Why You Have Poor Time Management (It’s Not What You Think)

Samantha Lane: And I got a little too close to dying, but it ended up helping me realize, oh my gosh, life is short. I’m doing it all wrong, and I went on a journey to figure it out.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: For many of us, managing our time can feel like such a struggle. If you can relate to feeling like you have more stuff to do than time to do it —

Samantha Lane: Prior to my journey, I was a dumpster fire of a human, struggling to get anything done. And if I was getting things done, it was at my own detriment.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: But there are some strategies, mindsets, and maybe even ways of operating that can make all of this just a little bit easier.

Samantha Lane: How do I balance life and work? Really, that sort of brought me into: well, the resource we all have is time. The resource I’m really fighting with and wrestling with is time.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So by the end of today’s episode, I hope you feel calmer, more in control, and leave here with some actionable ideas that you can put into practice starting now.

Samantha Lane: How much will this one thing matter in 10 minutes? How much will it matter in 10 days? How much will it matter in 10 years? That’s a really simple way to reflect on your priorities.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And if this is your first time tuning in, I am so glad you’re here with us today. I am your host, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m a psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, and a board-certified coach — here every week with you to talk about your life, your internal experience, your relationships, even your career, for the purpose of growing and making it all as strong and great as it can possibly be.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And hey, if you’re a therapist tuning into this show, I’m glad that you’re here as well. Know I have another podcast just for you. It’s called Love, Happiness, and Success for Therapists, where we do deep dives behind the scenes with a lot of the guests I speak with here, about how we can implement these ideas for the purpose of facilitating the growth of others. Join me over there.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Without further ado, let’s talk about getting in control of our time and our lives with Samantha Lane. Samantha is the real deal, you guys. She is the founder of Origami Day. She is a TEDx speaker. Her broke-the-internet TEDx talk was called Are We Overcomplicating Time Management? I think the answer is yes in my case. And she has been studying productivity and balance from the inside out for a long time.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Samantha, we have so much to discuss, including my chaos. Can we just —

Samantha Lane: We have so much to discuss, yes. We can start wherever you want, because I think we should go ahead and set the expectation that there is so much we could talk about, we just won’t get to the end of it today. So we’ll at least start.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: We won’t have all the time to do all the things that we want to?

Samantha Lane: We will have the time to do a lot of the things we want to, I’m sure.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: You know what? I think we’re already starting to circle in on the problem. I love doing this show for so many reasons — especially when I hear from people who listen and get in touch. But my very favorite thing is that I get to talk to really smart, well-informed, authentic experts like yourself, and I get to learn new things that I can sometimes apply to my own life. My whole entire life, time management has just always been one of those things for me.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: One of the reasons I really resonated with your story and wanted to invite you on the show is that my perspective of you and your work is that you’re not necessarily the genre of human who’s super organized and in boxes and in some four-dimensional color-coded spreadsheet. This whole thing actually started because you are one of us — the time-challenged.

Samantha Lane: I love that you said it that way. I am one of you. I am one of the time-challenged. Sometimes people will be like, “Well, you’re just organized. You’re just on top of it.” I’m like, hold the phone. That is not how I began. I learned time management because I desperately needed time management. Prior to my journey, I was a dumpster fire of a human, struggling to get anything done, and if I was getting things done, it was at my own detriment. So I always tell people: if I can do it, anyone can.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That makes me trust you more, honestly. Because there are just people in the world for whom this stuff comes very easily — they remember things, they always put their stuff down in the same place, they follow a schedule without going, “Oh, you know what I could do.” So can you take us into this? Let’s do, like, a before and after. Tell us more about what your life was like before you figured some of this out.

Samantha Lane: Absolutely. Like many people, I sort of subscribed to this quote-unquote American dream where I went to school and I got a job after college, and I was committed to “hustle equals happy.” So I was working long days trying to climb that ladder. Then I had to have my chest cut open when I was 29 years old, and it was a planned surgery.

Samantha Lane: People would say, “Oh, it was a heart thing.” No — I had a chest wall deformity. The doctors told me I was medically severely deformed, which is the distinction every young woman wants to be labeled with. But that was my situation. They said my sternum was sitting on my heart and that’s why I had breathing problems and circulation problems, and if I didn’t have this corrected, I had a high risk of heart issues. I did the research, and they were right. So I agreed to a five-hour surgery where they cut me open and put a metal bar in place. The plan was to be back at work within four weeks and better than ever.

Samantha Lane: Unfortunately, sometimes plans change, and I had a ton of complications and I got a little too close to dying. But it ended up helping me realize, oh my gosh, life is short. I’m doing it all wrong. And I went on a journey to figure it out. What I found was time management.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Thank you for sharing that story, and what an awful thing to have to go through. But what was it about that experience that made you — of all the things — go to time management as what you really needed to focus on?

Samantha Lane: I remember the day I was readmitted to the hospital with staph in my chest. It took them well over an hour just to get an IV started. It turned out my body was shutting down. I remember sitting in that hospital bed thinking about how I didn’t spend enough time with my mom. I didn’t spend enough time with my grandma. I wished I had spent more time pausing to give my husband a kiss goodbye instead of rushing out the door. I just thought about all the things I felt I had to do and all the moments I’d just skimmed past. It felt like a massive misstep.

Samantha Lane: I had this moment — and this is sort of what began my framework — I realized we have to know what’s truly important with our time. Forget optimizing it. We have to know what’s worth optimizing. My husband at the time was working as a firefighter, so I didn’t have the option to just stop working. I still had to contribute. That’s really what made me realize: if I know what’s important and I still have to work, where’s the balance?

Samantha Lane: It began with this juggle so many people have: how do I balance life and work? And really, that brought me into: the resource we all have is time. The resource I’m really wrestling with is time.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I’m going to butcher this, but I think it’s Annie Dillard —

Samantha Lane: “How we spend each day is how we are spending our lives.” I love that quote. After my surgery, when I was back at work trying to figure it out, I got to go to a time management workshop. My boss was like, “Who wants to go?” I was like, “Me. Let me go, please.” That was the third slide. The guy facilitating put up that quote, and I swear, I thought I was going to fall out of my chair. How often do we skim past this realization — that what we’re doing right now isn’t just a means to an end. This is our life. This isn’t a test run. This isn’t a practice. This is it.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This is not a dress rehearsal. This is actually it. My son is going to turn 18 in a couple of months, and I’ve just been sitting with this — how did this happen? It’s been making me reflect on all the time I’ve spent doing other things and all the stuff that feels more important in the moment. Did I spend enough time with my kid? I hope so. And then there’s this other reality: if you’re working full time or running a business, or just doing laundry and paying bills, it feels like hours and hours of time and energy every week.

Samantha Lane: It really is. That’s what caused me to start by saying: what’s important? If someone imagined being in a hospital bed questioning if they were going to die, it would not be hard to prioritize family and loved ones and experiences. But then we step into an office or open up our computer, and suddenly it’s so much harder to know what’s important, because every demand feels like it’s the most important thing.

Samantha Lane: This is where I started leaning into tools. I probably read every book you could find. I listened to all the podcasts. I tried all the apps. I was like a lunatic in the aisles of Target and Office Depot looking at every planning tool. And I realized we were chasing the wrong rabbit. So one of the things I settled on is what I call the formula for success. There’s two things I teach: the success formula, and the 3P framework. Everything I teach falls into one of those.

Samantha Lane: Time management isn’t always easy, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. It really is simple — and there’s a huge difference between simple and easy. Our success in work and life comes down to just two parts: mindset plus habits. We have to begin with the mindset. We have to understand we can’t do everything, all the time, and our to-do list will never end. Then we can lean on habits — planning, adjusting notifications — so the two pieces work together.

Samantha Lane: For people who have babies that are now big boys, kids growing up and leaving the nest — think about your son and your other child and everyone in your life that you love. When you’re confronted with a decision, ask: “How much will this one thing matter in 10 minutes? How much will it matter in 10 days? How much will it matter in 10 years?” That’s a really simple way to reflect on your priorities.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This is so good. Thank you. I think the big idea is: you have to choose. This is the part that’s hard for me — I want everything. I want to do everything. I want to get excited about all kinds of different things. Do you think one of the main mindset issues for people who are not great at time management is actually less about time and more about boundaries — boundaries with ourselves?

Samantha Lane: Yes. Boundaries are an important part. So let’s name the framework: prioritize, plan, protect. I touched on the importance of knowing what’s important. The middle P — plan — is allocating time. I talk a lot about time as a resource. If we can think about it like a tangible resource, like cups of flour or pennies and dollars, that helps us to manage it a little bit differently. And then that third part, protect — that’s where we really talk more about boundaries and saying no.

Samantha Lane: Time is a limited resource. A lot of us think about it as an infinite concept because time will go on. But in our lifetime, we only have a certain amount of days and hours. We have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. So if we start to think about time as a resource to be allocated — a very valuable resource, because it’s non-renewable and we don’t know how much we get — we should treat it like the most valuable resource we possess. And so, when we say yes to something, by default we are saying no to something else.

Samantha Lane: That empowered me, because I loved saying yes. That’s why I was such a frazzled mess — I said yes to everything. I saw the potential in everything, and I didn’t think I was allowed to say no. But eventually I realized: I am saying no. I just wasn’t choosing what I was saying no to. I was saying no to things accidentally by saying yes to other things.

Samantha Lane: A lot of what I’m doing is empowering people. I’m educating on the realities of time, and my hope is to empower people to say, “You know what, Lisa? You are already saying no. Reframe that, decide what you want to say yes to, and let that help you enforce boundaries and say no to the other things.” By starting with priorities, by starting with what’s most important, knowing your time is finite — now it’s a little bit easier to say no to the other things.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This idea that you’re always making choices whether or not you’re doing it intentionally — before your shift, what was the loop? What was the tape in your mind that you were telling yourself, that was creating problems for you that maybe you didn’t see then?

Samantha Lane: You’re right, I was swimming in my own broth. I couldn’t have seen it when it happened. It took that hindsight. Full disclosure, my surgery was 2014, and I didn’t really fully digest everything until almost two years later. So part of my goal is to compress time for everyone else and not make them spend two years figuring out what all this means. That hindsight gave me the realization that I was going through my life thinking I had no choice — as a victim. My internal thought was, “I can’t. I’m not allowed to. This isn’t for me.”

Samantha Lane: After my surgery, I was so emboldened because the perspective had shifted so significantly that I was willing to say, “Okay, so if I try this different way of managing my time and I get fired, do I care? Nope.” Because I had so many days when I woke up and all I was trying to do was not die. I had this great morning routine where I’d eat a cup of yogurt and watch TV for an hour just to mentally and physically get ready to sit on the couch with my laptop and get some work done before I eventually had to take a nap. That shakeup put me in a position where I was willing to say, “I’m gonna give it a try, and if it doesn’t work, I don’t care.”

Samantha Lane: The good news was what I tried was rooted in research. I’d done all the research — I wasn’t just making crazy decisions that weren’t backed by how our brain works. But also I was like, “I’m just gonna do it, and if my boss doesn’t like it, I’ll figure it out.” And it actually worked tremendously. It made me more successful. The boss I worked for during this whole ordeal was one of my first customers when I started this business.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So before, there was an undercurrent — a subconscious core belief of, “I can’t say no, I need to.” And then because of everything you went through, there was a shift into “no.” It felt a little bit scary. You weren’t being reckless, but it was like this actual no — and taking a chance, and then realizing that that whole paradigm paradoxically made you much more effective.

Samantha Lane: Absolutely. I shifted from a victim mentality — that I couldn’t, that I had no control — to a place where I realized: I do have control. If I’m making smart decisions, I’m keeping my head up, I’m focused on the right things, then these are risks worth taking. I spent all this time thinking, “If I could just get to this place where I could be more productive, I would find the bottom of my to-do list. I would suddenly run out of things I have to do. Then and only then could I rest.” But that’s not real. That’s not a real location. And in choosing, “In the meantime, I’m gonna be more present in my life along the way,” turns out that’s what actually made me more productive.

Samantha Lane: I realized that being present is a great productivity hack. Being present in life, being present in our work, showing up — letting our brain and our body be in the same place — turns out that’s one of the most productive things you can do.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s so inspiring. Can you also, just for a moment before we move on to strategies, speak to people on the other side of that spectrum?

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Somebody like me — I don’t feel even a little bit victimized. And I think people with ADHD tend to be this way — really overconfident in my ability to do a lot of stuff, and also that I want to. I really do actually want all of the dessert choices on the buffet, and so I put 10 little desserts on my plate, and the reality is that I can eat about eight bites of any dessert, and then I’m like, “Eh, too much sugar.” But I’m gonna take all that dessert anyway.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: The thought of doing otherwise doesn’t feel empowering. It sort of feels like, “Oh, I don’t get to do everything I want.” Combine that with a little bit of impulse control problems where I’m like, “Oh, that looks interesting. Let’s do that instead.” How does your system speak to that experience — where it’s not being made to do something, it’s “I really wanna try”?

Samantha Lane: I love that. We are all different. We’re created in our unique ways with different brains that are wired in different ways. There is a phrase called time blindness — that’s a whole thing. I’m so thankful that in my journey I have not been labeled as an overly rigid, “you have to be qualified to even work with me” kind of person. I am one of us. That’s because I’ve gotten to work with large amounts of people who deal with ADHD or define themselves as creative types or say, “I don’t want that restricted state, I want freedom.” When I work with creatives and they’re like, “Well, I can’t manage my time, because then I can’t create,” I’m like, “Nope, turns out you can. You can manage time and create.”

Samantha Lane: The easiest way to answer this is to think about it like a spectrum. Take the worst foods for us and the healthiest foods for us — there are so many different foods in between, and the goal maybe isn’t to only eat the healthiest or only stay away from the worst. It’s to figure out where you are on that spectrum. Mental health is a spectrum. Time is like that too — it’s not a black and white thing. On one end of the spectrum you have your most rigid plans, planning down to the 15 seconds. On the other side you have no plan at all — you just blow with the wind and hope things work out. My goal for everyone is to find their place on the spectrum. In different seasons of life, we’ll be in different places on that spectrum. There is no magic bullet for time management. I looked for it. I can’t find it.

Samantha Lane: But I have found some very real truths about time. One of them is that our time is a finite resource. That goes into the mindset piece: accepting that, like your dessert analogy, we may not be able to do every single thing. A really tough lesson I’ve accepted is that I will die before I read every single book, and that’s sad, but that’s okay. What I’ll do in the meantime is keep trying.

Samantha Lane: One of the things that really hit me after my surgery: I loved working out, and I had a friend who loved working out at five o’clock in the morning. She’d always be like, “Come with me to the gym.” I would set my alarm, then hit snooze and snooze and snooze until the very last minute. Eventually I accepted the reality: I am not someone who works out at five o’clock in the morning. Instead of hitting that snooze button, I just said, “You know what? It’s not for me. Love you, supporting you from here.” And I continued to work out at six o’clock at night.

Samantha Lane: In not hitting snooze and hoping I would suddenly wake up a different version of me — but instead accepting who I really was and saying, “It’s okay for me to never be a 5 a.m. workout person” — that helped me accept a reality of time and a reality of how I was gonna show up and manage my time. So back to your point of wanting to say yes to all the things, wanting to have freedom: there are neurodivergent components to keep in mind, all of that. Where are you on the spectrum? Let’s be real with you. What is going to set Lisa up for success? Let’s embrace that and not try to make you a version of you that you aren’t.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Thank you for saying that. When I’ve read time management books and used apps, one of the things has always been: you really should be different in some fundamental ways. It’s just never gonna work for me, and that’s probably why I’ve continued to struggle. So take us into this shift. The big pieces I’m hearing: first, there needs to be an acceptance that we cannot read all the books ever written. We cannot eat all the dessert. We do not have all the time. It’s a finite resource. We do need to make choices — intentional choices, based on the things that are actually important to us.

Samantha Lane: Absolutely. Someone used a phrasing with me early on: it’s less balance, it’s more blend. Balance implies to me an equilibrium of two equal pieces, and it’s not that black and white. If on one end we’ve got work and on the other end we’ve got life, we’re bopping up and down that spectrum all day long. All week, every year, there are always going to be seasons where life needs more and then work needs more. Accepting that and saying, “That’s okay. I’m just gonna embrace what’s real” — that’s absolutely part of it.

Samantha Lane: So much of the way I approach time management is rooted in human behavior. When I went into the internet hole and all the books, I did not skip the part about the human brain. I did not skip the parts about how we’re wired. That was the most empowering and illuminating part. Why would we fight against ourselves? Why wouldn’t we just embrace how we really are? In that journey I realized: I can decide what’s important. Here are some frameworks that help me. I can make a plan to allocate this resource. I can then protect that plan in a way that’s in alignment with me.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Okay, so hypothetically, I’m your time management personal productivity coaching client, and I arrive to our first meeting at your office 10 minutes late with wet hair. I’ve lost my phone somewhere between my car and phone. Where would you start with somebody like me?

Samantha Lane: I would probably start by asking you more questions. You may have shown up to our imaginary session with wet hair and you’ve lost your phone, but you still showed up, which means something’s working. I’m going to start with understanding what’s working first, and we’re going to build off successes. Everything I’ve learned in the coaching space is: let’s build off of what’s already working. Then we’re going to understand what’s not working. People love solving problems — you don’t need me to tell you what to do. I need you to tell me what’s not working, and then I help you understand how to address that piece.

Samantha Lane: Typically, everything I see with my clients — individuals, teams, business owners, pastors — there’s some component of the success formula. There’s a mindset piece we have to address, or there are habits we need to tweak. And it comes down to some version of: we need to prioritize a little bit differently, we need to learn some planning strategies and tactics, and we need to understand how to protect our plans and our ability to execute them — which touches into self-care and maintaining a position as an asset versus slipping into a liability state.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So starting with strengths and taking a look at what’s working. Then where do you take people next?

Samantha Lane: Everyone starts with the same first step — a step that changed my life. It’s taking time once a week to make a plan for the next seven days. I created planning tools in lieu of ones that worked. The signature thing I created is a folding weekly planning sheet, hence the name Origami Day. Origami is the Japanese word for folding paper. I grew up in a Japanese American home, so it just seemed divinely given. I encourage people to take this piece of paper — we can give everyone the link, freeweeklysheet.com.

Samantha Lane: I started taking time once a week. For me, it was Friday. There’s a lot of reasons why I love Friday, but the goal is: pick one day a week, create a positive environment. For me, I’d go into my office, turn on fun music, pour my cup of coffee, and fill out this piece of paper.

Samantha Lane: I mapped out my week, and then I could go into my weekend feeling good. I closed the mental loops. That’s the reason I like Fridays — it gives us an opportunity for those of us who work Monday through Friday to sit down and bookend our week, close loops mentally, get the ducks in a row so we can go into the weekend in a place where we could mentally rest. What I realized is that I wasn’t ever resting my brain, and so it was creating drag. If you think about apps on a phone — if you leave those apps open all the time, it’s going to drain your battery. That’s what happens to our brains sometimes when we don’t close these loops.

Samantha Lane: It also gave me a roadmap for Monday morning. So Sunday, instead of having the crushing Sunday scaries I had all the time, I started having a full weekend where I could actually enjoy my life.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: What’s appealing to me is just this idea that closing the loop on Friday, you will have more fun on your weekend. It just shuts some tabs on the cognitive load.

Samantha Lane: I was leaving my office on Friday like 20 pounds lighter. I started taking all the things swirling around my brain and putting them onto this piece of paper. Then there was the surprise benefit of waking up Sunday morning and not having crushing anxiety. And Monday morning, all I had to do was look at what my piece of paper told me to do. You just have this simple list, and instead of stopping and thinking every time you complete a task or leave a meeting, you just follow your plan. You pre-decide, you preload your week. Of course, plans change, and that’s why God made erasers. But it’s better to shift a plan than have no plan at all.

Samantha Lane: If everyone wants to ignore everything else we’ve talked about, they’re welcome to do that. They cannot and should not ignore this. Taking time once a week to map out your life on this simple eight-and-a-half by 11 piece of paper is life-changing. Life-changing.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Okay. Okay, let’s change my life, Samantha. So what do you do? You fold it?

Samantha Lane: There are two versions of the sheet. It looks like you got the vertical version, which is awesome. When the vertical is folded down, it fits a lot of cell phone holders or shirt pockets. There’s also a horizontal version, which when folded is the size of a Post-it. But we’re not going to fold yet — we’ll get excited for that.

Samantha Lane: There are three steps to filling out your weekly planning sheet. Step one is what you know is going to happen. This is the time you’ve already given away. Typically we’d be doing this on a Friday, planning for the next seven days. So imagine each of these boxes represents your day. If you have something Monday morning, it goes toward the top of the box. If there’s something Monday evening, it goes toward the bottom.

Samantha Lane: You start by simply writing out in your full sheet what you know you’ve already given away, what time is already allocated. So this is a meeting, this is a podcast interview. This could be, if your son’s doing any sports, this might be one of his games. And I advocate for personal, professional, all on the same sheet, because managing less is better for us. One sheet — all your doctor’s appointments, anything like that.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: One of the things that’s striking me about this is how simple it is, and there’s no, like, time slots. Do you get hyper about the times?

Samantha Lane: When I made my sheet last Friday, I noted that the time you and I were meeting was 3:00 central time because I wanted to make sure that I showed up on time. But before that and after that, I have a task that doesn’t have a time. Tasks are typically step two. Typically step one is: when something occurs at a set time, let’s go ahead and note that. Because this sheet represents your week. So starting with what we know is going to happen is essentially a way of saying, “What of our 168 hours have we already given away?” Then we want to block that.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Just even hearing you say that — it’s only 168 hours. I was like, “Only 168 hours.” Okay.

Samantha Lane: Step two is what do you hope is going to happen? So this might be things like tasks, to-do list items. Is it swing by the bank? Call your cousin? Sign up for the yoga class? What things do you hope you’ll do? These aren’t typically time-bound, but they’re things that maybe you want to ensure they’re accounted for. Once you map out all the time you’ve already given away, you should theoretically have white space on your sheet for the week. That’s where we want to schedule those things you hope to do — in that white space. If you’ve got a block of time between two meetings, well, that’s probably time you could get something done. So what is the realistic task or activity that makes sense in that block?

Samantha Lane: Step three is digital reinforcement. Because I’ve already told you there’s benefits to using paper, but I also am not anti-technology. We do live in a very connected world, and other people sometimes need to know where to find us or details for a meeting. So step three is: take your sheet and say, “What on this sheet needs a calendar invite? Do I need to send an email with an agenda? Do I need to shoot a text over to my friend and say, ‘Yeah, I’m in for dinner on Thursday’?” What is that third piece of digital reinforcement that you want to layer onto this paper plan to ensure that everyone is on the same page and set up for success? It’s insane how easy those three steps are and how life-changing that process is.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: For people who make this beautiful plan on Friday and then by 1:00 on Saturday have other things come in, or something they thought would take an hour actually takes four hours and now everything downstream is messed up — how do you stick to the plan, or is that something you master over time?

Samantha Lane: That’s reality. First of all, that mindset — we accept that plans are going to change. The way my sheet looks in the beginning versus the end of the week — there’s always coffee on my sheet. There’s rips, random notes. It’s usually a sight. But that tells me I’m using it. Plans do change. Once we have that digital reinforcement, this is when we fold. The folding is designed where you only have to look at one day at a time, and then you have a flip or a turn to see the next day. It always gives you a preview of what’s coming, and you can unfold it at the end of the week to see a visual record of accomplishments.

Samantha Lane: The short answer to your question is: buffer time. We don’t overbook. We don’t put too many things in the small piece of time, and that’s a huge life change for a lot of us — especially people like you and me. We see the potential. We want to say yes. We want to be involved. So the companion piece to this weekly sheet is actually a month view calendar I created and use, and it has boxes that are only about a one-inch box for each day. I use that to help force buffer time so I’m not overbooking. And yes, I did just admit that I still plan my life big picture on a paper calendar. Over time, the more you do this, the more proactive you become, so you have that breathing room for plans to change.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: It’s not like a one, “boop, do that.” It’s a recognition that this is important — mindset shifts around your relationship with time, and then a ritual, a system to be able to do this. This feels different to me. I know we’re coming up on the end of our time, Samantha. Thank you for being so generous with all your tools and strategies. Is the best place for people to get another weekly sheet or look into your other things presentandproductive.com?

Samantha Lane: Before I fully answer that question, I want to say thank you for the opportunity to share this because I never planned to start this business. I accidentally unearthed a way to live better, and I felt that it was too valuable not to share. Being able to come here and share this with your audience is really meaningful for me because I believe that if I can do it, anyone can. I think we deserve to live better lives. We deserve to be more present. We deserve to be happier. Yes, there’s so much depth to what we’ve talked about today, but that’s because I’m taking a very different approach. It’s not just the tool — it’s the philosophy, the mindset, and the tools to maintain the philosophy.

Samantha Lane: I share that to further validate people who are like, “But I’ve tried everything.” Cool. Try this too, because this is different.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: What I’m hearing between the lines is — maybe not now, but there might be a book coming down the line?

Samantha Lane: I have been working on a book. I’m in the process of figuring out the best way to get it out to the masses, but it is 60% completed. I hope it’s something that will really help people because, again, I realized: oh my gosh, people need to hear this. I found something worth sharing. So yes, the book is coming. Stay tuned.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: You’ll have to come back when the book is officially out.

Samantha Lane: The best way for people to stay in the loop on the book and the planning tools — I send an email once a month. You get added to that list when you get your freeweeklysheet.com. So freeweeklysheet.com will get you the weekly planning sheet. Origamiday.com is where all the planning tools are sold. There’s also presentandproductive.com, which is more of a space to assess yourself and your team and get into some of the services. Most of my time is spent doing things like this or teaching teams or speaking at events, and I have two coaches who work with me who help implement the framework for individuals. I have some group coaching options. There’s a tip library, YouTube videos. I’ve spent the last almost 10 years creating this ecosystem to give this information to people at every journey, at every level. Whether you’re an individual or part of a team, whether you have a budget or you don’t, we have a solution for you. The best way to do it is start at freeweeklysheet.com.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Thank you. It sounds like you’ve put so much thoughtfulness into not just this whole system, but also a lot of entry points and free resources — just watch a YouTube video or download a weekly sheet and start taking baby steps in this direction.

Samantha Lane: I am the conduit. The information was not given to me so that I could take it with me to my grave. It was given to me so I could give it to you and to everyone listening, because we deserve to live a better life.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I love that. Let’s just land on that. What inspiring for everybody. All of us in some ways live through things, and we all learn and grow, hopefully in the process. You’re such an exemplary example of this — how do we use whatever it is that we’ve been given not just for our own benefit, but share it with other people in small ways or large in order to help benefit their lives as well? You’re taking that as a responsibility, and I think that’s incredible. So thank you.