Cara Harvey (00:10.754)

Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom Show, episode 514. Today we’re gonna talk about why the hustle advice just isn’t meant for us moms, why it doesn’t work, and what I think is much better advice. Show notes are gonna be over at a purpose of mom.comslash podcast 514. If you’ve ever followed that expert advice, you you know it, right? Wake up earlier, work harder, grind, grind, grind, be consistent. And then you still feel like you’re failing.

Maybe you thought, like, how come if it works for everybody else and it doesn’t work for me, right? The problem isn’t you, mom. It is the strategy. It’s the reason I wrote my book, The 15-minute formula, because I was tired of the hustle culture advice. I was tired of being shamed in a very like bro sphere place in productivity. Hustle advice was not designed for the realities of motherhood. Hustle advice tells you that you’re failing if you don’t do all these things perfectly. And

This is the thing we need to caution. A lot of times I’ll like follow people on the internet, right? And I’m like, I really like their content. Like they’re posting something that’s inspiring me. And I’m getting ideas for their routines and I’m getting ideas for this. And then I start to see, like, wait, you don’t have my life. It’s like you don’t have kids. Or you your kids aren’t the same age as mine. Or you’re in a different financial like situation than me, right? It’s like, wait, you don’t understand, right? Because the hustle culture is saying, well, wake up at five.

Okay, and I always say this like, we are getting as much sleep as we can. I get up at six, I’d love to get up earlier, but six is like pushing it most days, right? But it’s like wake up at five or you’re failing. just get all the work in, right? Just take a couple hours and get it done. Uninterrupted, of course, like they’ve never been asked to open snacks or wipe someone’s butt on the potty, right?

Push through. I don’t care if you’re sick. I don’t care if you’re tired, if you wanted it bad enough, if you were disciplined, like we all have the same 24 hours, like you’re just making excuses, right? You should always be consistent. I don’t care what else is going on in your life. Do more, do more. It makes us feel like we’re failing because we are flawed. This advice specifically, this hustle advice, it’s built for people who have control over their schedule. Right? I think about Kara who was single.

Cara Harvey (02:27.122)

Ooh, Kara who was single. Let me tell you, I would come home from teaching and go run five miles because I had nothing else to do with my night. I have two places to be at the same time: a baseball game and a field hockey game tonight. I have to get dinner on the table. I have to get my kids to bed. And to be honest, we had a really hard day, and I had yet another message from my kids’ teacher that I’m trying to navigate and like figure out because it’s so hard. It’s also

Meant for people who don’t have caregiving responsibilities, whether you’re caring for your aging parents or for caring for your kids, and who have predictable energy. And we’ve talked about this on the podcast: how men in particular are in a 24-hour cycle with their hormones, and we’re on a 28-day cycle, which is why we flow and flux so much. Hustle advice does not work because.

Our time is not fully ours as a parent. Now listen, I always talk about bookends. You’re in charge of the first things you do in the morning, the things you do before you go to bed, right? That’s the time I have for me. But I’ve also shared with you my little guy, he’s eight, he’s an early riser, he’s up before me. So I’m often not up before my kids. So yes, I’ve got all the kids stuff. I also have the school stuff. I know we’re kind of gearing into summer. So think about that as well. You gotta get the kids to camp or not to camp, and then you have to maintain home with them.

You’ve got appointments that you’ve got to make sure. I just got a call just now while I’m trying to navigate this school issue with my daughter that, the form for campus filled out of the doctor. Please come get it, right? There’s so much to do. And then there’s the emotional needs of everyone else.

Cara Harvey (03:59.822)

Barrel, I’m gonna pause this real quick.

Hi. Hey. You wanna call? Yeah, hold on, let me pause it.

Sorry, it was my husband. I told you, I just said we’re dealing with some stuff with my daughter today. We gotta handle that. Okay. Let me

Cara Harvey (04:23.946)

There’s interruptions, and I’m gonna laugh right now, and I’m gonna be real. I just paused this podcast recording because my husband just called me. He’s been in meetings all day. He just saw the message from my daughter’s teacher and called me to be like, what are we gonna do about the situation we’re dealing with? Right. So I laugh because I’m living this life with gosh, it’s so hard. I’m living the life with you.

They’re constant. I now am like out of my flow. He’s like, let me just call you back. I’m like, okay, but like I I just lost my podcast workflow, right? Because of the interruption. And it’s not my fault. It’s the nature of life. That’s funny.

Cara Harvey (05:03.36)

The other thing that gets in the way of the hustle culture mentality for us moms, and I say it like that with that voice because it just feels it’s so masculine, right? Is that our energy is split into so many directions. The mental load is exhausting. My brain is so full of all the things. And I’ve shared this before. I have three part-time jobs. My first is running a PDM, and then I have two other jobs. So I’m split just with work all over the place, right? And then there’s all the volunteer commitments, everything else.

And just the general worry that I have. So that emotional labor is there. I’m indecision fatigue. If one more person asks me, we’re having for dinner, I’m gonna snap, right? Like my energy is so split because the thing about us is that we moms, we’re not just managing time. If I only had to manage my calendar capacity, cool, I can do that. That’s math. I’m managing people, I’m managing energy.

I have this plan, but I know it’s about to get derailed, right? Because I know that my daughter is not gonna be happy with the consequence she gets after school. And now there’s that emotional labor that’s gonna go into that, it’s gonna throw my day off. So the hustle advice of like, well, just get it done anyway, it doesn’t work for us moms. And the thing about us is that our schedule, it’s inherently unpredictable. Kids are gonna get sick, schedules are gonna change, school events, summer events, things are happening.

Hustle culture itself inherently depends on control. Motherhood disrupts that control. And I’m not blaming our kids. I’m not saying I can’t get anything done because of my kids. It just is the reality. And if we can accept that reality, we can make a plan.

Cara Harvey (06:45.57)

Hopefully this kwaff goes away soon. Alright. Hustle culture also ignores the season of life. When I was in early motherhood and my kids weren’t sleeping through the night, or remember the transition from three naps to two naps to one nap, figuring that out looked very different. Versus school age or teens, right? School age, right? I’ve got my kids who are up late with activities, but they still go to bed relatively like 9, 9:30. Teenagers go into bed late. Our schedules are different.

That is important to recognize because hustle culture, like the way I used to work when my kids were younger, to be honest, I was getting a ton more done than I am now with them fully at school sometimes, because there’s so many different factors to what I have to get done during the day. Because if it’s cheer com season during the day, yes, I’m working, but then I still have to do things to prep for our next travel trip, right? There’s just so many different factors. And business advice.

or that you get or productivity advice or any of that type of advice often assumes that you’re in like a neutral life season. I wish. I always say like I’m like waiting for the perfect day. Well it is not gonna happen. So what if instead you can recognize that? Because what hustle culture is doing is creating this cycle of guilt. I can’t keep up. So then I feel bad. So I try harder because that’s the only thing I know how to do. Then I burn out. Then I repeat then I feel like a failure. But what if it was better? What if there was something else we could do?

Mm-hmm.

Cara Harvey (08:17.738)

If we don’t come up with an alternative plan, and we’re gonna talk about some ideas and stuff, a sustainable approach, you’re gonna hit burnout. You’re gonna hit this place where you are stuck in shame and guilt. You feel terrible about yourself, you’re burnt out because you don’t have enough hours in the day to do all the things, you’re resentful towards your business or your home or your family just for existing. If I could just get a minute, right? You always feel behind and you’re losing joy. And there’s more than that for you in life.

What

Cara Harvey (08:52.152)

Hustle culture, hustle mindsets, hustle productivity tips, they don’t just fail. They are actively making it harder for you. It’s not just, this doesn’t work for me. It’s this is intentionally making me feel worse. So instead I want you to adapt a sustainable, friend, intentional sustainable. That’s our, you know, our theme here, approach.

I want you to have flexible consistency over rigid discipline. Now, in last week’s episode, I talked about rethinking consistency, but this is one of the key mindsets to shifting from hustle to not. And we did we just had this conversation on my call this morning about like, how do I get to this place where I want to honor where I’m at? I don’t want to burn out. I want to get things done, but I also need to kick my own butt be like, let’s go. You still have to get things done. It’s meeting in the middle, it’s intentionality.

Showing up consistently, even in small ways, and adapting based on the day. It’s allowing those 15 minutes to be enough because you’re like, right, I’m sort of showing up, I’m sort of showing up, I’m getting it done, and not saying I must do it this way. It’s starting to change your brain around how you look at productivity. And that small pocket of time. I want you to recognize that instead of hustle, hustle, hustle all the time, what if you said, what can I do with the time I have?

The 15-minute formula, again, wrote the book on it. It is the thing I love the most because it works, right? This is about momentum over intensity. If you stop looking at I must go 100 miles an hour all the time or it doesn’t count and I’m failing, and you start to just say, I have some time now. How can I be intentional with it? You will make progress. I want you to plan for your real life, not ideal. We’ve talked about this so many times. Making plans that ex accept the exp

The interruptions. So when I talk time blocking, I always say, hey, you have a three-hour block of time. Don’t plan more than half of that. Plan out what 90 minutes of that three hours is gonna look like. And the rest is for life to happen. And if life doesn’t life during that time block, go grab something from your to-do list, right? Or chill, whatever you want to do. Create messy day versions of each of your goals in order to be in a better mindset when you’re not go, go, go all the time. I also want to encourage you to have what we call energy aware productivity.

Cara Harvey (10:57.48)

Matching your tasks to your energy.

Cara Harvey (11:06.91)

Know what time of day you feel the best to do certain things. Know when is the best time for you to go run errands versus the best time to create content versus the best time to do your cleaning. If you match your tasks to your energy, you’re not gonna feel like you have to push push, which is what hustle feels like. You’re gonna feel like you’re in a state of flow. And accept that not all hours are equal. Like yes, math, logic, 60 minutes in an hour. But 60 minutes for me, first thing in the morning, doesn’t look the same at 10 o’clock at night.

Right, I’m a lot slower, I’m moving differently. And it’s not the same 60 minutes in energy I feel in my three o’clock slump. I want you to redefine what success looks like because it’s not just doing all the time. It is showing up. It’s not crossing everything off your list. It’s how did I show up? I want you to measure effort and the return you’re getting. Like I showed up, I did this, I’m rewriting, you know, this narrative in my head. I don’t have to be perfect.

So when you’re thinking about your goals, right, a hustle version of a work block could be like, all right, I got three hours. I’m gonna be uninterrupted. I’m gonna get 13 things done. I’m gonna sit down, it’s gonna be perfect. And any interruption makes your day feel like a failure. But what if instead you create this aligned version where you sit down and you say, okay, this is my, for example, this is my podcast work block. My goal is to record two episodes and outline two episodes. If I get those things done in the three hours, cool. And it

I’m being so real with you. That is what happened today. Because in the middle of me recording my last episode in this episode, I was dealing with stuff in my kids’ school. And it wasn’t just, I have to answer the message. It’s the mental load, if your kid has ever struggled at school, of overthinking and thinking and what’s the right consequence? And what’s what are we doing? And is something gone like I quote unquote lost an hour of my three-hour block managing this one message from a teacher, you know, back and forth and trying to figure out what to do. Okay. It’s real.

So because I didn’t overplan it, I had an aligned version and I’m a little feisty right now, you could probably hear it, but I said my block’s almost over and I told myself I was gonna do one more episode. So I’m gonna go get this one done and let it be enough. And that’s important.

Cara Harvey (13:23.968)

In my little mini TED talk today, I’m reminding you that hustle isn’t meant for us moms. Intentionality is. If you’ve told yourself if I just try harder, I could make it work. You need to have a more intentional plan. Not put more on your list.

I just need more discipline. I just need more motivation. Well, these other people I see on the internet, these other people are doing it. Why can’t I? It’s not that you need more discipline, it’s you need better alignment and a better intentional plan for your life. So, my homework for you is I want you to pick one thing that you’ve been hearing that’s like the hustle advice. Get up at 5 a.m., have the full underrupted block, whatever it is. And I want you to ask yourself does that advice actually fit my life right now? And I also want you to notice the accounts you scroll on social and

And you find yourself thinking, well, they’re doing it, why can’t I? Is this my life? Do we have similar situations? Because you won’t have the same, right? But you have similar. And then replace it. Replace it with a smaller version, a flexible version, and a realistic version. You’re not behind. You’re doing your best. So now it’s time to be intentional. You don’t have to hustle to succeed. You need to build an aligned life that feels good to you, even on the hard days.

I’d love to hear more, so head over to Instagram at a purpose driver mom so we can chat. Otherwise, check out your show notes at a purposedrivermom.com slash podcast five fourteen.