Cara Harvey (00:04.142)

Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom 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 (00:45.566)

To the purpose-driven mom show episode 509. Today I’m sharing with you behind the scenes of my purpose-driven mom club and something I do on Fridays, which is what we call the SOAR teaching. Now, SOAR is the method I teach inside of this program. It is really about how do you take your goals and create a plan to achieve them? How do you take those goals that are overwhelming, that your brain is like, I don’t want to do them and make them manageable, make them doable.

inside this call it’s pretty informal. I teach so normally Friday calls I’ll teach for like 10-15 minutes. Then I do open coaching. so we’re just really hanging out, but it’s me drilling these concepts home and then helping people on it. So what you’re gonna hear is me talking about how do you break down a project based goal? What do you do when you have this big daunting thing that feels like it is insurmountable and you’re not gonna be able to achieve it. Follow this framework for any project based goals that you have this month and I guarantee that you will have success

moving them forward instead of allowing them to be this big thing in your brain that feels like you can’t do it. Show notes are going to be over at a purposedrivermom.com slash podcast five zero nine and listen if you’re interested in the purpose driven mom club head to a purposedriven mom.com slash club where you can either get on the wait list, watch a webinar, or join the club itself. This is the place where if you have these goals, you know exactly what your goals are and you need help figuring out how to get them in your schedule and achieve them, I’d love to help you do it.

So you can go to purposedriven mom.com slash club or the show notes over at purpose driven mom.com slash podcast five zero nine. Enjoy this episode. Tasks. Project-based goals, though, they do need to be broken down a little bit differently than your numerical, even though they use a numerical system. And they definitely need to be broken down different than habits because you need to think through the tasks. And I think a lot of people find project-based goal breakdowns a little bit tricky, is because

They’re not always sure what the tasks are, or they’re not sure how long a task is going to take, right? So project-based goals take a little bit more time to break down. But once you have them broken down, you’re pretty much ahead of the game. Okay. When you use this system, and again, I just showed you, like I’ve really been working on decluttering this office. And after I get rid of those donations this weekend, like I’m gonna feel even better because I was sitting here and I was thinking, why isn’t this working?

Cara Harvey (03:07.818)

When you use this system, it takes tasks from like, I cannot do this. It’s too much. I can’t plan the party. I can’t plan the trip. I can’t do the packing. I can’t declutter the thing. I can’t build my friend, they just got a bunch of chickens. So like one of her goals right now is she’s like getting a chicken coop up and going for her backyard. These are project based goals, right? It takes it from like it’s just too much to like I can handle this task because I’m not trying to handle every task. I’m trying to handle this task. And again, I always say like,

There are some goals that fit in all three categories, depending on what part of the goal you’re looking at. So don’t feel like you have to have it perfect, but they are ones that tend to have an end date, which means they’ll be done. numerical goals also tend to have a bit of an end date, but they can be longer. So you’re like, hey, I want to read this many books this year, right? Project-based goals are like done, right? These are things that you will physically know they’re done. Habit-based goals tend to not have an end date. So that’s a distinction there.

And instead of using the numerical breakdown at first, because we will use it by numbers, you’re gonna break it down by tasks, keeping them short. Now, here’s your sweet spot. I know that sometimes on project-based goals, it’s hard to keep things broken down into 15-minute tasks. But if you do keep them into 15-minute tasks, you will find you will make a lot of progress. It really is a sweet spot of like, I’m just doing this one thing. you also can use what we’ll talk about, the batch system.

To break it into category, things to plan, things to learn, things to buy. So decluttering is, I think, one of the most common project-based examples that that we give because so many of us work on a decluttering project all the time. If you’re planning something, whether it’s an event, a party, yesterday I was talking to one of our members who’s moving, right? Breaking down the move. Getting the puppy is a project-based goal because I need to get prepared for the puppy.

Right. There are tasks inside of this goal. If you’re planning anything, my May planning, right? Like I have my May planning workbook. It’s up one of these tabs because I’m working on it for next week. May planning itself is a project-based goal. One, because it’s gonna end, but two, I can break it down into sections. Let’s find it. So I have my yeah, my May planning workbook up here. Well, here’s all my sections of May planning, right? That can take small chunks. This is another example of a project-based goal.

Cara Harvey (05:25.904)

if you’re doing anything in the business, completing your podcast episode, working on your blog post, writing emails. I’m working on a webinar right now. My webinar is a project-based goal. I need to set up the tech, I need to make the tags, I need to do the emails, I need to draft out the slides, right? Project things. These are tasks. Again, if you’re breaking it down by number, numerical, if you’re breaking it down by task, project. Okay. And we’ll get to habit and stuff next week because I think sometimes this can.

People get these a little confused. So here’s how we’re gonna break them down. I want you to think of a May goal. Let’s we can do a May one right now, or maybe you have one that you’d like to complete by the end of April, because April’s not over with, right? What is your end date? The best way to break down a project based goal is to determine what the end date is. When do you want it to be completed? Right. Because by nature they have one. So the birthday party, right? Done. My husband’s birthday party is next month. I should probably plan something, right?

My holiday dinner menu. We talked about this. I remember for Easter, right? I’m prepping for Easter. I need to plan those things out. I want to do my summer planning. One of my goals in April is to complete my summer planning, big picture stuff. Like I’m making my work schedule, et cetera.

Cara Harvey (06:38.818)

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Cara Harvey (07:23.436)

Decide first when you want it done. All right. Because you, if you do not have a due date, then you’re not going to be able to break it down with urgency. It’s just going to still be this nebulous, this is so big type of goal. If there are is a goal that does not have a very clear end date, right? Birthday party. I know my husband’s birthday, right? Like I know when that’s gonna be. Summer planning, I know when summer starts. If you have goals that do not have an end date, give yourself one. So

My example here is decluttering my office. If I just said I’m gonna declutter my office at some point, it’s not gonna have enough of a guardrail. So I need to give myself the end date. I need to say to myself, okay, I want it done by the end of my goal was I I would like this done by the end of April. Like that was my goal. And I’m 60% done. So I really need to like continue to push, but I can get it done next week. I feel really good about it, right? I wanna complete this blog post. Now, here’s the thing I will say also, if you’re an entrepreneur and you have your own business.

It is so important you give yourself end dates because nobody’s holding you accountable, right? Nobody is saying you have to get these things done. You’re saying it. And this is one of the hardest transitions going from a traditional job where I had a boss and I had someone to answer to to being the boss. I have to answer to myself. And I don’t always want to do that, right? So give yourself an end date. this webinar, for example, I told myself by the end of the day Friday, I would have everything I needed done for the webinar except for the slides. Like I want to get all of

The promo material out, et cetera. Give yourself that due date, or you’ll continue to procrastinate it. Now, once you have that, you’re going to break it down. And here’s two different ways you can break it down. You are not gonna break down my numbers, right? That’s our numerical. I want you to break it down by task or section. All right. So the batch tasks could be things like this. All right, let’s talk hosting a party. I’m having people over, let’s do the birthday party, right?

Things when I’m thinking about a birthday party. I could make a list, Trello, workbook, where wherever you want to do it, right? What are the things I need to plan? Write them all down. What are the things I need to organize? Write them all down. What are the things I need to clean? Write them all down. What do I need to buy? Write them all down. What are the phone calls I need to make? What are the things I need to learn? Right? Break it down by task. This works for sp certain types of project-based goals. Now for other types of project-based goals, you’re going to want to break it down by sections.

Cara Harvey (09:46.486)

An example is decluttering this specific drawer, this specific closet space, this spice cabinet. All right. I’m going to work on this because it’s so much harder to be like, well, all of it has to get done. So if you have a project-based goal and you’re saying, okay, well, I should, these are my dues, right? When we’re thinking dream, learn, plan, do, these are my dues, the dues will tend to get broken down this way. So you could use our dream, learn, plan, do framework, and those could be your tasks to dream to learn.

To plan to do. And then you could start working on each of those, dream, learn, plan. And then when you get to the do, you’re gonna have to break the do down by sections. So you’re really just having to pull these out of your toolbox to break them down. And as I often say, all goals eventually lead to the numerical process. So once you have it broken down, then it goes back to the simplicity of a numerical goal. Then it is just math because now you have numbers to work with. Numbers are objective, numbers are easy math.

Calculator or not, right? Numbers allow you to make a plan going from this is so big to here’s my list organized by category or task to what am I gonna do when? So now we create a numerical breakdown. This is all about batches. So here is an example for decluttering. Okay. I have four rooms I want to declutter by the end of one month. Okay. That’s my goal. Pretty ambitious, but it is what it is, right? Four divided by

Four weeks in a month, the numerical process is one room a week. Okay, well, that’s a little bit more doable. I need to do one room a week and I’ll get this section decluttered. Break it down even further. Say there are 16 sections I want to do, okay, by the end of a month. Then it’s only four per week. So it’s that numerical process. Same when you’re looking at, let’s go to the monthly planning example, because I have this pulled up. All right. So I have these categorized.

The way I have these color-coded are by the section of the planning. Right. This is the reflection. This is the vision. This is the goals. This is the breakdown. This is the time blocking. So it’s kind of broken this way. So I could say to myself, all right, I have one, two, three, four, five sections, five categories of monthly planning. Right. And if my goal, let’s do this now. Today is Friday. I want to have my monthly planning. Say you’re like, hey, I want to have most of it done by the end of the week for Monday.

Cara Harvey (12:10.636)

And then I want to have it done by next Sunday. So I give myself like 10 days to get it all done. 10 days divided by five sections is two. So if I do two of these sections, no, that’s backwards bath. Five divided by 10. Sorry. Every other day I’ll be able to get a section done. Well, I could even divide even further. One, two, three, four. I could say, all right, I have this many micro sections. How many days do I have to complete it? But see how it started with the project. It started with.

May planning broken down into categories and then we break it down into the numbers. Once you have that done, now you’re gonna add it into your calendar. All right. You’re going to create a plan for your project, and I want you to do it in pencil slash trello. And I just realized my trello board isn’t up. So I want to show you how I have my decluttering broken down real quick since we’re on my screen. So you’re gonna do it in pencil because things are gonna change, or you can do in Trello where you can move things around. All right. This is not, I’m gonna

plan every minute of every life. This is here’s my general plan. I like to do week. If I know I have this goal and I want it done by the end of the month, I want it done by the end of the quarter, I can say to myself, hey, I know that I want this done. These are the tasks I’m going to do this week. And I’ll worry about the days when I do my Sunday planning. All right. So I want you to map that out. I think doing it weekly is really helpful. Now if you have a year-based goal or a quarter-based project, then you can divide it by month first and then month by numbers.

by the weeks. So for example, let’s head into my planner for today, this week. So I’ve been working on my decluttering. It’s in this actions for my goals. And I did most of it, so you can’t see. But let’s pretend these are all the weeks. At the start of the month, I have all of this stuff planned out. So I have already pre-planned at the start of April that next week I’m gonna finish up this one section. And that’s

Honestly, all I have left. I actually forgot my the workout stuff has to get done this week. So I was like, wait, I didn’t do that yet. So I only have this section and these left. And I have it completely planned. I plan those out at the very start of the month. So I know exactly what I need to get done, which week. And now I’ve got my urgency. Once you’ve got your urgency of, hey, I know I have seven decluttering tasks to get done, then you can assign them time blocks. Then you can say, all right.

Cara Harvey (14:30.272)

If I know I’m gonna take 15 minutes to declutter, it takes me this long, whatever, how many time blocks do I need? And you pre-assign them. This way you’ve made your full project-based plan. As we’re going into May Planning, and listen, if you have a goal that you want help with, please, I’d love to help break it down for you today. My favorite thing to do. I want you to break down one of your project-based goals and then assign when you’re gonna do them. So thinking about next week, because it’s Friday today that we’re talking, right?

So think about next week. Take one of your project based goals and assign what days they’re gonna get done as well. So then you know that task.

Cara Harvey (15:07.736)

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 podcasts, 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 aha, 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.