We were lucky to catch up with Emily Guerra recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Emily thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

When I was in middle school, my parents got divorced. It honestly wasn’t an amicable separation and, being the youngest kid, I felt like I was always put in the middle of my parents’ disagreements. But they saw that.

To help me process the divorce and handle the aftermath, they started sending me to therapy when I was about 12 years old. Looking back, I’m so impressed they made this decision together – especially since therapy just wasn’t common yet, and since it felt like they could never agree on anything anymore. But they did agree that I needed support they couldn’t offer.

At first, I hated therapy. I was the only kid I knew who went, and I thought my parents sent me because it was my fault they couldn’t get along. But they went to sessions with me, unpacked a lot of our deep-seated issues over the years, and stuck with it alongside me. Their dedication to helping me gave me permission to help myself, which has encouraged me to keep up with my therapy sessions to this day.

I’ve always said that sending me to therapy at such a young age was the best thing my parents ever did for me. It gifted me a foundational mental health awareness that so many adults are lacking but that I’ve grown so passionate about continuously developing every day. So passionate that I founded The Productivity Flow and got certified as a Productivity Life Coach who empowers female freelancers/solopreneurs in overcoming mindset hurdles and optimizing productivity so they can live a balanced work-from-home lifestyle. Because I’ve had the lifelong chance to better understand how our mindset really works, I’m able to bring the lessons I’ve learned from therapy over the years into my coaching calls. I’ve realized that my purpose is to help others escape the hustle culture and truly believe in themselves and their abilities, which I don’t think I could be doing without my time in therapy.

Emily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I was a little kid, I didn’t know that I had ADHD. I actually wasn’t diagnosed until after I graduated from college, so I went through all of school wondering why things wouldn’t click for me the way they did for everyone around me. Throughout elementary and middle school, I’d get really frustrated and down on myself because I honestly thought I just wasn’t smart. And it seemed like people around me agreed. Math teachers would tell me that I’m just not good at math. English teachers told me that it’s okay to be a slow reader. My brother always said, “C’s gets degrees!”

Luckily, I was also in therapy during this time. I’d share my frustrations with my therapist, and over time she helped me realize that just because I process the world differently doesn’t mean I’m not capable of doing brilliant things. I just needed the world to align with how I processed it. I needed systems in place to help me make sense of the world around me in a way that truly clicked with me.

So by the time I got to high school, I created productivity systems for pretty much everything in my life – although, at the time, I had no clue that’s what I was doing. For example, I created a color coding system for my class notes and studying, a closet organizing system that I still use today, and routines for every transition in my day.

These productivity systems became my ADHD medication. They helped me go from a C student to an A student, assist in taking care of my grandma when she had Alzheimer’s Disease, keep a clean room, and everything in between. It was truly the first time I felt in control of my life.

And that control is what I want to help other people find.

When I graduated from college and started freelancing, I adapted my systems to fit into my work-from-home life. And it was through freelancing that I realized so many people are missing the systems that can help them feel that control, too. This hustle culture we’re stuck in forces people to work harder, not smarter, which comes at the expense of mental and physical well-being. And I know from a lifetime of experience that working harder doesn’t work. Just ask those who have burnt out.

Which is why after a few years of freelancing, I founded The Productivity Flow and became a certified Productivity Life Coach who empowers female freelancers/solopreneurs in overcoming mindset hurdles as well as optimizing systems, tools, routines, and habits so they can not just boost productivity, but live that work-from-home lifestyle of their dreams. I combine my lessons learned in therapy, my own freelancing/work-from-home experiences, and all of the research I’m obsessed with doing to offer 1-1 coaching programs, an online course, and digital products. I also post blogs with free, downloadable tools, send weekly texts with bite-sized productivity tips and growth mindset tricks, and am now doing speaking engagements, too.

My mission is to help people like me become the most productive and balanced version of themselves. I help my coaching clients realize that being productive is not about being busy, constantly being on the go, or checking as many to do’s off the list as possible. It’s about getting your mindset and systems right so you become so effective and efficient that you save time and energy. And the good news? You can spend this newfound time and energy on things that actually make your life whole. Even if you work for yourself, work should not be your life. To truly escape this hustle culture, we have to be intentional about our productivity.

And that looks different for every person. So if you’re curious about how we can boost both your productivity and work-from-home-life balance, then reach out to me on theproductivityflow.com and let’s chat (for free) about your goals and next steps!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I graduated from university in 2020, right after the COVID-19 lockdown began. I lost my post-grad wedding planning job before I even started, could no longer afford rent, and ended up moving across the country and in with family to save money and figure out my next steps.

At first, I was convinced the lockdown would end soon and I could just return to my life as it was before. But then a month went by, and another month, then another. I grew resentful towards everyone and everything because I felt like I had no control over my life. I felt like COVID robbed me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But then my therapist asked me if I was okay with waiting for life to happen to me. And that question hit me hard. No, I definitely wasn’t okay with it, and I wanted to feel like I was living life.

So I had a choice to make: I could either wait for lockdown to end and eventually go back to wedding planning, or I could pivot.

At first, I had no idea what I could pivot to. But the universe has a funny way of guiding you when you need it most. It was during this reflective period when a family friend asked me to help him manage his startup’s social media accounts. So with a huge knot in my stomach, I took this opportunity and ran with it.

I earned a few online certifications in social media management and within 2 months had built up a freelancing clientele via referrals/word of mouth. Although I wasn’t in love with social media work, I fell in love with working for myself from home.

In fact, I fell so much in love with the be your own boss lifestyle that I now coach fellow freelancers/solopreneurs in how to work-from-home productively and mindfully – which would have NEVER happened if I didn’t pivot.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’ve always loved writing. I took AP English in high school and was a Communications Studies major in college, so essays were a huge part of my life for the longest time. My teachers and professors taught me how to write professionally, as if I was writing for an academic journal. The idea that I should never write how I speak was firmly ingrained in me.

So when I created my website and committed to writing blogs, I struggled. I couldn’t help but write as if I was submitting a presentation to a professor, and my blogs were just boring. My personality never showed up, and I always felt like I had to cite sources or include research in order for the blog to prove valuable.

Reading my first couple blogs made me see that I was stuck writing like a student. I at first attempted to improve my writing style on my own, but quickly became frustrated and overwhelmed with impostor syndrome. So I reached out for help.

I joined a blog writing cohort and spent a few months re-learning how to write in a way that connects with real people. I had to actively catch myself slipping into academic-like writing and purposely shift until I developed a style of my own. I had to embrace the tactic of writing how I speak – the exact tactic I was taught not to do.

Now that I consistently write the kind of blogs that I’d want to read, my audience has blossomed. I get thousands of visitors to my website / blogs every month, and many of those readers sign up for my weekly texts and become interested in coaching with me. Because I get so many visitors, I added ads to my website and created another source of passive income. I’ve also been asked to write for other publications and am now looking into affiliate opportunities that can align with my blog topics.

I’m only sharing my blog’s success to show you that unlearning and re-learning a skill can truly turn into opportunities you’re probably not even thinking of yet. It’s one of those things that you can totally dread in the moment, but that can turn into a beautiful blessing in disguise later on.

So if you’ve been feeling some friction around something, then maybe it’s time to unlearn what you think you know. You’ll be happily surprised by what’s around the corner!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theproductivityflow.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproductivityflow
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theproductivityflow/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-guerra-the-productivity-flow/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/theproductivityflow/

  https://www.tiktok.com/@theproductivityflow

Image Credits

Emily Guerra | The Productivity Flow