How To Get More Done In Less Time

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello my lovely friends. I hope you are doing well. Today we are talking about how to get more done in less time. I get a lot done and I also have a lot of rest and playtime and downtime and it is only because I intentionally plan my life that way. Planning really makes my life better. It doesn’t make it more rigid, it just makes it more intentional. IE I get more of what I want in my life through planning and that means I get more family time and I get more done whether it’s in my home, in my business, in all of the things.

So today I am going to read a message from a member in this community who wrote in with wanting some help on this topic and I think her question may resonate with you. And I also want to remind you that if you would like to write in and leave me a message, you can do that in two ways. If you go to momonpurpose.com/subscribe, you can get on my newsletter and sign up and you can reply to any of those emails and they will be forwarded to me from my team and I will be able to, answer them on a future podcast. You can also call the podcast hotline over at 8 3 3 3 Ask Nat. That’s 8 3 3 3 2 7 5 6 2 8. If you want to leave an audio message, I can, get that and review it and answer it on an upcoming podcast as well. So today’s message is from someone who wrote in and said, “As a mom, I’m constantly juggling so many tasks from managing the household to taking care of my kids and it feels like there’s never enough time in the day. I struggle with staying focused and end up multitasking, which just leaves me feeling more overwhelmed. How can I actually get more done in less time without burning out?”

Alright my friend, I can totally understand where you’re coming from because without using the tools that I’m going to teach you on today’s podcast, I too would be feeling that way because it would be living on default, living in reactive mode where you’re just kind of trying to stay afloat and put out fires and it’s a very overwhelming and exhausting and it feels like you’re spread too thin and you can’t keep up. And I just want you to know that there is a better way, like your feelings are valid and also there is a better way. So the tools that I’m going to teach you come in the second half of this episode. The first half is sort of like what I call laying the groundwork for utilizing the tools because if you use the tools without doing the mindset work and changing the perspective that you have around your days and around your family and around your schedule, then what can happen is you can try to outrun your to-do list.

You can try to get so much done that even though your productivity has increased ’cause you’re utilizing the tools, you still feel exhausted because you have a mindset that, you know it’s something like I need to do everything for everyone always or you think you need to earn your rest. So let’s start there. Let’s start with the question, why get more done? I like this question because I think we all assume that it’s just better to get more done. But have you ever thought about why? Why is it so important to you to get more done? Said differently? What do you make it mean about you when you’re on top of it? When you do accomplish all of the things, do you make it mean that you are a better person? Do you make it mean that you are more capable? Do you make it mean that you’re a good mom?

If you’re making your to-do list and your productivity means something about your worth, you’ve sort of entangled your identity with your actions and it’s a recipe for disaster because you will never rest enough, you will never play enough, you will always be trying to do more. And we live in a world thank goodness where we can do more. I love that there is always opportunity to do more and we’re invited to the things and we have opportunities and we have laundry machines that we can do our laundry in and that’s a beautiful thing. And yet if we don’t have a way to manage all of that, then we will never sit down and relax if there are piles of laundry in baskets. So if you think that you should get more done, that you’re supposed to get more done, that you have to get more done, that if you got more done you would be a better person.

If you got more done, you would be good enough. If you got more done, you would be the best. If you got more done, you would be a good mom. Those reasons are terrible, do not use those reasons to get more done. That is when you want to work on your mindset first because you can’t outrun your mindset, you take your mindset with you, you will learn these tools and your mind will come with you and you will still feel exhausted because of the way you’re thinking about all of your stuff. So when you do this mindset work and you change the way you’re thinking about it, the question then becomes why would you get more done? And I like to say because I want to, because it aligns with who I want to be because I care because it contributes to my growth and my goals.

These reasons feel very aligned with my capacity with the future of me who I want to be. They’re not rooted in scarcity or tied to my worth. Like getting more done is fun. Ask yourself, are you comfortable resting or do you think you need to earn your rest? I love letting laundry pile up and can easily rest and take breaks. I used to not be able to do this. I used to think that I had to get more done to order to feel good about myself and this worked fine when it was just me when I was single, when I didn’t have kids, there was time for all of that. That is not the case now. I am married, I have a home, I have three kids. So if I am trying to get everything done before I rest, I literally wouldn’t even have time to sleep.

So I had to change the way that I thought about doing things and I’ll just use household tasks as an example. To me, I like to think about household tasks as part of a running a family. And I say running a family intentionally because if you’re inside the Mom On Purpose Membership, you know I talk about seeing your role as mom like you would as a leader of a company. So if you are running a business, you are running a household. And I think that’s a really helpful way to think about it because when you think about a business, even if you’ve never worked in a business before, you know this, when you think about running a business, there are different parts of the business that you would be in charge of or responsible for or in your job. Same thing, the same is true at home but it doesn’t stop you from taking breaks.

It doesn’t stop you from going home. It doesn’t stop you from eating lunch or going to the bathroom. It just means that these are things to do as part of running the business and there is no kind of tie to your worth at all. And so that’s how I think about laundry piling up or just things that need to get done in my home. I just think about them as part of the tasks that are done to make this “business,” to make this home run. And I want to do them when I want to do them and I want to rest, but there’s nothing that ties my worth to them being done. So I don’t think that if I do more that I’m somehow better. This is key to getting more done. It’s untying your worth from your productivity said differently, get really good at resting at taking breaks.

This was such a gift I gave myself years ago. I remember going through this transformation. We were living in South Carolina at the time and just feeling so at peace doing nothing and what do you know? The sky didn’t fall, people were still okay, safe and healthy. My family was fine, everything was the same except I felt better. It was that transformative and I’ve never looked back. And now just like I think about other traits that I can kind of turn up and turn down, that’s how I think about this. Like a dial or a spectrum where I can go back and forth between. So there are periods where I am more highly productive and there are periods where I’m resting more and those might be periods throughout the year or they could be periods throughout the day. There is no right or wrong, it’s just increasing your awareness.

So you choose intentionally how often and to what extent you’re resting and practicing self-care and how often and to what extent you are productive. So for example, if you’re in medical school, that’s going to be a highly productive time. You’re going to want to make sure you have tools where you can rest in the pockets but you’re not going to have a big season of rest in the middle of medical school, same thing. But the inverse with being pregnant, I had great periods of rest in all of my pregnancies and just with little ones I’ve consciously decided to pull back a little bit. I always overdeliver to my clients but I haven’t grown my business exponentially and decided to work full-time because I want to be home with my kids, particularly when they’re under, you know, three years old, they’re not in school yet. It’s really important for me just based on you know, my values and everything I know about attachment theory and just who the mom I want to be.

She is home with her kids when they are that little and I’m able to do that because of the decisions that I make and it does require sacrifices and still I don’t make it mean anything about my worth in either way. So let’s just fast forward a handful of years when all my kids are in school, I’m likely going to have higher periods of productivity and business growth because that’s what I want for that season. So it might be that you’re increasing your productivity and getting more done in a season where your kids are in school versus in a season when your kids are at home. Or you can also apply these throughout the day. So you might be noticing, okay, no matter what season I’m in, I’m always in that go, go, go energy and I actually need to really work on resting just in my everyday life.

You can do that too. So check in with yourself. Are you good at resting? Do you feel comfortable resting? Are you tying your worth to how much you get done? You really gotta work on that mindset. If so, come inside the membership. I’d be happy to coach you on that. Next is to think about overscheduling and unscheduling. This is one of the biggest mistakes and misconceptions of these tools that I teach. It’s thinking that getting more done and planning more means that you have less white space and that is not the case. It means that you are intentionally choosing how you spend your time Over scheduling is from sunup to sundown. You have something planned Under scheduling is you’re not planning at all. Be mindful of both of these extremes. You want to be somewhere in the middle where you are planning intentionally to get the results that you want and leaving white space. So it’s both.

The last thing that I want to say before we dive into the specific tools that I want to teach you is with respect to your relationship to time and to planning and to calendaring. So if time could talk, what would it say about your relationship? Do you blame time? Do you think that you don’t have enough time? Is your time not as good as someone else’s time? Are you mad at your time? Notice the way that you think about time because how you relate to time is all mindset work. It is not action work. You cannot action your way to change your mindset.

Same thing with planning and with a calendar. If your calendar could talk, what would it say? So for example, if my calendar could talk, it would say I treat it like we are best friends. I rely on it, I believe in it, I use it, I’m proud of it. We work together, we are an amazing team, I respect it. That is what my calendar would say. So checking in with yourself and your own mindset around the way you think about time planning and calendaring is really, really helpful. Because if you hate your calendar, you have all of these negative thoughts about it, there is no tool that’s going to change that. You have to change your mind about it. And you do that through choosing next believable thoughts. So you can create a mindset that supports the results that you want. ’cause you don’t have to do any of this, right?

You’re doing it because you want different results in your life. Alright, now let’s dive into the tools that can really help you get more done in less time. So going back to the original question which really focuses on how to manage a house, kids, family relationships with so much going on, it feels like you’re always multitasking, putting out fires and just feeling overwhelmed and how can you actually get more done in less time and not burnout? I love this question because again, it’s like this is what will happen on default in our modern world. So I really think it’s an opportunity for growth. So I’m here with you, I know for sure that you can change, you can become someone who utilizes planning tools to create the life you want. Who knows how to process her feelings when they come up without making them mean something about you.

And who is able to say yes and no appropriately, who is able to not go into people pleasing, who really creates a life that she wants, given the time that she has and is okay with other people feeling how they want to feel. So this might mean cutting back on some kids’ activities to kind of preserve the family mission. For example, your family north star of being together and not having any time if your kids are all in, you know, six activities each. And so you might decide, all right, we’re going to cut out some activities and, and what this is really about is about being a leader of your life, being a leader of your time, not just doing what everyone else wants you to do with respect to your time. It takes courage, it takes growth. That’s why I love it so much. And it is so worth it because on the other side you will feel so much better and things will be undone and that’s okay.

It will be a choice that you’re intentionally making. You won’t be blaming your life on anything outside of you. You will feel confident even if sometimes someone is upset with you because you said no, you’ll know that you’re so aligned with who you want to be, your purpose, your family, and the work that you do in the world. And it’s so much easier to plan your days from that place of feeling in alignment with creating the life that you want. Okay, so with that, now I want to dive in to the practical tools. I have 10 of them for you here that I use and teach inside the Mom On Purpose Membership. So when you join, you get access to a library right away. And if you go under a library and you click on Time Management and Productivity, there are three courses, Time Redesigned, Get More Done In Less Time and Letting Go Of Busy.

And I continue to create typically about one course a year on Time Management and productivity. That way you always have kind of my fresh perspective and new way of teaching it. And oftentimes when you go through it again and you hear it a different way, it lands differently and it really changes everything. So if you’re not in there, I definitely recommend to getting in there so that you can utilize these tools. And aside from that, there’s all of the mindset work and feelings work that will go along with all of these changes that you’ll make. So with that, let’s dive in to the tools that will help you get more done in less time. Number one, using Google Calendar. I love Google Calendar, I’m obsessed with it. I think it’s really easy to share with others and it’s so common that most people have a Gmail account anyways, use this instead of a to-do list.

Do not use like a a hard paper calendar and do not use a to-do list. G calendar is awesome because of the way that it allows you to plan your life and move things around and you can also share it with your spouse, who was a game changer for us when Steve and I started sharing our calendars and we’re just better able to run our household together, run our family together. It’s really important that you don’t use a to-do list because you will be in scarcity. There will always be another thing that gets added to the to-do list and your brain will freak out. Do just do not do it, trust me. Number two is to time block on your Google calendar appointments, kids activities, events, doctor’s appointments, just things that are specifically scheduled that you’re not going to miss.

So inside the Membership we have a calendar page where you can add the calls that are weekly to your Google calendar so it makes it really easy. That’s an example of where you would want to time block because you can’t change those. The next tool is to time block results that are scheduleable. And what I mean by this is that outside of you know, the appointments, the doctor’s appointment for the child, you want to schedule things that you’re going to do or get done as a result on your calendar, not scheduling the busy time. So for example, if you are working out right now, you’re not going to put on your calendar work out. Instead you’re going to put exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to put run three miles at 4:00 PM It’s very different and this is a game changer. I love that I’m recording this podcast at the end of a highly productive day with the specific results on my calendar.

So I don’t put work or work on my business on my calendar. I had record How To Get More Done In Less Time podcast. So I know at the end of that time period whether I’ve accomplished the thing or not. This will just radically change your life. Do not put busy work like work on x, y, Z. Put the exact specific result on your calendar. Number four, create a flex time list. So this is what you do to have things that you can work on in the cracks throughout the day. So for example, I am mostly home with my little ones throughout the day and I do run my business as well. So it’s really important to me that outside of calls I have a flex time list where I have a list of a few, just three daily priorities that I’m going to get done in order in the cracks.

Whether that’s during a nap, whether that’s, after my kids go to bed, whether that’s in the morning, whether that’s you know, when my husband has off or something like that. The flex time list is what I’m going to get done and in what order when I’m not momming. It’s so important to have this done ahead of time, otherwise you’re just going to waste that time not knowing what to do when it comes up and then you’re just spending more time trying to figure it out. And so have that list made ahead of time. Number five, schedule in white space. Just time to do nothing. Just time where you know you’re going to be hanging out. Either spending it with your family or just being. Number six, schedule self-care. So this is a little bit different than white space because white space can just be you enjoying yourself and your life or you just, you know, hanging out Self care is a little bit more intentional.

It’s a way for you to take care of yourself and sometimes that’s in ways that don’t always feel good. For example, if you know you’re taking care of your health or your finances, you might be working out or financial planning and neither of those I would describe as necessarily like restful or rejuvenating. And yet they are in the bucket of self-care. So you want to schedule out white space and you want to schedule out self-care. Now of course there are those activities of self care that feel really good to you as well. Number seven, say no, allow other people to feel disappointed. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person. It just means the answer is no. It’s saying to yourself, I love you and know and allowing them to feel however they want to feel. You have to stay in your business. What are your thoughts and your feelings? And give them space to feel how they want to feel.

Number eight is to ask for help. Ask for help my friend. I know you think you can do it all and I know you try and it leads to a lot of overwhelm. So going back to the person who wrote in, it’s asking yourself, do you have the mindset? I think I’m supposed to do everything for everyone, always. And if that’s the case, it will be hard for you to ask for help and you won’t really like it. You’ll feel like you owe them. You will struggle to just embrace the help. It will just be uncomfortable for you. And so working on your mindset along with taking the action of asking for help can greatly help you get more done in less time. Number nine is to adjust your plans when you need to. Need is in caps here, my friends when you need to adjust your plans, do that.

And you can do that, you know, at your own discretion. But you gotta be honest with yourself like are you adjusting your plans because someone was genuinely sick and it was a higher priority for you to go pick up your child from school than it was for you to do the other thing that was on your calendar? If that’s the case, then yes, adjust those plans. Don’t make it mean you’re doing something wrong, just make it mean that this is the part where you adjust your plans and then what it’s kind of like you’re strategizing. So you and your calendar work together to strategize when obstacles arise. Okay, the obstacle today was that one of my kids was sick and now I need to move things around or you got sick, right? Whenever I’m sick, it’s okay, how are we going to navigate this week? We gotta move some things around and that’s okay. But you just want to be honest with yourself. This shouldn’t be often if it is often it just means that you are not using the tools in the most effective way, right? Because you’re not coming up with the right plan for you.

Lastly, have your own back. Have your own back for how you spend your time. Your time isn’t supposed to look like her time. It might be a busier season in life. Right now, three kids three and under. Oh my goodness, my days look a lot different than someone’s days who doesn’t have kids and that’s how it should be. Or who has kids who are older. And there is no right or wrong. And so just knowing that staying out of scarcity, staying out of trying to make it fair, staying out of all of that will really, really serve you so that you just focus on what do you want for your life and your family. And you are a human being my friend. So you need rest, you need to relax, you need to enjoy your life. And you can get a lot done. You can get a lot more done.

I think that motherhood is one of the greatest containers for getting more done because it requires so much efficiency. Like when I have a really great idea for the business, one of my first thoughts is, okay, how can I get this done more quickly? How can I make this easier? How can I do this smarter? And it has made my productivity higher and my deliverables better. I have created so many courses and pieces of content and tools and new materials for the members and the membership while I have grown my family from zero to three kids in three years. And that is not because I’m a unicorn, it is because I plan. That’s it. It’s not that sexy, right? Sometimes it’s not that fun, but it is life changing. So if you want to get more done and you want to do it in less time, join the Membership.

You will get access to all of the time management and productivity tools, the courses, the classes, and you get accountability from me. So you can write into the Ask a Coach forum 24/7, get support from me. And you can also come to any of the group coaching calls. There’s typically about one a week. I will coach you there. We will work through a plan that really works for you and your life because your life isn’t supposed to look like her life. Your life is unique to you. So let’s make sure that this is the year that you get more done in less time. Alright my friends, I’ll talk with you next week. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening Now head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.