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. All right. Hey, welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show episode 448. I have a episode today that actually came from our Friday coaching call on the Purpose Driven Moms club. I literally just finished and I was like, we gotta put this on the podcast because it’s helpful.

Cara Harvey 00:00:55 I don’t need to have my mics plugged in, but I was like, this is going to be a good one. I took it all. I had a batch. How do you batch tasks that are like minded? How do you use it to be more efficient? How do you use it to save time and how do you decide what to batch? So this is exactly what we do in the Purpose Driven Club. On Fridays I do what’s called sewer, which is the course inside of the club, and I take one of those topics. I deep dive into it, I teach a little lesson and then we do open coaching. So today you’re not going to hear the open coaching, but what you are going to hear is me teaching it. You can just see my slides, get to see a little bit more. If you’re interested in the club, go to a purpose driven romcom slash club. Join almost 200 other moms who are trying to work on their goals and their time management, and see how you can use this strategy to help you.

Cara Harvey 00:01:34 Okay, a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 48 that’s going to have all the show notes. Tune in. Let me know if you need any more help. I’m just an email away and have a good one. All right. So I’m gonna talk about batching and combining. And this is it’s so interesting to me because every time I work on a session for y’all, a presentation for something, for work, I’m always like, I need that reminder. And I like to share that too, because Ron will say to me a lot, my husband, he’ll be like, when I’m struggling. He’s like, what would you tell one of your moms? Like, that’s his favorite, what would you tell? And I’m like, shut up! But also that’s true. And I just want to remind you that these tools are here to be pulled out of your toolbox when you need them. And I think sometimes we feel like we’re supposed to arrive. We’re like, I’ve learned the thing. I’ve been in the program, I’ve been doing this.

Cara Harvey 00:02:21 But because of the inconsistencies of life, the seasonality, the amount of things that are just constantly changing, unfortunately, when it comes sometimes to your time management or goals, it’s not a rival. It’s an adaptation, right? It’s like I am able to adapt, I’m able to switch, I’m able to pull from my tools to be able to thrive. And I think we need that reminder because like I said, I think even myself, I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m the one who teaches this. Why am I so feeling overwhelmed with my schedule? And then I’m like, wait, because I’m not doing the things that I know work, and maybe you’re in the same boat where you’re like, I know something isn’t working. And then this is why we say get on the calls, right? Because then you’re like, this makes sense now it will work and I will figure it out because I just need the reminder. Okay? So batching and combining tasks to save time is our saw topic.

Cara Harvey 00:03:06 So what do we mean when we say the word batch? I’m talking about the concept of putting together like tasks in order to streamline, in order to save time, to reduce the mental load. Can I get an amen? Do we want to reduce that in mental load and to increase your efficiency? Now I’m going to tell you, I feel like I’ve been very inefficient with my time lately. I can admit it to you have been all over the place, right? And I’m going to give just a Girl Scout example because I always do cookie season. I have cookie deliveries to make. It would be so much more efficient if I was like, let me go out one time and drive around and deliver these cookies. But I found myself getting a new a place where I was like, oh, you place an order, I’ll go today. Oh, you place an order, I’ll go today. And like, even after this, today I have to go deliver something. It is not efficient, right? Because I’m taking all these tasks and I’m scattered.

Cara Harvey 00:03:55 I’m not putting things together. That makes sense. I’m not running all my errands on one day. I’m not working on one thing. You can see my screen. I think the full screen. Look at the tabs, right? There’s so many tabs open because I find myself ping ponging back and forth. That is not efficient. When you put together like tasks, you’re going to save time, stress and energy when you’re actually doing the output of the task. Now, you know that I like to teach 15 minutes at a time. Sometimes when you batch things together, you need more time to get them done because maybe they’re all small 15 minute tasks, and together it takes a two hours. And that’s okay. All right. It’s kind of combining those two concepts. So we’re going to talk about what how when. So how do you figure out what to batch what to combine what to put together. Because I will say it depends on the goal. And I think a lot of people want that black and white answer.

Cara Harvey 00:04:47 You want to know like exactly what to do. Some goals are better if you do them start to finish. And when I use the word better, I know that you need to customize what better means for you. So you might be like, well, what is a better? You know how you work best. There are some things where I’m like some days I’m decluttering, right? And I pull everything out of my hall closet. It might be better for me to do that one task from start to finish that day. Now I might get overwhelmed with my decluttering, so sometimes it’s better to do it shelf by shelf and do it in small chunks. Okay, so I just want to say the batching can be used for every task. It doesn’t have to, but here’s how you figure out what to batch. Okay time inventory a few days doesn’t do a full week. The blocks you’re struggling okay if you find yourself sitting down to do work, if you find yourself sitting down to do household chores and you’re like, I’m struggling, I’m not sure nothing feels like it’s getting done.

Cara Harvey 00:05:42 So I feel like often I’ll give you phrases that maybe your brain says, and this is another one. If you find your brain saying, I feel like nothing is getting done, okay, I feel like I’m always moving around. I feel like I’m never, you know, like always stopping. I feel like I’m getting up. I’m walking around a lot. That’s when I would encourage you to pause and say, hey, maybe batching could work really well for me. So do a time inventory. What the time inventory is going to do is going to tell you what you’re doing during those blocks, and find those places where you can streamline and pull things together. So when I’m doing stuff for work, it makes more sense for me to be like, what are all the images I need to make? Open up one Canva tab and make all my Canva images. If I’m working on my podcast, it is more efficient for me to go through and say, let me pick all the minerals for the whole quarter.

Cara Harvey 00:06:33 And this is the concept of working vertically versus horizontally. 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 romcom slash podcast checklist and it’ll be there absolutely free for you again.

Cara Harvey 00:07:28 Go to a purpose driven romcoms checklist and get your copy. Now I share this when I do my meal planning, okay, I don’t meal plan week to week. I’m meal plan dinner for the month. Why? Because then I can copy and paste things, right? If I’m going to eat them two times a month, I can work vertically, right? I can say, okay, if it’s crock Pot Monday, let me just come up with four crock pot meals right off the bat instead of let me think about Monday and then Tuesday. Our brain works faster. But the first thing you’re going to need to do is go over an inventory. Things. Where are you struggling? What could you be more efficient then what I would recommend you do? Whether you print it out Trello, IT notebook is highlight and categorize like and common tasks to see if you notice patterns, see if you notice places you can be more efficient. So this is things like errands. And again I’m telling you pot kettle black like this is where I’ve been lately.

Cara Harvey 00:08:22 I found myself in a place the past few weeks. This week’s been better, but the past few weeks when I caught it, I was like running errands every single day and I would be like, okay, I’m gonna go to the library. Oh, look, now I’m going to go. Because in my brain I was like, well, one errand will take me 15 minutes. Now this is where you have to start using, you know, your own skills to analyze. Is that actually more efficient? So while typically doing one errand feels less overwhelming for my brain than, oh my God, I have six errands to run. Okay, it actually wasn’t more efficient. Now, sometimes that’s the best approach for me. Sometimes it is. Let me pick one errand today. But what I was finding was one errand was taking me forever to get there and back. I would come home. I would have like downtime. You do this where you come home. I ran the errand. Now I got to put everything away.

Cara Harvey 00:09:09 Oh, I should get back to work. Oh, I should get back to the laundry. And then I’m, you know, I’m pattern interrupting my day. So I found for me what I am committing for March in next week and moving forward is I’m having just an errands time block once a week. And normally now here, here’s what’s interesting. When I’m in a healthy state with my time management, my productivity, these are the things I do. I can tell I’m getting in an unhealthy state, and I just mean unhealthy state of like, I’m not following the patterns. I’m starting to get stressed out, like it doesn’t feel great when I’m not following these things. So I normally, typically when I’m in a healthy spot, do one errands block a week. But I noticed my brain was feeling scrambled, so I was like, I just gotta do this. I just gotta do this. I’m very impulsive, okay? It was not efficient. So this is a commitment I’m making to myself.

Cara Harvey 00:09:56 Laundry is another one. Now, laundry is something that you need to decide. I used to do a batch laundry day. Saturdays. I would be like, all right, everyone, bring the laundry down. We’re gonna do the laundry all day. That worked for a little bit, and then it did it. So now I’m back to the place where I do a load a day if there is a load. Right? So, like, if I do laundry Monday, Tuesday, I might not have any laundry Wednesday. But maybe my son Peter’s bed and I need to wash his sheets or something, right? Like if there’s a load, right? Like I did laundry today. I didn’t do it yesterday. I find now in my season. So this is where you have to really tune into, like how you are and what your season is. Years ago, before our weekends became busy with activities, right? Because now I’m traveling. I know I miss a lot of y’all at Sunday planning.

Cara Harvey 00:10:39 Like I’m traveling for cheer every week and like, I don’t have a weekend right now. And so because I don’t have a huge amount of time. This system works for me. Take a quick second because I wanna invite you to join. One of my new favorite apps is called Brain Club. I am all about trying to get my side hustle on right, and one of the things I hate doing is taking money out of my pre-planned budget for tiny things that pop up, like the snack stand during football season, or the $10 you have to Venmo somewhere else because you need it for school. And I found Brand Club to literally fill that gap for me. Here’s what I do with it. Every single day I go in, I earn between a dollar and a dollar. 50 takes me two minutes and I just fill in some surveys. Super simple. Very easy. I also will link it to my Amazon, my Walmart and my target account. So when I buy things anyway, I get cash back.

Cara Harvey 00:11:25 Takes me about ten days, but I earn $10 and when I get my $10, I cash it to my Venmo girl math. I’m using it all the places I want to share with you a $3 code to get started, because you need $10 to cash out. So let me give you $3. I’ll get $3 if you sign up. I really appreciate it. Go to a purpose driven romcoms brand club. Do it on your phone because it’s going to bring you up to the app so you can download it. It’s a really easy way to just get some side money going, so you don’t have to take it out of your regular budget and make some money for yourself. That’s a purpose driven mom.com/brand club. Now, when I didn’t have as much on my plate when my kids were younger and we didn’t really do much on the weekends, that was fine. Now I have to tweak it. So for laundry I will do a load a day because it does not take me long to fold one load.

Cara Harvey 00:12:11 One load really does take me 15 minutes or less to fold and put away, and that works best for me now. Okay, another example of this is meal prep. I do a mix of meal prep now that I’m making things from scratch. So see how I kind of take the systems. I put them together, right? The first thing that I’m doing with my meal prep is I do make a freezer item maybe every day or every other day. So like, for example, we’re almost at a frozen pancakes, right? I make them, I freeze them, we heat them up for breakfast. I don’t need them right now. But I was like, I don’t have anything else to make. I will make those and put them in. Last week I made a ton of waffles on. One day I just took one morning while I was getting ready, I took a half hour. I made a crappy little waffles and now we have like three weeks worth of maybe a month of waffles frozen in my freezer, right? So I do like to kind of do like one small thing, but on Sundays I do my meal prep for the week, and I take one hour and I do all of our typical things because I’m in the kitchen, I’m making a mess once and it works for me.

Cara Harvey 00:13:09 So not everything will always work out for you to batch. The best way for you to know is to do a little bit of an inventory. Doing an analysis. Ask yourself, where do I feel scrambled right now? Where do I feel like I’m toggling back and forth what isn’t working and see if you can categorize? I noticed, like I said, I’m running errands five days a week. I’m losing a whole hour. This is what I noticed. I did a time inventory and I was like, wait a minute. By the time I go run to the library, come back from the library, I was having that transition downtime. I was losing almost a full hour on something that really should have taken me 15 minutes. So notice your patterns. Okay, that’s step one. Now here’s how you’re going to batch okay. You’re going to pick one area of focus to focus on. After you’ve done a mini inventory. And again do these multiple times. Then you’re going to create a list. And I’m going to show you an example in a second.

Cara Harvey 00:14:01 But I want you to create a list of all the categories of tasks that are inside that area. Okay. You’re going to list them out. You’re going to use your numerical goal process and plan. So let me show you an example okay. So step one I said right. Pick your area. Make a list of tasks in that area. Here it is. This is my around the house okay. So I said all right we’ve got floors and surfaces. Those are the two areas I want to batch. This is like my cleaning right. Essentially more than just like this is the stuff I want to do once a week type of thing. So I split it up into floors and surfaces. And so then inside of that I asked myself, what are the categories under floors? We’ve got vacuum. We’ve got sweep, we’ve got mop. What are my categories under surfaces I’m dusting windows or glass is probably a better word and I’ve countertops okay. Those are the two main areas that I really want to focus on every single week.

Cara Harvey 00:14:54 So now I did step one. I made a list of the categories in the tasks. I listed all those tasks underneath. That’s my next step. So what do I need to vacuum? Living room, family room? Bedrooms. Cool. What do I need to sweep? The kitchen? The dining room? The bathroom I need to mop downstairs. Upstairs is not mopping, so just need your mop downstairs. Okay. What are my services? Asking myself the question. What do I need to dust the living room and the ceiling fans? I probably could add in here. Like the family room. I couldn’t think of the word when I was doing this. Like tabletops. Like I just couldn’t think of the word of, like what? You know, my end tables and etc. dust Bowl things. I’m sure there’s something else in here, but I just couldn’t think of the word. So I was like all the stuff in the living room, but also like, I’m thinking like, the thing attached to my bed, like my nightstand.

Cara Harvey 00:15:38 Like all those types of things, could probably use dusting. Okay. Windows. Again, the word I was looking for was glass, but I couldn’t think of the word. So we wrote windows here, but outside windows is what I meant. So this meant to say glass. I was like, I’m trying my best friend. So yeah, I need to do all the windows. Okay, I need you. The bathroom mirrors. That’s all the stuff that like, I need. So if I’m getting Windex out, question for myself is what are all the things that need Windex so that while I have the Windex, I can be like bam, bam bam one bam bam bam. Done right. I don’t have to get the Windex and find it right. And here’s the thing with this I need to analyze for myself different approaches. Some seasons this works. Some seasons I prefer to be like today. Monday is a bedroom day. Tuesday is a kitchen day. Wednesday is. That works sometimes. Sometimes this method works the best.

Cara Harvey 00:16:22 So again you need to decide what works best. I found that it was in this season. This is then this is my plan. So I was working on my plan for March. But in this season I find for me if I’m going to grab the Windex, I would rather just Windex everything around my house and walk around the house and Windex it. Then, okay, it’s time to do the bedrooms. All right. I need the Windex for the mirrors, and I need the vacuum. And I need the duct. Like, I don’t want to do all that. I just want to have one thing in my hand and do it. And where this also helps is my kids. If they want a chore, they want to earn some extra money. Great. Go do all the windows right? And then counters I put like you know, bathroom counter, kitchen counter, the table with an island, etc. so I kind of went through, okay, I picked my area, I listed my categories, and then I listed out the tasks under each category.

Cara Harvey 00:17:07 All right. The next piece is the numerical process. This is where you’re like okay now where does it fit into my schedule. You’re going to ask yourself a couple questions. How much time is needed for this batch, and how many tasks need to be completed each week in order to get it done. So I went through and I looked at these tasks, and if I was realistic with myself, most of them take five minutes or less literally. The ceiling fans only take a little bit longer because I’m really short, so it’s challenging for me, so I have to get a step stool out and blah blah blah blah blah, right? All the windows. We have a lot of windows in my house, so it takes a little longer than just the mirrors. But if I was honest and also I did a time inventory, it does not take me very long to do these things. So this does a couple things my brain says. interesting. I’m doing the thing I know where I complain about something longer than it takes, right? I can sweep the longest task.

Cara Harvey 00:17:59 I honestly is mopping my floor and it doesn’t even take that long. Okay, but our brains want to make it big. So the next thing you’re going to do is you’re going to ask yourself, okay, how much time are these tasks going to take me? Okay, here’s my cleaning example. Then you’re going to say, okay, where are they going to fit? Now this was a nice example for me because most of these tasks like our 15 minutes or less like and again, I needed to hear this myself because I’ve been like hemming and hawing my cleaning routine. But I really can get it done in 15 20 minutes like I really, truly can. And sometimes we need to do activities like this in inventories like this so that we can be like, right, it actually is going to take that long. Now, sometimes you’ll find that it takes longer, right? Like sometimes you’re like, I need two blocks for this activity when it comes to work stuff. Right? For me, for the podcast.

Cara Harvey 00:18:46 Right? I need multiple podcast blocks to get everything done. This example is actually like pretty simple that I could fit it in once a week, but you know, you’ll edit it. So I asked myself, okay, what order do I want to get these things done? And I had to move this around a few times because I was like, great, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And then I got here and I was like, wait, I want to dust first, because then any of the dusting stuff that falls on the floor, then I want to vacuum it up, like, you know what I’m saying? So I was like, Mondays, I’ll dust. Okay, cool. Tuesdays I’m going to run the vacuum. Now time out. Right. I also have like a robot vacuum and I run that every night. That’s part of my nightly routine. But when I say vacuum here, I mean, like, I’m getting my big guy out and I’m, like, doing a better job, like my robot vacuum.

Cara Harvey 00:19:29 Like, he’s pretty cool, but like, he’s not doing all of it type of thing. Okay, time back in. So then I said, all right, my big sweep. What am I going to do that I’m going to do that on Wednesdays again. I run the robot every day, but I want to do like a better sweep. And I also want to mop, because if I just did a better sweep, I should mop the same day. So it saves time. See, I bash those things together now. Again, this is a 30 minute task, and the reason this also works is because I have time on Wednesdays to give it more time. Mondays I’m like coming off the weekend. I have so much to do. I don’t want to take a lot of time to do things right. Then I said, okay, what am I going to do Thursday? And then I left this daily. Like these things get wiped down twice a day, right? Again, when we’re in like the best time.

Cara Harvey 00:20:08 They get picked and wiped.

Cara Harvey 00:20:09 At least once a day. We’ll get them wiped down. I left Friday, Saturday, Sunday as a buffer to again. I follow like a clean mama, plan to maybe do like my sheets, whatever, etc. but you see how I went through this and I said what is the area? What are the main categories? Floors and surfaces? I probably can have the bathroom in here somewhere. I didn’t, it’s fine. What is my list underneath each of those categories like what are all the things that are like that need to come together? I then divide it on up by time and I pick when it’s going to happen. And now I have a plan that I can complete in a not a very long period of time, and I’m able to do it without feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Okay, so here is my next steps for you. And then if you want coaching, use that raise hand feature and we’ll put you next up in the queue to do some coaching on this.

Cara Harvey 00:20:57 And we can help make a plan. I want you to ask yourself what is an area that I’m struggling to get done? Like where am I procrastinating? Where can I not fit things in? Like what’s my hold up and ask, do I think a batching strategy can help? Now again, you might be like, no, I don’t think I want to do one podcast episode from start to finish. Okay, I prefer to pick all my titles at once for the quarter, and then pick all my minerals and then record all my minerals and then outline everything and then record like I prefer to work that way. You just might not. And that’s okay. So ask, do I think batching can help for this? Sometimes it’s done right when you have more time, so it’s not going to fit for every goal. So just a little reminder and it can just be something that you do once a week. You do it in a workflow. You don’t have to batch every little thing. It’s the other reason I like to use themed time blocks.

Cara Harvey 00:21:47 So if I know I have a household block, I’m like, that’s again, remember my household tasks that I just looked at my cleaning like only take 15 minutes of that one block. So it’s like, what else can I fit in? It also is helpful if maybe you have something like this where it has shorter time, it’s not gonna take as long. This would also be a great microwave minute list. Now with the microwave minute it’s like, oh look, essentially the concept, right? My coffee’s reheating in the microwave. I have a minute. What can I do? And I normally will empty my dishes and stuff, but maybe it is. I have five minutes. I want to vacuum. I, you know, here I want to vacuum here. Now, that’s not really batching it, but it’s just a different strategy. So you really need to be a detective around what works best for you, how do you best operate? And if you want to use this system okay. Again, it’s just another tool to add into your toolbox when you find that maybe goals aren’t working the way you want and ask yourself, how can I apply this? And if I apply this, is it going to be the most efficient? Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Purpose Driven Mom Show.

Cara Harvey 00:22:53 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. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.