Need to reduce overwhelm? Shira Gill, professional organizer and author of LifeStyled takes us inside her proven toolkit to help you edit and elevate your home, career, relationships, finances, or health.  

Shira recalls her parents’ combative divorce, and how schlepping her stuff between two homes showed her that more stuff means more anxiety. As an 8-year-old, she taught herself to organize her spaces as a way to have some control of her chaotic world.  

As an adult, she realized that possessions and clutter are triggers for everybody, and minimalism is the key—to prioritizing what you want, and creating the space to make it happen.  

Forget the stark white walls and beige furniture. Shira redefines minimalism. It’s being intentional about where we place our time, energy, and resources. Rather than focusing on the lack of something, her approach is about having the right amount without the excess. And, since doing everything is impossible, it’s up to us to decide what matters most at any given time.  

Shira lays out the core principles of her system. Then, walks us through practical ways we can organize our homes, maximize our time, set boundaries in relationships—and say “no” in order to say “yes” to what we value most.  

Shira’s less-is-better approach and “15-Minute Wins” will launch you out of overwhelm and into action for your next “It has to be me!” 

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS: 

• Minimalism can be defined as intentionally doing less to prioritize what’s important.  
• A cluttered mind and home trigger emotional responses and stress.  
• Organizing your home and mind helps you clarify what’s important and make room for it.  
• Empty your brain like an overstuffed closet, and let go of the beliefs that don’t serve you.  
• Creating habit loops with a cue, a routine, and a reward helps to implement behaviour changes.  
• 15-Minute Wins get you out of overwhelm and into action to chip away at your goals.  
• Implementing sustainable systems simplifies your routine and increases productivity.  
• Turn envy into inspiration and use it as a roadmap for what you want to bring into your life.   

ABOUT SHIRA GILL: 

Based in San Francisco, Shira Gill is a home-organizing expert, speaker, coach, and bestselling author of the books Minimalista, Organized Living, and LifeStyled. 

Her minimalist approach is guided by the intimate relationship between people’s homes and their lives, and how they inform and inspire each other.  

Shira has helped thousands reduce physical and mental clutter and prioritize what matters. Her signature 3-step toolkit and organization method are effective tools for anyone to use, regardless of budget, space, or lifestyle. 

Shira’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Dwell, Architectural Digest, InStyle, Real Simple, Harper’s Bazaar, Goop, and HGTV, and many others.  

A featured expert on Good Morning America and an ambassador for Williams Sonoma, Shira has spoken for audiences at Google, Well+Good, and TedX. 

CONNECT WITH SHIRA 

Website:

https://shiragill.com/ 

1:1 Consult with Shira 

https://shiragill.com/consults/ 

Minimalista  

https://www.amazon.com/Minimalista-Step-Step-Better-Wardrobe/dp/1984859277/ 

Organized Living 

https://www.amazon.com/Organized-Living-Solutions-Inspiration-Organization/dp/1984861182/ 

LifeStyled  

https://www.amazon.com/LifeStyled-Your-Guide-Organized-Intentional/dp/1984863509/ 

Get Organized Masterclass:  

https://shiragill.com/get-organized-master-class/ 

Meet Tess Masters:  

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of The Decadent Detox® and Skinny60® health programs.     

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.   

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.  

Connect With Tess: 

Website: https://tessmasters.com/  

Podcast Website: https://ithastobeme.com/   

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theblendergirl  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/  

Get Healthy With Tess 

Skinny60®: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Join the 60-Day Reset: https://www.skinny60.com/60-day-reset/ 

The Decadent Detox®: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/  

Join the 14-Day Cleanse: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/14-day-guided-cleanses/ 

The Blender Girl: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

Thanks for listening!  

If you enjoyed this conversation and think others would benefit from listening, share this episode. And, please post your comments or questions below. I’d love to hear what you think.  

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Uh, Shira, I was so excited to talk to you about minimalism and decluttering, because I just love your books so much. So let's just start from the same knowledge base. So that dear listeners, you are getting Shiraz definition of minimalism, because I love how you redefine it in your world. So can you just share what your definition is?

I would be happy to and I love sharing my definition, because I feel like minimalism is a word that turns people off rather quickly

in your book, where you say, if you're thinking about white walls and Swedish furnish side laughing when you said exactly what I was thinking, right?

Or like living in a van down by the river with one fork. So, so I define minimalism as being radically intentional. So if the word minimalism freaks you out, you can just replace it with intentionalism. I really think minimalism is not just about the things you own, but how you spend your time and your resources and your energy, and ultimately, it's about clarifying what's most important to you so you can cut the clutter and distraction that stands in the way. That's really how I define it

and the bit that I loved the most about your definition was defining what is enough, living with what is enough, and everybody has a different definition of that, and making peace and owning what is enough for you, I love that you give the coffee cup example. You know, if you're living alone, two coffee cups might be enough for you. If you entertain all the time, and you have a family of seven, then you're going to need more coffee cups, and that's okay,

yeah. And some people are wildly sentimental about coffee cups, as I found, as a professional organizer, I've been like, literally having fist fights with people because they're like, I need all 32 of these very fundamental, important coffee mugs. So yes, you get to decide. So

in your book, in your books, you talk about how clutter is a universal trigger. So take me inside of that. It has to be me moment for you when you were a child and your parents went through that very brutal divorce and custody battle, and you had two of everything, and you were splitting your time between these two homes, and decluttering was a way for you to feel safe and understand the world. So take me inside of that.

Yeah, so I was eight when my parents divorced, and I kind of overnight, went from having one centralized home to two different homes, two sets of everything, schlepping my stuff back and forth every other day, and I think stuff, kind of in a moment, became more suffocating and stressful to me than liberating and exciting, right? Like we're all kind of fed this myth that the more we have, the happier we'll be, and the sexier and the pretty, you know, like we need more and more and more to feel better. And what I found is, for me, I think because of my circumstances at that time, stuff became a burden, and I found myself feeling really weighed down by having two sets of everything and having to keep track of all of this stuff. It felt very burdensome. And so I think I started, even at the age of eight, really thoughtfully curating, decluttering, organizing, kind of setting things up in a way where I felt in control. And that's really what it was for me, is that my world felt out of control, and I felt like I couldn't control what was going on with my parents or the world or politics. I mean, I still can't, but as a little kid, it was like, Okay, I have this little slice of real estate. You know, I have two bedrooms, and I can make them feel cozy or calm, depending on how I arrange my things and what I keep and what I put where. So it was a very organic discovery for me as a kid, yeah,

and so take me into the next it has to be me moment where you went overseas and studied overseas, and you threw yourself into theater and into stories. And you know, we're going to be in that world. And then what happened there? What was the it has to be me moment where you started event planning and organizing for other people,

yeah, so there were many seasons of career for me. So I started acting when I was eight, and I was in theater for 20 years, and it was my whole life. And my parents were both kind of hippie intellectuals, preaching, you know, about experiences over things, and I had a very like anti consumerist upbringing. Thing, and it was all about, like, arts and books, and so I threw myself into that world, but I remember kind of being told like, you're going to be a starving artist, like, if you pick this life, you won't have money, you won't own a home. And so that was always kind of at odds for me, because I really loved stability. And I of course, dreamed of having a home and being comfortable. And at the same time, I felt like my whole life and my whole identity was around acting in theater and kind of being scrappy. And so I spent, you know, 20 full years doing theater, making very little money. And at a certain point, I think I was 28 I just felt like the life was not aligned with my character anymore, and I just hungered so deeply for a regular paycheck. And again, going back to that control, like I just wanted a sense of like, I know I'm gonna be okay. I know that there's money coming in. I know what I'll be doing in a month from now. So I walked away from the theater, started working in event planning and catering, mainly because I thought there's theatrics still involved in that world, and it would be interesting. And

I love that you're talking about it. It does not have to be me moment, because you talk about this in your book, that when you get really clear about what the yeses are, it makes it so much easier to say no exactly prioritize where you want to spend your time and energy and resources,

exactly, absolutely. Yeah. So I think the the the first kind of it has to be me. Moment was I really want a different type of life where I can have some stability and feel financially independent, and so I chose this path of event planning, and I didn't love it. I didn't thrive in it at all.

What did you love about it? Well, there

was a lot of debate over, like, what color the napkin would be, like, what shade of cream or ivory or Alabaster, and I just found myself being like, I don't care. Like, this doesn't matter. It was a lot of little details. And while I love events and I love going to parties. I found that actually being behind the scenes and planning them was not as creative or exciting or fulfilling as I had imagined.

Yeah, so let's go into the next it has to be me where you decide you're going to email your family and friends and you're going to declutter and going to turn these superpowers you've been honing since you were eight years old onto helping other people get get clarity around what their priorities are, yeah,

so it was kind of decided for me, because I got laid off when I was eight months pregnant from this event planning job where I was quite unhappy, and so I had this, yeah, it was a blessing in disguise, but it was terrifying at the moment, because I was like, I had this career instability, and I left everything for this, and now I have nothing. I'm pregnant. No one's going to hire me at eight months pregnant. What am I to do? And it truly was through my friends and family saying, you know how you've always helped me declutter and organize and and get on top of my stuff. This is a skill you can help people with. And this was before Marie Kondo was known. It was really prior to professional organizing becoming a legitimate career. Yeah. So I thought they were all insane, but I also had nothing to lose. I was like, no one's gonna pay me for this. You're all insane. But I just thought, you know what? I'm gonna put together an email. I'm gonna cobble together a website. I know that I can help people with this if they want my help and and that is literally how my business started decluttering and organizing through word of mouth and this scrappy email I put out into the world saying, if you need any help clearing clutter, setting up organizational systems, styling your home, I'm your gal, and I started with half day packages because I was still breastfeeding and taking care of a baby. And it was sort of shocking how quickly I started getting clients, real, actual paying clients, and then they started assuring me the more clients. And I could not believe that people were paying me for this thing that was so easy and enjoyable for me, and I didn't even really value it at the time.

Yeah, and I love how your two worlds came together in this career, where the scrappiness, that superpower that you'd been honing as an actor all of those years, and then this, this kind of say. Safety mechanism that you put around yourself. All your superpowers converged in this thing. So I want to ask you how what were you learning in working with these people that then made you realize, oh, wow, decluttering is a portal into understanding what your priorities are that then took you to that next it has to be me of becoming a life coach and putting these, all of these skills together.

So very, very quickly, when I started helping women and families declutter, I saw there was a huge emotional toll for people, there was shame, there was guilt, there was overwhelm, paralysis, anxiety, and oddly enough, my father was a therapist and my mother was a life coach. So I came from a very psychologically minded home, but I also didn't really feel like I had the tool kit. I really felt like I was pretending to be a therapist or a life coach and helping people navigate these decisions and overwhelm. And I think nearly everyone I've ever helped declutter their home has burst into tears at some point. And so I started realizing this is really deep work. This is much more than moving piles of things around and putting them into cute baskets. This is identity. It's decision making, it's regret. It's so much baggage that people had to process. And so the light bulb was kind of like, you know, what? If I really want to be the best in my field, I need to have another toolkit to help people on a deeper level.

Yeah, I love the mike the Uber driver story in lifestyle, because it's exactly what you're describing. So can you just share that story so that at least not left out of this? Yeah, if you're going to do something, you're going to do

it. Well, yes. So okay, so I travel a lot, and I was traveling on this particular occasion with my two teenage daughters and my husband. We were all exhausted. We pull into SFO we get an Uber, and this uber pulls up. It's immaculately clean. I've never seen such a clean car. We open the doors. He offers us water, hot coffee with cream and sugar. He had granola bars on offer for the kids, gum, every type of cell phone charger. And I was like, did we get the wrong Uber like, I don't think I remember upgrading. And so I ended up asking this guy, like, what's the deal? And he said, You know, I used to be an executive. I'm in between jobs, and anything I do in life, I give it my best and I do the very best I can. And I just was so, so inspired by this man and how he showed up, inspired by that, right? Yeah, yeah. You just think about most people, if they're in between jobs, and they used to be, like a CEO, such an ego bursting moment to be driving a car. And he just went, No, I'm gonna Oh, he was wearing a suit that was, like, freshly pressed. I mean, this guy was, like, doing it for himself, and it was so incredible, like, the ripple that it created, we were so delighted. We we felt so taken care of and so seen, and, yeah, even my kids were like, wow. Like, that guy was incredible, you know? I mean, it's such

an example of what you do is that through prioritizing and radically giving yourself permission to do less, yes, you actually expand your capacity to show up as the best version of yourself. So I want to dive into your toolkit, because I just I love this, this, these three tools, this toolkit that can be applied to all these different aspects of your life. And that's why I love the trajectory of your book so much. In minimal Eastern your first book, it was a better home, a wardrobe, you know, and then organized living, you know. You went the second book, you went giving examples of what's doing in this book, you're really using this, this minimalism, and getting really clear about what you want in every aspect of your life, and these three tools just keep getting applied to career, finances, home, personal development, you know, everything. So let's talk about the three tools, because that's awesome, yay,

yes. And the back story is essentially that I could organize a home in my sleep, but what I realized was my life was feeling pretty cluttered and pretty overstuffed, and so I thought, You know what? What if I applied the tools that I've used to organize a home to all aspects of my life? And what I came up with is there's three things I do in. Every home, in every circumstance. And I started playing with it. What if I apply these tools to everything? So tool one is adjusting volume. I think it's the most important tool, both for home, life and mind. And really, what it's looking at is, in any situation, do I have too much, and do I need to turn the dial down, reduce, edit, subtract, or do I not have enough? And do I want to build, invest, add, and so an example would be, you know, like the physical example would be your overstuffed closet, right? I have nothing to wear, but I have too many clothes, so it's time to edit and pare back right? Really obvious, but maybe with relationships, it's different, like certain seasons in my life, I felt lonely or isolated or like I don't have a strong enough community, and then I want to turn up the volume of my effort in terms of going to take a class or volunteering, or, you know, going to a workshop to create new, new relationships. But there's other periods in my life where I'm like, I can barely keep up with the friends that I have. I feel like I'm drowning. Yeah, I've got to really pull back, prioritize and invest in a few that really matter to me. So that's volume, and you can think of it just like a radio dial, and you can apply it to anything. Do I need to turn the volume up, or do I need to turn the volume down? Then the second tool is creating systems and and this is one of my favorite things, because organization is really all about simplifying your life, creating systems. I've done it in the home for ages, but I started thinking, How do you do that in your life with the friendship example? How do you automate plans so that you're not constantly doing the text back and forth ping pong of can we see each other for dinner in this month or that month, I started batching important plans, like the Saturday date night with my husband, where we just know every Saturday the kids are taken care of, we're out, or the Tuesday night date with my best girlfriend, where I go to her house every Tuesday, bring takeout and chocolate and wine and We hang out and we know this is baked in. We don't have to wonder when we're going to see each other. Oh, I love that.

This is baked right into the story. Bake

it in, and it's the same thing for me. Exercise is one of those, like, it's always lost in the shuffle. It's so important. Like, if you don't have your health, you have nothing. But I always felt like, for me, getting exercise was like the afterthought, like career and then kids and then husband and that, you know, maybe if I have time now, I've decided every week I'm going to take four yoga classes. I take the same ones with the same teacher, so I know they're expecting me. I have accountability, I have a community. And it really is, again, about intentionalism, what is important to my life, and how do I bake it in, make it easy and repeatable so I don't have to have all that mind drama.

Yeah, I do love in the book, how you talk about schedule it and honor the calendar. Yes,

which is, and this is where habits comes, come in. So you can reduce the volume of your life, you can set up really great automated systems. But if you don't have habits, even the best, most brilliant system will fall apart. And I figured this out in the home, because so many of my organizing colleagues were constantly kind of lamenting, you know, I help people declutter, and we set up these beautiful systems and labels, and then I come back a week later and everything's a mess. What is happening? And I thought, oh, you know what it is? It's that it's not that the systems are broken, it's that people aren't establishing habits. And so in the book, I break down how to reduce the friction so that you can make and maintain habits which is so difficult for all of us, myself included, any sort of behavioral shift, our brain will have a temper tantrum. And so I talk about making it micro, about making it fun, bringing in other people for support, like there are so many habit helpers we can leverage to make sure we do the things that matter to us.

Yeah, I loved your section on creating a habit loop. Choose the three things can you can you talk me through that because it was so great.

Oh yeah, great. So with any habit, there's a cue behavior and a reward. And I think most of us skip the reward part, which is why we hate habits. So like we gotta have the truth.

I got the reward. Yeah. Out

the rest of it, right? Yeah. So, so, like, an example would be, you know, I have two teenagers. They come through the front door, they dump all of their stuff. I wanted them to have a new habit, which is called hang up your backpack and your jacket. Seems really simple. We've got a hook in place. We've got a cubby, but they were not doing it. So I So essentially, I said, okay, the cue is you open the door before you pass go. The behavior, or the action is you take three seconds and you hang up your coat and you put your shoes away, that's it. And then you get a treat. And the treat, I mean, I always have ice cream stocked here. I'm like an ice cream aholic, but sometimes the treat is just hanging out with a friend or watching a show. They essentially get the freedom to move about their their day, once they have implemented that tiny habit, right? So the queue is open, the door, the habit is, put the stuff away. The reward is now you're free go do your thing. So this works really well with kids, because they love clear expectations and boundaries. But it also works really well for adults. So if there's a new habit I'm trying to maintain, like taking a walk every morning, that used to be so hard for me, even though I knew it would feel great, I implemented the habit. When I wake up, that's the cue. The first thing I do is put on my shoes and walk out the door. I take a 15 minute walk because it's tiny and I know I can do 15 minutes. And then I get to come home and like, get a latte or take a shower, do whatever I want and feel the accomplishments of that?

Yeah, I love how much you address how the brain requires safety and it will seek out pleasure and the mindset piece of this, going back to what you were saying before that, it's not just about putting things in pretty baskets and having everything look amazing on the outside. It's about really decluttering and prioritizing the inside. So I want to ask you about the five things to let go of, because that really, really spoke to me, and I know that that is something that comes up over and over in my office hours, in my health programs, letting go of other people's opinions and comparing and despairing and all that sort of stuff. So take me inside how that works in your practice and and and the value of letting go of things and yet at the same time focusing on what you're gaining because of that. Yeah.

So I think the really great news for all of us is that we think we have these hard wired belief systems that's like, this is just how I think. This is just who I am. But the truth as I've found, as I've gotten older and gone through life, coach, school, training and learned more about how the brain works, is that a belief is just a thought. You've practiced a lot, yeah, and so we have the opportunity to question and shift our beliefs at any time. And the way I think about it, it's similar to like emptying a closet, taking everything out and just looking at it with fresh eyes and deciding, what do I want to keep and what do I want to let go of you can do the same thing with your belief system. So you can kind of empty your brain. You have to get really conscious of what are my beliefs, and sometimes you won't like them. They're kind of icky or embarrassing or, you know, things that you're not proud of believing, right? Like I used to believe I was not capable of making money because I was a creative person, and I Troy I couldn't make money until I shifted that belief, but it felt so true in my brain. So the idea is, you kind of think of your brain as like that overstuffed closet, and you just start writing down what are all the things I believe about myself, about other people about the world, and then you can look at them, and you can ask the question, which of these beliefs do I want to keep, like, put back in the closet, and which of these beliefs are really not serving me, not making my life better? And I want to let go of them, which is really difficult, right? Because our brain, as you mentioned, like it seeks pleasure, it resists any sort of pain or discomfort. So even a really negative belief system that we've had our whole lives, our brain is going to want to cling to it and say, no, no, no, this is who we are. It's really feels dangerous to the brain to let go of even the worst belief. Yeah, but if you make the decision and you just can say to yourself, What if this wasn't true? What if I just play around with possibility, like, that's what I did. I couldn't leap from I'm a person who doesn't make money to I'm going to be a millionaire. Yeah, but I could start to kind of deconstruct the belief and and look for evidence. Oh, there are some creative people who make money. Like, those people exist, right? Like, if they figured it out, maybe I could figure it out. Like, that's like a baby step belief. So I talk

in the book the turn envy into inspo, yes, part of your book where you said, you know, we typically think of envying something that somebody else has as a bad thing. Let it be an inspiration for how you want to be or how you want your life to be exactly.

I think envy is the biggest teacher, because if you pay attention to who you're envious and why it's like a road map to your true desires, yeah, oh, I want that. That's what I'm craving. I don't want to be that person. I want that thing, that they represent, that I want to create for myself? Yeah, so I have I used to, I mean, we're all human. I think envy is a really human emotion, but I think we're kind of taught like, envy is bad, run away from it, resist it. And instead, I would actually say, like, lean in. Be a little curious. Like, what am I feeling? What am I wanting? And what could I claim for myself here?

Yeah, that is a really important part of your books, is this personal responsibility piece and the accountability and taking responsibility for the life that you want and actually putting those things in place and taking action on them. So I want to go back to this belief system, because the boundary setting around the container that you put your life in is so incredibly important. So I really loved the part of your book about improving the quality of your connections, and you very openly admit that you're a recovering people pleaser, right? For sure that I loved the upside of lowering the bar and not feeling like you have to do everything accepting that you can't. So once you accept that, then okay, that's how we get clear. So talk to me about how you help people with their boundaries. Yeah,

so we cannot do it all. We all know this intellectually, it is impossible to do a million things. So I know we all want to myself included. And so what I help people with is identifying, like, okay, it can't all be important, because you're one person. So for this season of your life, because I don't like to pick, so I like to just say, like, for this season, maybe that's three months. What do you want to lean into hard, and what can you just do? The baseline minimum kind of get into cruise control. And for me, it's interesting, because I'm a very productive person. I've written three books in three years, and people are like, how do you do it? Yeah, I say no to almost everything that that is really the answer. I don't go to a lot of parties or events. I say no constantly to opportunities. I have learned how to say no in a way that's comfortable to me, and that I think, is like the biggest life lesson of all, is when you can really have your own back and stand behind who you are, what you're doing, and the choices you're making. The world really does pay attention, and like, I don't get any pushback now when I say lovely offer, I wish I could help. I'm totally at capacity. That's kind of like my my mantra now, and really, where

you talk through great ways of saying no and setting boundaries. I read that section twice because I thought you give the language. You just be definitive. Just say it very clearly. I mean, I thought I'm stealing some of that. That was assured, amazing. Yes,

designed to be stolen. You know, I've had to practice so much like especially as a woman, where there's so much pressure to be the perfect mom and the perfect entrepreneur and have the perfect home, that I have decided there are places I just want to be bad at on purpose. And so that's, you know, this section of the book where I write like, the upside of lowering the bar is it is so liberating to just say, You know what, I'm crap at making dinner for my family. I'm terrible at it when it's my night to cook. I'm ordering Chinese takeout, and it's fine. And I used to. Really struggle with that, feeling like I'm a bad mom, and real moms cook like a perfectly balanced meal every night, and now I've just accepted I'm good at a lot of things. I'm not great at meal planning. My husband, luckily loves to cook. My kids love takeout food, so it's all working out, but there are so many places like technology is another one where I just said, You know what? I'm terrible at technology. I'm not really that curious to get better. There's other things I would like to pursue. I'm just going to be bad at it, and it's okay, right? So I think even the exercise of just making a list of things that you're bad at and then deciding which of these things do you want to work on and improve, and which do you want to just say it's fine. I have a free pass. I'm terrible at this, and it's totally cool with me. Yeah. And I love

the audits. I love your new year's eve audit that you do every year for every aspect of your life you know, whether it's you know, your health and wellness, your career and finances, your personal development, these sections that you take everybody through in the book. So can you take us through the New Year's Eve audit? Because I think writing these lists and these prompts that you have in each section of the book, and then the 15 minute wins. I want to ask you about that in a minute, because it's such a great philosophy. So, yeah, you really cover these different bits of personalities, like you admit you're someone who just wants to be told what to do, and let's go. Come on. I want to go into action, you know. So talk me through the audit. Okay,

so the audit is just a little practice I came up with maybe five years ago. I do every night on New Year's Eve with my husband, and I basically just write down the big buckets of my life. So health and wellness, relationships, career, etcetera. You can make up your own, and I rank them in order from zero to five, from most fulfilled to least fulfilled. And so I can just get a little snapshot of where am I with this part of my life. And then I can think, Where do I want to be like if I know I can only do one or two things really well, and I have 10 different buckets. Where do I want to lean in in this new year, or even just in the new season, like winter ahead, and where do I want to divest on purpose and say it's fine, right? Like maybe this isn't my season for big personal development or learning a new language or running a marathon. I'm going to just lean into writing a book and making sure I have some time with my friends and family. That's enough, you know, other seasons of my life, like when I had a baby and a toddler, it was just mom life like that was the season I was in. Was I want to really invest in being a great mom, taking care of my kids, keeping them out of traffic, you know, like and I can't simultaneously write and publish a book or launch a podcast, so it's all about accepting your own personal limits and capacity, but being very thoughtful about where do I want to put the majority of my attention this season, knowing it will change in the next season or the next year, you have a whole lifetime, luckily, to kind of flip and flop. But what I find is most people just kind of say yes to everything unconsciously, and then they wake up and they say, What happened to my life? This isn't what I want. So that's the real goal of it is to just decide on purpose what you want to put your energy into, and what can go in the back burner, basically, yeah,

and then in terms of the implementation of that, when you talk about your mission for the season, your mission for the week, your mission for the day, you Know, and then putting it into practice with the systems. So if we're going into the second tool in the toolbox of the systems, give me an example of something that you would want, and then creating a system, putting it on your schedule, and then going into step three, tool three of the habit,

yeah, okay, so here's a good example. I got a book deal right before COVID, and my kids were unable to go to school for a year and a half, and so I was home with two kids who were on zoom in a very tiny house. My husband was suddenly home from work, having very loud zoom calls. I had a book to write, and I just thought, How on earth am I going to find any quiet focus time to write this book? And and my manuscript was due in six months at the time, yeah. And so what I did is I said, Okay, how can I systematize this and automate it? I. Looked at the schedule my kids and husband started school and work, respectively at 9am and so my husband actually suggested. He said, What if you write every day from seven to nine while we're all getting ready and, you know, eating breakfast and taking showers, you have that as kind of sacred time those two hours. And while it didn't seem like much, I I was so laser focused during those two hours every day, because I knew it was truly all that I had, that the habit was every morning I wake up, I drink a glass of water, I plop my laptop in my lap in bed with the door closed so nobody can bother me, and I write for two hours until an alarm goes off, and then I would go be with my kids. And what's fascinating now, having written two subsequent books, is I have never been more focused or more efficient than when I was kind of forced to constrain my system and habit into this tight little time period once we were able to kind of go back to normal life, as it were, my brain was all over the place. I would write and then get distracted. And so I found the constraint of having to say, You know what? This thing is so important to me. I don't want to have to figure it out every day. I just want to know every day at this time, and it's so easy to do the hard thing first, because at least for me, I'm sharpest in the morning. I have the best energy and brain power, right when I wake up, and then it kind of depletes throughout the day. Oh, I'm the

same way you are. Yeah, you think productive after 2pm

right? Exactly. So I think for me, any any big thing that I'm working on, I know if I do it first thing, and I have a limited amount of time and it's just on repeat, on kind of autopilot, I know that I'll do it.

Yeah, I really love this. So in terms of, let's say we're not as motivated as that, right? So let's talk about these 15 minute wins that are dotted throughout the book and that you can apply to any situation. Because I think it's a really important part of your methodology. And I think it's, you know, being able to modulate your method to your personality, I think is one of the most genius parts of of the way that you approach this. So give me some examples of some 15 minute wins. Yes,

so and I'll tell you, I developed the 15 minute win when I was personally overwhelmed because I had to write my first big keynote and perform on a big stage. And I don't typically get overwhelmed. I'm very like results and task oriented, and my brain just kind of shut down. And it felt so big and so scary, it was paralyzing. And so I finally said to myself, You know what? Just set a timer for 15 minutes. That's it, and just see what you can do, and then you're free. And I found that just by sitting down for the 15 minutes, I kind of overcame that huge resistance from my brain. And once I started, I couldn't stop. And so then I started saying, Well, how could I use this in my work? Because everyone I know is navigating overwhelm or paralysis in some area. Yeah. So the way the 15 minute works, when works is so simple. You pick one task, any task that feels in any way overwhelming or paralyzing, you set a timer for 15 minutes, kind of remove the distractions, like the cell phone and the notifications, and you just roll up your sleeves and see what you can do. So a few examples would be like in the home, clearing out your junk drawer, you know, tidying the refrigerator, going through your mail bin and reviewing the mails and the bills that are piled up just for 15 minutes, just to see what you can do, and it is shocking how much you can get done in like people say to me, I have literally procrastinated for 10 years, and then it took me 15 minutes to declutter my junk drawer, or, you know, take the donations from the basement and just drop them off at the donation center. So you can apply this to any part of your life, like making a difficult phone call, or, you know, I use it for my taxes, or anything that I just really don't want to do. And I call it the 15 minute win, because I've never seen someone try it and not have a win, because it's, it's this little hack that just gets your brain out of overwhelm and into action very quickly.

Yeah, see, 15 minutes goes so quickly too. So for me, my problem is, Oh,

I'm getting a lot done, and then I'll just fixate and I'll, you know, 15 hours later. Peter, I'm still on that.

But I mean, I guess I'm being productive. So in terms of, in terms of juggling the things that that you want to do and getting different things done in a day, how do you then pull yourself out of of getting in quicksand about that one task. If you're predisposed, like, I am,

yeah, and there are you're not alone. There are so many people that say that to me, like, well, once I finally get started, I am unstoppable. And now my whole house is like unearthed. And so I think you've gotta know yourself, right and the way your own brain works. If you know that you're going to get carried away, you've got to put some guardrails around your time, set an alarm. Know what's coming up next. Don't unearth an entire room. Do one drawer. And so even I learned that the hard way as a professional organizer, like one of my first jobs, I said, Okay, well, we're going to take every single thing out of every drawer in your kitchen, and then suddenly I'm in this heap of mess, just heart pounding. And so from from then on out, I was like one drawer at a time, one small surface at a time. And so then you can keep going, if time allows, but if it doesn't, you've tackled a drawer and the rest of your home is neat and tidy, or at least, not a disaster, right? Same thing with like, a big project, like, if you know, you only have 15 minutes or half an hour, give yourself that alarm and make it really micro. I think the more we can break the big thing into micro. Just like writing a book is really overwhelming. If you think of writing an entire book, right? You know this, you have to break it into chapters, and then you have to make an outline, and you have to make each thing so tiny that maybe you're just writing a paragraph to get over the hump to then keep writing. But I think for me, if I think of the whole book, I'll just sit there and not get anything done. If I make it really tiny with any task, like not a whole house, but a junk drawer, I'm not gonna, you know, organize my whole financial life. I'm gonna pay one credit card so it's, it's taking this big, overwhelming thing and making it as tiny and achievable as possible. Yeah,

I love, how do you eat away all one bite at a time? It's great. I love the prompts in the book where, for each section, whether it's you know, adjusting your health and wellness or your home and environment, your relationships and community, your career and finance, your personal development, there are these prompts where it starts with asking yourself the important questions, yes. So I want to just go through some of these categories, because these are things, you know, these tent poles in our life that we all struggle with prioritizing. You know, what are we going to say yes to? What are we going to say no to? So some of your health prompts were really, really good.

Oh, good. That means a lot coming from you. Yeah, no, I

really thought that they were the really good basics, you know. So talk me through your, your some of your health and wellness prompts,

um, gosh, I'm trying to remember now. So I think, you know, in thinking about health and wellness, I think there's so much pressure, and so I wanted to take that pressure away and make it very values based. So what does healthy mean to you? What does fitness mean to you? What does a good balanced meal look like for you? Where could you turn up the volume on your health and wellness habits? Is it more hydration? Is it more movement? Is it auditing your sleep? Right? It's looking at it in a really non judgmental way, and essentially saying, like, we all kind of know what to do when it comes to health, but it's really, really hard to put into practice. Yeah, so I think just stepping back and looking at like, what are all the different buckets of health and what's screaming out the most loudly for my attention, you know, that's going to be really different if you're facing a diagnosis or a big health challenge, versus you're just kind of cruising, but you want to get into better shape, or you're tired and you want to get better sleep. So it's really looking at like in this time in my life, where are the places where I want to invest my energy and where do I want to just say, You know what? It's good enough like, I give an example of my best friend always talking about, I want to get healthier. I want to lose weight, but then putting butter on her pizza, and I finally said to her, Hedy, really feel like you are committed to losing weight and do. Just that question. She was like, No, you know, I'm not. I think I like the idea of it, but I'm really I don't have the time right now. I like butter on my pizza, like, I'm gonna just say it's fine right now, right? And so it is about accepting who you are and what you actually care about in value right now. Yes,

going back to what you were saying about being intentional about what you want, who you are and and where you're going to prioritize your time, energy and resources. So one of the the other things that really spoke to me in your book was the section on curating your relationship cadence, yeah, and your love languages. Because, going back to what we were saying about the health and wellness piece, this comes up all the time in my work, in my office hours, where a lot of people will fixate on the behavior of others in their core relationships. You know their husband, their wife, their you know their children. Well, nobody eats the way that I do, so it's not going to work. Or nobody cares about that. So it's not going to work. So I talk me through how you help your clients with that. What is curating your relationship cadence look like, yeah,

so it's really granular. Like, I like to think about, how often do you need time to be alone to recharge? Like, in a given week, I realized I'm very, very social, but I'm actually an introvert.

Oh, you too. That's so funny, too. I need a lot of alone time to reach out, yeah.

And so for me, it was like, gosh, I my identity. Is this, like, very out in the world, social person, yeah. But I get super depleted if I don't have a set amount of time every single day to be alone and recharge, yep, so I start with yourself, and like, my husband could literally talk to people all day long.

That's the funny bit of beats everybody and wants to talk this whole life story.

Yeah. I'm like, at midnight, I'll be like, Okay. And he's just like, firing it up with another conversation. So it's number one, looking at yourself, what do I need to recharge and do I have that built in? For some people, it's actually more contact with people, right? Like for my husband, he recharges by having more social time. I need total solitude. Yeah, he's true extrovert. Oh, it's unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. He like walks around looking for people to talk to. So for him, like I actually made this suggestion, you need to set up more regular dates with other people, talking to the people I need to be alone now. So baking that into your schedule, whether it's you know, the social thing that repeats, or the alone time, then it's thinking about like in your relationship, if you're married or you have a partner, what does that look like? And that could be a conversation where you decide together as a couple, like, what does success look like for us as a couple. How often do we want to go on a date night? How often do we want to go away just the two of us? I know that's something that really got lost in the shuffle once we had kids. Is the like weekend away, and so we've decided once a quarter we want to go away just the two of us. And sometimes that means, like, having our kids at all sorts of different locations and crazy logistics to make it happen, but it's really deciding on purpose, like, what's the cadence that's ideal for us as a couple to spend quality time together? I see with with most families, that is the number one thing that gets lost in the shuffle. It's like career gets prioritized. Kids get prioritized, paying the bills, and then there's very little left at the end of the day for your partner, so baking that in. And then the last thing is just like the bigger social plans, events, networking, how often do you want to go to those things. And depending on who you are, like it might be not at all I hate these things. Or it could be like, You know what, once a month feels good, or if you're my husband, every night. I think the key is, again, it's like this, this thread of intentional living is it's it's so difficult for us to take the time to pause, to actually think and answer these questions. If you do, you can really set your life up better around the connections that work for you and the cadence and the third point here is just around boundaries with. Relationships. So we have a lot of accidental or unintentional relationships, right? People who come into our lives for whatever reason, or maybe it's like when you go to work, there's people that you wouldn't necessarily choose as your best friends, but you have to engage with them or family members that are particularly difficult. So I talk about creating a set of your own personal relationship deal breakers. What are the things where it's like, this is, this is a no for me. No matter who it is, I will not tolerate X, Y or Z, and I actually write them down so that if something happens, and I'm really feeling like, God, this feels really bad for me. If it is on that list of relationship deal breakers, like I will have a hard conversation, or I will set a very big boundary. But I think it's much harder to do that when you haven't clarified what those are for you first, yeah,

and knowing what your love languages are and what your characters are, and being okay with that, even if they seem like they're complete opposites, because they are complimentary, you know, in any relationship, as long as we understand that and then navigate, you know, that space, um, totally the the dream day thing was something else that I really, really loved. You know, when Jordan took you to LA for that dream day, you had dinner with your friend, and how you talk about creating that dream day for yourself, which is just a natural progression of what we've just been talking about, is knowing what you need to get, what you want, and to feel safe and happy, And then actually putting yourself in that container. What does your dream day look like? So talk me through that. Yeah. So

the dream day is just a really brief exercise you can do where you literally just ask yourself, If I had one day off with no responsibility and no plans, what would I do? What would I eat? Where would I go? What would I wear? And you kind of map out what that looks like, and then if some of it feels unrealistic or not viable, you scale it back to something you can do now. So like, I had a client who was like, Well, I desperately want to go to Paris, but I can't just suddenly whisk away to Paris. But like, what is the thing I'm really craving? I think it's just like sitting alone at a cafe and having this romantic moment, like eating a croissant and listening to music and reading a book. So that's really doable, like, she could go to a cafe tomorrow and spend an hour with a pastry and a good book and a latte. So it's looking at like, what are the real needs in that dream day. And, you know, I did a newsletter post on it, and had my community comment. And some people it was so sweet. They were like, I just want to, like, curl up and read a book and do a puzzle. It's like, okay,

you can do that idea of the nightmare day.

I do too. People love the puzzles. Yeah, so. And for me, I mean, the example I gave, which was like, so sweet, but Jordan knows that I love traveling, and I love adventure, and it's, it's something where we're so different, like, He's a creature of habit, he's not a big adventure. And so for my birthday, many years ago, he booked a ticket to LA, which from where I live. It's a 50 minute flight, so it was very doable. And we saw my best friends, we went to a favorite restaurant, we flew home, and it was like he knew that what I was craving was adventure and newness. And so while we couldn't go to like Tokyo, he knew, you know, this was a $59 flight. It was a single day our kids were at school. So it's looking for like, what's the aspirational version, and then what's the doable that you can implement now?

Yeah, I love it. I feel like the closing paragraph of your book just completely sums up everything. So if you don't mind, I just want to read a little bit for everyone, because it's just so beautiful. You are a beautiful writer, and your writing style really captures the energy that we're all feeling from you right now. So I just loved it so much. Having it All is a myth, and attempting to juggle it all at once is a dead end street. So make peace with our limitations and define success on your own terms. Breathe and remind yourself that less is always available. Identify the things you value most, lean way in and let the rest go like it just, I think just encaps, encapsulates your entire philosophy so beautifully. So I just want to ask you the same thing that I ask I close every episode with the same question, which is. For somebody who has a dream in their heart, which is all of us, and doesn't feel like they have what it takes to make it happen, what would you say to them?

I would say it's never too late to take full responsibility over your life. And it's never too late to create a new dream for your life. And so dream big, but then start super, super small. Oh,

I love it. Oh, dear listener, you just got to get Shiraz books. Alright? Minimal Easter is the first book. You probably saw it. It is just absolutely everywhere. I've been all over the media. Such great tips. And I love how you said to me when we spoke well, because I said, the progression of these books is such complete genius. Did you know that you were doing this from the beginning, and you said, No, I thought I said everything I wanted to say in the first book, you know, and, and I really loved what you were saying about that, because there's always more.

There's I guess so,

yes, always more of our voice that we can discover. There's more dreams to be had. There's more stories, you know. And one of the things I mean, the many things I love about your book, but how you told this, the two stories about your life, and how story one was really, really sad about your dad and your brother, and you know, that was one version of the story, and then you told the other version of the story, which was full of hope and optimism, and you were choosing to put the microscope on all of these beautiful things that you had, as opposed to putting the microscope on the things that you didn't have. So I thought that that that's the thing that really stuck with me, in addition to that last paragraph that I sort of butchered by putting it all in the wrong one out these two stories. So I just want to close with that, because I really, really love how you teach people to be inside the Empowered version of their story.

Yes, and you can always rewrite your story. I mean, that's what's so exciting and liberating, is you could have told yourself the same depressing story about yourself or your life for 47 years and then wake up and say, You know what? I'm tired of the story, I'm going to create a new narrative. It. It truly is up to you.

Yeah. And, and when you talked about how the story that you tell yourself determines how you inhabit your life, yes. And I, anyway, I just, I just thought it was so beautiful. And so thank you for these three exquisite books. Minimalist is the first book, organized living is the second book, and lifestyle is the third book that launched this week with 10 Speed Press. Always love celebrating a fellow 10 speed author, just the most beautiful publishing house. I had a very joyful time there with them, and I know that you did, too. So we'll give a big shout out to the beautiful 10 Speed Press crew in California. So please get your copy of lifestyle this week. It's just an unbelievable book. I loved it so much, and I'm going to be keeping it in my room and referring to it all the time. So congratulations, enjoy the book tour, and I just look forward to the next chapter.

Thank you so much. This was such a delight, and I loved this conversation.

Oh, thank you for how you show up in the world. I'm excited to stay connected. Me too. You.