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!

Cara Harvey 00:00:44 Hey everybody, I am here. I am like post-surgery and I’m going live on our Facebook group. So if you’re watching this later on the podcast show notes are going to be over at a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast 449 coming to you from the past or the future.

Cara Harvey 00:00:57 If you’re on the Facebook group and if you’re not in our free Facebook group search Purpose driven. Mom community. Come on over. I will be giving some tips strategies for you as work at home mom to figure out how you can manage your time, your day and fit it all in. I want to talk to you today about the microwave minute real quick for this quick tip today, because I just used it and I thought, well, this would be really helpful to remind people of. Now the microwave minute is a strategy I’ve been using for years, okay. And it helps me so much in freeing up the pockets of time. Let me tell you about how it got started and how you can use it. And listen, if you’re in the Facebook group, when I’m done with this live, what I’m going to do in another post is I’m going to post my microwave minute checklist for you so you can use mine, or you can make your own. Now, the microwave minute concept actually came because I realized when my kids were little.

Cara Harvey 00:01:42 So this was a strategy I came up with when they were still in like preschool daycare ages. I was heating my coffee up so many times. Anybody else heat their coffee up like a million times, right? I was heating my coffee up so many times a day and every time I would do so 30s one minute here or there, I was picking up my phone, right? I was scrolling my phone, going on to social media. I was doing that and by the end of the day I remember saying, God, I feel like all I’m doing is heating this cup of coffee up again. Wasting so much time. And I thought, wait, what if I could capitalize on this time? And that’s how the microwave minute was born. So essentially, the concept of the microwave minute doesn’t always have to be at your microwave, but it could be anywhere that you have a little bit of pockets of time is asking yourself, where can I add in tasks that maybe I don’t really even want to do, maybe aren’t 100% towards my goals, but they’re tasks now.

Cara Harvey 00:02:29 When I talk about tasks, I’m talking about those things. Not so much the actions towards my goals. I’m talking about the little things we have to do to get with our day, right? Like I need to unload the dishes, I need to sweep my floors, I need to take out my trash like all those things. And what’s really great about the microwave minute is if you start to do all those little tasks, the ones that we don’t really want to do, the ones that, again, do not take up a ton of time by themselves. If you start to do them in little pockets of your day in a strategy, I’m going to show you in a second you can actually free yourself up. 15, 20, 2030. Almost an hour a day that you can then use that chunky time, that one hour to do something for you to do something towards one of your goals, to read a book, to take a walk, to do those things. Because what I often hear from moms is, well, I can’t go for a walk.

Cara Harvey 00:03:13 I can’t read my book, I can’t do the thing for me because I have to do the laundry and load the dishes and all those things. And I’m not saying don’t do them because they still have to get done. When I want you to start questioning is, how can you do them a little more strategically so that they get done effectively so that you have free time to do the things that matter and spend time with the people who matter? Okay. Take a quick second, because I wanna invite you to join one of my new favorite apps. It’s called Brand 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 $1.50.

Cara Harvey 00:03:59 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. 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 to 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, romcom slash brand club. So what happened for me was I realized this moment of like, I’m standing at the microwave and all I’m doing is picking up my phone, which again, I love my phone.

Cara Harvey 00:04:51 I love to pick it up. I love to scroll play little games on my phone. Now I’m here for it, right? But is there something I could be doing that is more efficient. That’s the keyword efficient with my time. And I came up with a checklist starting in the kitchen. So when you’re coming up with your microwave minute list, I want you to think about where you are and how you can maximize time. So we’ll go through a couple categories. First up is the kitchen because that’s where the microwave is. And also it’s I was just preheating my oven because I was putting some cookies in the oven for after school for the kids, I’m making dinner, etc. like I spend so much time in the kitchen. And so I asked myself the question, what are tasks that take up more of my time than I wish they took up that happen in the kitchen that I could do slowly. And I started with the dishwasher. So I made a commitment to myself. Not a rule, just a commitment.

Cara Harvey 00:05:38 Every time I went to the microwave to heat up my coffee or honestly anything, what I was going to do was I was going to unload my dishes because I realized that I was spending 15 minutes at the end of every night unloading my dishes, and every time I got there, I’d be like, oh, I don’t want to do this right now. I have to load the dishes, which means I have to unload the dishes like it was just taking so much more mental energy than it deserved. And I asked myself if I spent the 30s that I was on my microwave unloading my dishes. I wonder how many 32nd shifts it would take. And the answer is four. It literally takes me two minutes to unload my dishes, maybe three max. And I thought, okay, if I can unload the dishes during my microwave minute, I don’t need 15 minutes at the end of the day to get the dishes loaded. I can load them in five now because the dishwasher is already emptied. So what this did for me was it freed up time.

Cara Harvey 00:06:31 Now I want you to think through the kitchen. When you’re heating something up, when you’re making dinner, when you’re just like standing there. What are some tasks you can do now? I have a microwave minute checklist and like I said, if you’re in the free Facebook group, when I’m done with this, I’ll go find it and I’ll post it for you so you can just screenshot it, download it, and take my checklist if you want. But what I decided was, all right, let me look around. I can take the recycling or the trash out. I can start making lunches. I can wipe down the counter, I could sweep, you know, these are all things I could do. While that 30s to a minute of the microwave was happening, I wasn’t just now letting this dead air space take up in procrastination on my phone. It was actually being purposeful. So think about your kitchen and ask yourself, what are the things you can do now? This checklist I used to keep on the side of my fridge because oftentimes when we get started on something, I’m like, I don’t know.

Cara Harvey 00:07:19 I know there’s something I could be doing right now, but like, what is it? What could I be doing? So I made a checklist for myself to eliminate the mental fatigue and just say, okay, coffee is in the microwave. First up is always unload or load dishes. That’s always my first thing. So that way I don’t have to do it later. It’s just a constant thing. Then it’s what might say wipe off your counters. Then it’s like put away the mail sweep, take it and I have a list there. This way I can maximize my time during the day. What’s great about having a list there too, is that other people see it. So this is one where my kids want to earn extra money, or I could use some help with something. I can say this is the next thing that needs to get done. Now the kitchen is a hot spot, so start with your kitchen. Let’s think through some other hot hotspots. My second hotspot, where I found that I was wasting time or just not being.

Cara Harvey 00:08:00 It wasn’t wasted. It was like the time was just passing and I wasn’t doing anything that would be considered like more productive. Now here’s the thing. Scrolling my phone, going on my little games, reading on my phone like all those things can be productive in the sense of rest being productive. But I realized that if I wanted to have time for my other goals, I was going to need to be strategic about the time I did have. And I would rather spend that 30s getting the dishes done so that later I can spend that 15 minutes reading. That’s just how I felt about it. Is it fine to scroll your phone? Yes. Is it fine to have times where you’re not doing 100%? But I want you to think, are there places I can maximize? So the car was another one. I found that I was, you know, in drop off line pickup line. Now I wait for my daughter for cheer. I’m sitting in the car a lot more than I would like to be.

Cara Harvey 00:08:48 And I asked myself the question, what can I do while I’m sitting in the car to either work on a goal or again to get these more rote tasks done. So for me, this became make a phone call. This became answer my text messages. This became editing through my photos on my phone. I would have a book so I could work on one of those goals, you know? And I’ve kind of coupled those two. We call them habit triggers, where if I’m in the car solo, I’m listening to an audiobook or a podcast. Like that’s kind of how it is, and it really helps me maximize that time. You can dust off your car trash, right? I’ve coupled those tasks to I’m waiting at the gas station. Anyone else do this? I’m waiting at the gas station. I’m going to empty the trash in my car. So I want you to think through your hotspots. Are there times where you’re just, like, waiting for something to happen? And if so, are there tasks that are happening inside that room that you could potentially do while you’re waiting? That’s really the question.

Cara Harvey 00:09:52 If you are a mom who wants to start a business and you need help, and you want to go from chaos to clarity. I want you to go over to a purpose driven romcoms business planner and get my new ultimate digital planner for business owners. I’ve got client profile pages, business breakdowns, promo planners, goal setting, social media, and more. You can take that overwhelm that is planning your business and get all of it in one place. You can make a binder, get your things together, and get on track with your business. I’ve got 13 different planning worksheets you can choose from goal setting sheets, project planning, product planning, client profiles, financial templates, and more. Go to a purpose romcom slash business planner, and you can also get this bonus social media content pages, where there are over 20 different options for you to lay out your social media and get it done. Go to a purpose driven romcom slash business planner and grab yours today. Now, again, the caveat of your permitted downtime.

Cara Harvey 00:10:51 Go and scroll your phone like all of those things are completely fine to do, but I found that I was saying to myself, I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time. And if you find yourself on that replay, I don’t have enough time. Ask yourself, where can I be more efficient? And if you’re like, I’m not sure my recommendation is going to be a time inventory inside of a time inventory, you’re going to go through a couple days or a couple time blocks and write down every single thing you do, all right? And you’re going to write down what it is and about how long it takes you. So you could do start and stop time. You could say, oh, I did this for about 15 minutes. Whatever it is, when you’re done with that list now, you kind of know how your time is being spent. And this is where you can answer that question where can I be most effective? Where can I go through and say, okay, I noticed that I was taking X amount of time to fold laundry.

Cara Harvey 00:11:39 I bet I could do it differently. Now. I don’t have a big enough laundry room to make this happen, but if you have a big enough laundry room where you could fold your clothes in your laundry room, and I’m gonna caveat that I could do it in my laundry room, there’s just a lot of junk on top of my dryer, so I do not have space in my laundry room, so we’ll just be real here. Like if I clean my laundry room a little bit, decluttered it, I would have space. But say you have space to fold the laundry instead of I’m going to take 15 20 minutes to fold this load of laundry. At the end of the day, when you could be spending that time doing something that fills your soul up a little bit, moves you towards your goal in a relationship, you know, spending time with the kids. What if every time I’m near the laundry room or I walk past the laundry room, I fold a couple of things, like I keep the dryer open and I just go in and I fold a couple things and stack them on top.

Cara Harvey 00:12:20 So then it’s done. Now, I do prefer to batch most of my things, but this is just a different strategy based on different things a lot of people want like one size fits all. Sometimes I batch, sometimes I use microwave minute, right. Those are all things that are helpful. And again, listen, if you’re listening on the podcast or on YouTube later, go search Purpose Driven Community. We’ll link it up in the show notes. Otherwise, a Purpose Driven mum.com/4 49 we’ll have the video in the show notes, but I’m live and I’m trying to get live in this group. I feel like I said that a lot. I’m trying. I’m trying to get live, you know, all good intention. But some goals, some things work better to batching some tasks, some work better to using a microwave minute. It just depends on how you want to customize it. And so I like to use this strategy for those small things that I just they take up more time than I want mentally and physically.

Cara Harvey 00:13:04 Right this way you’re maximizing that time. This is another just like quick tip. And that’s always like I never leave a room empty handed type of a thing. So if I’m walking from one room to another room, I’m going to look around and be like, is there something that needs to go to the trash can outside to a room that I’m walking past? This is part of the microwave minute concept. It’s how can I use what I’m naturally already doing my natural path, my natural task, what I’m doing, and how can I just maximize it and tweak it 1% more? How can I just use 1% more to do a little more during that to make it easier for me later? All right. So this is our quick tip for today on how you can use the microwave minute. Again, if you’re on the podcast in a few weeks. Hey, show notes are at a purpose driven romcom. So podcast 449, if you’re on the YouTube channel or in the Facebook group. Comment and let me know what microwave minute tasks you can do today and give me five minutes.

Cara Harvey 00:13:58 If you’re live in the Facebook group, I’m going to go find that download of the Microwave Minute checklist for you free. I’ll drop it in here so you can get some ideas of some of the ways I maximize my microwave minutes. And you can to have a wonderful day, and we’ll chat soon. 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. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.