From Overwhelmed to Focused: An Agile Approach to Daily Life
Details
Our Agile & Scaled-Value Project Management Meetup hour in March 2026 is scheduled for Thursday, March 19th, 2026.
Time: 12:00 pm PT/2:00 pm CT/3:00 pm ET
Topic: "From Overwhelmed to Focused: An Agile Approach to Daily Life"
Our Guest Speaker: Helene Gidley
Pls. Note: To protect privacy and ensure a smooth session flow, we request that attendees refrain from using AI-assistive recording or note-taking tools during the meetup session. Thank you.
An introduction to the meetup:
Have you ever found yourself up late finishing something you’d known about for weeks, or missed a personal event because your day completely ran away from you? You’re not alone.
Between work, home, family, and everything else competing for your attention, managing time can feel impossible. The truth is, time management begins with focus. When you can manage your focus, getting things done becomes far less stressful—and a lot more satisfying.
In this interactive workshop, Helene Gidley introduces The Art of Agile Living, a simple, hands-on approach to creating focus and momentum in your daily life. Grounded in Agile principles that have transformed the software industry, this method adapts the best of that thinking into an easy, practical daily practice anyone can use.
You’ll learn :
- how Agile thinking applies beyond software, why small daily rituals matter for motivation,
- how to break work into manageable pieces, and
- how to stay focused—even when life throws interruptions your way.
- Most importantly, you won’t just hear about the method—you’ll practice it.
You’ll leave the session with your own personalized daily plan and your first real implementation of The Art of Agile Living, ready to use the very next day.
Takeaways:
- workshop that helps you see and manage your work more clearly.
- Apply Agile principles to real life through guided exercises that turn proven Agile practices into practical daily habits.
- Practice breaking real tasks into small, achievable steps that increase momentum, motivation, and follow-through.
- Leave with a personalized daily plan—your first working implementation of The Art of Agile Living that you can use immediately.
Our Speaker:
Helene Gidley brings over 40 years of experience in the IT industry, working across Fortune 500 companies, startups, and mid-sized organizations. She has been helping teams adopt and grow Agile practices since 2003, with a focus on making those practices practical, sustainable, and human.
An entrepreneur and coach, Helene has founded two consulting firms focused on improving personal and team productivity. She also leads the Agile Coach Retreat in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where experienced coaches come together to deepen their craft.
After spending more than 15 years as a certified Project Management Professional and IT Project Manager, Helene began blending the best of traditional project management with Agile principles to address a problem she saw everywhere: smart, capable people feeling overwhelmed by their day-to-day work. That blend became The Art of Agile Living.
Helene is passionate about supporting Agile learning in the community. In 2008, she founded the Agile Groupies Meetup in Ann Arbor, MI, and is a frequent speaker at Meetups, Agile conferences, and productivity-focused podcasts worldwide.
In this session, Helene shares a practical, hands-on approach you can use immediately to create focus and get more done—without burning out.