[Case Study] From Frustrated to Focused

The Background

Kathleen joined the my group coaching program a little frustrated with herself.

She had owned and operated a successful communications and design firm for nearly 20 years. She had a team of five people working for her and had brought on a highly compatible business partner a year prior.

Clearly she was doing a lot of things well – very well.

And yet at the end of the day she didn’t feel as productive and focused in her approach as she could be. She watched herself regularly underestimate how long tasks took her and ended up undercharging her clients as a result.

Ouch.

All day long Kathleen was pushed and pulled by the demands of her team, clients, and business partner. Not to mention the energy she needed to raise her son and take care of herself.

It never felt like she had space to think let alone dive into the creative process that her work demanded.  

Because there was never enough time to do the work, projects were completed at the last-minute and under great stress and pressure. She worked longer hours and took home more stress than she wanted to.

Her Experiments

If you have read this blog for any length of time you know that it is most important for people to find their own approach to time management – this is the key to creating systems that will last.

This is where Kathleen excelled.

Once she understood the basic framework of her systems and embraced the key principals to time management, Kathleen became the ultimate experimenter.

Each class she came back with a new approach to her workday. She tried 50 minutes of focused work with a minute 10-minute break every hour. She tried limiting the number of times she and her business partner could interrupt each other throughout the day.  

She set up a new system with her staff to better track their time and priorities.

Some of these experiments ‘stuck’ and some didn’t. Some just needed to evolve.

By paying attention to what worked and what didn’t – without making herself wrong – Kathleen was able to devise systems that really worked for herself and her staff.

Through additional private coaching, Kathleen realized that she approaches life from a different angle than most – wouldn’t it make sense that her time management approach needed to be unique as well?

This gave her permission to leverage her own creativity in the area of time management and build systems that felt good to her.

The Results

One of my favorite experiments that Kathleen and her business partner embraced was the 6 Hour A Day Rule (created by Kathleen). They ultimately realized this was the optimal amount of productivity that they should expect from themselves each day.

Because of this constraint she was better able to say “No” to demands that weren’t a priority or in her firm’s best interest. She delegated more quickly and was finally able to give herself that interruption-free time to think and be creative.  

By giving herself permission to do less, Kathleen was able to do more.

Here is what Kathleen says about her experience:

“Julie did an amazing job of making me time-aware during her six-week course. This started me down the road but I really thrived under her individual attention.

The time-tracking systems for my team, along with my own systems and time awareness, my computer alarms, and integration of my systems are really helping me succeed.

I have adopted some really healthy habits during this process and look forward to integrating them for many years to come. I finally understand what I need to do to live a healthy and balanced life in regards to my schedule.”

– Kathleen Krushas, To The Point Communications, Portland OR