Podcast Episode #14 | The Secret of Time Management

Time management tips for busy moms! Our episode topic today is the #1 biggest struggle reported by busy moms in our survey conducted for the book Secrets of Supermom. 

In today’s episode, we are talking about some strategies for time management based on the chapter Supermoms Always Have Time  | The Secret of Time Management. 

In this episode, you will find strategies and time management tips including:

1. How you can “plan to plan”
2. Ways to use to-do lists to your advantage, even if you hate them
3. How to stop “terrible time wasters”
4. Easy tips to get started

Ready to listen and learn how to change your mindset? Use the podcast player or listen anywhere you find your favorite podcasts. (Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode!)

Rather read? Check out the show notes and episode content right here!

Show Notes and Transcript: Time Management Tips

Hey, hey friend! Welcome to Episode #14 of The Secrets of Supermom Show! If you have been listening along, you know that we are in Part 3 of the book which is The Secret Skills supermoms use to succeed.  This week, we are tackling the number one problem that moms reported when I surveyed them for the book. I asked, what is your biggest struggle and they said “time”. In fact, 37% said time, and 35% said balance, which is essentially knowing where to put your time. (For more from The Supermom Survey, check out this fun infographic!) That means that 72% of the moms we surveyed had time at the top of their struggle list. I’d say that is pretty important. Today, we are going to talk about some time management tips for busy moms based on Chapter 13 from the book Supermoms Always Have Time: The Secret of Time Management. And next week, we will tackle even more time management tips that are specific to being productive with the time you have. Don’t forget to stick around until the end because we always talk about one small step that you can take TODAY to get started with the strategies from the episode. 

See if any of these statements from our survey sound familiar to you…

• “I just can’t seem to balance it all.”
• “I wish I had more time to get things done.”
• “How does she have so much time?”
• “I feel like I am on a hamster wheel where I have been running all day. I get to the end of my day and am in the same place I started. The house is a disaster, I am no closer to reaching my deadline, and I have to just give up.”
• “I don’t know how other moms seem to have so much time because I just don’t.”
• “I’m just so busy.”
• “I have so much to do.”
• “I don’t know how they do it.”

I am willing to bet that one or more of these sound familiar because they were taken straight from the mouths of busy moms just like you. 

How can we better manage our time so we don’t feel like everyone else has more time than us and so we can get off that hamster wheel?

Planning to Plan

Alright, truth time. If you are not planning your time, you will never have a good handle on it. If you wake up in the morning and have no idea what is ahead, you are in a perfect position to lose time, waste time, miss appointments, and overall just use your time poorly. 

Am I saying that you should have every minute of your day delegated to a task? Oh, heck no. You do not need to plan every minute to be productive. What you do need are two things:

1. A calendar, planner, printed schedule, app, online program…something to keep track of what in the world you need to do.
2. A plan to plan: You need some time dedicated each day or week or even month to plan our what is happening in your life. 

Setting aside dedicated time to go through your schedule means fewer missed appointments, fewer missed deadlines, honest tracking toward your goals, no double booking, and a clear picture if you actually have free time or not.

I get asked a lot what I use. How do I manage my personal time? Well, mine is a tiny bit excessive, but because I actually like to plan, it totally works for me. (Note: These are affiliate links meaning I could be compensated if you join or buy, but I only share things I use and LOVE!) I use:

• The COZI App (Calm the chaos with Cozi, the #1 family organizing app.): This is an app on my iPhone, and we use it as a shared calendar for our family. Jeremy, my husband, convinced me to use it years ago. It also is programmed to show up on an electronic calendar in our kitchen so EVERYONE knows the plan.
• The Happy Planner: This is an 18-month planner that I use for meal planning, long term planning for things like vacations, birthdays, and appointments, to do lists, and really all the things. I love the standard size because it fits in my purse and use the vertical layout.
• The Crush the Rush Planner: I use the Crush the Rush planner and monthly club for quarterly planning of my business goals and daily time blocking and planning (You can join the club, use the planner, or both). 
• Microsoft Outlook: In my day job, we use shared calendars and task lists on Outlook so my detailed meeting schedule lives there and all other planners just have time blocked for work without any additional detail.

I love to talk time management so definitely check out the show notes for all the links or do ask a question in the comments!

Why To-Do Lists?

You likely either love your to-do lists or you hate them. If you love them, I am preaching to the choir today, but I will tell you why I love them. If you hate them, listen up because it might just help you hate them a little less. Many of you hate a to-do list because it highlights all the things you have to do. All the undone things in your job or at home or both. Or you hate a to-do list because it feels too structured, too planned. You want to do what you want to do when you want to do it. 

Here’s why l love them the most. I am not going to like that I do love to check things off a list. That is simply fun and satisfying for me. But that is not the best part, maybe a close second. They allow you to get all the things swirling around in your head out. All those things in your mind are causing that feeling of overwhelm because you don’t want to forget anything and you probably have way too many things going on. All of that gets out on paper instead of in your brain trying to overwhelm you. It allows you to fully focus on whatever it is that you need to do, instead of devoting part of your focus to not forgetting all the things you need to do. Once it is visually out on paper (or an app if that is your thing), then you can see if the list truly is manageable and figure out how to prioritize and tackle it. If you need help figuring out how to prioritize it, take a listen to last week’s episode on setting priorities.

One more thing I like to do is keep to-do lists separate. I have one for work, one for home (that week), and one for long-term home to-dos. Many of us who are still working from home, or have been for almost 14 years like me, can get work and home pretty interwoven. For that reason, it is nice to keep the lists separate and the time blocks that you work on them separate too. We will talk more about task batching and time blocking next week. 

Terrible Time Wasters

What are terrible time wasters? Terrible time wasters are things that take your time in an unexpected or unwanted way. In the book, we have a whole table of things–page 198 if you already have the book in your hands–that can waste your time, some of which you might not have guessed like not having a plan, being disorganized, or lack of routine. Others you might not control like waiting in line or traffic. And some you definitely control like too much Netflix, Instagram scrolling, or alcohol. 

How do you stop terrible time wasters? Figuring out what yours are is the first step, and the best way to do that is to track your time. If you spent one or two days actually writing down what you did all day long, in 15-minute increments, think of what you could discover about your time. 

Easy Steps to Get Started

1. Assign your time a job. There is something called Parkinson’s Law developed by Cyril Parkinson in the 50s. It basically means, at least the way we use it today, that a task will fill the time it is allotted. If you give yourself 3 hours to clean your house, it will take you the full 3 hours. But if the inlaws called for a quick pop in and you only have 20 minutes, the house will be sparkling in a fraction of the time. The idea is to give yourself enough time to complete a task but not too much so you are efficient and focused. 
2. Eat the Frog. The term “Eat the Frog” is attributed to Mark Twain and means that you should do your hardest thing first. There are a few reasons this works. It stops procrastination because it doesnt allow you to keep putting off the hard thing. It allows you to use your fresh will power and brainpower. It prevents you from never getting to the task at all, especially if your day gets derailed like a busy moms day can often do. And it allows you to win the day! If your big thing is already done, even if the day becomes a train wreck, you already did your biggest and most important task. Win!
3. Just start. Sometimes you are not motivated. Sometimes you don’t want to do anything on your list at all. Maybe you want to get started but you are just overwhelmed and spinning. Here is when I would tell you to pick and easy task and just start. Check off one thing and then move on to the next. Once you get in motion, momentum will help you keep going.

One Small Step: Time Management Tips

Every week we share one small step you can take to get started today. This week you get two! Last week when we talked about setting priorities, our one small step was to create a brain dump of everything you need to do. A big challenge for time management is also a list that is too long with all those “need to dos” floating around in your head. So, if you didn’t do it last week, our one small step for today is to brain dump everything you need to do so you can then start getting all those things in your planner or in your to-do lists. 

If you already did that, kudos and good work, your second option is to print out the time tracker from the Secrets of Supermom Workbook–if you don’t already have it you can grab it at SecretsofSupermom.com/SOSworkbook–and decide that tomorrow you will track your entire day. If you do it, I want to hear what you learned so make sure to share it and tag me or send me a message. 

Alright, friend, before we say goodbye today, if you are on my email list, you might have seen that we are working on something totally new at Secrets of Supermom. We are creating a new program that will be an amazing community for moms who want it all. You won’t just have the book and the workbook to apply the strategies on your own, but a community of accountability and fun to become your version of a supermom. If you missed it, send me an email at lori@secretsofsupermom.com, and I will send you all the details. It is going to be amazing, I can just feel it! See you next week!