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Glue.
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That is the word for the person in your family who holds everything together, right?
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The one who knows when the prescriptions are running low and if the pet food's almost out and which kid has the field trip when, and when the car's due for an oil change, right?
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All of the things.
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Pretty much every household has a person who is the glue.
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And this is a job that never shows up with any formal job description or any kind of employee handbook.
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And friends, if you are the glue, this is why you're so tired.
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And it's been an interesting last six months for me here because I've been watching as my husband is now becoming the glue in a certain area of his life.
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And it's changed a lot of things.
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So today I think it'd be really important and meaningful to talk about this job of being the glue and really help understand if you are the only person serving as the glue in your household, how you can start to shift away from not being the only glue stick there.
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Welcome to the Work Life Harmony Podcast.
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Guess what?
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You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out.
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There is another way.
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When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony.
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If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you.
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Hey friends, welcome back to Work Life Harmony.
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I recently posted out on Instagram a carousel style post that was talking about the toll that it takes on any kind of partnership if you are the one that is the holder of the information, aka the glue of kind of your household situation.
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And it sparked some fantastic conversation.
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And so today I thought it would be meaningful here to take some time to take a deeper dive on that conversation on the podcast.
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Now, before we dive into anything here, if you have a friend that you know is the holder or the glue or the chief information officer or the one who keeps everything running in their household and they are exhausted, definitely take 30 seconds and share this episode with them.
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So there's an interesting kind of measurement scale, if you will.
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And when we look at society today, the fact is most women, I'm going to say most, there's always exceptions, but most women were raised in a way where they were taught to be measured by what they manage versus our male counterparts were raised in a way why they were taught to be measured by what they accomplished or do.
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Right.
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Now, this is not a bashing on one sex versus the other.
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It's just a reality.
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This is the way many of us were raised.
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And the holding, right?
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If you are being measured by the person who's managing and holding, is not the same job as the doing.
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But there seems to be this expectation or this belief that, oh, it's the same thing.
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And it categorically is not.
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I have been typically the holder and the glue of our family.
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And now we have kind of a division of our family where I am not.
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I am simply a doer.
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And I am here to tell you I am experiencing that they are not at all the same thing.
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Not that I didn't know this already, but my spouse is as well.
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And so it's been a really interesting topic of conversation for us and just a learning experience for both of us.
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If you are the holder or the glue, the reality is it carries with it a lot more of an emotional and mental toll.
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While if you are the one who is who is a doer, it typically does not come with that mental and emotional toll.
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And that's why there can be such a massive disconnect.
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So let's kind of walk through an example of what I mean by, you know, to kind of illustrate the difference of the holder versus the doer.
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Maybe it's been a week, you typically do the grocery shopping, but you're like, oh, we're, yeah, we're running out of milk.
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We need milk tomorrow.
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And so you ask your partner, hey, could you pick up milk on the way home?
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That is you asking them for the doing.
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And so your partner goes and picks up the milk.
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Now, there was all this stuff behind the scenes that's tied to the holder or the glue that isn't as easy to track as the person who went and picked up the milk.
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You noticed we're running low on this.
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You looked at your schedule to say, do I have time to go pick up the milk?
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You're realizing you can't because you've got 50 million things going on.
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So then you have to remember to ask.
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And then you might even have to check in that it actually happened.
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And then sometimes the doer
Load full transcript
maybe doesn't quite get it right and they got the wrong kind of milk, and now you're back dealing with that.
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So the fact is, even though the physical task, the doing, went to someone else, the holding of it and all the thoughts and the planning and the organizing and the noticing and the thinking and all of that, it stayed with you.
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And this is a pattern that I see people talking about more and more.
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And I think it's great that we're bringing this to the forefront.
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There'll be a situation where typically it's the woman in a household who is feeling overwhelmed with the juggling of all of the emotion and mental load and noticing, et cetera.
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And maybe her partner notices, okay, she's seeming a little stressed out, a little overwhelmed.
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And so they ask, hey, what can I do to help?
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The best of intentions, right?
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What can I do?
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Not what can I hold and manage, but what can I do?
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So just like the above example, right?
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Where she, you know, maybe, maybe you even delegate, hey, I need you to go to the grocery store and get this entire list of groceries.
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Now the partner's thinking, I helped.
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I went and did the grocery shopping.
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And the holder, the glue, is left feeling like, wow, I don't really feel any better.
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I thought I'd feel better because I got something off my list.
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And here's why that the holder is not feeling any better.
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The task wasn't really moved off her plate.
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The doing part was.
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Meaning she still took the time to figure out what do we need, probably even doing some meal planning, then creating the shopping list.
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Then when she hands the shopping list over, there's probably fielding of questions around the shopping list.
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What is this?
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What is that?
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Then perhaps the shopping happens, but if it's not happening regularly, products come back into the house that aren't the right product.
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So then there's regrouping when the granola bar that kid A does not eat is the one that was bought, right?
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And this happens often.
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And the grocery shopping is just one example of this.
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So again, all of this management of it, the noticing, the holding, the making of list, all of it, that's the heavy part.
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The easy part was the going and the doing.
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The doing was the very easy part.
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You go to the store, you buy the stuff that you come home.
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And this is the tricky thing with this whole area of people saying, Oh, if you're feeling overwhelmed, just ask for help.
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Because help often shows up as delegation, meaning take something off your list and ask for help.
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And in the example of this grocery shopping, that was an example of delegating.
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I'm giving you the doing, but the management behind the scenes does not ever actually leave your plate.
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This is why so many women get frustrated with like, no, I don't want you to ask me what to do.
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I want you to fully own something.
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I want you to own the noticing, the holding.
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I want you to be the glue for one part of our household.
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And so this is where that shift starts to happen.
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And I've talked about this difference before here on the episode of it isn't about delegation, right?
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Delegation doesn't lighten our load.
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What lightens our load is transferring the complete ownership, meaning you are no longer the glue for that specific category.
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Back to our grocery shopping example.
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The way you can truly not be the glue there means you're not making the list.
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You're not the one noticing what you're almost out of.
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You're not the one coordinating with other family members what are the right granola bars that you like this week, the scheduling of when it's going to be done, and coordinating that amongst plans.
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That is transferring of ownership.
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When you transfer ownership, meaning you are no longer the glue for something, it means that somebody else owns the entirety of it.
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The noticing, the tracking, the deciding, the remembering the consequences of it not getting done, right?
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And you are out of it completely.
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The more we can inside of homes and partnerships today, whether it's parent to children, whether it's co-parents, whatever it is, the more that we can start to share this glue, right?
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That we're recognizing no one person is the glue for everything, the lighter the load for everybody.
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Well, that's that's not true.
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The lighter the load is not for everybody because now some of the load is going elsewhere, but it creates so much more awareness, partnership, in it togetheredness, et cetera.
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And unfortunately, this is not something that we're really being taught that's being taught about in homes, that's being discussed openly.
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And so most women, all we're being told is delegate, ask for help.
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And then we're left wondering, why don't I feel any better?
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Why am I still tired?
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And then we end up going, it's just easier if I do it, right?
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Because the reality is it is, because we haven't transferred everything with that particular task over to someone.
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This has been fascinating here in our household this year.
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As I mentioned earlier, my husband has now become the glue in a very time-intensive part of our life.
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My mother-in-law has recently moved here close to us into assisted living.
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And he is now the glue.
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He is the holder for all of it.
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Her appointments, her medications, paperwork, phone calls, advocating all of it, all the stuff that often goes unnoticed that other people are managing.
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He's the one scheduling the things, managing the billing, catching something that maybe the facility missed.
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And he's the one in the evenings that's that's talking to me about concerns, worries, et cetera.
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He is 100% the glue.
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And I am not.
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I am now a doer in that part where sometimes there are tasks or things that I can step in and support.
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This has opened the door to really great conversations in our home because now there is a real understanding of being the glue, right?
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And all that goes, that goes into that.
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What I love about this is that we are now together experiencing, you know, the ride that is the ups and downs of being the glue stick.
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So if you are someone that is currently the holder for everything and you are feeling overwhelmed by it, I am here to tell you just simply asking for help is likely not going to fix that.
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It is time to actually get it completely off your plate.
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No more delegating.
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It's time to take the entirety of ownership and transfer it to someone else in your home.
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Delegating will keep the load on you.
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Transferring of ownership moves it off for good.
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So people always ask, but Megan, where do I start?
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Right?
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What if it's done wrong?
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Here's what
you're gonna do: you're gonna pick something that you do not have a strong emotional connection to the to how it looks on the other end.
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Pick something that requires noticing, manage, maintaining, scheduling, et cetera, and transfer the whole thing over, the entirety of it.
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And the best way to do that, instead of just saying, hey, I need you to manage a grocery, grocery shopping, right, is define what does that include?
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What is the definition of done?
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So it might be, hey, I need you to, you know, ask everybody in the house what their current snacks are.
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I need you to check the pantry to see what we're low on.
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I need you to do, you know, plan four dinners for the week, make the list, go do the shopping, come back.
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Now you're transferring everything: the noticing, the making, the managing, the scheduling, all of it.
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And that's a very different conversation than here's a list, go be the doer.
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This is now bringing in the holder and the glue into the conversation.
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So again, if you've been delegating a lot and you do not feel any less overwhelmed, delegating likely, rarely does it lighten our load.
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Transferring that ownership, right?
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That's what moves the weight.
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And now that you have kind of a word for what you've been looking for, you can start recognizing it.
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I see it all the time when I am simply delegating or looking for a doer versus noticing where are there pockets where I need to do full transferring of ownership, right?
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Because there's always room for both.
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Things where you're just the doer can be helpful and we need that, but it's not going to chip away at that overwhelm if that has been creeping up.
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And if you are looking for a really great way to maybe start those conversations with your partner, I highly, highly recommend getting a book by Dr.
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Morgan Cutlip called A Better Share.
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It's a fantastic book.
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I know a lot of couples that have read it together, and it really helps give great conversation, great talking points, et cetera, to really start working on untangling this you being the glue for absolutely everything in your household.
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So I hope you have a fantastic week and as always, happy planning.
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Getting on top of all things, time management, organization, and productivity doesn't have to stop just because this episode is over.
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If you are feeling overwhelmed, your calendar's out of control, or you're just running in a race that will never end in terms of your to-do list, I have great news for you.
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I have an app in both the App Store and Google Play called the Pink Bee.
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And it is chopped full of small but incredibly powerful trainings to help you get out of overwhelm.
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It includes my signature Ditch the Overwhelm training and introduction to my time management framework built specifically for women.
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So open up either your App Store or Google Play, do a search on the word the Pink Bee, all one word, and download the app to get started today.