Are you fully aware of the force that drives you forward? Considering that change is the only constant in life, it’s ridiculously easy to lose track of our priorities and life purposes.
Moreover, in a world where perhaps too many experiences are blended together, taking control of our time and lives is challenging.
It can be done though, and that’s why we want to share the inspirational story of Catie Fenn.
Catie transitioned from law to life coaching, managed to overcome many obstacles, and became the best version of herself.
Now, she helps others do the same.
To name a few things, she’s currently:
- An entrepreneur,
- A life coach,
- A soul guide,
- A course creator, and
- A speaker.
We found out that time tracking in Clockify was (and still is) a vital aspect of Catie’s journey, so we reached out and conducted this interview with her.
Besides more details about her uplifting story, in this blog post, we’ll cover topics such as mindfulness, work-life balance, benefits of tracking your time, and much more — so read on.
No such thing as too late — Catie on starting a new life chapter
Before switching her career (and life) path, Catie had been practicing law for 6 years. She was incredibly successful in ticking the items off her bucket list, one by one, in the right order.
How Catie was living was supposed to be her dream life — working in a prestigious law firm, living in a perfect apartment, having a successful partner, and traveling the world… It was all there.
In spite of all that, Catie admits — she’d never felt more lost.
Catie explains it took her a while to let go of her fear and admit to herself — her current life wasn’t how she wanted to spend her time.
Upon further reflection, Catie understood what she needed to do, as she points out:
“Sometimes it’s about making lifestyle shifts, and other times it’s just letting go of a past version of ourselves — so we can rise into being whoever we are.”
However, personal development is neither a single step, nor an easy one. It requires consistency, setting our priorities straight, managing to get and stay motivated, and learning to take back control of our time.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Struggling with prioritization? Want to learn how to determine what your highest-value activities are, how to recognize the signs of a potential shift in your priorities, and which techniques might be right up your alley? Check out this guide:
How Catie realized the importance of self-reflection
After a while, Catie realized what was the main issue in her life — being a lawyer (especially being one in a large and reputable firm) often comes hand-in-hand with stress, long hours, complex issues, and challenging deadlines.
To help herself, she tried introducing some positive practices to calm down and achieve mindfulness — e.g. meditation.
That’s when her inner transformation started.
“I was a lawyer at the time and I had just started practicing. So I started meditation — just because I was so stressed. And then I talked myself into taking that time to pause, to journal, to start doing these practices just because I wanted to manage my stress and anxiety.”
However, soon enough, Catie started to realize something — living a deeply fulfilling life calls for a more radical change than just introducing meditation to her routine.
At the same time, Catie knew she couldn’t just quit her job and run off, leaving her life behind. So instead, she started integrating personal growth and wellness tools into her existing life, and learning about the brain, performance optimization, conscientiousness, and spirituality.
Soon enough, Catie was running retreats, leading workshops, and coaching, while being a part-time lawyer.
She started aligning with her purpose and knew she was on the right path.
Now she passes her knowledge to other people, explaining how it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf:
“It’s okay for you to potentially wanna pivot your life, or who you are, or decide to take a different path.”
After all, even our main personality traits can change as we mature, so it’s only natural that our goals do as well.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
If you often feel like there are simply not enough hours in a day and just end up stressing about it, what you’re experiencing is called time anxiety. Read more about it here:
How to know you’re on the right track in life, according to Catie
Even though Catie committed to organizing life in a better way, starting her own business wasn’t a strict plan. Coaching other people happened naturally, over time, and was rather a consequence of her personal growth:
“I just knew intuitively I’m being led down this path. And the thing that was spontaneous about it was that I didn’t plan the steps of how it would happen. It was just like an inner knowing.”
Connecting with her intuition resulted in Catie taking a more pragmatic and logical approach to life.
Fast forward 6 years and Catie is now exactly where she wanted to end up.
She is a full-time successful life coach who offers group and 1-on-1 sessions.
As her business expanded and she can dedicate all her time to it, Catie now also:
- Offers 6 online courses for personal development,
- Leads corporate workshops, helping companies increase their employee satisfaction,
- Teaches about feminine leadership, work-life balance, well-being, etc., and
- Organizes retreats in exotic locations.
Turns out — paying attention to how much time she allocates to certain activities helped Catie reduce her stress levels, live in the moment, and grow her own business.
Once you are aware of how your typical day looks, instead of complaining about the aspects you don’t like, Catie suggests being proactive and asking yourself: “What would I want to change and what would be different?”
She adds how people are rarely objective when it comes to realizing they are complaining too much, while doing too little and spending too much time complaining.
“Complaining is one of the easiest things for our minds to do to protect us from something that feels uncomfortable.”
It’s just one of the reasons proper time management can keep us grounded and help us notice things we want to change.
Catie adds it’s all about choices:
“Consciously pick what you spend your time on — even though something might appear really fun or enticing, maybe it’s not always a good idea.”
Catie’s advice for disconnecting after work
Catie is aware that mentally disconnecting is easier said than done. Especially in today’s notorious 24/7 work culture.
So we asked if she could provide a piece of advice for disconnecting from work after work hours.
She suggests creating transition points in your daily schedule.
“People waste a lot of time because, despite leaving work, they’re still thinking about it. What I do is have conscious transition points throughout the day where I’m saying, ’Okay, let go of that completely and let’s get into a different mode of being present with what you’re focusing on for the next few hours.’”
Catie understands life can be hectic, but adds that transition points help her create different blocks of time dedicated to different activities.
This practice led her to increased levels of self-care, self-love, more confidence, and ultimately — achieving work-life balance.
Why a well-balanced schedule means fewer distractions
Optimizing our performance means creating a balanced schedule in life, and sticking to it. As Catie discovered — said balance helps us stay focused on the matter at hand.
As a result, we’ll be more productive at work.
And, as a consequence of not having to deal with procrastination, once leisure time arrives, we’ll feel more satisfied and relaxed.
However…
The rest of the world doesn’t really check our calendar before it throws an abundance of distractions our way.
We asked Catie to share her thoughts on this topic — and she mentioned social media as the biggest distraction:
“I would say social media is the biggest time suck. Those things are designed to occupy your attention. And, what social media does, is take us away from our own natural connections — from what is true for us.”
It’s a form of addiction, and nothing beneficial comes from mindlessly scrolling through social media. But we’ve all done it, right?
Well, Catie has — she admits to using TikTok, and gaining little real value from it:
“I kept thinking — I don’t know what I just did for the last 30 minutes on TikTok. I didn’t learn anything. I like watching these cat videos — but my life is not better because of this.”
At one point, she realized she needed to break that habit, so she deleted the app.
That’s some valuable time lost — and a reason Catie recommends tracking your time spent on activities outside work.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
If you have a tendency to procrastinate and still haven’t found a way to deal with it, here are some useful expert tips to check out:
How Catie started tracking her time and what she learned in the process
Since being aware of your time is the key, Catie decided to leverage the power of automation and dedicate even more time to activities that she values.
“I started using the Clockify app because I really wanted to be aware of how much time I was spending on each thing. I started looking at how much time I was spending doing stuff that’s related to my work.”
Here’s a post from her LinkedIn page where Catie mentions Clockify.
Catie explains that visualizing her day truly helped her discover the power of now:
“Ultimately, so much of this is just mindset. What these tools are doing is starting to interrupt the mindset pattern of staying hooked in a moment that you’re not in anymore.”
How Catie found out about Clockify
Naturally, we had to inquire about how Catie found out about Clockify specifically. Her answer didn’t surprise us:
“I Googled it. I just went on, Googled, and found out about it in a blog. Then I downloaded a couple of time tracking apps.”
So, after Catie did her research, she tried using different time trackers. Here’s what she first thought of Clockify:
“I found that Clockify was just the most intuitive, the most straightforward, and the easiest solution.”
It makes sense that Catie liked that about Clockify, as when it comes to software, ease of use is critical.
What made Catie stick with Clockify
Catie told us about some specific Clockify features and benefits of usage she noticed that made her stick with the app. She adds that she now recommends it to her clients, as it can truly be a game-changer.
Besides the user interface, here’s what Catie likes the most:
“I like that there’s a manual entry and also the timer version.“
Catie usually uses the manual entry option for her daily tasks that are not so urgent to complete, and are more on the creative side.
On the other hand, if she needs to fully focus on a task, Catie chooses to start a timer, as it helps her focus on the present task.
Another thing Catie likes about Clockify is the calendar view.
“It makes it the easiest for me to actually visualize my schedule. It just helps me to see cumulatively — what am I doing each week, or during a whole month? It answers the question — How much time did I spend on this?”
Catie finds these insights quite powerful, and believes that having an overview of past activities is great for self-reflection. And self-reflection is crucial because there’s always room for self-improvement.
Having such insights on a regular basis helps Catie better manage her time overall:
“In general, Clockify has made me more aware of just my time and where it is going. It’s made me much more considerate about activities outside of the app as well.”
Moreover, Catie believes that everyone has a pattern of doing things, and not all our habits are beneficial.
So, to get rid of the habits that don’t work in our favor, we must gain awareness first — to strike a better work-life balance as a result.
How Clockify helps Catie achieve a work-life balance
Achieving a work-life balance can be challenging. However, the lack of it is a straight way to career burnout and all of its negative effects. And, in Catie’s opinion, it all starts with a lack of autonomy.
“What leads to people burning out or not having any balance is the lack of autonomy — the feeling you don’t have control over your time.”
But, turns out that time doesn’t have to be our enemy, even if we occasionally believe that’s true.
“With Clockify, as I started tracking my time just for one specific area of my life, all of a sudden I became so much more aware of other areas of my life. Ultimately, the more you’re tracking your time, the more that you can spend time doing things that you actually like doing — which leads to so much fulfillment.”
To make time our friend instead, we must focus on setting boundaries and rethinking our habits. This will ultimately help you lead a more fulfilling life.
Why Catie recommends Clockify to others
Since Catie mentioned that she regularly recommends Clockify to all her clients, we wanted to dig deeper into that.
Here’s what she had to say:
“If you’re not using your time, your time is going to get away from you. And I think that it’s just a really amazing habit to be aware of where our time is going.”
Catie’s main point is that people should track time on everything they do. Once again, she emphasizes that it’s all about achieving balance:
“That’s a reason to start so that fulfillment doesn’t get away from you, and so that you actually spend time on the things that you value.”
Besides mentoring and coaching, Catie adds she is really happy that she didn’t completely cut her ties with law practice — she leads workshops for law firms and organizations. During those presentations, another Clockify feature is a must-mention:
“During these lawyer presentations I’m doing, I recommend tools and say — okay guys, you need to download this app — because it’s useful for tracking billable hours.”
Tracking billable and non-billable hours separately can certainly come in handy for lawyers looking to better understand how they spend their days, both at and outside of work.
Wrapping it up: “You can have it all, but not all at once”
Catie is an amazing example of a person using their full potential in life, and we can all learn from her. As we’ve seen, tracking our time and reflecting on our habits is the first step to living a life of purpose.
To sum it up, the moral of the story is that everyone can live their best life, but that it takes time and commitment to achieve that goal.
After all, as Catie says it:
“We all actually have the same amount of time in the day.”
So we should indeed use it wisely.
✉️ Do you have a success story about time tracking you’d like to share? Write to us at blogfeedback@clockify.me, and you’ll get a chance to be featured in one of our future articles. And, if you liked this post and found it helpful, share it with someone you think would benefit from it.
