Optimizing Time and Sleep for Increased Productivity and Better Life Balance w/ Carina Lawson

This is Tools of the Podcast Trade, where you can learn about the tools and resources you can use to start and grow your podcast. Tune in this week as we talk about the help you need to remove the mystery from podcasting so you can become a successful podcaster that can reach your audience where they are. My guest today is certified high-performance coach, karina Lawson. She is a productivity optimization expert, business efficiency consultant and founder of Ponderlily paper and planners. Welcome, karina.

Thank you so much for the warm welcome. I really appreciate it.

I appreciate you being here. Yes, for sure. Okay, so the first thing I like to do when I talk to a guest is tell us who is Karina Lawson. Who are you?

I'm Brazilian borm. I am Arabian Gulf raised. I am a mother, a twin mom. So originally from Brazil, living and working at Doha, Qatar, I'm someone who's really passionate about helping people make empowered decisions with their time and with my background in business process improvement has really allowed me to take my body of work and take what I've learned in the boardroom into a planet, to personal life. And the reason why I did that and the reason why I became so passionate about this work is because I see so many people at some point, like me, thought that their success would come at a cost to their well-being and the time that they spent with their families. So I'm here to help people get out of busyness and really live their lives more fully, from work to weekend.

Okay, all right, thank you for sharing. I always like to ask that. So, all right, I think one of the things we wanted to talk about is productivity. It seems to do both business and personal productivity. But before we get into that, how did you get into productivity and efficiency? Keeping people efficient?

Sure. So, with my background in business process improvement, I found that it was so important to have a conversation with the individuals that were part of the process in delivering the work for organizations, so that they could do more, keep their teams happy and make sure that they could meet and exceed customer requirements. In my work basically my research in employee wellness when I was doing my master's, whenever I would talk about wellness it was always in the context of work. However, people spend eight or more hours of their day in the workplace and when they go home, sometimes they work longer hours and when they go home, that kind of permeates into their home life and the people I talked to weren't taking good care of themselves and were really missing out on a lot from their life, which then permeated back into the work life. So I think it's a really important conversation to have and explore the ways in which people can be happy at work, how they can feel more productive, because sometimes and productivity is the start of the conversation Efficiency is what you're really aiming for, so you're doing the right things rather than doing all the things multiple times. So that's how I got into it. I've always been very passionate about helping people. I've always had planners and diaries that helped me keep myself productive. And in that quest of dotting the eyes and getting the teeth crossed, and in the many pages of my planner, I wasn't seeing my goals, I wasn't seeing my health and my values reflected in my everyday. So at that point I really wanted to make sure that my children's lives are not going to be affected in the same way I wanted to. And, for those of you who were listening, there is a world of possibility that you can, and you can start by looking into that as to how you live your everyday. I love having conversations with clients about what's possible, because often they come to me telling me like, oh, I can't do this, I'm so overwhelmed. And that may be true. People come from so many different walks of life with so many different life circumstances. But I always like to anchor the conversation of what could be possible for them rather than what it is.

Yeah, Okay, all right. And when you mentioned self care, you didn't say the word by the term, but you mentioned self care and it's a vicious cycle, isn't it? That if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't be very productive, and even if you get busy, you're not efficient because you're not well. Yeah, precisely yeah.

Yeah, productivity, people think the root of it all is being able to do more and being efficient and getting the best work done and in the right when the right place is right in the right tasks. But for you to be able, for individuals to be able to make quality decisions with their time, they need to be well right. They need to have slept well so that their brain function is optimal. They need to have drank enough water so their body functions well as well. So we can't have a conversation about productivity without mentioning well-being. I feel like, and oftentimes when people and that's what people interpret as toxic productivity or toxic positivity, because it's very one-sided and human beings were multifaceted and so it's important to have the conversation about well-being being at the core and then moving into a larger, having a larger conversation about the need and, you know, the capacity that people have and those pesky and realistic expectations.

Yeah, all right, sure, so tell us exactly what you do for your clients and how we can get in touch with you.

Absolutely so. I typically work with clients on a 12-week basis and the reason why we do this is so that they can develop the habits and the productivity protocols and the leadership that's needed so that they can have more time, more energy and more space in their day. Essentially so, we work on three different areas. We talk about their clarity of what it is that they want to achieve from working together. People come to me with different needs, whether it's to work on their career development because I'm certified as a career mentor, as a high-performance mentor and a productivity mentor as well. So if they come to me and they say, you know, my focus really is on my career we use the same tenets of having clarity of what it is that they want to achieve, leadership that they need to have and that has different components to it as well and the well-being component as well. So we combine those three things, that I tailor the program to the individual, because I feel very strongly that productivity is personal and what may work for one person may not necessarily work for someone else. But within those three tenets, we work on habit development, nervous system regulation, so that they can cope with stress in a way that really makes an impact for them, and these are just some of the areas that we work on together, but primarily a work of clients who want to improve their productivity so that they can have more time with their family, who want to get their next promotion, and how they need to perhaps adapt their work habits and skills that they need to have to get there, and I work with them on work-life balance. Primarily. That's what most people come to me for.

Okay, cool, and how can we get in touch with you?

Absolutely. If you go to my website, karina Lawsoncom, that's where you can learn more about mentoring services. Or if you go to ponderlilycom, you can get some of the free content that I offer there. But for right now, I think your audience might really benefit from the Pink Balance Blueprint that I've got that they can download for free on my website and I'll send you the link so that they can download it from the show notes and they can learn some strategies on how they can cope with the struggle of everyday but keeping their well-being top of mind and the performance top of mind.

Okay, thank you, and are you an Instagram?

Yes, I am, and you can find me at WeArePonderlilycom and I answer all direct messages myself, so please feel free to get in touch.

Okay, cool. I always like to ask that, because if someone is listening to podcasts, they can always switch over right. Yeah, of course, Okay. So another description of you is you ignite joy, purpose and empowerment in women striving for a life of fullness, not busyness. So, before you go, can you give a solo mom one piece of advice that could help them become better at managing their busyness?

Absolutely, and I think the root of it comes. Most people might think that it's waking up earlier so they can do more, and I adopt a different school of thought is that I find that if you sleep more and go to bed earlier, if you're able to go to bed earlier because we're not especially when you're a single parent or you're solo parenting for a specific period of time and you might have very young children who wake up super, super early and that might not be feasible for you, right? So, but we can always try to sleep earlier. When my twins were new born and at the time I was solo parenting, if my husband was traveling for months at a time, I would always try to go to bed together with the kids so that I could get the maximum sleep possible at the same time that they would go to sleep. So trying to find ways that you can get 50 minutes more of sleep would be ideal, and that in it doesn't have to be a bubble bath If you're able to get a bubble bath, super. But just going to bed earlier, reading a book, going to bed earlier, popping in a meditation, going to bed earlier and just thinking about what you're grateful for that might give you 50 minutes more sleep. That will allow you to have more clarity in the morning so that you can make better decisions. You can make quality decisions from a refreshed and rested place.

Thank you, and that's very good advice, and I like the part about you know going early, going to bed early, but also contemplate things like what you're grateful for, gratitude to journal. Ling is said to improve sleep when you do it just before bedtime and you create journals and planners. Right, yes, I do. Okay, so that's perfect. Now I really would like you to come back again and have this conversation more extensively, and would you like to do that? Absolutely, we had pleasure, sure. I appreciate you, karina Larson, for coming and speaking to us today.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for having me, yes.