InfluenceHer Summit capitalizes on time management as a superpower
The summit concluded on Thursday, March 27 at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens.
In a room of about 80 women, not a single person denied struggling with time management at one time or another. Lucky for attendees of the annual InfluenceHer Summit, hosted by First Horizon Bank, Samantha Lane, the Founder of Origami Day, a time management coach, and speaker shared inside tips for how to make the most out of your day while also creating a life you love.
She shared three pillars of time management: prioritize, plan, and protect. Lane knows the importance of these three pillars all too well.
Prioritize
Lane was a self-proclaimed “workaholic” who spent her days operating with the utmost urgency on every task she tackled. It wasn’t until a critical health condition put her in the hospital that she realized that time is finite – and she had no control of it.
Fast forward to 2007, Lane decided to step back from her overdemanding corporate career and create a life she loved. A portion of that was to teach herself how to better manage time, and the other part was to teach others so they don’t make the same mistake. Today, Lane is recognized as one of the primary thought leaders in the time-management space.
She uses the Eisenhower Urgency Matrix to help people examine their day-to-day activities and place them in buckets of importance.
Plan
“How we spend each day is how we spend our lives,” Lane said. “Planning for the day to day is life changing.”
She created a paper seven-day planner that folds down from a full week into individual days. Her company is called “Origami Day” to pay homage to the act of physically folding your day to day schedule, as well as her Japanese-American roots.
“An essential part of Japanese heritage is paying respect to ancestors and the family who came before me,” Lane explained on her website.
She recommended that people note three things on their planning sheets – things they need to do, and things they would want to do. By laying out the whole week on paper, it’s easy to note where you need to cut back, or where you have large pockets of time to get things done.
“Friday planning saves you from the Sunday scaries,” she said. “A 30-minute weekly planning session with yourself or with your souse is the magic bullet to better life management.”
Protect
Once everything is detailed on a paper sheet, Lane encouraged people to use digital reinforcement strategies like setting calendar reminders and “time to leave” notifications. For her, once her schedule is written down on a piece of paper, it becomes set in stone.
“Saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else,” she said. As an example, Lane pointed to an employee who spends time saying “yes” to tasks that could be deemed as busy work, and ends up not having time to work on an important, engaging, and fulfilling project deadline.
“You need to think upstream and prepare to protect your schedule from outside forces,” she said.
Lane’s keynote session was followed by an economic outlook provided by First Horizon’s Chief Investment Officer, Tracy Bell and Senor Economist of FHN Financial (a First Horizon affiliate), Sophia Kearney-Leaderman. The two spoke on the economy’s uncertainty in early 2025, and unveiled the Fed’s predictions for the next few years.
The closing session featured a relaxing, rewarding, and rejuvinating session led by Sheryl Houston, a transformation coach. She spoke about the importance of taking a break or “sabbatical,” whether its for one day, one week, or one month.
You can learn more about the annual summit here.
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