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 in 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 Mom Show, episode 473. Today we are going to talk about how to plan your week like a CEO. Mom, I always say we are the CEOs of our home. We’re going to be treating our home and our goals that way.

Cara Harvey 00:00:56 And I’m going to give you tips that actually are going to work. If you ever feel like your week is running you instead of the other way around? Lean on in realizing this episode over and over again, because I’m going to help you figure out how to take it from. I’m not sure what to do to running your home in a way that actually feels aligned, that gives you time and space to exist. And these are the steps that I take to help manage my home, my job, my family, all the things without burning out, without expecting perfectionism from myself, with being okay if I don’t get everything done, and allowing myself to take some breaths at the end of the week to enjoy because we are also allowed to enjoy things. Show notes will be at a purpose driven romcom podcast for 73, but I feel like this is so timely. My kids will be going back to school next week that this airs. I’m recording it in July. Part of my strategy that we’ll talk about, which is the batching, but I’m, you know, I’m ready for but I’m very not I’m very, not ready for it.

Cara Harvey 00:01:51 I wish we could pause. I wish we could have more time together. I wish I didn’t feel like I had to like, jam everything in. But I know that my kids do thrive off our rhythms and our routines. They’re excited for school to start. But buckle up because I shared this in last week’s episode 1st September Hits. Man, it’s like September holidays, right? We are about to go into the a little bit of chaos, and the best way to overcome that is to remember that I am in control of my time in my schedule. I’m not in control of what other people do, how they respond, how they act. But I can control what I do. Okay? I am the CEO of my home, of my life. My husband and I run that co, run that together. But I need to adopt a CEO mindset. Okay, I am in charge of my time, of my energy, of my priorities. I am in charge of what I say yes or no to and I’m going to be real.

Cara Harvey 00:02:44 Sometimes I’m the problem, right? Like that Taylor Swift like, hey, me, I’m the problem. It’s me. I’m the one who books the things. I’m the one who over books the things. I’m the one who’s constantly filling our schedule up with things instead of allowing us to slow down and relax. Part of that, though, is I take ownership over how I can plan moving forward. Right? Like, what would it look like for you if you treated, you know, your family, your home, your personal goals, like they were actually as important as they are? Often we put those things on the back burner. My personal goals, I’m like, yeah, one day, right. I’ll try that on Monday. Right. I’ll try to fit it in somewhere and then we don’t. When you can start to shift your mindset into realizing that planning a little bit of time for you is actually going to be so helpful. It’s going to set you up for success, and it’s actually going to help you get things done.

Cara Harvey 00:03:38 You realize how powerful you are. Okay, so I’m going to give you some quick planning tips right now as you go into this busy back to school season that will help you feel and reclaim that control. Okay. First up is a weekly SEO review. When it comes to what’s going on. All right. So I want you to look back at the last week, write down a win that you had. Okay. And check out the calendar for next week. Not only with yourself, but with the other people in your life. Have that meeting. We do it once a week at dinner where we sit, we have our family meeting. We talk about what’s going on. In particular, I had mentioned this last week, but like multiple kids, multiple sports schedules, right? I cannot get my kid to everything. We are very much a divide and conquer family and it is what it is. If we don’t all have to go to baseball practice, we’re not all going to go now. Baseball games, different story, but I don’t feel the need to drag us all to everything.

Cara Harvey 00:04:36 We can split up so we can get things done. So I need to have conversations with my husband. I need to have those conversations with my kids so they know what’s going on. I like to look at all my commitments. So the first step here is going through and asking yourself, what are my non-negotiables for the week? What are my top priorities? And do this before the week starts. I do mine on Sunday, but sometimes I started on Fridays. Friday night. I like to like close it out. One of the things that we tend to do is keep Fridays open. We don’t often have sports or activities on Friday unless something pops up. So what we like to do is have an open Friday. I tend to use that as my administrative day, going through the paperwork, cleaning up the command center, reflecting on some goals, catching up on stuff that needed to get done around the house. Everyone on Fridays is just kind of chilling anyway, so it’s not as on demand for me.

Cara Harvey 00:05:23 But if I don’t get to my planning on Friday, I do it Sunday. The other reason I will say that I like to do my next week planning on Friday is if there’s something I can do over the weekend to make the next week easier. I like to do it right. If I can make my grocery list, then it’s easier for me to get my shopping done on my planning. If I know that I have something going on on Monday night, and I could do it over the weekend so that I don’t have to worry about doing it Monday during the day. Like for work, I might squeeze it in. Okay, so I review those things. I check out our priorities. All right. And I make sure that the week is set up so that less things fall through the cracks. Okay. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:06:13 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. 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 a house and then it said the parent to draw a rainbow and a son. 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 the start that stops us. I want to spend intentional time with my kid and I don’t know what to do. I’ve made a plan for you. You can go to a purpose driven mom, draw with mom, or just search on Amazon to grab the book.

Cara Harvey 00:06:56 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. Draw with mom. Now I have a weekly planning system that I also use that makes sure that I don’t fall through the cracks. Okay, so it starts with my appointments, and then it moves to 15 minutes a day for one of my habits or routines that helps run my life. This could be a family routine, like making lunches for the next day could be a personal routine like my skin care, right? I put at least 15 minutes a day in for at least one of my routines. Now, I’ve been doing this for years, so I put in more than 15 minutes a day for multiple routines. But if you’re just starting out, do that. I then make sure I have 15 minutes a day for just one of my goals. Making sure it’s a personal goal though. Making sure it’s something for me. Am I using at least 15 minutes a day for my goal to move forward so that I’m not just going through my task list and my to do list, but I’m actually moving towards my goals, and then I put 15 minutes a day for Learning and Growth audiobook I’m doing a learning sprint this week where I’m doing a lot more courses and things like that.

Cara Harvey 00:08:10 Do the same. Okay. And do it before the week starts. Now, once you’ve kind of gone through and you’ve looked at what you have to get done, I do recommend also batching and theming your days. Now I mentioned batching. I do it all the time. I’m doing it right now. I’ve said this in past episodes. My kids do not have any camp in August. I have zero kid free work days in August, which means that the things I need quiet time for what I did in May was I made a list of all the things I want quiet time for, which included recording episodes. Now I still am doing work, meetings and things. My kids are home for those. If they interrupt, it’s not great, but I it’s not as annoying to me to be honest as if I have to. Like, I just feel like I have this block where it’s like, nope, I prefer to do my podcast when nobody else is home, right in my own quiet space.

Cara Harvey 00:08:55 I could be as loud as I want. I can, you know, have the door open, whatever. So I’m batching, which means I’m putting, like, tasks together. I’m recording all the rest of August episodes today, and then I’m going to get into September episodes so that they’re already done and ready to go. Look at your schedule. Look at the things you have to do for the week again, like a CEO and give yourself kind of meeting slots. So maybe you’re like, all right, on Mondays I’m going to run all my errands, and on Tuesdays I’m gonna make all my phone calls. And on Wednesdays, that’s what I’m gonna do. This type of work tasks. And on Thursdays, I’m doing my cleaning batch, your tasks and theme together because it’s going to reduce your decision fatigue. If I know that Mondays and Wednesdays is my errands day, which is what I have. Then if something pops up on Tuesday, I don’t have to stop and drop. I can just do it if something pops up on Thursday.

Cara Harvey 00:09:43 Actually my errands days Monday, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Okay, so I do have three errands days. Not the full day, right? Like I literally this morning when I was in my workout, I forgot a couple of things that I didn’t buy at the grocery store when I last went shopping or things we already ran out of because normally I shop on the weekends. But I shopped on Thursday last week, so like we had run out of some stuff. While I was there, I put in a quick pickup order, a little CVS order. I ran out for 15 minutes. I picked my things up. I’m home. I’m done with errands for the day. Right now, Wednesday, I might have to do a couple more. And then on Saturday I’ll do like a full shop. But by batching it together and having it pre-planned in advance, if something pops up on Thursday or Friday, I’m like, cool, it can wait. I want you to start treating things like that like they are meetings.

Cara Harvey 00:10:24 If you are a CEO of a job, if you knew that you had time blocked out to run your errands and someone asked you to run an errand for them in your family before that and you were the CEO, would you do it? No. Right. So the mindset shift is I’ve already pre-planned when these things are going to happen and you have to wait and guess what? They will rise to the occasion. It is rare that there is anything that is actually that important that you need to stop and drop. My son is out of strawberries. It’s like his preferred fruit right now. Again, my errands day was until Monday. He ate all of the strawberries very early on after my grocery shop again. It was Thursday, so between Thursday and Monday, like, okay, he ate the strawberries. Sometimes he eats them between Saturday and Monday also. But it is what it is. He prefers them. I don’t mind buying him strawberries, but yesterday when he was like, I don’t want, you know, I need another fruit.

Cara Harvey 00:11:14 So we have like a quote rule in our house with food where every meal has a fruit or vegetable. I don’t care which one it is. Sometimes pickles and olives are our vegetable. It is what it is. They just need a produce with every meal. That’s just kind of how we run things to be a little more balanced. Well, we’re out of my son’s preferred fruit, which is strawberries. We still have grapes. We have blueberries, we have some apples. He’ll eat them, but he would rather have strawberries. He’ll figure it out. This morning it was breakfast. I don’t want grapes. Okay, well, which one are you picking? Because you need to pick one of them. Right. And I will be going to the store today. So today I went to the store. He’ll be excited. I got him enough strawberries. He in my daughter’s at camp this week so he didn’t even have to share them. It’s okay to make them wait a little bit and they’ll learn and kind of figure it out.

Cara Harvey 00:11:58 This also is good for you so that you’re not Up feeling like you’re running all over the place. Okay. If you know that, for example, Girl Scouts is something that I work on every single week, I’m a Girl Scout leader and I do stuff every week. I know that Mondays is when we have our Girl Scout meetings, so what I’ve adopted into my schedule is every Monday night, I spend half hour to an hour on Girl Scout stuff. We’re either at the meeting like if it’s a Girl Scout week, then I’m there from 6 to 830 and I’m, you know, it’s longer than a half hour or whatever. But even on our off meeting weeks, we meet twice a month. I spend 30 minutes to an hour at my desk in administrative Girl Scout things, whether I’m balancing our bank account, planning a trip, planning our next couple meetings, you know, administrative things. I know that this is happening. So when girls got stuff pops up in my head, I can say, this is when I’m gonna have this.

Cara Harvey 00:12:47 I make it a little appointment inside of my calendar. I want you to do the same. Now, another tip for this is your tools. Now I say til I’m blue in the face. The calendar is just a tool, right? Your planner is not going to save you. But if you have some really good tools that will help you feel a little more organized. Great. But stop going from tool to tool thinking. Once I find the right planner system, then my life will be saved. Okay, if you want to use a Google Calendar, stick with it. Trello, stick with it. Paper planner stop going back and forth. Pick one and work on it. The reason it might not be working for you might not be because the system is flawed. It might be because you’re not giving it enough time. I know I’m going to rustle a feather, but you might not be giving it enough time because you’re making it too complicated. I won’t invite you over to grab a $10 club pass today.

Cara Harvey 00:13:41 The purpose of your mom club has been around for almost five years now, and we know that sometimes it can be hard to commit to something like a membership, ongoing payments, and all of the times you feel like you have to show up. So this summer we came up with the club Pass and we are continuing it into the fall. For just $10 you can join any of our calls. We have planning calls every Sunday during the week. We have accountability calls where you can get coaching and laser focus. Plan for what you want to work on. And we have a co-working which has been incredible for our members, where you literally show up with the tasks you want to get done, and we are that little kick in your booty to get it done. We are going to hold your hand as you complete the task. For only $10. You can join any of the calls and check out the purpose of a mom club. Go to a Purpose Driven Moms Pass and grab your pass today and I hope to see you on a call.

Cara Harvey 00:14:30 Now I have a couple things in my planning system Google Calendar and Trello, and a simple Google Doc. Those are the three things I use to plan my week out. I tried to use a planner. I inherited a happy planner. I was like, oh cool, let me try to use this. I don’t want it. I like my system. It works for me. Okay. So yes, I have multiple pieces to it, but I use them in a way that is not overwhelming. That has me really focused and allows me to not put her back and forth between, well, does Trello work best? How about asana? Now I should go to click up. I hear this all the time. The reason it’s probably not working is because you’re not giving one thing enough time. Now, one tool isn’t going to be the be all, end all tool, which is why I have multiple tools. But you have to stop thinking that if you just pick a different planner up, your problem will be solved.

Cara Harvey 00:15:19 Okay, so use a simple tool or tools, not overcomplicated systems. I tried to get my husband on the Trello train. He didn’t want to be on it. We use a Google calendar. It is what it is. Okay, simple. And what you will check. What you will check, what you will look at, what you will use in your day to day. That’s going to be the key. All right. My final little bonus tip here of planning your week legacy is to leave buffer space. Overfilling your schedule will backfire. You are putting too many things on your plate. You are trying to do too many things. And with school year chaos, the amount of transition you need to give yourself more time off, she says to herself as well. One of the things I like to do is make sure I have buffer blocks multiple times. My first one is every day. Now I don’t give a full time block. You know, time blocking is my dream. That’s how I work, which is like chunking a couple hours together.

Cara Harvey 00:16:17 I don’t give a full block off. I’m not saying oh, from 3 to 6 like I’m quote off and I’m just flexed in doing whatever. But I will make sure that there’s at least an hour or so in my day that is unscheduled and unplanned because stuff’s going to run over. I have a phone call to make today. I don’t want to make, and it’s going to probably take longer than I think. I need to have time and space for the stuff that’s going to get pushed off my list, because I probably over planned later in the day. So I try to make sure I have at least one hour before I go to bed. That’s just nothing, okay? That’s just an hour. There’s nothing on the plate. Who knows what we’re going to do? Maybe I’ll read a book. Maybe I’ll catch up on some stuff. Most likely I’ll catch up on some stuff. right? But having that white space every day just gives me a little breathing space. And it also helps if you have an emergency if something pops up.

Cara Harvey 00:17:09 Okay. So I maybe didn’t know I needed to make the phone call. Oh, look, I know I have an hour of free time later. That’s where it can go. Instead of let me move this thing and move this thing and move this thing to make it fit. I also plan out multiple white space blocks throughout my week. This is where I do have nothing completely on the calendar. Mine tend to be on the weekend because I am working during the week, and that’s different during the summer. I talk about the Four Seasons plan, push, rest, and fun during the school year. Monday through Thursday is push. Like every block is filled with either work or a kid task. Okay. But on the weekends we tend to have a little bit more flexibility right now depending, you know, it depends on the month, right? Come find me to your comp cookie season. I don’t know, I’ll see you later. Right now that my son’s doing baseball for the first time in the fall, I don’t know what it’s going to look like.

Cara Harvey 00:17:57 He’s not doing football, which is what he normally does. So I don’t know what the weekends are going to be. I like to give myself some time on the weekends where we’re unplanned and I don’t know what we’re going to do because I know something’s going to pop up. I know that I’m going to have a project I know I’m going to want to work on. I know that I’m going to have something I’m behind on, and or I know that I’m just going to need the recharge period, and I give that to myself. I plan that out in advance because if not, I will burn out. You are the CEO of your schedule, and if you’re not planning it intentionally, then you’re just an employee of that schedule. Okay. You are needing to make your schedule work for you and not the other way around. And you don’t need the perfect system, okay? You just need a plan that works for you, that works for your family. Okay. A CEO like they’re not waiting for a week to happen, right? She is planning that week out.

Cara Harvey 00:18:49 Do you do the same? And if not. What tips can you take today? Okay. What I would love for you to do is you can go to a Purpose Driven Moms weekly checklist. That’s pretty much all this system I talk about. Plus my planning system. Absolutely free. You can go download it. There’s a Trello board for you there. And I would love for you to tag me over on Instagram at a purpose. If you use any of these planning tips. I know that the back to school season is about to feel like a whirlwind. You are capable of handling it. You just need a better plan. Show notes are at a Purpose Driven Mom podcast 473 and I’ll see you next week. 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 00:19:38 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.