#72 "Old Lady Time"

I’m struggling to write this newsletter issue because I’m in that post-lunch, pre-dinner snack-craving phase and I’m looking at photos Sara Loretta—a business optimization strategist at systms & fellow Notion Ambassador—sent me.

Just look at those bagels. 🥯

So, how did I end up with a handful of baked goods visuals landing in my inbox?

Sara shared in our Notion Ambassador Slack mentioning “Old Lady Time”—her way of switching off from work to do something creative, peaceful, soul-not-bank-account-enriching.

I wanted to dig a bit deeper about this concept. Sara explains,

“Old Lady Time is doing all the things that I used to do with my grandmother — having a cup of tea and working on a puzzle, cooking/baking and chatting with friends, reading. It’s my version of offline mode.

I don’t share these things on social media (98% of the time), because its my time to connect with the things I was raised on, and hold dear to my heart.

My Old Lady Time is a daily non-negotiable. I usually spend an hour in the middle of the day with no screens, and of course after work cooking dinner.”

Switching off as a business owner is hard. As is getting out of the mindset that everything you do in life should come with a financial ROI at some point.

For this reason, Sara has a hard rule:

“I will not monetize my creative hobbies.”

She tells me a story that's all too familiar for anyone who's spent any time on LinkedIn—that endless cycle of personal branding, service promotion, and the delicate dance of "please hire me" wrapped in a façade of confident expertise.

“There is enough pressure as an entrepreneur to make money from everything and share every aspect of your life to ‘build in public’, and I know that the second I do that, it will no longer be for me or enjoyable,” she explains.

“However, I feel like I have a solid routine (1 hour a day) that easily gives me time to be creative without it feeling like a chore or feeling guilty for doing something else I love instead of just working on my business all the time.”

Making bread fits this perfectly. It’s a staple of Sara’s ancestry and childhood. Her grandmother would always have a fresh, crusty loaf ready to snack on, with another slice or two with to accompany dinner.

“However, I got really into making my own bread in my 20s because of how bad store-bought bread (in the US) is for you. Now I make everything from sandwich bread to pasta and tortillas.”

If you’re looking for recommendations on what to make, here’s two great options Sara suggests:

• Homemade tortillas (recipe here)

• Shredded chicken tacos—Sara’s weekly dinner staple (recipe here)

Beyond transforming flour and water into artisanal loaves, Sara's creative spirit finds another outlet in writing. When I ask about the novel she once mentioned on LinkedIn, she laughs:

“Ha, my first novel. I really need to finish that. I started working on this story in undergrad. I took a class where we had to write a pilot for a TV show, and the concept I developed stuck out in so many ways that I decided to explore it further.”

But what brings all these outlets together is how they all have systems of their own. Systems that can be followed and replicated every time for success. “I think that’s why I enjoy what I do, because I completely control the outcome, there’s no surprises (usually),” she explains.

And systems have a role to play in how Sara splits her time between personal and business activities. Over the past seven years of freelancing, that’s the biggest change she’s made. How does it work? She now follows her energy ebbs and flows, instead of trying to fit a square into a circle (aka pushing through energy dips no matter what):

“Circling back to my one-hour Old Lady Time block, I usually do that about 2pm, because my energy is lower. I don’t force myself to work through that low by having another cup of coffee.

Same as I usually work at 9/10pm every night because I have a burst of energy after going to the gym.

I think I get more done now than I did when I first started freelancing thinking I needed to follow the traditional 9-5 hours so I was available as much as possible.”

Tying in with my last week’s thoughts, offline recharge is where it’s at. Doing it because you want to and it brings you joy, not because algorithm likes it and engagement boosts your ego.

And this is exactly the idea that Sara leaves us with:

That’s all from me this week—if you enjoyed this newsletter issue and haven’t subscribed yet, you can click the button below. I’d love to have you here! Hopefully, catch you next week.✨