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 Your Mom Show episode 436. And this is a very timely episode because we’re going to talk about what you do now in the beginning of December, to prepare for your holiday break. As a work at home mom.

Cara Harvey 00:00:55 I have been preparing for this for, I guess, the beginning of October. I’m actually recording this episode. It’s Halloween today because my goal was to get all of my podcast episodes done for the entire year before the end of the month, which I’m counting like tomorrow to. I have three more to do. I don’t know if I’m going to get there, but at least I feel ahead. And that’s really one of the tips I’m going to give you because I want to take off. So I guess the first thing I’m going to recommend is, do you even know what you’re planning to take off over the break? Oh, listen. Show notes. They’re going to be at a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 36. Or you can just swipe up on your player and we’ll have resources there. Now before you even decide what to do you have to decide when you’re taking off. And I highly recommend you take off. This will actually be the first year in seven years of my business that I’ve taken the break completely off.

Cara Harvey 00:01:45 Now I’m doing it light, which I’ll talk about in a second, but I’m not hosting any calls or any of it over the break. I’ve not done that since, let’s say, the purpose of Vermont clubs, but announces 2019. I’ve not done that in the years since the club has been around, and I was pushed by my team to give myself a break. I want to remind you that yes, it is really nice to be able to work from home. It’s fun to be an entrepreneur, but you also have to give yourself breaks. Now I am going to get work done, but it’s going to look different. I’m planning on taking a few days off. Obviously like the main holidays for me and my family are a Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. We’re going to have a New Year’s Eve party, my daughter’s birthday. What are the other big ones? I’m taking off? We’re going to my sisters for Christmas. So that day and the day after. So I’ve kind of went through my schedule and I xed out the days that I am not working at all.

Cara Harvey 00:02:35 I might come to the office and check in on my clickup, see if there’s anything that I feel like working on, but I’m giving myself some definite don’t work at all, right? I’m not working at all. I’m going to treat them like weekends because I don’t typically work on the weekends. So first up, identify what are the days that you’re taking completely off. Then you’re going to want to identify the days that maybe you’re choosing to work late. Now this is going to be variable based on your work at home job. I am an entrepreneur, so I make my own hours. I know a lot of you listen, aren’t entrepreneurs or aren’t there yet, but you, you know, have to work on certain hours. So decide what are your light days. I’ve given myself off for the two weeks. You know, between Christmas and New Years of calls, I still wanted to get some work done because I have some projects I want to work on, and this is important. Deciding your priorities.

Cara Harvey 00:03:22 People are gonna be like, oh, I can’t believe you’re still working. It’s because I’m choosing to. I’m choosing to because one of my priorities is to work on this project that I want to finish before the year ends for my business, because I want to work on it. It is my choice and it feels different. Okay, so I am picking a couple of days that I’m working light, and what that’s going to look like is I might work for a couple hours in the office, I might pop in when I feel like it, but I’m going to be very strategic about what that looks like, because if I said, oh, I’ll just work a light all break, I can see myself overworking, not taking a break at all. So step one is identify when you’re going to take off versus when you’re going to have light days versus when you might have full, heavy days. Because we’re not doing calls. I’m not having any full workdays at all. But previous years I had days where I would host my calls and because of that, I would take my call.

Cara Harvey 00:04:10 Days like Tuesdays, for example, a day I do a coaching call and the purpose of a mom club. I would take that day and I’ll say, okay, I’m just going to work heavy Tuesdays and get all those things done. I’m not doing that this year, but maybe you are. So start with the calendar. What are those things you want to take on and off? The second thing you’re going to want to identify are the key projects and things that you want to work on for your business during that time. So when I’m sitting in my light days and I’m going into the office, I’m very specific about what I’m doing. I’m going to work on some passion projects. I’m going to work on some fun things. I have a list I’m not going to get sidetracked with. I should be doing other things. This time is very intentional, so that the time that I am taking from spending with my family relaxing is purposeful. I want to pause real quick to invite you to the planning event of the year.

Cara Harvey 00:04:56 It is time for the Purpose driven 2025 Best Year Ever Planning challenge, and this year we’re offering it up absolutely for free. We’re going to use the Four Seasons method to help you create your anti hustle roadmap for 2025. Conquering your goals, working on your tasks, and going after your dreams. This is going to be where we are going to set the vision for your year so you can hit the ground running in January. We have done this event five years in a row and this year is going to be bigger than ever. We are offering it up free because we really want as many moms as possible to get a vision set for their year. You can get your free spot at a purpose driven romcom slash 2025 planning this five day absolutely free challenge kicks off December the 8th and runs through the 11th. So while you’re wrapping gifts, running around in the car, doing all of your errands, you can also do something for you. We know it’s a busy time of year, mama, I get you.

Cara Harvey 00:05:52 But why not set the time now to think about how you want things to feel in the new Year. Head to a purpose driven romcom slash 2025 planning. Grab your free seat, invite a friend and I cannot wait to see you. I also want you to think through your current priorities. Is this a time where you can push? Is this the time where you’re like, hey, I am a stay at home mom. My kids are younger, so they’re home, but my partner is home over the winter break, so I actually get more work time. Maybe for you, you don’t take time off. Maybe for you. You’re like, I have these non-negotiable days off and I’m working harder. That’s totally fine. All right. The other thing I want you to pick is a couple personal goals that fit in for you, because it’s going to fuel you. I’m all about doing something for you. Find that book, find that craft. Find that thing that you want for you so that you can make sure you’re planning on it as well.

Cara Harvey 00:06:41 Now, what I want you to also think about now is what you want January to feel and look like. You know, if you go to a purpose driven mom.com/20 25 2025 planning. We’re doing our 2025 planning challenge. Actually, when this airs, it might have already happened, but if not, go get your free ticket. Part of this is asking yourself what January is going to feel like for you. What’s the ramp up? A lot of us want to start January 1st and be like, let me do it. I’m all in. I take that first week of January light. That’s a planning week for me. That’s where I kind of slowly enroll myself into my goals for the year. I’m not trying to hit the ground running on January 1st. I like to again. My kids don’t even go back to school. So I think the third of the fourth, right. So what do you want January to feel like? I identify this in my personal life. I identify this in my work life.

Cara Harvey 00:07:23 For me, in my work life that first week of January, when my kids are January 1st, that week, I’ll start working slowly and ramp it up, and then I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled work programs. Okay, so planning out January is also going to help you over the break because you’re going to know are there things you need to do now we’re playing the purpose of our Moms Summit, which happens in April. So we’re doing all those things now. I’m getting interviews, I’m doing presentations, I’m working on the branding and the messaging and all those things. So I know that’s going to be a push season for me. Quarter one. So then I ask myself the question that I want you to ask yourself, what can I do now to set myself up for success? One of the things, like I mentioned in the beginning, this episode that I’ve been doing is asking myself, how can I take two weeks light where all I’m doing is working on the fun projects that I want to do without feeling stressed? And one of those was getting things off my plate.

Cara Harvey 00:08:12 Not that way me down because I love doing the podcast. I like talking to you for 436 episodes in. So we’ve been doing this this year and we’ve been hanging out for a while. Maybe. Or if it’s your first time. Hey what’s up? Thanks for hanging out. Here’s the I love the podcast. I love getting to talk and share and teach. But when I think about my my career in my job and I think about it in different buckets, right? I have all the purpose driven mom stuff and then I have different segments of that. The podcast is one of those things that’s constant. It’s not a project for me. It’s a numerical goal or a habit. So I am constantly producing episodes every single week, a new episode has to come out. It never ends. So in order for me to be able to take a breath over the holiday break, I needed to get ahead and I asked myself, how ahead do I want to get? So our goal in the way we kind of operate in batching things here at ePDM is I’m always trying to be recorded minimum two weeks before it’s out, because then that way if I’m recorded two weeks out, I can get it to my editor, she can edit it, then we can get the show notes up and then we can be done.

Cara Harvey 00:09:14 So it’s not like, oh crud. Because I remember in the beginning, especially when I was doing it by myself by Sunday night and I was like, oh, I gotta get a podcast out by Monday. And it felt stressful and draining and I didn’t like it. It didn’t make the podcast enjoyable for me. Now this is fun. This is coming out mid December. I’m chilling right now. I’m not stressed about it. I’m enjoying our time together and I need to look at the podcast in a way that sets me up for success when it comes to the holiday break. So what can I do? I can very easily think to myself, okay. I know that I want to get podcast episodes done. I know that I wanted to look a certain way. So how many podcast episodes do I need to do? I told myself, I want all of December done by the end of October, because I want to spend November working on other projects. So that was my deadline. Maybe your deadline is.

Cara Harvey 00:10:03 I want to have all of my January podcasts done by the end of December. You know, by the time I take a break so that I don’t come into January and I’m feeling already behind. So if you do, maybe a weekly episode, you’re like, okay, I have two weeks to get four episodes done to get ahead. How do I do that? I have to record right you backwards plan. You map it out. I do two episodes a day sometimes just to kind of get them out and get them ready to go. All right. Once you’ve identified what you want to get done, now start to backwards plan. Now make it math. I want to write x amount of blog post. I want to get x amount of social media things recorded. If these are the things I want to do to feel light and easy over break, what can I do now? And I want you to make the next couple weeks a sprint for yourself. It’s going to be a sprint, though, right? It’s going to be a sprint for you, for your family, for the holidays, for getting it all done.

Cara Harvey 00:10:53 I also encourage you to make it a sprint for work if you haven’t started batching ahead yet, because then when you get to the holidays, you can sit, you can relax, you can take a breath, you can enjoy yourself instead of oh no, it’s, you know, the day after Christmas and I want to sit around and read my book, but I have to get my podcast up. Okay. The other thing I will recommend, though, if you do content, is take a break. We re-aired an episode last week. We’re going to be doing that for a couple other episodes, because I don’t think you have to always be creating new stuff. I think it’s okay to take a pause. I think it’s okay to take a break. Remember that consistent doesn’t mean constant, but I try really hard not to take a break. And I think over the course of five years we’ve missed one week of an episode. So I try really hard using this batching. Right. Okay. So batching your tasks, getting them done now.

Cara Harvey 00:11:41 All right. Now if you haven’t, if you’re listening to this, you’re like, I haven’t started. I don’t have time to batch. I just want you to set those boundaries again. When am I working? What are my maintenance days? What are my light days? What are my heavy days? What are my no work days? And stick to those. Pre-plan what you’re going to do and then set some boundaries. Okay? I want you to talk to any clients. You have any customers, let them know. So it’s October. We already put on our calendar for the purpose of Vermont Club in bold letters, and we’re already telling our students these two weeks are no call weeks, right? Like we’re communicating that two months in advance because we want them to know and understand, like just so you know, like we’re just not having calls these two weeks. We are going to have time with our family and take that time off. Here’s how you can get support. We set it up.

Cara Harvey 00:12:24 We put in a way message up, put it in a way, message up in your autoresponder of what you’re doing. I have another student and she communicated with all of her clients. She’s an accountant. And she said, I told them, this is what I’m taking off. This is when we’re doing it. So especially getting ready for tax season, right? She’s like, we just did it early. Communicate those plans and then also communicate your plans with your family. Are you looking to spend intentional time with your kid and have no idea where it’s going to fit in? Let me help you out. I just made an activity book called draw with mom, and the purpose of this book is to give you intentional time with your kid. That doesn’t have to take hours. I’m going to be real. I don’t want to play for hours at all. I also don’t want to play dolls and have you tell me how I’m doing it wrong. I made this book to be an interactive journal so that you could be creative.

Cara Harvey 00:13:10 Your kid can be creative and you can have fun together. There’s 50 prompts that are set up for you, where the child draws on one side and you add to it. Yesterday, my son and I did it and it was draw house. And then it said the parent to draw a rainbow and a sun. And we’re super creative. We make up stories, we draw outside the box. We don’t have to stick to the prompts, but the goal is sometimes it’s always a start that stops us. I want to spend intentional time with my kid and I don’t know what to do. Well, I’ve made a plan for you. You can go to a purpose driven romcom, draw with mom, or just search on Amazon to grab the book now. It’s 1995. It’s a great way to be intentional about your one on one time and spend time with your kid. That’s a purpose driven mom.com/draw with mom. So I’m going to tell my family, hey, these are mommy. No workdays. Mommy will not be working on these days.

Cara Harvey 00:13:59 And I asked them to hold me to it. Right. If I say I’m not working on Christmas Eve because I like. If you see me in the office, I want my kids to be like, mommy, I thought we were playing games because I need that pull back. It’s hard for me not to work. I love my job. I love what I get to do. I love getting to work on projects, but it can lead me to burnout, so I want them to call me on it. But also the expectation of hey, this is a mommy workday. I am fortunate I have an office room, workout craft space, I have a door, and so I will shut the door and say when my kids know and my husband. Sometimes if the door is closed, mommy’s on a call. You know, this is mommy, you know, work time. If the door is open and mommy’s in here, then you can come in and ask me questions and things like that. Communicating that is going to really help.

Cara Harvey 00:14:42 And then maybe even talking to your partner, your stakeholders, maybe your work has become kind of a point of contention, of the lack of time you’re spending with your family. Like maybe it got to that point and they’re kind of like, you know, I, I is there a way that you can not work so we can have time together? I don’t know, have that family meeting. And then my next step is involve family in the planning of what that’s going to look like. Not only do I want you to communicate your work boundaries, but I also want you to plan time with your kids and one on one time if you want. Here’s my copy. If you’re watching on YouTube, draw with mom a purpose of romcoms. Let’s draw with mom. 20 bucks right on Amazon. It’s a little shameless plug of my new activity book I made for mommy and kids. I’ve loved it. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see a couple, a little clip, a couple of my beautiful artwork.

Cara Harvey 00:15:27 Sorry for the flipping noise on the podcast, but go to the YouTube. Look at my incredible mouse. Yesterday we made House in rainbows. Be intentional. I made this book because I was like, I need one on one time with my kids and I need a plan and I can’t. I don’t have hours, but I want it to be purposeful. So I made this book with drawing prompts to just spend 15 minutes a day on purpose with my kids, and it’s been so much fun, enjoyable. It’s letting me just relax like I’m not a great artist, so I have to just have fun with it. And I don’t know how to naturally do that. So spend that time with your kids, okay? No. And intentionally plan it out. But also ask your kids, what do you want to do, right? Like what? What kind of stuff do you want to do over break? I have each of my kids get to pick one like holiday thing, like they want to go see the holiday lights or we have breakfast with Santa or if they want to go, I don’t know, ice skating.

Cara Harvey 00:16:16 It’s not a thing we do. I’m actually petrified to ice skate. I’ve gone once in my life as an adult. I have this really irrational fear that my throat is going to get like sliced open with a skate, and I cried. I took my Girl Scouts ice skating, and I cried for the entire time, like sobbed like Kim Kardashian. Ugly cried. I was incredibly afraid. So maybe I will do it again. But you know, what are the things they want to do? Have them pick one and make sure you stick to that for them. My daughter’s birthday, as I mentioned, is the 23rd of December. So we have a birthday over the, you know, over the Christmas break. And I want to make sure that time is special for her. We’re actually taking her to a hotel because we were going to a party, and my son didn’t have a birthday party this year. He got in trouble, actually, so he lost his birthday party and it was fabulous. I didn’t have to spend money on stuff.

Cara Harvey 00:16:57 We still celebrated his birthday, went out to dinner. He got gifts. It was honestly it was perfect. So my daughter, my husband has like Marriott points. So we’re going to get a hotel with like an indoor pool, like near our house and just have a nice time. And she’s so excited about that. But I want to make sure that on her birthday, I’m not glued to my phone. Right. Like talk about that. Also, have your kids help with some of the holidays just to get it off your plate. Do they want to help wrap gifts? My daughter is so excited to help me wrap the family gifts for her cousins, right? They love to decorate. They love to do things like that. The other thing that I’m going to encourage those for you to come up with activities they can do while you’re working. So we have a list that we use in the summer that I’m going to reprint for Winter break. And it’s basically like we call it the activity list, and I will make a time block schedule for them ish.

Cara Harvey 00:17:41 So if you know my time blocking, it’s not rigid. It’s just a visual schedule where I’ll print it out, I’ll put it on the wall, and they know they have to do these things before they get tech. Right. Then there’s I have to do these certain things and then I can have tech, etc. like that’s how we did the summer. So I’m going to do the same thing over winter break. And on it, one of the things I have was an activity list and it just said activity list. So they had to choose from the activity list, two things to do before they could have tech. And I gave them ideas. Even though my kids know how to play, sometimes kids need to be a little more directed, like go play with the Legos, go play with the magnet blocks, go outside color, etc. and so I would put stuff on that activity list and I would say to them, all right, now it’s time to go do something with my activity list. So having that pre-made, talking to them about it and saying, hey, mommy’s going to go get some work done right now.

Cara Harvey 00:18:26 You need to pick anything off the activity list while I’m doing it. Teach the independent play, all right. And then finally, be kind to yourself like, it’s okay if you need to take more breaks, if you want to cuddle up with your book, if you want to work, all of those things are fine. So give yourself grace. Give yourself intentionality. But I want you to think right now, winter break is coming. It’s not a surprise. It comes every year. What do you want it to look like? And what can you do now to set yourself up for success? I am making that activity list with my kids now. I am planning those things. I’ll put them in like a special bucket. We’ll pull them out. I have them on a different shelf. I have got things planned. Now I’m looking at the Dollar Tree and my goals and when I go and if I see holiday crafts for them to do that are cheap, I’m putting them in a bin. So when I do have to work, I can just pull them out.

Cara Harvey 00:19:15 Ask yourself how you can help yourself out. Now. Bash some things ahead, make a plan and enjoy your holiday season. You can enjoy your holiday season and work if you choose. You can enjoy your holiday season and take off. If you choose, you get to decide. So in order to do that, you have to take the first step, which is to make a plan. Listen. Show notes to purpose to vermont.com/podcast 436. Head over and grab those. And again go to Amazon right now. Here’s the way you can help yourself and get draw with mom. Go grab it so that you can have an intentional thing to do with your kids over the break. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:20:04 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. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.