Cara Harvey (00:04.12)

Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom Show. Here at 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 Cara 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 fill the laundry and let’s do this.

Cara Harvey (00:44.974)

If you’ve been wondering how you can make AI and ChatGPT a tool you use and not something that overwhelms or irritates you, I know I did not want any part in the AI when I heard about it a few years ago, but now ChatGPT has become my personal assistant. I have put together 40 of my favorite prompts specifically for moms to help you manage your schedule, break down your goals, create meal plans, and more. You can go to a purpose-drivenmom.com slash AI prompts and grab these absolutely for free.

and start using the chat GPT tools for good and helping your day feel lighter and better. That’s a purpose driven mom.com slash AI props. Welcome to the purpose driven mom show episode 493. Today we’re going talk about how do you game fire your goals? How can you turn motivation into a game when you just don’t feel like doing it? Cause we all have those moments.

What is reaching your goals about more like playing Mario Kart than it did running a marathon? We’re going to give you some tips today and help you get through the slumps, the low motivation, the not having enough time, feeling like you have so much to do. I’m to talk to you about how gamification can reduce your emotional weight of your goals, make them fun, bite size and like you’re actually having a win.

This happened to me the other day. We were on one of our coaching calls in the purpose of her mom club. We run weekly coworking sessions. These are guided work times where we get on the zoom. I’ll put a 15 minute timer on and I’m like, tell me in the chat what you’re going to do and go beat the clock. It works really well. We’ll talk about the timers in a second, but I found a playlist on Spotify. It was called folk energized, energized focus. I never listened to it before and I was like, let me do some music. I’m in the mood to do stuff. I was working on the computer. cause I also get some work done during coworking if nobody needs coaching and

I felt like I was in a video game. was like, I am Mario, beaten the final boss here. It was so much fun. And it let something that I didn’t feel like doing at the moment become enjoyable. I’m going to put all the show notes, ideas, tips, things that we talk about today at A Purpose of Your Mom.com, so podcast 493. But let’s first start with why gamification works. Our brains love some rewards, right? We love instant feedback. We love quick wins.

Cara Harvey (03:00.054)

Right. And games shorten the feedback loop. Progress feels exciting, not exhausting. I don’t know about you, but if you’ve ever scrolled your phone, that dopamine hit, right? We love the immediacy of that. Our brain wants us to do something, get a reward, do something, get a reward. So gamification helps do that. It keeps it fresh and fun. And I talked a little bit about this on my last episode, but if you’ve ever read The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin, she talks about the four personalities and one of them is a rebel.

My rebels need the fun. They need the gamification. If you’re an Enneagram seven, you’re like, this is the type of thing I need. Moms that use gamification find that their goals happen more frequently, more often and are completed at a better rate because they’re giving themselves their fast wins. This is perfect. Also, if you don’t have a huge stretch of time, but you want to get something done fast, we’ll talk about that as well today. And when things are fun, you don’t

them as much. They’re easier to stick to. You want to work on them. Now, when you’re in this perfectionist mindset that many of us get stuck in, myself included, you can kind of connect your goals to feeling hard. They feel like work. We are focusing on if I don’t do it a certain way, it doesn’t matter. But when you look at your goals like game, it not only allows you to enjoy things, it instead

takes it from a chore to I’m actually excited to work on this. Now, some of these are simple kind of cute little language shifts. Some of these are games you can play and some of these are based in our brand science. If you are someone who’s a bit more serious and you’re like, I don’t need this, maybe listen in and see what kind of things you can add to yourself. Now, the first gamification strategy I just talked about was music. Music makes things so much more fun.

And any kind of audio can make it enjoyable. When I’m gamifying some of my stuff again, if you search Spotify, you can get a focus playlist or this energized one. I also recommend if you’re looking to like get into starting something and making it fun. I heard this recommendation once and it’s so smart. Search the year that you graduated high school on Spotify and listen to that playlist. The vibes are immaculate. You are going to be in such a good mood. It is going to make cleaning feel like,

Cara Harvey (05:24.697)

And we’re like, yes, like I want to do more. The other thing with audio is find something you enjoy. I love audiobooks. I get more done when I’m listening to an audiobook when I’m the first one I’m not, because I want to listen to more of the book. So I’ve kind of made it more fun by deciding to listen to the book while I’m meal prepping, while I’m putting stuff away around the house. OK, I want to go take more walks because I can’t wait to get time with my audio.

The other recommendation is podcasts. They’re absolutely free and they get your brain in the right zone. One of the things I recommend with podcasts is find a podcast on the thing you’re doing. So if you have a decluttering goal this year, listen to a decluttering podcast while you declutter. It is going to make you more excited, more energized and more inspired to get started on that specific goal. Now, that is a very easy and simple one that you can get started without any prep, without any thought.

attach your audio to your goal. Now I’m going to give you a couple more strategies that are a more fun. You guys think about them a little bit more, but they really do help you move into momentum. The first one here in this section is a points system. This is making progress measurable and fun. love numbers and I love tracking. I also love to write things down to cross them off shower check, right? I love that completion. So if you find you’re struggling and here’s what I’m going to say to you. These are tools you can add to your toolbox.

You don’t have to do it for every goal. you find you’re struggling with one of your goals and in particular with I’m not sure how to get started on this, use one of these tips for that goal and see which one works. I’m going to hit 150 points for this goal instead of the day to day pressure. A chart for yourself of what each goal is related to the points, especially again with cleaning. This is what I’m going to use this year because

Cleaning is my nemesis. Like me cleaning, like I try, I try. And again, I get my daily stuff done. My house is manageable. Everything gets picked up at the end of the night. I run my little robot vacuum, but it’s like the deeper cleaning. So give yourself a point system. So you’re not feeling like I have to complete everything on the list, but instead, hey, how can I get to hundred points? Could I do a little small things? Can I do some big things? Make these for your kids as well. My kids want to do some chores. I’m going to do this. So then this way they can pick from the five point.

Cara Harvey (07:39.4)

the 10 point or the 20 point column in order to earn whatever they’re trying to earn. So make a point system for your specific goal and then give yourself a goal for it. The other thing you can do kind of correlates with what we call the good, better, best method in the Purpose to Remind Club, leveling and unlocking. This is gradual growth without the overwhelm. Okay, so the cleaning’s a great example. Cleaning used to be so much of a struggle for me. It’s still a struggle, but not as much. So while cleaning is still on my goals list for the year, it is not.

at the same level. And that’s the thing we need to identify. If it’s not at the same level, it means that I’ve made progress. But we often see if I don’t complete it, then I haven’t done it, right? So what if you made a couple levels for yourself? What if you’re like in January, I’m gonna be at level one, which is just showing up. I talked to her this last episode, just showing up. If I can just show up, right, that I’m on level one, I will unlock level two. See how we’re gamifying here? When I have completed a certain amount of micro action. So let’s tie this into the point system.

When I get a hundred points on my chart of tasks I want to accomplish, right? Maybe think about your decluttering. You can go through, take your house, break it down and then give every section points. So for me, cleaning a bathroom drawer would be like a five pointer. Whereas going through like photos, that’s like a 50 pointer, right? Like that kind of stuff takes longer. Some of my crap stuff. When I hit a hundred points, I’ve unlocked level two and then you give yourself a reward. We love a good reward. Go buy a new candle. Ten minutes to go read my book. I, you know, can.

Go on a date with myself, get myself some coffee when I get to level two, and then make what level three looks like, gamify it for yourself. And then if you do this, when you look back month over month, you’re gonna be like, wait, I started my cleaning routines at like a level one cleaner, which is what I would give myself. And I wanna reward myself. I wanna applaud myself. Like, good job, Cara. Like for real, I’m really proud of you. Like you really beat yourself up over not having your house look perfect, but.

One, perfection is a myth. And two, look how much better you’ve gotten at the daily, day to day maintenance. All right, pat, pat, pat. There we go, pat myself on the back. Anyway, thanks for coming to my paws. That’s what it sounds like in my brain. And that’s how I use the strategies that I literally teach to coach myself through, to push through the hard stuff. Sometimes it does happens to me all the time when I’m on coaching calls with somebody else. It just like pops in my head and I’m like, wait, let’s walk through this. So anyway, I thought that would be fun. We walked through it. But not on this second tip here.

Cara Harvey (10:00.412)

This will grow your confidence and remind you that you’re doing a good job. Habit, quests and mini missions. I saw this t-shirt today and it said something like, I’m not procrastinating. I’m on a side quest. And I was like, yup, I feel that.

and invite you to get my brand new reading tracker and planner. One of the cool things we’re doing here at APDM is monthly I’ll be coming up with a new printable to help you with your goals and I’m a huge reader so I made this for myself and thought let’s put it together for our audience. If you go to a purposetrivermom.com slash reading tracker you can grab this using the code pod10 and get it for only $10. This printable reading tracker has challenges, trackers, goal setting, and some fun gamification to make your goals a little

achievable and a lot more fun. Again, go to a purpose driven mom dot com slash reading tracker and use the code pod 10 to get it for only $10 only for podcast listeners of the purpose driven mom show. So for my fantasy lovers, come on in, lean in. I want you to start turning some of your goals into mini quests. How fun is this? I have a hydration quest to drink eight cups in a row. And listen, I’m kind of a nerd. So like if you’re like, what is she talking about right now? Like what in the Lord of the Rings are we doing today?

It’s fun. It’s fun. And if you don’t find it fun, then this is not a tip for you. But I love this kind of stuff. So my quest today is to drink my water. My quest today is to remove 10 items from my home. My quest today is to be an inbox warrior. And I’m going to clear out five of my emails. This is so fun for those of us who like structure. Like I need a number. Like I like that. Right. Like I like. Hey.

I’m removing 10 things. Like I saw this thing on social day and it said something along the lines of like, yeah, I can’t get my shelf decluttered, but can I throw away one thing? Yes, right? Like my quest is to remove that many items for the day of the month. I saw this one too that I might try. Like January 15th, remove 15 items from your home. know, January 31st, 31 items. I love this concept, right? Cause it makes it fun. It makes it a challenge. It makes it a quest.

Cara Harvey (12:06.72)

So think about one of your goals and think how you can make this a quest. Again, I see this working well with my kids as well. Another fun way to gamify is badges, streaks. All right, I did something three days in a row. I’m the weekly warrior. I got these things done. Consistency queen. Now listen, that type of motivation, badges and streaks, it isn’t something that motivates me. This system, but I thought maybe this could work for those of you who love the graphic design, who wanna go on Canva, who wanna put it on your Trello board.

I did that thing. The other piece of gamification I will talk about visual motivation is tracking. I mentioned this last episode as well, but cross the things out. Give yourself the gold star, make a little jar and every time you show up for your goal, put a little pom-pom in. Streaks create momentum, but also just that reminder, don’t quit if you break your streak, okay? Streaks can restart, okay? Shame does not restart you. Streaks will restart. Beating yourself up for missing a day,

and not being the consistency queen is a-okay, but it’s fun for that week. And you can print them out and put them up and remind yourself, hey, this is really fun and I’m proud of myself. Now I wanna deep dive a little bit into my favorite gamification tool, the timer. Beat the clock. Timers are the ultimate gamification tool because they create urgency, fun and micro-momentums, which I talked about in last episode. Timers trick your brain into focusing.

There’s actually multiple reasons, co-working calls work really well. But part of it is I have 15 minutes. I want to get this done before this 15 minute chunk, right? They also remove that like, oh, this is going to take forever feeling and be like, I just have to do this for 15 minutes. And they make things feel like challenges and not chores. So I’m going to give you a couple of fun ways that you can use a timer. That’s a little bit more than just like I put a timer on my phone. Like I do that as well, where I gamify things by like.

Can I beat the timer or it’s five o’clock, go check your tracker. Like I do those as well. But what if we did a few other things? So the basic symbols is the beat the clock itself. Beat the clock works so good with things like cleaning and pickups. Put on a five, 10, 15 minute timer. This one again, I do with my kids. The goal is to finish. See how much you can get finished in before it goes off. Can I unload my dishes in five minutes? Can I reset my living room? Can I wipe down my counters? Do it simple and.

Cara Harvey (14:30.229)

It makes it more fun. Bonus level with this one is if you can tie your timer to music. I do this with my kids a lot instead of like when the timer goes off, it’s OK, we’re going to put on this K-pop Demon Hunter song. And when the song is done, our goal is to see how many Legos we can pick up the floor, do it and connect it with music. Makes it even more fun. You can also do something called timer stacking where you’re doing two or three short, short blocks like three, five, seven minutes each. And then after each block, you tally off how many rounds you’ve completed.

So I do a workout, I use Beachbody On Demand. One of the workouts I did is called MBF. And they have this thing called AMREP, which is as many reps as you can do, whatever. It gives you like five moves. And the goal is within four minutes, you do as many rounds as you can do. This works so well because not only am I trying to beat the clock, but I’m trying to do a little bit more than I did last time. So if I noticed in my last workout, I got four rounds done. Then my next workout, I’m trying to get to five and it helps challenge me.

Now you can also do a rolling timer challenge. This one’s really fun. Choose a task, any task, pick your task. Then you can spin a wheel of how much time you’re going to give to it. And the randomness of it makes it more fun. So you can put it in. I use the site. It’s like online random picker dot com or something like that. But you can Google it and you can put two, three, four or five up to like 20 minutes and be like, I need to go work on my decluttering. I really don’t feel like it. Let’s see how much time I’m going to give myself. Let the randoms.

Picker do its thing. Oh, seven minutes. Okay, go. Now this is another good one for side note for gamifying things using the random picker is say you have your to do list or you have tasks and you’re like, oh, I don’t feel like doing any of these. Take your tasks from your trial board, your list, whatever, put them in the random picker, copy them in and then let the random picker decide what to do next. And then the game is to just do what it tells you to do. It’s so much easier than making the decision sometimes. All right. Another tiny, tiny timer one is called the tiny time boss task.

You’re going to use the timer to force a stop and not a start. A lot of times we avoid, right? We avoid starting because we’re like, oh, I’m to get stuck. This is going to take forever. I’m going to have to do this forever. So when you tell yourself I’m only having to do this until the time ends, it lets your brain be like, this is safe. I can do this. I can get started. So pick a time and say, all right, I only have to do this for 10 minutes and then I can be done for the day.

Cara Harvey (16:51.725)

It makes it fun. It makes it enjoyable and it makes it so that your brain feels like it’s not going to work on it forever. I gave you a bunch of really fun ways that you can gamify. So how do you track again? Tracking itself is a goal. I love Trello for tracking. It’s one of my favorites. They have a checklist column. gives me percentages. You can print out habit trackers. I sell a lot of printables in my shop that you can use to track. The thing with gamifying is it does add another layer because you want to track how you’re doing, but make it.

the path of least resistance. Don’t make it another thing you have to do. If it feels like it’s taking too much of your time, if it feels like it’s not fun, if it feels like you’re like, and now I have to do this, then this is not the right strategy, friend. Pick a different one. There’s no right or wrong. Use your whiteboard. was going to say you can use your whiteboard. I actually cleared my whiteboard off, so I put some goals on. It came in yesterday morning and my son had decided to do, if you’re on YouTube, you can see it. This behind me. And I was like, did you write on my whiteboard? He was like, mom.

It’s just an expo. And I was like, get in there and clean it up. He was like, but it was empty. Like he couldn’t resist it. So, and he has not cleaned it off yet, but use a whiteboard, use your planner, right? You can have a points column, a levels. You can have those badges. If you’re using Trello, use Canva to make yourself a little badge. I’m sure there’s a badge template in there somewhere. And then you can put them digitally in your Trello card and then it’ll show you for the goal. It super fun, right?

Timer challenge list the more visual the more fun It’s gonna be and then focus on creating some simple reward systems for you small things guilt free you never want your Reward to make you feel bad that you’re spending money spending time things like that I will gamify things and be like if you finish these three tasks Then you get a half hour to read right I gift myself those things that I desperately want to do

Time to listen to new podcast episode I buy I might buy myself a little something a pen or a candle But hey listen if you’re trying to have a low-spend year save money I bet you have something around your house. How many packages do you have that you’ve never opened? How many things you have around the house that you’re like I bought this for myself and I wanted to use it What if the reward is you actually use that thing that you bought six months ago? That’s still sitting there, right? again, avoid the rewards that pile work on and feel like a punishment and reinforce that like

Cara Harvey (19:09.057)

You want this reward to celebrate your effort, right? Not your perfection. So it’s reinforcing for you. I showed up to do this thing, not I finished my goal and my task. All right. So think of some things you can do this week, right? You can have a laundry folding race with yourself. Can I beat the clock on this inbox zero quest for yourself? Every email is a point that you finally get answered. Movement challenges are also super fun.

Again, that family beat the clock, cleanup works really well. And just do some boss level stuff by finishing some big tasks. I want you to pick a goal this week. Create one game mechanism you can use, right? We talked about a ton of fun things, the quests, the points, the timers, the music. Try it for seven days, play your little game, and then share your score with us in our Facebook group to search purpose to remind community.

And listen, I know it seems silly, but it’s not childish to want to gamify. It’s strategic. My focus this year is joy, because we don’t have enough fun. I don’t have enough belly laughs. I would like to have more fun. Not everything has to feel so serious. And I am a serious person. Like that’s how I would describe my personality is pretty serious. Like, I don’t think I’m very fun. And I’m working on that mindset because I am fun. I feel like I’m very transactional. And so I’m trying to get myself out of.

Everything has to have a purpose type of a mode. Maybe you don’t need the motivation. Maybe you just need to let yourself have a little bit of fun and not take everything so seriously, she says to herself as well. You know what I’m saying? Listen, show notes are gonna be at A Purpose to Her Mom.com. Such puck is 493. I would love to see here all the things that you’re doing as we get into January and those exciting goals we made start to be a little less exciting. Use these types of strategies to excite, re-energize yourself.

Cause this is, this is it. This is the time of the year. It’s only been two weeks in, but guess what? Many of you are going to say, I can’t do this goal already. It’s just the way it works. And this is the year you’re going to do something different. shownonsertapurposedreamermom.com. So it has 493. Thank you so much for hanging out. And if you enjoy this episode, please go share it with a friend. We really appreciate you getting the word out. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope that you were able to get some tips to just parent with more intentionality. Make sure you head over to Facebook and join our private Facebook community group.

Cara Harvey (21:27.483)

Just search for Purpose Driven Mom and it’ll come up. You can also go to PurposeDrivenMom.com slash podcast and you will have access to every single podcast, all the show notes, all the links, all the freebies and all the goodies that I have for you. Thank you again for being a part of the community and I would love and appreciate it if you head over and gave a five star rating and review. It allows us to find other Purpose Driven Moms, have an impact on them and I would love to feature you as the reviewer of the week. Thanks again and have an amazing day.