Explore every episode of the podcast The To Do Show

I've been interviewing people about their to-do lists for months while mine was making me physically sick. I've been sick nonstop since I started recording. My body has been screaming at me to stop filling every moment with productivity and actually create space for stillness. I finally listened.

What You'll Hear:

• Why nervous system regulation means doing less, not organizing better
• The impossible conflict between being a marketer and a storyteller (at least in this case)
• What the internet rewards (extreme angles, prescriptive rules) vs. what this show celebrates (everyone's way is valid)
• Why I can't reconcile myself as a marketing consultant with myself as a podcaster
• The moment I realized I had to choose health over growth

About This Episode:This is my final episode of The To Do Show. I loved every conversation and every guest. If you watched even one episode, I hope you walked away feeling like your way of doing things is completely valid.

Links:Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quizMore episodes: thetodoshow.com

Sarah Townsend has spent 26 years as a freelance copywriter helping other people say exactly the right thing. She's written a bestselling guide to self-employment, sold books in 29 countries, and built her entire career around getting words right. She also has ADHD, still switches productivity systems mid-project, and has "learn to cook quinoa" on her bucket list.

She's one of us.

What You'll Learn:

• The "Do, Delegate, Delay, or Ditch" framework she uses instead of the Eisenhower Matrix, and why it works better for brains that need action words, not categories
• Why she went five weeks without posting on LinkedIn and considers it the right call
• The moment she stopped thinking "I can't afford to outsource" and started thinking "I can't afford not to"
• How her 60 before 60 bucket list works: firewalk, helicopter ride, rugby match redemption, and yes, eating a prawn (verdict: "still reminds me of maggots")
• What 26 years of freelancing actually looks like vs. what the hustle-bro crowd posts about

About Sarah: Sarah Townsend is a UK-based freelance copywriter, author, and self-employment survival guide writer. Her book Survival Skills for Freelancers has sold in 29 countries and holds a 4.8-star rating on Amazon. She also writes books about language and spelling and runs her DocuMagic service turning documents nobody wants to read into ones people actually do.

Links:Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quizSarah's book: https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Skills-Freelancers-Self-Employment-Without/dp/1916371566More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Esther Brown wakes up at 4 AM to swim. She runs a diagnostic lab, gets her MBA, takes upholstery class with her mom every Tuesday, and is building a wellness brand on the side. She's had COVID five times. She's experienced burnout. And she told her friends she wants to start "dating" them because monthly is all she has time for.

Now she treats her life like her lab: constant risk mitigation. Every morning starts with an energy check. Her entire to-do list adjusts based on that number.

What You'll Learn:

Why she bases her entire to-do list on her energy level each morning (low, medium, or high)

The magnet method: how she redesigned a million-dollar lab using Staples poster board and cutouts

Why thinking is harder than doing (and how she protects time for deep work)

How she spent her first three months as VP at the bench, not in her office

The "Do Not Do" list: protecting energy by writing down what you won't touch today

Dating your friends: making a monthly pact when that's all you have capacity for

Her Sunday ritual with jazz music: planning what must be true by Friday

About Esther: Esther Brown is VP of Operations at Nexus Medical Labs. She's getting her MBA, building a wellness brand for working women, and applying risk mitigation thinking to everything from lab workflows to burnout prevention.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quizMore episodes: thetodoshow.com

When Jennifer Ruiz tells people she makes paper flowers, they say "how cute." Then they see her four-foot installations for Valentino and L'Oreal and the reaction shifts to "oh." She works as a caregiver from 10:30pm to 6:30am, comes home to take her son to school, then creates massive floral installations on four hours of sleep. She's exactly at the financial breaking point where her business income matches her caregiver income. Not above it. Not below it. Right there.

What You'll Learn:

Why "paper florist" gets a different reaction than "I make paper flowers"

How she learned to create giant flowers by watching YouTube tutorials in Russian and Korean

The language kit she created so crafters can speak corporate to luxury brands

Why her rental flowers (which last three years) are her biggest money maker

How the paper florist community shares leads and pricing instead of competing

What it's like to keep 80% of your business details stored in your head

Why flowers became her escape and healing during a difficult time in her marriage

About Jennifer: Jennifer Ruiz is a paper florist based in California who creates massive floral installations for luxury brands and weddings. She teaches monthly classes and is working toward running Petal Loft full-time.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quizJennifer's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petal_loft/?hl=enMore episodes: thetodoshow.com

Lauryn creates dark, moody wedding photos. Not the bright, airy Pinterest style everyone expects. Her style makes people feel something they can't name. She edits each gallery two or three times, uploads it, then sometimes pulls it back down to re-edit more. While doing this obsessive perfectionism, she's listening to Stephen King and wondering who the killer is. Her 8-year-old daughter has adapted. She doesn't ask "Mom can you do this?" anymore. She says "Mom, can you set an alarm?"

What You'll Learn:

How constantly witnessing the deepest sentiment of people's hearts at weddings makes her "kinder to my husband. I'm like, aw my God, I guess I love you too."

The printed list method: checking off every shot so the next 45 minutes are free to just be creative

Why one bride grabbed scissors and redid her entire bouquet mid-wedding (and Lauryn just said "okay I'll be back")

Her slow season list includes: taxes (sad face emoji), call Fidelity, make welcome guide, blog 47 weddings

The question creative people face: "It's generally creatives who have the most awful evil taxes, and it's like, this is the opposite of what our brains were built for"

What Taylor Swift knows about work-life balance that wedding photographers should steal

About Lauryn: Lauryn is a moody wedding photographer based in the Philadelphia area who specializes in dark, saturated, atmospheric images. She got diagnosed with ADHD a little over a year ago and runs her business through a system of alarms, post-its, and organized chaos.

Links: Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Alina Fattakhova tells her clients which women rejected them and exactly why. She's a luxury matchmaker in New York City, and people pay her to deliver brutal honesty wrapped in strategy. She treats finding a life partner like applying for jobs. Spreadsheets, data points, reverse engineering your timeline from age 35 backwards.

What You'll Learn:

Why people apply to 200 jobs in two weeks but won't do the same for dating

The "illusion of choice" problem in New York City dating (and why it makes people less willing to commit)

How raising prices actually brought better, more self-reflective clients

What it's really like to tell a 40-year-old man why stunning blondes keep rejecting him

Why nerdy clients with dating spreadsheets often find patterns they need to break

The accountability party trend: forcing yourself to do hard tasks (like scheduling a sleep study)

About Alina: Alina Fattakhova is a matchmaker and founder of a boutique matchmaking agency in New York City. She went from luxury jewelry sales to construction bidding to discovering her real talent: connecting people. Now she runs events, screens matches, and gives people the reality checks they're paying for.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quizMore episodes: thetodoshow.com

Vicky used to run weddings. She'd be there when the couple arrived and couldn't bring herself to leave until the last guest did.

Now she's a calligrapher doing around 100 weddings a year, engraving £360 perfume bottles while people watch, and trying to figure out how to stop saying yes to everything.

What You'll Learn:

What a calligrapher actually does in a day!

The different perceptions of calligraphy in the UK versus the US.

Why the creativity is always the first thing to go when your calendar gets too full

How doing cold outreach feels like sending a naked photo of yourself

Why two artists obsessed with beauty both keep the plainest to-do lists

The spa day that completely backfired because she couldn't stop thinking about work

Why this is the first year she's putting a cap on how many weddings she'll take

About Vicky:

Vicky is the calligrapher behind Inviting Writing, based in the UK with her husband and dogs. She went from hotel management and wedding coordination to building a calligraphy business that covers weddings, luxury brand events, signage, and hand-lettered maps.

She teaches calligraphy courses, listens to nineties dance music while she works, and is currently learning the hardest skill of her career: saying no.

Links:

Instagram (Inviting Writing): https://www.instagram.com/invitingwritinguk

Instagram (Signs by Vicky): https://www.instagram.com/signsbyvicky

Website:

https://www.invitingwriting.co.uk

Teepublic:

https://www.teepublic.com/user/inviting-writing

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz

More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Ryan Doyle grew up with an Irish Catholic grandmother, strict rules, and a constant sense of doing everything wrong. Then he went to clown school in France where they insult you, f*ck with your head, and force you to face the fact that people are going to hate you...

What You'll Learn:

• How Catholic guilt and shame actually become creative fuel
• How clown school trains you to stop caring what people think
• The cut-up technique: stealing text from anywhere and sculpting it with the delete key
• Why his fiancée is his only audience before anyone else sees his work
• Gremlin Day: one day a month with zero rules, pizza, weed, and Real Housewives
• The Hindu priestess who gave him a flower that unblocked his throat chakra
• How he's working 10-12 hours a day on one insane show after years of being scattered

About Ryan: Ryan Doyle is a writer, performer, and clown creating Free Speech, a one-hour show that performs every type of speech possible. He does typewriter poetry at weddings, wrote a board game over seven years, and paints himself green to sing Rat Pack songs as a goblin.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz

Follow Ryan: ryan-doyle.com

More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Coach Lee wakes up at 2:30am. Works out, builds her coaching business, then goes to her full-time job as a criminal defense attorney. She's in bed by 8:30pm. And her coaching philosophy is "The goal is once we finish working together, for you not to come back." That's a terrible business model. And exactly why it works.

What You'll Learn:

• Why she calls it "procrast-planning" (when you plan instead of actually doing the thing)
• Her 2:30am-8:30pm schedule that lets her run two full careers without burnout
• The three categories for any task: must do, need to do, want to do
• Why following productivity gurus without adapting to your lifestyle always fails
• Her "terrible business model": teaching clients to never need her again
• How to check if what you say is important is actually, factually what's important
• Why she's "very anti hustle and grind, but not anti hard work"

About Coach Lee: Coach Lee is a criminal defense attorney and productivity coach who believes in realistic, sustainable systems over guru advice. She helps high-achieving women build schedules that actually work for their lives, not someone else's Instagram version of productivity.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz

Coach Lee's Website: www.legallee.me

More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Amanda Kwan works her corporate marketing job from 8:30am to 6:30pm. Then she preps food until 2am for her underground dining concept that seats 22 people and has a 400-person waitlist. She sleeps 4-6 hours a night. She hosts 60-person Thanksgivings. And she chose all of this.

What You'll Learn:

• The invisible labor of being The Organizer: the friend who remembers birthdays, makes reservations, hosts everything

• How she manages calls at 3am with Japan and 11pm with the West Coast

• Starting a private dining concept during COVID that turned into a 400-person waitlist, all word of mouth

• Her "if I die tomorrow, I'd die happy" operating principle

About Amanda: Amanda Kwan runs global marketing for a Hong Kong brand while operating Savour Cinema, an underground dining concept she co-founded during COVID. She also runs an events company, organizes TEDx talks, and leads Women of Influence at AmCham Hong Kong.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz

Savour Cinema: @savourcinema on Instagram

More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Jen and her husband Rory share their alternative to New Year's resolutions. It's called Words of the Year, and it's the practice that's completely transformed how they approach everything.If you're tired of failing at New Year's resolutions, this one's for you.

What You'll Learn:

• Why New Year's resolutions lead to burnout (and the February crash we all know too well)
• How to choose one word that guides your entire year without crushing you with expectations
• The story of how Rory's word "family" led to an unexpected marriage three months later
• Jen's wellness journey: 2-3 hours daily of nervous system regulation and becoming a different person
• How to use AI to help choose your word (and the concept of word ladders)
• Why focusing on your weakest area beats optimizing what you're already good at
• The difference between open vs. restrictive words (and why "flow" works better than "money")

About This Episode:

Jen and Rory share their personal experiences with Words of the Year, from unexpected marriages to complete personality transformations. This is for anyone tired of failing at resolutions and ready for a simpler, more powerful approach to personal growth.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz

More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Santa Mike spent 21 years working warrants for the courts. Parking tickets to wanted felons. He saw families at their absolute worst. Then he retired, met another Santa in a Zoom acting class, and everything changed. Now he's a full-time professional Santa using every bad Christmas he witnessed to show up better.

What You'll Learn:

• "Santa enters through the heart, not the chimney" and what that actually means

• Why Christmas is invisibly hard for people and how he reads every room

• The countdown exit strategy so kids don't have an awkward Santa goodbye

• How he engineers the perfect photo when kids are terrified of sitting on Santa's lap

• December schedule: one day off until Christmas, sometimes 400 kids in one brunch

• The 200-year history of stockings hanging by the chimney (St. Nicholas origin story)

• Why he carries quiet bells for kids with sensory needs

About Santa Mike: Santa Mike is a professional Santa based outside Philadelphia. Real beard. Blue eyes. Fifth year in the business. He works with photographers, does home visits, corporate events, tree lightings, and parades. He's watching the same kids grow up year after year.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz   

Connect with Santa Mike: https://www.instagram.com/get_santa_mike/ 

More episodes: thetodoshow.com 

This is the most heartwarming conversation I've had on this show. Santa Claus - yes, the real one - sat down with me in the middle of his busiest season to talk about his to-do list, his marriage, and what he wishes humanity understood about the spirit of giving.

What You'll Learn:

• How Santa's to-do list is organized by monthly themes (and why Mrs. C runs the naughty/nice list)
• The logistics of delivering across time zones when every direction from the North Pole is south
• Why Santa does yoga, Zumba, and calisthenics with elves (lower back health matters at 1,755)
• The gift paradox: why the "right" present for the "right" child is more complicated than you'd think
• What really makes the nice list vs. the naughty list (hint: inaction counts too)
• Santa's stress management philosophy: Do what you can, influence what you can, put it down

This Episode Is Family-Friendly:Safe for children who want to understand the behind-the-scenes magic of what Santa does year-round, especially in December.

Santa's Advice for the Holidays:Get outside. Look at the stars. Sing songs. And remember: the best gift you can give this Christmas might just be hearing a story or telling one.

Links:

• Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz
• More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Lily Szabo was a classic Type A overachiever: running a hostel, managing a team, living and dying by her calendar. Then she got pregnant and hoped motherhood would cure her burnout.

Spoiler: It didn't.

She had to completely rebuild her sense of self without external validation, deliverables, or adult conversations.

What You'll Learn:

• The difference between self-esteem and self-worth (and why it matters for mothers)
• Why postpartum anxiety might be a normal response to having no village
• How to deprogram from "productivity mindset" when caring for a baby
• Putting work last: self first, family second, everything else after
• Building your own village

About Lily:Lily Szabo is a mom, community builder, and digital nomad visa nerd based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She hosts the Amagi Village podcast exploring how we redesign community in today's landscape, and alongside her husband runs CNX Local - a trusted guide for families relocating to Chiang Mai. She's raising two daughters while advising founders, nurturing local community, and learning to live intentionally.

Links:

• Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz
• Lily's Podcast (Amagi Village): youtube.com/@amagilife
• CNX Local: cnxlocal.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/itslilyszabo
• More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Safir Jamal runs a business in 25+ countries, which means WhatsApp messages from every time zone, proposals that take 15 hours each, and calls at midnight.

His calendar is color-coded. His date nights are scheduled. If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen - because if he doesn't protect his time, work swallows everything.

What You'll Learn:

• The color-coded calendar system that runs a 25+ country business
• Why time-boxing is the only way to survive this pace
• How to scale from solo founder to global field teams
• Building a custom CRM on Notion
• The reality of B2C, B2B, and B2G business models
• Why he does his best strategic work at 11pm
• The advice from his wife: "You have time, you're just not allocating it"

About Safir:Safir Jamal is the founder and CEO of Global Nomad Pass, a membership that rewards travelers for supporting local businesses in 25+ destinations worldwide.

Links:

• Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz
• Global Nomad Pass: globalnomadpass.com
• Instagram: @globalnomadpass
• More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Most entrepreneurs hustle 14 hours a day. Stu works 4 hours and outperforms them all.

In February 2023, Stu quit everything to go all-in on AI.

Now he creates a week of strategic content in 2 hours, has zero stress, and teaches thousands how to harness AI without the overwhelm.

Here's the twist for today's episode: Stu doesn't use a to-do list.

What You'll Learn:

• Why traditional to-do lists keep you trapped in busy work (and what to do instead)
• How AI gave him crystal clear vision after 2.5 years of full-time learning
• Creating a week of strategic content in 2-3 hours
• Sequential planning vs traditional planning: The 4-hour workday secret
• The "scrappy entrepreneur" AI prompt that changes everything
• Aphantasia: How his brain works like AI (and why that's his superpower)
• Why 2026 will be the year of mass AI adoption

About Stu:Stu Jordan is the founder of Evolution Unleashed, an AI learning community for creators and entrepreneurs.

Links:

• Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz
• FREE Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/evolutionunleashedai
• Patreon (only $9/month): patreon.com/cw/EvolutionUnleashedVIP
• More episodes: thetodoshow.com

Jen's note: The ROI on Stu's Patreon is absolutely insane. You get custom GPTs, prompt generators, workflows, and step-by-step AI implementation. He's the only AI educator I trust.

The healthcare system gives new parents 36 hours to learn everything about keeping a human alive. Erica Hopper is trying to change that.

She's a postpartum nurse, lactation consultant, nursing instructor, and mom of three who color-codes her scrubs because she works three different jobs at the same hospital - all fighting the same broken system.

What You'll Learn:

• Why insurance only covers 2 nights postpartum (sometimes just 36-72 hours)
• Creating patient to-do lists: The art of clustered care
• Why the first 48 hours determine your entire milk supply
• How she created NICU pumping journals and breastfeeding diaries
• The escape rooms she designs to teach nurses critical thinking
• Healthcare workers never take care of themselves: 5 years, no sleep study
• Mom of 3: "I'd forget to feed them without my husband"
• Why she keeps hourly calendars dating back to 2018

About Erica:Erica Hopper, MSN, IBCLC has a Master's in nursing education and works at Jefferson Einstein Hospital as a postpartum nurse and lactation consultant. She teaches nursing students at Gwynedd Mercy University and Drexel, runs monthly Baby Bootcamp childbirth education weekends, and is passionate about maternal health advocacy, particularly paid parental leave and systemic healthcare reform.

Links:

• Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz
• More episodes: thetodoshow.com

This episode is for anyone who takes care of everyone else but struggles to take care of themselves. It's a reminder that even the most organized-looking people have "schedule sleep study" on their list for half a decade.

He creates experiences that spark human connection and play in 20+ cities worldwide, but his to-do list is surprisingly mundane.

Stefano is an experience designer and the founder of F*ck the Small Talk. His job is to design structure so others can experience whimsy and authentic connection.

But what does that actually look like day-to-day?

Spoiler: It's a lot of emails.

What You'll Learn:

• The exact process behind designing a 1-to-1 matchmaking experience in 2 hours
• Tools of the trade: Typeform, Video Ask, Notion
• How he hacked Typeform into giving him a year free with a custom rap video
• Why "Get Shit Done" coworking events help people do their best work
• The email backlog problem and how he decides who becomes a host
• Authenticity-vert: Why real connection is the ultimate energy source

About Stefano:Stefano Sacchi is an experience designer and founder of F*ck the Small Talk, a global connection event in 20+ cities from Berlin to Buenos Aires.

Links:

Discover your To-Do List personality: thetodoshow.com/quiz

Instagram: @theepichost

Company: @epic.llama

Learn more: epicllama.com

More episodes: thetodoshow.com

What's on your to-do list today?

The To-Do Show is a new interview series that asks everyday people to share their actual to-do list from a real day, and then we talk about how they really get through it.

NEW EPISODES EVERY TUESDAY

Starting December 2, 2025

WHAT TO EXPECT

In each episode, I sit down with someone: a nurse, an entrepreneur, a coach, a creative - and ask them to show me their actual to-do list. Then we explore:

• How they actually organize their time
• The systems that work
• The trade-offs nobody admits they're making
• What it looks like when you have 47 things on your list... or zero

We talk about calendars and chaos, boundaries and burnout, structure and spontaneity. Because your to-do list reveals more about you than your resume ever could.

WHO THIS SHOW IS FOR

This show is for anyone who's ever felt:

- Overwhelmed by unrealistic productivity advice

- Isolated in their struggle to keep it all together

- Curious about how other people actually do it

- Tired of content that's either too fluffy or too preachy

If you're a creative professional, freelancer, parent, small business owner, teacher, remote worker, or someone who is just curious about other people - this show is for you.

We're here for the curious doers. The imperfectly organized. The people building days that match their real energy and values.

TOPICS: productivity, time management, to-do lists, work-life balance, organization, getting things done, task management, personal development, entrepreneurship, creative work, parenting, remote work, focus, systems, routines, real talk, honest conversations, everyday life

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