Power Your Reinvention with Time Management (and Mindset) Tips from EIC Lesley Jane Seymour
Show Snapshot:
Magazine publishing legend and entrepreneur Lesley Jane Seymour (former EIC of More, Redbook, and Marie Claire) knows how to get sh*t done.
We do a deep dive into tips, tools, and practices for powering productivity and staying focused—we talk physical planners, how to end digital distractions, and why the “Pomodoro Technique” might just change your life.
We also get into the art of reinventing and hear the #1 takeaway Lesley has learned from interviewing 200+ people for her podcast Reinvent Yourself.
Bonus-Lesley fills us in on the “30-Day Reinvent Yourself Challenge” from her company, the CoveyClub.
In This Episode We Cover:
Lesley’s dive into time-management practices and what she learned about how to get more done in less time.
How to generate momentum.
How to be your own (best) boss.
Digital planners, physical planners, calendering apps, the power of meditation, and more!
Why 10 minutes on Sunday adds up to a peaceful, productive week.
How the Pomodoro Technique (and time-chunking) might change your life!
Mastering email and digital distractions
Lesley’s pivot story from magazine publishing to entrepreneurship.
Want to reinvent ANY area of your life—career, fitness, health, relationships? Move 1-2 degrees a day.
Lesley’s #1 takeaway from interviewing 200+ people for her podcast Reinvent Yourself.
Show Links: Covey Club
Lesley’s Podcast: Reinvent Yourself
Quotable:
Pick something you’re going to do every day for 5 minutes that’s going to move you toward [reinvention.] In a month, you will have traction, you will have put the seeds in the ground, and things will start to happen.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty [0:03]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud and welcome to A Certain Age podcast’s very first show of 2023. We did it, we made it through the crazy busy holidays and have arrived at the bright, shiny start of a brand new year. We are kicking off 2023 with a very special guest, journalist and media OG Lesley Jane Seymour, the former editor and chief of More Magazine, Marie Claire, and Redbook.
I was a More Magazine superfan and when the magazine folded it was like saying goodbye to a dear friend, the kind of friend that has fabulous book recommendations, knows an eye cream that actually depuffs, and has advice for navigating minefields at work and home. Yeah, that kind of friend. But happily, Lesley is still producing fab content for growth-minded women. She’s the founder of the CoveyClub, a media platform and virtual meeting place for lifelong learners, and she is the host of the podcast Reinvent Yourself. She joins me today for a deep dive on the art of reinventing plus we get into tips, tools, and practices for powering productivity and staying focused because we have an entire brand spanking new year ahead of us and we want to make the most of it. Welcome, Lesley.
Lesley Jane Seymour [1:19]:
Thank you, Katie, nice to be here.
Katie [1:21]:
I am truly thrilled. As I said, I used to read More Magazine every month.
Lesley [1:25]:
Aww, that’s so sweet.
Katie [1:28]:
I loved reading your editor’s note and to have you on the show is such a treat. I’m excited to get into the art and science of reinventing with you. I want to hear both about your own career evolution and, of course, get some ideas for our listeners that they can use in their own lives. But first I want to talk about an article you recently wrote. I saw it on LinkedIn, because I subscribe to your LinkedIn newsletter, and it was called, "How to Get More Things Done.”
Lesley [1:52]:
Oh yes.
Katie [1:53]:
Yeah. This, of course, caught my eye because I have two jobs, this podcast is one of them, three kids, a husband, a puppy; it is definitely hard to get it all done. And I know from reading this article that you did a deep dive into time management and productivity hacks last year, I would love to kick off by having you share why you focused on prioritizing time management and ask you what you learned.
Lesley [2:20]:
Well, I’ll tell you. The time management thing, I found it really scattering, especially when I left corporate life, I found that was my biggest time suck is just figuring out how to get stuff done and it felt like everything was flying around with no structure and that’s... I didn’t know, I’d had small periods of freelance during my corporate life, I had never had long extended periods where I had to generate my own momentum, and keep it going, and find a way to pick up all those threads. I was also used to having a staff of anywhere from, you know, 24 to 54 [laughs] so if I wasn’t keeping hold of the threads, there was always somebody else to. And when you are a solo-preneur, it doesn’t work like that. And like you, I have family, I have pets, I have friends, I also moved to a new city, part of my reinvention, so I’ve got new things going on that I have to incorporate into my every day. And then starting a business, which I’d never done, is insane!
And I found myself feeling this horrible feeling of, scatteredness and I’m a real super Type A so that was a bizarre thing and I said, there has to be some reason why I’m feeling this. And of course, as you dig into it, you find that everybody feels that way and it has to do with our digital life. And it has to with also, I came out of a business of producing something tangible, where every month we’d put the magazine up on the wall in printouts, you’d see it coming together, and then at the end of the month, you would have a magazine on your desk. And you had this great sense of accomplishment and this sense of something you could hold in your hand, like, “I made this.” Not having that, living in this total digital world, you don’t ever have a break. You’re on the treadmill forever and there’s no signposts, no road posts, you just feel like, I get rid of 10 items to do and 10 more pop up.
Katie [4:40]:
Totally. It’s like this Sisyphean... It’s like laundry. It’s like the clothes...
Lesley [4:45]:
Yes, like laundry! Very well put.
Katie [4:46]:
The clothes keep getting dirty. When is this going to end? I love a phrase that you used, “Generate my own momentum,” and I’m definitely nodding along with that too because I too have to generate my own momentum. I have my podcast and my day job are both small businesses that I run by myself and I’m my own boss and sometimes I’m hard to work for and other times, I’m the world’s best boss.
Lesley [5:16]:
Right. We all are like that, yeah.
Katie [5:18]:
Exactly. So, help us figure out how we can generate, but also maintain momentum for the 2022 things that we want to get done this year.
Lesley [5:28]:
Well, there are a couple of things that... I guess it even helps if you’re incorporated, it all depends on how you like to work. I find that you have to sort of find the thing that works for you. In the old, olden, olden days, I used to have, we used to have those little planner books that we worked with, I don’t know if you remember those, really soft, and you’d put your whole life in there, and you’d follow it, and then we became digital. I went totally digital to the point where when I went back to get my sustainability degree in my late fifties, they would say, “Pull out a pen for a pop quiz,” and I didn’t have one. That’s how digital I was; I’d have to go around to the 20-year-olds and go, “Do you have a pen or a pencil I can borrow?2 [Katie laughs] That’s how digital I was, and that’s a problem.
So, one of the things, there’s a couple of silly, stupid things that a lot of people probably already know but if you’re not doing these, they’re fundamental and I’ve talked to a lot of people who are living this digital life now and they’re not doing them. And that is, and since it’s the beginning of the year, find a planner that works for you. You can do a digital one, but I really believe in, we all know from the science and the research that brains take in handwriting and analog differently than they take in digital, right. So, even though I have everything in my digital calendar, I also have an analog calendar where I put everything in.
I found this great woman down in Australia, it’s called Dailygreatness. I’ve gone through hundreds of planners and studied them; this one works for me. She has many different types; she has a business planner that really is incredible for entrepreneurs, which is she just says, “Business” on the front. And it really walks you through every quarter planning, day-to-day planning, different levels of day-to-day planning depending on how your brain works like if you like to write everything in a list, or if you like to put it into your day. And every Sunday at the end of the day, I sit down, and I pencil in what’s in my virtual calendar into the planner, and then I transfer over all those little lists that I didn’t get done the week before. I know where I’m standing, I look at if I’m interviewing somebody, or talking to somebody, I do all my research ahead of time, Monday morning I can hit the ground.
Katie [8:14]:
So smart. So smart to prioritize this on a Sunday night because it probably helps you know...
Lesley [8:18]:
Yes. 10 minutes on Sunday night will save you this horrible getting up to speed with everything going on, on Monday morning. It’s incredible what 10 minutes can do, it’s like meditating. Everybody says they don’t have 20 minutes to meditate, and I say, if you meditate for 20 minutes in the morning, you will find you have 2 hours extra in the day because you’re going to be going at your tasks in a much calmer, steady paced way instead of all over the place.
Katie [8:50]:
Lesley you had me at calm. [both laugh] Keep going. I want to be calmer. [laughs]
Lesley [8:57]:
Yes. The other thing that was really enlightening and who I really love is Cal Newport. If you haven’t read... There are two books that he does; one is called, Deep Work and the other one is, A World Without Email. And what he has done, he’s a scientist out in I think it’s at Stanford, all my guys are Stanford now, who I admire. But he’s basically done the research and said, the big problem, the reason why we’re so unhappy with our work, whether you work in corporate or on your own today, is that we’ve become part of the email chain. And we spend half our day, he actually puts all the studies out there, just sending emails. That’s not satisfying work, that’s not real work, that’s not moving you or the needle down the field at all, and that’s why when you’re done, even if you’re in a digital world as we are, if you’re not making car parts which makes you feel very satisfied when you see that, or art, why you feel so dissatisfied is the majority of us have been sucked into the email chain, we never get to our work.
Katie [10:07]:
And it also feels like we never get to the end of that inbox. Lesley, we’re going to head into a quick break but when we come back, I want to talk about how we manage the email, how we manage our digital life in a way that lets us be calm and productive. We’ll be right back.
[Ad Break]
Katie [11:41]:
Okay, Lesley we’re back from the break. We headed into it talking about biggies: managing our digital life, managing this onslaught of email in a way that lets us be productive and feel purposeful. So, keep going, tell us more about what you learned from those books.
Lesley [11:56]:
Well, the other thing which is really silly and very easy, you can also look at the Pomodoro method, which is again, somebody’s done some research where they find that if you do stints of very productive work for 25 minutes at a time, and then you get up for 5 minutes and you walk around, you exercise, you go get a drink, whatever you’re going to do, come back for 25 minutes. And I have this great little timer which is a little cube that I got off of Amazon, that you can set on your desk. And when you force yourself to get up after 25 minutes, your brain apparently can only do a 25-minute sprint. If you give yourself that 5-minute break, you’d be shocked at how much stuff you can get done. It’s weird stuff, it’s all brain hacky stuff.
Katie [12:51]:
I love brain hacky stuff. [Lesley laughs] It’s interesting, I actually googled the Pomodoro Method after I read your newsletter because you referenced it in that. I loved learning that it’s called the Pomodoro Method because it’s based on this Pomodoro tomato kitchen timer and the Pomodoro tomato rings at 25 minutes and you’re supposed to do your stuff. And I was so proud of myself because I accidentally practiced the Pomodoro Method and I do it, truly because I have a bad, tight back, so I set my iPhone timer, I get up every 25 minutes, and because I largely work from home, I do some quick, gentle yoga stretches, and then I return to work. And so, I do practice this time chunking in a way that I feel is so helpful.
Lesley [13:42]:
And each thing, each person has to take their own thing. Not everything works for everybody, but different things work for different people, depending on how your mind is. But certain things, they’ve done the brain research, and they know what actually works for you.
Katie [14:01]:
Yeah. How do we limit all these distractions of social media? I find, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Instagram, I’ve got two jobs, I have two sets of emails, and I’ve a personal email. There’s a lot happening on my computer and on my phone.
Lesley [14:17]:
Yes, number one, before you... Well, you have to have your planning, however it works for you, you have to have your time chunking. Turn off all your notifications. I know everybody’s going to freak out when I say that, but when you learn, again, with all the reading I did... When you learn that these companies, Facebook, Google, they’ve hired every brain researcher in the world to figure out how to distract you into their systems, they hire brain research people, right. Those little things that interrupt all your work and make you feel like you’re scattered, once you realize they’re not helping you, somebody is trying to, they don’t care about your work, they don’t care if you ever get your work done. They care about you going to their site because that’s how they get paid.
Once you understand that it’s all about that and that really... The reason why we’re afraid to turn off notifications, most of them, I’m not saying all of them, you can go and look at them later, is in the back of your head, and I know this is what I thought, I had to say, why was I afraid to turn them off, is I kept thinking one was going to come along that says, “You just found out you won a 15 million dollar lottery, [Katie laughs] and the money is waiting for you.” And I’m afraid I’m going to miss that one, right. Well, that one has never come. And so, once you turn off your notifications, the only thing that I leave on are my calendar notifications and my phone notifications, that’s it. Because once you realize that they’re coming to you because they get paid to get you distracted, you can turn this relationship around so that you only go to your phone and to your systems to look at what’s happening, when you want to.
And you can set up, in your calendar, this is another thing that’s really helpful, is called time blocking in your calendar, where you can go to a Google calendar, I think Apple, you can do it too, but you put in blocks like writing from 9 AM to 12 on Mondays, you block that out in color, for instance. I’m a writer, so I have a writing block, I have a business block, I have a financial block, different times of the week or month, you can set it up that way, and you know you’re going to get those things done at those times of week or month.
Katie [16:56]:
That’s so smart. I love that idea.
Lesley [16:59]:
You can do that with your email. You can put your email or all the things that you want to look at, you can put that in for 12:00 block to look at your email. But the problem is if you’re trying to study, and this is the other thing they found, if you’re trying to get your work done and you’re constantly distracted, they’ve measured all the distraction your brain has when this stuff is coming in, it takes you equal amount of time or more to get back into what you were doing. So, you’re wasting time every time that you get distracted. It’s better for you to block it out, go look at your email twice a day, spend time on it, and not look at it again unless there’s an emergency you’re looking for.
Katie [17:45]:
Yeah, and you can train yourself to do that. I have a color-coded calendar where I have things coded for work, podcast, each of my kids has a color, and I put in exercise, I learned to do that.
Lesley [17:57]:
Yes, put in exercise.
Katie [17:58]:
If I put the exercise in, it’s a commitment to myself. What I haven’t done yet, but you better believe I’m going to do after this conversation, is put in sort of, higher level thinking for work, with writing or maybe planning.
Lesley [18:11]:
Planning, that’s a good time, a block time for planning is a great idea.
Katie [18:15]:
Yeah, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to put in a time where I’m saying, this is when I’m doing the logistics, I’m looking at the email, I’m getting the scheduling done. And I do think when we organize our day, and we put it down, I think a lot of women who are amazing multitaskers, we get a lot of stuff done, when I see something that’s on a list or a calendar as a commitment, I do it. [laughs]
Lesley [18:40]:
Yes, we’re very good about that.
Katie [18:42]:
We’re trained to do our tasks, but we want to do the higher-level tasks, the tasks that get us excited.
Lesley [18:48]:
That’s correct. We spend our time down at the bottom, in the salt mine of returning emails and we never actually get to the mining the gold, which is the stuff that we want to do. And that’s the key, it’s reversing this relationship. For each person, it’s probably different, but when you understand... For me it was this fundamental understanding that these distractions were not designed to help me, they were designed to make these people money, and that’s when I was like, oh!
Katie [19:25]:
I’m out.
Lesley [19:26]:
I’m going to turn you off. [Katie laughs] I’ll look at it, because if somebody needs me, that’s important, but now I get it. Okay, you’re in the business of keeping me from my work.
Katie [19:36]:
Of course, and we’re in the business of mining gold and we’re mining gold in 2023.
Lesley [19:40]:
That’s right. You got it.
Katie [19:40]:
So, this is the perfect time to segue and switch to talk about your reinvention work. Because I know you’ve reinvented your own career, you’ve got a podcast called Reinvent Yourself, and CoveyClub offers tools, resources, inspiration, momentum for women who are growth minded. You literally say in your website, “This is for lifelong learners.” Can we kick off by having you share your reinvention story with the listeners? And then we’re going to a deeper dive.
Lesley [20:08]:
Oh god. [laughs] It’s just... Well, I was...
Katie [20:13]:
How did you come from More magazine to CoveyClub, for example?
Lesley [20:16]:
Well, I’d been running national magazines my whole life, that’s what I’ve done. I’m a writer, I’m an editor and chief of magazines, flying around the world having this very glamorous life, walking to Hollywood red carpets, traveling the world, going to the fashion shows in Italy. And of course, when that all ends, when they close your magazine because print is dying, I had 627 readers who were very upset, and they went to my social media. I put out a survey because they all came to me on social media the day that More closed, and people were really upset.
Katie [20:52]:
It was a very special magazine.
Lesley [20:54]:
Yeah, it was intelligent. It was incredibly intelligent. And what was fantastic is we could do anything we wanted because the company didn’t care. We never fit in any of their holes, so we were, they kind of ignored us. I think half the time, my boss never even read the magazine so, I could do anything I wanted, [laughs] even subversive stuff.
So, when it closed, 627 people took a survey I put out when they said they wanted me to do something else and I took that survey, and I mapped out something called CoveyClub from there. Covey is a small group of birds, I wanted something intimate and small, and I wanted to continue my service to women. That’s really what being an editor and chief is all about I’m an informer and a gatherer. That’s what I do, and I love to give women a voice. And I didn’t want to be cut off from that, and I thought, okay, how do I do this? At the same time, I had started going back to school to get my degree in sustainability management at Columbia at night. I thought, I’ll segue– I mean, it was very clear that magazine publishing was in trouble. You had to be a chicken with your head in the ground to not realize that. I mean, everywhere, they were laying off hundreds of people in every magazine at a time.
So, I had a couple of years to say, okay, what am I going to do? I started getting my degree, sustainability management is where the environment and business meet and I thought I’ll segue over into beauty biz, they pulled the club on More two years too early. So, I literally sat at my dining room table saying, “Okay, I need to either learn Mailchimp today [Katie laughs] or I need to finish this piece on women in the Congo.” It was this completely nutty experience, and Covey sort of took off. Originally, I thought it was going to be... anybody who is in publishing is going to laugh hysterically when I say this. I thought I was going to produce an original magazine every week with original art, and original articles, and I was going to get people to pay for it, digitally. Ha-ha-ha, doesn’t happen. [Katie laughs] So anyway, what happened is, when I figured out that that wouldn’t work, I leaned into the club part of it. And this is what happens too as an entrepreneur. You have to move.
Katie [23:20]:
Yeah, you see what your consumers want.
Lesley [23:23]:
Right, you meet walls, and you say, “Okay, either I’m done, or I take it in this direction.” Anyway, when I leaned into– I love to teach, I’ve taught as an adjunct professor at NYU before, so I leaned into that part of it. We’d always done a little bit of teaching but we kind of started out by doing stage interviews with experts, the kind of thing you would do if you went to a conference. And then shortly, we began to spin into actual workshops, all that kind of stuff, I had a lot of coaches come on.
Then COVID hit, and low and behold, I had a captive audience to do an experiment with, and that’s when we started teaching five days a week, and the whole thing went crazy, and we created platforms for women to meet and all this kind of stuff, and Covey really got cemented. What we figured out is what our tagline is, we say, “We hold a space for you while you figure out what’s next.” And we take women who are in transition of some sort, any kind of transition; it could be widowhood, it could be divorce, it could be losing a job, about to lose a job, it could be an empty nest, whatever it is, and we put in front of them the people, places, and things they need and the services. And about two to three years later, all these people who come in at the beginning saying, “I feel like I’m drifting, I’m scared, I feel like the world is not here for me anymore, I’m invisible, no one hears me as I’m getting older, I feel agism,” they come out the other end with new jobs, new friends, new ideas, new practices, all kinds of stuff like that, and we now know what we do, and that’s what we do.
Katie [25:06]:
I love this so much. I love that you shared that a lot of your CoveyClub members do feel the things that I hear from listeners, that I hear from clients that I work with: concerns about agism, what’s next, what do I do with my time, how do I find purpose and meaning?
Lesley [25:22]:
Yes, we do all of that. We do all of that.
Katie [25:24]:
And they come through the other side. This show focuses on women who are reinventing in midlife as well, who are launching businesses, and creative endeavors. Every Monday, there are women who share inspiring stories. So, I know with your Reinvent Yourself podcast, you’ve done about 200 interviews, and you’ve got a bunch of wonderful episodes. What are common themes that you’ve seen emerge that make a successful reinvention? How do we get from “I’m worried and scared and what’s next” ... How do you get through to success? What’s the common theme?
Lesley [25:58]:
Well, first, I want to say that reinvention can also be thought of as rethinking, restarting, and refreshing. It doesn’t have to be a full... Sometimes people, when they say reinvention, they’re like, "I don’t want to throw out my whole life. I love my life.” We understand that. We just picked the word reinvention because people understand what that means. But you can reinvent, it can be as small as reinventing how you look, or reinventing your health, or reinventing your attitude toward fitness. It doesn’t have to be gigantic, it can be small, or it can be as life-changing as, “I’m leaving my job, and I’m moving to a new city,” like I’ve done. It can be big or small, so I just want to say that.
Katie [26:42]:
That’s a great stage setting.
Lesley [26:45]:
Yeah. So, with all the interviews I’ve done, here’s what’s so fascinating. And we also did a book while I was at More, and we ran a regular column called “Second Acts.” Here’s the fascinating thing. I have interviewed, and I’m sure you’ll find this too, people with money, with no money, with contacts, with no contacts, with education, with no education, with family support, with no family support, people who have dramatic health impairments, people who have literally, the world has fallen in on them one year, they’ve had a year where, I mean, terrific loss, or lost everything. And you know what they all have in common?
Katie [27:25]:
What? [laughs] I’m on the edge of my seat.
Lesley [27:29]:
Mindset. It’s mindset. And it is fascinating because I was really trying to listen to all my podcasts and say, okay, can I come up with a recipe? What’s the recipe? And it’s very clear, and we know that mindset, from all the research can be changed. If you have an open mindset and if you have an open look for how your life can change, and if you believe that your life can change, and if you put out of your head all the things you already think you know about yourself, you can reinvent, reset, refresh. Whatever you want to do with that R-E in front of it, it is mindset. It is absolutely fascinating. And that is because the mindset is the thing, there is a very– You know, I did the book for More all about reinvention, the thing, the one quote that stood out for me was somebody, and I don’t even remember who said it, she said, "You have to open your eyes to the reinvention possibilities that throw themselves in front of you every single day.”
Katie [28:53]:
Ooh, I love that.
Lesley [28:55]:
And it’s true! It’s absolutely true. And once you open your brain... I’ll give you an example if we have time.
Katie [29:02]:
Yeah! Please.
Lesley [29:03]:
Just myself, I moved. We left the suburbs of New York after our kids were grown up and gone because I just felt like, once I was no longer going into the city to work in a corporation, and once I no longer had to be in the city, I wanted to go somewhere where it was fun to be an adult. There’s a whole long story there, but anyway.
Katie [29:24]:
Okay, I want this too, I love this. [laughs]
Lesley [29:24]:
We moved to New Orleans three years ago, right before COVID, right before the shut down, and one of the things I did here, when I got here, I didn’t understand all this obsession with Mardi Gras. I was like, what is all this obsession? Anyway, it’s a whole long story, I’ll have to write about at some point. But I joined a marching club, and I didn’t... These are the people that follow the big floats, there’s all kinds of groups. You see music people, I’m not musical, but they have various marching groups and some you know, do these silly dances, they dress up in funny ways, whatever. So, I join this thing and what I didn’t realize when I joined it like, duh, I thought they looked like they were really fun and interesting, they’re called the Amelia EarHawts, they pronounce it the way one would pronounce it down here. It’s a take-off on Amelia Earhart but because of the Louisiana accent they call if the Earhawt, [Katie laughs], and we dress up in these silly red costumes.
What I didn’t realize, of course, is that they do dances. It didn’t even occur to me. I’ve had the mindset in my life that I am a klutz, I have problems with, I’m kind of ambidextrous so I have a terrible time with left and right, I’ve always had that problem in my life. Tell me if I was either left or right, I would know it better, but I never know left or right. I cried in gym class [Katie laughs] because they say, “Go to the left,” and I go to the right and bump into the girl with the big hockey stick. I’m so terrible. And I was so excited to get in, and then I was like, “Oh shoot, I have to learn to dance. I can't dance.” I don’t know my left from my right, that’s why I don’t take Zumba class because I’m afraid I’m going to go in the wrong direction and bump into people.
So, I decided, “Okay, here’s your experiment. Get rid of that mindset.” When I was 7, I used to do tap, ballet, and baton. What if I look at it? I didn’t think that when I was that age, I didn’t think I was a klutz, impossible, or dumb, or couldn’t follow. And I’ll tell you, it’s been a struggle, but I have learned to do these dances, and I am learning to trust my muscle memory. And I have to learn it my own way. I have to dissect each thing and write it down and say two hands up over here to the left; I have to do it my own way to make it go in. I am having the time of my life. I did two parades. Being in a parade is so stupid fun, [Katie laughs] I can't even tell you, it’s so joyful. And what’s really great for me, while I’m mortified if I’m going in the wrong direction, or my hands are up, and everybody else’s is down, I’ve decided I’m changing my mindset about that. I’m not bad at this. I’m not going to be in the front. I want to be in the back so that no one can see me.
Katie [32:15]:
Lesley, you can be in the front.
Lesley [32:18]:
No. [laughs]
Katie [32:19]:
Yes, you can because you’re going to keep going.
Lesley [32:20]:
Not yet, not yet.
Katie [32:21]:
We do tell ourselves stories that we believe to be true, and when you tell yourself a story that you believe to be true, it can get in the way. I love what you shared about this mindset. My favorite yoga teacher, regular listeners, have heard me say this, one of my favorite teachers always says, "If you think you can't, you’re right.”
Lesley [32:41]:
That’s right, very good.
Katie [32:41]:
We need to think we can because that is the first step in any kind of change. And I love this story that you shared because you, you know, accidentally stumbled into having to tell yourself a new story, and look what happened, you’re dancing in a Mardi Gras parade.
Lesley [33:00]:
[laughs] So stupid, but it’s so much fun!
Katie [33:03]:
No, it’s so fun and so fabulous. And everyone here who is listening to this needs to start telling themselves a story for 2023 so that they can do the thing that they know deep in their heart that they want to try.
Lesley [33:17]:
Yes, I love that. I think that’s a great challenge, love it.
Katie [33:20]:
Yeah. And so, it’s so exciting. This is why we’re here having this conversation. It’s a fresh start to a fresh year. If a listener is sitting here thinking, okay, I’m telling myself a new story, I’m switching my mindset, 2023 is my year to reinvent...
Lesley [33:35]:
Come join us!
Katie [33:36]:
Come join us! What would be a tactical piece of advice you might share that goes beyond mindset? How do we propel ourselves into action in some way that feels tactical or actionable?
Lesley [33:49]:
Well, I do a lot at CoveyClub. I’m not a coach, and I don’t want to be a coach, but I actually got my certification in tiny habits only because I find that, and you probably see this too, the hard part of getting started on any reinvention, refresh, rethink, repackaging, re- whatever your R-E word is, is getting started. The getting started thing is the hard part. And what we know is that once you get started, and you create some momentum, some traction, the snowball keeps going. But that first start is very, very difficult.
So, at Covey, we are doing, as a matter of fact, January 9th through February 9th, we are doing what is called our 30-Day Reinvent Yourself Challenge. We’re going to do it as a club together, and we’re going to check in twice a week. We have a launch, and we have a finish-up. I have, it’s not tiny habits but it's tiny movements. Each day, I give you a calendar that has something you’re going to do. You’re going to pick something you’re going to do every day for 5 minutes that’s going to move you toward whatever that thing is. “I want to change my eating habits; I want to get a new job in a new territory.” Whatever the thing is you’re going to pick what you want to do. It could be, you know, Call Jane, who is in that category already, where I want to go. Follow three doctors if I want to change my health in social media. Buy this book. Whatever it is, you’re going to do something 5 minutes every single day. And here’s what’s fascinating, if you were a couch potato and never moved, after 30 days, if you did even 5 minutes or 10 minutes of walking, that’s 10 times 30, you’ve already done several miles. And that’s true with any kind of pursuit that you have. In a month, you will have traction you will have put the seeds in the ground and things will start to happen.
Katie [36:01]:
And you will have built that habit because they say it takes 30 days to learn a new habit or to get rid of an old one. I love the notion of doing this with an accountability partner or an accountability group.
Lesley [36:12]:
Yes, the whole club! The whole club is your accountability partner.
Katie [36:15]:
Everything is more fun with friends; I absolutely love that.
Lesley, we’re nearing the end of our time together, we’re going to close with a speed round. But before we do that, I want to ask you one last question. Could you have launched CoveyClub, could you have made this big reinvention pivot into entrepreneurship when you were younger? Or did it take getting to midlife?
Lesley [36:38]:
I think... You know, and I asked myself that because I’m very frustrated, I wish I’d launched Covey at least five years earlier. I think I was ready. I just needed the push. I had a big salary, I had a fancy job, it was very hard, there are people in my podcast who have walked away from those things, they knew deep down in their hearts that they had to get out, it wasn’t satisfying. Mine was not that it wasn’t satisfying. It was just sad, it became really, really sad. But I don’t think I had the guts to pull the plug myself. I really wish that I’d done it earlier.
I could not have done it in my twenties or thirties. I was too insecure. I had to get to the point where I didn’t care what people thought and where, you know, if I screwed up, I could get over the screw-up. There’s plenty of screw-ups that you do and when you have some confidence behind you, like whenever I get into a tough situation with CoveyClub, I always look back and myself and go, you know, 30 years of editing magazines, you never had to put yourself on the cover of the magazine because you couldn’t figure it out or find the right person, or even, the person ditched. Something always worked out. And that’s a long way from... And I’ll really be honest. When I would have a big celebrity booked for a cover and somebody would come in and screw me, which happened all the time with these celebrity publicists, they would lie and cheat and say they– I mean, that’s a whole other story also.
Katie [38:17]:
They promised you somebody that wouldn’t show up.
Lesley [38:21]:
You can't even believe the things they would do. And I would literally go barf in the garbage pail because I was like, “Oh, what am I going to do now? I’m dead.” And I’d have the confidence to know that I’m never dead, and I’ll figure it out and I’ll figure out something, whatever it is.
Katie [38:39]:
Of course. I love this story. You shared you wish you’d done it 5 years earlier, but we all, I believe, get there on our own time, we get there eventually, and we have this learning. And how fortunate for us that you go this push, and you created something that’s special for women in midlife and really of all ages. I do know there’s a big, sweet spot of women who are in midlife and are looking at the next chapter.
Lesley [39:09]:
It’s a transition but you know, I would have called in Women in transition, but today that can mean other things.
Katie [39:18]:
It’s evolving. We’re evolving women.
Lesley [39:20]:
Evolving. And it’s this transition.
Katie [39:23]:
Let’s do this speed round Lesley. Let’s go for it.
Lesley [39:25]:
Okay!
Katie [39:25]:
So, this is our high-energy note-to-end, one-to-two-word answers.
Lesley [39:29]:
Oh, okay, I’ll try.
Katie [39:31]:
You can do it. I know it. You’re dancing, Lesley, you can do anything.
Lesley [39:35]:
Yes, I can do anything. [laughs]
Katie [39:37]:
Launching the CoveyClub was _____.
Lesley [39:42]:
Extraordinary. Scary and extraordinary.
Katie [39:45]:
Two good words. The CoveyClub is for lifelong learners. What’s the last new thing you learned?
Lesley [39:52]:
That I can actually dance. [both laugh] I’m not a klutz.
Katie [39:57]:
What’s the next new thing you want to learn?
Lesley [40:00]:
This year, it’s funny. I’m struggling to figure out what it is I’m going to do this year. I always pick something; I pick a topic every single year. I’m really heavy into learning about health and blood sugar.
Katie [40:12]:
Oooh, that’s a good one.
Lesley [40:15]:
[laughs] I’m weird, I know you didn’t expect that one.
Katie [40:17]:
No! We like unexpected answers. It keeps us listening. Reinvention is not as simple as making a new year’s resolution. We’ve all just maybe made ours. What’s a tool or hack to keep the reinvention fire burning all year long?
Lesley [40:32]:
Planning. It’s planning and actually working with a group to get it done and stay with it. And I hate to call them resolutions, I don’t. I just would call them inspirations.
Katie [40:45]:
Nice. A lifestyle choice or hack that keeps you growing and going?
Lesley [40:53]:
I’m a huge reader, and I do. Every year around New Year’s, I pick something that has been intriguing me that I haven’t had a chance to study. I’m a big studied, and you know, that’s how I ended up with my sustainability degree. I used to kill every plant I ever touched, and then I decided it was time to figure out how to not do that and that eventually got me into a master’s degree. But this year, I think it’s going to be physical health. I’ve never really had to pay attention, and now I do.
Katie [41:30]:
We all do. We all do. All right, finally, your one-word answer to complete this sentence, as I age, I feel _____.
Lesley [41:39]:
Happier.
Katie [41:40]:
Nice! Love it. Perfect note. Thank you, Lesley. This was so much fun. It was such a treat to connect with you in real life since I’ve only ever been able to read your editor’s notes.
Lesley [41:53]:
Oh, wonderful.
Katie [41:54]:
Before we say goodbye though, how can our listeners find you and the CoveyClub and learn more about your work?
Lesley [41:58]:
Yes, please come over the CoveyClub.com and read all our content. Just put the word reinvention in there, or rethink, or refresh, or whatever it is; we have hundreds of original articles, essays that will inspire you. Look at our classes and see if it’s for you! The great part about CoveyClub, you can join for a month for free, if it’s not for you, no harm no foul, you can just cancel. We just have a wonderful group of women who are very accomplished, and I get the women who want to help each other. That’s what’s really great; we’re all here to help each other move each other along.
Katie [42:36]:
I love it. Lesley, this was so fabulous, so phenomenal. Thank you for kicking off 2023 with us!
Lesley [42:43]:
Thank you! I’m so excited!
Katie [42:46]:
This was so fun.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next week when fitness pro and menopause advocate and educator Amanda Thebe, helps us amp up our 2023 fitness and wellness routines.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties.