us how well we are eating, sleeping and running, and we have access to an endless supply of productivity apps to help us do more in less time.
Our work boundaries are so blurred that most of us now feel panicked if you ever leave the house without your smartphones, and it’s been reported that 71% of people sleep either holding their smartphone, having it in bed with them, or having it on their nightstand. It’s the first thing they look at when they wake and the last thing they see before they close their eyes at night.
But with all this technology to allow us to do more in less time, how productive are we really?
In the UK, Britons are working an average of 42.5 hours a week, and my guess is that you are probably exceeding this if you include the time spent on your phone, checking emails and hours thinking about work when you are not sitting at your desk.
It’s not just the physical hours spent working; it’s also the mental load of not switching off when you close down your laptop.
Not surprisingly, it turns out we are simply not designed to be working this hard. We have been taught to work in a linear way throughout the year, not taking into account our seasons, changing daylight hours or our own body’s natural rhythms and hormone cycles.
Work and life is designed in 24 hour cycles.
And yet 50% of the population don’t work this way!
Binary female hormones typically work around a 28 day cycle (our menstruation cycle), whereas binary male hormones typically work around a 24 hour cycle. It’s not that women can’t work to a 24 hour clock, but our linear work culture has programmed us to be productive day in, day out, often striving to do more, in less time, and not taking into account our own body’s natural rhythms and hormone cycles.
Plus 2020 has seen unprecedented changes to the way that we all work. Even for those of you who already worked from home, you’ve been dealing with the challenges of isolation, endless Zoom calls, children home from school and partners working from home with you.
A recent study from LeanIn.org found that women who have full-time jobs have taken on way more housework and caregiving than men during the pandemic; estimated at an extra 20 hours a week, compared to men, on top of their 40+ hour working week.
And that’s not all. If midlife women don’t already have enough to contend with, the menopause can hit you like a freight train! If you are already experiencing levels of stress, peri-menopausal symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, raging headaches, aching bones and hot sweats, can slow us down and be incredibly frustrating and exhausting.
How I learnt to change my hard work story
Back in 2012, I hit burnout hard. Still reeling from losing my dad to cancer two years previously, I found myself unable to function and couldn’t get out of bed one weekend. I can look back now and see all the signs; the extreme fatigue, brain fog, body in pain. But because I had programmed myself to keep working hard at trying to get everything to work – life, business, family – I ignored the signs and just kept working harder to keep all the balls in the air.
I was sandwiched between life and business, squashing myself harder as I tried to keep up with it all.
That summer was the start of five years of horrid hormonal imbalance and peri-menopausal symptoms which I realised couldn’t be fixed with a pill or a two week holiday. I had to reset, reboot and take some serious rest, and yet I felt really guilty about taking my foot off the pedal.
I had images of just laying on the sofa and watching daytime TV all day, whenever I was challenged that I may need to rest and do less in my day-to-day life. I just couldn’t do that! I had things to achieve and resting wasn’t something I had been taught how to do.
But I came to realise that doing less isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing less of the busy stuff, and doing more of what matters to us and the values we want to live by. And doing it in a way that flows with our natural cycles and energy ebb and flows.
One of the areas that needed to change was the way I was working, and I started on a journey of exploring and understanding what working less hard actually meant. Today, I bring everything that I have learnt condensed into my Ebb & Flow programme, a new approach to managing work, time and energy.
It’s time to stop trying to work to our modern, fast-paced schedules and work productivity expectations (often designed for how factories and assembly lines work, rather than human beings), and experience how to get out of your head, slow down your race to success and embrace your natural work flow and leadership style.
And it all starts with this simple, easy to follow 28 Day Energy Tracker.
How to use this 28 Day Energy Tracker
Step One: Download a copy right here
Step Two: Print the 28 Day Ebb & Flow Energy Tracker (page 8 in the PDF)
This process is best done analogue because you will be doing this first thing in the morning and last thing at night. You don’t need to open your phone or look at a screen to follow this process.
Step Three: Your Morning Tracking
There are five things to track first thing in the morning:
- Where you are in your menstrual cycle
- What phase the moon is in
- What the weather is outside
- What time the sun rose
- What was the quality of your sleep
What you are collecting is objective data; data that can be measured consistently and is not influenced by emotion or opinion. When you download the energy tracker, you will be able to read more about how these five things are relevant and how they can affect their energy levels.
Step Four: Your Evening Tracking
At the end of each day, you will decide how in flow you felt and give your energy flow a score out of ten.
This data is subjective, and these scores will be influenced by your levels of stress, tiredness and what you’ve actually done each day. In the energy tracker download, I will help you define your flow to make it easy for you to track consistently.
Step Five: What do you notice?
At the end of the 28 days, notice what patterns occur.
- Did you experience a higher level of energy flow at different times of your menstrual cycle?
- How did the weather or the season affect your energy flow?
- Perhaps you discover your work patterns change with the different phases of the moon, and different kinds of tasks are more easily achieved on different days?
You have a small section to make your own notes on what you notice, but I would encourage you to get yourself a journal to use alongside this tracker to help you expand your thoughts over the coming weeks and months, especially as energy tracking becomes part of your every day routine.
28 days will give you a really great starting point in which to spot your natural cycles, but the more data you collect over more months, the more you will see patterns appear over a longer period of time, especially if you are transitioning through the menopause or recovering from a long term illness.
When I first started experimenting with energy tracking, the biggest benefit I felt was the realisation that I had good days in between the not-so-good days, which really helped me appreciate the days I felt better, and how much in flow I was in and how much I did achieve on those days. It made me realised that I wasn’t failing all the darn time; the not-so-good days stopped playing such a dominant role in who I was defining myself as!
Over the years of doing this kind of energy tracking, I have narrowed down the key things to notice and simplified the process to create this energy tracker that you have access to today. It has since become the bedrock for helping me begin to predict how my energy ebb and flows really worked, and how I could ensure I could achieve what I wanted to do, whilst thriving in the process. And I would love for you to experience this, too.
Let me know how you get on with this simple and easy to use energy tracker. And for those of you who want to continue in the journey, look out for details of our Ebb & Flow programme starting early 2022.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 09,21 | Ebb & Flow, Leadership
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Hi Karen
Walking into my Plotting Shed this morning, there was a distinct chill in the air. For the first time this season, I shuddered and realised it was time for ceremonial switching on of the wall heater.
I love the shift in seasons. It reminds me that change is always happening.
No matter how much we want to stay in the place we’re in, we’re always moving forwards, having to adjust to what comes our way.
There is so much focus on our wardrobe shifts, packing away our summer clothes and dusting off our autumn boots, but to me season shifts are so much more; in life, business and leadership.
As the seasons shift, so do we.
Yes, there are the obvious shifts that take place as we age.
But there are the more subtle shifts as we flow in and out of love for the work that we do.
There’s often a belief that if we lose our mojo that it’s a bad thing; we must stay motivated and have passion for what we do at all times. For if we don’t, then we must be doing something wrong.
Is that really the case?
As I approach my autumn years in age (now 52), I’m embracing the subtle shifts of slowing down, whilst still able to make a bigger impact.
And I recognise that not feeling passionate about what I am doing every day is absolutely OK.
Look at our seasons. Autumn chills our air, which signals for our trees to lose their leaves. And when Winter arrives, our barren trees give us the impression that all is dead.
However, it is Winter that drives the power of our Spring and Summer. For you to feel full of creativity and energy, it is those quiet, reflective, quiet times that give you the fuel to spring forward.
If you were to stay in Spring and Summer energy all year round, you’d be exhausted and eventually burn out. And yet, this is the expectation that so many of us have about our work and leadership paths.
If you want to learn more about my midlife journey and how I run my own business around my own seasonal shifts, then I have two podcast interviews that have been released.
Rachel Lankester’s Magnificent Midlife Podcast is now in its third year, so I was delighted to be asked to share how I make the most out of my midlife, and share my journey in figuring out what kind of business really suited me.
Plus, I was featured on Joy Burnford’s The Confidence Conversation on how I fit life and work together, and shift my energies to help me step up when I need to.
Would love to know how you are embracing the season shifts; whether it’s simply a change in wardrobe, or that you consciously shift up or down your gears at this time of year.
In the meantime, if you want to find out more about how to embrace your midlife shifts, then join us for our two day Embrace Festival that’s happening on 21st & 22nd October.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 09,21 | Ebb & Flow, Pillar Articles
There’s absolutely no doubt, that what you do on a Monday morning sets the tone for the rest of the week. And often the weeks proceeding.
I’ve learned the hard way.
If I start my week faffing about and scrolling through social feeds, the rest of my week will follow in a similar pattern. I end up drifting from one thing to another, reacting to what comes in to my inbox and I start to lose any clarity that I may have had about where it was I was headed.
At the other extreme, I have at times when I started my week with a blaze of energy, jumping into multiple projects and taking action. This may sound great but starting my week like this, I was always in danger of pinging from one thing to the next over the following days, working faster and faster until I hit Friday like a brick wall.
Over the years I have tried out different Monday morning routines, and have worked out what I need to do to keep myself on track each and every week, without over stretching myself yet still achieving what’s important to me and my business goals.
So I thought I would share these with you today to help inspire you into reviewing how you start your week and decide on the two or three key things that have to happen to ensure you remain focused and on track, without drifting through your week or hitting that Friday brick wall.
1) Check in where I am in my energy cycles
Having gone through some pretty horrid years of recovering from burn out and dealing with menopausal symptoms (still ongoing!), I now make sure I track my energy ebbs and flows. I have had to redefine my workflow and understand the patterns that I naturally go through during my menstrual cycle, as well as how I am affected by the seasonal changes, weather patterns, daylight hours and moon phases.
Some parts of my energy cycle I feel clear headed and naturally in flow. In other parts, my body feels stiff, my brain is foggier than usual and I feel myself retreating. I call these our natural Ebb & Flow energy cycles and once you start to become body conscious of them, they are incredibly powerful to help you do your best work.
So at the start of the week, I remind myself where I may be in my menstrual cycle (which has become far more erratic as I approach my menopause), where we are in the moon phase (I have a clock on the wall that tracks this for me and helps me see quickly at a glance) and what the weather may be doing in the week ahead.
If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you get a copy of my Energy Tracker which will help you embody this work. I liken it to checking your weather app on your phone and if it says there’s 60% of rain, you’d probably take an umbrella with you if you are going out. You aren’t trying to predict how you are going to feel energetically, but preparing yourself for whether you are more like to experience ebb energy or flow energy.
And if you are interested in how your menstrual cycle in particular affects your productivity, check out this article here: Marketing with your menstrual cycle
2) Overview of my business objectives and intentions for the week ahead
Next I give myself an overview of what is happening short and medium term in my business. I have a Big Vision and a strategy for the year ahead, but for my Monday mornings, I focus on what is due to happen over the next 4 to 6 weeks. I review what I have planned and have scheduled in my diary and then I drill down what needs to happen on one piece of paper.
This “one piece of paper” concept is important. I don’t have running to-do lists that go from week to week (these can distract and overwhelm you if you never seem to get the bottom. Read more about how to-do lists distract you here.) and I actually don’t use any fancy online scheduling tools because of the time it used to take me to maintain all the notifications, priority colour changes, etc. I’ve tried various ones but this way just doesn’t work for me.
My intentions for the week get put down on to one A4 sheet of paper, and that sheet remains on my desk until the end of the week or I have completed them all, whichever happens first. I then decide who needs to do each task or short project on that sheet of paper so I either put my initials next to or the initials of somebody else that it needs to be delegated to. So quite often a lot of the things that go down there have the letter A to it, which stands for Alexia, who is my VA and looks after my client and diary management.
This is often a fairly quick exercise taking no more than half an hour or so, as long as I do this every week. If I’ve been away or haven’t done this for the past few Mondays, it can longer. Sometimes I need a bit warming up, a coffee, sometimes a walk, depending on where I am in my energy flow.
3) Money Management
The next thing I do every Monday morning, is my money management. Often it takes me just 10 or 15 minutes to dive in and get this done. I go into my Xero online bookkeeping system, where I have all my bank account reconciliations to check to see what money is coming in and what money is flowing out. I check what I need to still pay for, and what invoices of mine maybe still outstanding. And I also review my revenue spreadsheet so I know how balanced I am moving towards my financial targets for the year.
This simple process gives me a real grounding about where I am financially in my business. It’s what keeps my eye on my profitability. It makes sure I don’t get carried away with all the dozens of ideas that I’m always coming up with it, to ensure they financially benchmark against where I’m going from the money side of my business.
When I don’t do this, I could go weeks before realising that maybe my cashflow was about to dry up or I was overspending. I would often bury my head in the sand, especially when sales weren’t what they could have been, which meant I didn’t have the right energy when I showed up for my sales conversations. So now this money focus happens every single Monday morning.
4) Weekly team meeting
The fourth thing that I do is I have a zoom conference call with my team, Alexia my Operations Manager, and Melina, my Senior Coach. I didn’t really do this for the first eight or nine years of my business. It didn’t seem necessary when it was just myself and Alexia, who was more of a virtual assistant back then. But this weekly 45 minute call has made a huge difference to how we work together.
If you know me personally, or you have worked with me, you know my brain can work incredibly fast. I’m full of ideas; I’m a very creative and innovative person. And the danger of being this way is that I am always racing ahead and Alexia’s trying to keep up; trying to work out where I’m going, and what’s the latest thing I’m doing.
Our team meeting now grounds our week, gets us all focused on what is happening in our client programme, Momentum, which of our clients may need extra support, as well as what tasks are needed for events or campaigns coming up.
These are the four things I do every Monday. I’d love to know what you do each Monday morning to start your week.
Do you do the same things or do you do things differently?
Or perhaps this has inspired you to put some regular tasks or appointments in your diary every Monday morning.
What’s important is that you have a regular focus to your Monday morning (or it could be Sunday evening if you prefer – whatever works best for you) so that you don’t have to rethink Monday morning every week, and it gets you working on what and where it is you need to focus your time and energy on, rather then just jumping straight into your to-do list and reacting to the week.
Having this approach will give you that focus; reviewing, and possibly resetting your focus to ensure that you know where are in your journey and bigger plans.
If you don’t have this weekly grounding of planning, scheduling, tasking, working out where the money is, and who in your team needs to do what, it’s really easy to go adrift. It’s really easy to get carried away with ideas or get lost in the confusion and drown under information and feel you have too much to do.
So what can you do every Monday morning to start your week?
Thank you for reading. Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
