Join Mind the Mess for real stories, practical tools, and thoughtful prompts to help you grow — in life and at work.
COMING SOON
BY YOUR OWN DESIGN
A life design workshop series for women
The productivity industry was built on a 24-hour hormonal cycle, an uninterrupted workday, and a person whose cognitive load begins and ends with their own goals. That person is, statistically, a man with a support system he doesn't see.
These workshops start from the life you actually live.
The Pattern
You've read the books. Tried the systems. Downloaded the planners.
Some of it worked for a while, until it didn't.
At some point you probably concluded the problem was you.
Not enough discipline. Not enough consistency. Not together enough.
The research on women's lives tells a different story.
Women perform an estimated $11 trillion of unpaid labour globally each year. In heterosexual couples, women disproportionately do the anticipating and monitoring of household needs while their partners enter at the decision stage. Women's free time is more fragmented, more interrupted, and more contaminated by the awareness that someone might need something. 43% of women with ADHD are first diagnosed between 41 and 50, when perimenopause strips away the coping strategies that masked it for decades. And every failed system adds another layer to what researcher Brendan Mahan calls the wall of awful: the emotional barrier that makes it harder to try again.
This is a design problem with structural roots that go far deeper
than most coaching is willing to look at.
What makes this different
By Your Own Design takes the research seriously. Not the watered-down, Instagram-friendly version. The actual evidence from feminist economics, cognitive science, disability justice, and neurodivergent-affirming psychology.
Six standalone workshops.
Two-three hours each.
No prior attendance required.
Each one built around a specific question about how women's lives actually work.
Every workshop names the trap it could become. Capacity tracking that turns into a performance metric. Structural analysis that becomes a venting session changing nothing. Refusal as a personality brand. The research is clear that even feminist critique can become another form of self-optimisation if you're not careful. We are careful.
Three Shifts
Capacity over productivity
What kind of tired are you, and what does your energy actually do across a week? We use Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith's seven types of rest and cyclical capacity models to build from what you have, not what you wish you had. These workshops replace the assumption that you should perform at the same level every day with something more honest.
Structure over self-blame
What are you actually carrying, and whose design are you struggling inside? We use Allison Daminger's research on cognitive labour, the distinction between six kinds of invisible work that popular culture collapses into one, and the neuroscience of interest-based motivation. These workshops give you precise language for what you're experiencing and practical ways to externalise the load your brain was never meant to hold alone.
Collective over solo
What can be redistributed, and what can you refuse? We use Eve Rodsky's CPE framework, Emily Nagoski's concept of Human Giver Syndrome, and Oliver Burkeman's thinking on finite time. These workshops are where the work moves from individual coping to shared responsibility and deliberate refusal. They're also the hardest, which is why we do them together.
What you leave with
A question you can keep asking yourself. One practical thing you built in the room. And permission to let it break and come back to it.
The goal is not a better system. It is a life that works well enough, with room for imperfection, rest, and joy that serves no productive purpose at all.
Want to be the first to know when the workshops start?
→ Join the Mind the Mess newsletter.
THE TRAVELLING COACH
Sarah Will
C/ Jose Manaut Viglietti 3
46024 Valencia
Quick links