Ep. #163: Overwhelm, Adhd & Household Systems: Rethinking Organization with Lisa Woodruff

Written By Tansy Rodgers — beU Complete

Sometimes overwhelm isn’t about laziness or poor time management.

It’s about carrying the mental load of an entire household—and trying to keep everything running without a clear system.

In this episode of The Energy Fix, Tansy sits down with Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365, to explore the deeper roots of overwhelm—especially for women managing households, careers, and the invisible labor that holds everything together.

Lisa shares how societal expectations, perfectionism, and neurodivergent thinking patterns (especially ADHD) can create constant mental pressure. She introduces practical mindset shifts that help transform the household from a chaotic to-do list into a manageable system.

The conversation also covers time management, emotional well-being, and Lisa’s well-known Sunday Basket system—a simple method for organizing tasks and reducing cognitive load.

If you’ve ever felt busy all day but still unfinished, this conversation will resonate.

 
 

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What We Cover

In this episode, we talk about:

  • Why overwhelm often comes from unfinished mental loops

  • The unique organizational challenges for ADHD and neurodivergent minds

  • The pressure women feel to maintain perfect households

  • Treating the household like a business system

  • The emotional impact of constant household management

  • Why self-care is about managing your life—not just relaxation

  • The shift from perfectionism to excellence

  • Creating systems that reduce cognitive load

  • The concept of Swiss cheese organizing

  • Why to-do lists can actually increase overwhelm

  • The Sunday Basket system for organizing responsibilities

Key Takeaways

  1. Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you’re failing—it often means your systems need adjustment

  2. Household management is real work that deserves structure and support

  3. Perfectionism can block progress; excellence creates freedom

  4. Visible tasks often distract us from meaningful priorities

  5. Systems can reduce emotional stress and mental clutter

  6. Prioritizing laundry, food, and trash can immediately reduce chaos

  7. Time management can be reframed as protecting energy for self-care

  8. Letting go of constant self-judgment leads to a more sustainable life

Favorite Quotes & Sound Bites

A few moments you’ll want to remember:

  • “You are never going to finish your to-do list.”

  • “Self-care is not selfish.”

  • “Running a household is like running a business.”

  • “You’re running two businesses.”

  • “Your machines are employees in your company.”

  • “Stop judging yourself and live a happier life.”

Chapters

06:13 – The “Quicksand” of Modern Life
12:10 – Mindset Shifts for Organization
18:00 – Burnout and Emergency Energy
23:45 – Societal Expectations on Women
27:14 – Creating Systems for Household Management
32:53 – Excellence vs Perfectionism
40:45 – Manipulating Time for Self-Care
46:34 – Swiss Cheese Organizing
56:26 – Rethinking To-Do Lists
01:01:09 – The Sunday Basket System
01:11:21 – From Chaos to Capacity

Why This Episode Matters

Because overwhelm doesn’t always come from doing too little.

More often it comes from doing too much at once, without structure or support.

It can show up as:

  • feeling busy all day but never actually finished

  • constantly thinking about household tasks in the background

  • starting projects but struggling to complete them

  • feeling responsible for everyone else’s needs

  • judging yourself for not “keeping up”

  • feeling like self-care is one more thing on the list

And the frustrating part?

Many women assume this is a personal failure.

This episode reframes overwhelm as a systems problem, not a character flaw.

Lisa walks through practical mindset shifts and organizational strategies that can reduce mental load, create clarity, and help women step into their role as leaders of their households—not exhausted managers of chaos.

About Lisa Woodruff

Lisa Woodruff is the founder & CEO of Organize 365. Lisa and 87% of Americans believe organization is a learnable skill. Yet less than 18% of those same Americans feel they are organized. As the host of the top-rated Organize 365 Podcast, with 24 million downloads & counting, Lisa shares strategies for reducing the overwhelm, clearing the mental clutter, and living a productive and organized life.

Links Mentioned In The Show

Support Beyond The Episode

If this conversation hit home, and you’re craving deeper support (not just ideas, but real integration):

If this episode resonated, follow or subscribe to The Energy Fix so you don’t miss future conversations exploring emotional health, healing, and personal growth.

And if there’s a topic you’d love to hear explored on the podcast, you’re always welcome to send it my way.

Transcript

  • Tansy Rodgers (00:13.73)

    Welcome back to the Energy Fix, a podcast dedicated to help you balance your energetic body by diving deep into the sweet world of all things health and spirituality. My name's Tansy and I'm an intuitive crystal Reiki energy healer, energetic nutrition and holistic health practitioner, and a crystal jewelry designer. It's time to talk all things energy. Let's dive in.

    Welcome back to the Energy Fix podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about a very, very specific kind of overwhelm. It's the kind where you're really doing everything, but somehow, somehow nothing feels like it's actually finished. Like you're carrying this invisible job title that you never actually signed up for. And that overwhelm never really goes away because you can't check off the box.

    Lisa Woodruff (00:54.062)

    you

    Tansy Rodgers (01:09.558)

    or cross it off the list because it still doesn't feel like it's completely done. And we're going to really be dive, we're going to be talking about that, but we're really going to be diving even deeper into nuances with the neurodivergent brain, especially ADHD, because that can completely throw this whole other twist to the story that is fascinating when people start to learn, hmm, maybe my brain works just a little differently.

    Now, my guest today is Lisa Woodruff, and I am so excited to have her on the show. She is the founder and CEO of Organize 365 and host of the Organize 365 podcast. She's also the author of a new book called Escaping Quickstand, 10 Steps to Overcome the Overwhelm of Modern Home Life. And I love the premise. I love it so much because

    with my neurodivergent brain, organization can sometimes it can feel like just this dream floating out in the clouds. So today it's gonna not be just how do you do it all. It's going to be how do you care for yourself so that you can do what you're actually here to do. And essentially just create magic, right?

    So if you've ever felt like your time and your identity are getting absorbed by the household around you, this was going to really hit home, I feel. It's gonna feel very validating, feel very expanding. All right, here's Lisa Woodruff. Let's dive in. Hi, Lisa.

    Lisa Woodruff (02:57.454)

    Hi, thank you so much for having me.

    Tansy Rodgers (02:59.502)

    Thank you so much for being here today. Yes, we're going to be talking all things organization. And I think that this is going to hit home for a lot of people. What do you think?

    Lisa Woodruff (03:10.242)

    Yeah, I definitely think so.

    Tansy Rodgers (03:12.238)

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, before we really get into this, let's learn about you and where you're at right now. Because I want to hear all about your journey, but your journey and where you're at right now is probably not the same as when you started out. So is there a word or a phrase that you're really embodying right now in this season of your life?

    Lisa Woodruff (03:34.03)

    You know, I don't take a lot of time to reflect on things like this and I've heard you mentioned this in your podcast before and you reminded me before we started this and this one word keeps coming to mind and it's so Not on brand like hell. guess not a word I've ever said ever before but the word that just keeps coming to mind is wonder like Yeah, know it's so I'm gonna be 54. So it's not like I'm 14 or anything but The older you get ladies, especially it is awesome like getting older

    is so awesome and wonder. Yeah, like I wonder what my life is gonna be like in the future. I wonder what I'm capable of and just like just being in wonder in the world.

    Tansy Rodgers (04:14.638)

    I love that. so question for you then, because I know at least for myself, I can find myself being very serious at times and that childlike play, that wonder, that curiosity can just float right out the window. So how do you stay a little bit more in wonder and curiosity?

    Lisa Woodruff (04:36.14)

    I think it is because of the people who listen to the organized 365 podcast or in the app and you know that I'm in relationship with like these really are my best friends because I mean I go to work and I go home and you guys are my friends so my friends are online and I've done some big things like gone back and gotten my PhD and I've done little things like scrapbooking and things like that and I find that I need to or I'm feeling like I need to really keep pressing into what is the

    of the middle-aged woman like what things can I try next what can I do next to continue to be an example of like well if Lisa did it then I could do it cuz it's just Lisa you know what I mean

    Tansy Rodgers (05:15.116)

    Yeah, yeah, I love that too. And so I feel like that's such a beautiful segue into really your journey because that is something that I'm sure didn't just happen overnight. For anybody who's meeting you for the first time, Lisa, what is this origin story behind your work? How did you get so passionate about this organization and really allowing life to expand rather than contract by all of these things on your to-do list?

    Lisa Woodruff (05:45.112)

    Yeah, so I've recently been diagnosed with ADHD in the last couple of years because I had a psychologist at my kid's special needs school diagnose me. I was like, figure it out. Do I or don't I have it? And she's like, clearly you don't have it. You're way too accomplished. I was like, excuse me, are you saying you can't be accomplished with ADHD? She's like, no. I was like, okay, then really dive in and figure it out. And she's like, yeah, you're classic ADHD once you took a look at it. But I had a really unique childhood. So my mom,

    I was a college graduate, started a company in our basement when I was in second grade, sold it when I was in eighth grade. My dad quit his job, well didn't quit his job, but he got a job as a partner when I was in eighth grade and doubled the sales of that company overnight. And so I've watched my parents do really big things in the marketplace. And I am the fourth generation female college graduate and all those women own their own company. I just recently talked to my mom about my great grandmother. She owned a floral shop.

    She owned a restaurant that they lived on top of, like all these things that they did as women. And so I saw women as being entrepreneurial and in the marketplace and also running their households at the same time. I don't think most people saw that. Like they had a stay at home mom or they had a working mom and that's what I had. Well, my passion was having children. None of the women in my mom's family really liked having kids. Like they had them cause it was like a check the box thing, but none of them like loved kids like I did. So I loved kids. wanted a babysit. I went in a babysit and I,

    would organize people's houses when I was babysitting. And at first I thought, oh no, I'm organizing their house. Like I've overstepped my boundaries. Cause I organized the kids toy area in the kitchen. Next thing you know, cause they were out till 1 a.m. I'd organize the whole entire kitchen. And I was like, Dr. and Mrs. Stover, I'm really sorry, but I organized your entire kitchen. And here's all your expired products if you don't want to throw them out, but they're ready to in the trash. And they were like, oh my gosh, could you please do the laundry room next?

    And then another family I babysat for a family of six and I traveled with them and everything and I would do all the organization. I came home from college and the mom called me over and I said, you want me to babysit the kids? She goes, no, we're adding onto the house. So we really want to know like, is this plan going to work and where is it going to break as far as the kids in the organization? And so I didn't even really realize those were unique skills, but in my twenties, I was a teacher. helped organize teachers closets and classrooms.

    Lisa Woodruff (08:04.194)

    And then I was a stay-at-home mom and we would have play dates and I organized people's playrooms as we were on the play dates. And then as I was getting ready to turn 40, my life had just been falling apart for a really long, slow five-year slide into the pit of despair. And I felt like nothing was working anymore. And I knew that I needed to leave teaching and stay home to take care of my kids, even though they were in middle school. I was trying to figure out what I would do with my life. And I thought, well, I've either been successful because I was organized.

    or being able to organize someone else helped me be successful in my job. So I'll talk about organization for the rest of my life. I just have no idea how I'll monetize it. That's why I decided at the age of 40.

    Tansy Rodgers (08:44.81)

    You've been an organizing cyclone since you started, basically since you were out of the womb. Wow. Wow. And you know, was so interesting. I was thinking about why you were talking. All this modeling that you saw around you, that could have easily allowed another woman yourself, I mean, to fall into hustle culture, to get into.

    burnout, to fall into these places that could have made you very sick or exhausted or not really being able to expand your wings, right? And so I would even say especially since the ADHD for any ADHD brain out there, it's really easy to fall into burnout. And so for you, what did you start to notice really kind of kept you level?

    How did you not fall into some of those traps?

    Lisa Woodruff (09:44.204)

    Yeah, it was two things that happened in childhood. So one was, I was raised Catholic, but my mom's family was Presbyterian, so I went to both kinds of churches. And I have a one-on-one relationship with God. Like I understand God at a spiritual level and I practice now in the non-denominational church. And at the time when I, I mean, I know you do spiritual things, so I feel like it's okay, I'm allowed to say this on your part.

    Tansy Rodgers (10:11.22)

    You can say whatever you need to say.

    Lisa Woodruff (10:14.006)

    Yeah, so like I audibly hear God tell me certain things. Like when we were adopting our second child, you know, I was wrestling with a decision and I heard him audibly say, I'm not asking you this question. I'm just asking, do you want to adopt this child? And I was like, well, yeah, the answer is yes. like, so I've been that way since fourth grade. So I went to a camp and in the camp, they asked if you wanted to accept Jesus into your heart. And I said, yes. And I accepted him in my heart. My mom and dad picked me up from camp. My dad opens the door. I'm like, dad, I accepted Jesus into my heart. He goes, no, you didn't slam the door, get in the car. You know, like.

    on you go, like just, you know, they look back on their like, my gosh, because my whole family's had that relationship since. So I had this at a very young age where I knew that I had a spiritual relationship that was separate from my parents in fourth grade. And that they didn't understand what I understood. And I'm not, you know, no judgment for anyone, but like I understood that my parents were an authority, but not my only authority in fourth grade. The other thing is I never got diagnosed with ADHD in school.

    but I always had a floating C on my report card. So wherever the floating C was, I would double down on that subject. It was never math, I was good in math. So I would double down on science or history or English or whatever it was. And I could get that up to a B and then the C would be somewhere else. It drove my mom nuts because she was a straight A student. Like she was just a straight A student all the way through. And I could not meet her expectation. And I remember she me sit down and watch this whole series of videos like where there's a will, there's an A and like you could figure this out. And I was like,

    I can't, I was like, don't know why, but I cannot meet this expectation. I will never meet this expectation. I'm not capable. And so knowing that there was more than one authority and also knowing that there was a standard that I literally physically couldn't meet no matter what I did in eighth grade, that I realized I was not a perfectionist before I even hit high school. And I never even tried. And that really wasn't even sad for me, honestly. You could be like, oh, that's so hurtful or whatever. I'm just not that, I'm not that emotional of a person.

    I'm very logical. So I was like, okay, well, that's the standard. I don't meet it. Okay. I guess I'm not going to be a straight A student. So I'm not going to put all my effort in that because I'm not going to succeed. And the thing that I'm really bad at is spelling. So I'm so bad at spelling. So I was born in 1972. I was probably in sixth or seventh grade when this Franklin speller came out. And if you could phonetically spell the word, would tell you how to spell it. It's like the very first, it was before computers basically. So my father bought me this thing.

    Lisa Woodruff (12:39.392)

    And I typed the word in there and I brought it to my dad. said, this is broken. And he goes, what are you trying to spell? And I told him the word. And he said, how are you spelling it? And I told him, he said, you can't even spell wrong, right? You don't even know how to spell wrong. So the computer can help you spell right. And then the teacher that year wrote on my report card, Lisa will have to carry a dictionary for the rest of her life because she cannot spell. And again, all these things could be like, you know, I could be in therapy for the rest of my life, but I didn't receive them that way. I was like, okay, that's my weakness.

    I don't understand why children have to be so well-rounded at everything. What are my strengths? And I always played to my strengths. And I knew in my new book, I have a chapter called, you are not a perfectionist, you are a woman of excellence. And once you realize that perfection is not a thing, and once you stop getting your worth from whatever it is that you are perfect at, you'll realize that you are excellent at so many more things. And you can be excellent and you can always strive to be more and more excellent. But excellence isn't like you're perfect or you're not.

    Excellence is a continuum, and you're always striving more and more for excellence. It has much more grace and not the judgment of perfection.

    Tansy Rodgers (13:45.102)

    Yeah, so you really use that logical side of your brain and also your anchor to God to be able for you to just stay very grounded and strong, but also open, wondrous, right? Curiosity, very open to it doesn't have to be this way. Yeah. Which really just bridges so beautifully into that word that you use on purpose, which is quicksand.

    Because I think so many can fall into the pit of quicksand. Yes. Yeah. What does quicksand look like in modern home life or just modern life in general? The everyday version that people don't even necessarily realize that they're drowning in it yet, but they're slowly drowning. What have you learned and noticed?

    Lisa Woodruff (14:37.518)

    So I had the privilege of organizing people's homes in Cincinnati. Once I started this job, Organize 365, within a couple of months, I learned I was a professional organizer. I didn't know that was a thing. I was like, oh yeah, this is a job I can do. So I started going into different people's homes. And here in Cincinnati, every house is the same. Like literally, there are no different floor plans. You have a ranch or a two story, but that's it. Ohio doesn't have like a lot of difference in our houses. So I realized the only difference in the houses were the women.

    that were hiring me, because it was all women except for two men in five years. And it was a young mom about to have children, or it was a woman who had gotten divorced and she's getting all new carpeting because she was getting remarried, or it was a single woman who had come into Cincinnati to do her stint at P &G. And they were different women, but the house was the same. And because the women were different, the house functioned differently. So the first quicksand I saw was that women were trying to make their house look a certain way.

    but it didn't match the person who was living in the house. And so I started to match the person to the house. The other thing that I noticed was a lot of the women who had lived in Cincinnati a long time and were stay at home moms, but the kids were now in school and their husbands had pretty big jobs, that the expectation on the woman of herself and her husband's expectation on her were untenable. And no matter what we did, they couldn't meet that expectation.

    And also they were made to feel bad that I had to come in and help them learn or do any of the work. They should just know how to do this from birth. And I realized that these women were becoming prisoners in their homes, that they weren't allowed to go out and do anything because their homework wasn't done. They didn't have all the things done for the kids and the spouse, or they didn't have all the things done that were the expectations that they saw either on Facebook at the time, or they had put on themselves. And I was like, wow.

    You know, men are not holding us back, but our houses are really holding women back and thinking that we have to have all the laundry done, all the cleaning done, all this done. It has to look perfect. And if it doesn't look perfect, then you don't have time to go out and play. You don't have time to go out and do what you're uniquely gifted and created to do because there's work at home that's not done. Well, here's the news flash. It's never going to be done. It's never going to be done. And to your point, 50 % of the women either were diagnosed with ADHD or had self-diagnosed themselves with ADHD. Let me be clear.

    Lisa Woodruff (16:57.036)

    Running a household is a hamster cage. Like, it's not like you're in an organization. You have to create all the organization that you're in and we don't have the tools and the systems and structures you have in school and government and business and all those things. We have to create them all from scratch. Yeah, you're exhausted. Like, lower our expectations. We need to lower our expectations. And the other thing about quicksand is I realized when I was thinking in quicksand and I was 40, I wanted somebody to save me. And here's the thing.

    We're all sinking in quicksand. We can't save each other. We have to save ourselves. And then we could support each other as they save themselves as well.

    Tansy Rodgers (17:34.702)

    And yeah, so as you as as you observe these women these households You really saw that they were just trying to do the right the quote-unquote right things Yeah faster and faster and faster, but it was really for the wrong reasons and that it wasn't ever going to actually save them and Solve the big problem the big p problem, right? Yeah. Yeah

    So thinking about these right things, what are the right things that women keep speeding up that are still keeping them stuck? And is it just women or is it really anybody with ADHD brains?

    Lisa Woodruff (18:13.09)

    Okay, so let me see it. Is it just women or just anybody with ADHD brains? So I think it's whoever's the head of the household. Whoever's the primary head of the household, which still is typically women. And that's pretty much what I study. Is it just atypical, neurotypical? No, I think it's everybody. I think that, so I have studied ADHD, my kids.

    had ADHD and I was a teacher and I specialized in helping kids with ADHD before I found out I had it also. also think we all, there is no normal, okay, so here's my big thing. There is no one brain. Like what are we measuring to? As a teacher, I believe that every single student is individual and they all have individual giftings. We may be learning the same things at the same time, but we're all gonna learn on different levels and we all learn differently. So I think there is all that difference.

    What you will notice with women is, who are diagnosed with ADHD, is they often can keep it together until the kids leave home or until the kids aren't in school. Because the school structure provides structure for the household. And that's the only structure really you can get in a household. There is no structure inherent in a household when you move into a house and there isn't any that you could buy. The only thing that you could buy is matching containers. And then when you look to organizers,

    who tell you how to organize, what they do is they show you a decorative solution. They don't teach you the skill of organizing. So when I was first organizing, I was in my second year of business and I had two clients canceled the next week. And I was like, dang, I really need this money. And I was like, okay, when do you want to reschedule? like, we don't. I was like, oh, how'd I take them off? Like, what did I say that was inappropriate that they don't want me to come back? And they both said the same thing. They both said, we don't need you to come back. We learned how you asked us questions and we now know how to organize.

    We're organized. And I was like, no, this is my business model. I'm not going to make any money. And then I was like, wait a minute, it's teachable. People can learn how to be organized. I am a teacher. I will teach this. And that's when I launched the podcast. I was like, I will figure out how to teach this through the internet. Not what it looks like, how it feels and the questions you ask yourself. So that as you move through your phases of life in your same exact house, your kitchen will function differently. Your family will function different.

    Tansy Rodgers (20:31.47)

    One of the funniest things that I heard and actually I felt so called out, but one of the funniest things I heard on a podcast one time was the woman said, organizing is not just buying more containers to put things in. That's not, and.

    Ironically, that's what I do. I buy some containers or new books to put things in, to file things away. When in reality, like you had talked about with some of these women, I'm just trying to do things a little bit faster, a little bit, quote unquote, neater, but it's not actually solving the problem and it's not actually saving me from all the frustration. Yeah. Yeah. Right. A quick pause before we...

    really dive further into this conversation. I wanted to let you know that I create intentional crystal jewelry through BEU crystals. They are pieces that designed to

    feel like this small beautiful little anchor that you can actually use when your nervous system is getting too loud, your energy is feeling too scattered, or you're stepping into something brave and you want something to really ground and support you. That is what my crystal jewelry is all about. It is supporting the place, the journey that you are on right now. And a little behind the scene updates. I have a brand new website that I am

    rolling out in the next few weeks and I'm so excited for it. It's going to be cleaner, easier to shop, and way more aligned with where this brand is going, along with new products that have come out, new pieces, and easier ways to custom build the perfect piece for you. So for now, you can head on over to beucrystals.com. I'll make sure to link that down in the show notes so that you can easily browse. There's a few things up there.

    Tansy Rodgers (22:31.694)

    the website isn't looking too amazing right now, but that's okay because the new one is coming. Keep your eyes open. All right, let's get back into this episode. One thing that I really appreciate is how you redefine this concept of self-care as supporting the adult life that you actually have. like you're talking all about this organization. You're talking about changing patterns and habits and learning.

    this teachable concept of organization, but yet there is also that other side of making sure that you're taking care of yourself as a human being while you're also doing this. Would you say confidently that that is part of the organizational skills?

    Lisa Woodruff (23:17.73)

    Yes, so in my first 10 years in business, I created these systems, literally designed, manufactured, sell physical products and courses and all of them help you get organized. They do, they actually work. However, what I did in writing Escaping QuickSand is I went back further before I was organized. I was like, okay, what mindset shifts did I have to make in order to be ready to implement those systems in organizing? Like where are my current customers still stuck? Where they...

    Set aside the time they even buy the program, but they don't get it done. What don't they have in place? And I realized that I recently went back and got my PhD in my 50s, which is so fun. And I was in a class and we were learning about life development, which I had learned when I was going to school to be an early childhood teacher. And there really aren't good adult developmental stages. And from that, also took that, I just, this thing appeared in my head and I thought, okay, well, what is self-care?

    Like, and everyone in the audience can answer for yourself. What do you think self-care is? And what I think self-care is, is as an early childhood expert, when you care for a child, you have to care for them until they're 18 or ready to be on their own. And also in the phase of life I'm in, we're caring a lot for parents and grandparents. And what does it mean to care for parents and grandparents? It means that you're stepping in and you're doing some of the things they used to do for themselves, but they can no longer do. So then what is self-care? All of that. It's not a bubble bath.

    It's not a trip to the spa. It is caring for yourself. It is your laundry. It is your clothes. It's organizing your closet. It is making sure you're signed up for extracurricular activities. You're having spiritual development. Like you would never say to a child, okay, I fed you, I clothed you, you live in a house now. No toys, no books, no education, no spiritual, no emotional, no touch. Like no, all of that is the care of a child, right? All of that is the care of what you would give your parents or grandparents. So all of that is what you need and should give to yourself.

    So what I found when I was 40 and down to the bottom of the pit of despair sinking into quicksand was I had three outfits in my closet that still fit my body. I was eating cold chicken nuggets and fountain cokes and I was sleeping like five hours a night. Now, would you do that for your parents or your children? No. And so what did I think the answer was? Organize the toy room.

    Lisa Woodruff (25:36.014)

    That's immediately, you know what I think? We'll organize the toy room. I think we'll take the kids to the zoo. I think that we'll, you know, do something for someone else. Whereas I was like a shell of a woman. So when I say self care, I mean, when was the last time you organized your bedroom? Your closet? Yeah, I know you did your closet, but did you do your bedroom? Have you ever organized your bathroom? You know, have you ever really thought about like, okay, do I have everything that I need in my purse or backpack all the time? Do I have duplicates of what I need?

    Do I have a good morning and evening routine? And I do not mean the whole 90 minute thing that's on the internet. I mean, do you remember to put on your deodorant every day? Do you know which days you're gonna wash your hair or is it just like, if I can get to my hair? Like, do you have some purpose for the care for yourself?

    Tansy Rodgers (26:21.71)

    Yeah. And so one thing that you mentioned just a little bit ago was about these mindset shifts. I'm curious, first off, what are some of those biggest mindset shifts that you notice that need to shift, number one? And then also number two, how do you suggest motivating somebody, right? Or getting them out of freeze mode?

    when they are really struggling to do these self-care things because the narrative for so many women, let's be honest, the narrative for so many women is any kind of self-care, even you could, yeah, quote unquote, but even you eating the right foods for yourself, going and exercising, moving your body is selfish. We know differently here at The Energy Fix, right? But like, how do you really get people to shift that mindset?

    Lisa Woodruff (27:13.07)

    You have to shift your own mindset like I did when I was a kid. No one is going to come up and say, you know what I think you need? I think you need a week at home to organize your bedroom like when you were a kid. I think that you need to, you know, overhaul your diet. no one is going to say that to us. Not our parents, not our spouse, not our friends, because they're thinking about themselves. So it just is what it is. So self-care is not selfish. And I wanted to write this book and I wrote the whole book and I was like,

    But it's like, first things first, me first. Like, it's like so selfish, I'm gonna be selfish. And it's actually Rory Vadin who said, he's my writing coach, and he said, no, Lisa, you must take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. What happens is we give and give and give and give, and then we're depleted, and then we have nothing, and then we're burned out, and then nobody gets care, or we can care for ourselves, and then we can continue to care for others. So some of the mindset shifts.

    being a woman of excellence, not a perfectionist, just to erase perfectionism from your head. Another one is really understanding that the role of the household manager is the economic role that the entire world runs around. US GDP, 68 % of US GDP is household spending. So the household manager that makes all those household spending decisions is making the decisions of what's being sold in the marketplace. And the United States has the largest world economy.

    So what the American household buys is what the whole world is going to be producing, right? And they're going to be working towards. In that way, you're running a business, you're running an enterprise, you're an entrepreneurial business. There is a lot. If the American consumer is not doing well, we go into a recession and the world goes into depression. Like this is a big, big deal. You're not just folding laundry. You're not just, you know, doing whatever you're doing. You're raising the next generation. You're in charge of the world economy.

    Take your job at home seriously. We are all household CEOs. And when you start to realize, wow, I'm a household CEO, well would a CEO come to work in yoga pants with a ponytail? I mean, you can still wear yoga pants and a ponytail if you want to, but do it purposefully. Like I do it on my PhD days and Saturday and Sunday, but the rest of the week, like I'm looking good. Like I know which days of the week I'm going to be dressing for which roles I am doing and what I need to be doing. And that's okay. And take time for yourself.

    Lisa Woodruff (29:34.638)

    Like just no one's gonna put it on the calendar, so you put it on the calendar. So I love what you said about the food. So recently what I've been doing, my grandchildren live with me, my daughter and grandchildren, four year old and a newborn. And so I've been taking the four year old to preschool and also to the gym. I joined the gym and I take him with me. So it's like kill a million birds with one stone. And so I pack him a lunch box. The kid eats a lot. So I pack him a little lunch box. I have all these foods in there and I was always getting myself fast food or just grabbing a protein bar.

    And now what I've started doing is I figured out what I want my food to be like. So I make his little lunch and then I prepackage everything I need for my day. So I have everything I need for my day in a lunchbox and I just eat out of the lunchbox all day. Now I'm hitting my macros, I'm hitting all the numbers that I want to hit and I'm doing it right along just like I would do for him, I am doing for me. So if you want to know like what could you do for self-care, when you want to go clean out your kids rooms, don't, go clean your own bedroom.

    Their room is gonna be messy next week anyway. Yours is gonna stay clean longer or send everybody to their rooms to clean their rooms and you go to yours too. Like don't just do the dishes, go clean yours too. Like do for yourself like you do for others.

    Tansy Rodgers (30:43.374)

    It's almost like you're re-childing your own inner child.

    Lisa Woodruff (30:47.98)

    Yes, yes.

    Tansy Rodgers (30:49.976)

    Like you're literally approaching yourself like it is a child that needs to relearn or to learn new skills.

    Lisa Woodruff (30:59.182)

    Yeah.

    Tansy Rodgers (31:01.902)

    I was laughing as you were talking. I couldn't stop thinking about how some of my this now granted this is when I was in my 20s 30s or whatever some of my most favorite Saturday nights the ones I actually remember was me staying at home and completely reorganizing my living room my bedroom whatever

    Lisa Woodruff (31:25.9)

    Yeah, mean,

    Tansy Rodgers (31:26.786)

    I like two in the morning and everything is out and I'm reorganizing and cleaning things. It was so satisfying to me because I felt like I was just really doing this overhaul. It was shifting the energy. It was changing the feel of things. And that felt so sweet and beautiful.

    Lisa Woodruff (31:47.886)

    Yeah, I think when we organize, we can aesthetically, you know, get control over physical things and also a lot of other mental things fall in place as well. I have any science behind that, but I think it's true.

    Tansy Rodgers (31:57.539)

    Yeah.

    Yeah, yeah. Well, now you also, so you framed, you've already talked about this, you framed the household as this business unit, this economic business unit. And so what have you noticed really starts to shift when a woman realizing that she's not just doing household stuff, she's running a whole operation and she's shifting the landscape of her business, her at home business.

    Lisa Woodruff (32:27.8)

    When women really grasp what's going on, number one, they realize that if they are also an entrepreneur outside of the household, why it is so hard is because you're running two businesses, two entrepreneurial businesses. That's why it's so hard. Also, if she is in business and then can look backwards and go, my gosh, you're right, there's zero systems here. And by systems, I don't mean like the way that you fold your laundry. I mean,

    Do have a system for processing your planning each week like you would in business? Do you have a planning system at home? Do you have a strategic planning system? Do you have a cadence with which you go through your house and you organize different rooms at different times of the year so that you get through everything instead of just organizing the same rooms over and over and over again? Do you have a system, like I've created a system for your file cabinet that replaces your file cabinet into binders where all of your information

    is organized in binders and you can take it with you if you need to evacuate for a hurricane or a fire or any of that or need to use the information to advocate for the people who the information is for. So creating those systems like you would in a business in a household then reduces the trying to remember everything and having the mental load and being the one person that everybody can go to for that information instead of being able to go to these systems for information like you would in a business.

    Tansy Rodgers (33:44.928)

    Yeah, I love that. And so before any of this is really set into place, these systems, mean, are there sneaky signs that you've noticed that really is telling people they're running on this emergency energy and cortisol instead of allowing more capacity to expand? Even, this is this is the big everyone I know this is the big part of this, though, even if it looks like you're high functioning on the outside.

    Lisa Woodruff (34:11.681)

    So.

    There are a few women who will be like, yep, I'm organized at home and work. There are very few women. More women come to me and they're like, everybody thinks I have it all together and I don't have it all together. And everybody comes to me for all the answers at home and at work. And it looks like I know what's going on, but I mean, it's a shell. I'm just waiting for somebody to realize that there's a facade here. And the first thing I would say is you're way more organized than you give yourself credit for because you're probably.

    reaching a perfectionistic standard instead of a woman of excellence, that's number one. But number two, yeah, until you externalize what's in your brain, how is anybody gonna help you? That'd be like the CEO saying, like, I had an idea last night about how we're gonna sell this project, so go, but then they don't tell you anything about it.

    Tansy Rodgers (35:00.869)

    Oh, I love it. So you said perfectionism versus the excellence. That's almost the excellence. That's almost a beautiful question you can ask yourself. Yes. To almost stop and say, all right, where am I? Am I trying to be perfect or am I trying to be excellent? What a great little mindset shift.

    Lisa Woodruff (35:24.77)

    Yeah, and you will, you would be surprised how often during the day you're trying to be perfect. And I think why we're trying to be perfect is A, because we want to be of high caliber women. Like we want to give our best effort to absolutely every freaking thing. But also we would like some recognition. So maybe if we do it really, really good, somebody will say we did a good job and they won't, but I'll tell you, you're doing a great job. You have to give yourself, you have to tell yourself you're doing a great job and stop. You're doing a great job and stop and save that time for something else.

    Tansy Rodgers (35:44.451)

    Yeah.

    Tansy Rodgers (35:52.332)

    Yeah. that can be so challenging, though, I think, because we've gotten so conditioned, at least in our in our American society, we've gotten so conditioned to be in this place of as a woman. I mean, I have to do it all. I can do it all. I can. And by the way, Lisa, I'm just going to say this. No, we can't do it all. No, we can't. Are we capable of?

    Anything we put our mind to, yeah. But we can't do it all. And I think that that's the trap that we've been led to step into because it's literally breaking us down and not allowing us to be of excellence in our own household and in our running of our own lives.

    Lisa Woodruff (36:41.486)

    Well, let me say this. First of all, only 17.9 % of the United States population are married with children. So there are a lot of women listening to this podcast who don't have children. And I've been talking a lot about being married with children. So I want to acknowledge that we have a lot of people who are listening or running households who are not married and or do not have children. And so my research is really going to be focusing on that. However,

    It's so easy to have this conversation if you are married with children because you may not know this, but being married adds seven hours of housework to a woman per week. When men get divorced, they add 5.5 hours of housework to their agenda per week. So it's a really good deal for a man to be married, just saying. Each child adds 3.3 hours of housework. So if you have three kids, it's 9.9. So you can see you've got right there 19 hours of housework if you're married with three kids. Now.

    Tansy Rodgers (37:17.581)

    Wow.

    Lisa Woodruff (37:37.036)

    With my grandchildren, there are some things I'm noticing that weren't around when my children were younger. My kids are 24 and 25. When did we decide that December was going to be the parents who have to pay for Christmas also have to go out and buy 18 random items every single year in a different size in order to do the certain special day of the week at preschool or daycare or

    Who started this and how can we please for the love, stop it? Because you have to buy the elf shirt and the Grinch shirt and then something red and then you've got to have this. And you know, the kids are a different size every single year. So it costs, because I paid for it last year, it costs like a hundred dollars to go buy all of these things so that the three year old wasn't wearing the wrong thing in daycare. Do you know how much daycare costs? Almost two grand a month. Why are we, why do you think people who go to, sorry,

    I've never been able to have this rant, so I'm having it on your podcast. Why do you think people who are paying this much money have the time to get all this stuff, then remember which day to send their kid to school in it, and then buy it again the next? Whose idea is this? The three-year-old doesn't know. Who are we doing this for? Have one pajama day. Have one pizza day for the month. We don't need this. And the daycare we went to did this four times a year. We had spirit week.

    We had like Christmas week. I was like, and then they would, and then they would like, and we're going to have our, our concert for you at two o'clock in the afternoon. And we really would like you to take your children home after that. And then tell us if you're going to send them on Friday, cause we really would like to give our staff the day off. I'm like, would you like to give me a tuition reduction? Would you like to like, or if you want them all to wear these clothes, put it in the fee and just send us home, send home the, what, where are these expectations coming from? Who, whose idea was this?

    Why are we perpetuating it? Can someone please stop it? Because no one wants to do it anymore. When I was raising my kids in the early 2000s, it was fun. And we had a couple of days like this, and I was a crazy room mom that would help. like a lot of us were stay-at-home moms. That is not the case anymore, especially not in a daycare. You don't have stay-at-home moms in a daycare. Like that is the whole point of a daycare. So anyways, for the love, ladies, can we help each other out?

    Lisa Woodruff (40:02.094)

    There are very few men that work at this daycare. We're like, you're underwater? Let me throw a couple rocks on you, and I'll take some money for that, What are we doing to each other? Stop it.

    Tansy Rodgers (40:15.202)

    Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. And yes, there are so many people out there listening to this that, you know, they're they may not be married. They may not have children. But but there are so many that are or that have been in this situation before and are probably still feeling the sting of so much of it. Right. You know, when you when you talk about this 19 hours, you know, just throwing that out.

    Lisa Woodruff (40:16.663)

    Let's start a movement.

    Tansy Rodgers (40:45.591)

    number wise. You talk about these 19 hours potential of being added on. Seven hours if you don't have kids and you're married.

    Lisa Woodruff (40:54.446)

    That's just for the spouse. Actual housework is between 26 and 38 hours. Wow. Wow.

    Tansy Rodgers (41:00.268)

    Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about step one. mean, you in your book, you talk about- Yeah. But you also talk about learning to manipulate your time, right? Which I think is such, it's a great concept, but I want you to unpack this for us because-

    Lisa Woodruff (41:06.766)

    Let's do less.

    Tansy Rodgers (41:20.254)

    I don't want the listener to be like, learn to manipulate my time. That means then I will have more capacity to do more. Lisa, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about what learning to manipulate your time actually means. And what do you want the listener to do differently in their day so they can manipulate their time?

    Lisa Woodruff (41:41.582)

    Yes, I do want you to have more time so you can do more of what you want to do, not more housework. Yes. more housework. So do not get more. Because I did that. was like, you know what? If I just make a really cute checklist, if I just make a really good thing and I'll get through it all, you are never just just understand right now you are never going to finish your to do list because as soon as you do, you're going to just make another one because you'll be bored. So do not try to get your to do list done. When I talk about manipulating your time.

    You know, I'm very analytical person. That's why I look at this daycare thing and I'm like, this is a boon for Walmart. It's not a boon for the people who work in the daycare or the people who use the daycare. What are, how are we using our time? When are we annoyed? Like obviously that annoys me. And had I stayed in that daycare longer, I would have probably tried to get them to undo it. And what I find is usually when we're annoyed, it's not our family. Wasn't my family that got me annoyed at that daycare situation?

    It was somebody who started that years ago and they've just perpetuated it. When I'm annoyed at home, it's usually because I'm waiting for a machine or I'm waiting for water to get hot. It's often because I'm waiting for water to get hot. So when I'm waiting, when I'm waiting and I know I have so much to do and I don't want to be waiting, what can I do differently with that time? So learning to manipulate your time is knowing like you would in business. In business, you know all the objectives that you want to get done. You know all the things you need to get done during the day.

    And then you order those things. I need to do email. Okay, I'll do that between two podcast interviews in this 30 minute chunk of time. You wouldn't start a three hour block with I'll do email first. No, because that would waste that three hour block where you could do deep work. You need to think that way at home. How do you manipulate your time at home? So one of the things I like to do is when I get up on Saturday or whatever day I'm going to do housework is get all those machines going because it takes them a while to get their job done. So get the washing machine going, get the dishwasher going, get that.

    robot vacuum going, if you can get her going. I usually can't get her going. Get the coffee maker going. I get everything going. By the time everything's going, I go back, great, the coffee is ready. It's ready for me. And I can keep going with my day. And so looking at your machines as you would as if they were employees in your company, I always answer emails from my employees first. Because if they're stuck with a question and I don't answer, then they're either not working at all.

    Lisa Woodruff (44:00.95)

    or they're working on things that maybe they shouldn't be working on, I want to make sure they're working on whatever business objectives I have. That's what you want to do at home too. You want your family, you want your machines, you want everything working to multiply your time.

    Tansy Rodgers (44:12.91)

    I love that. Emphasize that your machines are employees in your company.

    What a really cool concept. Yeah, yeah. And I will also say too, ADHD brains, maybe neurodivergent in general, but ADHD brains especially, we love to fill our time that becomes available. We love to be able to stack more in, at least maybe I'm talking about myself, but we love to stack it in. And so I like that, I like that.

    difference that you talk about that you talk about right in very beginning. It's not about opening up time to do more. It's about opening up housework. mean, it's about opening up time to do more self care for yourself. Yeah. Did you know that stress doesn't just live in your brain? It actually lives in your gut too, because your gut is the center of it all.

    Lisa Woodruff (45:03.852)

    Yes.

    Tansy Rodgers (45:16.93)

    When your nervous system has been under pressure, digestion starts to really weird and cravings start to feel out of control. Sleep may get lighter and you feel like you don't get the rest you need and your mood, well, it can get super spicy. And so supporting your gut is such a big part of supporting your resilience. One of my go-to staples is just thrive.

    probiotics. It is the first probiotic that I found works so well for me and has worked so well for many, many of my clients. I love it because it's simple, it's consistent, and it fits into real life without turning your morning into this supplement overwhelm. You don't have to keep it in the fridge. It is shelf stable and you can take it wherever you need. It is quite easy.

    But my favorite thing about Just Thrive Probiotics is how it made me feel. The bloating started to go away. I felt like my digestion was running so much smoother. My immune system started to improve. I just feel better when I am taking Just Thrive Probiotics consistently. Head down to the show notes, click the link.

    for Just Thrive Probiotics. And when you use code TANZY15, you get 15 % off your entire order. That's TANZY15 for 15 % off your entire order. I know you're gonna love this product. I can't wait for you to try it out. Now you talk also something about Swiss cheese organizing, which that feels very resonant. It feels very, very resonant to my soul.

    Lisa Woodruff (46:56.386)

    Yeah.

    Tansy Rodgers (47:04.322)

    Let's talk about what that is. What is Swiss cheese organizing and why does it feel productive and why does it fail people long-term?

    Lisa Woodruff (47:13.582)

    Okay, let me ask you this question. If you have Saturday and you can organize your house, what room are you going to organize first? I'm asking you.

    Tansy Rodgers (47:21.582)

    You're asking me? I would actually organize my, like my office space because it's never, it's never in full organization.

    Lisa Woodruff (47:34.476)

    And is that what you normally do? What's the last time? What do you normally do?

    Tansy Rodgers (47:36.972)

    No, wanna do. I end up doing laundry and doing like all of these little nuance things that I just don't feel like doing.

    Lisa Woodruff (47:47.68)

    Okay, so yes, so what you want to do versus what you actually do. So normally when you're like, okay, I'm gonna organize, like, I wanna get to the office. But before we get to the office, I'm just going to pick up the family room floor, clean up the kitchen counter. You know what, the kids' rooms are a mess. Okay, we're gonna organize the kids' rooms, the toy room, da da. And you do all these spaces and you're like, I'm exhausted. Let's just order pizza and let's watch a movie. And did you get to the office? No, you did not. Because you did Swiss cheese organizing.

    So Swiss cheese organizing is organizing what you could see in front of you instead of what will actually make a difference in your household. The office is the right answer. That's why I pressed you, because I was like, wow, well, why would she? Okay, see, but you don't get to the office because you're like, nobody sees that but me. That's going to help me. But everybody else sees the laundry and all these other things. You should step over that laundry pile and go straight into the office. And then when they say, can I help you? You say, yeah, there's laundry to do. And by the way, order pizza because I'm hungry and I'm not going to leave this room until this room is done.

    And the office would actually support your self-care, but you prioritize the family over yourself. So the office is great. In the book, I go through your bedroom, your bathroom, and your closet. Because if your bedroom, and your bathroom, and your closet, your bedroom, your bathroom, and your closet are organized, then you will go to sleep organized, and you will wake up organized, and you will start to live your life 50 % organized. I made my kids clean and organize their bedrooms every single Saturday their entire life.

    And then I turned around at one point, I realized that my bedroom was a storage room. I had in there like all the gifts that I was hiding, all the things I didn't want the kids to touch or find. I had random papers, I was scrapping, like it looked like you're walking into a hamster cage. But their rooms, I redid them every three years, they were always clean and organized. And yes, children need to live in an organized environment, but also every single Saturday you're going to need to redo it. Whereas if you organize your bedroom, it will stay organized for six months to a year.

    It will stay organized longer. So Swiss cheese organizing isn't only the order in which you do it, it's how long it lasts. When you get your closet really organized, it will last for sure four months, maybe six, right? And then you gotta do it cause you're in a new season. You get your bathroom organized. It will stay organized possibly for a decade. If you're like me and you don't change what you do in your hygiene routine. You get your office organized. You're probably gonna want to do that, you know, three, four times a year as each quarter rolls around. You're gonna want to freshen it up and move things around.

    Lisa Woodruff (50:10.242)

    but stays way more organized than a kitchen counter or a family room floor or a laundry room or a kid's bedroom. And that is Swiss cheese organizing. If you keep putting all your effort on what you can see, you're just going to be running that and you're never going get to the storage room. You're never going to get to your file cabinet. You need to prioritize those places that you don't see, but actually help you live a more organized life.

    Tansy Rodgers (50:32.098)

    Lisa, feel so called out right now. No, I love this. For all the listeners, I literally just got a silent therapy session. is so good. So good. Yeah. And so as you were talking, so many things started popping up. It's not in my brain. It's not just the organization. That is the act of. You're literally

    Lisa Woodruff (50:34.646)

    All the listeners.

    Tansy Rodgers (51:01.102)

    calming the mental chaos in your brain. Yes. You're balancing out. You're shifting the energy of the room and the space. mean, on this podcast, we've talked about things like feng shui and changing the energy when you are changing your closet or your clothes or the things that you are surrounding yourself with. It's about changing the energy. And I love that you say start with your personal room, your closet.

    your bathroom because that can shift so much. And honestly, and I say this from personal experience, honestly, I think it actually makes you more productive because now all of sudden you have more energy and mental space to be doing the other stuff.

    Lisa Woodruff (51:46.732)

    Yeah, because if you're walking in a bedroom that was like mine that's really a storage room, all you're seeing is all the things that aren't done yet and then you go to bed and you're like, my gosh, I have 18 things to do. But if you walk in a bedroom and it's going to still have stuff in it, you're not living in a museum, but where everything there is purposeful and projects that you want to be working on, then, you know, yes, you're more supported in your environment.

    Tansy Rodgers (52:06.402)

    Yeah. And so would you say that those three things in particular, I mean, those three spaces in particular, if somebody's feeling overwhelmed, would that be where they should start to get fast relief?

    Lisa Woodruff (52:18.316)

    Yes, and don't start in your closet because you have too many preconceived notions about your closet and then the body and blah, blah, blah, Start in your bathroom. Because you know that you don't like the scent of that perfume or perfume at all and just get rid of all of it. Get rid of the cleaners that stink. It's really easy to get rid of things in the bathroom. You just haven't done it. You don't need 80 towels. I can't even tell you every single linen closet I ever did. What do we do? We buy two to four towels.

    and then those get hard and crunchy. So we put those in the linen closet, we buy four more and we keep doing this until we have 80 in there. Like I can't even tell you how many houses had 80 towels in there. was like, what are these from? If they'd been married 20 years, every single towel they'd had that entire 20 years was in that linen closet because you know, you might need it. What if there's a flood? I was like, how big is this flood gonna be? That we're gonna need 80 of these towels. You're not going to.

    Give them to the shelters, by the way, if you want to donate them. The shelters, the pet shelters love to have your old hard towels. They're fine with it. Especially the ones monogrammed from the 80s that you still have. Just saying. Yeah. saying.

    Tansy Rodgers (53:19.726)

    And interestingly enough, that's exactly what happened to the towel, the extra towels that I had here at my place. They went to and are going to the pet shelter. Yeah. So Lisa, as you're talking, one of the things that pops into my head is what if somebody, especially those with ADHD or who easily go into a freeze mode, maybe it's trauma related, whatever it is.

    What do you suggest for those individuals who start to go into freeze and they get so overwhelmed and they just stop and they walk away?

    Lisa Woodruff (53:57.358)

    Okay, this is great. So I have a book called How ADHD Affects Home Organization and you let me know if this would work with the phrase that you're talking about, because that's a new phrase to me. So my kids, it took them longer to learn skills, but they could learn the skills. And the way I taught them how to organize their bedroom was we went in every single Saturday and their bedroom was going to be organized. So my son's solution was to just get rid of everything and not play with things during the week and just play video games. There's a lot less to do, so that's the solution.

    My daughter is very eclectic and she was like, okay, so you know, really buckle down. But now both of my kids can totally clean their mini apartments on their own and they're 25, 24 and 25. So we started with these three steps. The first thing we do is we collect all the dirty laundry and we put those in the hamper. Or if you're doing laundry, you go ahead and start the laundry. So first thing, get rid of all the dirty clothes and they're all over the house. So just everywhere they are, collect the clothes, put them in the laundry. Next, collect any

    food or dirty dishes, because I let my kids eat in different places. So we would get that going. And then the third thing is you would just go through the space and you would pick up anything that is trash. And because it's always the same three things, you're creating a script for yourself. When you're so overwhelmed, you don't know what to do. Well, I know what dirty laundry is. I have to do laundry. OK, I'll start the laundry. OK, are there is there any food or dishes in here? OK, I'll take that to the sink. OK, now I'm going to look for trash. And this works in any space that you're in. Work for trash.

    get the black trash bag, it, you're probably already through your 15 minutes, you've been productive, you can be done if you want to be done. But what tends to happen is that once you start doing that script and you do it over and over and over again, then you're like, okay, so I've got all the trashes done, okay, what's the next thing I can see? And you can either work clock-ways around the room, or you can say I'm only gonna pick up books, or I'm just gonna do this one thing and you do that one thing and then check in with yourself. Are you done with your session or can you do more? And eventually your stamina grows and you're able to do more and more and more.

    But it always starts with laundry, food and dishes, trash. Laundry, food and dishes, trash. Because they're always there. They're easy lifts and you know how to do those.

    Tansy Rodgers (55:58.524)

    gosh, I never realized, isn't it funny how your brain, your body just sometimes knows what it needs to do and it just does it? I've never realized this, but something you just said, that's one of the tactics I do when I start to get overwhelmed. I make a circle around the room. I start in one corner, I make the circle and I just follow the trail to get things done. Yeah. that's interesting.

    all right. So let's talk about that inevitable to-do list. Now, are you a fan of to-do lists? Not a fan? Do you think there should be certain ways to work with to-do lists? Like, I say this from a recovery. Mine? am a sticky note, a holic. I'm pretty sure that I've kept that company in business because,

    My to-do lists can get really long. Sometimes I have to remind myself to dial it back. And what ends up happening is I will write everything down. I look at it. I get really happy that it's out of my brain and on paper. But then I get overwhelmed because there's so much. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes when my ADHD brain is flying high,

    I don't know exactly where I want to start and I get overwhelmed and then I could just go do something else.

    Lisa Woodruff (57:28.674)

    Okay, exactly what you said is totally me. I agree with everything you just said. So what do we do about that then? Right? So what I found was I'm really good at making the list. And sometimes the satisfaction of writing on the list is better than doing the actual thing. And then I don't even want to do it. And I was like, I wrote it down and I don't want to do it.

    Tansy Rodgers (57:48.726)

    Lisa, how many times have you done the action and then wrote it on there just so you could check it?

    Lisa Woodruff (57:53.56)

    Okay, that also, yes, also did that too. So I realized that, and I'm a verbal processor, so sometimes when I tell you my great idea, then I don't even need to do the idea, because I got the pleasure of having told you about it. So I have to trick myself to actually do the work, if you know what I mean. First of all, no one likes to do housework. Housework is just laundry, anything related to food and cleaning. Everything else is not my definition of housework. I've done an academic study on the definition of housework.

    So everything else we do in our house is not housework because no one's gonna come and, you know, condemn our house because it's clean. So what my problem was, and you tell me if this resonates with you, that to-do list is self-generated and no one's holding me accountable to it because I mean, I was a stay-at-home mom and now I'm an entrepreneur. Like I don't have a boss. I am my boss. And so I could say yes or I could say no whenever I want. And sometimes I'll be like, yeah, I don't wanna do that. And so I don't do it. And then I reaped the...

    repercussions of not having done that thing, but also I'm sure you can relate that when the get close to the deadline, I'll just get it done real fast, you know? So I like to do those things. So I started to look at my to-do list differently and I was making a to-do list of all the things I had to do in order to get more time to do what I wanted to do, which was a jigsaw puzzle.

    And then I finally realized, well, if I didn't write all those things on the list, I could just go do the jigsaw puzzle. Now when your kid's a little, you don't have time, but I do a jigsaw puzzle every day now in my 50s and I love it. I thought you had to be retired to do one, found out you didn't. Now I just do it every day. I love it. And I'll listen to an audio book or I'll watch TV with my husband, but I love doing jigsaw puzzles. So once I realized that I was writing a lot of things on my to-do list because other people were doing them or I thought they needed to be done, I started writing down just what I wanted to do.

    And I realized a lot of what I was writing down were big projects and things that couldn't be done quickly. And so then I just have to rewrite it and rewrite and rewrite it. So I stopped doing to-do lists and I started writing things on index cards, which sounds kind of like what you're doing with Post-it notes. Because when you write on a Post-it note, you're pulling one or two things off of that list and you're putting it somewhere so you'll remember to do these things. And so you're chunking your to-do list and like what you want to do next. You're almost like prioritizing it. Does that resonate with you?

    Tansy Rodgers (01:00:09.346)

    Yeah, that does. Yep. Okay.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:00:12.066)

    So what I did was I just started, and when you do that, when you write that to-do list down scientifically, you're encoding that deeper into your memory and you're allowing that thought to go out of your working memory. So you have more working memory capacity in order to do things. So let's get a little nerdy. Do you want to? Okay, so there's, I'm getting my degree in applied psychology. I'll have it this summer. And when you talk about ADHD, ADHD is a deficit in executive functioning.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:00:28.162)

    love too, yes.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:00:41.74)

    Now we know that working memory is definitely part of executive functioning. That is, mean, everybody knows that working memory is part. I like a test called the brief A and it has eight different executive functions. So there's working memory and then there's getting started like task monitoring, planning, organization, impulse control, all these things are working memory or executive function. My dissertation right now is about working memory and prospective memory. So prospective memory,

    is like working memory, but it's not exactly working memory. And it is the memory of remembering things. So this is remembering to take the cookies out of the oven, remembering to get the milk on the way home. And perspective memory and working memory are in a task switching state all the time. So when you remember you need to do something, you're interrupting your working memory that's actually doing something right now. As you have to stop what you're doing to remember what you need to remember, then you have to really remember it so you can get back to what you were originally doing. And we as women are doing this like it's a ping pong game.

    ding ding ding ding ding ding and I realized for me that when I could take that interrupted perspective memory thought and I could write it on a piece of paper and I could put it down I would get back to the task that I was doing quicker and then when I was done doing whatever I was doing I would look at this little stack of papers that I had of all these things that I had thought about most of which were nonsensical and usually not even important and I'm so glad I didn't stop what I was doing in order to do them. I really think that the Sunday basket that I created years ago this is kind of funny it's probably eight years ago now

    One of my employees, Monique, said to me, Lisa, wouldn't it be great if we found out that you had ADHD? And I was like, where are we going with this, Monique? And she goes, wouldn't it be great if we found out that the Sunday basket was actually the solution for ADHD? And I was like, that is interesting. That's when I pressed to find out, do I have ADHD? Well, that's what the Sunday basket does. It takes all these little pieces of paper and you put them there. And then on Sunday, you go through all of them and you prioritize what you want to get done for the week. And it does everything that your executive function does outside of your brain.

    so that your brain is available to be utilized on not remembering things all week long. So I'm getting my dissertation in if perspective memory, if offloading perspective memory reduces cognitive load in invisible family load and overwhelmed people. I'm not very good at the academic speak, just so you know. But then our first academic study that we're going to do is going to be to test, pre-test and post-test.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:03:08.128)

    executive function before and after using the Sunday basket. And I have talked to the doctors that are working on ADHD meds for adults and they do things like this for children. There are all kinds of things here in Cincinnati, Ohio that we have in the ADHD center to support children who have ADHD outside of pharmaceutical invention, but there is nothing for adults. And I talked to the leading researcher and he said, no, and we have nothing in the pipeline and we aren't even looking at that. And he said, you can't have my research dollars for it. I said, fine.

    I'll just sell enough of my product to fund my own research. And I'm hoping that this becomes the first non-pharmaceutical intervention for ADHD for women at home.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:03:47.278)

    I love that concept so much because as you were talking, what I could think to myself was how many times I personally have walked around the house and I was on a mission to do one thing and I stopped three or four times because something popped into my head and I didn't want to forget it. So I would stop, I would quick do it, and then I would try to get back on task again. depending on where I'm at,

    on my brain cycle, like where my energy is sitting, where I'm able to give more or not, will completely depend if I can even remember what my initial thing was that I wanted to get to. So I love this concept about just get them out of your head, write them down, and put them aside. You can come back to them whenever you want to, or you can do the Sunday basket.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:04:27.022)

    Yeah.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:04:44.448)

    as that extension of your brain. What an amazing concept.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:04:48.91)

    Yeah, well, I have the Sunday basket because I didn't want to do them. So I write them down and I don't really want to do them because I was just going to do this one thing and then go do my puzzle. And now my brain is like, here are eight other things you could do. I'm like, OK, I'll talk about it. So then I just look at those eight things and my only question is, can this wait till Sunday? If it can wait till Sunday, it must wait till Sunday. And the reason why it must wait till Sunday is because you've planned your week like your calendar is full. You don't have time for these random things your brain wants you to do. Now, if it's really, really important.

    you will add it to the list, but usually nine times out 10, it just goes in the Sunday basket. Then on Sunday, yes, I get overwhelmed when I look at all these ideas that my brain had or things it wants to do, but the nice thing about looking at it in totality is it's much easier to say, nope, nope, nope, because you can't get it all done. So no, no, no. And then a lot of things have money attached to them. Well, there's only so much money. If you're spending money all day, every day, as you think of things, you run out of money for the things that you forgot you needed money for.

    If you're making all your financial decisions on Sunday when you remember all of these tasks, you're more financially prudent. So people say, how do you make yourself do the Sunday basket? I don't know, how do you do your homework when you had to go to school or how do you make dinner? Like, you don't have to love it, but you do have to do it. You can do it all week, all the time and just have your brain ping pong around, or you can do it for, you know, 90 minutes to two hours on Sunday and make all those decisions all at once and then go play pickleball or take a walk or whatever it is you want to do.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:06:13.568)

    Yeah. What have you seen has shifted emotionally for someone who's been living in that reactive mode by doing the Sunday basket?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:06:22.84)

    So I'll speak to myself personally. I am so calm all the time. And things will happen, like big things will happen. I'm like, okay, because I know exactly what I could take off of my current list and put back in the Sunday basket and I won't forget it. So I'm looking at my calendar out my week and then some big emergency happens and I'm like, okay, this is going back in the box. This is going back in the box because this new emergency did take precedence. So I know I'm going to get to it when I want. And then I was with a colleague in my PhD program.

    and he's studying mindfulness and he explained to me what mindfulness was. I was like, okay, what is it? And he said, well, you continually reorient yourself to the present, like so that you're always present. And I was like, oh wow, I am always mindful. Like literally during this interview, we're going into the second hour. I have not had a thought other than what we're talking about in this interview. In the past, I would have had like a million thoughts about, oh my gosh, he's picking up the kids from school, all those things.

    I am 100 % present with whoever I am with all the time and it is so freeing and I mean, just it makes my soul so happy. I just don't have a lot of stress because it's in the Sunday basket or at work, you I have a different basket for work. And so I know that I'll get to it or I won't, but I'm going to enjoy this moment now. And that is because I don't let my brain remember a single thing. She's not responsible for any remembering. She's only responsible for

    Networking and creating and talking and generating and ideating and she loves it.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:07:55.81)

    Yeah. I'm still always fascinated when I go out to a restaurant and those amazing brains who stand in front of me and take my order without writing anything down. I don't know how they do it. Yeah. Because I'm right there with you. don't want to remember anything anymore because I've learned, I've learned that it throws me even deeper into that quicksand. And so it sounds like it sounds like that's what you've been doing. You have really learned how to escape that quicksand.

    What have you noticed, either within yourself or anybody that you've worked with, once somebody escapes the quicksand, what do they start to get back first? Time, energy, identity, creativity, peace? What is it that they start to actually get back first?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:08:40.695)

    So I always say time, because you get more time back. And then my audience will be like, we don't really have any more time. And I realized what they were saying was, their time is still full. I'm like, yes, but now you're doing what you want to do instead of what you used to do there. yeah, that's right. So what you end up getting is capacity. And like I was saying earlier, the word wonder. I remember when you go through my courses and you develop these systems in your household and you learn how to create them and then you know also how to change them as you face.

    growth through your phases of life. It takes, you know, 18 months, two years to get your whole house organized. And some people are like, but also you're still not organized. So what do you care? Like you're still going to live 18 months, two years. It takes a while. What happens is though, you get all the way organized because you stop Swiss cheese organizing. So you get those spaces organized that were never organized. And then you can actually organize the ones that are Swiss cheese. And then you know what happens? You're organized. And that is really uncomfortable.

    Because now you come home and you're like, have so much to do. No, you don't. Everything's done. We're on maintenance. And then this is why I have my whole entire company. You have to wrestle with what you are uniquely gifted and created to do because it's different than everybody else and the world needs you. So when COVID started, I had someone in Florida. She emailed me and she said, because I am organized and I have the capacity and I have these systems,

    I am going to fly to New York. This was like week two. We had no idea what was going on. She was leaving her teenage kids because they were in an organized house and they were going to be fine because she didn't want those on the front line that had little babies working there and she was going to go work in New York because she had the capacity. The things that people do, the women do, when they have their time back and they have their capacity back are, I mean, awe-inspiring.

    What you're uniquely, we just don't as women, we fill our time with all these things on our to-do list, trying to be perfect and trying to get all of our housework done. Who cares? Buy paper plates. Go out and do what you're uniquely gifted and created to do. That is my mission, is to unlock what you are uniquely gifted and created to do.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:10:51.51)

    You know, I never even thought of this, but as you were talking, I realized that if somebody hasn't had the capacity to heal on a deeper level and then they happen and then they open and now have the capacity, how quickly how quickly they may actually end up filling it up again and getting into that cycle, almost like creating drama for themselves. Yes. Because they don't know because they literally don't know what to do.

    with time.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:11:22.54)

    Right. Yeah, I did have to move from creating fires and putting out fires to sustained energy and creating significance. It was a shift, things that were significant.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:11:37.806)

    Before we get into your rapid fire questions, I'm curious with your book, what is your favorite chapter? What is the one that you feel? I mean, I'm sure the entire book is a game changer, but what do you feel is the most valuable chapter, one of your most favorites?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:11:55.534)

    would say you're not a perfectionist, you're a woman of excellence. Because even if you don't take any of the tips for how to get organized or get more time, once you let go of perfection, it and move from living under judgment to receiving grace from yourself, it is like the rest of your world, the rest of your life will be shifted. Like that is the gift is to stop judging yourself. And when you stop judging yourself, you stop judging everyone else and you just live such a happier life.

    when you strive for excellence instead of perfection.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:12:28.366)

    Yeah. And you know, from a recovering, my hands raised for those who are just listening, a recovering perfectionist, I think that is one of the most beautiful. This whole podcast episode has been awesome, but I think that's one of the most beautiful things that you said, because it's such a great reminder that it isn't about the perfectionist, it's about the excellence. And that can be defined in so many different ways, depending on who you are.

    Well, before we figure out where to get this book and where you're hanging out, let's do a little rapid fire. What do you think? Sounds good. right. All right. These are fun questions. So Lisa, this is really just about you and tying it back to this concept that we talked about today and just whatever comes to the top of your brain that you want to share. All right. Three of them. There's three. All right. Number one.

    And what's something in your own house you still quote unquote forget that it exists until it actually becomes a problem?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:13:29.934)

    Smoke detectors. Why do they always start beeping at 3 a.m.? I don't understand. And then the dog goes out and won't come back in. And then it wasn't that battery. And we have like the regular smoke detector and then we have the ADT one. And which one is it? Oh my gosh. It's a whole thing.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:13:47.342)

    So I would have never thought of that and you are so right. The most inopportune times. All right. Question number two, if you could snap your fingers and delete one recurring household task from this whole entire planet earth, what would be gone like that?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:14:05.966)

    Let's just get rid of dusting. You don't need it. Just get rid of it.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:14:08.354)

    Good one. Good one. Yes, good one. Just magically disappear. I like it. All right, number three. And the final one. What's the most unexpectedly soothing thing that you do to reset your brain when you're really feeling scattered?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:14:26.89)

    Make a list. Write it down. Yeah.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:14:31.458)

    Yeah, yeah, good one. I like it. I like it. what a great conversation. Thank you so much, Lisa. Where can we find you? Where are you hanging out? And where can we find your book?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:14:44.398)

    Well, thank you so much. I really primarily just hang out on LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm addicted to Instagram. I'm organized 365 on Instagram. I have a podcast organized 365 and the book is called Escaping Quicksand. It's available on Amazon. And if you go to organized365.com, you can find directions there. If you preorder the book, you can get into our book club. We're going to go chapter by chapter through the book. You'll get the audio. You'll be able to experience the whole entire book before it even comes out on June 23rd.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:15:15.106)

    And my dear listener, as always, those links will be down in the show notes, so make sure you jump on down and get your hands on them and get into Lisa's world. Are there any last words that you would like to lay on the hearts of the listeners for today?

    Lisa Woodruff (01:15:30.638)

    No, just thank you to you. Thank you for this podcast. Thank you for the work that you're doing in the world and how respectfully you talk about how different all of us are. And it's just been so much fun to spend this time with you.

    Tansy Rodgers (01:15:41.88)

    Thank you so much.

    in some cheesy way. that is, overwhelm isn't a character flaw. It's usually a systems problem, plus a nervous system that's been carrying too much for too long. And if you have ADHD or you love someone who does, it can feel even more personal. Like the clutter, the piles, the unfinished loops are proof that you're failing, but you're not. What if, what if,

    just feedback. What if the point isn't to become more organized, but to actually stop sinking in responsibilities that were never meant to live on your own shoulders alone? If you want to check out Lisa's new book, Escaping Quickstand, and grab the resources that she's sharing, everything is linked down in the show notes. And here, I just want you to sit with this one question for this week and just ponder

    on how it makes you feel but also what comes up. What am I currently doing out of obligation that is quietly pulling me under and what is one small boundary or system that would help me come up for air? So powerful. And until next time, keep spreading that beautiful energy you were born to share.

    Lisa Woodruff (01:17:10.062)

    Mm.

Tansy Rodgers — beU Complete
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