We’re a few days post-launch for Cowork and today felt like being on the other side of a long tunnel. It’s been 6 wild and full months bringing Cowork to life all while running my design business and balancing a move, garden, and personal life. I imagine you probably resonate with having a full plate and also understand that feeling of relief when you finally reach the other side of a major project.

All weekend I felt a pull to reset given that I’m no longer in launch mode and now pivoting back to creating and building this community. Coincidentally, I ran across an Instagram story from Carly Riordan (one of my favorite blogs to read – I’ve read her blog for 12 years!) about wrapping up her 75 soft journey. Then I binged her story highlight on her whole journey through 75 soft and knew this was just the inspiration I needed for my own reset.

I decided to choose three areas where I want to realign:

• Sleep – an Oura Ring score of 85 or above
• Movement – 30+ minutes of movement at least 5x per week
• Cycle Syncing – intentionally syncing my nutrition, movement, and work to my cycle

When those three areas of my life are optimal, I feel like a superwoman. Rather than dive deep into why I chose these specific areas and my specific goals, I thought it would be more helpful to share how I’m setting myself up for success. Goals are deeply personal, but the methods to set us up for success can be universally applied.

Habit Tracking

I’m a visual person, I need to see the progress happening. So I’m using this habit tracker to track sleep and movement. I love its compact size and the ability to track two habits on each page. It’s pinned to my pin board behind my computer so I see it every day.

Another place I like to place habit tracking is my bathroom mirror. When I was first establishing my morning and evening rhythms, I wrote them on the bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker.

Cycle Syncing

Cycle syncing is a way of adapting your lifestyle to match the four phases of your menstrual cycle. Unlike men, our hormones fluctuate and change a great deal over the course of our cycle and as such, our bodies function optimally when we adapt our lifestyle to mirror that change.

When you first learn of cycle syncing it may feel a bit overwhelming, but I’m going to share some pro-tips and resources that will ease the overwhelm particularly if you want to incorporate this into your work life.

Resources for Cycle Syncing

There are hundreds upon hundreds of resources out there, but a few of my favorites are:

• Dr. Jolene Brighten – I read her book, Beyond the Pill, as I was preparing to come off of hormonal birth control and learned more about my body than I’d ever known.
• Maddie Miles – absolutely love Maddie’s content. She’s an herbalist and I took her supplements in the months post-BC.
• @balancedbeyars – I’m so obsessed with this account and I think you’ll understand why when you binge their content. They have a ton of resources and even programs on their website as well as a podcast which I’ve downloaded.
• Elix Healing – Elix focuses more on general period and hormonal wellness content BUT I love their approach and use their herbs ever month. No other product has helped me more than Elix.
• Natural Cycles – if you are new to tracking your cycle, my favorite app is Natural Cycles. It uses your basal body temperature and an algorithm to track your cycle. The app provides a lot of great education and guidance throughout your different phases. When you sign up, they provide a thermometer or you can use it with Oura Ring (I’ve never been into fitness wearables, but I absolutely love my Oura ring)

Color Coding Your Google Calendar

One of my favorite ways to stay on track with my cycle is color coding my Google Calendar. Either add it in a month in advance or if you have a fairly predictable cycle, you can add it further out. I personally like to have a general idea of my cycle for at least 6 months so I can plan out projects, meetings, and launches.

You can make this even easier by using an app like The Agenda which syncs with Google Calendar and also guides you towards syncing life tasks with your cycle. I first heard about The Agenda on Maddie Miles podcast and the concept blew me away. While I don’t personally use this currently, it does eliminate the task of logging your cycle into your calendar manually!

Adjust Your Work to Match Your Phases

Now, I understand that we can’t uproot our entire schedule to match perfectly with our cycles. There are deadlines and things that simply can’t shift. However, I recommend starting with the things you can shift like content creation, writing or editing, or admin. Shifting your cycle around your business is an area I’m still exploring.

The Intuitive OBM has some great resources on syncing your cycle to your work and I highly recommend checking those out.

One of my goals for the next few months is identifying specific tasks that can be batched during certain times in my cycle like writing blogs, creating content, and designing products. I plan to incorporate this over time so that I can find a balance between things that pop up and things I know are best done at the optimal part of my cycle.

Make a cycle syncing chart for easy reminders

I created this super simple, customized chart for myself as a reminder for each phase. I’ll likely adjust this over the next few months especially for work, but for now it sits behind my computer where I can easily reference throughout the day!

If you’d like to join me in your own summer reset, I would love to connect with you! DM me on Instagram so I can cheer you on!