Signature Work Habits with My Executive Assistant

Have I got a treat for you today? I often get asked, how do you get so much done? And the truth is I have a lot of incredible people around me, one of which is my executive assistant Abigail Schroeder, and I asked her to come onto the podcast to share some of her signature work habits. So get ready to learn and be inspired, and to meet my assistant. Let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where personal development meets style. Here's your hostess, master life coach, Tonya Leigh.

Tonya Leigh:

Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am so looking forward to today's episode because I have a very special guest for you. One of the questions that I often get asked is how do you get so much done? And I just have to tell you, I don't do it alone. I have a really great team around me and one of those people happens to be my executive assistant who I discovered almost, has it been a year and a half? Well over a year and a half ago. And I remember putting an add out on Indeed, not knowing what I was doing, and I got so many applicants. I think there was over 500 people that applied for this position. And there was one in particular that really stood out and I'm so happy I really honored my intuition and welcomed Abigail Schroeder to the team and she is here with us today to share her signature work habits. So welcome, Abigail. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Abigail Schroeder:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk about signature work habits with you.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, so I think before we get into talking about signature work habits, I think one of the questions that people are always intrigued about is what does an assistant do? I would love to hear just your take on what you do because it is a lot. You do a lot, not only for me but for the company. So can you just give us an overview of what you do, what your day looks like, which I don't think you have any one day that looks the same, but just tell us all the things about your role as an assistant.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, like you said, no day is the same. I touch a lot of different facets of your life and the company. I think a good visual would be to mention, I don't even really remember where it came from, but you started calling me your second brain when you introduced me to people. Do you remember where that came from?

Tonya Leigh:

Yes. It just came from my brain. I'm like, oh, she is my second brain.

Abigail Schroeder:

And I feel like that's a really good visual because I would say I'm probably involved in, I don't know, 80% of your business and personal life, probably more than that honestly. And that doesn't mean I'm doing all the same things as you. It's more so if you are involved in something, I am there alongside of you in some way, shape or form. To talk about some specific tasks, I fall into a couple different categories. So like you said, no days are the same, but I tend to fall into a personal assistant category of helping with travel arrangements, small errands, financial support, appointment management. And then in my executive assistant category, task-wise is calendar management, communication with the team, liaising, task review, email management, researching things upfront, event planning, really you name it there. And then there's also the HR, finance compliance department, like employee relations, record management, benefit administration.

I have a lot of different roles. I think a helpful picture to paint would be to talk about my goals that I have that really shape my tasks. And I would say my two main goals in my role is to optimize your time and to support the overall vision you have for the company. And so that can look like in your personal life, doing your travel arrangements isn't just an administrative task for me. I take it on as anything that I am supporting you for. Over here is where you can spend more time in the company focusing on your zone of genius, which is the content creation and visionary side of things that you excel at, which saves you time. So that's what that optimization piece and goal comes in.

And then I'd say the overall vision piece at times is when I use it as a decision filter. So your goal for the company comes into play with our core values. Am I allowed to share those? I know we haven't really shared them.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, let's do it.

Abigail Schroeder:

Which are joyful hustle, elevated simplicity, and mindful excellence. And so I use those often when making a decision or executing a task. And I ask myself either, am I myself exhibiting all of these things when I'm doing this task or are we as a company able to accomplish this project or task with those core values in mind? And so I would say those two things, optimizing your time and executing your vision through core values are my main goals that drive my tasks.

Tonya Leigh:

And as you're talking, I'm just thinking about the amount of time that you have saved me, which has allowed me to work on these other things such as serving clients, creating content, thinking about the team, thinking about where we're going. But I also just want to honor you because one of the things that you've brought into my life is being my guard rail, quite honestly, because I am a seven on the Enneagram. I am a quick start on the Colby. I am a visionary. And so you put that all together and I'm the one that shows up and I'm like, "Hey, let's do this, let's do that." And you're always the one to say, "Okay, this sounds amazing and let's really think it through. What's going to be the consequence? Can we do it well?" You just ask really good questions that calls me to pause and think, ah, maybe now's not the time to do that, or maybe we need to delay it a little bit. And so you have really brought that skill set to me, which I greatly, greatly appreciate.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah. Well, and you teach that in the membership with the four D's, and I feel like we do that a lot together with talking through our projects and the company and walking through that. Have you spoken about that on the podcast before?

Tonya Leigh:

I think I have, but we've added an extra D, so should we go over those real quick?

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, let's do that.

Tonya Leigh:

So people know what we're talking about.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, do you want to share or should I?

Tonya Leigh:

You can share. It'd be great.

Abigail Schroeder:

So the concept of the four D's is when you're faced with a task, you have four options. You can delegate, delete, delay, or delight. And so we'll go through those. And so often, let's say there's a project that we're talking about implementing in the company and we go through and notice, okay, while this is a really great project, we maybe can't do this while exhibiting mindful excellence for whatever reason, we have other projects going on the timeframe. So we can go through those D's and say, well, can we delete this? Is this really important? If the answer is yes, we can go, all right, can we delegate it? That's a great option. We have such an amazing team. There are several different parts of projects we can delegate to other people, but sometimes everyone has a lot on their plate. And so number three would be delay. And so that is moving it to a different timeframe. And then if none of those work and we say, you know what? We got to do it, then you delight in the task or activity that is at hand.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah. And it's such a great way to think about what you're doing. Because I always say, if you're going to do it, don't do something and then be struggling and arguing with it. You've already committed to doing it, so figure out what needs to happen so that you can delight in it. And I feel like we do a really good job with that at the company. So I want to hear all about your signature work habits. I have people come to me on the team that's just always bragging about you. They're like, "God, Abigail just gets things done. And she's very mindful and she really thinks things through." And you are able to accomplish a lot and what feels like a relatively short amount of time. And I feel like this is something that a lot of people struggle with. And so I thought it would be fun for you to come onto the podcast to share what your signature work habits are.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, I'm excited to dive in. I have five of them. There are more, but I would say these five steps I'm about to share are the steps that when I notice I'm not doing one or two of them, my productivity goes down, I'm not feeling as good. And so that's where these steps come from. And my caveat to begin with is while these are my signature work habits, I fall short of them often. I do not do these perfectly. Jamie, our copywriter has the phrase, consistency over perfection, and I have been using that often as a recovering perfectionist. And so just before I share these steps, I want to make sure I give that caveat of these are my signature work habits, but I'm not 100% on them all the time because no one can be.

Tonya Leigh:

No. Thank you for saying that too, because I think people can listen to a podcast like this and immediately feel like such a failure. And I don't think any of us do anything perfectly or even consistently all of the time. That's just not the nature of life. I like to see these as standards that we work towards and when we're not living into them, we can feel it and we just course correct. And so for any of you all watching or listening to this, I hope you really take that to mind. These are just meant to inspire you and hopefully make some tweaks in your work habits to help you ultimately just feel good, to feel good not only about your work, but about yourself and taking care of yourself. And so I'm really excited to hear what your signature work habits are.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yes. All right, now we can dive in.

Tonya Leigh:

Let's go.

Abigail Schroeder:

So I'll give the brief list and then we'll go in deeper. So number one is starting your day well. Number two is self-awareness and acceptance. Number three, prioritize with focus and rest. Number four, diffuse mode of thinking. And number five is ending your day well. So let's dive into those. Starting your day well can mean a lot of different things. It really means whatever that means to you. For me, it tends to fall in the category of supporting my nervous system. That can look like movement, going on a walk, getting some sunlight. There's a lot of science behind why those things are good for you, but all of them for me really center and help balance my nervous system. So I start the day in a more relaxed state. Do you have anything that you start your morning with that tends to benefit your nervous system?

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, it's always changing, but I find the one consistent thing I come back to, well two things, music, putting some music on first thing in the morning and journaling. When I can create that surrounding that, as you said, calms your nervous system. And then journal anything that is going on in my head, anything I need to work through or sometimes it's journaling from my future of this is what I'm excited about, this is where we're going. Any of those methods really helped me start my day off right.

And recently, this is going to sound silly, but I usually play a couple of games of backgammon with Fonz before I get my day started. There's something about games for me that creates presence. I'm focused on that one thing. I'm not thinking about work yet. I'm not thinking about what I've got to get done today. It's just a moment of let's just be here. Let's start the day off with something delightful. And then sometimes it's a workout. Sometimes I do that later. I may do my walk later, but journaling and music and then just giving myself a little bit of space to do whatever I want, whether it's play a game, whether it's putts around the house, I know I said two, but those are the three things that really help me start my day out well.

Abigail Schroeder:

Do you feel like you can notice a difference when you start days off that way versus maybe not making the time to do those things?

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, because I think the way we start our day is the energy that we take into our day. And so if I just jump up and run to my computer, I'm already in a state of overwhelm and stress and it just seems like that is the energy in which I carry with me throughout the day. So yeah, I definitely feel it. What about you?

Abigail Schroeder:

I totally agree. I mean that's why it's step number one. If I don't start my day well, that is probably the main thing that influences the rest of my day. And I like to remind myself too sometimes, I think by saying this, some people might feel like, oh, well it's noon and I haven't started my day well, so the day's gone for. It's like, no, you can really decide to start your day over at noon if you want to. Just taking time for yourself to regulate, most beneficial at the beginning of the day, but can really happen-

Tonya Leigh:

It can happen at 6PM people. Seriously, I talk about the U-turn and I call it Y-O-U, and I'm like at any moment... Because I think when we hear this, we're like, well, I screwed up today. I'll start again tomorrow morning. And we just keep this perpetual pattern of waiting until the next day. And I'm like, at any moment you can do a U-turn and recommit, do whatever you need to do to get yourself back on track. And so I'm so glad you brought that up.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah. So that's step one and I think it's a really important step. So going on to the next step is self-awareness and acceptance. And so self-awareness is the piece of knowing yourself well enough to know your strengths and weaknesses, specifically with work, it's what do you excel at and what are you still working on growing? And then the acceptance piece of it. And I was hesitant to add the acceptance piece as a habit because this is still a daily practice. I have to choose every day to accept these. It's not quite a habit yet, but I'm getting there.

The acceptance piece does two things. One, when we accept that we have strengths and weaknesses, it can actually help us understand others better and lead to more collaboration and understanding. And then number two, it can help us actually find tools to support the weaknesses. Sometimes when you aren't self-aware about a weakness or don't accept it, it can be really hard to find the tools to support it. I feel like in coaching you might come across people saying, "I know I do X, but I want to change and I can't seem to do anything about it." Is that something you come across?

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, all the time.

Abigail Schroeder:

And so for me, that's the acceptance piece of it because I feel like for a long time I was like, well, I know I do this, but it was the acceptance of, okay, that's a weakness and it's okay that that's a weakness because I have these strengths. Because I think for a long time I didn't accept that the things that I was good at were strengths of mine. I just thought everyone was good at them.

Tonya Leigh:

That's usually how it is with our strength. It really is.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah. But it really helps you be able to accept your weaknesses when you notice, okay, it's really hard to say, yeah, I really suck at these five things more than that, but when you don't acknowledge that you're really good at the other things. And so I think both of those things are really important.

Tonya Leigh:

I just want to add this because when people come to me with that, one of my questions is why do you want to be better at the things that you're not good at? Really think about that. Is it because you think you should be? Is it because of what the people around you are saying? Because sometimes I find that maybe that's time that we could spend just really reveling in and focusing on our strengths and then surround ourselves with people that support us on our weaknesses. Now sometimes there are things that you want to get better at and I think you absolutely can, but just be curious as to why you're wanting to better that area, what's driving it.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, definitely. And maybe there's a third step of self-awareness, curiosity and acceptance there. So get curious about those strengths and weaknesses like you said. I'm glad you mentioned that.

Tonya Leigh:

What are some of your weaknesses, do you think?

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, some of my weaknesses, well, I would say... I'll list some strengths and then I'll list some weaknesses. Going back to making sure I accept my strengths. My strengths are processes, forward-thinking and seeing several perspectives at once. I tend to be really good at seeing how several different puzzle pieces could honestly make four different puzzles. My weaknesses however are memory. It's not great. I lean towards pessimism often and I'm easily distracted. And so it took me accepting those things to be able to find some tools and I'm happy to share those in case anyone relates to these weaknesses with me.

Tonya Leigh:

I'm sure you're the only person who is not easily distracted or is easily distracted. No, I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with, myself included. So please share with us all the tools.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, so number one, I would say my main tool for my memory specifically is I write everything down. Any task I ever have to complete, no matter how long or how short it's going to take me, I write it down and I put it into one place. So for a while I was getting, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, I'll get a notification on Slack, our messenger, and I get an email and I would get a text and I'd have all these things written in different places of things I needed to do, but it wasn't housed in a location that was easy for me to look at. Or I would easily forget to look somewhere. And so my system has been put everything in our project management system, we call it Asana or Asana as some of us call it, and I make a due date for myself, that way I have to look at it and I have to remember, but I don't have to remember, right? My memory is not my strength. And so my project management system can remember it for me.

I actually realized this was a huge anxiety reliever and a distraction reliever. So another one of my weaknesses is easily distracted, actually came back to my memory because I would be working on something, my brain would be like, "Hey, you're not great at remembering. Let's remember this other task." And I'd be like, "Thanks, I got it." And then 10 minutes later it'd be like, "Hey, you're not great at remembering. Let's think of this task." And it would distract me from something else that took priority. And so writing it down, putting it somewhere to house for me, I think of Asana as my second brain because that is just where everything that was in my head can live and I know it'll come back up and I trust that I'll get it done and it'll help me. That's my main one for my memory.

Tonya Leigh:

That's like an extra signature work habit actually. It's so good.

Abigail Schroeder:

Probably. Yeah.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, just write. I agree with you. I think when we have so much coming at us every day and our brains are so overwhelmed with content and to-dos, it can create this underlying, just anxiety throughout our lives because we're so afraid of dropping the ball, but if you write it down, you know it's taken care of. You know it's there. You know it's not going to slip your memory. And so that's a really good one. And we use Asana, but there are many different ways that you can keep track of your brain so that you don't forget those things that are really important.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, exactly. And I don't know about you, but for a long time I would write something down somewhere or write it down in four different places and then I'd never look at that piece of paper again. And so the step I took farther was, it has to be in one place for it to be productive for me. Other people might have different processes and systems, but that is my main... Memory probably could have been a different signature work habit.

Tonya Leigh:

I just want to say, it's crazy to think about how well you work with your memory not being so great. Seriously, you are so productive, you get so much done. It is very rare that you drop the ball ever. And now I know why, you write everything down. It seems so simple and yet it's a practice that you have to just repeat over and over until you realize, oh, I have another brain that I can rely on.

Abigail Schroeder:

For sure. And I think this might be a tangent, but I used to have a really good memory and then I went through some health issues and my memory just went away really quickly. And so I think maybe being able to remember what it was like having a really good memory to then having almost none made me create a process even faster than some other people might because I knew what I was missing, remembering things well. But anyways, that was just a tangent.

Tonya Leigh:

Love a good tangent.

Abigail Schroeder:

My other weaknesses, shorter, they are shorter tools, but I lean towards pessimism and I say lean towards because it is pessimism. But to be honest, it feels more like realism to me. And I know that's definitely a pessimistic thing to say, but my tools there have been, I started a gratitude journal a couple of months ago and I was so resistant to this idea. It felt very easy for... I was like that's just too easy. But it's really helped shift my perspective on things that I...

One of my strengths is forward-thinking and being able to see a lot of different puzzle pieces and perspectives. But I did lean towards those negative perspectives. And so having a gratitude journal and being able to keep note of some positive things happening, it didn't prohibit those negative thoughts, but it just made space for positive ones and now I can use them all together instead of just leaning towards the negative, which has been really helpful I'd say for work and projects and having a positive mindset and confidence that a project will get done well.

And then the third one, which is I'm easily distracted. We actually aren't going to talk about the tools right now because my next step is actually how is the entire tool basically for my weakness here. Before I get into that, do you have any strengths or weaknesses you want to talk about and some tools that-

Tonya Leigh:

So many of both. I think for me, I think my biggest strength is my visionary aspect, being able to really see and know where I want to go. I think my biggest weakness is my impulsivity. I'm full of ideas and I want to do everything like yesterday. And I'm sure that's very overwhelming to the team. And I think as I said earlier, having someone like you around me to be like, okay, we're not going to just get rid of that idea, but is it the best thing to do right now? That has been so helpful, so helpful. So I could go through a whole list of weaknesses, but we have other work habits to get through. But again, like I was saying, I think it's just important that you know what they are and that you honor them. You don't make them mean that there's anything wrong with you. It's just part of the human experience. We're not supposed to be great at everything and you just surround yourself with the right people. It's why environment is so important.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, for sure. And like you said, getting... You're saying you're impulsive. Is that a bad thing? It actually creates a lot of positives within the company. It's finding the people that can help support that with their strengths. So yeah, I love it.

Okay, the step number three is prioritize with focus and rest. And so this is a big one, and this is a tool I use to help me not get distracted. And I think everyone gets distracted nowadays. We're kind of primed to not have a very good focus, not a very good ability to focus for long periods of time. And so for me, what I have found to be helpful is prioritizing and then implementing something called focus and rest.

And so how I prioritize is... You can do it on a monthly, weekly, quarterly basis. But for an example, a couple of weeks ago I noticed I had a couple, we had a lot of hard dates and a lot of projects that had due dates coming up. And I wanted to make sure that where I was spending my time in the coming months was where it actually needed to be. I feel like it's really easy to get pulled into side projects or things that are important but might not be the main priority at this moment. And so I made a list of an order of everything that needed to get done, when it needed to get done, and very menial steps of, okay, well this due date is now, but it's actually going to take me a month to start getting the information from other people and doing these types of things. And so that is something I implement often and I implement that on a weekly basis as well. But it is beneficial for a longer term, usually quarterly.

And so I did that a couple of weeks ago and then now every week, every Monday, it's usually how I start my week. I will look at that list and say, what is my top priorities this week? That usually leads to a list of a couple of things. And then from there I do something called focus and rest. And so this is the practice of setting intentional time to focus and intentional time to rest. And so for me, what that looks like is I set a timer for 52 minutes. It's a very specific time. It's what works for me. And I focus on whatever my priorities were that I set. It usually is more so a beginning of the day task or ability. I can't often do this all day. We have meetings, we have things come up, people need us for other things. And so I usually try to do two or three cycles of this throughout the day. It helps my productivity. And so I sit down, I do 52 minutes of focus, and then as soon as that timer goes off, I set a timer for 17 minutes and I rest.

That can look like going on a walk. A lot of those things to help calm your nervous system that we talked about to start your day, are a lot of what I can do during this time period. But it's really stepping away from whatever I was working on because it's really beneficial for me to not only be able to come back after that 17 minute time period and say, all right, what do I want to focus on for this next hour or 52 minutes? But then also it lets my brain do its natural focus and rest cycle. Have you ever been working on something really hard and you kind of naturally daydream off to the side for a couple of minutes and then you just kind of naturally shift back into focus? Does that ever happen to you?

Tonya Leigh:

All the time, every day.

Abigail Schroeder:

That's natural. It's actually how our brain is supposed to work. We just don't often tell people that or people don't often know that that's an okay thing. It tends to be a negative that people daydream or that they aren't able to focus for four hour periods of time. It's actually not how our brain's supposed to work. And so by doing these focus and rest cycles for myself, I really just support my brain in how it naturally functions. So that is step number three. So prioritizing with focus and rest.

Tonya Leigh:

I love that your time [inaudible 00:29:23].

Abigail Schroeder:

Do you have other time frames or anything that helps you?

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, mine, I follow the Dream Italian process, which is in the School of Self-Image. I love it because it's customizable, but I always encourage women to choose blocks of time. And the first thing that they have to schedule is self-care because that's usually the last thing we put on our list. We're like, oh, let me see how much time I have to take care of myself. That's the first thing that we schedule. But I like to schedule blocks of time. Typically, for me it's 45 minutes. I find that after 45 minutes, I'm off in la la land, so 45 minutes. And what's really important for me is that I know the outcome of those 45 minutes.

So instead of just saying like I'm going to work on a program or I'm going to work on this, it's like, no, at the end of this 45 minutes I will have produced a podcast. I will have created the outline, whatever I need to know... I need to tell my brain exactly what we're doing because if not, my brain is going to go to confusion. What are we doing here? And so for me it's like 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off is like the ideal time, but for some people I think they have to work up to it. Maybe start with 20 minutes or 10 minutes because if you're not used to focusing and you aren't used to requiring your brain to really zero in on something, it's a skill that you have to build.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, like we talked about at the beginning, if you try to go all or nothing, starting at 52 minutes might get you really discouraged that you're not able to focus for 52 minutes. And that's completely normal. It's normal for your brain not to be able to focus and you just have to work up to it. You wouldn't expect yourself to be able to run a marathon without training for it. And so we have to treat our brain the same way.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah. We have to love our brains.

Abigail Schroeder:

We have to love our brains. And going on to the next step. It kind of blends together with this one. But step four is called diffuse mode of thinking or incubation theory of psychology. And this is the theory that when you step away from a challenge or a task and actually don't think about it intentionally for a while, it can really actually help you see new perspectives and be able to solve the problem in a way you really wouldn't have been able to focusing on it so intently. So this ties into the focus and rest we just talked about in giving your brain space to not so intensely think about a challenge. Now that intense focus is really important as well, but this diffuse mode of thinking allows us to gain new perspective like I mentioned. I so often will take a rest or I'll be in the shower or I'll be putting my head on my pillow about to fall asleep and I'm like, bing, I just solved a problem I've been trying to solve for a week and I haven't been thinking about it for the past three hours.

Those things happen all the time for me. And so diffuse mode thinking is really important to my work process. I'll take it a step further. For me, it's not only those 17 minutes of rest, it's also when I'm given a project, I probably would allot 60% of the time I'm given to completing it and 40% to refinement. And that 40% is where I use more of the diffuse mode of thinking. So let's say you give me a project on Monday and say, "Hey, I need this by next Monday." I have a week. In my brain, I actually set the due date as Wednesday or Thursday for me to have completed the task, that way my brain has Thursday and Friday to really spend time in the background thinking about it. I notice I create such more high quality work when I'm able to take space away from it for a while. And that is why diffuse mode of thinking is one of my steps-

Tonya Leigh:

Oh my God. So I have to share this with you. I love that you just said this because I'm used to, okay, it's due on Friday, I'm going to get it done by Friday and then I get it done. And there are times where it's like, okay, it's off to the masses, it's off... The contents out. And I'm thinking, oh my God, it could have been so much better. And part of me thinks that that's just the way our brains are wired. Our brains are always going to think that it's so much better. So Laura Hinton, who is our community manager, she came in last week to work on a project for the membership that we're so excited about and we are so ahead of schedule because this is something that I'm going to be filming in December. But we completed everything and now I can't tell you how good it feels to know that I have the next couple of months to do what you were just talking about.

I'm already getting ideas of how I want to refine it, how I can make it better. And so I am in love with this theory of yours. I know you didn't come up with it, but you have brought it to my attention because I do think there's something about that. So what I'm hearing you say is whatever the deadline is, shrink that deadline for yourself, get it done, and then give yourself those... It might be a day, it might be three days to really marinate in it and see what you want to tweak, see how you want to refine it. And you may do nothing with it, and that's okay too. But also I think about just the pressure. It's like you're ahead of schedule, you got it off of your plate ahead of time and if you want to change it, you can. So I love this theory.

Abigail Schroeder:

Yeah, there's several different rows to it like you mentioned. And I love that you've been noticing that it's been supportive for you.

Tonya Leigh:

So good. So good. All right, what's your next one?

Abigail Schroeder:

So the next one, step five, last one, ending your day well. And so this one is important, just like starting your day is because it's all a cycle. And for me, I've noticed, especially work related, I need to finish work about three to four hours before I go to sleep. So I don't really have a designated time that I end work, but if I know a time I'm planning to go to bed, I work backwards from there because for me, if I don't take that time to do something for me, those three to four hours before sleep, I tend to continuously think about tasks, the projects, and then I don't sleep well. And then I wake up and then I probably sleep in because I didn't get enough sleep. And then I don't start my day well and then it just cascades from there.

And so step number five, ending your day well just kind of ties a pretty little bow on everything else that we've been talking about because it supports all of the rest of the steps. And for me, ending my day well can look like cooking, hanging out with friends, going on a walk, playing a game. I love concerts, traveling, new experiences, any of those things that really support you. And I do want to mention a piece about... I think sometimes self-care is seen as get a massage, do a facial, those types of things. But this also falls into the practical self-care of like do that chore you've been putting off for a month, doing it will actually really support you. And spending the time before you go to bed doing things for you, even if it's not the most fun type of thing, is really important to the rest of your productivity and work habits.

Tonya Leigh:

I love that you said that. Self-care can be hard sometimes, right? Self-care is going to the gym even when you don't [inaudible 00:37:25] to. Self-care is folding the laundry that you've been letting pile up and it's just consuming your time, but you know you're going to feel so much better once you do it.

Abigail Schroeder:

Or that hard conversation that you've been avoiding with somebody that you know will benefit in the long... It's the decision to do something now that might not feel the best but will definitely benefit your long term goals. They don't feel the best in the now sometimes, but they definitely help in the future.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah. So what would you say out of... Can you go over them again? Start your day well-

Abigail Schroeder:

So there's five steps. So starting your day well, self-awareness and acceptance, prioritize with focus and rest, diffuse mode of thinking and ending your day well.

Tonya Leigh:

So out of all of those five, which would you say is the most important, that's had the biggest impact on your work life?

Abigail Schroeder:

A big fan of everything blends together, but I will answer the best way I can. I would probably say the prioritize with focus and rest. If I had to start with one, that would probably be it. If I'm being honest, the reason I started focus and rest was because I was noticing at the end of the day, my brain's capacity to really do anything was zero. I couldn't focus. I couldn't really regulate my emotions. I was getting really irritated and frustrated about things that didn't really warrant it. And someone mentioned to me like, "Hey, maybe you should rest a little bit more throughout the day, maybe a little bit." And I started to implement that on a very small scale and it was so supportive to my ability to show up for myself, to show up for work. It's counterintuitive that you rest and you're not spending time working. I think we think we have a lot to do. Let's do everything we can with the time we have, but resting actually makes those 52 minutes so much more productive and beneficial. So I'd say that one probably.

Tonya Leigh:

Yeah, and that's what I love about our company culture is that we really do encourage that. I get excited when someone's like, "I'm going out for a walk, I'll be back in 30 minutes." Because I just know that when you come back, you're going to be so much more productive, you're going to feel better. And I think everything is energy. So not only will the team feel that, but I feel like our clients will feel it. So it's something that we definitely encourage and I just find that people are more in love with their work, they're more productive and they're happier. It's like, are we working to live or living to work? I want us to work to live. I want us to have a life outside of work and a life inside of work, which is why things-

Abigail Schroeder:

[inaudible 00:40:15] a life that we like in work. I think being productive and feeling like the goal of your company is something that you believe in is really important and can support you having a good life. But there is always that work-life balance that it's very hard to accomplish. But we definitely encourage that with people within the company.

Tonya Leigh:

100%. Well, thank you so much. I know so many people are going to find this conversation extremely inspiring and hopefully you all will walk away with some tips of how to elevate your work habits. So thank you for joining us today.

Abigail Schroeder:

Well thank you so much for having me.

Tonya Leigh:

Take care. Cheers everyone.