How I get sh*t done as my own boss
Plus: Seven solid prospects in the last two weeks - here's where they came from.
Happy Friday, friends!
I’m coming off a super-productive week, which isn’t always the case for me. I’ve spent plenty of days and weeks feeling like I’m just spinning my wheels or being “fake productive” - think, endlessly refreshing LinkedIn or checking Slack, only to later find myself wondering where the time went.
But this week, I’ve managed to juggle client work, seven new prospects (more on that in Behind the Scenes, down at the bottom), and staying on top of my own business - all while traveling. Not gonna lie, I’m kind of amazed.
So today, I thought I’d share some of my best tricks for staying focused and productive - these are the things that I come back to when I start to feel scattered, and they work every time.
🫶 Know thyself.
I love reading about productivity hacks. I am objectively terrible at implementing them.
Back in my corporate life, this wasn’t a problem - I had clear deadlines, teammates who were depending on me, and would work crazy hours to get it done. Same goes for my client work today (except for the crazy hours - those days are long gone).
But when it comes to my own business, I’ve learned to pay attention to how I work best - and my own sneaky tendencies, like that fake productivity I mentioned above. It was only once I started to tune into this that I was able to find productivity tricks that actually work for me.
⏰ Timebox (and hold yourself to it).
Okay, we all know that timeboxing is supposedly the secret to productivity, right? But I resisted it for so long. I wanted to own my calendar and have flexibility with my time, so why put constraints in place?
I was SO wrong.
Timeboxing client work was my first step. Rather than being available to clients all day, I set office hours - and it was magical. Suddenly, I had actual ownership and flexibility when it came to my time, because anything outside of those office hours was mine. I wasn’t stressing about replying to emails or checking Slack. I could finally take an 11am tennis lesson and not stress about rushing back to my computer after.
Surprisingly, timeboxing my own work was a bigger challenge. I followed advice to block off two or three hours of focus time each morning, and consistently found myself starting late, getting sidetracked, and making zero progress.
Here’s the thing: I’m one of those people who’s at peak productivity when my laptop battery hits 10% or when I’m working on a flight and the pilot announces we’re about to begin our descent. I love a race against time.
When I realized this, I shifted my approach - rather than giving myself two- and three-hour stretches of focus time (“this morning I’m going to update my website”), I started planning 30-minute blocks, each with a specific task (“I have 30 minutes to update the headline on my homepage”). Suddenly, I was making progress on things that had been collecting dust on my to-do list for waaaay too long.
🎲 Play mind games.
I have a few favorite thought exercises I often come back to when I’m feeling overwhelmed or stuck:
→ What do I need to get an A on?
I’m a lifelong overachiever (any other eldest daughters here? 😂) and often need to remember that I can’t get an A on everything. So when I’m trying to do all the things, it’s helpful for me to pause and think about where I need (and want) to get an A, and where a B or C is okay.
My infinitely wise best friend often points out that if I only have 20% to give to something, and I give that thing 20%, I’m giving 100% of what I can - this is reassuring, but the A/B/C framework is what works best for me. 🤷♀️
→ How much time am I spending playing offense vs. defense?
I’m not a very sportsy person, but I’ve nonetheless found this analogy helpful. Offense is the time I spend working on my priorities, whether that’s planning content for my business or developing a client strategy. Defense is the time I spend reacting to other peoples’ needs, from replying to texts to jumping into client Slack messages first thing in the morning.
I try to spend most of my time playing offense, and have realized that if I start my day playing defense…well, it’s hard for me to recover.
→ Work backwards.
Last year, I drafted a LinkedIn post announcing that I’d grown this newsletter to 100 subscribers in under a month. I wrote it well before I actually reached that milestone, and it not only helped me think through how I’d get there, but it also really lit a fire under me - I wanted to be able to publish that post!
Now I’ve got an end-of-year newsletter drafted about how I made 2025 my highest-revenue year yet - and how I’m celebrating that!
🎨 Create an aesthetically-pleasing second brain.
I’ve tried so many project management tools, from Monday to Asana to Trello…and I just can’t. With any of them. I don’t know what it is, but they just don’t seem to work the way my brain does, so they end up collecting dust.
I started using Notion a few years ago and initially, it was the same story. But I bought some templates and eventually learned to build my own, and Notion is now my life, from content planning to travel checklists to an obsessively organized database of things I want to read, watch, and listen to.
And aside from the fact that I built it so that it works the way my brain does, I think the other reason I’ve been able to stick with it is because it’s pretty. I’ve tried utilitarian Notion templates and they just stress me out. (I’m sure many people would look at my image-heavy, not-at-all mobile-friendly Notion dashboard and run screaming, so we’ve come full circle to know thyself.)
💬 Your Turn
Like I said - I love reading about productivity hacks. So if you have any favorites, please share them in the comments!
💡 On A Related Note…
👀 Behind the Scenes
Over the years, I’ve found that while January and February can feel quiet in terms of business development, things tend to pick up in March and April - and that’s definitely been the case the past couple of weeks. I’ve had seven great prospects flow through - and even resurrected a ghost from Q4.
Before I get into where they’ve come from (and how I’ve handled a couple of unique situations), I wanted to share a quick update: I’ve officially turned on paid subscriptions.
Going forward, I’m reserving some of the deeper behind-the-scenes content - like this - for paid subscribers. I’ll still be sharing plenty of free content (especially the info I wish I’d had when I was just starting out), but as this newsletter has grown beyond my immediate network, sharing the more internal side of my business with a smaller group feels right for me.
If you’ve found value in Fractional Fridays and want more of the real talk, I’d love to have you as a paid subscriber - and am offering 15% off annual subscriptions through next Sunday.
Okay, let’s talk about those prospects! They’ve come from a few sources: