how I manage everything and travel full time as an entrepreneur

time management for someone who is geographically unstable and also likes to play

So…I’ve been living out of a suitcase for the last 2 months. It was kind of on purpose, kind of by accident — but ultimately it’s nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve never been one for a structured workday and I don’t ask the same of my team either. We’ve never had an office even in New York, and I genuinely enjoy not knowing what country I’m going to land the next day. No lease, no plans, just a carry on and endless possibilities.

But I do also happen to run an 8-figure business that requires a lot of TLC … and my team has requested me to share how I balance it all. So here’s how I approach running Freja and full time traveling as someone who was born to be type B and forced to be type A, including some practical tips that might be useful next time you throw everything in storage and leave the country indefinitely on a month’s notice.

You know how they say you trade your 9-5 for a 24/7 when you choose entrepreneurship? I don’t know who they are, but they’re correct. I’m always on, and have created, refined, and lived my 5 step productivity system down to a science at this point — record, prioritize, organize, plan, do.

My System

Record: 25% of my time

I write down absolutely everything — from design edits to that ad audience we should try, to that contract with a vendor I want to revisit, to sales reports for that one SKU that I might need to order more of for our next PO, to those tweezers I lost and desperately need, to gift ideas for my friends birthday next month — and export it out of my brain into a running Notion list. I’ve gotten up mid massage to do this because I can’t relax when tasks and thoughts are swimming around in my head without a folder or file. Information overload without a clear path of action = anxiety. My first step is always writing e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g down, and closing the mental tab. No judgment or filtering at this stage.

Prioritize: 5% of my time

Since I’m always staring at my list, asking myself what’s important vs urgent vs both vs neither, I’ll often remove items completely, save them for later, or delegate. Nothing feels better than clearing unnecessary tasks, and seeing everything in order feels like a mental massage for my brain. Productivity is not doing everything, it’s getting rid of the tasks that don’t matter to make room for the ones that actually get you closer to your goals.

Organize: 10% of my time

When I’m in a working headspace, I divide, categorize, and order my tasks into lists by urgency, time required (quick 2 min tasks, 10 min tasks, 30 min projects, 1 hour blocks of deep work) and business department (admin, production, ops, team). So if I have a 10 min break, I won’t start tackling a 30 min project and will instead check off some quick tasks. After implementing this for a while you gain a great intuition for how long certain tasks will take, as well as what kind of tasks are sneaky time sucks (graphic design I’m looking at you). I’ll let department tasks collect and marinate for a few days before sending off to my team — this format also provides helpful context and a framework into why I’m inquiring about certain things.

Plan: 40% of my time

Here’s where we break down projects into chunks, thinking through all the steps involved for each, collecting any data we need and answering any questions that might arise. If I’m writing a newsletter (like this one) I’m creating an outline and filling in my thoughts over a few days. If I want to pull a report, I’m writing down the specific filters I’m using and what insights I’m trying to glean and which departments I should share that data with and how we might use it. For bigger projects, I’m creating milestones and assigning an action plan and deadline for each. Communication wise, I draft slack messages and email responses in my notes app so I can revisit and refine (or just delete) before I send. Planning is not only just the “what,” but also the why, the how, the who. And the real magic of planning — it plants the seed early so ideas can flow and come to you over a few days (instead of only during the 2 hour block you set aside for this task). And best of all, I can do all this on my phone from anywhere in the world.

Do: 20% of my time

So when it comes to executing, it’s simply a matter of following and finalizing the course I’ve already created. A few 4-5 hour blocks every week is all I need because I’ve done so much pre-thinking and legwork throughout the days leading up. These are my so-called “deep work” sessions — infrequent because I want to play, but highly effective nonetheless.

The above is how I’ve trained myself to live and work, regardless of where I am. Below are a few special additions for when I’m on the road.

“Jenny you sound like you’re underwater”

My System: Travel Edition

I could talk about how I wake up early to grind before the day gets away from me, or how I save deep work for flights, or how I jetlag-proof my life, but more than anything, travel means staying flexible. Some days I’m glued to my screen. Other times I won’t crack open my laptop for days. Sometimes I can’t because I’m power walking around Verona, Italy in 97 degree weather, four hours before an international flight looking for an apple store because my laptop crashed (thank you Igor for saving the day). Or my phone’s hotspot option disappears. Or I forget to charge all three pairs of my airpods and I obviously cannot work without them. Or they’re charged but the signal is so bad all I can hear is “Jenny you sound like you’re underwater”. This summer is proudly brought to you by technical difficulties.

But enough about work. Travel also provides so much inspiration. A change of scenery, of people, of headspace forces me out of my day to day and to see the bigger picture both personally and work wise. I’ve had the most breakthroughs when I’m alone in a new city somewhere having a solo dinner at a restaurant where I ask them to bring me all their favorites and I have nowhere to be but where I am. Isn’t there just something about biting into a piping hot arancini with porcini crema and tiny sprigs of something verdant that’s so enlightening?

Savoury delights and 3 hour dinners aside, here are some other work / travel / flow mantras I live by:

• Follow your energy, not a set schedule. I know my focus peaks in the early afternoon and again around 10pm. Make your routine work for you, not the other way around.

• Design context switching out of your life. It’s highly inefficient and I won’t do it! Meetings are stacked on Monday and Tuesday, alternating internal and external teams biweekly. Mornings are for admin. Nights for creative. Saturdays are for projects I didn’t get to during the week. Sundays are for preparing for the week ahead. Whatever happens in between changes day to day, but this structure keeps me grounded.

• Value output instead of hours. Honestly, I don’t have more than 6-8 hours of intense work in me in a day. I was working way more hours when I started, but my hours are more efficient now thanks to my system.

• Optimize for speed. Make decisions, test, get feedback, pivot, repeat. 80% of the way there, 99% of the time, is perfectly good enough.

• Prioritize sleep and rest. This one is tough for me, and a constant work in progress. But everything is better after a solid night of sleep. Pinky promise we’ll work on this together?

• Let go of the “shoulds.” I don’t guilt myself for being in a busy season, just like how I don’t guilt myself for taking time off. After almost six years of building Freja I know there are busy seasons and slower seasons. The type of work required of me is ever evolving — from task based efficiency to slow, deep, thoughtful projects to collaborative, iterative cycles. I identify what season I’m in, and adjust my lifestyle around it.

At the end of the day, I’m SO grateful I get to call this a season of my life. I get to do what I love, with people I adore, from wherever I want in the world. I can’t imagine a greater gift.

Could I be working more? Sure. Could we be making more progress? Absolutely! But at what cost?

I could give up traveling and invest all my focus towards growing the business. We would grow bigger and faster and make more money so I can … do exactly what I’m doing right now? I don’t want to let life pass me by while I’m preparing to live it. Besides, if business is a constant loop of trading your current problems for bigger ones…I’m happy to take my time doing so.

I hope this was a somewhat interesting and/or insightful look into how I structure and spend my time — thanks for reading x

Caveats:

I’m not someone who craves routine, quite the opposite. Personally, I find unfamiliar situations to be a forcing function for growth and willingly throw myself in the deep end. I can’t sit still.

I’m lucky enough now to be at a stage where I don’t need to DO everything and as long as I have service, I can delegate. I didn’t travel at all the first three years (mix of having no time and no money — mostly the latter).

We make consumer products and are not a client facing business, so things aren’t typically time sensitive. My team knows my motto is “nothing’s important, nothing’s urgent” — because I’ve put out enough fires to know that there are very few things truly worth stressing over. And in the rare case it is, well, that’s all the more reason to take my time.