What time management exercises should we stop giving our clients?

Most productivity advice ignores our lived reality and assumes our time is fully ours to control.

They imply you aren’t navigating caregiving, chronic illness, or survival. They don’t account for interruptions, fluctuating capacities, being under-resourced, or juggling ten invisible things at once.

Not only that, mainstream time management tools aren’t neutral. They’re violent in origin, reflecting a long history of enslavement, colonization, and industrial control. Time is weaponized to regulate bodies and extract labor.

Most popular hacks teach us to override our bodies, punish our rhythms, and measure our worth by output, because that’s what they were designed to do.

And for many of our clients, they’re actively harmful. In this piece, I’m reflecting on some of the popular “time hacks” out there. I’ll share about their historical origins, folks that these hacks often fail, and what we can do instead.

Popular time hacks to be careful when sharing with clients

Time blocking (traditional approach)

Time blocking has roots in plantation and factory systems, where bells, overseers, and time sheets were used to control and extract labor. These systems were designed to enforce discipline, regulate productivity, and surveil human bodies for profit.

For a single mom without consistent childcare, her toddler’s nap schedule shifts daily. She’s juggling school forms, work emails, and unexpected meltdowns. Telling her to “block her time” in the traditional way will easily crumble under the weight of real life.

5 AM Club / Miracle Morning

This idea of early rising as virtuous is deeply tied to the Protestant work ethic and industrial values of discipline and moral superiority. Waking early has always been about being useful to the system.

For a chronically ill person with insomnia who finally gets to sleep at 3 a.m., getting up just two hours later is a fast track to flare-ups. What’s framed as a “success habit” will quickly become a recipe for illness and shame.

Pomodoro method (25-minute work sprints)

The structure of Pomodoro mimics the rhythms of industrial shift work: punch in, punch out, like gears in a machine. This method echoes assembly line logic, where people are treated as parts in a productivity engine, not as cyclical, varied, or embodied beings.

For a neurodivergent artist with executive dysfunction and bursts of hyperfocus, the Pomodoro method can create more friction than flow. Stopping every 25 minutes can feel like yanking your brain out of deep water, right when you were beginning to swim.

Plus who actually takes the 5 minute break? 🤣

Eat the frog (Do the hardest things first)

This push to prioritize labor over softness is again rooted in Puritan, abelist, and capitalist ideals, where rest must be earned through suffering and value comes through productivity. It’s a legacy of moral discipline: suppress your needs, start with struggle, prove your worth.

For someone with complex PTSD, mornings are tender. There is a real need to re-enter the world slowly and gently. Being told to “do the hardest thing first” is not motivating; it’s jolting and destabilizing. It can tank someone’s entire day before it really begins.

Batch your tasks

Batching has historical echoes in industrial production lines, where repetition and monotony were optimized for speed and output. These systems assume controlled environments and consistent capacity…something the vast majority of humans don’t have.

For a parent working from home, batching might sound good in theory, but in practice, it collapses with the unpredictability of life and constant context-switching. Just when they get into a groove, the school calls or the dog needs to be taken out.

Time Tracking

This practice mirrors how enslavers and factory owners monitored labor, using ledgers and time sheets to measure productivity. Their goal was to control and commodify.

For a Black creative who’s healing from productivity trauma, minute-by-minute time tracking can feel like surveillance. They’ve spent years believing their worth must be proven through constant output, shaped by white supremacy and internalized capitalism. Tracking becomes just another tool that creates mind, body, soul harm.

Start of the week: Sunday

This norm is rooted in Christianized, colonial time structures that imposed a seven-day week starting Sunday, erasing Indigenous and seasonal ways of moving through time. When we hear “start your week right,” it actually means “start your week our way.”

For a bartender whose workweek starts on a Thursday, being told to “reset” every Sunday feels out of sync, irrelevant, and isolating. It disconnects them from their reality and reinforces a dominant cultural clock that isn’t theirs.

Design your ideal week

Ideal-week planning emerged from corporate productivity models meant to shape workers into efficient tools. But “ideal” often ends up meaning unrealistic and optimistic in order to please our bosses (internal or otherwise).

For a neurodivergent caregiver, no week is ideal. Their capacity shifts daily. Their responsibilities shift hourly. Trying to map out an “ideal” only highlights what they can’t predict or control, and what they wish were different. It often leaves them feeling like they’ve failed before they’ve even begun.

What can we do instead?

If you’ve shared (or tried) any of the hacks above, or other time hacks, you’re not alone.

Most of us Westerners have inherited these time systems. They’re all we know.

However, when we don’t know or ignore the histories behind the tools we teach, we risk replicating the same systems we and our clients are trying to heal from and move beyond.

Time isn’t just a schedule. It’s how we move, relate to one another, survive, and hopefully thrive. You don’t have to pass the harm on by minimizing time to hacks.

You can help your clients experience time liberation.

You can offer time practices rooted in:

• Compassion, not compliance

• Honest pacing, not punishment

• Awareness, curiosity, and care, not control

The Holistic Time Practitioner Certification is a 12-week training for coaches, therapists, healers, and space holders who are ready to unlearn harmful time narratives and guide folks into a more liberatory, life-giving relationship with time.

You’ll learn how to:

• Support clients in navigating procrastination, capacity, and follow-through with care

• Rebuild your own relationship to time, beyond grind and guilt

• Integrate liberative pacing and structures into your own practice

Learn more + enroll here.

What if urgency is the trauma, not the tool? A conversion on reclamation with Madison Abdullah

In this episode, I’m joined by Madison Abdullah, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and creative coach, and founder of Radiant Somatics for a powerful conversation about what it means to unravel urgency as a survival strategy and reclaim time as a space for safety, presence, and choice.

Inside the Holistic Time Practitioner Certification, Madison didn’t just learn new tools—she practiced and learned a new way of being. A way of following through without pressure. A way of working without collapse. A way of honoring her body’s truth instead of overriding it.

We talk about:

• how urgency becomes embedded in the nervous system

• reclaiming time as a trauma-healing practice

• the difference between “doing it all” and being with what matters

• letting go of internalized time pressure without losing momentum

• how changing your pace changes the way you hold space for others

“I became more productive—but only after I stopped treating time like a threat.”

This episode is for anyone who’s ever felt stuck between burnout and ambition. For those who are tired of urgency—but afraid of what might happen if they actually slowed down.

Connect with Madison

https://www.radiantsomatics.com/

https://www.instagram.com/radiantsomatics/

Want to help your clients transform urgency into agency?

The Holistic Time Practitioner Certification is a 12-week live training for coaches, healers, and space holders who want to guide clients through time-related struggles without replicating urgency, shame, or extraction.

You’ll learn anti-capitalist, trauma-aware frameworks to support your clients—and yourself—in building more liberatory relationships with time, capacity, and care.

Enrollment is open now through July 31st, 2025. Learn more and join us here.

How do you stop fighting time? A conversation on trust with Soledad Paulino

In this episode, I’m joined by Rita-Soledad Fernández Paulino—self-care and money coach empowering BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ communities, founder of Wealth Para Todos, and a graduate of the Holistic Time Practitioner Certification.

We talk about what it felt like to move through the world with time blindness, urgency, and a deep fear that there’s never enough time. She shares what changed when she began approaching time with self-compassion and nervous system awareness.

We talk about:

• carrying shame around how you use time

• navigating time as a neurodivergent, chronically ill, queer, first-gen Latina

• why urgency doesn’t lead to sustainability

• how budgeting time (like budgeting money) created a sense of agency

• how supporting clients means guiding them back to their wholeness, not their hustle

“The certification helped me realize I wasn’t lazy. I just needed a different approach.”

Inside the certification, Soledad found language and tools that shifted so much—not just for herself, but for the folks she serves. She shares how time healing helped her slow down without losing power and gave her the confidence to lead her clients with more clarity, spaciousness, and permission.

“Now I coach people in how to follow through without urgency. That changes everything.”

If you’re a coach, healer, or space holder who wants to better support clients who feel stuck, overwhelmed, or ashamed of their time habits—this episode is full of real-world insight, personal transformation, and collective care.

Connect with Soledad

Instagram: @wealthparatodos

LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/wealthparatodos

Website: https://www.wealthparatodos.com

Help folks relate to time with less shame and more agency

The Holistic Time Practitioner Certification is a 12-week live training for practitioners ready to move beyond surface-level productivity advice. We offer whole self-aware frameworks for helping clients navigate capacity, urgency, and the stories they carry about time.

The next cohort is enrolling now and starts July 31st, 2025. Learn more here.

What if your pace isn’t the problem? A conversation on reclaiming capacity with Cindy Hoch

In this episode, I’m joined by Cindy Hoch—coach, facilitator, and holistic time practitioner—who shares what it means to rebuild your relationship with time from the inside out.

We talk about:

• how gentle curiosity changed the way she relates to herself and her clients

• what it means to honor realistic capacity

• the daily practice of softening the inner judgment and meeting yourself with grace

• how parenting, business, and time aren’t separate but part of the same ecosystem

• and why slowing down doesn’t mean doing less

Cindy’s journey through the Holistic Time Practitioner Certification wasn’t about learning how to “do more.” It wasn’t about tools or systems alone.

It was about unlearning urgency, making space for truth, and letting her body signal when enough is enough.

“I’m not necessarily doing different things. I’m doing them differently. I’m doing them with presence.”

She found a new way to guide her clients through time-related struggles rooted in softness and trust.

If you’re a coach, healer, or space holder who wants to help your clients navigate shame, burnout, and capacity with clarity, care, and integrity, this episode is for you.

Connect with Cindy

Cindy’s current offers in English:

1:1 sessions with Holistic Time Management, Theta Healing® & Trauma-informed Coaching: https://cindyhoch.com/en/theta-healing-en/

Check out her IG and website for new offers in English.

Cindy’s current offers in German:

1:1 sessions: https://cindyhoch.com/theta-healing/

Women’s Circles: https://cindyhoch.com/frauenkreis/

Connecting to the Soul of our Work: https://cindyhoch.com/soulconnection/

Ceremonial planning session in January 2025: check out her IG for updates

Want to support your clients in building a liberatory relationship with time?

The Holistic Time Practitioner Certification is a 12-week training for practitioners who are ready to stop replicating urgency—and start practicing a new way of holding space. You’ll learn frameworks, tools, and embodiment practices to support your clients in building time practices rooted in consent, care, and capacity.

Learn more about the Holistic Time Practitioner Certification and enroll in the 2025 cohort now. We start July 31st.

How do we help our clients follow through (especially if we struggle with it ourselves)?

If you support others through any kind of transformation, you’ve probably felt the ache when a client shares something you know all too well.

When your people get stuck, stalled, and avoid the thing they care about… you feel it in your body because you’ve been there too.

Follow-through is a common one.

As business owners, parents, space holders… we can deeply struggle with follow through, just like our people.

The good news? That means you understand and can help them.

Most of us are drawn to this work because we’re walking the path ourselves.

You don’t have to be perfect at it to support someone else. You just have to understand what follow-through actually requires. Especially in a world where people are stretched thin, punished for needing rest, or told they’re the problem when they struggle.

What follow through needs of us:

Dominant culture treats follow-through like a matter of discipline or willpower. Like if you just tried harder, focused more, pushed through, you’d “get it together.”

But that story erases and ignores the realities of being a human navigating life in a world shaped by capitalism, ableism, and supremacy.

What I’ve learned is that follow-through isn’t about forcing yourself to do the thing. It’s not about getting more done.

It’s about resourcing yourself and creating the conditions that make doing the thing feel more possible. Perhaps even easeful or joyful.

Here are the concepts that I teach to my clients around follow-through gently :

• Real desire and values alignment. Wanting to do the thing because it feels true, not because you think you should, or feel like you have to. Follow-through rooted in obligation rarely sustains. But when it's aligned with your values and chosen from your wise self, it's easier to return to, even when it gets hard.

• Right tools. Tools that are easy and actually help you, not what productivity culture says you should use. For me, that’s a simple Google Doc and a visual digital calendar that works with how my brain processes time.

• Right expectations. A realistic plan that honors your capacity and leaves room for being human. One that can flex, include rest, and allows you to pause or pivot without being punished.

• Right environment. We don’t follow through in a vacuum. We need environments and relationships that lower friction and make things easier. That might look like a quiet room, phone on Do Not Disturb, or a cozy blanket—but it also looks like access to childcare, a reliable ride, someone to co-work with, or a gym class that’s nearby and affordable.

• Right internal voice. An inner voice (or thought) that’s compassionate and curious, not critical. One that believes you can try again, that cheers you on, and gives you freedom instead of shame. This voice doesn’t say, You messed this up again. It says, You’re allowed to try again tomorrow.

• Right tolerance. The ability to be with discomfort (fear, doubt, frustration, boredom) without letting it take over or abandoning yourself. This is about building the inner capacity to stay with yourself when the work gets tender, messy, or uncertain.

• Right identity. How we see ourselves shapes what we believe we’re capable of. If you’re still living inside the story of “I’m a procrastinator,” it’s hard to show up differently. Part of this work is letting go of that egoic label and claiming something new.

If you’re someone who holds space for others…

You might wonder: What’s actually mine to hold when it comes to follow through?

As a space holder, this is what I believe:

• I’m not here to control outcomes.

• I’m not here to fix someone.

• I’m not here to take responsibility for someone else’s life.

I am here to help them tend to themselves.

• To name the conditions that support follow-through.

• To offer reflection without shame.

• To hold the possibility that change is always available.

• To offer accountability, if that’s what the client wants.

That’s my responsibility. The rest belongs to the client.

Helping your clients follow through deeply matters.

Helping someone follow through on what they care about interrupts shame and builds self-trust. It creates counter-evidence to the stories that say they can’t change.

It offers them a life that feels more like theirs.

That’s why it matters and why we do this work.

Want to better support yourself and your people in following through gently?

• Register for the free Follow Through Gently: Helping Clients Honor Their Commitments workshop on June 24th.

• Check out and enroll in this year’s Holistic Time Practitioner Certification program that starts on July 31st.