How Busy Pros Actually Take a Break (and Thrive)

How to Actually Take a Break and Enjoy Vacation

Life has a way of throwing curveballs—school drop-offs, surprise PTO, family vacations, sick kids—interruptions that can tank your momentum if you’re not ready. But you can plan for them without burning out or losing your stride.

Kristi and Kelcie are sharing their PAUSE method: a simple, actionable framework to help you navigate busy seasons with more ease and less chaos. If you’re trying to balance business goals with family schedules and still show up as your best self… this episode is for you.

✨ In this episode, we cover:

• How to spot and prepare for recurring patterns of chaos
• Why automating and delegating are your secret weapons
• How to reset and update your priorities when life gets hectic
• The key to setting clear expectations with clients, team, and family
• Why easing back into your routine (instead of sprinting) helps you sustain momentum
• Bonus: How to create a “momentum menu” for those messy in-between days
• How to protect your energy without striving for perfection

💡 Real Talk Takeaways:

• Interruptions are normal... your plan is what matters.
• You don’t have to do it all; delegate what you can.
• Your future self will thank you for automating now.
• Resetting expectations reduces stress for everyone.
• Momentum comes from small, intentional steps.
• Progress > perfection. Keep moving forward.

🎯 Chapter Markers
00:00 — Intro: Life Interrupted
03:01 — The PAUSE Method Explained
06:04 — Automate & Delegate to Protect Your Time
09:01 — Updating Priorities Mid-Chaos
11:45 — Setting Expectations with Others
20:44 — Easing Back Into Your Routine
23:43 — Bonus Tips to Keep Momentum

—

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🎙️ About the Podcast

Take It and Run is the podcast for ambitious professionals—especially real estate agents—who want practical strategies they can implement immediately. Each episode delivers mindset shifts, frameworks, and real-world insights to help you move from thinking about it… to doing it.

Transcript

Kristi Jencks (00:01.56)
All right, welcome back to the Take It and Run podcast with your host, Kristi and Kelcie. And let's just start off by saying I was gone, like out of my house for 15 days in July. And that was a little bit hard. And so as Kelcie and I were preparing for this episode, one of the things that I was telling her and she's actually getting ready to go on a little trip with

her family, we were talking about, it seems like there's always something that comes up in life. And it's between vacations, my kids go back to school next week. You heard that right. Here in Arizona, we start school in the middle of July. It's gonna be like on or Nate next week, no big deal. But the kids' schedules, things that I hear from busy professionals all the time is like, but my kids are gonna be on break or my kids are going back to school or.

Kelcie Dowd (00:48.671)
It's got to in there.

Kristi Jencks (01:00.302)
Christmas is coming, Thanksgiving's coming, Fourth of July is coming, right? Or a vacation. There's always these random curveballs. There's always something that threatens your momentum or threatens your routine. So I want to take this time to talk about what if you could plan for the interruptions and actually use them for your advantage.

Kelcie Dowd (01:21.076)
Yeah, and we actually came up with a method, like an actual acronym. We love acronyms, but a framework for when, you know, whether it's a planned vacation or something unexpected happens, or it's just back to school, like Kristi was saying, that it helps you protect your momentum. So whether you're at the beach or just getting ready for life to start back up again in its routines, we got something for you.

Kristi Jencks (01:51.086)
So we're going to introduce what we call the PAUSE Method. It's a framework to help you try to find and prepare for the patterns of life. We like to think that life is random. But a lot of times, we actually know when school starts. It starts this, I can look it up. I know when school starts. Holidays, they hit like clockwork. So why are we treating them like surprises?

kind of zoom out a little bit and talk about the prepare. So one of the jokes that I always make when I'm talking about time management, Kelcie knows this, I always say like, you just have to prepare because someone's gonna throw up. Your kid's gonna throw up, your dog's gonna throw up, your cat's gonna throw up, or you're gonna throw up. And you know, that's kind of gross, I get it. But the point is, that something like, I always think back to when my,

Kelcie Dowd (02:41.718)
It's so true.

Kristi Jencks (02:48.3)
babies who are 12 and 13 were babies. The moment that I had like a hard deadline to get out of the house, someone would throw up. Someone would lose the shoe. I once left the house and Red was in a flip-flop and a cowboy boot. Like, no joke. And I was just like, I'll allow it. Because I was like, I was going to be late. And so there are some things that we just have to prepare for. And whether it's a vacation,

Kelcie Dowd (03:04.086)
you

Kelcie Dowd (03:07.99)
you

Kristi Jencks (03:16.598)
Right? If you know you're going on vacation. So for me, some of the things that I did to prepare to be gone for so long in July is I prepared my kids. Right? So that meant I had their suitcases out. I even went as far Kelcie as I had my my handy AI. His name is Chad. Chad, my Chad GPT. So Chad, I had Chad, said, I need you to write a

checklist for my kids. So I actually printed out a checklist for each kid. How many underwear? Did you pack your toothbrush? Did you pack your cell phone charger? So every child had their luggage with a list of everything that they needed because I wasn't going to be home. They needed that same thing. Like I packed everything that I could pack for vacation before I did. So I prepared my clients. I prepared my schedule, whatever I could prepare in advance.

For vacations and things, there's a lot of stuff that you can prepare. For the unexpected, or for just like trying to get your kids out of, out the door on time, there are some things that you can prepare in advance. I don't know, what are your thoughts on, on prepare for the patterns?

Kelcie Dowd (04:25.462)
Yes, so the first, yeah, P is our is our first letter for our acronym PAUSE, but yeah, I would prepare. I would look at we look at our lives and this is typical. We look at our lives in quarters, right? So in those 90 day blocks and I think that's the best way to prepare for the things that you know are going to happen back to school. Vacations are usually especially big ones planned in advance, stuff like that. So take a look. You can even do it

It doesn't have to you don't have to wait until the next start of the quarter or anything like that And we're at the middle of the year. So it's still if you like those like Pillars within the within the calendar to start things Look at what regularly shows up and what you tend to underestimate but then when it happens you're like chicken with your head cut off someone's throwing up all of it and you're like, it's just back to school, but like what

What can you prepare for like Kristi did and what tools can you use to help you prepare? You know get your own Chad. Kristi, do think you should rename it Thor though.

Chad makes sense. look back, reflect on what happened last year, the last time you did this, and what you were on the plane wishing, I wish I had done this differently, or on your way to school thinking, we should have done this instead. Why didn't we do this sooner? So just build it. Buffer weeks, light loads, plan for flexibility, but you can still prepare in advance for things like this.

Kristi Jencks (06:09.666)
Move us on to our A.

Kelcie Dowd (06:12.406)
A so A and a little bit of D. A so next one is automate and delegate. this is where you which is something that I value over a lot of other things is you protect your energy when you automate and you delegate. You don't have to do it all. You don't have to do it all. You definitely don't have to do it all.

right then either. So that's the beauty of automating and delegating. Kristi, me more about it.

Kristi Jencks (06:47.958)
forget exactly how Rory Vaden put it, but I was privileged to see Rory Vaden speak twice in the past year. Plus, I've read two of his books. I'm currently reading his third book. And there's so many nuggets, but he talked about when we automate and when we put together processes and things like that, our future self will thank us. Right. So let's say that it takes me

an hour to put together an automation or an hour to batch and schedule my social media for the month, right? And we think, oh, I don't have an hour. I'll just do one post right now, or I'll just do one thing right now, you know, even creating an email newsletter or something like that. So we think, oh, I don't have time. I don't have an hour to be able to do this. And he says, think about the time dividend that you'll get. Take the hour, put together the process, put together the automation, do whatever you you'll do.

And then think about yourself three weeks from now, three months from now, how much time you've given your future self back. And so that automate and delegate, you should absolutely schedule, think about batching your emails, batching your content, preloading your calendar. Heck, I I look at the emails and schedule them to send while I'm gone, right? Different things, scheduling tasks.

Use technology to handle the boring stuff so you can focus on what matters. If you can't automate it, should you delegate it, right? So does it have to be done by me? Can it be done by someone else? Can I automate it? And if I can't automate it, can I delegate it? That's how you can scale while you're busy. And you may even have to update your priorities on what you're trying to get done. So like for me personally, in a month like July, where I knew that I was gonna be traveling for half of the month,

We spent the beginning of the month preparing our content, batching our content, brainstorming our ideas. I spent a good portion of the middle of June rearranging my July schedule to accommodate for the travel. And that was really like that automation. Also just saying, this is not something that I can do right now, which actually brings us to our next letter, which is U in the pause method. And that is update your priorities.

Kristi Jencks (09:07.96)
there are going to be times like if you are in crisis or you have a vacation or you know an emergency or you've got family coming into town or it's Christmas or whatever it is right like you don't have to do everything you just need to do the right things so you know my summer schedule like when my kids are out of school my summer schedule is very different from when my kids are in school and just think about that have teenagers so

Teenagers like to wake up super early, right? No.

Kelcie Dowd (09:39.732)
Yeah, they love it. early then is like before noon, right?

Kristi Jencks (09:45.102)
Exactly. So my summer schedule is a little bit different than when my kids are in school, because when they're in school, their school starts at seven. So I'm waking them up a lot earlier. We're making sure lunches, backpacks, gym clothes, all of the things that they need. Well, in the summer, I just let them sleep. It's like, them sleep. And they know, don't wake mom up at night, because she'll turn off the internet. So I don't care if you stay up.

Kelcie Dowd (10:11.766)
you

Kristi Jencks (10:14.946)
but you wake me up in my precious sleep, I'm turning off the internet. So you need to update your priorities. Trying to start a new project in July, that would have been crazy. That would have just been setting myself up for a lot more stress, setting myself up for failure. That also meant that I had to say no to certain things in July because of my travel schedule. So when we talk about update your priorities, it's that you need to focus on what's your non-negotiables.

Kelcie Dowd (10:18.806)
you

Kristi Jencks (10:42.776)
So my non-negotiables were my clients who were under contract, my listings that are active on the market. For us, it was staying consistent with our emails newsletter, staying consistent with our social media strategy. We weren't trying to launch any new projects. We just tried to buffer the beginning and then updating our priorities of what we were gonna do for the rest of the month while we were traveling and making sure.

Kristi Jencks (11:13.87)
Exactly.

Kelcie Dowd (11:14.01)
know, yeah, what can wait, what deserves your full attention, what's his noise. Okay, so that kind of takes us into the next part, which is S And I think this one, all of them are important. I think this one is super, super, super important. And that's to set expectations. This is where the magic happens. You set expectations with your clients, your team, your support people, your family, whoever, or your friends, whoever you're going on vacation with. And you

yourself. You know, it's really easy to when you have a laundry list of things that you need to do to completely abandon preparing yourself and other people for

what you are going to do. you know, Kristi, you were just on, you know, you were just gone for 15 days and you, like you said, you changed your schedule a lot, but did you completely stop answering emails? Did you completely stop working? Was that that kind of vacation? Or was it one where you and Meryl kind of had some mornings where you answered emails or you took meetings?

Kristi Jencks (12:24.514)
You know, that's a really good question. this particular vacation, and I'll tell you about a different vacation, but this particular vacation, Meryl and I did not schedule, I didn't schedule any coaching calls, I didn't schedule any webinars, I didn't schedule anything like that because we knew we were gonna be out of the Airbnb and like hiking and on the lake and in Yosemite, it was a very active vacation. There have been times where like we've gone to our family cabin

and I'll tell the family, hey, I had to schedule a webinar. It's from this time to this time. There's been times where we've gone to Mexico to do, to do, know, retreats things like that, where we've said, okay, I'm going to work from, I'm going to work until nine or 10 in the morning. I'm going to have the entire afternoon and then I'll have, you know, the evening open. So all of our, all of our real estate clients knew that we were going to be traveling. They knew they could reach us for us. Our strategy was going to be afternoon because most of our mornings, especially with

Yosemite and Tahoe, like you have to get out early. It's super, super packed. So we set them up that we were not gonna be available. We were not gonna have communication during the morning, but that we would be available every evening to answer calls, respond to text messages, respond to emails. So we kind of set up our real estate clients to know. Now they also had obviously transaction coordinator, your information. So they had a backup person if there was an emergency that they had to get a hold of. They had people they knew who to talk to, but we set them up that.

we were not going to be available. I remember one of my real estate coaches, the amazing Eileen Rivera, she actually challenged, Meryl and I, I don't know if you remember this, when she challenged us to have a work-free vacation, meaning we were not allowed to have business meetings. We were not allowed to like have calls with our clients or anything. we had never done that. Like in 10 years of selling real estate, Meryl

had never taken a vacation where he didn't work. And I remember he was so nervous. And the world didn't fall apart. Obviously, you and the team, everybody handled it swimmingly, right? But the idea is to set expectations. So back to set expectations, when we travel, I have a lot of clients that are traveling to Europe right now. So there's obviously a major time gap. And so I say like,

Kristi Jencks (14:45.498)
what kind of vacation is this? Is this a working vacation? Is this a non-working vacation? And then what kind of boundaries are you gonna set for yourself? Like, are you gonna be on your phone all day, like not connected with the family, or are you going to set up, a lot of times what works really well for us, if we're traveling and we know we're gonna have reception and we're not gonna be out and about, we usually try to do it in the morning and in the evening, know, just to catch up on what we need to.

you know, I'll talk about something a little bit more practical too than just vacations.

You also need to set expectations with your family members. So my coaching schedule is pretty, pretty busy. I like to stack my coaching calls. And so Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays are like really big coaching days. My children know if you need mom, like if you need a schedule, even my mom who needs sometimes help with her doctor's appointments and different things like that. If she needs me, I always tell her like, don't schedule me, schedule me on a Monday or a Friday. You're more likely to get into my schedule or

after two, right? So if you can schedule me after two or on a Monday or a Friday, it's more likely that I'm gonna be able to participate in a doctor's appointment, participate in something like that. So even setting the expectation with my kids, like if you need something from me, I need advance notice. Like you can't come to me today and say, hey mom, I need you at school tomorrow at 12. I'm not gonna be able to accommodate that because I have other people that I've already made commitments to.

So a lot of times, even just in life in general, I set expectations with my kids. This is gonna be a silly one and people are probably gonna think that I'm crazy, but my kids know that I order the groceries on Fridays. So if you need deodorant, you better have it to me before Friday afternoon. And so they even say, hey mom, have you ordered the groceries yet? Okay, cool. And then they also know that they need to text me. All my kids have cell phones, so they text me. it's like, don't tell me you need

Kristi Jencks (16:48.386)
deodorant, text me. Don't tell me you need XYZ. If you have a project, this is a really, really big one. If you have a project in school, the expectation is that you are not coming to me. Like it's at the time of this recording, you know, it's one in the afternoon. You're not coming to me tonight and say, I have a project due tomorrow. I need a poster board. need this and this. no, no, no, no. Like you better hope that your older sister is in a good mood and will take you to

Kelcie Dowd (17:16.372)
you

Kristi Jencks (17:16.44)
the story to get a poster board because I'm not going to like, you knew that you had that project. My expectation is they're all seventh grade and up. So they're way capable of knowing that if they need supplies, they have to come to me. So I set expectations around if you need me, you can get access to me, if you need something from me, how to do that.

so that I don't have as many last-minute, like, hair on fire with the kids stuff. I see that a lot of times with, with professionals. I don't know, Kelcie, if you've ever seen that, but you've worked with a lot of the agents on the team, so you've seen that too. It's like, what's the most common thing that gets people off their routine and out of, like, out of doing what they, what they should be doing?

Kelcie Dowd (18:07.7)
No, that's actually what I was thinking of while you were sharing this is it was making me think of one of our most recent podcasts where we were going through like the most common questions that agents have. And I was just thinking about like, if you don't have. OK, so you you are primarily a real estate coach, and so that's what fills up your day and speaker. And so that's what fills up your day. But I'm thinking about, you know, people that.

primarily agents or business owners and what do their days look like? Their days are by design. And that can mean that they are designed to be controlled by their family. Instead of design for no from 12 to three, I'm making calls or, you know, I'm I'm

fill in the blank in terms of lead generation. So if the people in your life don't know that.

then and if you don't live by that, then you're going to be tossed by the waves, right? And you're going to feel stressed out and then you're going to be like, I can't do this. I, you know, I just think it's not having a structured schedule with the set expectation for the people around you and the discipline to follow through on it. You will tumble into this is too hard or I'm not cut out for this.

Kristi Jencks (19:49.112)
Mm-hmm.

Kelcie Dowd (19:49.928)
You know, like, I guess this whole, and this is why I said I think set expectations is the biggest one because maybe it's multifaceted and it's not just for, it's not just for the, you know, the holidays or the vacations or whatever it might be in life. It's so critical for every day that you know what you're going into.

And the people that are most important to you or affect your day the most or you affect them also know what your day is like so that you can be successful in real estate or whatever you're setting out to do. You know, like you said, you have appointments with other people. But I mean, I think, know, too, that the appointments that you make with yourself are just as important. And and so.

Kristi Jencks (20:38.03)
that's such a good point.

Kelcie Dowd (20:42.998)
teaching people to honor those to honor that time that you have is important. So yeah, going back to your original question, you know, family, because they're so, you know, because it's so important family and whether that's like blood family or, you know, I don't I don't have children, but I know that, you know, my close friend and my goddaughter, they, you know,

it's hard to not drop anything for her, you know? And so, but I'm like, that's not how it works all the time. So that's definitely the thing that can throw people off the most.

Kristi Jencks (21:21.708)
Yeah. So let's finish out with our last letter of our acronym for PAUSE So we talked about prepare for the patterns, automate and delegate, update your priorities, set expectations. And now let's talk about getting back to it or easing back in. Right. So ease back in for E Now that what I mean by that is I want you to get back into routine. I don't want you to take a week like easing back into it. That's not what I'm saying. But

What I am saying is like, you need to come back from where you're going, what you're doing, and you're not going to accomplish everything that first day that you're back, right? You may have to. In fact, we were talking about it. I think you need to get back into routine as quickly as possible. But when I'm talking about ease back in, it's like having a buffer day. I came home on a Saturday, so I had all day Sunday to get what I needed to get done. That meant.

you know, working on my calendar, getting my laundry, doing my meal prep, kind of those things. you know, how do you feel about this idea of like easing back in and getting back to it?

Kelcie Dowd (22:28.968)
so crucial and it's something I realized that I was doing subconsciously over the past few years is once you experience the buffer day it's like I would rather maybe it's getting older I don't know but I would rather

Kristi Jencks (22:43.726)
That's exactly what it is.

Kelcie Dowd (22:44.924)
Like, I would rather have that, you know, say like in your example, like get back home on a Sunday or get back home on a Saturday and have that Sunday before work. I'd rather do that than have an extra day. And truly it's a half day, right? Because you're traveling and you're getting ready to leave and everything. I would rather get home and have a buffer day than have an extra day on vacation because it's, you know, coming back to like protect your energy.

Kristi Jencks (23:03.597)
Mm-hmm.

Kelcie Dowd (23:14.818)
right? And I think some of us know that feeling of needing a vacation from your vacation, you know, and especially if you're traveling with other people, you know, you could get if you're introverted, that's like your, your energy tank is low. And you need that day to get back into it. It's so it's so important. Worth it. It's worth it.

Kristi Jencks (23:36.846)
Yeah, it totally is worth it. Well, let's do lightning bonus tips. So one of the things that I would say is we're going to call it a momentum menu. And this is a time blocking recommendation I give a lot of people who are new parents. I would say you need to be ready to work in small bursts of time. So you should have your go-to list of things that you can do in 15 minutes. Like what are tasks that I can do in 15 minutes?

Kelcie Dowd (23:42.558)
Okay.

Kristi Jencks (24:06.286)
You know, you should have your call list ready to go. So if you only have, you know, five minutes, you can make one call, you can send a text message, you can do something. So even if things are chaotic, I once had a client, their child was having a lot of medical issues and none of it was like urgent. It was, but it wasn't meaning like she wasn't in the urgent care. She was in scheduled doctor's appointments, but they were taking every day, long periods of time. And she was really worried about her business.

And so one of the things I told her is like, need to just have like, you need to have a little go bag of like note cards and a list of people you could write note cards. You could write note cards while you're in the waiting room of a doctor's office or, you like you could have a list of people ready to go to make text messages. So think of like a momentum menu, things that you could do in a short period of time, but you have to have that prepared in advance.

Kelcie Dowd (24:59.348)
Yeah, and if you like the sound of that, but you don't, you're kind of drawn up links, ask your own chat, ask your own chat GPT or your AI that you prefer. Like, hey, I'm this kind of professional, I need this momentum menu of 15 minute tasks that I can do in the waiting room. Tell me what you got.

So another one of our tips that we have is to block your tasks and some margin space. Like it blows my mind. And I think it just comes from seeing it on your guys's calendar for so long that some people, busy professionals don't time block travel time.

and you can see it on their face when they don't. And you can see it in the stress in their eyes when they show up five, 10 minutes late to an appointment because they were running from another one, right? And it's like it could have been avoided if you put in that buffer time. Interruptions come and you can plan for them.

Kristi Jencks (25:59.416)
You know, it's funny that you say that because travel time is a big one and I do put in travel time, especially because I'm constantly giving out my link so people can schedule me. And if you schedule me during travel time, but another thing that I do in that buffer time is I know that if I'm going into a call session, so this is like one of the biggest things that I see is people get distracted during their call sessions and they don't make as many calls as they should because

They're getting distracted by text messages. They're getting distracted by emails. And I know you actually will pause. That's one of your strategies. You will pause your email so that you can focus. Maybe it's not on calls, because you don't like making calls. But it's so that you can focus on your project, right? And so I always like to, if I'm going into a call session, I like to take 15 minutes or 30 minutes, like whatever I can afford, to clear out my email, to clear out my messages, right? Like respond.

Is there anything urgent that I have to do? And so let's say that you're doing an hour and a half block of calls, schedule 15 minutes prior and 15 minutes after. Nothing that's gonna happen in that hour and a half or that hour of calls that you're making is gonna be so urgent on a contract or something like that, that you can't wait until you get done. So I do love that buffer block. So we mentioned it before, I would say batch before the break.

you know, a couple weeks ahead of time, you know, create a couple extra pieces of content, you know, create, create an extra automation to touch your clients, schedule an extra email, schedule your email newsletter. Heck, you know that I hate social media, you know, ad hoc, where people are just like, every day doing social media. I'm like, you should prepare in advance, you should schedule what you can. Yes, capture the the moments as you go. But also, like don't

live under the pressure of every single day I have to come up with something new and engaging and creative, schedule it out.

Kelcie Dowd (27:59.668)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And lastly, don't expect perfection of yourself. Don't go into a shame spiral mode. This whole thing is about pausing and it's about being intentional about these fun, sometimes fun, vacation fun, sometimes just part of life routines, going back to school and other interruptions that...

you know, you don't know when someone's gonna throw up most of the time. So it's like that's just a part of life.

Kristi Jencks (28:35.02)
I did throw up on my vacation actually, Kelcie. I won't name the person, but someone actually did get sick. So for this vacation, I actually did order, I don't know if you guys know this, but you can order the barf bags from Amazon. And I did for, cause it was a road trip too. So I had like, my whole car was stocked with like wet wipes and sanitizers and we did have someone throw up.

Kelcie Dowd (28:40.682)
Was it motion sickness? Yeah.

Kelcie Dowd (29:01.014)
Yep, I just got my Dramamine. But yeah, so don't go into a shame spiral when things don't go according to your pause plan. You can just pivot and do what you can and it's okay.

Kristi Jencks (29:15.47)
Perfect, so this week you guys are going to pick one of the pause methods. Find something, try it and make it work for you.

Kelcie Dowd (29:25.566)
Yeah, then maybe it's just looking ahead and identifying your next interruption, going back to school. I mean, if you're not in Arizona, you're like, they go back in like three months. I get it. But create your own momentum menu maybe, and just take that first step.

Kristi Jencks (29:40.396)
Yep. So when life interrupts, know, don't freeze. You've got the plan. You've got the framework. So take it and run.