In this episode of Life Intended, Kelly Berry welcomes back Sailynn Doyle, an entrepreneur and expert in work-life balance, to dive into the concept of designing your ideal day. They explore what it means to live each day intentionally, and the tools needed to craft a daily routine that aligns with your goals and personal values. Sailynn shares practical strategies for achieving flexibility while staying productive, offering listeners insights into self-assessment, mindfulness, and the importance of designing a sustainable daily rhythm. Whether you're an entrepreneur or seeking more control over your life, this episode provides actionable steps to make every day a meaningful and productive one.
Sailynn emphasizes the concept of designing your “Groundhog Day”—a day you’d be happy to repeat endlessly. This isn’t about envisioning vacation days but creating a sustainable, enjoyable routine that fulfills your goals. She discusses how shifting your mindset to focus on building a consistent, balanced day helps break the burnout cycle and contributes to long-term satisfaction.
Kelly and Sailynn discuss the dangers of being overly rigid with daily schedules, which can lead to stress when unexpected events occur. Sailynn shares her method of structuring days in broader time blocks—morning, midday, and evening—allowing for adaptability. This approach offers a balance between the stability of routines and the freedom to pivot as life’s demands change.
Sailynn explains her blueprint for self-assessment, advocating for weekly check-ins rather than the traditional annual review. This method allows you to recalibrate your goals, identify areas for improvement, and celebrate progress. She also introduces her "Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide" to help listeners evaluate different areas of their lives and set achievable, realistic goals.
Both Kelly and Sailynn highlight the importance of taking realistic, small steps towards your goals, ensuring they are sustainable. They recommend starting with manageable timeframes like a 30-day or 90-day commitment to new habits, offering flexibility to adapt while still seeing progress. This approach aligns your daily actions with long-term aspirations.
Sailynn challenges the misconception that external circumstances completely dictate your schedule. She and Kelly discuss strategies for reclaiming your time, such as controlling morning routines and minimizing distractions like social media. By making intentional changes, you can gain more agency over your time and increase overall life satisfaction.
Kelly Berry (00:00)
Hi friends, you're listening to Life Intended, a podcast that explores what it means to be true to yourself and live an authentic and purposeful life. I'm your host Kelly Berry, and each episode of Life Intended explores my guest's version of personal growth, self-discovery, and the pursuit of becoming the best version of themselves so that you can take what you need and incorporate it into your life to live with more intention and authenticity.
Whether you're seeking to develop your leadership skills, overcome challenges, or simply live a more fulfilling life, you will find guidance, motivation, and practical strategies to help you navigate your unique journey. Today's episode is a little bit different than normal, I am bringing on a return guest, Salem Doyle. We had a conversation a few months ago, and part of that conversation, we talked about
how to create an ideal day that you would be happy to live day after day after day. What would your Groundhog Day look like? Because that is what your life is made of. And so I took this tidbit of our conversation to heart and have made some changes in what I have done and how I operate in my day to day to day. And Salen and I have continued this conversation in the background.
She had the idea to jump back on and record something a little bit more formal about the changes I've made, what it actually means, and just expand on the topic. And I think that you will find it very valuable. If you are struggling to gain control of your days, feel like you never have enough time, everything's kind of out of control, you have all of these goals, but you're not really moving towards them, then I think this episode and Salem's tool that I will link below
will really help you audit your life and start to make some of those intentional changes so that you can live your everyday with more purpose. here we are, Salem and I, having a conversation about your ideal day.
Sailynn Doyle:
First of all, let me ask you, I was on the podcast and we were talking about ideal days. What really stood out for you that you were like, hmm, that's an interesting topic.
Kelly Berry: Yeah, I think there were a couple of things that you talked about or ways that you described how you coach the people that you work with to get to their ideal day. And one of the things that you said was, you know, it needs to be your groundhog day, not a day on vacation, not your birthday, not a special occasion day. And I think it's easy for us to think about aspirationally, if our life is perfect, you know, we'll be able to go out to lunch with our girlfriends or spend the afternoon shopping. But, know, really what we need to be doing is figuring out what our day after day after day after day looks like and making sure since that is what makes up the majority of our lives, you know, our lives are lived only in the moment that we're in, know, they're not lived on vacation or on her So thinking about it like that was more like I need to figure out how to make every single day the day in the life that I want to have. So I think the Groundhog Day phrase really stuck with me and made me think about it a little bit differently. But then I have a tendency to try to like overdo things. So when I'm working towards my ideal day, I think I even shared this with you, I had a spreadsheet that 30 minutes of the day planned out from the time that I woke up to the time that I went to bed. And if I'm not able to wake up at 5 a.m. and spend the first 30 minutes reading, I'm likely to be like, well, that's a wash. So instead, I think the way that you kind of talked about it, it's like, what area of your life do you want your mornings to be focused on?
when do you want to do the bulk of the work of your day and what do want your evenings to look like? And so instead of being like, okay, well, I need to do this at five, this at 5.30, this at six, this at 6.30. It's like, okay, if I want my mornings to be focused on my mental health and maybe my physical health, that can look different every single day. It can look different if my daughter decides to wake up at 5 a.m. versus sleep into 7 a.m. like she normally does, you know, so I think being a little bit more flexible and less rigid was also another big takeaway that I got from it.
Sailynn Doyle: Yeah. So I love two things you said in there. So the first thing is how it shifted your perspective about what your day, not in many time increments, but kind of larger increments. Right. So like, how do I want my morning to look versus how do I want this 30 minute period to look?
And so for me, that's huge because as an entrepreneur and I think just as a person in general, and I don't know if it's because I'm a little different is I have a love hate relationship with routines, right? So I love routines because they allow you to accomplish your goals because they keep you on track. But I have a hate love relationship with routines because
they just feel like they're sticking you in a box, right? But as entrepreneurs, we need to have a balance of both, right? Like we need to know what are the things we need to do daily that are gonna grow our businesses. But we also need the flexibility for those days that it's like, yeah, your daughter does get up at 5 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. and that doesn't throw your whole day off. So I totally love that.
And then the other thing is really just how you wanna live your day and being more open to it. And this is the thing, and I think this is the challenge that so many of us struggle with is no one in our life has asked us, what do we wanna be when we grow up in a really long time? And so we get boxed in, we assume other people's dreams and goals. And so, maybe you are a...
person that thrives on, you know, 30 minute increments because that's just how your brain works. Whereas other people don't like that, you know, they want more flexibility. And I think that's the power in having your ideal day because it's yours and yours alone. It's not mine. It's not hers. It's not theirs.
It's what works for you and your dreams and your goals. And it is like Groundhog Day. And I think when you think about it, right, when you were in that grind every single day, you were like, when is this going to end? Well, this is the opposite. This is your opportunity to get into a day that you really would enjoy doing every single day. So that's so huge.
It's definitely a mindset shift on that. So the first thing that I always like to have people do is assess where they are, right? Like we have to have a baseline of where we're starting. And so I have a free guide that I can share with anyone interested in going through it, but you assess the 10 areas of your life and you know, like where you are with your family, with your friends, with your finances.
I just chose all F's there. But, you know, really we need to know like on a scale of one to five, like where are you in those different 10 areas? Because it's not an opportunity to beat yourself up. It's more an opportunity of just to make yourself aware. Because how many times have we closed out a week, a day, a month, a year and been like, where did that time go?
So a lot of people advise you to do an assessment like this on a yearly basis. I personally think you should do it on a weekly basis, right? Just, where are you? How did last week go? Like you said you wanted to be more present for your family, were you? Right? Like it's just kind of that thing. So is that something that you have incorporated into your life yet or where are you on kind of like an assessment? Yeah, I have.
been doing a lot of thinking about it since our conversation too. Because I think in general, I had done a lot of the boxing in the increments and the timeframes. And what I had realized after some reflection was that was just really stifling creativity and being able to make adjustments with less friction. So if something
you know, interrupted my every 30 minute schedule or my morning didn't go as planned, it felt like there was a lot of friction and it made it harder for me to like switch to the next thing or get my day started. And so when I stepped back and started thinking about it, like, well, what do I want my mornings to be focused on? Or what do I want my evenings to be focused on? Or what areas of my life are ones that I need to like pour more into right now? And I...
can't remember if I shared this on the podcast or in conversation with you, but something else that kind of stood out to me was something that a content creator I follow on LinkedIn shared. it's that she, every quarter she does this assessment of the areas of her life. And she looks at her kind of like where she's going to focus, like a stove top. And so she puts, you know, like two or three things on the front burners and two or three things on the back burner. So.
You know, maybe this quarter she needs to focus on career, on fitness, and on family. But she needs to put like her, let's just, I can't even think of another area, but like maybe her finances and maybe, you know, her, we'll say health on the back burner. And so every quarter she kind of assesses that. So I kind of took this assessing the areas of your life and then also overlapping that with maybe like.
What are the most important ones for me to do right now? And so I, as I was thinking about restructuring my day, you know, on the forefront for me is like health in general. So mental health and physical health, those are two areas of my life that I had been neglecting. So how do I do that? Maybe even like overlap those things. So if it's doing morning yoga or taking some time to read.
A big shift that I made that I have talked a lot about on social media is not checking email or social media before 9 a.m. And I wake up early. I'm an early riser. So between 4 30 and 5. So that's a long time to to not be an email or social media. But what it allowed me to do was start my day on offense. So I'm not reacting to what I see online. I'm not reacting to the emails that come into my inbox. I am choosing, you know, if I get some time to work.
in the mornings, what am I doing that's important work and not just responding or reacting? So that's a very long answer, but yes, I use kind of both the assessment overlapped with just maybe even a, whether it's monthly or quarterly, taking an inventory on where do I need to pour in to myself or my family or my career right now.
and making it fluid. So next month it may look different based on where I need to put extra energy. I know you've had a lot of work projects, you know, and you've talked about how you've had to do some sprints here and there. And so I think just being aware of all of those things and how they overlap helps you just be more intentional with your time and your day. So you don't feel like you're just getting, you know, run over and you look up at the end of the day and you're like, I don't even know what just happened.
Yep. So one of the things that I love about you, since I've known you, is that you take action. You you hear something that rings true for you and you take action on it. So let me ask you, how long have do you think on average you have not checked your social media till 9 a.m. and how do you feel about it? Like what is your assessment of that change in your life?
Yeah, so that's a really good question. I was just talking to my husband about this yesterday, actually. I went one entire month without checking email or social media until 9 a.m. Recently, like within the last, I'll say week, I have started to like peek in at times. I found that there were some limiting things to that. So I'm kind of trying to figure out like, what is, what's my default going to be going forward? Because 9 a.m. is a long time to wait.
but I think after this conversation with my husband, probably like my default setting is going to be no email or social media until 9 a.m. If I have something that I need to work on or I need to be checking a message or something, I can make like a call if I'm going to do that. But, you know, going back to 9 a.m. worked for me. It helped. It really helped me, like I said, start the day on offense, just feel
Like my screen time was way down. I felt like I wasn't wasting as much time, wasn't scrolling, wasn't like comparing. And so my mindset and my mental health felt a lot different. And in general, just, you know, I was able to get in and like, instead of reacting to what came to me, I was able to, you know, work on things and, you know, get things done. And also like,
really focus on being present with my daughter in the mornings after she wakes up, getting her breakfast, ready for school, being present with my husband while we're all doing that together. that was just, I noticed a big difference. It was hard at the beginning, but then it was kind of like, I don't even wanna do it. Yep. And that's one of the things that I love hearing from people who implement
you know, some sort of change into their day from doing this exercise is, yeah, it might be hard because you had an older routine, but then you get into it and you find your happy space, right? And for some people it's, okay, 9 a.m. like really works for me. And then some people realize like, no, I really need to do 8.30 or 9.30 or whatever it is.
Or it could be, as you said, just going to be some days where you need to change, right? Just like, there's some days that I work longer than four hours, which on average, that's my goal. And so I love that you committed for 30 days and then you also did an assessment on how it worked. one of the things that I have people do is they're designing their ideal day is to really look at a previous period of time. So,
If we're in a workshop setting, look at yesterday, right? If you had to repeat yesterday on Grand Hag Day every single day, is that a day you'd wanna do? Or if it's in a longer setting like last week, when I teach my clients to review their previous quarter, I'm a big advocate for working in 90 day periods. And so when we sit down to plan the next quarter, I have them look at their schedule for the previous quarter and kind of determine
I use a 3D framework and the first thing is like, what went so amazing that you wanna like double down on it, right? So if we're looking at your ideal day and we're looking at yesterday, like what went so amazing yesterday that you wanna do more of that, right? And then the second D is what could you further develop, right? So like what went okay yesterday that you were like...
You know, that was really good. Like maybe you took a yoga class, but maybe the timing wasn't right. Like maybe it needed to be earlier or later, whatever it is. And so you're like, if I further develop this, this would be really good for me. And then the third D is ditch, right? So what is something that you did yesterday that you would not want to do again in your ideal day? So maybe you did book yourself too solid. Maybe it was a
10 hour day versus you prefer a six hour day. So this is an opportunity for you to really review a previous day that you lived and say, would I want to do that every single day? So if I was asking you, tell me about yesterday. Is it a day that you'd want to be your groundhog day over and over or are you still working out the kinks of your ideal day?
I'm definitely still working on things. you know, I'm in a season of life where my days look extremely different right now. You know, sometimes I have two podcast interviews and some other things. Some days I'm creating content. And right now I value the variety because for a long time I was stuck in like, I don't know, just got into burnout mode. But in general, like my days look very, very different.
working wise in the mornings, I'm able to like, kind of compartmentalize that in the evenings. think, for this season of life that I'm in, really happy with how our family spends our evenings. but sometimes this stuff in the middle, I, I need to, I feel like I need to get a little bit more of a grasp on. but I do think this is, this is something that
I'd like to add and build on something you said was, whatever you want to, when you look at your life and you're trying to figure out like this Groundhog Day, what would you be happy doing and what would be in there and what would you want to double down on? Another thing that I've really been thinking about since our conversation is this like living in the waiting. I think a lot of us are like when
XYZ happens, then I'll be able to go to a yoga class. Or when my business hits this revenue goal, then I'll be able to hire. Or when my daughter starts going to school full time, then I'll have this. But what we really need to figure out is like, I'm in this period right now where this is what my life looks like. So what can I do right now to make sure that even if they're not days, I would want to repeat over and over for the rest of my life?
Like what can they look like right now so that I'm not constantly waiting for something to change. I'm taking advantage of what, what the day looks like right now. So that's kind of been another key for me because I feel like, for the past year, I've just been in this like waiting game and you know, I had this epiphany one day and I wrote my newsletter about it yesterday. Like I'm, if I want to be somebody who is in shape,
Like I don't need to wait until everything is right. I need to work on that right now. If I want to be somebody is good at yoga, I have to be somebody who's practicing yoga right now. If I want to be somebody who, so if you think of all of those things for yourself, like if I want to be this person, like you have to be putting work into those things and you can't just wait for like when the time is right to do that. So I thought that was another
thing that I've been thinking about along with the ideal day is, know, while we're talking about it, like this is what's ideal for right now. You know, you don't also want to just be like, well, I need to wait until all of these things magically fall into place because we know that they never really do. No. And I mean, I love that you brought this up because
And that's why when we had developed this topic, we called it, you know, live every day. And as someone who personally worked in senior home care for 13 years, I can tell you that no senior at the end of their life ever says, I wish I had worked more. And so they said things like, you know, I wish I had a better relationship with my spouse or my kids, or I wish I had taken that trip, or I wish I had been more present or all of these different kinds of things. And that is
heartbreaking. so it's so true. What you said is we need to, if we want to be a certain way, we need to do the work today and embrace that, right? We're not going to become that person unless we do the work. And it's the same thing in business. You know, I work with women entrepreneurs and one of the things that I teach them, and this is kind of the next thing in your ideal day, if you're an entrepreneur is
Really, what are the things in your business that you must do every day? I call them income producing activities. Like what are those business needle moving activities that you need to do? And it's the same thing in your personal life, right? Like if you want to be healthy and whatever that definition is for you, what are the things that you need to do in your life or in your business every single day in order to be that person?
And I find that so many of us struggle with this. It's like, well, I don't know what grows my business or I don't know what's needed to be healthy. And so it's, love, I was in event planning for 10 years and you always planned events by reverse engineering them, right? So the day of the event was here and you would back up, okay, when do I need to have the invitations back? When do I need to send the invitations? When do they need to be designed by? And it's the same.
thing, right? What is the end goal that you want and then reverse engineer backwards? So if you want to be healthy, what does that look like? What does it feel like? And then what are the activities that contribute to that in order to make that happen? And then how do you incorporate those into your ideal every day? And that's where I as a non-morning person,
really embraced having a morning routine, a mindful morning routine, because I knew that my brain didn't function till about 10 a.m. And so I knew that it was like not beneficial for me to have an 8 a.m. meeting where I needed to actually like use my brain power because I just wasn't going to be firing on all cylinders. And so I knew that about myself. I said, OK, how can I make this happen? And then this is how I
run my days in my ideal days. So I love how you talked about, you know, what do we want to be? What do we want personally and professionally? And then figuring out what are those things that you need to do every single day? So what things have you found? So I read your newsletter yesterday. It was amazing.
You know, what are the things that you would suggest to someone struggling to figure out? How do I figure out what are the things I'm supposed to do if I want to be healthier, if I want to grow my business? Like, what is your advice? You run successful businesses, you know, all different things. Businesses are personal. How do you figure that out? Yeah. So I would say that we'll talk personally for a minute because that's kind of the
area that I've lived in for the last several months is figuring out what your values are as a person and then maybe even collectively with your family. So what are the things that are important to you? What are your passions? So if you truly think about what you like to do and what you're interested in doing and what you want to be better at, what are those? Looking at relational health, like the health with your family, the health.
with your friends? Do you have enough friendships, relational health? And kind of looking at those areas and seeing like, what does this say about me? So if we'll go back to your example about if I want to be healthier, you know, why is that important to you? What does that mean to you? And figuring that out, like you may know what health looks like on Instagram because you see that all over the place, but is that truly what's going to contribute to your life? And if, if yes, then
Maybe do a little research, maybe start to work with a trainer. I'm a big fan of like coaches, trainers, anybody that can help you shorten the learning curve and actually get it done. So maybe doing something like that. If it's more like, I just feel like in this season of my life, I just need to move my body. You know, maybe it's like, well, I would be good with something that's attainable and something that I can
commit to, so a 20 minute walk after lunch. need to, instead of waking up and getting on Instagram, I need to wake up and read 10 pages of a book. And so just figuring out not only what it means to you and how this thing, whether it's health or financial, how it can serve you and then figure out how to make it realistic and attainable. So that I think is a big part of it.
Another thing that I will say is really when you look at this list of passions or maybe if you've created a list of goals that you had, look at that list of goals and think, if I want to write a book, if that's on my list of goals, what am I doing to move towards that? I just said I can't be somebody who's fit if I don't work out. I also cannot be somebody who's written a book if I don't do any writing.
You know, I can't be somebody who is called on to speak if I'm not speaking anywhere or not putting my name in the hat. So when you think about like, what's the difference in these aspirations that you have and the action that you're taking, even small steps, I think are really important. And just knowing that if you want to do hard things, it's going to be hard. And
I think that's a mindset shift. It's one I had to go through. You see people doing a lot of things. you know, so many people are like, wow, doing a podcast is so hard. You know, I can't believe you do that. And maybe five years ago, I would have said the same thing, but it's like, just get started and then you start talking and it just happens. And then before you know it now I'm 30 episodes but that wouldn't have happened if I wouldn't have taken the first step.
So just knowing like changing, doing hard things, it's gonna be hard. You can expect it to be hard. You can expect there to be challenges. You can expect there to be failures and just do it anyway. Yeah, I am a big advocate of taking messy action. I think at times I strolled for perfection, but I was never one of those people that was like a.
100%, but now I'm probably even less, you know, you don't know whether something's going to work or not, unless you take that action. And I love how you use the word realistic in regards to goals and actions and everything. And, you know, that's the thing is I, as we kind of come to the conclusion here you know, planning and how to implement this all into your life. As I said, I'm a big advocate of
90 day periods. think 90 days is long enough for you to be able to try something new, right? It's a realistic amount of time and see if it works. It's also long enough for you to try something new and make a pivot halfway and still see results. But it's not so long if you try something new and it totally tanks and you feel like you wasted a lot of time. And so setting realistic goals. So, you know, if this topic of designing your ideal day that includes
personal and professional growth and development interests you, try committing for, like Kelly did, 30 days of not checking social media until 9 a.m. and then see if you can go 90 days and make it realistic. Don't say like, okay, I'm not gonna do it for the next year, but pick a short amount of time and see how it goes and.
See how you feel about it and do that assessment. How am I feeling? And then really go from there and pivot and make it work for you because you're gonna learn what we did and the changes we've made in our life. But essentially this is your day, your life. You need to take the concept and make it your own to meet your specific unique needs in your life because we're all different and unique, right?
that's kind of how I usually wrap up this practice is challenging clients to commit for 90 days and just kind of say, okay, you know, doing an assessment in 90 days of how did it go? What did I learn? What went well, you know, and really seeing what needs to change in order for you to do in 90 days and have an even better experience. So as we wrap up,
Kelly, what are your final thoughts on implementing something that's kind of outside this box, right? Like this isn't outside the box kind of thing. Like people don't think that they can necessarily live their ideal, maybe their ideal day, maybe at this point in their life right now because of a lot of constrictions. Like what is your professional life from someone who's, you know, done it for the past 30 days and what would you say to them?
that you realistically have more control over your time than you think that you do. And so I think that you have to be really honest and objective with yourself first and You may have to be at work at a certain time and you may not be able to leave until a certain time, but outside of that, you have more control than maybe you're telling yourself that you do.
What can you do in those periods that you As a business owner, think that I, for a long while I had 100 % control over my time, I didn't act like that. I acted like I only had control over about 80 % of my time. So flipping the script and realizing that I really do have 100 % control over how my day goes.
Do I have a family? Yes. Do I have a toddler? Yes. Are there things that happen? Absolutely. on a meta view, I've got control. And so I need to act like I have control and implement some agency over the way that my life is going. And then to your point, just those whatever checkpoint it is, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, reflection is so important. And I think just
Although it needs to be realistic and truthfully goals that are very specific go better, but also don't make it too complicated. If you're just trying to be more present with your family, rate your day on a scale of one to five. Don't make it really complex. Just be like, was I more present today? Yes or no? Was I on a scale of one to five? How well did I do with my health today? Just make things easy so that more or better is attainable.
Exactly. So, that is so true is, you know, goals are great, but goals are only great if you keep them sometimes simple because we live in a very busy world and we want you to have success with this. If this inspired you today to take action. think that is a great ending. Kelly is to keep it simple, right? And don't beat yourself up about it. It's a journey. We are on a
long distance marathon. We don't have to be in a sprint. And hopefully this is something that once you do implement it into your life, that it will be a constant reminder that you do ongoing. So I want to thank you for having this in-depth conversation with me today about living your ideal day and how you've implemented this into your life. So what is the best way for people to connect with you offline? Yeah.
Thank you. It's been fun and a topic I didn't know I'd love to talk about, but I've been talking about it more and more. So people can find me on Instagram mostly. I'm at Kelly Berry for or at Life Intended Podcast. You can also find me at the website, kellyberry.info. You can sign up for my newsletter. It comes out every Tuesday. Yeah. And again, podcast is on Spotify, Apple, all of the places. Life Intended, so would love if you listened.
Awesome. Yes, and I highly recommend the podcast. You've had some amazing guests and the newsletter is so well written. So definitely thank you. Yeah, I loved yesterday's thank you letter that came out. So thank you so much, everyone. If you have any questions, follow up questions, feel free to connect with Kelly or myself at Salem Doyle, pretty much on all social media.
avenues there, but I hope you enjoyed this. hope it inspired you to just take one step today towards living your ideal day. Pellie said it absolutely right. It's a hundred percent in our control in order to live our own lives. It's just a small mindset shift to get there. So thanks so much, everyone. I hope you have a great day. Thanks, Aileen. Awesome.
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader and business coach. She is known for her operational excellence and her ability to drive growth and results across multiple industries.
She is also hosting her own podcast, Life Intended.
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