Time in The Middle with Jaimee Campanella

In this podcast, I had a conversation with Jamiee Campanella about the importance of embracing the middle stage of progress towards our goals. Jamiee shares her personal experience of being stuck in the middle of her business journey, experiencing burnout and losing sight of work-life balance after having her second child. However, going through that struggle and burnout helped her get to the other side.

We touch on the need to balance work and personal life as a parent, acknowledging that to achieve a balance, one needs to make a conscious choice to prioritize self-care and adjust plans based on changing circumstances. Calendaring is highlighted as a useful tool to keep oneself organized and prioritize time in alignment with intentions.

Make sure to check out our guest, Jaimee Campanella:

https://www.jaimeecampanella.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jaimeecampanella/

New Masterclass: How to go from “never enough time to do the things you want” to “an organized CEO mom that has time for everything that matters”

https://www.jaimeecampanella.com/masterclassceo

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Full Transcript

[0:00:05] (Lacey): Welcome to Sharing the Middle, where we’re covering perfectionist overachievers and anyone in the middle of a struggle come together to learn to embrace the messy middles of life. I am Lacey, your friend in the Middle and guide whose claim to fame this week is laundry. Not finishing laundry, but just doing a little bit that counts, right? In my episode. Today, I’m joined by Jamie Campanella. Jamie is a time strategist and productivity consultant who mentors and guides parents, professionals and entrepreneurs to take control of their time.

[0:00:39] (Lacey): She’s the creator and facilitator of the Time Power program that gives people the essential tools and strategies to avoid overwhelm, contain chaos so they can control their time for good. Jamie and I talk a lot of it about The Middle and time and how those things are all mixed up. So let’s jump right in. Well, welcome, Jamie campanella. I am really excited to talk to you today because we’ve had on the books for a long time.

[0:01:11] (Lacey): When you first heard of The Middle or first heard of me, to propose the Middle, introduce it, what did you think of? Because I find people tend to have a visceral reaction to this is what that means for me.

[0:01:22] (Jaimee): Yeah. When I was thinking about The Middle in preparation for this podcast and seeing everything you speak about, I realized the middle for me is I’m not at my goals yet, but I’m not just starting. I’m in the middle of my process. I’m in the middle of my progress. There’s nothing wrong with being in the middle, but I’m not where I want to be yet. When I thought about it for myself, middle is like, okay, I’m in the middle of something. Right.

[0:01:46] (Jaimee): When I was thinking about expressions and when I use it, I’m in the middle of working on something. Okay, what does that mean? I’m not completely done. I’m not completely cooked. But I’ve started. I saw that there’s so many ways we can go in this experience of The Middle where I thought I was going to go into a negative place, like, I’m not there yet. I actually saw it as a good thing. I’m making progress, but I see that there’s someplace else I still want to go.

[0:02:10] (Lacey): So you don’t necessarily think of it in the negative, but it’s still not totally comfortable for you. Do you think? Is that what I’m picking up on is or is it a place you like to be?

[0:02:19] (Jaimee): I think it depends in one context, absolutely. Because I feel really good about being in the middle of something because perhaps I’ve taken time to pause, to come back to something refreshed or perhaps I’m in the middle of something. I’m really working on it, I’m in focus mode. Or I could have a negative connotation with it where I’m like, I’m in the middle of this project that I’m never going to get finished, or I feel like midlife crisis or we have these other connotations of this is a bad place to be because I’m not where I want to be. But I think that’s all about our mindset and how we look at being in the middle, depending on the context in which it puts us in the middle, are we putting ourself in the middle or our external circumstances making us feel like the middleman or lower than?

[0:03:03] (Lacey): I really like that. I love that idea of that, the ownership. Like, do you feel put there or did you put yourself there? I think that’s really powerful. Very powerful, yes.

[0:03:12] (Jaimee): And that’s the responsibility that we can take. We can change our experience of it. Even if someone has characterized this one way, we have the power to change our mindset about any position that we’re in, whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end. We could have positive or negatives on any stage. So where do we create the experience we want to have?

[0:03:33] (Lacey): I love that. I’m going to be honest, I’m a little intimidated talking to you because I feel like you’re about planning and stinking strategically and all these different things about having your life together. And I don’t feel like I have my life together, so I’m a little intimidated. So it’s nice to hear you kind of be like, it’s what you choose. I think it could be very easy for you to be like, no, this the middle is this and it’s this time and you move on and you do what you need. So to hear it be a little messy is nice.

[0:04:04] (Jaimee): Yes. I’m a time strategist. I’m a productivity consultant. I teach tools to organize your life, but that doesn’t mean it looks good all the time. I want to be really clear about that. My life is messy. It’s because it was so messy that I got to where I was because I wanted it to be different. I made choices to change my experience of life and I work with people all the time in different phases of messy. I mean, you talked about laundry when you first started.

[0:04:28] (Jaimee): My husband laughs at me all the time. He’s like, you’re so good at doing your laundry, but then it sits there and you don’t put it away for three days. So there is no perfect. And it’s just about how you can experience your life to make you happy and contentment is key.

[0:04:41] (Lacey): I like that. I like that. Well, we kind of, like took around the conversation and in a specific middle or middle moment of your life. So what kind of middle would you like to share with us today?

[0:04:52] (Jaimee): Yeah. I realized when the middle for me was in my business journey and shortly after my second son was born. I had been in non for profit in corporate for 14 years. And I wanted to take some time to be a mom and be present. And I wanted to create a business where I had some experience of work life balance that everybody had been talking about. And I was quite successful in creating that business initially and had clients and used tools and systems and strategies and all that good stuff that I had learned in my professional context. But there was this point where I’m seeing it in hindsight as the middle of my progress, or I was stuck in this place of hustle culture, of working really, really hard.

[0:05:39] (Jaimee): While I was successful with this business I had created for the purpose of work life balance. I lost sight of that very quickly. I was tired. I was overwhelmed. I was burnt out. I was no longer spending time with my kids in the way I wanted to, and I was no longer present with my business either. And I was cycling through mom guilt. I see now that that was my middle. I had to go through that burnout. I had to go through those struggles and those challenges to get myself to the other side, to where I am now, where I feel like I’m not in that middle play. I’m in the middle of a different era. But in that era, there’s always a middle, right?

[0:06:14] (Jaimee): But I see, looking back, that middle zone of starting a business and then finding myself in this hamster wheel rut, in the middle of working hard, thinking more was better, and even feeling like, oh, great, I’m making money. But I was struggling. It wasn’t enjoyable. So I see I had to get to be there. I had to be in that middle place of discomfort, of seeing it wasn’t working, to kind of push myself to one extreme, to see that there was something else that I wanted. If I hadn’t been in that middle zone, I don’t know that it would have propelled me to the other place that I reached.

[0:06:50] (Lacey): Yeah. So I have two thoughts. One is, I think that a lot of times we don’t realize that we’re in a middle until the middle is over. So you’re saying that looking back now that you were in the middle, it hits me usually for me, I don’t realize that in a positive situation. So it’s here interesting to hear you be like, I wasn’t a middle, and it was in a more negative right.

[0:07:12] (Jaimee): Because I thought it was the end. Right? Like, okay, well, I got to throw the towel in. This is not working. I’m sinking. I’m failing. So I thought, this must be the end. But I saw through that struggle, no, there is something on the other side of this that I want, and I have to keep going towards it. So in hindsight, I saw that quote unquote breaking point or struggle point was imperative for my journey.

[0:07:37] (Lacey): That’s really interesting that in the moment, you thought it was an ending. I want to know a little bit more about that breaking point. Like, was there a specific I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s always the most trivial thing that makes me realize that something like, I get one too many emails and the email is not anything related to what’s actually wrong or what’s going on. And that’s my point.

[0:07:59] (Lacey): Do you have an idea of what triggered that realization that you were in that grind and movement and whatnot?

[0:08:05] (Jaimee): There were two moments I remember viscerally that I realized I was in a different extreme. And one was I was putting one of my sons to sleep, and I remembered feeling like, I cannot wait for him just to freaking fall asleep because I want to go back to the office and work on that proposal. And I was laying there reading him a story, but I was drafting the proposal in my head, and he asked me a question about the story, and I had no idea what had just happened, even though I was reading, but I was not attentive or present to any of the content I was even sharing. So when he was like, Why did the bunny do that? I was like, oh, God, I have to reread this page because I don’t know. And I just saw so clearly how I was not present with them anymore. And it was my business was taking over these moments, which is why I wanted to have a business like this. So it was so clear my priorities were not in alignment.

[0:08:55] (Jaimee): And something was really off in the way I was doing things, because if I was taking proposal writing into bedtime, something was off. So that was one, and the other one was sitting at the dinner table, checking my phone under the table and someone asking me something and also not knowing what they said or knowing the answer. And mom, no phones at the table. What are you doing? And I realized I wasn’t following the mannerisms or things I was trying to teach them. And I was actually having this counter effect on the family dynamic, and it was me doing it. And I was wondering why my son would bomp me to get my attention because I was looking at my phone.

[0:09:35] (Lacey): Yeah. I feel that in my soul, that unconscious action that can have such a big feeling outside of you. I am so curious with how you course corrected because, yeah, this is something that you were doing to fix another problem, and it was causing similar problems. I can only imagine me just trying to beat myself up about it and all these different things. How did you move past that once you had this realization?

[0:10:01] (Jaimee): I think the first step was acknowledging it. Right. So I saw, this is not working. So either I am going to quit, I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to go back to a nine to five where when the kids are like, I had to see what did I really want this wasn’t working and I realized what I really wanted was to be present for my family. I was a successful business owner as well and I had always thought it was one or the other at this point and I realized that is what I wanted to crack. I did want to have both. I felt fulfilled as a woman, as a creative thinker, as a leader in my business. I was fulfilled and so I didn’t want to lose that. But I also knew that I couldn’t let it take over. The other experience that I wanted to have I saw very clearly. I didn’t want to choose one or the other. I wanted to have both and be great at both. And to do that I needed to create some new structure for my life that would support that. Otherwise it would always feel like one was competing for the other.

[0:10:56] (Jaimee): And so once I kind of saw yes I do want this, I have to just change the way it looks. First was there’s a problem? Two was okay, what do I want? And then the third was taking a step back to recreate it so that it was in fulfillment of what I wanted versus just need more clients, need more work or need more spend more time with the kids? No, there was a balance and I needed to work for it.

[0:11:19] (Lacey): I’m curious because we were talking about you at work and then you with your kids but what about you as a person? Find myself losing myself and that no matter what job I’m doing, I think a lot of moms feel that. And so I know a lot of your work is around helping moms and parents be able to find that. So I’m just curious about finding yourself in that as well.

[0:11:44] (Jaimee): Oh yeah, definitely the hamster wheel section. I was not putting myself first. Any energy I had was for the children or the business or to get dinner on the table or to keep my relationship with my husband thriving. So when I kind of took a step back and I recreated my ideal, putting myself into the equation was one of my priorities, something that I had been lacking and I wanted to be very practical about how I did that. So when I created my structure or my systems later on I chose friday mornings was me time.

[0:12:18] (Jaimee): I built it into the plan for this to be sustainable. What were my key points I needed to bring into it? So that was one of them. It definitely is not something that gets the same amount of attention as everything else. But I made a conscious choice about it and I accept it. I think that that’s the biggest thing. If you’re going to do one self care thing a day or one thing a week that’s great. It doesn’t always have to be the same amount that you’re giving to everything else. And I think that that also ebbs and flows with seasons when business is slower or children are in school or it’s summer vacation time.

[0:12:49] (Jaimee): I’ve learned to adjust my plan for my lifestyle based on what I need.

[0:12:54] (Lacey): Yeah. I also think that seasons also when we talk about parenting and children, so my kids are still very young. They’re two and four. So when they need me, they need my physical presence. They need me right there. They need to mean they’d be sitting there with them, whereas they were babies, they just needed me to physically hold them. You know what I mean? So I just think it’s interesting to think about how that could also look differently. And my kids don’t care if I’m on the phone. They just want to sit on my lap right now. But in two years for my mom, my phone, I’m missing all of the opportunity with them. So just a realization I just had that you were saying that’s another piece of this, too.

[0:13:35] (Jaimee): Yeah. And I have a three year old and almost five year old, so I relate to the era that you’re in 100%. And I tried so many times to have those conversations, even though they were content on my lap. But then I was like, I was missing so many moments of just being present and enjoying them that I realized I wasn’t giving my full attention to the call or to my kid. There’s a time for multitasking. We know that it was a slippery slope because then I was like, let me just answer that email while I’m breastfeeding, or Let me just answer that email while they’re playing on their own.

[0:14:13] (Jaimee): Again, if it’s a conscious choice, like, I have 1 hour, this is when my kid usually likes to do independent playtime. I’m going to work during that hour. It’s a conscious choice so that I don’t feel guilty about not giving him attention because I’ve made a choice to do work at this time. As your children grow, they need different things at different times, and so does your business. Right? So it’s just becoming aware of what the needs are and then making conscious choices about what you’re going to be giving your attention to.

[0:14:41] (Jaimee): One of the things that I worked with and I work with people on now is just ensuring that your time is in alignment with your intention. So what is the experience you want to have? Is it being with my child or is it working? So just making sure that whatever you’re doing is in alignment with the experience you want to have and that’s kind of like your internal check and balance.

[0:15:03] (Lacey): Yeah, well, that’s actually kind of leading to where I’m curious. So I am a bit of a process junkie. So when you say I had to set up systems and that kind of stuff, was that very time based, I do this at this time and this at time, or is it a little bit more fluid of in this state we do this. I’m curious about the little bit of the nuts and the bolts. I know we can’t go into too much detail. Sure. But I know that you have calendars and whatnot and all these things, so I would love to hear more about that.

[0:15:36] (Jaimee): So that’s like multi pronged. Yeah, I know, but the main tool that I use to keep my sanity and myself organized and ensure that my time is in align with my intention is calendaring. It is scheduling. I teach time blocking. I am a huge fan of time blocking, so it’s not about down to the nitty gritty minute of every single moment of my day and like, this is the task I need to be working on. But it’s time block it’s, task batching it’s. Here are all the things I need to do today and how am I going to allot time to make sure they happen.

[0:16:09] (Jaimee): The fact is, everything we do takes time, but we never plan for how much time it’s actually going to take or how much time we need from self care blocking out an hour for that to business emails or just straight free time on structured time. So for me, I needed something very visual and visual that I could see and plan and know, okay, today when the kids I have childcare, this is what I’m focused on. When the kids are out of school, my focus is with them.

[0:16:37] (Jaimee): So I really needed to block out my time in chunks based on Circum. Like I knew I had untouchable time when my kids woke up until they got to school or daycare or whatever was happening at that time, there was nothing else I could be doing, so I wasn’t even going to try. So I blocked out that time. So for me it was really calendaring and scheduling my time so that I also built confidence with myself. Like I can be present with them because I know I have time later to do this. And my schedule was never perfect, but I had more of a feeling of control over where my time was going.

[0:17:11] (Lacey): I struggle a little bit. I love the idea of time blocking, but I’m learning that even though I sometimes I don’t like what I’ve set up for myself. And so I think I need to do what you were just saying there of maybe larger categories. So instead of saying I’m going to do these tasks at this time, it’s just going to be this is work time and work happens during this time, whatever that looks like. Because even though I love to think of myself as more type A, I am learning that I am much more of a free spirit than I ever thought. Guess maybe I should say was there an end?

[0:17:48] (Lacey): When did you know that you were at the end of your middle of oh, I am not here? Was there feeling a moment? What did that look like?

[0:17:57] (Jaimee): It was a huge shift in my business focus. It was a shift in how I managed my time and finally I felt in control. See, the thing is, when I was in my middle, I felt out of control. I felt like time was just being taken away from me. I didn’t have enough time. Everything was happening to me and it was happening too fast or too much. And so when I changed my mindset about it and created the new structures that I wanted, I felt in control.

[0:18:25] (Jaimee): And when I was, I remember I just launched my new website, my new model, to work in this direction. I felt I’m in the right place, I’m on the right track. So it was like a new beginning. I think I’ve hit my middles in this new phase also. But that moment was the end of that middle.

[0:18:46] (Lacey): Absolutely. Well, I love for people to be able to walk away with a piece of advice or takeaway so what would you tell yourself in that moment? Or just a piece of advice that has always resonated with you?

[0:19:02] (Jaimee): Because time is kind of my thing. I want to say something about time. This is something we overlook. We talk a lot about money, we talk about manifesting money, we talk about having money in our life. Money can be replaced, it can grow and lessen. Time is a one stop shop. We cannot renew time. So be intentional with your time. You’re writing the story of your life with your time. So find out what makes you happy, find out what brings you joy and make sure that the time, your life, your lifeline, your time is actually allocated to those. Because when you’re intentional with that part of yourself, with how you choose to spend your time, I feel that only great things will come from that.

[0:19:49] (Lacey): That’s awesome. I love that you write your story with your time. That’s going to be a quote that I pull out. Well, how can people find you, work with you? What does that look like?

[0:20:01] (Jaimee): Yeah, sure. Well, definitely, if anything I’ve talked about today, check out my website, Jamiecampanella.com. You can follow me on social media for inspiration and tips at jamiecampanella co on Instagram and Facebook. I’m also on LinkedIn. I have some great free resources, like a free training of giving you shifts to take control of your time. I also have some master classes available, so definitely visit my website, sign up for my newsletter.

[0:20:27] (Jaimee): And if you want to take a deeper dive into changing your relationship with time and changing your mindset around time, I have an amazing online course, self paced course, to help you learn the specific shifts to change this relationship that I’ve been talking about, about being intentional, about your time. And if you’re interested in getting more of the systems and structure into your life, time blocking and so forth. Then check out my Time Power program, which gives you that one on one customized support so that you can really create the life that you want to be living and the structures to support that.

[0:21:04] (Lacey): Thank you so much for joining me in the middle today, Jamie.

[0:21:07] (Jaimee): Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure to be talking about the Middle. I’m going to be reflecting on this so much more, I’m sure.