Amanda Goetz Doesn't Believe in Balance

If she were merely the head of brand marketing at the Knot, Amanda Goetz would have enough work to fill her days—and enough stress to guarantee plenty of sleepless nights.

But that’s not all Amanda Goetz does. She’s also getting a new startup off the ground, and homeschooling two of her three kids (“After this is phonics,” she tells me as we sit down). There’s also, like, a global pandemic going on.

I figured I would hear from Amanda that her life is all about “balance”: how to get it, how to keep it, how to hold one thing in each hand. But Amanda Goetz prefers to embrace it all. She doesn’t believe in balance.

She doesn’t expect her life to be separated into discrete parts of work and family and interiority. It’s one life, and trying to pretend things can be perfectly compartmentalized—especially when you’re working at home with kids because of a global pandemic—leads to more stress, more guilt, and less realistic expectations. She lets them blend, and lets everybody know.

She took my call during her “bopping around” hours in the middle of the day, when her kids sometimes sit in her lap while she’s in a meeting, or she emails while waiting for her daughter to finish an assignment, when everything blends, when they’re “in it together.”

We talked about how she sets expectations clearly: with her kids, with her colleagues, and with herself—and then makes sure she lives up to them. We also talked about how she makes sure to carve out focus time and alone time even in the middle of her busy blended days. And we covered the time and emotional management skills she’s developed over the years to sprint through her ambitious schedule.

So much of what Amanda told me sounded hard-earned, genuine, and simple—the way things kind of are when you’re talking to someone who takes no bullshit. But she’s probably wouldn’t call anything bullshit. Instead she says, “I don’t believe in that.”

Want to know what she does believe in? Let’s dive in!

Amanda introduces herself

I lead brand marketing at The Knot Worldwide – the global leader in all things wedding planning.

I oversee everything to do with brand-building, so that includes PR, social partnerships, influencers, our community channels, and all of our editorial content.

Prior to that, when I was pregnant with my first child, I had my own tech startup in the wedding industry. As a first-time founder, I learned all about how to navigate the fundraising process.

My life these days is based around working my role at The Knot, fundraising for a new startup I’m working on, raising three kids, and being their homeschool teacher – all in the middle of a pandemic.

I want to talk about how I approach getting all of that done.

I wake up at 6 and set an intention for the day

I do ‘me time’ when I wake up, around six. That's my quiet time – before the kids wake up – when I can just check in with myself.

I have my coffee, sit, and think. A moment of focus, when I can set an intention for the day.

To clarify what that is, I’ll ask myself, ‘What does success look like for this day?’ Is it going to be more high-energy, where I’m really going to bring everything? If yes, my daily intention might be, ‘Today I want to knock out a couple of big things for my startup.’

On the other hand, my intention could be ‘I’m going to give myself more lazy time today, so I’m not going to do a workout’ – because I believe you should be intentional about being lazy, too. Or maybe I’ll decide that ‘today I’m going to focus on the kids and have some real family time’.

I put my intention into an email I send to myself every morning – it ends up in my inbox, and since I’m an inbox-zero kind of person, that means I’ll take action on it.

Whatever daily intention I set, my ultimate goal is that when I go to bed at night, I don’t feel guilty for not getting to something that I should have gotten done.

With that done, I’m ready when the kids wake up at seven. I cook them some breakfast, and we make sure to sync our Zoom schedules for the days’ homeschooling.

Right after this interview is phonics – just so you know!

I play offense with a 90-minute work sprint every morning

After breakfast comes my power time. It’s what I think of as my ‘offense time’ from my years as a basketball player – when I’m in charge and in most control of my thinking.

I let the kids go play, and I go into a 90-minute sprint where I am head-down, cranking out the two to three big items that I want to move forward for the day – and my team knows not to schedule me for anything during that time.

It turns out that medical science confirms what I’ve known for years – I’m a morning person.

I went to a doctor who specializes in the gut microbiome, and who did a full suite of tests on my cortisol levels to find out how my energy tracks during the day.

For me, there was consistently a huge spike in the morning, a huge crash by 3:00pm, and it all evened out to more normal levels around bedtime.

My cortisol levels in the morning are three times higher than at any other part of my day – so I know morning is when I’ll get the most work done, and I let the kids play on their own.

I use that time, when I’m thinking and working at my best, for the things that really need to get done – like team updates, or sending out strategy or OKR reminders – or the bigger, meatier things that require more focus – like working on a deck or a creative strategy.

Later in the afternoon, as my cortisol levels go down, I feel more sluggish. That’s when I can go for a walk with the kids, or spend time with them in other ways, because my brain actually needs that break.