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 Mom Show episode 428. Today we’re talking about one of my favorite topics prioritization. We are going to talk practically about how do you prioritize your goals. Listen, it’s mid-October. We have a lot of things happening.

Cara Harvey 00:00:56 We are thick in the holiday season and I know how easy it is for everything to get off track and derailed, especially when now I need to think about the trunk or treat. Thanksgiving is coming. All of the December holidays are here. There’s so many things happening. I want you to know you’re not alone. You can check out show notes at a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 28. But let’s start with the elephant in the room, which is why is it so hard? Why do we struggle so much to prioritize things? I think there’s three things that are really holding most moms back, so I’m going to go through them. I want you to ask yourself, is this me? Am I doing this okay? Number one, my biggest problem is I got too much going on. Does this sound like you? Are you like, I just have too many roles. I have to show up as mom. I have to show up as a partner if I’m married or in a relationship, a sister, a daughter, all of these things.

Cara Harvey 00:01:54 And I get it. It’s hard. I am constantly on the go and I like my life a little bit busier, but it makes it really hard to decide what actually matters when I am pulled in so many directions and everyone needs me. I often struggle to prioritize my goals first and again. Maybe this sounds like you. One of the things is that we are busy and I think we just need to identify it. There seems to be this thing of like, let’s pretend like we’re not right. Like, oh, you should just figure it out. You should just be motivated. You should just want to do it. No, I struggle to prioritize because there are a lot of things that are important that have to get done. Because I am not a one dimensional character. I’m not on a TV show. This is not my my fake life. This is real. And I just want to let you know I get it. When you have multiple things, multiple projects, not only work and home, but the layers of all the things you have to do at work and all the things you have to do at home, and all the other things you have to do for your kids.

Cara Harvey 00:02:52 You know, it’s September when I’m recording this back to school season and in school about a month now. I was sitting there last night doing paperwork still and filling out forms and sending things in, and now my daughter wants to be in the orchestra, and I have to think about all these things, that mental load of motherhood. It’s real. And it does make it really challenging to prioritize things. And often we talked about this a little bit last week with perfectionism and procrastination, but often this makes us put our goals to the backburner. This makes us take all of the goals we want and say, oh well, I don’t care about them now. The other thing though, that I do think is holding us back is, yeah, I’m wearing multiple hats. Yeah, I have lots of things to do, so I don’t know how to prioritize. But we also struggle to know how to prioritize because everything feels urgent and important. I’m going to talk about this when I give you some strategies and tips, including our quadrant brain dump that we do every week here, the Purpose Driven Mom Club, our thought catcher.

Cara Harvey 00:03:43 But everything can’t be important at the same level. I always give the example of glass and rubber ball, so if you’ve heard me talk about it, lean back in. If you’ve never heard me talk about it, let me explain. As moms were juggling balls all the time, right? We’ve got all the hats. Sometimes these balls are glass. If they fall, they will break. And sometimes they are rubber. And if they fall, they will bounce back. Because here’s the thing most of the things we do in life are actually important, but they’re not important at the same level. And I think when you’re looking at everything is equal, right. The paperwork that I have to get filled out, it’s important, but it’s not as important as something else that might be on my list when we’re under this pressure to excel. Right. That’s really where it comes from. Moms have to just we gotta do all the things. We got to be amazing. We have to excel in every area, in all tasks, at all times.

Cara Harvey 00:04:32 It makes us feel like everything has to be equally important. And when we look at everything is equally important, we’re doing ourselves a disservice because then we get back into that procrastination we talked about last week. We feel like we can’t do anything because we don’t know where to start, because it all must get done. The third thing, and maybe you’re doing this again. Think of these. Is it am I just struggling to prioritize because I have too much going on in my schedule to prioritize, because I feel like everything has to be done right now, right? It’s urgent. Whether it’s an external pressure or an internal pressure making you feel that way, or am I struggling to let things go? I have a process of blessing and releasing goals every single month. When we meet in the club, we do our planning and when we’re doing our planning for the next month. One of the things I ask my club members is, what are some goals that you might want to put off for the next month? What are some goals that you wanted to work on that maybe didn’t happen that we’re going to say, hey, thank you for showing up goals, but we’re ready to move to a new one.

Cara Harvey 00:05:27 It’s okay of letting things go. And I think that when we feel like we have to do everything at the same level, we then struggle when things don’t happen, but we feel like we can’t take it off our vision board. Right. Well, I said that I was going to save this money this year and I just can’t let this goal go. So I’m going to keep focusing on it, even though maybe it’s not the season, right. Maybe it’s instead a season that I’m just trying to get my budget together. Well, I said I was going to go start this blog, but I haven’t been able to do it because I have all these other things to do. Maybe it’s just not the time we avoid prioritizing anything sometimes because we don’t want to let anything off of our plates. And I always say this just because you have more things written down on your to do list does not mean that you’re actually more productive. It literally just means you wrote more things down. So if you’re not actually planning out the things that matter, it’s going to obviously be hard to prioritize them because everything is there and you don’t know what to let go.

Cara Harvey 00:06:25 I want to chat with you now and invite you to grab one of my top free resources that have been downloaded almost 4000 times, and this is my ultimate weekly planning checklist. If you are ready to go into your week feeling less frazzled and more in control, this checklist is for you. It’s going to help you set up your week, save time running around, and plan out all the time you need for you, your goals, your family, your business, the whole thing. It’s the exact same checklist that we use in the Purpose Driven Mom club every Sunday. And not only do I give you the checklist of what to follow to plan your week, but I will give you a Trello board if you want to use Trello with it. Absolutely free with a video tutorial, it is going to take you less than 30 minutes a week to plan the week and save you hours. If you want to go and snag this checklist, you can go to a Purpose Driven Mom Competition checklist and it’ll be there absolutely free for you.

Cara Harvey 00:07:13 Again, go to a Purpose Driven Mom competition checklist and get your copy when you’re not prioritizing effectively. And I’m going to give you some strategies. So hang on with me. It’s going to lead to burnout. It’s going to lead to burnout. It’s going to lead to overwhelm. Because you will be feeling like you’re on that hamster wheel. When you spend time on these low priority tasks, they’re not moving the needle right. As much as I need to dust, like dusting is not going to move the needle in the long term of things, do I still focus on getting it done once every two weeks. Right. We get some dusting done. Maybe, but I don’t beat myself up for not doing it because I know it’s not a top priority. And here’s what I do want to say about the priorities. Know that your priorities are not my priorities. This is another thing that I think pulls us back is that that comparison of, well, I need to be doing these things. This is the way it should be.

Cara Harvey 00:08:04 And then thinking, well, this person has this goal, so I should have this goal. And if I don’t have this goal, then I’m failing again. That’s not what it’s about, right? Whatever you decide is your maybe dusting is your priority right now. Maybe that is really important to you. You’re working on house routines and things like that. That’s just not the season I’m in. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be in that season. So when you’re really clear, we’ll talk about vision setting, like when you’re really clear on what you want, when it’s time to prioritize, it’s a lot easier for you to do. When you aren’t prioritizing, though, you’re going to be burned out. You’re going to be overwhelmed. You’re going to feel that resentful feeling because you’re sitting there saying, oh, I wish I could. You know, I wanted to do this summit. And I saw all these people doing summits, and I thought it would be great, but I never did. And now I’m just watching all of these people doing the thing I wanted to do because I didn’t prioritize it.

Cara Harvey 00:08:48 It also gives you this lack of progress on your goals. When you’re spreading yourself too thin, it can really take a toll on moving any needles, which then makes you put your personal goals or business goals, or any goals to the side because you feel like maybe you don’t deserve it. Well, I didn’t get my to do list done right, so therefore I shouldn’t talk about that phrase that’s shooting on myself. Therefore I shouldn’t go exercise because that was important to me. And then we feel the guilt and then we feel the stress. And it’s this cycle. I’m never doing enough. I’m failing. I’m the worst. I can never take it anything under control. I can’t manage it and so I can’t manage it. So I’m just going to sit in that paralysis of do nothing. I’m going to turn on my Netflix show and I’m going to ignore it. That sounds familiar. There are ways to prioritize everything you have to do, but I want to be clear you’re not going to get it all done.

Cara Harvey 00:09:42 One of the biggest like, for me. Like that sigh of relief was when I stopped forcing myself to get everything done and instead said, I’m going to do what my priorities are for the moment and be proud of what I accomplished based on the day and how I was feeling, and keep it moving. Okay, so what do we do? How do we prioritize? Great, I know this, Kara. Like I’m in this zone, I don’t prioritize, I’m struggling. He’ll pop up. Okay, let’s talk about it. I like to start with vision. When we are defining what actually matters the most. I talked about the glass and the rubber balls, but I want you to think about the next couple months, especially with the holidays coming. All right. What do you want it to feel like? We do this exercise inside the club, and it’s writing vision statements and then sending them to yourself using a tool called Future Morg. It’s a free tool where you can send yourself letters. What I want you to do is think about the next couple months.

Cara Harvey 00:10:33 Don’t chalk it up. Oh well, the years over. None of this, right? What do you want the holiday season to feel like? What is going to be the most important to you? And again, glass on the rubber balls Some months my family is my glass ball and some months they’re a rubber ball. They’re always a ball. I’m juggling. They’re always there. But in September, for example, when the conference my family like it was a rubber ball, it was important. I was trying we were trying to get our weekly monopoly games in. We did our best to eat dinner and our Bible study together. We didn’t spend as much one on one time together as I wanted. I did my best right, and I allowed my best to be enough because I had a vision and I knew that in September I was going to be working incredibly hard on the conference during my work hours, while they were at school and outside of my work hours. I also knew September. It was when I was doing all my Girl Scout stuff for membership recruitment for September.

Cara Harvey 00:11:16 It’s a busy season for my specific leadership volunteer role on top of my troop, so I knew my vision. So when it came to deciding what was going to get done, I knew what I wanted to prioritize versus if I didn’t have time for it, I was okay skipping. And when you know these things, you can kind of go in with confidence that I’m living in a lined life based on my vision, my values, my priorities. Making these clear intentions is going to move it forward. Okay. I think that each month you need to look at the rest of October, November and December. And I want you to ask yourself, what do I want my family life to feel like? Write it down. What do I want my work life to feel like? What do I want my personal goals to feel like? And you can even get specific. I always just say personal goals in general, but you could say like, you know, my spiritual life, my financial, my relationships.

Cara Harvey 00:12:02 You can get into each category if you want. When you have a clear intention, when you go in, you are much better equipped to say no to what doesn’t serve you and yes to what does. Because no is a complete sentence, right? This is not a priority right now. That’s a phrase I use a lot with my kids. When they ask if we can buy something, I’m like, it’s just not a priority right now. Or if somebody asks me to do something, hey, thanks for thinking of me, but I already kind of have my priorities for this month and I don’t have space for it. Or I do, and I can get it done. When you’re looking at your planning, I also want to introduce you to the Big Rocks method. Maybe you’ve heard of it before. Let’s imagine we have this jar here and the story I heard a professor. He went to teach his class, right. And he had this big jar. And next to it was rocks and pebbles.

Cara Harvey 00:12:43 And he said to them, all right, I’m going to fill this jar up and see what fits. And he started with the sand and the pebbles and the little stuff, and the jar got filled and filled and filled. And then he tried to put the big rocks in, and they couldn’t fit because there wasn’t enough space, because he had put the tiny things in first. He took it all out and he said, all right, let me do it the other way. Let me put the big rocks in first. And then the tiny things, the sand and the pebbles started to kind of filter through. So to fit inside, when you’re looking at your week and you’re trying to pick your top priorities, I want you to use this method in planning. We use it in our weekly planning process in the club. We do it every week. Here are the steps and I want you to take this. I know it’s Monday when this episode airs, but take this for the rest of the week.

Cara Harvey 00:13:24 Look at your plan for the week and I want you to ask yourself, what appointments do I have to make? These are the first ones because we can’t skip them. We have to keep them there and you’re going to put them in first. You want back up from your planner and look at the time you have left. Now the next thing that I recommend before we put anything else is theming your time blocks. Now I could do a whole episode and I have on theming your time blocks, but theming your time blocks essentially are saying this is the chunk of time during the day that these goals are going to fit. So my 6 to 9 a.m. block, that’s my self-care block. That’s where I put in my big rocks for self-care. I also get my kids ready for school and shower, and we get started with our day and we, you know, get the book bags packed in things. But it’s also where I work out. It’s where I do my personal growth reading. So where I do, I have some a photo goal that I’ve been working on this year that I work on.

Cara Harvey 00:14:09 When you theme out your blocks, you’re essentially making many big rocks for each time block. A lot of times people will say, okay, like what’s your priority for the day? Pick your big three. You’ve heard this. Maybe you read three things you want to work on, and I get it. But as a busy mom, I am again. Back to problem number one. I’m juggling too many things. I’m so excited to share one of our sponsors today and that’s Hands of Harvest. Hands of harvest created personalized magnets hand-painted for each of our conference attendees, and they are beautiful. So as you’re getting ready to get gifts for the holidays, you’re going to want to check out Kelsey’s site and all that she can do. She makes custom handmade gifts, home decor, special occasions, and again also the holidays. She turned her passion and creativity into something more after having kids, which so many of us moms know what that’s like. We want to have something more. And she’s created this incredible business where she personalizes things.

Cara Harvey 00:14:59 Not only can it be personalized for your home, but they make incredible gifts. Like I said, she made customized personal ones for every single attendee at her conference and they are beautiful. If you love that farm life aesthetic, that cozy feel this is going to be a shop you want to check out where you can find her stuff though. Instagram. You’re going to go to Instagram. Com slash hands under slash of under slash harvest. We’re going to have it linked up in the show notes. If you’re looking for an incredible gift I want you to reach out to Stacy, tell her you heard about it on the podcast, and go order some really great holiday gifts right now. That’s instagram.com slash hands under slash of under slash harvest. So if I just had to pick three main priorities for the day, I would not be able to choose. So what I want you to do is choose your micro three. So you’re going to go through and theme out your blocks for the day. I have a self-care block from 6 to 9, from 9 to 12.

Cara Harvey 00:15:55 That’s a work block. So depending on the day it might be podcasting, it might be working on stuff for the club, etc. 12 to 3 is my second work block and then 3 to 6. That is my family block and my home block. So that’s where I put family and home goals. 6 to 9 is activity block, where we’re somewhere out doing things and then 9 to 11. So about when I go to bed, that’s my personal block. All right. So I’ve identified what those blocks are. And then instead of just picking my big rocks for the day, I pick my big rocks. Except they’re medium sized. I want you to pick three micro tasks for each block. So my self-care block again I work out, I do a 20 minute workout, and I just told my husband this morning about it how I used to do a 45 minute workout. I’m doing this 20 minute workout now, and I love it because it’s giving me time in the morning for other things while still making an impact on my fitness and my movement.

Cara Harvey 00:16:43 So I’m here for it. I’m like, I’m going to keep these under 30 minute workouts because I have time for that. I have time for personal growth reading, and I do my photography culling of my photos, which is part of my self-care because I enjoy it and it makes me happy. My endorphin hit get a look at my memories. So my little guy today, he was two in the picture, I was dying. I was like, oh my God, he was a little. So those are the three things I do now. I have a three hour block to complete those medium rocks in. Okay, workout photos and reading. I will give it an hour at the most an hour. Okay, that’s one hour out of three. I still have two hours to exist as a mom. I have two hours to do all the things and get myself showered and get the kids up and ready to go. Okay, so that guilt like that guilt, we can kick it to the curb because it’s not saying I’m ignoring them, it’s saying this is what I’m doing.

Cara Harvey 00:17:26 So you’re going to go through and every day can be different. You’re going to make little mini themes and medium sized rocks, and then you’re going to put those goals in first. I mentioned Girl Scouts of high time commitment volunteer activity for me because I not only run my troop, you probably heard me talk this, but I run stuff on the leadership for my town. Okay? I spent hours every single week, probably 2 to 5 hours every week on Girl Scout stuff, depending on the week, sometimes more. So I have a Girl Scout block once a week. It’s another hat that I’m wearing, and once a week I give myself a 3 hour to 4 hour block that I’m working on Girl Scout stuff now, is it the only thing I’m working on? No, but it’s what’s happening. So it might be my 3 to 6. It might be my 6 to 9 during activity block, things like that. It allows me to prioritize what needs to happen for that specific time. You can’t just look at your whole day and say, all of it’s needs to get done, because it does all look important.

Cara Harvey 00:18:20 But when you look chunky little time blocks by chunky little time block, you are going to then start to put in your medium sized rocks, right? Big rocks are your appointment, your medium rocks are your micro priorities. Small? Not huge, small, small things you got to get done. And then you’re sand in your pebbles, right? The target runs and the phone calls, all those things, the paperwork you got to fill out. The other thing I want to suggest you do is use the Eisenhower Matrix. We call it quadrant brain dumping in the Purpose Driven Mom Club. Maybe you’ve heard of the Eisenhower Matrix. It helps you decide what needs to happen and what’s the most important. So every week when I’m planning out my week, I do the process I just talk to you about with my weekly planning. And I also make a matrix. So think four boxes, four quadrants. I first write my to do list out on a piece of paper or Trello. Like all of it, I brain dump it.

Cara Harvey 00:19:03 I don’t qualify, I don’t categorize, I just put it all down then, and I recommend you do this on a piece of paper and not in Trello and not typing. Because if you physically fold your paper into quarters, you will run out of room. And if you run out of room, you will have to make decisions. I want you to also use a pencil so that you can move things. So I have my tiny tasks to do list. Write my thought catcher for the week. I got 40 items on it or whatever it is I need to put them each in one of these quadrants for the week. Now this is important. You need to identify what your urgency is. My urgency is I’m going to do it for the week, right? Like by the end of the week this is going to get done. And so inside of that, I will then take each task and I will place it into the appropriate quadrant again in pencil because I might change things. Here’s what your quadrants are quarter one or Q1 quadrants right.

Cara Harvey 00:19:50 Q1 quadrants are the things that are urgent and important okay. These are the do it. Now. This is what we call them. These are things that need to be done by the end of the week. So they have a deadline and they’re important. Like they got I got to fill out the paperwork or my daughter cannot get her cello by Friday. Gotta get it done okay. Hue to these are the do it laters. These are the things that are important but not urgent. So maybe they don’t need to be done this week, but they could need to be done by next week or next month or in the next few months. All right. So a Q2 for me, it’s October might be making my holiday shopping list. Okay. It’s important. My gift list. It’s important. I really want to get started on it. So I can like get some deals now and things like that. But if I don’t do it this week, it’s not the end of the world. Q3. These are things that are urgent.

Cara Harvey 00:20:31 They got to be done this week, but not important. Here’s a caveat that you do. We call this the delegate. These are things other people can do. My kid got invited to a birthday party. My husband is more than capable of going on Amazon and ordering a gift or picking up a card, right? I don’t need to be the one always doing it. I can also delegate things out to my kids. Oh, I need to dust. It’s urgent. The dust is everywhere. My allergies like I can. And that’s not even a joke. Like, I feel that like, my poor fans desperately need a dusting. My kids love to do stuff like that. They can do it. It doesn’t have to be me. And then Q4, these are the dropouts. These are not urgent or important for you to do this week. There are lots of things that get on your list that are not needed to be done right now. Okay. These are things we’re dropping for this week, okay? That’s why it’s important you have your urgency.

Cara Harvey 00:21:15 So then when you’re planning your week, you’ve got your big rock appointments. You got your medium rock priorities. Now we take these small rocks and these pebbles and we start planning them. Now here’s what I said do it on paper. If you run out of room, you have to make a decision. Not everything is a Q1, but we treat it like it is. I said this was a quarter one, a Q1 important task. It must get done, but this other one feels more important than that one. So I’m going to move this to Q2. Now, the Q2 things I always try to work on my Q1 first, and then I get my Q2 is done. Second. If I have time, I you know, they’re a little bit more fun for me to do because they’re not urgent. I’m not stressed. Same with the delegates. I can still do the things in the other quadrants, but my goal is that the priority is the things in the first quadrant need to get done by the end of the week.

Cara Harvey 00:21:55 Does that make sense? This way I’m feeling more aligned because I’m not just working on my big three things. If I only ever worked on my top three goals every single day, I would never do anything else. My floor would never get mopped, the phone calls wouldn’t get made. I would just be sitting here working because I want to make money. I want to make an impact, and I love my job. That’s all I would really be doing. And I’d be playing games with my kids. Like I wouldn’t be doing anything else. Using this method of big rock, medium rock and small priority pebbles will allow you to grasp around what actually is important during this time. All of it’s important, but maybe it’s not important right now. And that’s important to know. Okay. And then just to close out, I said this already, but saying no right is okay if you can’t drive someone somewhere, if it’s inconvenient for you to do something. I love to help. I have a servant’s heart.

Cara Harvey 00:22:39 It’s harder for me to say no. I just finished up my People Pleasing certification. Actually, I’m a certified life coach and I have about eight specializations and I just got people pleasing. Who was that talking to me? It’s just a reminder that you don’t owe anyone an explanation for things. If you need to say no. If you need to step back, say you’re in a volunteer role and it doesn’t serve you anymore. To do that role, you can just say no, and that’s fine. I know there’s these fear of what will people think? And if I can’t do that, you are not in control of what people think, what they feel and how they act based on your behavior. That’s a them problem. And I just want to encourage you that when you start to step into who you are, I feel like I turned 40 this year and I’m in this like very kumbaya. I like strong and who I am type of thing. It’s freeing. It feels amazing and I want that for you.

Cara Harvey 00:23:22 This week, I want you to go use some of these methods to plan the week. If you haven’t planned the week yet, you can check out your show notes that are purpose driven. mom.com/podcast for 28. If you need more help, check out all the links and the things that we talked about in this episode. I’d love to coach you. I’d love to help you as this year closes out and have an amazing day. 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. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:24:09 Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.