Planning Your Life with Lori Oberbroeckling

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I'll start.

Now, on to today's episode:

Corinne Powell: Oh, I'm so glad that you're here with Lori and I today. Lori speaks from an energy that is so fun to be around.

She's going to help you today to locate pockets of time you didn't know you had.

You're going to want to stick around and listen to this full episode. I want to begin by introducing Lori to each one of you listening. 

Lori Oberbrockling is a mom of four. She's many things, a corporate leader, a podcaster, a productivity expert, and the author of the book, Secrets of Supermom, how extraordinary moms succeed at work, at home, and how you can too.

She's passionate about helping parents who want fulfilling careers or side hustles to also feel present and connected to their families.

High priority, high value of mine for us to be able to do both the work we love and also be present in our families.

So I am so excited to have Lori here with me today and let's just dive right into the

episode. So happy to have you. Thank you for being here.

Lori Oberbroeckling: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

Corinne Powell: And we're going to talk about weekly planning, which is, I think, a good thing for all of us.

I know some of my listeners are parents, so I feel like time is of the essence, but it is for all of us. So jump in wherever you want to take us and we'll go from there.

Lori Oberbroeckling: All right, well, let's do it. So why do I love weekly planning and kind of where does this go?

I used to wake up and go to my calendar and say, OK, what is today? So this is me pre-kids in a corporate job and usually fairly demanding days.

So usually lots of meetings, right? I traveled for a long time. So really would say, OK, what do I need to get done today?

And I would go through the things that were on my list, the meetings that I had to do, the schedule that I had.

And sometimes I would find that I had conflicts that I didn't realize. Sometimes I would find that I did not have any available time to get tasks done because I was doing so many meetings.

And maybe I had a project due to that day or a report due that day or something. So it just wasn't really working without me working a million hours, right? So I could certainly put in extra time some days.

Sometimes there weren't even hours for extra time, right? Because you have filled your entire day. And then it's 11 p.m., midnight, and you still don't have it all done.

And I know that the moms listening, the women listening, the folks listening have had that feeling where you just felt like you hustled all day.

It's late into the night, and you still don't have it all done. And I did not like that feeling.

And then as I had children, that feeling got worse, right? Because now I have all of these unknowns, right?

I have little tiny kids. I have four kids within six years. So my kids were all little, all at the same time. They're now bigger, but not big.

And so I just couldn't continue the way that I was continuing without feeling very overwhelmed or just giving up a lot of sleep.

And that's what I did for a long time, was I just gave up a whole heck of a lot of sleep.

And we are not our most patient when we don't have sleep. We do not make our best food choices when we don't have sleep.

We are not the nicest to our family when we don't have sleep. And so it just made, I knew that I needed to make some changes. I needed to do things differently.

And I didn't realize how differently until I started to make changes and realized how different I felt, right? How much calmer I felt, how much more patient I was, how much more energy I had. I thought I was energized before.

And it is nothing in comparison to making some of these changes that came along the way.

And one of those big ones is weekly planning.

So kind of a long story to get there, but I just feel like it's so important for everyone to understand that when you do things a certain way and you're just kind of living the life, right, you're not taking that step back and saying, is this broken? Is this really the way it has to be?

You might just be stuck in this and thinking this is just how it is. It's just busy all the time.

Every day just has to be a scramble, and it doesn't. And so weekly planning for me is a one session per week where I sit down and I look at my entire personal calendar, my entire business calendar, my entire career calendar.

I look at everything that is happening with me, my children, my partner. We look at all of it.

And I look at the things I want to get done from a personal perspective and from a business and career perspective.

So I'm literally looking at everything for that week. And I am making sure that if it needs to get done, it has a time block.

And if it's a meeting, that it's there. If it's a conflict, that it gets fixed. Right?

So I'm looking at all of those things because what it lets me do. So I do mine Sunday morning. And I know women do theirs different times.

So I don't think that there's a magic about Sunday morning. But the magic for me is that everyone's still sleeping.

So I'm not distracted. Right. And I am not in the midst of a work week.

Corinne Powell: Okay. Right.

Lori Oberbroeckling: So when you're in the midst of a work week, sometimes you're already living in panic mode.

And so stopping it like Monday at noon to try to do this, that's not a good spot for me. Right.

I need to be not in the midst of a work week. I need to be in a calm place, like ready to plan place. So Sunday mornings for me, really nice and ideal for that.

And then I look at that entire week and I can say, oh, we've got a conflict or, oh, we've got three kids that need to be in three places at three of the same time.

And we are not three parents.

Right. So being able to say, wow, I need to ask for help. Wow. We need to cancel something. Wow.

My husband and I really need to, you know, teamwork makes the dream work this week, or we're never going to make this happen.

And so being able to have those conversations, being able to look at the calendar and say, is this overwhelming to me?

You know, am I already dreading the week?

What can I change now instead of being Wednesday, being drowning and feeling like I have no way out?

And so it's just made such a difference because then each day I wake up and I execute.

I know what has to be done that day. I know what tasks are on my list. I know what to do's are going to get done. I know what meetings I have. I know what children need to be aware. And it just has made the weeks work like clockwork.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, that's good.

I love that you're saying do it when you're in a calm place when you're not in the midst of it all already feeling the overwhelmed.

That stands out to me as one of those keys like, oh, take that nugget. 

Lori Oberbroeckling: Because when you're in fight or flight, right? Let's say you're already in panic mode, right?

So now you're like, oh my goodness, what do I do? Your anxiety is high. You feel that fight or flight mode. All those problem-solving, those thinking skills go away, right?

We know this. We know this biologically. This is what happens: our body says go and do it this way or that way. But it does not let you think about problem-solving skills. You're not strategizing when you feel that way.

And we know this, but we so often don't take advantage of the fact that we can be not in that mode and we can strategize.

So when we think about, oh, this week looks terrible, right?

Could we move that dentist appointment?

Could we move that orthodontist appointment?

Do we have to do all the activities this week?

Does everyone have to go to the baseball game, right?

What can we start to shift so that the week becomes doable for the entire family and no one is feeling completely overwhelmed?

Because we know that if mom's overwhelmed, everyone's overwhelmed, right? But so is true with dad. So it's true if some of the kids are overwhelmed, then everybody else gets the brunt of that. So the feeling of the family, I can look at that.

I'm strategic. If I'm in the middle of it, it's just panic mode. How do we fix this? And it becomes overwhelming, just like you said.

Corinne Powell: Yeah.

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Corinne Powell: I'm interrupting the episode just for a moment to let you know that I have some newly revised and fresh workbooks for you. They'll focus on healing your inner child, living intuitively. What are the keys for change?

How can you stop people pleasing? If you've heard me talk about a subject here on the podcast, I likely have a workbook that also talks about that subject in more depth.

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Corinne Powell: Yeah. Is this something you had to implement? You realized you needed it at some point in your life?

Lori Oberbroeckling: That's it. Yeah. So when I realized, okay, I've got to make this change,

I started to do things differently. I used to use an 18-month planner, for example, and I would just write everything in my planner.

But my husband said, I can't see your planner. And at work, I use an Outlook calendar. So all of my stuff was kind of everywhere.

Well, this lets me pull everything into a paper planner, pull everything into a daily view so that I can see a weekly view and a daily view of what's happening.

And it really allows me to do things differently. So yes, I kind of changed the process, changed the flow and went, oh, wow.

Okay, this is where I can stay out of overwhelm. This helps me see in advance. This is where I am really doing things differently than I was before.

And it's just making such a difference. And so I started to share it, of course. So I share it with women in my society.

And we have an entire bootcamp that we've done in the past. And we just then are able to really dig in. It's part of my supermom system.

We're able to dig into that because as I see it work, and as I, over these past couple of years, have seen it work for other women, it works, right?

I can see it working. I can see them scheduling themselves differently, feeling differently about the things that they're working on, feeling like they actually have time to do things they want to do.

Can you imagine being like, oh my goodness, I do have time to work out. Oh my goodness, I do have time to plan our meals so we're eating something that I can feel good about, right?

Oh my goodness, I do have time to work on this project that I thought I'm never going to be able to get to that.

Or I always would put it on the back burner because it wasn't important for anyone else. It was just important for me, right?

So often we do that. We say, well, it was my thing. So I guess it's fine if I just start it next week or next month or next year.

And we put off all the things that are those passions that are on our heart. And so it just lets you get back to doing all of that. And it felt so good.

Corinne Powell: So what about the person who isn't naturally, like doesn't feel like they're naturally the organized person?

Because this, I mean, you're talking about these planners, not the week view, the day view. I'm like, okay, so what about for that person? What can they, where can they start? Yeah.

Lori Oberbroeckling: So if you feel like very hot mess, right?

You feel like you, like your to-do lists are everywhere and your schedule is everywhere and everything is everywhere.

My first step is just let's pull it all together, right? So, it doesn't have to be in an organized system, but let's get it all into one place at least.

Even that, if that is a file folder on your desk that has 8 million Post-it notes in it, right? And some sheets of paper and a torn-off back of an envelope, right?

It's got all the things. Let's put it all together because then we can say, oh, okay, I felt like I had 27 to-do's because there were 27 post-it notes, but actually eight of those have the same thing written on them because I forgot that I'd already written it down, right?

Because that's what happens when we get stressed out and disorganized. We write the same thing multiple times. We put the same thing in multiple places.

And then we feel like three things might exist or 10 things exist or 40 things exist. And it might not be true. So we can start asking ourselves those questions.

Is it true that I really have that many things to do? Well, now you can see, oh, okay, everything is here. I don't actually have that many tasks to do this month.

I can break those down over the next couple of weeks and totally get it done. And then it starts to bring some of that peace.

And then you go, okay, this is working, right? So we want to do these little baby steps because then our brain says, oh, that worked.

That was awesome. I felt good doing that. I should do that again, right? So then we say, oh, I had all this stuff together and it worked and it was nice.

And so what if I were to keep putting everything in this file folder, right? Or in this specific sheet of paper or in this notes app and everything goes there, right?

Whatever you decide you want to use, but you start being consistent with that and you start getting those wins.

And then you can go to the next steps, like the more strategic actual weekly planning going through your whole schedule.

But I wouldn't want you to start there because it would be almost impossible to maintain that for someone who feels like everything is everywhere.

You can't go from like zero to 60, right? You have to be able to take the baby steps and say, this is working.

You're able to do this. It's totally manageable. What's next? And then be able to build on it. So yeah, that would be my first step. Let's get it all in one spot and see what really is there.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, I love that.

You could just feel that when you were talking about, oh, you know, if you put it all down, you figure out everything, you might realize, you know what?

I actually can get all this done. It isn't as much as I'm thinking it is. It's just, I guess the truth of that is so clear that it's like, what a relief. This really is the case and not always.

But enough times that it's worth saying, maybe, you know, let's take a look and see are all the things that are making us feel overwhelmed in our head actually the case, or do we just need to get it out, put it down, look at it and evaluate from there?

Lori Oberbroeckling: That's it. And so often we think, well, I have so many things to do. I can't possibly get it done. Maybe you write it all down and you go, every one of these tasks is something

I already know how to do. Maybe only takes me 10 minutes, right?

Because a lot of overwhelm is the unknown and the anticipation of the fact that there's too much to do. 

So like I anticipate that all these tasks are gonna take me too long and I have too many of them.

So there's no way I'll ever get it done. And now I am overwhelmed, right?

But if I look at the reality, so it's really that taking that step back, saying what's true, is it true that I have too many things to do?

The answer might be, yes. You might have to ask for help. You might have to say, I'm not gonna do that this week at all.

And I'm just gonna let it go. But it gives you the control over it. So having the control and having the knowledge takes the overwhelm down almost immediately.

And then you can say, what do I want to do? What can I do? What feels good for this week and start to build those things in.

Corinne Powell: Yeah.

Yeah, actually open ourselves up to the idea that we can make the life we want to have.

Because as we're talking about it, it's like, I remember that place of where you just feel like, no, I don't have the freedom to actually cancel this plan or to not plan that in the future.

Or I don't have the freedom to pivot or to create a lifestyle that works for me. But we do, we really can. If we don't wanna be filling our days, we get to choose that.

And I think it's so refreshing to be reminded. What you just said fully reminded me of that.

Like, it is really truly ours to decide, no matter what we've seen or what we're seeing around us or what we experienced from our family that we grew up with.

It doesn't matter how our partner looks at it because we have our autonomy. So yeah, we can talk about it, figure out, well, this is the lifestyle they like to have.

And this is the one I like to have. But really there's a lot of control in this. We have a lot of ability to determine how we manage our time and how it plays out.

Lori Oberbroeckling: Yeah, I love how you said that because I do think that a lot of times we feel like time is controlling us, right?

Like we don't have enough time. It's like that everyone else's schedule is the schedule that is put on us.

We have to do this. We have to do this. We should do that, right? So it always feels like things are out of our control.

And I feel like with the weekly planning, with that look at ahead, it says, oh no, no, I'm in control of all of this.

I choose to attend that meeting. Now, will there be consequences for things? Sure, I could move that dentist appointment and my child could have a cavity, right?

There's gonna be a consequence. I could cancel that meeting, but maybe I get a really angry client that I may have a consequence.

But I still get to decide what is worth it and what isn't. And what I do this week and what I don't. And what is on my schedule for my life, right?

Like you said, autonomy. And what isn't. And so just being able to have that realization, that feeling says, okay, this is mine.

This isn't, time doesn't control me. The world doesn't control me. My schedule doesn't control me. I get to choose.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, which is a big shift for some. Like really depending on the cultures we grew up in, like that could be a huge shift. But I think just sitting with that is powerful.

Like just sitting with what you just said there. Wow, yeah.

Lori Oberbroeckling: Yeah, and doesn't it feel good, right? Doesn't it feel good?

Corinne Powell: Yeah.

Lori Oberbroeckling: Oh, wow, okay. I get to decide what I'm doing.

And you may decide to change nothing. Here's what's super magical about this. You might decide that, oh, my plan is totally doable.

The things that I have on my list are completely manageable. I have enough time for all of it. And you might decide all of that and make zero changes, but feel 1000% different about it. Yeah, it's wild.

Corinne Powell:  Yes, yes, yes, it is.

So you were talking about taking like a Sunday morning, planning things out.

Are there any other, just from the strategy end, from the practical side, is there anything else that you would suggest?

Lori Oberbroeckling: Sure, so I'll answer maybe a couple of questions that I get a lot from women in my community about weekly planning that they ask me kind of, what do you do specifically, right?

So one of the things is they said, you have a digital calendar. So how are you putting all these things together?

And I really truly am pulling them into a planner, like I mentioned before.

I'm taking work responsibilities that are digital, personal and family responsibilities that are digital, and pulling them all into a single written planner.

Because for me, writing it down says, okay, I can look at the time blocks and I can see what's scheduled.

And I can see where I have gaps. I can see what time is available.

And then my to-do list is always a handwritten thing that I keep together, but I don't look at it every day. I look at it once a week.

So by looking at it once a week and saying, what is on this list? And what do I want to get done this week?

That allows me not to be overwhelmed because if you're like me, you might have a list that has, you know, probably a hundred things on it.

There are a hundred things I would love to do or like to do or like to start or like to get going on, right?

We've got kids clothes to clean out and we've got rooms to reorganize and tiny little toys to go through 8 million bins. Plus we have work projects. Plus we have other house projects.

Plus we have friends that we wanna see and parties we wanna plan and all the things.

So it lets me look at that once a week and decide what's happening that week instead of constantly looking at a list of a million things and saying, how do I know where to start? It allows me to decide that.

The other two things that I think are really important are what I call buffer time and white space.

Buffer time is me planning time for when things will go wrong because they will. So I do not pack my schedule top to bottom because that will never work.

It will always go wrong because somebody just asked me, somebody while I was doing an interview and they said, how often do you finish your week and everything that you scheduled is like everything that you had planned on that Sunday morning, everything goes perfectly.

And I said, 0% of the time, never has that ever happened.

I have never done everything perfectly because it never happens like that. A meeting gets canceled.

A kid gets sick. You get sick. Somebody on your team bails out.

You've got a project that your client reaches out to you and you weren't expecting it.

You've got the school that called and you need to have an extra meeting because you have a kiddo that maybe doesn't like to follow the rules.

There are so many things that can come up that throw your week awry.

So I have time built in for when that happens that I can roll projects into.

Usually, mine's on Thursdays because I can roll things forward and say, it's fine. I have space for this.

So that's one thing. So that's again, strategic, right?

Very specific strategy to make sure that I'm not wildly busy that I can't get it all done. And the other thing is white space.

And I wanna tell you what's so important about white space and why, how I use it. White space for me is time blocked on my calendar that has nothing in it and is for me.

So I do not plan it. So I don't say, oh, I have drinks with girlfriends on Friday. That's my white space. No, no, no. White space has nothing planned until I get to the white space and I get to decide what I need.

Because each week you might need something different to refill your energy. You might need to be totally alone, right?

You might need like a bath and a book. You might need to have a conversation with your spouse.

You might need to call a best friend or your mom. You might need to just go play with your kids for a while, right?

You might need to go for a run or go to the gym. You don't know what you need to refill your energy until you get to that spot because it's hard to know what might deplete you for that week. And so by doing it this way,

I am saying, okay, what do I need now? And then I can say, it is a pizza night with the kids or it is a movie or it is going out and like having fun at dinner tonight, right?

I get to decide what I need and I get to decide how to use that time. And that's been really powerful too because then I can keep my energy high and I can keep replenishing it the way that I need.

Corinne Powell:  Right, yeah, wow, that's good. I wouldn't have, nope, not used to hearing that. I'm in a white space where you decide once you get there, what do I need? That is good, good stuff.

Lori Oberbroeckling: Yeah, I think that we don't, well, I think two things.

One thing we don't plan in time for ourselves and I'm not talking, you don't have to plan.

If you only have 20 minutes this week, plan your 20 minutes, give your 20 minute white space. If you can do an hour or two, awesome, do that. But I think one, we don't plan for that white space so we never get it, right?

Because if we don't plan it and we don't say I need this, our time will get steamrolled, right? If we let time steamroll us, it will steamroll us.

And then the other thing is a lot of women don't recognize what they need because they never ask themselves that question.

Like, how do I know what I need when I get to the white space? Because I never try to fill myself up. So starting, if you start doing this and realize I have no idea what I should do with my time, let's start maybe asking some questions, exploring that.

What does fill me up with energy? What would feel good right now? Maybe just that question. What would feel good right now?

Maybe it's laying flat on the floor doing absolutely nothing, right? Maybe it's stretching. Maybe it's having a glass of wine, right?

We don't know what's gonna feel good right now but what would feel good right now?And then being able to just say, okay, let's do that.

Corinne Powell:  Mm-hmm, yeah, good.

Yeah, I think those are the big things.

Those are the big questions that I get asked and things that like key things that I like to build in that maybe aren't easily noticeable from the outside, yeah.

Right, yeah, no, you're giving us a lot. We can take it, we can practice something. And I think actually what I see is this idea that we're gonna find all these pockets of time that we didn't know we had.

And it's gonna mean to allow a lot more to either get done or a lot more rest. Like, because it's not all about just getting things done, right? It's about whatever this time needs to be.

Do we need to recharge? What do we need to do? But I just see this idea that, you know what? It's gonna clear out a lot of space that is there.

I mean, phones like so much time can get eaten just scrolling too, if we're not mindful about the fact that, well, no, maybe we do have more blocks of time.

Nothing's usually going on here or there, but then wait, what's happening with the time?

And even just as we're going through our days to recognize, oh, this was a free hour, but now it's gone.

Lori Oberbroeckling: Yes, yes, that's so important being able to see what is actually happening with your time.

The planning isn't just for preparing, right? And being able to execute, but also being able to see, oh, I had all this, maybe it was white space, right?

I had all this white space for being able to do some things for me and I scrolled every time and I didn't feel better after, right? Sometimes you might want to scroll.

That might be a need that's fulfilled for you. And you might be like, I looked at all my friends, precious kids, and I'm so happy, but so often we don't walk away from that scroll time happy. We walk away with comparisonitis or feeling more terrible about ourselves or feeling like we just wasted time.

And we don't let it be fun. We let it be guilt-inducing.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your book too?

Lori Oberbroeckling: Absolutely, yes, yes.

So the book, Secrets of Supermom came about during the pandemic when I started seeing moms that seems like they kind of were pivoting, right?

And then moms that really felt like they were struggling. And I thought, what is the difference here?

Are the moms that are pivoting thriving sometimes? Are they doing things differently than some of the other moms, right?

Are there some things that are in common? So I interviewed and surveyed almost 200 moms and found some key commonalities from things that they were doing.

And so the book ended up being 16 chapters, 16 secrets of what these women were doing differently. So it is key secrets and it is secrets with time management.

Health is involved in that, right?

There's all these different things that these women were doing just a little bit differently and it was really helping them feel better, feel calmer and be able to manage when things did not go their way, when something changed, right?

Because that was kind of the name of the game at that time in our lives. Yeah, every day was different.

And so trying to figure out how to manage this and just all of those skills.

So I put it together and then it turned into a podcast and some programs and all sorts of other really fun things for super moms because I want every woman to feel like super mom. I think all of us are super moms and I want us all to feel that way.

Corinne Powell: Mm, awesome. Yeah. I will include it with the notes, but can you just tell everybody where's the best place to reach you? And if they wanna pick up your book, where they can do that?

Lori Oberbroeckling: Yes, secretsofsupermom.com is the best place because that's where you can find the book, the podcast, all of my socials. I'm @secretsofsupermom literally everywhere, but that's the best place to go to grab it all.

Corinne Powell: All right, fabulous. Thank you, Lori. Appreciate you being here. 

Lori Oberbroeckling: Thank you.

Corinne Powell:  If you enjoyed today’s conversation that Lori and I had I want to highlight a few previous episodes I recorded that you might also find helpful that expand on the topics we talked about today: from season 5, episode 13 - Supporting Yourself in Every Season; from season 2, episode 33 - Become a bestie to Yourself and from season 2, episode 17 What to Do When Life Feels Hard.

Here we are, we've come to the end of another episode. Sit back and reflect on what you heard. What’s the one thing that resonates with you, that you can take away and do something with? Let’s not just listen, let’s listen and take action.

Now, action may look very different for us, but it’s doing something with what we hear.

I hope that you share today’s episode with a friend that you think would also enjoy it and please come back next week.

I hope that you have a fabulous week and that you remember when you pillow your head at night when you are going through your days, that who you are is good and I am glad that you're alive.