With a “squiggly” career that now sees her juggling multiple roles and projects, Lauren Spearman, 41, needed to find ways to manage her time and workload without burning out. Here, she explains how Adobe Acrobat Studio has helped her find calm, boundaries and more time to spend on ideas.
My career is a mixed bag
I have several income streams to keep things interesting, and at the moment my main role is as a marketing consultant. After years working in advertising and marketing, I went self-employed two years ago to help brands refine their social media presence. It’s a really mixed bag, and I love it.
I’m a content creator in the career space, which stemmed from the frustration I felt at being ghosted by the job market: I now advocate for how businesses can improve their hiring practices. As well as posting on TikTok and LinkedIn, I’m launching a YouTube channel called Careering, as a home for everything I’ve got to say that won’t fit into a one-minute video.
I’m also a presenter and speaker, as well as the co-founder of a careers resource for marketers called NXT LVL. It’s a space where people can learn from others in the industry, offering insight, shared experiences and events.
Our strapline is “A career as big as your ambition”, which is something I’ve strived to build myself.
I’m a mono-tasker by nature
When I started freelancing, I tried to do a bit of everything every day, and quickly realised I’m not a natural multitasker. I prefer choosing one thing to really focus on for full or half-day chunks, because when I get into a flow state, I get much more done.
Mondays and Fridays are non-client-facing days, when I try to do things such as filming, preparing for speaking events and writing workshops. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are set aside for my marketing consultancy, then Thursday is more of a mixed bag.
It means every day is structured, but different: this week I’m working with an agency to deliver a workshop about setting goals for the year, and last week we hosted an event about how more brands are working with female athletes for their marketing. It’s certainly enough to keep me on my toes.
I manage my roles using the right tools for me
I chose Careering as the title of my new YouTube channel partly because I’m quite a chaotic person – and having the right tools to help me manage that, such as Adobe Acrobat Studio, is essential.
Ultimately, my time is finite, and if I want to do bigger and better things, I have to work with other people. So, in my first collaborative effort, I’m developing Careering with the help of a production company, a content editor and a virtual assistant.
I keep my pitch decks in Adobe Acrobat Studio’s PDF Spaces, so I can share them easily, and that’s also where I keep guest invites and research, release forms and all the social content for my channel. And then I use Acrobat AI Assistant for when I need a summary of my decks or research.
Having a workspace where everything’s in one place helps me to streamline it all – rather than saving documents on my desktop and having to deal with the horror of digging out the one I need. My career path has been a very squiggly line, and I’m a big fan of any tools that can evolve and follow that path with me.
Variety stops me burning out
When I worked a nine-to-five, I enjoyed the structure – and, if I’m honest, I’m only just getting to grips with how to manage my time without those boundaries in place.
Every morning, I go through a ritual of making a cup of coffee, lighting an incense stick or a candle and setting my intentions for the day. I’ve recently started working out with a personal trainer a couple of mornings a week too, which has been transformational when it comes to my energy levels.
Often, when I feel like I’m struggling with work, it’s not because I’m putting in long hours – it’s because there isn’t enough variety in what I’m doing and I’m not feeling creative. If I was working at home all day, every day, I’d get really bored, but Adobe Acrobat Studio means I’m not chained to my desk because by helping me to reduce the time I’m spending on certain tasks, I’m free to use that spare time doing something else.
I do a lot of networking, go for walks while I take phone calls and, if I’m doing jobs that don’t excite me (like managing my invoicing or scheduling content), I’ll go somewhere more interesting, like a hotel lobby for a coffee.
I can’t change the fact that admin isn’t fun, but it’s a business necessity, and variety makes it more interesting.
At the end of the working day, I try to set a boundary between work and personal time by intentionally putting away my laptop, clearing my workspace and going for a walk, treating it a bit like a fake commute.
Then evenings are for socialising, whether that’s leaving friends voice notes (I love a voice note …) or joining them for a Martini or two. I’m also trying to watch more television – which might sound odd, but it’s the only time you’ll find me sitting still!
Your creative collaboration companion
With AI Assistant and Adobe Express integration, plus features including Generate presentation and Generate podcast, entrepreneurs such as Spearman can use Adobe Acrobat Studio to switch seamlessly between tasks, without feeling overwhelmed.
With PDF Spaces allowing you to bring all the files, documents and weblinks you need for one project together in one place, collaboration is made a speedier, more streamlined and an altogether more joyful process.
And if entrepreneurial admin is getting you down, autogenerated insights are designed to give you a head start when it comes to dealing with those piles of paperwork that might otherwise add to your mental load.
Find out how Adobe Acrobat Studio can help you work smarter not harder
