40-year-old CEO and mom of 4: These 3 hacks keep me ‘productive and efficient'—one has ‘really been a game-changer'

Chelsea Hirschhorn may be a CEO, but she describes her career as akin to that of a circus performer—specifically, a juggler.

Hirschhorn has embraced this title since launching Frida, the popular fertility, pregnancy, and infant product company, in 2014. In addition to being a founder and CEO, she is a wife and mother to four children, ages 2 to 11.

"It feels like there a million balls in the air at any given time that I'm juggling, and inevitably, one will drop," Hirschhorn, 40, tells CNBC Make It. "But I've gotten comfortable with making sacrifices, and I've got my rank and file priorities – family always comes first."

Below, Hirschhorn discusses her favorite productivity and time management hacks.

1. Time blocking, especially for emails

Frida's early days, the biggest challenge for me was bootstrapping the business and trying to do every job myself. As the business grew, I was able to hire and invest in a team, but I also became a mom and felt like I had competing demands on my time, so delegating and prioritizing felt really hard. 

I don't think delegation always has to be assigning someone a task in a hierarchical sense. I think one of the best delegation strategies I learned from a friend was time blocking, or delegating certain tasks to certain times of the day to be more productive. 

I rely heavily on to-do lists and phone reminders.

From a time-blocking perspective, one of the biggest opportunities, or unlocks, for me was devoting time at the end of each day to reading emails rather than rushing to do it between meetings. It can't be the first few hours of the morning when my brain is in full maximum productivity and efficiency mode — that's reserved for more deep-focus work.

Having dedicated blocks of time for different types of work has allowed me to be more productive and efficient. Understanding when your brain is most creative and when it's tired and might be better suited to perform a low-energy administrative task has a game-changer for my workflow. 

2. A color-changing, moveable lamp

Other efficiency strategies I use like time-blocking are meaningless if I can't adhere to a schedule,  so another tool I rely on is this portable accent light from Phillips, which I use as a visual cue to adhere to my schedule and time commitments.

My assistant has programmed it to keep me in focus mode, meeting mode, or indicate that it's time to move on to the next scheduled commitment. You can program it for a particular color at certain times of the day — which avoids me having to constantly check the clock or my calendar during extended periods of focus — when I can easily lose track of time. 

It's controlled by Bluetooth, and I've assigned colors for different cues: Yellow means 15 minutes left in a meeting, orange means 5 minutes left, and red means it's time for my next scheduled commitment. Blue is focus time. 

I try to avoid checking Slack or my phone when I'm in a meeting, so the visual reminders are a seamless and less disruptive way to stay on track. It's really been a game-changer for me. 

3. Organizing life into chapters

I prefer the term "work-life integration," as opposed to "work-life balance" on a daily or weekly basis. I don't think your work and your personal life are ever in perfect equilibrium.

Balancing work and family as a CEO and mom of 4 requires a mix of strategic, meticulous planning, clear boundaries and storytelling. What I mean by storytelling is that I think about my life in chapters: It's created a safe emotional territory to get comfortable with inevitable trade-offs, both personally and professionally, depending on which "chapter" I'm writing at the time. 

Early on building and scaling Frida over the last decade, I was in my "Entrepreneurial Chapter." Knowing what chapter you're in helps when there is tension or a tradeoff to be made between work and motherhood or personal priorities.

It was easier to help figure out which should trump, but it requires planning to know which chapter you're in at any given stage of life. I rarely exercised, occasionally missed school performances for work trips, and only made it home for family dinner a few nights a week. 

That said, setting non-negotiable boundaries that transcend any chapter helps ensure I'm always where I need to be, whether it's tending to one of the kids when they're sick or business-critical meetings with customers.

As my kids have gotten a little bit older and the Frida team has also grown, I find myself in the "Scaling Frida" chapter, which has allowed me to prioritize being home for family dinner and homework every night, and to delegate certain business tasks to the growing Frida team.

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