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SNM237: Take Control Of Your Day with Megan Sumrell

• Jonathan Green : Bestselling Author, Tropical Island Entrepreneur, 7-Figure Blogger

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Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.

Today's guest is Megan Sumrell, a Founder, The Pink Bee, From Quality Architect to Business Owner: Harnessing 2 Decades of Experience and Expertise in Turning Chaos into Harmony. Are you ready to take your business to the next level? With over 20 years in the software and IT industry and a wealth of certifications and knowledge, She is here to help. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Certified Scrum Trainer, She have the experience and expertise to create systems and processes that will transform your chaos into a harmonious and efficient workflow.

In this episode, Megan highlights Embracing a Passion for Time Management: A Journey from Personal Need to Expertise.

Notable Quotes

-       " Just focus on those top three until they're done and then work on everything else." - [Megan Sumrell]    

-       " Give yourself some space to catch back up " - [Megan Sumrell]

-       "You get to be proactive instead of putting out fires." - [Megan Sumrell]

-       "It's gonna be unique for, for every person." - [Megan Sumrell]

-       "The thing that's really important is to exactly know what your strength and weaknesses."  - [Jonathan Green]

-       "Every entrepreneur, they start throwing job or side hustles." - [Jonathan Green]

-       “Best inventions come from things that we need in our own lives.” - [Jonathan Green]

Connect with Megan Sumrell

Connect with Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green: Take control of your day with time management expert Megan Sorell on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by click up In today's digital world, keeping track of all your tasks, projects, and employees can become overwhelming. Use the same project management tool that I use for my team for free.

servicemaster.com/click up. Are you 

Megan Sumrell: tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you've come to the right. Welcome to Serve No Master Podcast, where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep.

Presented. Live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now, here's 

Jonathan Green: your host. I'm really excited to, how about this topic, because time management is an area where I am terrible. So I'm really interested, I guess, in how your journey began, how you first decided, hey, this is my passion.

I want to be known for time. 

Megan Sumrell: Yeah, it certainly was not my, you know, the answer to the question that I was asked in third grade, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Uh, time management expert was not what, what came rolling out it actually, I think for so many of us at start our own businesses, it came out of a, a personal need.

Um, I had been working in the corporate tech arena for over 20 years, and my area of expertise there was really going into large scale, uh, large scale software organizations. and teaching them how to basically create harmony out of chaos. So I have a lot of training and background in continuous improvement, process improvement, um, optimizations.

Tons of certifications around that. Um, and got to a stage in life where, um, I was a new mom juggling a full-time career, a toddler, and was realizing that all of the kind of traditional, more corporate type time management strategies just weren't working for me anymore. Um, had a very pivotal day when my daughter was about three, when I had her at the park, and the woman next to me just casually asked, what do you do for fun?

And I realized I didn't have an answer and I couldn't remember the last time I had done anything for fun. It was pretty much wake up work, rinse, repeat, try and get through the task list. Um, so I set out on a way, personally to solve this problem for myself, applying all of the principles, um, and trainings I had, you know, devoted my life to for 20 years.

Put it towards how do I manage and plan my time and calendar? Um, friends and families started noticing like, wow, you, you look rested. You look so much happier. What are you doing? So I started teaching some, some local business owners here in the North Carolina area. Um, and after seeing their successes, I realized this really was what my calling in life was.

And so I, I left my corporate career behind, and I have been fully invested in this ever since. 

Jonathan Green: It sounds like an amazing journey and often the best inventions come from things that we need in our own lives. What do you think most people get wrong when it comes to building their own schedules? Why do most people mismanage their own time?

Yeah, I 

Megan Sumrell: think the, the biggest failure that I see, and unfortunately it's um, it's one that the planning and productivity community themselves are, are kind of spearheading, um, well, there's actually two things. The first is this constant approach. Of working from a daily schedule or a daily task list, meaning you start each day asking the question like, what do I need to get done today?

And if you are starting your day in that state, whether you realize it or not, it's kind of too late and you're gonna be stuck in a state of reaction all day long where what you're gonna be tackling is the next thing that you're thinking of, right? So if I wake up and kind of go, okay, what do I need to do today?

I'm gonna haphazardly create a list. It's probably not gonna be prioritized. Um, it's not gonna be very intentional, and I'm not gonna maximize efficiencies by maybe doing things in a certain order or grouping things together. But unfortunately, so many people teach the style of wake up, do your brain dump, circle your top three, and then we're somehow supposed to magical.

Just focus on those top three until they're done and then work on everything else when the fact is so many of us, particularly if you're a business owner, we're living such integrated lives, right? Where we don't go into an office and sit down where we have eight hours of uninterrupted time just to work.

Um, so one of the fundamental shifts that I like to really encourage people to make, and it's the foundation of everything I teach. Is to step away from this daily planning daily task list life and move into a weekly planning structure where we actually map out our entire week ahead of time, um, creating specific routines to maximize efficiencies there.

Um, and, and I, the second real failure is this push for work life balance. Um, that seems to be the movement that everyone's getting behind. And what's interesting is whenever. Google work life balance to look for, you know, images around it. What you're actually seeing is people who are multitasking. So you'll see the picture of maybe the parent holding their kid while they're working and they're both smiling and having a great time.

Like that's not reality for most of us. Um, or you're seeing somebody who's working while grocery shopping or caregiving while, you know, doing something else. And so we keep saying balance, but what we're. Subtly telling people is you need to be doing everything equally, cuz that's what balance means is equal.

So this quest for what I think the intent of work life balance was, was a good one. Which was, hey, we need to make sure we're not, you know, constantly working 24 7. What we're actually starting to, to teach people is that you need to be doing multiple things at once, all day long in order to be successful.

And that's just a recipe for burnout. 

Jonathan Green: It's really interesting. So I think what people really want is work life separation. Right? A barrier between when you're at home and when you're working. So it's the exact opposite. Absolutely. It is interesting cuz there's always these new, big ideas and trends and I remember when everyone was like, multitasking is gonna change the world.

And then every study five years out later it came out and said, multitasking means you're terrible at everything. It's like, do everything okay and nothing great multitasking. I, I'm very interested because a lot of people I talk to have really different ways of scheduling their days. I know some people that have their days scheduled out to the minute, and sometimes I interview people like that.

Yeah. Like it gives me shivers. That's my nightmare. That's the exact opposite of the way I live my life, because I never know what's gonna happen. So for example, what if I'm having great conversation with you and I go, oh, I have you back to back with my next podcast interview. You gotta go right? You can't do an effective job.

And so I often see people schedule that way. Most of my family's lawyers and they schedule their day out every three minutes. The way they bill is every, sure, every 180 seconds is a billing cycle. So they have to constantly write down what they're doing. If you go to the bathroom, it has to be three minutes or six minutes.

Can't be five minutes cuz that's not how you build. Sounds like a nightmare. Exactly. My sister loves it. It's my nightmare. And so I've always been interested in people that are total heavy schedulers. And so I wonder, there's so many systems now, there's all these different time management systems and they're huge amounts of time to master it and learn it.

And I wonder if it's, how does someone know what's the right system for them? Cause I did notice on your website, a lot of your language says it's time management for women. And I wonder if there's a difference between the way men and women approach time. So I'd be interested in that as. 

Megan Sumrell: Yeah. So for me, I, I don't think it's so much that men and women in my experience, approach time differently.

It's that our, our brains are wired differently. They're not, neither one's better, neither one's worse. It's just different. I think we can all agree on that and typically for most of the women that I work with, um, I, I used to mistakenly say women are better multitaskers than men, which is completely untrue statement.

And my husband proves that to the fullest with his job. Um, but what it, what, what I realized the message I was trying to get across is women tend to carry more roles or kind of the emotional load of the household. Typically more than the male counterpart does, um, with, in terms of running all of the scheduling for, particularly if they have children.

So running all of the scheduling for the doctors, the dentists, the orthodontists, the pediatricians, the which days are off, all of that. And so knowing that typically there is one person in the household that is. Kind of managing that, that that takes a whole new level of things that need to be considered when you're planning and managing your time.

Um, and so it's not so much that we approach time differently, we're just juggling different types of roles and responsibilities. Um, and so for most women, and for a number of men that also don't wanna have their day planned out, we need to. Create plans that allow us to feel confident at the start of the week that, hey, the most important things are gonna get done.

I have a clear path to do it. I have wiggle room if I need it. And then most importantly, I have the right level of flexibility. Built into my schedule based on my current stage of life. So I know I've had stages of life where I could pretty much predict how my day was gonna go. Things weren't gonna come in and interrupt me.

I am currently on a stage of life, or that is not my reality. And so I need to have a planning system that accommodates exactly how much uncertainty do I need to build in. Um, but more importantly is to have a planning system that you can. As your life goes through all those different cycles. Um, so this is really at the foundation of the planning system I've put in place.

Is one that, hey, if you wanna schedule out every minute of your day, you can just, you can use this system and do that. But if that is not working for you and that's not the reality of your life right now, you can still use the same system. But the output, what your weekly plan looks like versus what mine looks like.

Are going to be completely different because our inputs are completely different. And so to me that's really the test of a great system is can you put in different inputs, use the same system, and then create unique outputs for each person. So that's really what I have been, um, kind of laser focused on for the last several years.

Jonathan Green: So there's a wall, a lot of entrepreneurs. Every entrepreneur, they start throwing job or side hustles. A lot of people call it now, and the first dream is to quit their main job and you go from having two hours a day to having eight hours a day and their productivity collapses. This is the same thing that happened about six years ago.

Everyone was becoming a travel blogger, and as soon as travel bloggers were stopped treating like a business and the blog collapsed. That's why there's almost no active travel blogs right now. So people have this, it's almost like more available time. It's the curse of getting what you. That more of all time means you go, oh, I've got eight hours to do it instead of two hours and your efficiency drops and your focus level drops.

How can people get prepared for that and what's the best way to handle that? Like shock to the system? Cause you think more time I'll get four times more work done, which usually you get the same amount of work done in four times as much time. Yeah, 

Megan Sumrell: and I think especially when, when you make that first transition, right, of, okay, I've been working a full-time job and building this business on the side, and then finally you go all into the business first.

Recognize, give yourself some space to catch back up. Chances are you are exhausted at that stage. I don't know any entrepreneur, myself included, that didn't when they find, when you finally make that push and now you're not building two things at once. Give yourself a little breathing room right out of the gate to kind of rest and recover as you move into the next stage of now full-time business owner.

Um, I think that the, the, the complaint or the problem that I hear so many people talking about, which is exactly what you are, is we procrastinate, right? Because like before, it's like, well, I've only got two hours, and you knew that. So it's like, well, I gotta get it done, or it doesn't happen. Now suddenly you look at this expansive day and you wake up at 9:00 AM and you're like, well, I'm not in the mood to do that.

I'll quote, do it later. Well later just keeps coming and going, and things don't get done. And this is why, uh, weekly planning is so critical. For people that like myself, that truly do get to dictate how I'm spending my time. I get to decide at nine o'clock in the morning if I'm working or not. Right? But when you create a weekly plan that accommodates the realities of your current commitments, so what have you already committed to Like, like this phone call, right?

Cause we all have those kinds of appointments. We tend to honor those. But then also acknowledging where do you have pockets of your day? Where you are awake, you're busy, but you know you can't be working on your business. So for instance, if you are someone that has a family, maybe you've got that pocket of time in the morning from six to eight where you're really busy, but you can't be working on your business cuz you're breakfast, packing, lunches, school, all that kind of stuff.

Um, and when we can plug that into our weekly plan with the intent of understanding how much time do I really have to work? Because we often think if I were to look at my calendar and just look at my appointments for the week, I might come outta that exercise and say, look, I've got 25 hours to work on my business.

But then when I plug in, well, yeah, but I'm always doing this from six to eight, or I've got this activity from three to four, and now suddenly I might realize, you know what? I actually only have 12, and so if I only have 12, and then I've got my prioritized tasks for the week. With a rough idea of exactly when I'm going to be working on.

Then what happens on Tuesday morning at nine o'clock when I see that I've scheduled time to maybe write some blog posts, and I'm not in the mood to write blog posts because I don't like writing blog posts, but I look at what I've scheduled out for the rest of my week. I might see if I don't do this now, there actually isn't a better time for me to do it this week, or if I move it to do it later than what I was going to do in that time is now gonna get pushed.

So we need to create that visual cue for ourselves to understand that there is a domino effect if we continue to put. The things that we don't wanna do and, and constantly live in this state of, I'll get to it later. And so again, this is why I am, am such an advocate for laying out these weekly plans, cuz it helps us stay focused as business owners and prevent that kind of procrastination cycle.

Jonathan Green: So there's a lot of studies that show, like people at full-time jobs send like six hours a day checking email like they spend. 70% of the day doing things that are inefficient. And this is one of the first things I learned to only check your email once a day. And there's this thing that can happen to people where, especially if you check your email at the start of your day, you're checking your email, then you're checking your social media, and suddenly it's lunchtime that we lose.

And you sit there and you go, I've been at my desk for four hours and I couldn't tell you what I've done. There's this lack of a fill of accomplishment. And the things you've done, they didn't matter or they weren't inefficient. How can or weren't efficient? How can someone. Determine maybe the 80 20 or what's the most important thing to be working on, and is it something they should reflect on at the end of the week, or is it something they should try to predict at the start of the week so that they can start to push away the tasks that don't matter?

And sometimes, at least for me, sometimes the things I realize that don't matter to my business, like giving them up, it's like, oh, that's my favorite thing to do, but doesn't make any money. That's sometimes a hard conversation to have with. 

Megan Sumrell: Yeah, it is. And so that's, that's part of the weekly planning process up front is really having, and I, I coach people to have what I call my master backlog.

So, and I've got kind of two tasks that we're working from two categories of tasks that as business owners, we work from every single week. One is. These are the recurring things that I do every week or every day that I know matters in my business. Um, you know, these are either the revenue generating or customer satisfaction type things.

So maybe you, uh, you know, record a podcast every week or write a newsletter every week. You know, all of those rinse and repeat recurring tasks. Then we all have those things that are those projects, right? The new thing that we wanna create, the thing that we wanna put in place, uh, maybe the book that you wanna write or whatever the case may be.

These two, that that list of projects or one off tasks should always be within priority order so that when you are sitting down, what we wanna avoid is in the moment decision making. Like, oh, I've got got a chunk of time. Let me figure out what I wanna work on. Cause then we waste 20 minutes trying to decide, and then we're pulling up our phone, and now we're staring at Instagram reels for 45 minutes.

Right? So when we have this prioritized list and when we're creating our weekly plan, we're looking at that. We're saying, okay, here's the top three or three or five or however many on here. Is there availability for me to work on those these week? And then we start to pencil in and I always say pencil because life happens, right?

Um, which days, what times we're gonna be working on them so that if suddenly you're presented with a pocket of time and you have time to actually get something done, instead of sitting down and trying to figure out what is it I'm gonna work on? You've already identified before the week has even started.

These were the things that I intentionally thought through and said are the things that are going to move the needle in my business. Now with those recurring tasks, as you mentioned, like with email, um, you know, I am one. I can't just do email once a day, but I do check email three times a day and that's it.

And then same with all other messaging. Applications. My phone has zero notifications and it's actually on mute at all times. Uh, you can set up your mobile device. I like to tell people you can set it up so it only talks to you when you've told it that it should. So for me, in my life, my phone never flash.

And never makes a noise unless it is a family member or a school calling me. This way, what? Anytime I'm sitting down to work, I know if my phone makes a noise, it's cuz I told it. This is important enough to interrupt me. Then I have set pockets of time, three times a day to go in and check and process my email.

Go in and check any, you know, messaging apps, whether it's, you know, dms on Instagram or Facebook or whatever, whatever tools you're using for your business. And it's time blocked. So I do that three times a day, 20 minutes a day. And then when that 20 minutes is up, All of those things get shut back down.

Email gets turned off again. Um, and for people new to this, it sounds very scary and they're like, I can't turn off. Like, what if, you know, there are always so words, you're gonna miss something. Well, unless you're running a business where you're truly saving lives, you can step away from responding to messages for a few hours, and you'll find that you can process them so much faster doing them all at once than jumping in and out every 15 minutes to respond to those kind of message.

Jonathan Green: It's, I remember when I first started in my business, I used to have every email address hooked up to my phone and I would get the phantom buzz where you think it buzz, but it didn't cuz I was like expecting so many messages. And it's interesting cause now I'm the same way. I have no, my phone's always on mute.

The only time I turn on the sound is if I, I think I turn on the sound maybe once a month if I'm like expecting a call in the middle of the night and I don't wanna sleep. That's the only time. And I don't even have, I've, you know, I have several different phones for different projects and I don't even have my work email on my family phone.

I don't have my personal email on my work phone. And there is this idea we get, especially when you're first starting out or if you're doing client work, where it's always an emergency. And the thing I learned, and this is a lesson I learned from my dad who was a lawyer, he's like, it's always an emergency until it's on their desk.

And I remember I once had a client, I was working on project for him. He goes, I need this done. Got me to push another client back. He goes, this is an emergency. I need it done. And it sat on his desk for full year. He didn't look at the project for an entire 12 months. That was an emergency. So we often think, uh, that things are important when they're not.

We have a trouble prioritizing or understanding that it's not really an emergency. Right? Unless you're a doctor or unless you have something where you have to respond within a minute. Like with um, our tech support chat, you have to respond really quickly cause people close the chat bubble within a minute.

That's the only thing in my entire business of everything I do, where we have to respond quickly. And that's not me managing that bubble anymore. But another thing people do is we go in the other direction rather than underworking, we overwork or we go, oh, I have to finish every project as quickly as I can.

And we put in these massive hours in marathons and I'm guilty of this, of where I'll wanna do an entire project and I'll shoot it all in one day and then I'll be sick for a week. Like I'll get the flu. I used to get the flu all the time from overworking and it's really hard. Yeah. To quickly create the balance.

Like I'm in a place now where, you know, I don't really work on Mondays cuz this is when I shoot all of my interviews. And so I know I'm doing a lot of videos. That's when I do all my live trainings on Mondays. And so I don't pressure myself, but for a long time I wouldn't have been five years ago, two years ago probably I wouldn't have been able to do this.

So how can people who are the other end of the spectrum, rather than going, oh, with eight hours I'm wasting time, they're going eight hours, I'm. Guns blazing all day. Oh, 20 . I have to grow our business. We have to sacrifice those things to 

Megan Sumrell: be successful. Yeah, and I think it's so important for people to realize it doesn't have to be one or the other.

You can't have an, and you can have a thriving, successful business. And be a well rested, um, you know, feeling full, well rounded individual. Um, that's why, you know, the hashtag I use instead of work life balance is you can have work life harmony and harmony means you get to be present in whatever you're doing.

You get to be proactive instead of putting out fires, and you get to be purposeful so that you, meaning you have things for yourself, you can answer the question, what do I do for fun? So if you are currently at that stage where it's just like, go, go, go. And I, I was there a, a long time ago. Um, here is what I would encourage you to do is to start off by picking what, where will you define.

Nonworking hours for the upcoming week. So when I was, you know, first building a business, I was still working full-time, young child at home. And then of course, what most of us do is default to using our evenings to build up a business, right? So this was no longer sustainable. So we started out by saying, okay, I will pick two nights a.

I do not work at, you know, as soon as dinner's over, everything is off. The family knew when those nights were. We would plan family time together, and then on the nights that I was working, then my family wasn't quite so frustrated because we did have those pockets of time. So I started small. I started with two nights a week, I do not work.

Then it went to three nights a week and all day Sunday. I do not work. And so you can kind of slowly start building in these pockets of time. Um, because for most people it's way too hard to shift and say, I'm just not, uh, total life transformation. I'm going from working 20 hours down to eight. So start small and grow from there.

Um, I am now at a point from doing this for several years. I work four and a half hours a day on school days only. And then I don't work at night and I don't work on the weekends and I take a month off every summer, um, and run a very successful business in that pocket of time. Um, but it was a transition, um, for me slowly putting those, those processes in place, training myself, um, and realizing, you know, back to your, everything's an emergency.

We almost have to live it to realize, look, I didn't work for a. And nothing bad happened and my business is still growing. So it kind of feeds on itself. And you will find that the more time you start taking off and the more you start creating that harmony in your life, the more you will crave it. Um, and it just continues to feed on itself.

And it doesn't have to be an OR situation. You don't have to have a successful. Or you know, a healthy lifestyle, you can have both at 

the 

Jonathan Green: same time. Really interesting cuz I remember when my business started to thrive, my dad gave me piece of advice. He goes, don't work more than six and a half days a week.

And I was like, whoa. That's, he's like, do only a half day on . I was like, that's when you know one workaholic is giving advice to someone else who's like a workaholic in training. And um, it is, I think the thing that's really important is to exactly know what your strength and weaknesses. Like I know some people, they only work Mondays to Fridays.

They don't work on their business at all on the weekends. They don't check work emails or anything. I can't do that. Like I could never operate that way. I have to at least be aware of what's going on, cuz I've had emergencies happen on Sunday. On a Sunday, my website, my membership 

Megan Sumrell: platform. And that's the thing that depends on your business too, right?

Yeah. Yeah, if you're running a tech platform, you don't necessarily get to, you know, someone's working 

Jonathan Green: on the weekends , right? So at least need to be aware of if something happens. As much as I'm not working, like I remember going on vacations and my dad was always working while we're on vacation and we didn't understand why he's sitting by the pool working.

And now of course that's me because, you know, finding out work life balance and I have four kids and maybe number five is on the way. We're waiting to find out. So, Time with each kid requires an extra thing and there's a lot of extra balances. Actually, my complexity has gone up as we've had more children.

I'm like, oh, am I being a good dad to each of them? Absolutely. And that kind of factors in. And of course we live a very different lifestyle, living remotely. We have a pool at the house. We live on a tropical island. Everyone's on vacation all the time. So finding those balances. But it is that thing of figuring out am I a Monday to Friday person?

And some people are, they work Monday to Friday, ar I could never work at eight hour shift. I can't work like. And I was like, I would rather work five 

Megan Sumrell: hours a day. I can't anymore now. I'd been so long that I have that now. If I try to, I'm like, whew, I can't do it. . I 

Jonathan Green: would rather work five hours a day, seven days a week.

And that was like a decision I made. I said, oh, I can work much shorter hours every day so that I can be available. You know, I haven't missed any moment. I was there for every kid's first steps, every kid's potty training, every kid's first word, all four of 'em. The first word was, I won all with all of them and like being there is like really important.

Yeah. That makes 

Megan Sumrell: every mom out there gets so 

Jonathan Green: frustrated, you know, being there for those moments. It was like the most, cuz that was my one regret for my childhood was that my dad wasn't there all the time. It was there for all the highlights. He was at every sports event, but I was like, I wanna be home.

That's why I work from home. But it is important I think for people to know. How they operate and sometimes we try to, yeah. And 

Megan Sumrell: it's gonna be unique for, for every person. Like I know some people who thrive working in the evenings and not in the mornings morning is their downtime. I'm, I am a morning person, so I'm not the quality of what I produce at night.

it's not good. So it just, it, it aligns better for me that I would rather get up and work very early in the morning and not work at night, whereas other, other people would, would flip that story because again, that's what works better with their body rhythm. So yeah, it's not, and this is what's so important with time management, if, if anyone is telling you, you have to.

You know, get up at 5:00 AM To be successful, you have to journal in the morning to be a productive entrepreneur. Anybody who's saying you have to, um, I would, I would say step away from that because every single person's body chemistry, body rhythms, home life. Lifestyles businesses are so uniquely different that you need to give yourself the flexibility and freedom to define what are, what's gonna work for you.

What are your core values? Um, and how does that work within your entire, you know, home life situation 

Jonathan Green: as well. I think that a lot of people make a mistake of going, this is the person I want to be. Like, I like their time management strategy, so I'm gonna copy their. And I've seen this happen, do it as a writer.

I've written a lot of books and kind of how I got well known as a ghost writer and writer, and a lot of people think all writers write a certain way. Every person I talk to has a preconcept, and I've never met another writer who writes the way I do, and I've never met two writers who write the same way as each other.

Everyone has a completely different process. Morning, evening, longhand, computer, laptop only at home. Only this, you know, I had a friend who could only write when he was like in a bar during the day on like, um, a high stool seat. And I was like, that my spine would shatter. Like that's my physical and like nightmare.

Like, so it's noisy, it's, it's dirty, it's sticky, and you're sitting on a stool, which is the most uncomfortable place to sit on a stool. And like, I, I went with him one time, I was like, oh, I'll join you. And I was like, Nope. This is my. So, but there's this preconception that, oh, the person I look up to or follow, I have to replicate.

And I think it's important for people to realize, no, you have to take their ideas and then modify it to you and your lifestyle. Because my lifestyle was different. I used to work during the day for a while. Now I only work nights cuz I wanna work when my kids are asleep. So I'm there for them all day from when they wake up, when they go to bed.

But yeah, sometimes you hear this advice, especially I know people who follow a couple of certain people, like, oh, you have to get up at four 30 to be. And it's like some people do not get getting the whole morning 

Megan Sumrell: routine thing. Yeah, 

Jonathan Green: I, um, but not 

for 

Megan Sumrell: every, No. And so one of the things I teach in my program is how to create a meaningful morning routine.

And the first thing that we do through it is I guide, I, I found a very interesting study that was done years ago, um, that based on your, that the old school Meyers Briggs personality type, you know, the Ines fjs, what, whatever you are, based on your personality type. There actually are very set things that you should and should not do in the morning because it will set you up for a total disaster.

And so what's interesting is when you go like research, you know, product or entrepreneur morning routines or highly productive morning routines, it's, it's, they almost all look the same. You're getting up at four 30 or five. You're meditating, you're journaling, you're doing yoga, you're, you know, all this quiet stuff for two hours.

And if you are an extrovert, like that could be the worst way for you to start your day, um, and the realities of your home life. Well, what if you have an infant? Who you know is, is waking up every three, like how are the heck are you supposed to make that work? And so that's one of the exercises I take people through is first we understand what is your morning routine personality type, and then based on that, and then based on what are kind of your boundaries, what are the realities of your morning?

Or do you have certain, you know, do you have to get kids out the door to school at a certain time or what whatnot. Then we craft what is a morning routine that's actually going to serve you. And it might only be 10 minutes for one person and it might be 60 minutes for another. Um, but give yourself that.

Um, I think people beat themselves up if they're like, well, everyone says this is what productive people do and it's not working for me. I'm doing something wrong. You're not doing anything wrong. You're just probably trying to shove a square peg and do a 

Jonathan Green: round. . I think this has been very interesting because for a long time I thought, oh, I don't have the same morning routine as other people, but my business is doing great and it's at same times.

It takes a while to realize that it's okay to be different, that everyone has a different approach. And when I was first starting out single on my own, I was working on night, getting up at two in the afternoon every day. Can't do that with kids. , they won't let you. And also there's realizing it's okay to take naps.

My life is mostly naps. Now you. Work. Very unusual hours, but they really work for me and my family. Maximum productivity, maximum happiness. I'm there for every moment, but it's not the eight hours of sleep in a single block. Sounds cool. I don't have that life, but I have, I do things in a way that works for me, but it took me a while to get okay with that to kind of go, oh, well the results the most important part.

Yeah, and I think that's really when you know if you're having a port result, then you need to readjust your time management. But if you're getting a really great result, maybe it's. 

Megan Sumrell: Yeah. And you know, I always tell people if you're, if you're doing something because you feel like you should, or it's what someone else told you, like pause.

That's a sign to say, hang on, what is the desired outcome I'm looking for? And focus on that and say, now how do I find a way to get that outcome? Just because their plan to get there looked one way, doesn't mean that your plan to get. Needs to look the exact same way. Um, and again, it's kind of back to that.

You need to be able to bring your unique inputs into whatever time management if you have, as long as your time management system can accommodate your unique inputs. And then give you the flexibility to create an output that is unique to you so that if you and your friend went through the same process, you each would produce something different on the back end.

You need to make sure you have a system that accommodates that. Otherwise you're going to be trying to live something that's working for somebody else that doesn't have the inputs in the current lifestyle that you have. And it's just, it's gonna set you up for. 

Jonathan Green: I think that's a great point to land on.

This has been a really interesting interview. Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time. Where can people thank you? Find out more about your planning system, your time management system, and just get to know you. 

Megan Sumrell: So I'm very easy to find. I am Megan's Sumal on both Instagram and Facebook. Uh, so you'll be able to connect with me there.

And my website is also Megan's Sum. And if you wanna see some of my planning in action, I've actually got an app in both Google Play and the App Store. It's called the Pink B. All one word, uh uh, that is, uh, the business name. And I've got a ton of training videos in there where you can actually see how do I do weekly planning, um, and a bunch of other kind of planning tips and tricks there, right at your fingertips 

Jonathan Green: as well.

Awesome. That sounds absolutely amazing. I know people are gonna love it. Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Serve No Master Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so that together we can achieve true freedom. 

Megan Sumrell: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Serve No Master Podcast.

Make sure you subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next week with more tips and tactics on how to escape the rat race. Please take a moment to leave a review@servenomaster.com slash iTunes. It helps the show grow and more listeners means more content for you. Thanks again and we'll see you 

Jonathan Green: next week.