Stop Being a Slave to Your Calendar: Holistic Productivity & Cyclical Living
A beginner’s guide to cyclical living and cycle tracking.
Today I'm talking about honoring your natural energy capacity, defining your non-negotiable values, and remembering that the little things—like connecting with the ones you love—that don’t feel necessarily feel productive produce invaluable results.
What if true productivity isn't about doing more; it’s about doing what truly matters, when your energy allows it?
What is holistic productivity and cyclical living?
Ready to explore a holistic way of living and working that works with you feminine energy and cyclical nature? This conversation is a counterculture beginners guide to holistic productivity with tried and true ways I’ve found peace in my busy schedule.
Listen Here:
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why it’s crucial to define your family values: Identify your top 3 non-negotiable values and use them as a filter for your calendar and time.
The 4 phases of the menstrual cycle and how to plan your month accordingly.
How batching tasks is a smart calendar strategy
The best phrase for making plans in advance
What mindfulness is and how to be mindful when you’re a productive and busy mom
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Holistic Productivity
01:02 Defining Values for Productivity
06:03 Syncing Life with the Menstrual Cycle
10:15 Batching Tasks for Efficiency
15:16 The Importance of Relationships
18:52 Mindfulness in Daily Life
23:27 Resources for Holistic Productivity
Up Next: Leadership & Empathy with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller
Resources: The ‘Best Books of All Time’ Categorized Booklist for Mindful Moms and Conscious Parents
Full transcript of this conversation with Ryann Watkin on holistic productivity, cycle tracking and cyclical living:
Ryann: 00:00
Hi, friend. Welcome back to the show. I'm so happy you're here as always. Today I want to talk about holistic productivity. And I just want to share some real life things from my world that I do that help me out that I think are gonna help you too. And the first thing that really helps me when I'm deciding how I'm gonna be productive in a certain week or month is deciding what is negotiable. So what can I bend on? What can I let go of? And why might I need to, right? So how do you do this though? How do you decide what's negotiable for me this week? Because it sounds easy, but in practice, what we need to do is really define our values. So if you don't know your values already, what are two or three things you highly value? And when you know what you value, you can run every single thing on your calendar through your values. Does it align with one of your values? So pick your top three values today. Maybe it's family, balance, health, money, freedom, flow, creativity, art, fun, sensuality. There's so many more that I could list, but pick three of those that I said, or just Google really quick what are some examples of values and pick three that align with the person you are today. And when you run everything on your calendar, everything on your to-do list, everything that you're debating doing, plans that you're making for next month or next year, even when you run those things through this list first, it's like a filter. You get to really just drop what doesn't fit the values. And of course, there are things that you have to do. There are obligations that you have to meet that might not feel super aligned with your values. Yes, like that's life. I had an old friend reach out and ask me if I wanted to do coffee with her. And I'm like, yes, that sounds amazing. I want to make time for connecting with an old friend because one of my values right now is relationships. So I'm learning how to be a good friend. I'm learning how to show up and serve or just show up and be present with someone. So I said yes to a coffee with a really, really old friend. And get this. She said when we were making plans, she said, let's confirm the day before. And I'm like, oh my God, yes, please. Thank you so much. Because life will life. And I often say, like, when I make plans, I'm a different person when those plans come around. I'm planning a conference. Many of you know we're calling it a summit, summit conference. Who knows what's the difference? My friend Ashley and I started planning this summit like in June. It might have even been sooner. And the summit is coming up this month. It's at the end of October. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm fundamentally a different person now than when I started to plan this summit with my friend Ashley. So I think let's give each other a little bit of grace and let's normalize saying, hey, can we confirm the day before just to make sure we're still the same people as when we made these plans? Just to make sure that nothing has come up that we really need to devote our attention to. This friend actually did have a couple things come up and we did have to pivot at the last moment and reschedule. And I'm like, hey, all good. I totally understand that. That's the kind of friend I want to be. When somebody cancels, I don't make it about me. Oh my God, it must have been this, that, and whatever. I'm not making up a story in my head. I'm just like, yep, you had some things come up. I am free to be flowy. Also, how we feel and what we're available for depends on so many different factors. Something comes up. What day of our cycle are we on? What's going on with work and family? I am all for the let's make plans, but let's confirm the day before. Every single person in my inner circle, which is a small circle, but all two of those people have heard me say at some point, I'm on day one of my cycle, or I'm on day 22 of my cycle, et cetera. And they know what that means. So let's normalize talking about our cycles. Another example of deciding what's negotiable and what's absolutely not negotiable is our lunch and breakfast situation around this house right now. It is bananas. I am cooking breakfast and lunch for my three kids, and then sometimes my husband and I. And everybody wants different things. I'm also like cooking lunch to put in their thermoses every morning. And this is new this school year. In the past, I have been a night before lunch packer. And this year I've decided because of a number of different things, that's a different episode, that I'm gonna make home cooked meals every morning. Let's just say it's bananas. And I am like a sous chef and a line chef and a head chef all in one. And I am, I've got a lot of different plates in the air, no pun intended. So why am I doing this? It's because I value what they're eating. It's because I value getting high-quality food into them at breakfast and lunch. And so I choose on purpose, yes, on purpose. Like I choose to have crazy, wild mornings in the kitchen. And oftentimes I spend like 30 to 45 minutes cleaning the kitchen after my kids leave or after drop-off. And some of you might be like, my God, that's insane. And listen, I get it. If that sounds totally crazy to you, that's fine. It might not be on your values list. Maybe it is. I don't know. Maybe you're more efficient at it than me, which is great. Either way, so that's another example of really like filtering everything I do. And that's like something I do five days a week, right? And so that's a big one. So another way I use holistic productivity in my life as a woman, as a busy woman, is an ambitious, busy mom in particular. I am syncing or tracking my cycle. And if you didn't learn the phases of the cycle, that's okay. Like I didn't learn that either. Um, and if you no longer have your cycle because of menopause or paramenopause or another reason, you can always look to the moon. The moon has a 28-day cycle just like women do. So you can use the moon to guide you in cyclical living, if that speaks to you. And so I'm just gonna tell you what the phases of the menstrual cycle are and what is good for those phases. So phase one is day one of your cycle. Day one of your cycle is when you start bleeding, it's when you start your period. And this is coincided with the new moon. So when you go outside and the sky is completely black and you don't actually see the moon in the sky, that's called the new moon. And this is a time for rest and intuition, and you're really just kind of at your lowest. You're at your valley at that time. However, internally, you've got processes that are working really well. Your brain is actually at its best time. I would say your brain and your heart, really, at its best time for intuition. So the best things to do during this time of your cycle is resting, reflecting on what's going really well, reflecting on what you might need to change, doing some research. It's called the fertile, and I think Kate Northrop uses this term. I don't know if she coined it. Um, and I'm gonna give you a book recommendation from her too. So that's phase one. It's when you start bleeding, phase two is the spring or the follicular cycle. That's when the moon starts to go from black to like a crescent moon, and you're starting to have an increase in energy. So you're like, okay, I can do this. You're starting projects, you're getting new ideas, you're planning, your estrogen, biologically speaking, is going up. So it's bringing energy and motivation. And, you know, it's a good time to start new things. You could set some goals, you could do some tasks, you could do some calendar mapping. So, right here, you're planting the seeds for new ideas. That is phase two. Phase three is ovulation. So, this, if the day one was your valley, ovulation is your peak or your summit. And this is the full moon. This is when the moon is the brightest in the sky. And so you are out and about, you're communicating, you are very high energy, you're confident. It's a great time to give a talk or record a podcast. So during that peak time, it's a great time to get out and to socialize and to network and do client meetings and give presentations. It's about visibility. And then we come to phase four, which is the luteal phase, which coincides with the fall or the waning moon. So the moon was full and now it's starting to get small again, right? And so now you're feeling, I always feel like around this time, actually, now that I'm I'm recording this, I'm on day 20. I think it might be 20 or 21, but I'm starting to come to a completion. I'm recording this podcast to publish. And so I have all my tasks done for next week. I'm starting to tie up all the loose ends on some research I've been doing. I'm tying up some loose ends on a class I'm taking. I'm making sure that all my ducks are in a row so that when I'm ready to kind of go inward and rest, that everything is done. So any details that need to be finished up. I love syncing up my calendar with my cycle. And I have a planner and I use my paper planner and I just put on my paper planner one when I'm on day one. And then I can remember that, which usually honestly I don't. Like I don't really remember. I have to go back through and look at my calendar and count to see what day I'm on. Cause sometimes I'll be feeling a certain way internally and I'm like, what's going on here? And then I'll reflect back. Okay, what day am I on? What's this time good for? It does help me harness the certain energy that I'm in, especially during that middle of the month. So if we're talking productivity, if we're talking getting things done, it's that middle of the month time that is so valuable for you to plan your things around. So this brings me to another holistic productivity tip that I use in my life. And that is batching tasks. If you look at my Calendly, you can see during that 10-day period where I have a ton of time slots open. And then around that, it's like nothing's really open. And so I really try to focus my planning, focus my scheduling on those 10 days where my energy is at its highest, because on the other days, I'm doing more internal work. I'm brainstorming behind the scenes or the researching or the editing, something like that. And I want to point out here like this is a very small shift and it can make a really big difference. Just paying attention to your internal world, paying attention to where your energy might be leaking. That's a really, really big cue of what do I want to spend my time doing? Like, how do you feel when you spend time with certain people? How do you feel when you visit certain places? I know when I was younger, I used to love going to concerts and events with a ton of people. And now, like, I really can't do that unless it's like a very special circumstance or a performer that I really love or something like that. But I really don't go to many places that have a whole lot of people and I'm kind of sensitive like that, which I didn't realize earlier in my life, which led me to abusing alcohol and various other substances because I was feeling the energy of so many people around me and it would make me crawl out of my skin. And so I had to numb. These are just the little things that if we pay attention to our inner world, they can really, really give us cues for is this thing good for me? Is this person good for me? Is this place good for me? What lights you up? What's draining your energy? You have to be paying attention to your possible energy leaks. And then on the flip side, what leaves you feeling just like so lit up? And some of the really small things I do on a daily basis, I get sunshine in the morning in my eyes. It's so good for our sleep. It's so good for our circadian rhythm to go outside without sunglasses and look at the rising sun. If you're not near the coast, it's okay. Just go outside, look at the sun through the trees. Like you don't need to sungaze or anything. It's just being outside, even if it's raining out, just being outside in that light helps so much. And then you're gonna sleep better and then you're gonna feel more energized the next day. For me, gosh, taking a walk. Taking a walk is so key. I was taking a walk before I recorded this episode. Taking a break, turning off your devices at night. Again, I'm super sensitive to light. And I notice when I'm watching TV or I'm staying on my computer late at night. Actually, this happened this week because I was at my peak energy and I was like, ooh, I'm gonna ride this wave. And I decided, even though I know that it doesn't feel good for me, I decided to stay on my computer a couple nights in a row. And I didn't sleep well. I was fighting a cold, and the cold really super lingered and I was dragging all week. And I really tried to give myself grace on those days. I tried to block off some things. I leaned on my partner for more support. One morning he looked at me, he's like, What do you need from me? And I was like, I need you to treat me like a newborn baby. And he's like, Goo, goo, ga, ga. I'm like, no, like seriously. So he made me laugh, which was helpful. But I was like, I am an infant right now. I haven't slept well in multiple days in a row. Like, I just need so much support. And so if you're in the situation where you can ask for support, whether that's at work or at home, like really ask for it. Give yourself grace. Learn how to ask for help. Especially if those days when you're dragging and you don't sleep well, if you're on the latter part of your cycle when your energy is waning, it's all connected. So another thing you can do to keep track of your cycle too, I want to mention here, is you can use your Google Calendar or your iPhone calendar and just put an event in there day one. So that way you can kind of go back and reference on those days that you are dragging. Are you dragging extra because you're in your last week of your cycle? Maybe. So, more ideas for batching. I batch my podcast interviews. You could batch your food prep. You could batch a creative planning day. If you're a writer, you could batch your blog on those days, client meeting batch day, house cleaning batch day. Think of being able to load your calendar in the middle of the month. And all of this being said, when we talk about being productive, I really, really want you to remember. And this is being said without judgment, I promise, because it's been something that I've had to work through myself and give myself a ton of grace on. And so I am saying this with so much grace. And I hope you can receive it with so much grace. When we talk about being productive, I really want you to remember one of the most productive things that really doesn't feel like it's productive. And that is building and growing the relationships in your home and connecting with the people who you love to hopefully be building a foundation of a lifelong relationship with those people. And so I have to remember for me what that means is witnessing the tantrums, allowing my tween to whine, listening to my toddler tell me a story that I've heard 65 billion times. We have to remember all these little things become the big things. The little things become the big things. And so while raising a family, while being a mother doesn't feel like it's productive, those are the tasks, those are the things that I like to call chopping wood and carrying water. Those are the things that we continue to do. We continually, consistently go inward and decide how am I gonna show up in this moment and this moment and this moment. We have probably thousands of times a day, right? To decide. Are we gonna show up calm? Are we gonna show up patient? And side note, are we gonna nail it every single time? No, absolutely not. We're not gonna nail it every single time. But the more we practice showing up calm, the more we practice showing up loving, the better we get. So I'm in a book club right now for The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haid. It's been on the bestseller list for a number of weeks. I think it's still there. It's a really good read. I dove into his work a while back. I've talked about tech a little bit on this show. And so I'm in a book club at a church. The leader of the book club, who also happens to be the pastor at this church, brought out two jars with marbles in them. And one of the jars visibly was like pretty full. And then one of them was like kind of looking empty. Maybe there was like a fourth of the marbles left. And he holds these two marble jars up and we're all looking around at each other, like, oh my God, what's this gonna be? And each marble in the jar represented a week of his child's life in his house. So from age zero, right? From newborn baby to let's say like 18. And a kid is, you know, supposedly supposed to leave the house and go to college. Each of those marbles was a week of that kid's life. And he has three kids. And he goes, I bet you're thinking, because he has one kid in high school, I bet you're thinking that this marble jar with this really kind of empty second jar over here, I bet you're thinking that this represents my oldest kid. And we all are like holding our breath. And he's like, This doesn't represent my oldest kid, it represents my middle who's in middle school. This jar was almost empty. He has already had the majority of weeks that he's going to have with his middle school kid already. I mean, that to me was such a beautiful visualization. One, because I love a good visual, and two, because it really put into perspective like, what are we choosing to fill our lives with? What we're choosing to fill our days with ends up being what we choose to fill our months with, ends up choosing, ends up being what we choose to fill our years with. And like that ends up being our life. So my call to you, my invitation to you is not to let that life slip by, not to let that opportunity to build that relationship with your partner or your children or your extended family or whoever it might be to slip by. Because now is the time. There is just the present moment. This is what mindfulness is. I think this word mindfulness gets thrown around a lot. And I think we try to understand how we can be more mindful, what's something we can do to be mindful? And I just want to call myself out publicly, right? And I want to give you an invitation that mindfulness happens in the messy moments of life. While you're witnessing the tantrum, while you're on your way to drop off and it's been a hard morning, while you have an argument with your husband while you're making the bed. This was me this morning. It actually wasn't an argument. It was just a quick back and forth that really got me feeling internally like a little off-center. And we made the bed together. We had this conversation. He was like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, head to my office and do my work. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna head to my office and do my work. And I was off center. And I had the choice in that moment to grind my gears. I don't I don't remember what that's from, but I had the choice of whether I wanted to grind my gears and think about how he's so wrong or think about why I'm so right. No, I decided to go outside, to look at the sunshine, to start doing some brainstorming actually for this specific episode and a couple others that are coming up, and to really dive in to what I wanted to do that day. And so it was there and then it was gone. And that's what mindfulness is. It's an opportunity in all of those moments to show up and to be aware of your internal state. And so, what does this all have to do with productivity? Everything. Because if we are constantly beating ourselves up, or if we are constantly picking fights, or if we are just feeling like we're not getting enough done in the day and we're choosing to feel overwhelmed. Yes, I said choosing. If we're choosing to feel overwhelmed, we're not going to be at our highest and best, guys. We're just not. And so I want us to frame this conversation in a way that helps us be aware of our internal experience as we show up to, yes, do the things we need to do in a day, do the things we want to do in a day. And then that ultimately creates our life. I really love that you were here for this conversation with me. It's something that has been on my mind and my heart for a while. I'm so happy to share it with you, framed in this way. And I hope it made you think a little bit different about productivity and how to check off the boxes on your to-do list. I hope it made you come to the table being able to shift a few small things and ultimately getting more productivity out of that, being more efficient from those things. These are ways that in my real life I have tried and tested. And so if you do one of these things or all of these things, find me on Instagram and tell me. Tell me what you loved, tell me what worked for you. And hey, tell me something that I didn't share today because I'm sure that this is not an all-encompassing conversation about holistic productivity. So tell me if you have a holistic productivity in your life that you use that has helped you to show up for the people that you love with more grace. Tell me, because I'd love to hear it. I know that if you're a working mom or if you're a stay-at-home mom or any sort of busy, ambitious entrepreneur, or any of it. Like I know that the exhaustion or hopefully not, but the burnout or the weight of the world can feel like it's on your shoulders. Like I know that in certain seasons, those feelings are so real and they're so valid. And I just wonder what would happen if you loved yourself completely and wholly through those seasons. The really busy, productive seasons, you know, the seasons where we harvest and we celebrate success and we hit the goals, like those seasons too. And also the seasons when we're at our valley and we're really low energy and we have to reach out for help. I really wonder what would happen if you loved yourself fully and completely throughout every season. And just a reminder here it doesn't need to be perfect. It's never going to be perfect. A great resource to learn more about cyclical living that I love, especially if you're an ambitious woman and a busy mom like me, is Kate Northrop's book, Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women. It's on my personal book list. It is one of my favorite books. The way that she talks about cycle tracking and harnessing our energy during our 28-day cycles as women is completely revolutionary. And it honestly changed the way I worked and lived and mothered and everything. And this is just one of the many, many, many books on my list. I have made you a book list that I've been compiling for two plus years. It has nearly every guest recommendation on it, every guest from the Raising Wild Arts podcast, plus, of course, some of my favorite books and a couple hidden gems too. So if you're a book lover like me and you need some inspiration, grab the book list. If you haven't already, I categorized it. So you can just like go to the section that you're needing now and pick out your next great read there. Some of the categories I included are holistic success, health and wellness, feminine leadership, aligned business, conscious parenting, and so much more. You can get the book list by heading to raisingwildhearts.com and becoming an insider. I send out weekly Wednesday little inspirational love notes that I like to call Wise Wednesday. And so I send out my email on those days and I usually do like a podcast recommendation and then just an inspirational note. So if you're not on my mailing list yet, if you don't have the book list yet, go to raisingwildhearts.com and get it there. And until next time, guys, go love someone well.
