Manager Memo podcast · Len Samborowski, MBA Associate Professor, Nichols College

The Art of Bending Time

·37 min·2 clips

Michelle calls "work-life balance" "bullshit" and argues people are one whole human being.

Michelle Niemeyer is introduced as a keynote speaker, wellness and productivity consultant, and expert in time management. She says the first step in bending time is knowing who you are and what lights you up. That clarity, she says, becomes fuel. She then walks through her move out of law after 33 years and says she is doing this full time now. She says she had real successes and periods of deep engagement. She also warns that being good at a job can keep you there longer than is healthy. The conversation keeps returning to burnout and the cost of staying flat for too long. Niemeyer asks listeners to remember the moments when they felt most alive and effective. She wants them to notice the scene around the memory, not just the result. Were they with a team, solving a hard problem, or physically in motion. She points out that people learn and remember in different ways. Some are verbal, some are visual, and some are kinesthetic. That matters because the thing that restores a person may not look like work at all. For some, it is running or skiing or another kind of movement. She offers a coaching example to make it concrete. A client doubled his business after he got back to surfing. The shift did not come from a new script or a better spreadsheet. It came from getting back the energy that had gone missing. She uses that story to push back on the idea of work-life balance as a neat separation. The closing stretch leans on being open enough to ask for advice, support, or company when life feels stuck.

As heard by us

Clear self-knowledge and energy management shape the episode.

Manager Memo lands on a plain but useful idea: better work starts with knowing what matters and what restores energy. Michelle Niemeyer, a former lawyer who now works full time as a keynote speaker, wellness and productivity consultant, and time management expert, comes across…

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Why you'd press play

If you are out of time, start by finding what lights you up.

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