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Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life. Toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this! Welcome to the purpose of our Mum Show episode 417. Today we have a very fun kind of behind the scenes type of an episode for you. This last cohort in the Purpose Driven Mom Club, I offered up bonus coaching calls. This bonus call was open to all club members and it was an AMA.

Cara Harvey 00:01:00 Ask me anything where you can get on and ask me absolutely anything from business to time blocking and more. And we had a couple really meaty, great questions that I just thought you might want the answers to. Our first question comes from Anna Marie, and it was like, how many time blocks is too many? Right? I talk about this a little bit in the episode, but Anna Marie travels with her husband full time, so their schedules are always different. How many is too many? So I answer that one. And she wasn’t able to get it on, so I was still able to answer it without coaching. And our second one came from a club member who was on. So we were able to get a little coaching and she talked about journaling. We talked about journaling and tracking and how do you make it a habit, and how do you take something that is important to using when it comes to your goals as a tool that you haven’t been doing and incorporated in so into this episode? It it is incredibly informal.

Cara Harvey 00:01:43 I don’t even think I had my podcast mic plugged in. We are going to hang out in a coaching call at the purpose of Drum club. If you want to learn more about the club, you can go to a Purpose Driven mom.com/club. We have an application over there that you can fill out and a waitlist to sign up for, because we will be opening up again in five weeks, about a month. So you’re going to want to make sure you get on that list. And please fill out an application. We often will have scholarship opportunities for people who fill out the application or early admission, and we want you to make sure you don’t miss out. So I hope you enjoy this if you like. You know this style of coaching. If you like this style of support, come over to the purpose of Vermont Club the next time we open. But for now, enjoy. Let’s talk a little bit about time blocking, tracking, journaling, and again, super informal. It’s kind of how we hang here at the club.

Cara Harvey 00:02:25 I know sometimes club members would be like a little intimidated to get on the calls, but we’re just casual and we’re hanging out and we’re coaching you to really reach your full potential when it comes to your time, your goals and your productivity. Show notes they’re going to be over at a purpose driven rom com slash podcast 417. Let me get to my next question here. I just finished the Trello bonus. And will it be too much to have for ideal time blocks? I think this is a great question that kind of piggybacks on Laura’s. We travel for work, so our schedules are constantly changing. I’m thinking I’d have a normal one when they’re home on the road and a bare minimum. I do not think that is nuts. I think that is actually a really smart idea. If anyone has seen in a the video the when the poop hits the fan, this is essentially what I’m talking about, this concept. And it came up for me too. During the pandemic, I would share like every day, like I didn’t know what to expect, right? When kids were permitted to go back to schools, I would get a phone call, one kid’s home, one kid has to stay home.

Cara Harvey 00:03:19 They have to stay home for this many days. This one can go to school. They can. They can’t go to like it was just there were so many variables and I found myself getting super frustrated. And so I made maybe even more than four scenarios. Now it’s really funny. I don’t has anyone seen Inside Out to yet? We went and saw it yesterday. It was really cute, but in it it talked about like the anxieties, like the new emotion and anxiety sends all the different scenarios to the brain of what could possibly go wrong. And so I was like, is this an anxiety thing? But I know I think it’s a planning thing because it allowed me to just say, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but let me see if I can get ahead of it a little bit. So I don’t think that’s a bad idea, especially if you’re traveling. I would definitely have let me see the option, she said. Yes, travel day, kids home bare minimum. Yes.

Cara Harvey 00:04:02 And I recommend a bare minimum day for everyone no matter what, because Because life happens. I, I who we were just coaching through somebody else. Oh I remember on a Friday call and we were talking about that bear Monday. When it comes to health, I know that we have a lot of people here who struggle with like some chronic health things. I recommend you make your bare minimum day for when when you’re not feeling good and you make a bare minimum a day after. I think we forget about this one. If you have a day where you’re really sick, right, and you’re not feeling well, you know, migraines and things like that, or you’re physically can’t do it. And anyone who’s been here a while knows that. Like, I went through some chronic stuff last year where it wasn’t just the day that was hard, it was the next day. And what was hard about the next day was that I was trying to get back on track from the day before, and so I already felt behind, and then I was feeling super scrambled.

Cara Harvey 00:04:54 And so I also recommend you make a bare minimum day like I’m sick. Kids are sick. It is what it is day. And then, well, what do I do in the next day is slowly ramp myself back up because we want to just go all in, don’t we? We want to just do it all. And that sets us up for failure too, because that just makes us exhausted and it’s not realistic. And so I do not think it’s overkill. I think that was kind of her question to say, oh, I’m going to make all these options. The only caution would be if you find yourself sitting there and making options and not getting started. So if you’re like, I can’t move forward until I’ve made all seven versions of what could potentially happen. That’s where I’m going to pause you. Right. So I would say start with one and go from there. But the fact that they travel full time, they need to have travel days look different than not travel days. So no, I don’t think it is too much.

Cara Harvey 00:05:42 But you do need to catch yourself if you get stuck in the planning paralysis of like, well, I can’t move forward until I’ve planned every scenario while also remembering you can’t control what’s actually going to happen. You don’t know what’s actually going to happen, and you need to give yourself grace and be flexible. But the reason I like these bare minimum when the poop hits the fan thingies is because on those days where, oh, I thought I was going to have this day. And then it turned out I can’t get things done or whatever it is. It’s easy for our brain to say, oh well, I guess I won’t do it. Like, oh well, I guess I just won’t do anything. And, you know, Laura asked me about lunch, right? On those days, my like when the poop hits the fan days, I have to write down eat lunch is my micro was my micro one. Because as long as we all just eat lunch, I’m happy. Like, that’s really sometimes all it is.

Cara Harvey 00:06:29 And I think that’s important to recognize to something else. Like, can I get a shower today? That feels great. And sometimes shower isn’t the option and that’s not what I care about, right? Those are all okay things. And the reason I suggest pre-planning them is because when we’re in this fight, flight or freeze place and our our brains cannot get out of it, we are not in decision making mode. We are in reactive mode. So I like to do it when my brain is in a good space.

Speaker 2 00:06:56 To.

Cara Harvey 00:06:56 Be proactive, to be like, all right, I can I can definitely do this. Yes, exactly. Sarah. And then a lot of times we make these bare minimum plans and we just do a little more. Right. You like just do a little more like I didn’t say I was going to sweep today, but like I’m standing here so I’m going to sweep it. I’m going to celebrate that. And that’s totally a good mindset switch. So I know Anna Maria wasn’t said she couldn’t be on.

Cara Harvey 00:07:17 But you know, if you go back to the recording and kind of read through those ones. All right, I think I saw Shayan. Yes. Okay. Shay, I have your question. Next, let me know if you want to unmute and just talk it out like I did with Laura. Or I can just read it and give you my thoughts, like I did with Anna Morris, because she couldn’t be here. I’m going to pause to invite you to something brand new we’re doing here at 2 p.m., and that is the very first in-person, purpose driven Mom conference. September 28th and 29th. I am hosting an event right here in Philadelphia that you can attend where we can be together live. The goal of this conference is to help you decide what dreams you want to work on, what goals matter to you, and to really embrace the person you are now in motherhood. We’re going to spend time mapping out the end of your year, creating time blocks for you to work on these dreams and goals.

Cara Harvey 00:08:04 And I have three incredible guest speakers coming to help you embrace and love your mom life journey and go after your goals and dreams. This event is been on my heart for years, and if you go to a purpose driven romcom conference, you can hear and read all about it. And I want to let you know that this event will sell out. We will be capping around 60 attendees, so as soon as it sells out, it is done. I want you to head to a purpose driven rom com slash conference, or check out the Shownotes for the link and come join us in Philadelphia. We are going to have the most incredible experience. It is in September. You have enough time to plan to make it happen, to tell a friend, we cannot wait to see you at the Purpose Driven Mom conference and have some in real life time together again. That’s September 28th and 29th, and you can go to a purpose driven Nme.com conference to learn more.

Speaker 3 00:08:54 I’m here, so that’s fine. Okay, cool.

Cara Harvey 00:08:56 All right. So I’ll read it and then we’ll kind of get personalized as we go through. this is a good one. How to use daily journaling for tracking and monitoring progress. What does that look like? And the review process. Okay, so tell me first what does it look like for you now? Do you have any sort of tracking routines or systems?

Speaker 3 00:09:12 The only one I have is in the mornings is I started to note like wins on the workdays. Okay, cool. Part of my startup is that I’ll note those.

Cara Harvey 00:09:21 I like that. Have you thought about what you want it to look like? Like what would an ideal like journaling or tracking be for you?

Speaker 3 00:09:28 I really haven’t, I only was even mildly interested in it, because you said it was supposed to be helpful for improving goals and figuring out why you’re not succeeding in goals, but I don’t I don’t really I’m like you. I don’t necessarily like to write them out, but then I’m probably better off to type them in part of my morning routine or something like that.

Cara Harvey 00:09:47 Okay, cool. So I’m going to show you some systems that I have that work and give some tips. And then you kind of pull out what you think vibes with you. Because there’s some people that love to physically like journal and write. And like you said, I’m not I’m not that person like I, but I type my journal. I have a like it’s like a word doc, and I use just the outline feature to like put the questions and stuff, because that just works a little bit better for me. So there’s two things here, right? There’s journaling and then there’s tracking our goals. Now journaling can have multiple purposes. It can help track your goals, but it could also be for different reasons. So I want to talk just tracking the goals first and then we’ll get to different journal things. I think it is really important to have a system for tracking goals, and I go back and forth with when I do it. So the first question you want to ask yourself is like, when is a good time for me to do it? Here’s my my journey through tracking.

Cara Harvey 00:10:36 Okay, while I was trying to get it to become a habit, I tracked very frequently. I used to like, try to wait till the end of the day, and that wasn’t happening for me. So what I did first was I put timers. You have heard me. I’ll talk till I’m blue in the face. But timers multiple like, let me show you guys my phone, multiple timers in my phone, and they’re all just like labeled different things. Like, I just they I just have so many like, you can scroll through. I label them different things. So one thing that you could do is if you’re tracking goals, let’s use water as an example because that’s like one that happens all throughout the day. You could put multiple timers on your phone that literally say, track your water, and it’ll be that trigger point and that reminder, I’m going to go track my water. I like that in the beginning because it it’s more frequent. If we get to the end of the day, we don’t have to do it.

Cara Harvey 00:11:25 That for me then transitioned into I do it once a day. On a pause really quickly to invite you to an absolutely free workshop I am hosting called From Dream to Reality. It is a mom Preneur Business Planning absolutely free webinar, and it’s going to teach you how to use the planning pathway framework to figure out how to break down your business goals and make your business dreams a reality. You go to a purpose driven, romcom slash dream to reality so that you can get your seat and the replay in case you can’t attend. What we’re going to be covering in this time is talking through your business idea, how you can take it from in your head something you’re thinking about to actual creation. The Planning pathway framework talks about who you want to help and what this looks like, where this fits into your goals. Hey, maybe you want to have a podcast this year. Write a book. Start a new course. Where should you put that in your year? We’re also going to get how it’s going to happen and talk about the breakdown of the goals, and then what it’s going to look like when it all comes together.

Cara Harvey 00:12:25 In this free workshop, I’m going to teach you this framework. So whether you’re somebody who has a business who’s been trying to figure out how to make it work, how to monetize it, you’re going to want to attend, or if you’re somebody who’s thinking you might want to start a business in 2024, I’m going to invite you to come attend this free workshop where you can learn how to take your business dream from inside your head to making it a reality and creating a plan. Go to a purpose driven romcom dream to reality to get your absolute free seat before we kick off. Now, I used to think the only way to do it was at the end of the day, because quote, of course it’s the end of the day I need to track. And that wasn’t always working for me. So for a while I was walking on the treadmill. I moved it to the mornings. So while I walked on the treadmill, I just tracked the night before. The day before it It’s not that far out that I’m going to forget everything.

Cara Harvey 00:13:10 Well, now I’m not doing that anymore. So I noticed I wasn’t tracking because I wasn’t walking on the treadmill like that habit left me. So now I moved my tracking to the night before again, and it works for me. So the first thing you’re going to figure out is like, when do you want to do this? So that it creates kind of the consistent habit because the goal is one thing, tracking it is a secondary goal within that. Okay, so think through like when you want it to happen. What frequency. And I’m I’m a big believer on more more more in the beginning. And then slowly scaffolding it back. And then you want to think through like how. So there’s a few things you can do. This is where you could say, hey, I’m going to do a journal like you’re doing, right? Like a win from work. We talk about the to do list. You can talk about a gratitude journal like you can have all of those anecdotal, more feelings based track journaling that you do.

Cara Harvey 00:14:01 At the end of the day, you could have it as your transition activity in between each time block. Like what’s something you I did that I’m proud of for these past three hours or something like that, you know, and also I do recommend a more practical completion tracking. Right. Like, did I do the thing? So let me show you what mine look like. So this is what my tracking currently is for a few things. Okay, so what I do is at the end of every time block, I keep these tabs up pretty much all day because I’m here. So at the end of every time block I come into this, this one here that I showed you where it has my micro three, you can see how today. Yeah, this is today. How today is Monday. And I already have things crossed off because at the end of every time block I head in here and I cross things off. I don’t wait till the end of the day because like I just mentioned, I forget.

Cara Harvey 00:14:47 Like I forget what I was supposed to be doing or what I said I was going to do. So I once my 9:00 time block hit, I came in here and I was like, oh. And like, I’ll tell you what, I did not unload the dishes between 6 and 9. It just happened before I came in here. So I knew that was still on my list, so I was able to get it done. At the end of this time block. I came in here and I did that. At the end of this time block, I’m going to do the same thing. This is a frequent reminder for me of one of my tasks. Okay, so think of this as the planner. At the end of the day before I go to bed. And as you can see here from 9 to 11, these are my goals. I’m going to catch up, which I’m working on to get this pillow done. Kills me. watch my face. And then I’m going to plan tomorrow.

Cara Harvey 00:15:26 Part of my planning tomorrow includes tracking. I put my food in for the next day, and then I check my list. Like I checked, I keep pointing. Sorry. I checked this column and I add anything that needs to be added. Okay, so I head into Trello. Here we go. I go into this. This is where we’re at and I don’t know, I did this today, so we’ll just check this off because I want to mess up my thing. I create these checklists inside of my Trello card, and I check it off and it gives me a fun little percentage, which I love, and it makes me feel good. And I can be like, oh, it’s working. So here’s something interesting, right? So I can look at my Trello and here’s how I can use it for goal auditing. Oh okay. Interesting. Six oh okay. Well it looks like I had let’s let’s pretend that these three weren’t, checked off. Right? It looks like Friday, Saturday, Sundays.

Cara Harvey 00:16:13 I’m noticing I’m not doing these goals. I wonder why, right. Like, it gives me that data of that. Like this data tells me I went camping like I was on vacation. So, like, I didn’t do my routine. Like, that’s what that tells me. But if we look at it and pretend the other way, I’m like, oh, I have a goal here. Here we go. My cleaning routine. Cleaning. All right, so I noticed that this week I missed my mopping. I did everything else. I missed the bathroom this week. Okay. Well, why? I wonder why those things are happening, right? I can really go in and I can audit that way. So this to me is a type of completion journaling. Right. Like it’s helping me I could I don’t, but I could create cards here on Trello where I just go into a Trello card and I write what I’m and I do all those things. So I think there’s, there’s so many different ways.

Cara Harvey 00:17:00 So now that I’ve kind of given you a ton of ideas, what one way would you like to try for the next week, like this week? Like what one thing do you think would be the best when it comes to journaling and tracking for you?

Speaker 3 00:17:14 Probably to add it to the morning where I’m already opening up my Apple note and put some type of tracker in there. Perfect.

Cara Harvey 00:17:20 And what is that going to look like?

Speaker 3 00:17:22 It’s probably going to be the little checkmark boxes with the list of the items, and then I can check them off.

Cara Harvey 00:17:30 Perfect. So like a nice completion. And because it’s important to know like what is it actually going to look like when I sit down to do it? And the one other thing you did, which was great, was you tied it to a habit trigger. Right? I already have this habit. It’s already happening. Perfect, right. You have something that’s working for you. I’m going to add to it. And you can slowly add more and more if you want to start more traditionally journaling.

Cara Harvey 00:17:50 If you wanted to start more planning, you can start to add those in and see, oh, it doesn’t take too much time. Like the my plan tomorrow takes me five minutes to do like it doesn’t take that much time, but my brain in the beginning was like felt like it was going to take so long to do all these things, but it doesn’t. Definitely, since it’s still since it sounds like the morning when is a good habit, you probably don’t need a timer, but you might want to, put some sort of visual reminder that you’re doing more than just that. You know, like, don’t forget to do this. Like you can even if you do it at your computer, like take a sticky stick it on the, you know, like just that reminder. Because I think a lot of times when we already have stuff that’s habitual and we’re adding and stacking something to it, it’s easy to forget, right? Like, oh yeah, right, I already do this. Oh, I forgot, I said I was also going to do this.

Cara Harvey 00:18:36 So I would give yourself just a visual trigger. Might be helpful. Cool. Awesome. Any other questions I.

Speaker 3 00:18:40 I think I’m good. Thanks.

Cara Harvey 00:18:42 All right. Awesome. And if anybody has questions on that let me know in the chat. That was a good one. Yeah. Some sort of tracking some sort of journaling. Like here’s the thing I want to say about tracking too, is make sure if you have a habit stack, like if you’re tracking your routine, don’t just track. Did I do the whole stack right? If I have my evening routine right where I’m like, I want to wash my face and I want to brush my teeth and I want to make lunches or, and sweep whatever. So those are my four things. If I just write on my tracker evening routine and then I notice multiple days, it’s not happening. That doesn’t tell me anything. It just tells me it’s not getting done in completion. I would make four separate trackers, right? I would say, like if you saw that cleaning one I wrote missed bathrooms like I did my dailies.

Cara Harvey 00:19:27 I missed the bathroom cleaning. Right. I want you to know, is it the sweeping you’re not doing or the lunches or the face or the teeth? Because if you know which one it is, then you instead of oh man, I suck. I’m not doing it. I can’t do my evening routine. It’s like, no, no, no, I bet you there’s just one tiny piece of that evening routine that needs some tweaking. So let’s figure out which piece it is. Let’s make a plan around the piece and not scrap the whole thing because it’s not working. Because a lot of times that’s what it is. We will feel like if we don’t do the whole thing perfectly, it doesn’t count. But if I do three out of my four things like, that’s still great. Okay, I didn’t sweep whatever. Right. Let’s move on. Let’s see. Let’s notice patterns. I always say like, let’s be detectives and things like that. So cool. Well, this was a fun chat.

Cara Harvey 00:20:07 That was our last question. And we’re kind of at the top of our. So thanks everybody for getting on. Listen, get on coaching calls. This week we’re doing our coaching raffle and hey, come see us in Philadelphia. We have seats left for the conference. Come and join us. We’d love to see you in September in real life. and if you have questions, get on. Get on the call. Get on with the coaches. Let us help you through. You know, we do our best to help hold you accountable this summer. And we would love to see you on calls. Have a good one, everybody. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcast, hit that five star and leave a review and a rating. That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an Make sure you come over and tag me at a Purpose Driven Mom on Instagram and share it with your friends.

Cara Harvey 00:20:58 The best way for us to get this message out there of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality, is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.