ARE YOU READY TO MAKE A MEASURABLE DIFFERENCE IN EVERY WEEK?
About
I am a work-life mentor to professional women helping them format their routines and bring integrity to weekly habits that will free the mental and physical space, so they can fill their time with activities they love while being highly productive.
Hello. I'm Stacey and this website is my space to share with you what it took me over 40 years to realize and why I want to help overburdened professional women implement the right routines right now. So, pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit down for a few minutes so you can get a feel for what I’m all about and why I want to help you.
My Story
Consistency, not perfection, will help you arrive at EXCELLENCE.
By all accounts, I am a born adventurer and passionate leader who drives for excellence, pays attention to the details, and prefers all required tasks are done persistently so I can efficiently move past the mundane and delve into activities I desire to spend time on.
But my journey to acknowledging just how impactful the right routines can be on your happiness, success, and ability to make (joyful) choices was longer than it should have been. Let me share my story with you.
I was the first female in my family to attend University. I went to college to study biology to become a surgeon, a plan I’d had for years. But after my second year into school I switched direction and entered the business school and graduated with a Business Administration degree with a double major in Marketing and Real Estate. During college I was an active founding sister for my sorority on campus in addition to working my last year because I needed more money than my summer job was providing. I had to cram in 21 hours each semester my last two years which meant 8:00am classes that I attended daily. I was young and driven and I did it all in four years. Not because I was the smartest student, but because I knew how to leverage routines and consistency to my advantage.
Structure & Adventure – honoring one will make room for the other in your life.
After graduation, I moved to Austin. Life was good, and my world was wide open. After a few grand after-graduation experiences including training team members at a restaurant in Puerto Rico and living for a month on a yacht Marlin fishing, I settled into Austin. Within a few years I landed a position at Dell working with the F1000 business in what was the start of a long professional career in technology marketing, partner development, and sales. I traveled all over the U.S. for work and saved for my first home by myself which I bought on my 30th year with money I made from consistent investing and savings.
I am a born adventurer. I love life and trying new things. Traveling, cultures, foods, music, meeting new people -I want to do and try it all!
I fit a lot into my days before I was 30. I was organized and put together and could cram a ton of activity into a week – both work and fun. During those early days I had a regular place for everything, a way to handle my finances, my mail, my bill paying, my travel go-bag, my work and desk routines. All the weekly tasks and planning were on habit autopilot freeing me up for deep work that landed me promotions and still left space for personal choices and multiple nights of fun during the week.
I am a Jill of all trades and master of one - Routines.
Early in my 30’s I got married and let go of many of my weekly routines as we merged lives and it became easier not to pay attention to the small stuff and just free flow with him. I thought, it won’t get that bad, I’ve earned the right to let a few things drop off and he will share the household side of the load. This proved a bad decision, or I should say lack of decision.
During our 30’s, we welcomed two children into our busy lives and I let go of all my foundational proactive planning and money routines as I cared for and loved my children and worked. Attempting to juggle all the elements of a demanding work environment and our home like any other professional woman.
Dropping those mindful routines was a big mistake! I was lucky that I had a good (although unorganized) husband and two beautiful children, but over the next several years, we were spending money with abandon, our mail was piled high in several rooms, our bank accounts all over the place, and I had no time for myself.
The mound of daily life obligations weighed heavy on me. I finally gave up trying to keep up and I did what he did – ignored the piles and pushed proactive planning to the sidelines. But a messy space breeds a messy mind. The only element that was functioning was work, where I had held on to some consistency in this separate space.
The thing about being a professional woman and letting go of your routines and habits is that you’re building up your interlaced career and home life on a pile of loose sand, a vulnerable foundation, open to external forces.
Activities and invitations that used to be fun became frazzled chores. Big goals gave way to just trying to ‘get stuff done’ and keeping my head above the piles of to-do’s. I had always fancied myself graceful and ready to entertain anyone at any time-I’m southern after all. But, I didn’t want to have friends over because the house was a mess, we turned down big invitations due to lack of budget or worse went anyway with no budget.
Since the home was a mess I compensated by saying “yes” to everything outside the home and became overcommitted. And overcommitted for the sake of doing and not choosing based on any mindful plans or desires. I just filled up the schedule with other people’s requests. I slowly became a different person – angry all the time, hard to please, demanding, negative, and totally exhausted and mentally depressed. I wore being busy like a badge. And it had creeped into all aspects of my life.
I was successful, but miserable. It took me several years of self-imposed suffering before I paused and found the courage to look inside and realize the roots to build a happier, more decisive life where still there. I knew how to do this – this is my personal genius zone and I wasn’t using it anymore.
Being proactive, not perfect will move you forward.
I desired to travel more and have my kids exposed to other cultures. I reached out to my VP and persuaded him to let me work for one month from France. I would be free during the daytime to be with my family and I would work in the afternoons through evening to fit into our home office time zone. This was not a practice in our company, but I convinced him to let me try it based on my results-oriented work and consistent communications. I wanted to do this! I leveraged the power of my weekly desk routines and it worked, worked well. A small flicker of inspiration went off in my head.
A year later I asked to start working from home full time and maintained remote office and corporate position for several years. Then I left corporate to be an independent contractor working with clients all over the U.S. Over a decade later, I have been successfully working from a home office using weekly best practices to thrive at my desk.
Finally, now, with routines back in place in my work space and paper management, I am beginning to flourish again but my 40’s would have been so much more pleasurable and saner if I had not let go of my weekly planning, scheduling, and paper management.
After consulting in small and medium business and in speaking with many of my fellow entrepreneurs and corporate work friends, I realized that most people didn’t know how to use these principles and put the routines in place for themselves. It not hard, but they need a mentor to help them own it and execute.
So, I’m dedicating myself to helping success-oriented professional women implement the right impactful routines. I will guide you through the blueprint and the mindset to do it consistently. I will be your voice of reason and encouragement until the system is built into a set of regular routines.
I am passionate about making life productive and peaceful for other working women. Especially those early in their careers. Creating systems and space for decision making that will help you grow your career, your money, your time with family and friends. Making space for what you choose. Isn’t this what you want in your life?
I want big things for you!
Routines should work for you.
They are a set of consistent systems you root in place and consistently attend to. In turn, they become habits that free space in your mind and on your calendar to make proactive decisions about where you will choose to spend your time.
TheRootineLife2022