Work + Life Harmony | Time Management, Organization and Planning for Overwhelmed Women

Hosted by Megan Sumrell: Time Management and Productivity Coach

Business Entrepreneurship Education Kids FamilyInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

371

Latest episode

Nov 2026

Language

About the show

You wake up with a plan. By 10 AM, it's completely off the rails. By bedtime, you're mentally running through everything you didn't get to and wondering how tomorrow will be any different. Work + Life Harmony is the weekly podcast that teaches women a completely different approach to time management, weekly planning, and productivity. Hosted by Megan Sumrell, a time management expert with 20+ years in systems and planning, this show will change the way you think about your calendar, your to-do list, and how you spend your time. Megan covers everything from weekly planning strategies and daily routines to goal setting, organization, and how to handle the curveballs that throw your whole week off. Her approach was built specifically for women managing work, family, and the million things in between, not recycled advice from productivity systems designed for someone else's life. If you've been stuck in the cycle of overwhelm, guilt, and never-ending to-do lists, start here. New episodes every week.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

November 10, 2026Episode 37220 min

AI Habits Quietly Wasting Your Time

AI is supposed to be giving you hours back. So why doesn’t your week feel any lighter? I’m not an AI hater. I use it almost every single day, and it absolutely saves me time. But as these tools have gotten smarter, I caught myself falling into two habits that were sneakily handing that time right back, and I didn’t even see it happening for months. If you’ve ever closed out of AI and wondered where the last half hour went, this one’s for you. In This Episode, I’ll Cover: Why a “quick” AI question can somehow swallow your whole afternoon. The question I now ask myself before I ever type a prompt. Where the minutes you don’t even notice you’re losing are really going. Why this has a lot less to do with AI than you’d expect. ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

November 3, 2026Episode 37117 min

5 Reasons Why You Can’t Stick to Your Plan

You know exactly what you’re supposed to do today. It’s right there on the plan you made. And yet... you’re not doing it. You push it to later, then later becomes tomorrow, and you end up wondering why you bothered planning at all. If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. I recently asked on social media where planning falls apart, and my DMs flooded with the same answer: “I’m getting better at making the plan. I don’t follow it.” So in this episode, I’m walking you through the five reasons you struggle to actually do the plan you made, and why it probably has nothing to do with willpower or discipline. In This Episode, I’ll Cover: Why the plan you made might have been set up to fail before you even started. The “I’ll do it after the kids are in bed” trap and what it’s really telling you. Why a plan with zero wiggle room is almost guaranteed to get abandoned. The one question to ask the second a surprise task lands in your lap. The real reason so many of us are planning for a life we aren’t actually living. Resources Mentioned: The TOP Program: www.thetopprogram.com My procrastination episode: www.megansumrell.com/blog/3-tools-to-help-you-stop-procrastinating ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

October 27, 2026Episode 37031 min

How to Stop Doing Everything for Your Kids with Hayley Caddes

When our kids are babies, doing everything for them makes total sense. They physically can't do it themselves. But somewhere along the way, it turns into a habit, and one day you look up and wonder why you're still doing it at 8, 10, or 12. I'll be honest, I felt very seen in this conversation. I'm still playing a little catch-up on this in my own house. My guest today is Hayley Caddes, co-founder and COO of Not Therapy, a lived-experience mentorship company for stuck young adults and their families. Hayley was the "troubled teen" first, and now she and her team of coaches work every day with young adults who are struggling to launch into real life. This is not a conversation about what parents have done wrong. It's about skills most of us were never taught, and how to start handing ownership back to our kids, especially if you're raising a neurodivergent child who may need more support for longer. Whether your kids are still little or already out of the house, Hayley shares what you can start doing right now. In This Episode, I'll Cover: The two things kids quietly absorb when we keep handling the hard stuff for them, and how it shows up years later. The one small thing Hayley suggests trying with your kids this week, and how to talk about it so it doesn't feel like a punishment. What to do if your kids have already left home, and why your role looks completely different at 22 than it did at 12. The shift that makes room for more of the good stuff in your relationship with your grown kids. Connect with Hayley + Not Therapy: www.tiktok.com/@hayleycaddes www.instagram.com/hayleycaddes www.linkedin.com/in/hayleycaddes Connect with Not Therapy: www.nottherapy.me www.instagram.com/nottherapycoaching www.linkedin.com/company/not-therapy-coaching ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

October 20, 2026Episode 36920 min

4 Things to Do Now So You Actually Enjoy the Holidays

Every year, you pour yourself into making the holidays special for everyone you love. The decorating, the baking, the gifts, the traditions. But somewhere along the way, did it stop feeling special for you? If you've ever reached the day after Christmas feeling more relieved than happy, I see you. I did that for way too many years. The holidays have always been my favorite time of year. But after becoming a mom and adding more extended family, I noticed I was almost dreading them because they'd become so much work. So I finally sat down and asked myself why this kept happening year after year, and what I needed to change. In this episode, I'm sharing the four things I now do every fall that have turned the holidays into a season I get to enjoy right alongside my family. None of them take a ton of time, and you can start on every one of them today. In This Episode, I'll Cover: Why your favorite holiday activities start to feel like chores, and the simple calendar move that keeps that from happening. The gift-giving expectation that quietly lands on so many women after marriage, and the conversation that takes it off your plate. How I started baking Christmas cookies in July without it feeling like one more thing on my list. The question that helped my family let go of traditions nobody loved anymore. My bonus tip for this year, for every woman who's always the one behind the camera. ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

October 13, 2026Episode 36818 min

Why January Is the Worst Time to Plan Your Year

Years ago, I went to a full-day "best year yet" workshop at the end of the second week in January. I'm coachable to a fault, so I did every single exercise they gave us. I walked out with an enormous workbook and what I thought was a beautiful plan for my year. That plan was basically useless before I'd even finished unpacking. Part of the problem was that nobody in that room ever asked what my real life and my real capacity looked like. The other part was the timing. Every planner starts in January, every marketer is shouting "new year, new you" (my least favorite message ever), and so that's when most of us finally sit down to map out the next 12 months. Right after the six most demanding weeks of the year, with a full-blown holiday hangover. If you've ever built a plan in January and watched it fall apart before spring, friend, this one's for you. I'm sharing why January quietly works against the plan you're trying to make, and when I do my annual planning so January gets to be just another month. In This Episode, I'll Cover: What happens when you bring your holiday-hangover energy to your annual plan, and why pushing through anyway can backfire. Why the plan you make in early January is secretly built on the chaos of the last few weeks, and you won't even notice it happening. How January and a good chunk of February can be gone before your plan even gets started. The month I've been doing my annual planning for years instead, and what it changed about how my January feels. ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

October 6, 2026Episode 36731 min

Artful Agenda vs Google Calendar With Katy Allen

If you love paper planners but your actual life has to be digital, you have probably felt stuck between two bad options. Go digital and lose everything you love about paper, or stay on paper and miss half of what your family adds to the shared calendar. I have been recommending one tool for this for years, and today I got the founder on the show. My guest is Katy Allen, the creator and owner of Artful Agenda, the only digital calendar software I give The Pink Bee stamp of approval to. Katy built it after she had to quit paper planners entirely, because her husband's tour schedule and her kids' schedules lived in Google Calendar and she was not about to do double entry. So she built the paper planner experience she missed, stickers and pretty layouts and all, on top of software that actually syncs. In This Episode, I'll Cover: The difference between a digital planner and actual calendar software, and why that distinction changes everything about what you can do with it. The one feature Artful Agenda has that Google Calendar, iCal, and Outlook all get wrong What to do about the shared calendars you can't control, like the school or PTO calendar dumping every meeting onto your view. How to pull work, personal, and the kids' stuff out of three different calendar systems and see it in one place without picking a side. Connect With Katy and Artful Agenda: Artful Agenda (affiliate link, includes a free trial): www.megansumrell.com/artful Instagram: www.instagram.com/artfulagenda Facebook: www.facebook.com/artfulagenda YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ArtfulAgenda ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

September 29, 2026Episode 36615 min

Do You Really Have 14 Weeks Left in the Year?

If you've looked at a calendar lately and counted the weeks between now and December 31st, you probably thought what I thought: that is so much time! Then I actually counted. And the number on my calendar and the number I really have were nowhere close. Planning your time is a lot like having a financial budget. And right now most of us are spending from an account we think is full, but it isn't. In This Episode, I'll Cover: The four-step exercise I walked through to find out how many weeks I actually have left this year. The first thing I layered onto my calendar that instantly took 25% of my capacity off the table. Why knowing your real capacity is the opposite of scarcity. Join Plan-a-Palooza: https://www.megansumrell.com/plan ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

September 22, 2026Episode 36534 min

The Household Help You Didn't Know You Could Hire with Kelly Hubbell

Have you ever said out loud, "I wish I had a wife"? I know I have! For years I thought the answer was to hire it out in pieces, so I had a nanny for my daughter and a cleaner coming every week. Then I'd look at whether a laundry service was worth it, or whether I could find somebody to walk the dogs on the days I just couldn't. By the time I added it all up, I was looking at eight or nine different people for eight or nine little pockets of my life and the math stopped making sense. And not one of them was taking the thinking off my plate. Turns out there was a whole category of help I didn't know existed, and I really wish I'd known about it ten years ago. My guest this week is Kelly Hubbell, founder and CEO of Sage Haus, and she's here to explain what a household manager actually is. In This Episode, I'll Cover: What a house manager actually does, and why it is a completely different job than a nanny or a housekeeper. What this really costs, and the number of hours a week most families start with. The difference between handing off a task and handing off the thinking behind it, which is where most of us get stuck. Why this isn't only for households with young kids at home. Mentioned in the episode: Book an introductory call: sagehaus.com/pinkbee Connect with Kelly + Sage Hause sagehaus.com linkedin.com/in/kellyhubbell instagram.com/mysagehaus ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

September 15, 2026Episode 36418 min

Why Your Big Goals Never Get Done

All I wanted to do was finish my daughter's baby book. Months 11 and 12 of her first year of life were the only thing left, maybe eight pages, and I wrote it on my list almost every other week for three years. It never got done. But you know what did get done? Just about everything for everybody else. I know you have one of these. It's the project that needs a free weekend, or two full days, or a few months of real effort. You can look at your calendar two months out and see wide open space where it could finally happen, and then those two months arrive, and puff, the space is gone. So you tell yourself you'll get to it "when things settle down", or "when this season is over", or "when I have time". For three years I kept asking myself what was wrong with me. Where was my discipline, my willpower, whatever people call it. That wasn't it at all, and today I'm telling you what was actually going on, because I promise it's happening to you too. In This Episode, I'll Cover: Why "when I have time" and "when things settle down" never actually show up. Where all that open space on your calendar disappears to Why the projects nobody else is asking you for are always the first to fall off. ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell

September 8, 2026Episode 36319 min

Planning Has Nothing to Do With the Plan Going "Right"

I teach planning for a living, and almost nothing I mapped out for this summer actually happened the way I planned it. Since the middle of June I have been on 22 airplanes. Three of those trips were booked with about 48 hours notice, and three separate times I had to disappear from work completely and hand this business over to my team. From the outside, that probably looks like a planning expert whose planning failed. And if you have ever watched your own plan go up in flames and thought "why do I even bother," this episode is for you. Because I hear women call themselves failures over this all the time, and it breaks my heart every single time. There is something happening here that almost nobody names, and once you see it, you stop measuring the year by whether the plan survived it. In This Episode, I'll Cover: The three choices you get to make about anything you can't get to right now. What an annual plan is actually giving you, which is not the thing you think it is. The reason you can end a year nowhere near where you planned and still feel zero guilt about it. ________________________________ 💻 Free Training Overwhelmed? Frazzled? Tired of your calendar controlling you? You’re in the right place. Sign up for my free, on-demand training and learn how to take control of your time—no matter what life throws at you. 👉 www.megansumrell.com/freetraining ________________________________ 📱 Get The Pink Bee App Access planning tools, trainings, and support all in one place. 👉 www.onelink.to/qxdcwu ________________________________ Thanks for tuning in! Megan 🩷🐝 www.megansumrell.com www.instagram.com/megansumrell www.youtube.com/@the_pink_bee www.facebook.com/megansumrell