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.

Cara Harvey 00:00:44 All right. Hello. I am going to be answering questions from last week. I had put up a post and said, toss me your questions. I’m going to answer them. So I am live here. If you have other questions while we’re live.

Cara Harvey 00:00:56 Just feel free to drop them in the comments and I’ll tag anybody at the end who asked a question in last week’s post so that you know that your question is answered here. Hope you’re having a wonderful week. Couple quick logistics. Next Thursday, I’m hosting an all day back to school planning workshop with a couple of my friends. If you can’t get online, don’t worry about it. You get all the replays for $27. You get to learn about meal planning, homework routines, creating your own schedule. And if you’re a homeschooling mom, we have a homeschooling expert there for you. We have a lunch break in between. It’s going to be very fun. We have lots of prizes. Make sure you go and grab your ticket. We’ve got it posted in the group. All right. First up question is from Jessica, and I know that this is one that I’m feeling a lot in the summer, so hopefully I can give you some good advice, she said. Every day is different. Sometimes staying consistent is a struggle.

Cara Harvey 00:01:42 So that’s one, right? There’s a few things there. I need visuals. I just moved to my new apartment. I’m still looking for that box of sticky things and whiteboards, and I’m not sure what to do because I keep forgetting. So there’s two things here. One is every day is variable, right? Like so staying consistent is hard and two is struggling to not have that visual reminder. This is something I feel a lot in the summer. Our schedule is different every single day this summer. My kids have camp. They don’t have camp. Moving into August, they have no camp at all. So every single day we’ll be doing a different activity. I don’t even know what the days are going to look like. And so that is a struggle. But I want to say something before I give you some tips on how to help with sticking to things. Consistent doesn’t mean constant. Just because you feel like you’re supposed to be doing something every day, doesn’t mean that actually is what consistency needs to look like.

Cara Harvey 00:02:30 Consistency needs to look like what you need for that specific goal. So whether you’re starting at I want to get some exercise in and you start it one day a week, well you’re consistent. Is that one day a week you show up, not seven. I think we often will put ourselves under all this pressure to do this seven day a week perfection. But if you’re consistent isn’t there, then stop putting your pressure on yourself. I now am at the point where I’ve been working on my exercise habit. For me, consistent is a bigger number. Six days a week. I’ve actually been hitting seven, which is something I never recommend, but I’m testing something this summer for myself. If I can get it almost every day. I’m happy with it because I’m not perfect and neither are you. So why do we keep putting pressure on ourselves to show up the exact same way and show up perfectly every day? Instead, the first question to actually ask yourself is what do I want consistent to look like for this specific goal? In this specific season of my life? Your summer is going to look different than your school year, and I think we often try to fit everything in a box, make it all look exactly the same.

Cara Harvey 00:03:31 It doesn’t work that way for us, and a lot of productivity experts out there are going to tell you, like you have to get up at 5 a.m., you have to do all these things. But here’s the thing my life is a mom of three is different than what your life might look like. My sister just had a baby. She’s got a one month old. Her life does not look like my life, right? So you have to learn frameworks to make it work. So one is give yourself some grace. Because again, consistency doesn’t mean constantly. But ask yourself, what do I want to be doing? And how often do I want to be doing it? Once you’ve figured what that looks like, then you need to make a plan for that. I wanna invite you over to grab a $10 club pass today. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:04:21 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 your mom club. Go to a purpose driven mom and grab your pass today and I hope to see you on a call. A lot of times we feel like we’re just supposed to show up and be motivated, but very small percentage of us are naturally motivated people. I always say this like I’m very driven. That’s my personality. I’m not always motivated.

Cara Harvey 00:05:13 Honestly, all I really want to do right now is read my book. Like, I want to take a day and I want to read my book and sit down and chill. But I have a lot of things on my list I have to get done. So I have to use all my tools and all my strategies to motivate myself to move forward, because I’m not always motivated. So once I figured out what consistent is for something, then I can ask myself what tools and supports can I put in place to make them happen? Instead of I’m just going to wake up and be motivated, right? I always share the story. A few years ago, I was on a podcast interview with someone and we were talking and she’s like, I know you like all this. Like, let me break all my goals down, whatever. But when I just feel like doing something like, if it’s important to me, I’ll do it. And I was like, red flag, red flag. You ever seen the red flag on TikTok where it just runs red? Red flag when you hear someone just say, like, if you want it bad enough, you’ll just do it.

Cara Harvey 00:05:57 Like, don’t listen to that. Because guess what? I want to reach my goals very badly. And I know that you do as well. But I’m a flawed human being who is tired, who has a lot going on, who has all these things pulling me emotionally, the load of all of it. So instead of expecting myself to show up perfectly, I ask myself, what supports can I put into place so that I can help achieve this goal? Okay, it’s not just I’m going to show up and do it, it’s what do I need? So maybe I need more accountability. Maybe I don’t have an accountability buddy or someone I’m checking in with. Maybe I’m not tracking. Maybe my goal isn’t broken down. Maybe I’m trying to do this goal at the wrong time of day. Right on the thing that you’re struggling with, instead of just throwing your hands in the air and saying, I can’t do it, it’s not going to work, and ask yourself, what can I change? Because maybe it just isn’t here for you in that moment.

Cara Harvey 00:06:46 But if you decide to do this goal in the evening instead, in the morning you start to become more consistent, right? This is something I’ve been working on this summer is my stretch routine and my skincare. It’s been my big summer. Goal is as I age to take care of myself. And I was trying to do all those things after my kids went to bed, and I was struggling with being consistent with it. Why? Because in the summer my kids go to bed. Later they’re going to bed between 930 and 10. So at 10:00 at night, I like to go to bed between 10 and 11. Like, I’m not going to want to do a whole 30 minute stretch skincare. Like, I don’t want to do that. And so I realized I was struggling to be consistent with taking off my makeup, washing my face. What did I need to change? A few things one the time of day. So I want to do it at the end of the night, but instead of doing it at nine, I moved it to before my kids went to bed.

Cara Harvey 00:07:29 My kids can hang out. They can do other things. There are other people in my home. I don’t have to be making sure they’re fine. So after I’m done with loading the dishes and doing those things, I go upstairs and I do my stretching my skincare around between 8 and 9. So it’s done before my kids go to bed. The other thing I needed was some more support. So I got accountability. And I tested myself this week because my accountability buddy is my daughter. She comes upstairs with me. We do our yoga, we do our skincare, and then we read a chapter of a book. We finished The Lion, line, the witch and the wardrobe. We’re reading Percy Jackson, which is so good. And she’s at camp this week, so I don’t have that, buddy. But here’s how I know that this system worked, and that this is the right time of day for me to be more consistent. She’s not here and I’m still doing it. I’m still doing it at the same time, and it’s still working on the nights that I don’t.

Cara Harvey 00:08:12 So normally Wednesday night I go to a friend’s house. Her husband works overnights, so we have found that the best way for us to get together because it’s so hard to like find a like not a sitter, but like for our husbands to be home to watch the kids or if we need a sitter. It’s so hard to like go out and we don’t want to spend any money on time. So we just meet up at her house and we watch two episodes of like, some crappy reality TV show and hang out, and it’s really fun. We do it almost every week. I noticed on the nights that I go over there around 8 or 9, I’m not consistent with doing my stretching and stuff. When I get back last night. I’m not gonna lie, I am tired. I got bored at midnight and didn’t scroll my phone, didn’t go to bed one in the morning and then I slept in. Didn’t get up to like 730 this morning. So my whole morning my hair is still wet.

Cara Harvey 00:08:54 Like I Look, I didn’t do all my normal things because I didn’t have the right time. So I want you to ask yourself, Jessica, and anybody else with this question. One. What do you want consistent to look like? And then two, what supports maybe are you missing to make it happen in a way that feels good to you? All right. I’m gonna piggyback on that because Mel asks a similar question. Meg said yes. Me too. Being consistent due to unexpected things like, again, not just the schedule being different, but being tired. So let’s talk a little bit about that, though. We talk in the purpose of a month club by membership, which if you want to come and get help with any of this, go to a Purpose Driven Mom Club Pass. You can just join us right now for ten bucks. There’s no calls today, Thursday. But tomorrow, Friday at one, I’m hosting a call on Trello. Or you can come Sunday and plan your week with us.

Cara Harvey 00:09:36 So one of the things that I teach is this thing called when the poop hits the fan blogs. And this is important for those days where we need to give ourselves a little bit of grace because maybe things don’t go the way we want, etc.. So what I recommend you do is that when you don’t need it, you ask yourself, when is my routine typically thrown off days? I’m tired. We come back from vacation for me Thursdays, right? I know that Wednesday nights I stay up late with my friends. So Thursdays I’m getting. I’m noticing the pattern. I’m getting up a little bit later, I’m more tired. I don’t have much energy. You know? I want to change up my schedule. Maybe you have a chronic illness. Maybe you know that, like these sort of things throw you off. So if you know that, make a plan for it. So make a I’m tired plan for your day. Plan for a day that you know you’re just not going to have the energy I talk a lot about, like syncing your cycle up with your productivity.

Cara Harvey 00:10:27 I also have my period right now, so I am not energized. I’m tired. You know, literally we’re tired during our cycle instead of pushing and just saying, I’m going to keep every day the same, I have a plan in for what I’m doing now. Typically, my plan does not include live videos on my on when I have my period 0%. I’m not feeling cute right now. I’m like, you know when you have your period, you look yourself in the mirror and you’re like, God, what is wrong with you? Right? Like, you just don’t like the way you look. And it’s so funny because it’s like as soon as as have you read a guitar? I love a guitar. And there’s like the glamour that they put on everybody. And then all of a sudden the glamour gets lifted and I was like, why don’t you look like that? Right? I literally feel like that, like the second my period’s over, I’m like, oh, right. I’m like, oh, there we go.

Cara Harvey 00:11:11 So I also come up with plans like that around the weeks you’re more energized in your cycle. Again, this isn’t something I typically do, but I felt like doing it. So I was like, let me just show up. You know, we might put this on the podcast later. Sometimes we re-air. So if this sounds a little wonky and you’re on YouTube, oh gosh, if I see it again, if you’re on YouTube, my hair is wet from my shower. I, you know, am not like feeling the way that I’m look, but I’m like, let me just do it. But if you’re on YouTube or the podcast and sounds funky or whatever, it’s because I’m doing this in our live in our Facebook group, just search community and come hang out there, but make a plan for it. Do you have a plan for those weeks of your cycle where you’re not energized, where you know that your body needs to rest, or are you just pushing through? And if you can make a plan for it before you need it, then what happens is when you need it.

Cara Harvey 00:11:53 You don’t have to think. You don’t have to use the mental brainpower. You can just pull it out of your toolbox and say, okay, this is this week of my cycle. This is how I feel. What are the tasks I’m going to do? Typically this week in my cycle, I’m doing more behind the scenes computer stuff I’m planning. I’m writing things like that. I’m not normally doing videos or social media, but today I just felt like doing it right because I’m permitted to adjust those things. But I tend to make these weeks, those weeks where I just don’t do those types of things. So good recommendation there. Plan it when you don’t need it. All right. And then coupling on this one. Sticking with your plan. Courtney asked this question how do I stick with the plan? This is the problem. I hear this in our community all the time. 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 Mom planner and get my new Ultimate Digital planner for business owners.

Cara Harvey 00:12:44 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 Supermom 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 planner and grab yours today. Moms come to me because they’re not sure what to do right? Then we get to a point after a while where they learn the frameworks, they learn the systems, they know how to make the plan. Then they struggle with the second half, which is how do I stick with the plan? Right? So she said, I need to admit it right, and accept and change some things with the tech around my house, but I’m just as addicted to my own phone.

Cara Harvey 00:13:46 Hand up right as well and some wake up time, she said. I’m a homeschooling mom, wakes up before the baby but doesn’t have a solid routine, so I need to create some urgency when I don’t have it. Okay, so there’s a couple of things in here that I think we can touch on. Okay. One is sticking with the plan that you have always go through an audit, your plan, just like I talked about before with consistent. If you’re not achieving your plan, ask yourself why. Like wrong time of day. Did I break it down enough? Do I have the supports? Okay. And I feel like I have all these things, but I’m struggling to stick with it. I really think it’s important to look at your diet. So do a time audit, go through and ask yourself again. Courtney mentioned the phone. We were just talking about this yesterday on a coaching call. I started decreasing my phone use this summer. Like I turned my phone off at 1015. My goal is 10:00.

Cara Harvey 00:14:30 Like I want to read before bed and not scroll my phone because I was having like, these terrible anxiety dreams because I was like doom scrolling on TikTok. And the world is a scary place, right? And so I started to limit the amount of phone I have before the amount of time I’m on my phone. I also want to stop being on some of the platforms as much. And so one of the goals I made was I’m going to look at my specific screen time usage and decrease it slowly. So, wait, should I embarrass myself? All right. So I’m going to be honest with you. So I’m going to pull up my phone right now. So if you go into your settings I’m going to tell you my screen time on TikTok yesterday. And I know that I scrolled for an hour before bed at least, so oh man, we’re about to do that, aren’t we? Okay, so let’s see Cara’s screen time. Let’s click in daily average see all weeks. Oh okay. So this is just today I can’t oh yeah I guess that can be right because it was from midnight to 1 a.m..

Cara Harvey 00:15:17 So just today I’ve been on TikTok for 58 minutes. That was midnight to 1 a.m.. Let’s look at my week five hours and 47 minutes. I have been on TikTok. Okay, so I’m going to own that. So one of the things I said to myself is I obviously would like to spend less time on social media, and this is the thing I find I like TikTok. I don’t mind scrolling my phone like, I don’t think those things are bad. I don’t think TV and all that is bad. But when I find myself saying I don’t have time for this goal, this goal, this goal or this goal, my tingly spidey senses go up and say, okay, is there somewhere I can make time tends to be on my phone, right? So go through and look at your screen time. Can you decrease that. So if I’m saying I’m spending five hours a week. So what’s today. Thursday Monday Tuesday Wednesday. So that’s I don’t know if the week starts on Sunday. So it’s maybe about an hour and a half a day, let’s just say an hour to an hour and a half a day on TikTok.

Cara Harvey 00:16:08 I can start making a goal of I’m still allowed to be on my tick tock, but only for an hour. Decrease it by a little bit. So then during the 30 minutes where I go to pick up my phone, I can say nope, I’m going to go do something on my to do list, okay? Or I need to do something on my to do list, and then I can earn the phone time. So slowly make those goals to replace them. And if you’re not sure, do a time inventory. Go through a couple days and ask yourself, where am I spending my time? Where am I wasting time? Look, I know that the stuff I want to do in the morning, I need to get up earlier. That’s an area I need to push myself now. It’s summer, so I have a lot less urgency. My kids are at camp this week. They have camp next week, and then they have four three weeks of no camp before school starts. My urgency of like, we got nowhere to be is high, right? It’s like, where am I going? We don’t have to get up.

Cara Harvey 00:16:52 I can sleep in. So it’s reminding myself of that. Giving yourself a place to be, maybe making an appointment with somebody else, say, hey, do you want to, like, can I text you to make sure I’m up at this time? One thing we do in the club again get a club pass is co-working. If you’re struggling to follow through on your plan, club members have told us that co-working has been the most productive thing they’ve done all summer. We do guided. So you show up and I say, okay, what are you doing for 15 minutes? Give me one small task. You post it in the chat, I put on a timer and we literally work. And then we report back. And the fact that we have to report back, the fact that we’re not doing it alone so often with our personal goals, because us as moms are doing it alone, we just don’t do it right. And so because we’re in that place, it’s really important for us to actually have accountability.

Cara Harvey 00:17:35 So do you have accountability to help you follow through on the plan? Okay. So you do need the urgency. You also need the accountability and also do the inventory. Where are you doing things that are not pushing you towards your goals that you can’t like? leave again. I’m not going to give up TikTok. My therapist would love if I did. I’m not. But can I go from five hours and 47 minutes in three days or four days if we count? And again, we’ll say four hours and 47 minutes. Because I know for a fact that an hour of it was last. Whatever. Whatever. No, I’m going to count. Can I go from five hours, almost six hours in three days to four hours and still get to scroll TikTok? Yes. It’s not like I’m taking it away, but I’m saying, where can I replace that behavior? I’m behind on my reading goals, and I know it’s because I’m scrolling TikTok at night instead of reading. Like, be honest with yourself.

Cara Harvey 00:18:21 Still do the thing. Get the dopamine hit, but replace the behavior. Or is that I’m a terrible employee to myself? I don’t listen to anything I tell myself to do. I’m trying to work, but it’s a problem. So if you are a rebel, Gretchen Rubin has the four tendencies. If you are a rebel, this might be an area you’re struggling in where you’re like, you can’t tell me what to do. Self, I hate to be a broken record here, but you need external accountability. It’s one of the reasons that having your own business is so challenging. And my husband will say this too. He’s working from home today. He’s like, oh, it’s hard, right? Because like, I want to go to the kitchen, get a snack and then I want to go put the laundry in the dryer. But then I’m staring at this thing and I know I have to unpack it, but I should make this phone call. And then, like, it’s so hard to stay absolutely on track with everything you want to do when you’re the one in charge.

Cara Harvey 00:19:03 When I was a teacher, I had to write IEPs. I had a timeline, I had a deadline. I had to have my lessons done. They had to be handed into someone else. I had external accountability. Having internal accountability is hard, especially though if you have a rebel personality where like, you can’t tell me what to do. So you need to get more supports and external accountability. And again, coworking, finding a buddy. Like if you have a similar goal like I want to work on recording this podcast. So one of my friends, we’ve been business friends for years. We message each other and say, what are you doing today? What’s on your list for today? Right? Just to hold each other accountable, just to say, I’m going to do a little more. I’m going to focus on something a little bit more. I’m going to get a little bit more done. If you can’t motivate yourself, which is okay, you need to add in other supports. It is really challenging.

Cara Harvey 00:19:49 It really is. And I’m I’m telling you, like sometimes I’m just like the struggle of managing all of it. When I’m working from home, it is a lot like I really just want to go watch a TV show or like, I just want to go read my book. But, you know, that’s okay. I can do all those things, all right, Maria says, remembering what I need to do. Thank you. ADHD. Yes. So this goes back to what Jessica started with, with the visuals. Okay. If it’s not in your face and if it’s not written down, you’re not going to do it. So what type of visual reminders do you have for yourself? Where are you writing your tasks down. How often do you check it? It’s not just I’m going to plan it out, it’s I also want to create a system or unchecking it. So one of the things that I do is I have three checkpoints in my day where I check in with my planner in the morning when I’m done with my work day.

Cara Harvey 00:20:36 Now that’s typically for the school year. But like, for example, my son is at camp right now. My daughter is away at overnight camp, so 2:00 I have to pick him up. So like right before 2:00. Right. Or midday. Midday, really. But I like to do that transition. And then at the end of the night, are you checking in with the plan you make? You can make the prettiest plan, but if it’s not one in your face somewhere, you’re going to use it and you don’t check in with it. It’s not going to happen. So have it everywhere. I have charts on the side of my fridge. I have a planner sitting here. I have a Google doc I use here. I have it on my Trello. I have it like I have it in my face. Also, use your phone timer, your phone alarm. You can set it to say anything. So go in and say, you know, I want to even to remind you to check your plan, right? But like whatever it is you want to do, go in and check your plan that way, have that timer go off, have that reminder go up so that you could say, oh, I need to go do this thing.

Cara Harvey 00:21:29 This is another one of those we feel like we should, and then we feel guilty because we don’t. Things I should just be motivated. I should just be able to remind myself of my goal. I should, I should, I should. Well, how about instead you give yourself supports, you give yourself tools you don’t feel like you have to be everything and perfect all the time. And you teach yourself how to follow through. It’s a muscle that you need and it doesn’t happen every day. I don’t remember everything every day. I’m not motivated every day. I’m not consistent every day. Right. And that’s Julia said, a lot of this is on here. That’s the theme, right? Expecting myself to perfectly show up consistent every day is setting myself up for failure and feeling like a loser. Instead, why don’t I say what support is going to put in place and what does it look like? These are great questions. I have another Q&A post going up. I’m going to do them every other week in the group, so you can ask me any question and I’ll answer them here.

Cara Harvey 00:22:17 I’ll be going live every week. It’s my plan. So I can just either answer questions like this, or I can go on a topic that I that I think would help you. So if you’re not here in the group, make sure you find purpose driven by community, because I’ll put it on the podcast, let’s say a purpose driven podcast for 75. So this will air in September actually because I’ve batched ahead. So this is an episode we’re going to record. So even if you watched me here live, go listen when it’s on the podcast again, I didn’t plan to put on the podcast, so I don’t even know what mic I have plugged in. It probably doesn’t sound great, but I know that I was dropping them truth bombs today. So go to a purpose driven podcast for 75 if you need help. A Purpose driven mom.com/club pass. Just check us out. Just check us out. Let us help you. Let us support you. We’re here for you. And thank you so much.

Cara Harvey 00:23:00 Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen.

Cara Harvey 00:23:14 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.