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I loved this lightbulb moment/articulation by Oonagh Duncan, shared on Eleanor Beaton’s podcast. Let’s dig into it!
Other links you might enjoy:
✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.
🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
Full transcript:
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.
Hey. Hey Ian. Welcome back. Alright. Today’s episode is another one inspired by my apparently rampant listening to Eleanor Beaton’s podcast. And I wanted to talk about a gem she shared on an episode I was listening to that she had heard from a woman named Una Duncan. And Una Duncan had said, you can set a goal and make peace with the level of effort required to reach the goal.
Or you can get [00:01:00] clear about the level of effort you’re willing to put in and make peace with the result that you get. It’s the peace that counts. And I love this point. I truly believe that one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves is own where we want our time to go and then put things in action to help us get there.
I think we need to own where we are in life, like what chapter of life we’re in. How we wanna spend our time in that chapter of life. And then, as I said, make moves to bring those plans to life. So an example, let’s say you have a big career goal in 2026. It’s really clear what you wanna do in your career.
You’re really going for that promotion, that next step to get put on that project, whatever it is. If that is your goal in 2026, you need to accept and own that, that next year of time. Is going to likely be overindexed towards work. You need to accept the reality that because of the result [00:02:00] that you want, your efforts are going to be required more to index towards work, and because of limited time, that’s going to have implications on other things.
It would look like having conversations with the important people around you about what your goal is and what the implications might be on everyone’s life. It would be getting creative about how you all could make life easier for everyone over the next year. It can look like building in recovery time after the next year and maybe along the way to help you sustain.
It looks like anticipating and accepting that your efforts and time won’t be going to other areas of life as much, and it looks like planning realistically about how you will still do the things that do light you up and bring you joy and that are important to you. Even though they’ll be on somewhat of a reduced schedule.
So for example, instead of four workouts a week, you might be like, I’m gonna be doing two workouts a week. [00:03:00] Instead of going to all school events that you typically have. You pick the two school events that mean the most to your child and maybe to you, and then you line up other people to cover those other events.
Things like that where you’re like, I’m just accepting that this year’s gonna look different. That’s gonna require different things, and I’m gonna get practical with what that means. Not just I’m gonna kind of lean out of motherhood or working out a bit. What does that mean in getting practical about it?
That all is how you really own the implications of the result that you’re looking for. That’s an example of what Unah Duncan says is you can set a goal and make peace with the level of effort required to reach that goal. All of those things, the proactive planning that will make the next year less frantic and help you still feel on top of things and enjoy your life.
All of that are possible because you didn’t just set the goal, you accepted the effort, which allowed you to then think beyond it, embrace the [00:04:00] effort and what it means, and then still get to somewhere that you wanna go that feels okay, that helps life feel easier. And I want you to just to kind of bring this to life a little bit, like think about the alternative.
You decide that you’re going to gun it at work, but you don’t make space for that. You don’t change your capacity in any way. You don’t whittle down capacity in other parts of your life to free up capacity in your work life. You expect yourself to show up just as you had before ’cause you just didn’t really own.
What this result requires, requires more effort, which does come from other places of your limited time and energy. Because of that, you feel like you’re failing at all of it. You’re scrambling to make it to kid events or something similar, something along those lines, even though you’ve ramped it things up at work intentionally.
When you can’t make an event like that, you’re scrambling to find coverage or canceling last minute on a different type of event or whatever it might be, and on and on and on. Do you see and feel [00:05:00] that difference? Now, I wanna flip to a different example in a different way. You could decide that during this phase of life, you want or need to lean into a different, like non-work part of life, whether it’s kids or aging family or your own health or a hobby or something that you’re trying to do, and then that’s important to you during this phase of life.
That might be for six months, it might be for three months, it could be for two years, whatever it looks like. And that means that the effort you are able to put into your Workfront is going to be reduced. It will be less like work will be less of a primary focus and more of, you know, I’m just gonna do work well enough to do my job.
Okay. And almost like pause any further progression or big progression for a bit during this phase intentionally so that you are freeing up capacity for these other important things in your life. Because again, our time and energy is limited and we just have to embrace that and work with it and not live in denial of it.
[00:06:00] So. If you accept that the efforts you’re going to put put into work are reduced, then you have to accept the results at work that that might lead to this time period. Likely is not going to be the time of accolades and promotions and pay raises, but you’re deciding that’s okay because you’ve decided what you want this time to be and own the level of effort that means you’re going to put into work.
You’ve made peace with the result that you get. Allah Duncan, again, I want you to compare it to the alternative. You decide that during this period of time, this specific period of time, whatever it is, you’re going to lean into that other thing, whether it’s motherhood, time with parents, personal goal, all of that, but you don’t accept the implications of that on the other parts of your life.
So you have the same expectations of yourself at work. And you don’t adjust your approach to work. In light of that, you just keep saying yes to everything. You keep volunteering for everything and all that kind of stuff. [00:07:00] As a result, you are over committed and you feel frantic and stretched too thin all the time.
You feel like you’re failing everywhere and you are deeply defeated when you don’t get that promotion or that raise. In that scenario, you didn’t really own the decision. Sure, you made the decision, but then you didn’t. Really think it through and anticipate the ripple effects of that reduced effort in the workspace and the result that you would get in it.
But if you had, you could have gone through that year feeling a lot more ownership and peace. You wouldn’t be surprised when you didn’t get the promotion, the raise, all of that. It was an intentional choice that you made. It was part of your plan, and you can focus on the benefits that you got elsewhere in your life because you made that decision.
There are so many scenarios that this could apply in. You know, it kind of bothers me that I talk about the workout context because I think it’s just so stereotypical around this, especially around this time of year. But it’s a similar thing [00:08:00] here, and I’m sure Una Duncan works in that space, so it might be what she was referring to.
But if you want a certain result, like from your workouts, then you need to put in the effort required versus if you’re like, life is really busy right now and I only have X amount of time to workout. You’re making a decision about your efforts on the working out, then you just make peace with the results.
You’re not gonna get the same results as the other one, but you’re still gonna get results. The tricky part, the part where we don’t have peace, that we feel scrambling and frantic and disappointed and defeated is when we either can’t or don’t want to put in the effort required to get the result, but we don’t accept that and so we hold ourself to the result standards, even though we’re not putting in the effort to get there.
Instead, we really have to own either the result that we want and the efforts that are required for that, or the efforts we can put in and then accept the result coming from that. And as Una Duncan said, it is the piece [00:09:00] that counts. It is the ownership of that and the piece that follows. That counts. I really believe.
Our suffering happens when we either set a goal and can’t, or don’t want to give the effort required or flip side only have so much effort to give to something and still hold ourselves to the results we’d get if we had more effort to give. And our lives are so full and our brains are so busy being focused on all the things that I think we really don’t know when we’re doing this.
We often don’t know when we’re doing this to ourselves. We are not clear on what effort we could realistically give to something or what effort would be required to get it. So we don’t set ourselves up well to have the required capacity for the effort or give ourselves a chance to intentionally decide we actually don’t want to do it because like the effort would be too much, or we want to do a [00:10:00] reduced version of it with an effort that we can give.
To clarify what I mean here is if it were clear, if you had the clarity of this is the result I want, and this is the effort required and this is how I see its implications on everything else, we’d be good. Or this is, I see that I don’t have the time or availability to give to the result I want, so I’m gonna do this reduced version and then get the result that I want.
I think if we had the clarity, we could manage it that way. I think the problem is we often don’t have the clarity. We don’t know what our capacity is, so we certainly don’t know what it is for a specific goal. We don’t see how the effort required for a specific goal interacts with everything else, so we don’t know if we could give it full effort or not.
And that lack of clarity really causes that suffering because we’re holding ourselves to standards and we can’t put the effort in and so on. This to me is where the bright method [00:11:00] in using a calendar shines because it is the only way I know of to help you take this concept and really bring it to life within the system to really be able to analyze, okay, I really want this result.
What will that require? Let me plot it out in my calendar. Let me see how that interacts with the rest of life. That will help me decide one if I want it. Two. If I do, what are the implications? What do I need to anticipate? What can we get for support? Because these are our pain points and so on. On the flip side, if you decide you don’t want or can’t do that full result, ideal life thing, you can reduce the effort that you put in and see, this is gonna take me longer, and that’s okay.
This goal that I set for myself, you know, in January or whenever. I can’t give it the effort. It’s required. So instead of, yeah, asking me to get to where I wanna go in six months like I originally [00:12:00] wanted, maybe it’s gonna take me longer, but it’s gonna take me 18 months or two years. But life along that whole way is gonna feel a whole lot better because I’m planning it more realistically.
’cause I can see how the effort interacts with everything else in my calendar. The calendar allows you to see the effort, even the tentative effort as you’re making decisions, and see it alongside all the other things you are doing in your life. You can see the implications of it and what would need to be shifted or eliminated to accommodate it and evaluate how you feel about that on the front end.
Once you make your decision, you can do that proactive work to help you own that decision. Well, you can see where conflicts are ahead of time and can manage them with less scramble. You can manage your capacity for the thing you want, including freeing up capacity from other parts of your life.
Intentionally. You can build and recovery time when it’s needed along the way, and after that big push. You can see where you’ll need more childcare. You can remind future you, when you wanna [00:13:00] shift your approach. It can often be like hard to, if you really go for a career goal and you know you have to really push yourself for the next year, it can be sometimes hard to get out of that.
Eventually you kinda almost forget. You just keep going. So you can even use your calendar to remind future you in a year, Hey, start down shifting a month later. Are we down shifting? What are we doing about this two months later? Same thing. To help yourself really make this maybe a push period, but then also know that you’re gonna help yourself get out of it.
Whatever you aim for, you can calendar it. So that one, it’s not all in your head per usual, but also so it doesn’t get forgotten as time goes on and helps you manage all those conflicts that will come from it and so much more so whether you use the Bright Method or a different system. Although candidly, I don’t know of another system that can do this in this way.
I hope as we wrap up this year and head into the next year and just on an ongoing basis going forward, we all get the clarity about what we want in terms of the [00:14:00] goals that we have, the things that we’re working towards, but also the effort we are willing to give to those things so that we can own both of those things.
I really hope you have a system that helps you evaluate your approaches, your options, and then bring the decision, like the things that you decide to do. Bring them to life in a way that helps you own them. Because I really do believe in Duncan’s statement that the piece is really what counts, and that comes from owning the goals and the efforts and being realistic on those fronts.
It’s pretty game changing. Well, thank you for noodling on that. I think that it’s weirdly fun. I’d love to hear what, what you think. And as a side note, before I close out, I got some emails recently from clients that have meant a lot to me and I just wanna share them with you to encourage you to set up the system in your own life.
Set up the Bright method in your own life. They’re two different ones. I do wanna clarify that the Bright Method is not just for moms, it is for all working women, but the first one just happens to be from a mom. So just know [00:15:00] that. And the first one is she said. You are the best. This is such a phenomenal community.
I feel like you strike the balance of work slash mom slash life so well. So many groups or people anchor so hard to either one of our identities, and this is one of the first times I feel like I am in a space where I can acknowledge that while I can’t have it all, I do wanna be both a great mom, wife, friend, and a great leader.
Thank you. Another one. She said, I’ve already had the confidence to ask if certain tasks take priority, how tasks fit in others, et cetera. And I feel so much more confident at work. It’s so cool. So if you’re ready to learn the Fulbright method, and I hope that you are, you can jump in right now at kelly nolan.com/bright.
Let’s get you in there so you can kick off 2026 strong and be able to own your own time now and for years to come. I’ll see you in there and I’ll catch you in the next [00:16:00] episode.
Links you might enjoy:
✨ The full Bright Method™️ program If you’re ready for a full time management system that’s realistic, sustainable, and dare I say… fun, check out the Bright Method program. It’s helped hundreds of professional women take back control of their time—and their peace of mind.
🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.
📱 Follow me on Instagram Get bite-sized, real-life time management tips for working women—like reminders to set mail holds before travel, anonymous day-in-the-life calendars from other professional women, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I manage my own time.
