How Female Entrepreneurs Can Increase Productivity by Syncing with Their Menstrual Cycle

•  Why traditional time management strategies don’t always work for women
•  How hormonal shifts impact focus, motivation, and productivity
•  The four phases of your cycle and the best types of tasks for each one
•  How to use rest strategically (instead of seeing it as a setback)
•  Simple ways to start syncing your cycle with your schedule today

“Understanding how different your body and your brain actually function gives you permission to do things differently.”

“It’s not about using your cycle as a crutch, but empowering women to operate at their peak without sacrificing well-being.”

“Most women struggle with giving themselves permission to take rest, to take a week off, or to put things down for a day.”

“It’s about being in flow, not forcing anything.”

“…our world does not run in a linear fashion, in almost any capacity. Mother nature and our world functions in rhythms and cycles. Humankind is the one that’s trying to function in a very linear capacity.”

ANNE RAJOO

Traditional productivity advice tells us to have routines and wake up early morning and get all the things and basically squeezing every ounce of efficiency out of our day. And I think actually this might be working against us. And I’m excited for have Renae Fieck with us and, I think she’s got some really insightful things for us. 

RENAE FIECK 

Hi! Thank you so much for having me here. 

ANNE RAJOO

I’m so excited. I very curious about what you’re going to tell us. I have only very small, sort of like, played around with it a little bit, but I have seen that there is some truth in it, in it. So let’s get right into I think for me the important part where I want to start is, what could that be that is working against us or working with us in certain terms of our cycle and our energy and our flow when it comes to productivity.

RENAE FIECK

Totally. Well, I think the first thing is just for us to understand, like how different men and women operate on a biological, like chemical level. So men typically have testosterone four hours, sort of rhythm. They wake up in the morning fresh dose of testosterone. As they go through the day, it gets sort of depleted. They wake up the next morning in a fresh dose. And so most of us are currently functioning in sort of that rhythm, right? Like that’s the way our world works. That’s the way society is set up in this 24-type of rhythm. But when we look at the way hormones are for women, women have very different hormones. We still have some testosterone, but we function more predominantly with estrogen and progesterone. So estrogen is more dominant in the front half of the month, and then the progesterone in the second half of the month, and they feel so very different, like they and the energy that you have and the focus that you have, like all of those things, is very different. And what we’re finding now is new research coming out that those hormones are directly impacting your brain and how your brain functions. And so those days when maybe you get up and you’re just like, I can’t focus, I can’t think, I can’t create. Like, I was in this flow a couple days ago, and I was writing all this content, and things were feeling really great, and then it flip-flops. 

We sometimes get in our heads and thinking that it’s something wrong with us, that we’re just not consistent, we can’t keep up. We can’t do it. There’s something wrong. We have something other people have that we just don’t have, whether it’s discipline or these habits, or whatever it might be, when in reality, it’s biology, neurochemistry of your body and how different we are. One is helping women like what I’m so passionate about. One is helping women understand that, like, understand how different your body and your brain actually functions. So one, you give yourself a little bit more grace, and you feel like you have a little bit more permission to do things differently. And then two, also helping you amplify what you’re able to do and how productive you really, truly are. And then finally, which is, like, my most important is, like, really helping women learn to trust that, like, learn to listen to your body. Because most of society is not telling you to listen to your body, right? They’re telling here’s the five things you need to do to in the first thing in the morning. Here’s your habit stack. This is how you create new habits. These are all these little tips and tricks to become, you know, more productive and effective and all these things. But nobody’s turning back and saying, like, what does your body actually need? Instead of pushing through when you feel like, gosh, I just need some extra, but instead, you bust yourself up out of bed and get going with that 5am workout, you know, whatever it might be, instead, it really has more of this intuitive approach of, how do we support your body where you are uniquely in that cycle, but also uniquely with where you are in your life and your goals, and like, what that looks like. So I think overarching, it’s really helping women get back to, like, listening to themselves, and it starts with understanding that cycle and understanding what’s happening and how that really impacts the way you show up every day. 

ANNE RAJOO

Yeah, I love that. It’s exactly what you said, like, we feel like there’s something either wrong or someone is doing much better. 

I had quite a few conversations with friends where we like, you know, I get this voice note: I feel like I’m in a funk. I don’t know what’s going on. Last week was great and now this week, I feel terrible. And I’ll go like, where are you in your cycle? Oh, yes, because we’re talking about this, we’re not that aware and in tune with it. I’m wondering if you have some sort of, like, maybe real-life examples of your clients or yourself, what you shifted, or what they should, you know, being aware of their cycle and how that actually realized impacted their productivity.

RENAE FIECK

Totally. Well, even just yesterday, my sister sent me a text message, and she was like, I really need to work out, but I’m dragging. I have no energy. And that was my first question back to her. It was like, What? What phase a year cycle are you in? And she’s like, I’m on the last day of my period. I’m like, well, then it makes total sense. Like, and she’s like, Yeah, but I just want, I want to move my body. Like, I know, it feels so much better when I want to move my body, you know. So I was like, you know, like that, this phase is your most intuitive phase. It’s your most like time when you rest and recharge and it’s going to amplify what you’re able to get done. And so letting go of that guilt of like, have to move right now. I have to get it done right now, because it’s what we’ve been conditioned into, right that’s what we’ve been believed that, like, we have to keep moving all the time, like, if we want to have the body of our dreams, if we have to be consistent every single day. Or, you know, there’s this conditioning that’s so deeply embedded in there. And what I’ve found with so many of my clients, is that we can’t. I want every person listening to this not, I like if you walk away from this episode knowing the thing is not your weak period or your cycles of weakness, and women should not be using it as a crutch. Of like, oh, I can’t do certain things, certain phases like that is absolutely the opposite of what I am all about, like I am about helping empowering women to operate at their peak and at their best, so you can achieve amazing, wonderful things. And there’s been amazing, wonderful women who have done absolutely fantastic things in the world without knowing their cycle at all. But they may have burned themselves out in the process, or they may have relationships, or they may have, you know, sacrificed things in their lives that they didn’t necessarily sacrifice. And that’s really what I’m all about, is helping the women that I work with like be able to go after those big, huge, wonderful, amazing dreams and also take care of themselves and take care of their family and be very present and show up for them. So it really becomes this element of understanding how to work with your body, like, how, how do you support yourself so that you are operating at that best peak? And so I’ve seen clients, you know, one letting giving themselves permission, like I talked about, like, giving themselves permission to just like, take rest, take a week off, to be able to put things down for a day, I think, is huge. Most women struggle with that. Like, that is a huge struggle. I see a lot of women having. So that can be a huge one, but I’ve seen it also increase. Like, you know, people that are that sat down, like, I had a client one time, send me a message. She’s like, usually I batch out or, like, I get one or two podcast episodes done, you know, here and there, like, doing them week to week. She goes, I sat down and I just got five out smacked in a row, and it felt so freaking good. I’m like, Yes, like, that’s the energy of it. It’s like, help you get into this place where things just flow and it feels easier and it feels alive, because in business or in life, like we are going to have to do things that are hard, quote, or challenging, or that aren’t necessarily easy all the time, but how do we bring the ease back to it? How do we make those things, those obstacles, those things that we have to overcome and move through and work in the world with like, how do we make it like in the most inflow with you and how you want to show up? 

ANNE RAJOO

I like that. Yeah, I’m curious. Let’s get into the phase. So you said there’s that Oh nothing seems to go right, can’t get out of bed phase. And then there’s this, like, Yeah I’m smacking off 5 podcast episodes in one go. Tell us what’s the sort of high and low energy and like, focusing on the productivity side of things. 

RENAE FIECK

So when we look at the actual hormone of the body, like I said, we have progesterone. And there’s some other message, things like that too, estrogen, progesterone are kind of our two big players that we feel so much and so after your first phase, is your period phase, that’s your men’s phase. I call that the recharge phase, because of how it feels right. You want to focus on recharging. You want to focus on your cup. You want to focus on taking care of what is it that you need and where are you going? Like, what are those intentions? What do you what do you need to like, purge out from the month before so you can really get back into alignment with where you want to go in this next month. Then as that estrogen starts to pick up, we step into the follicular phase. This is the phase I call, like, the accelerate phase, because that’s what it feels like after you’ve just rested. It’s like, hitting the gas on the pedal. You’re like, I’m ready to go. I just, like, get me out. Like, I just took this time off. And you feel excited, right? Like, if you’ve ever had that time where you’re like, resting, and you’re on your period bumps, and you’re like, I’m excited actually to get back to work. Like, I’m excited to move my body again. I’m excited to do all these things. And so you accelerate, it’s a great time for doing any of those sorts of productivity tasks that you feel like, you keep putting off the things that are difficult, the challenging, those things that maybe aren’t the most fun, because you’re going to feel the best at just like sitting down and narrowing it in getting it done like it just feels the most aligned. A lot of really high achieving women love this phase, because they feel like you get so much done in this phase, and then as estrogen peaks out at the top, as vitamins have a modulation, so your body is telling the world, like, make a baby with me, and so you are the most magnetic. You’re the most radiant and most confident, the most attractive in so many ways, physiologically and just emotionally, like just mentally, like you were about connecting with other people and talking with other people. So you want to ask a raise at work, or if you want to have a hard conversation, you want to go on date night, happy hour, all of those types of things, because you’re going to feel the most ready for that. I’m an introvert. Don’t ask me to go out to be with people. If I’m not in this phase, or even the follicular phase, I can probably get to it. But like, even when I move your phase or my mental phase, I’m like, it’s a absolutely not like, not gonna happen. You’re not gonna do it, yeah. And then yeah, you get to that after you ovulate, your estrogen dips off, and then progesterone kicks in. And when progesterone kicks in, just

the face the week before, that’s the heart. And they’re like, exhausted, and the kids leaving their sock on the floor last week was no big deal. You just picked it up and put it in the water. Speak, it’s like a central bit of, like, how am I the only one that does anything ever, ever, Why does nobody do, you know, like, the whole thing, yeah, so it can be also another phase. Maybe you go through and you’re like, clean up my entire closet. I don’t I’m gonna, like, declutter everything. And you get, like, in this bit of just, like, shorting and organizing. It tends to be the time every month I’m like, I’m going to clean out my downloads folder. My Downloads folder goes, everything goes in the Downloads folder. And then once a month, I’m like, where does it go? Where does it need to live? And sorting and organizing. So it can be very organizational, very detail oriented, also very productive. But it’s a completely different type of productivity. It’s not a productivity where you’re like, I want to be out there talking to people and putting big projects out there. You can dot your T’s, cross your eyes type of productivity, and then on top of that, being that it’s so emotional, it can be really powerful if you’re a business owner, because it helps you, like, actually feel into what your business your clients are feeling, and like help you have more empathy and connection with them, to be incredibly powerful, but it also allows you to be able to open up and become more expansive. 

And all of those triggers, all those moments of overwhelm, all of those fears, was something release those doubts. They’re all here to help teach us something. They’re all here to help us grow into our, like, next version of ourselves. And what most people are doing is kind of stuffing them down and trying to get a good month and, like, trying to move through and then they just build on each other, and they get worse and worse and worse. And the body holds on to all of that. The body remembers that, even if we’re not consciously paying attention to it, so that time, all those triggers and overwhelm start to come up It’s a really great time to actually lean into them and actually learn from them and process them and actually feel from them, but rather than just trying to brush them off. So each one of the different phases can feel very different, and they each have different strengths. They each have different things that we’re doing in terms of productivity, but they all incredibly productive in helping us move forward in the world and in our lives, but also feel really balanced as we do it, instead of feeling like we have to carry all of it at the same time. 

ANNE RAJOO

I love that. I love that you actually focused on the strength. Because, I’ll be honest, I’m one of those because, like, the week before the period, like terrible, because I’m not as productive. But I love that you actually pointed out there is this other kind of productivity that I maybe wanna tap into a little bit more. And, yeah, what I really heard you say is that there’s this strength in every phase of their cycle, and when we understand that, we can really tap into it. And so let’s say like, I’m obviously, what is the word? I’m tracking my cycle, and I know more or less what’s going on, and I understand the phases, but I haven’t really applied to my work. What? How would you like, what would you tell me? How could I do that in a very simple, you know, not overwhelming way, and definitely not just like, oh, now I’m going to be always looking which phase Am I in? Like, yeah, okay. What do you recommend for me? 

RENAE FIECK 

Yeah, well, I mean, I have my whole course is really on this. So let me give some of the big, quick nuts and bolts, I would say number one. One of my number one hacks would be to put your cycle on your calendar. So but it’s something that you’re not having to always think about of going to your calendar and be like before I say yes to you, let me check my cycle calendar that it’s just always on there, right? It’s always there front and center every time you open up your calendar, you know, this morning, it’s like, here’s where I’m at. Like, how can I use that information throughout the day, rather than necessarily being an added task? Nobody needs more tasks added to our calendar, like, schedule so, like, don’t add more work to your life. Like, make it its own. So for me, I use Google Calendar, and I have it has my own cycle or my it has its own cycle calendar. So it’s like its own calendar. It repeats every month. So based on how many days my cycle, used to be closer to 3233 days, now it’s closer to 31 so like it just repeats every 31 days. But things on my calendar, it blocks out my schedule on the weeks that I don’t want anything booked on my calendar, it has, like it just it operates and functions for me. So that would, I would say, would be number one

Number two, using kind of some of that same knowledge, but also going deeper into just the masculine approach of putting our calendar and trying to sync with all of our tasks, is having this practice of being able to tune in with your body every single day. So whether that’s just sitting on you, like, what do I need today? What does my body need today? Whether it’s a somatic practice like breath work or meditation or at EFT tapping or something, but having some way for you to be able to touch base with what’s actually happening inside your body, because there are going to be days when things don’t match up the way you want them to. There are going to be days when your cycle goes longer, you know, you don’t ovulate when you think you’re going to there’s been days when kids get sick, or any of any of the confounding things in our world that could possibly happen, like I venture to say, most of my clients and even me, I would say, let like, it’s probably less than 50% of our tasks actually match up with our cycle. So it doesn’t mean that you have to have everything matching in order to have the benefits of it, right? So it’s really this practice of understanding what your body needs, and how do you actually fit into that? 

There’s something that most of the world is not teaching us. It’s not telling us to do. You know, they’re giving us the list of the five things you have to do, or the rules and the confines, but nobody is actually saying, hey Anne, and your body is uniquely yours, and your life is uniquely yours, and your family and your rhythms and like everything is uniquely yours. So how do we understand your cycle, in the confines of your life, in the confounds of your energy, like all of those pieces like and really show up and like, what do you need today? And I think that’s one of the bigger, most valuable questions that we can do. Because, like I said, I can go through the nitty gritty of, like, how do you back out all of your tasks and match where they go? And, like, you know, tell you like, exactly where things should line up. But at the core of it, these, those two things, is everything.

ANNE RJAOO

Yeah, I like that. And I think, really, what comes to mind is this whole thing of what you said, like, for me, that the week before period is hard. I have already understood that. Ok I feel like that, let’s check what’s the feedback. Where am I? Oh, okay, yeah, makes sense. It’s okay. And, you know, don’t put through that’s what I would normally have done. And then what you said as well, what, like, don’t go out on big meetings and events and stuff like that. Like, if I have, like, especially, I do actually have a look, because I know I just don’t enjoy these things, and I feel so drained, and I take days to recover from it. If it’s in that phase of, like, you know, me kind of wanting to cocoon. That’s definitely two things I’ve noticed with myself. And you just gave me ideas of, like, what I could change when I’m in these phases of, like, maybe not feeling as productive. So I love that, yeah. 

But I’ll also be honest, for me, in the last quarter, my period has been a bit irregular. So I’m wondering, what do I do with that? Like, obviously, I’m getting into that age.

RENAE FIECK

Yeah, there’s a lot, right? Like, whether you maybe are having irregular cycle or on birth control or pregnant or parent than a couple, or any of those types of things, we can look at it as like, oh, how do I actually do this? And will this work for me? And I think one is one asking better key questions in the sense of, like, how can I actually apply this? Like, what? What of this can I actually still use? Maybe it’s not going to be exactly the same, but like, How can I and what things can I glaze from this? And I think one of the big things that came up for me when I started asking that question of, like, how does this actually work for women that are outside of that just standard, normal menstrual cycle? Like, what does it look like when really we’re dealing with human beings that are very unique. Is one understanding that everything that we our world impacting our hormones, right the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we exercise, how much stress that we have, all of those things is impacting how our hormones are running so and our body’s smart, our body’s trying to learn, right? Like, it tries to adapt, like, if we I went through a bout of like, learning how to do intermittent fasting based on your cycle. And that’s a whole different story. But like, if you’re not used to intermittent fasting, and you wake up in the morning, the first time I tried it, I was a bear. I was so hungry. I was like, my body needs food right now. Like it needs food right now. I was cranky and irritable and frustrated and all things. But you stick with it after a while, and your body starts to learn, hey, we don’t eat at eight o’clock anymore. We don’t eat till noon, or whatever it might be. It stops sending you hungry foods. Signals at eight o’clock. It waits until 12, right? Because we’ve learned like, Oh, this is the rhythm that we’re in. So sometimes it is looking at like, what are the rhythms you actually have in your life, and are they conducive and supportive to having really healthy menstrual cycle, and the really healthy like life, like those are actually eating and living and working in a way that supports our homeless. For most of us, most of us have so many things in our environment that are causing our things, as simple as like, our sleep, our food, but the products that we’re using, right? But there’s so many products disrupting. Start looking at, like, what are the things I am externally doing that can help support those hormones to run functionally? 

The bigger question started asking these questions is like, huh, we in the world operate like our entire world runs in cycles. Our entire world right when we start looking at talked about, like, you’re in summer, I’m in winter right now. So we’re like, completely different seasons. We have rhythms of the moon, we have rhythms of the sun, we have rhythms of the ocean, the tides. There’s life cycles. There’s cycles in our politics. There’s cycles in the stock market. Like our world does not run in a linear fashion, in almost any capacity. Mother nature and our world functions in rhythms and cycles. Humankind is the one that’s trying to function in a very linear capacity. And when we do that, what do we end up with? Nutrient-depleted soils. We end up with climate change. We end up with all of these things. Because if Mother Earth is like I can’t produce and function like this all year long, like I need to rest too. And so we start to take that bigger question of we are cyclical beings. We exist in a cyclical universe and a cyclical Mother Nature. What is that cycle that exists for you, even if you are on birth control and it’s not your hormones or you’re in perimenopause or menopause, and it’s your home runs in a very different place. What is, what is that cycle for you? Because we all have a cycle. It’s just a matter of like, how we’re leanng into it, how we’re supporting it, about the whole seasons and comes up winter in summer, and how that can play out in business, interesting as well. 

ANNE RAJOO

So yeah, I love that. I recently listened to a podcast with someone talking about the whole seasons in terms of enter and summer and how that can play out in business. So I love that. It doesn’t maybe have to be your cycle, but there are still seasons and cycles that you can work with. 

Anything else that you want to share before we wrap it up, anything that you think is super important for anyone who’s curious about the whole cycle. And, yeah, improving productivity through that.

RENAE FIECK

I mean, I would just say, like, for a start, like, give yourself grace in it. Like, there. This is a very fluid thing. There’s a lot of women that come to me and they’re like, exactly, tell me how to put this here and where, and how do I organize it and all the things. And I’m happy to do that. Like my logical brain can click on and go that way. But there’s also such a fluidity of like, learning to just lean in and trust your body, and learning to listen to your body. And there’s that balance of doing both, of really leaning into your feminine in all aspects, and not just in feminine in a very masculine way. So I would say number one, give yourself permission to just test it out. And then, the second piece of that, it’s just, just start listening, just start tracking, just start understanding. Like, use one little bit, even if just be awareness. I see a lot of people, just be awareness, like you talked about ant of being like, this is where I’m at right now. Oh, okay, maybe I will let myself take a rest, or maybe I not gonna give myself so much pressure. (dog barking) Sorry, my do. He, the cat came out of the room and now he’s all excited.

But just give yourself that permission to just test it out and try it out. And I think that’s the greatest thing I would leave people with.

ANNE RAJOO

I love that, because that’s what I tell my clients when it comes to productivity and changing things around there. And let’s play a bit. Let’s try it out and see how it feels and how it works. Something else so that. I love that so much. 

Well, you’ve got the really brilliant course that helps people with that. So maybe you want to share that I do. 

RENAE FIECK

Yeah, the book a great place to start. If you want to pick that up, it’s Cyclesync Your Business. You can find it at cycle-sync-you-business.com there are a couple different book retailers like, I know for sure Amazon has it, but I also know, like some people have reported, that they found it some local bookshops and things like that. So you never know where you might find it, but cycle seeker business.com for sure, and then, yeah, my program, your cycle advantage, really is the nitty gritty of helping people start to learn how to put this into your calendar, how do you put this into your workflow, how do you start leaving a business and running your life from more of this feminine place and adjusting when life doesn’t always throw you the same curveballs like when things go awry and how you adjust with that, so kind of the basics for really stepping into that beginning of feminine embodiment. Those would be both great places and all of it you can find on my website just reneafieck.com for sue.

ANNE RAJOO

Love it. Thank you so much. It was brilliant. I really liked that you pointed out these strengths and really took us away from seeing this as some blockage or hindrance to productivity. I think we can really turn things around. Thank you so much.

RENAE FIECK

Thanks for having me.