My Sustainable PACE “I thought it was a fantasy to wake up excited to start work on my business, but that’s how I feel”
Client: Jane Cavanagh
Occupation: Founder, Jane Cavanagh Flute School
Location: Sydney, Australia
foundher program: Sustainable PACE & SustainAbility
Flute teacher and business owner Jane Cavanagh has reinvigorated her approach to work – and unlocked joy for the everyday – thanks to the Sustainable PACE course.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a tipping point for many high achievers struggling to balance the competing demands of work and life. When Jane Cavanagh launched a membership component to her flute teaching business during Sydney’s lockdowns she soon discovered that her approach to work wasn’t working.
“I felt like I was trying to run two lives at once,” she explains. “I was very overwhelmed.”
Kicking off The Flute School Flute Academy membership program during lockdown was great at first, Jane recalls. After all, she had more time to spend at her computer every day.
“Then, at the start of 2022, when life started to go back to normal, I found that I couldn’t run a business from home every day, and also go to my tutoring job, and also have a social life and also have various appointments – to do it all at once,” Jane says. “I was really stressed and I felt like I had dug myself a hole.”
Jane heard about Sustainable PACE through the One Roof community for female entrepreneurs and realised it was what she needed.
“Elana was clear with how she sold the course to me, so I knew what to expect,” she says. “That was basically to reduce overwhelm and have a work life that I actually wanted for myself.”
A Mindset shift
While Elana had told Jane that she would come out of PACE with a blueprint for a life she loved, Jane was sceptical that anyone could wake up brimming with excitement to go to work.
“I thought it was a fantasy to be able to get up in the morning and be excited to start work,” Jane says with a laugh. “People would talk about it and I’d think, ‘yeah, right’. But that’s currently how I feel. I feel like I’m excited to get up in the morning and start working on my online business.”
While there are plenty of practical tools that have helped Jane get on top of her overwhelm and fall in love with work again (more on those later), Jane says it all started with a mindset shift.
“I thought it was a fantasy to be able to get up in the morning and be excited to start work. People would talk about it and I’d think, ‘yeah, right’. But that’s currently how I feel.”
“It’s the constant weekly exposure to Elana’s education about the fact that you can have a life that you want. It’s not indulgent. It’s not greedy. And it’s actually up to you,” Jane explains.
“My favourite quote that Elana shared is, ‘If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.’ That hit a nice note in my brain. Because until I did PACE I thought that I was being self-indulgent by wanting space and leisure time. But I’ve realised that if you don’t put it there, no one else is going to.”
Designing the day
Jane had already started to explore time-management strategies to address her overwhelm before she started PACE. But, she admits, “I’d really only gotten myself 5 per cent of the way there.”
Jane had begun a simple morning routine of a gentle walk that gave her time to think, and says that PACE showed her how important it is to keep that practice going.
But, PACE doesn’t stop at movement when it comes to designing a morning routine that will set you up for success. In the Sustainable PACE program, students also learn why it’s crucial to have a meeting with yourself to plan your day according to how you feel and what you need to achieve. This, as well as learning to notice when you’re better wired to do different types of work, has been key to unlocking Jane’s joy for her work.
“When I joined PACE, I had just decided that I was only going to check emails once a day. So, I was already not a slave to my emails. However, I was checking them first thing in the morning, and I thought that was a good idea because it felt like I was getting them out of the way,” Jane explains. “But the big game-changer for me was shifting that [email check-in] to the middle of the day and having the whole morning to work on something that I really wanted to work on.”
We love seeing our students discover that they have the power to decide when and how they want to work, depending on their own unique rhythm. For Jane, a later email check-in has opened up a vein of productivity and inspiration in the morning.
Jane says she’s been able to use the morning hours to enhance her students’ experience inside the The Flute Academy, making it even more engaging by setting up practising incentives – something she’s been considering for a long time. She’s also thrilled to realise that she has more creativity available in the morning, which has supercharged her business communications.
“The big game-changer for me was shifting that [email check-in] to the middle of the day and having that whole morning to work on something I want to work on.”
“The mornings have given me the headspace to be able to change my style of writing when I send out a video to my email list every week,” Jane says. “I started making it more personal, writing stories and anecdotes, something that’s relevant to the student and helpful to the reader, rather than just information. It’s more interesting to read, and I think it’s more engaging, and I really like doing it.”
This is the beauty of finding your own sustainable rhythm. When you take away the white noise of other people’s demands to tune into what your body needs, you find a whole new definition of high performance.
Planning for success
Jane has embraced Sustainable PACE’s planning tools to address her overwhelm and ensure she builds space for herself into every day. She says it’s a practice that she’s continued to customise since finishing the eight-week program in 2022.
“The organisation of my day, week and month has been refined over the last few months,” she says. “It’s at a point now where it’s really working for me.”
Jane uses PACE’s 90-day planning method to plan her months every quarter, with weekly and daily check-ins to adjust her schedule.
“Every Friday I do a review of the week and plan the next week. Then I can go into the weekend without thinking about anything,” she explains.
Like many people new to the Sustainable PACE Method, Jane assumed that this amount of planning would be “overkill”. But she says that the organisational tools she learned in PACE have helped her realise that planning her time thoroughly leads to greater efficiencies at work, as she can see exactly how much time she has in a day and adjust her workload to suit, while making sure she protects downtime for herself.
“Now, I actually feel like I have space for myself.”
As a result, the way Jane thinks about her productivity has completely changed.
“I definitely feel like I’m getting more done in less time,” she says. “Probably in reality, it’s the same amount I was getting done before. It’s just that now I actually feel like I have space for myself. And I feel like I’m being productive, as opposed to before, when I thought I was never finishing, I was never doing enough or getting enough done. I feel a whole lot better now.”
Keeping up the PACE
Jane has also joined foundher’s ongoing program for PACE graduates, SustainAbility.
In this online group program, students who have completed PACE come together on the first two Friday mornings of the month for an in-depth masterclass led by Elana followed by an integration session.
It’s a fantastic opportunity to continue learning and building on Sustainable PACE strategies while enjoying the same friendly support of the small-group setting that PACE offers.
Jane said it was a no-brainer to join SustainAbility after her PACE experience ended as she wanted to keep up her new momentum.
“I saw what I got out of Sustainable PACE and I knew that it could just keep getting better and better. And I wanted some of that!” she says.
“It’s now part of my Friday routine,” Jane adds. “Even when we don’t have calls, I have some time blocked off to still work on those sorts of things every Friday. And the fact that it’s a live call keeps me on track.”
“I saw what I got out of Sustainable PACE and I knew that it could just keep getting better and better. And I wanted some of that!”
Jane has been delighted to find a warm, welcoming community within PACE and SustainAbility and says Elana does a lot “to foster the connections between people.”
Her transformative foundher experience means she now champions PACE to others. “I tell my friends about it and I call it ‘the business course to make you feel less overwhelmed’,” Jane says. “If you want to feel less overwhelmed, it’s a really good thing to do for yourself – and your business.”
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