I’m writing this from Paris at 2 a.m. during men’s fashion week – sounds glamorous, right? It is, until I realize how behind I am on everything else I’m supposed to be doing. The brands here are showing Fall/Winter 2026 collections – things they’re planning to sell you in nine months – and the future looks very oversized. Which feels about right for how my life feels right now.
I’m a doctor, a small business owner, and an occasional freelance writer, so I get asked the same question constantly: how do you do so much? The honest answer is: I do it all late or in a hurry.
MyChart messages, Type spreadsheets, a yet-to-be-started edit for the next print issue of Groovevolt, a gorilla-trekking trip to Rwanda that’s half-booked, and photos of my goats in Georgia escaping from the same section of fence I promised myself I’d fix before I left are all sitting in the same mental browser.
Speaking at Emory a few moths ago wearing TYPE.
I wish I could credit this to a color-coded calendar and a morning routine that starts at 4:30 a.m., but I can’t. What I actually do is cycle through a handful of roles—doctor, founder, writer, stylist, hobby farmer—and try to let each one have the spotlight long enough that my life feels coherent, but not so long that the others completely fall apart.
Here are the things that actually help hold the chaos together:
On Calendar or It Doesn’t Exist
I start with the job that’s hardest and most dangerous to ignore: medicine. I have a dedicated Google Calendar with my call dates, license expiration dates, board deadlines, and any other must-do admin things. For each one, I set a 2-week, 1-week, 3-day, and 24-hour reminder. The second it shows up in my inbox, it goes into the calendar.
I’ve tried every platform you can think of, and Google wins every time because of all the other workspace apps (docs, sheets, etc.). To get around the usual hospital firewall nonsense, I just share work calendar invites to my personal Gmail so I can see everything in one place. No app is perfect, but this one at least yells at me reliably.
Schedule Your Comms
The best iOS update in recent history is being able to schedule text messages.
As someone who travels across time zones and leans nocturnal, I cannot recommend enough scheduling messages as soon as they pop into your head. I’ll draft a text at 1:17 a.m. in Paris and schedule it to send at 9:30 a.m. Atlanta time so I’m not chaos-texting people in the middle of their workday or REM cycle.
I don’t recommend scheduling your entire emotional life (maybe don’t pre-schedule breakup texts), but for birthday messages, holiday check-ins, and “hey, thinking of you” notes, it’s an easy win that keeps relationships alive.
I also still believe in calling people. I keep a loose rotation of friends I try to talk to regularly in a tiny list in my Notes app: “People to Call This Month.” When I’m walking somewhere alone or in an Uber, I’ll pick one and call instead of scrolling.
Asana
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but project management software works!
I’ve used Monday, Jira, Airtable, Notion, Milanote, and several other platforms I’ve blocked out, and I’ve settled on Asana for now. It’s not sexy, but it does what I need: separate projects for each bucket of my life, tasks with due dates (even fake ones) so things don’t just live in my brain, and running lists like “Type ideas,” “Paris tasks,” and “Farm fixes.”
Most of the time I live in the simplest view possible: a list of tasks with dates. If a tool makes me spend more time organizing my life than living it, I abandon it. Asana has survived long enough that I have to recommend it.
I’m a firm believer in outsourcing anything that drains me more than it develops me.
Upwork / Fiverr / TaskRabbit
I use a small army of freelancers I’ve found through Upwork and Fiverr to keep different parts of my life moving—especially Type. Things like clipping and scheduling content for socials, cleaning up decks, designing graphics I’d waste hours on in Canva. TaskRabbit handles everything else: furniture assembly, errands I’ll never get to, that fence in Georgia my goats keep escaping through.
Is everything perfect 100% of the time? No. But I would rather pay someone to get something to 85–90% done than let it sit at 0% because I “haven’t had time” for three months.
Bonus: Worth Experimenting With
Superhuman
I haven’t pulled the trigger on Superhuman yet, but I think about it at least once a week. My inbox situation is not great. Between hospital emails, Type, Substack, freelancing, and normal human life, I get so much junk and so many “quick questions” that my brain taps out. I’m curious whether letting an AI layer triage and prioritize for me would actually help, or if it would just become another fancy interface on top of the same chaos. If I do try it, it’ll be as an experiment: one month to see if this genuinely saves me time or just wastes money.
Flip Phone Era
I used to use a flip phone in med school leading up to finals and boards. My life is not in a spot where I can go back because of all the travel—I need my digital tickets, Google Maps, and translation apps—but maybe as an alternate mode for clinic days, farm weekends, or days off. I like the idea of being reachable without being able to scroll. I haven’t committed yet because logistics (two numbers? SIM swapping? IDK), but “Flip Phone Fridays” is on my 2026 bingo card.
I know I'm not the only one on Substack juggling too many things at once. I'd love to know: what's the one tool or slightly unhinged life hack that actually keeps your version of "doing the most" from falling apart?
