Create Harmony

Life Hacks for a Peaceful Mind

• Sally • Season 1 • Episode 119

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Amidst life's noise and chaos, finding moments of peace can feel impossible. This fresh take on the Create Harmony podcast explores how thoughtful productivity actually creates more space for tranquility and appreciation in your daily life.

Sally Burlington shifts the usual conversation about "being versus doing" to examine how strategic efficiency in mundane tasks opens up opportunities for deeper presence and joy. Through practical life hacks that anyone can implement, this episode builds a bridge between productivity and peace.

Discover the power of the "work a little, rest a little" technique to maintain focus without burnout. Learn why creating a "done list" might revolutionize your relationship with accomplishment. Explore batch-processing strategies for everything from greeting cards to meal preparation that eliminate decision fatigue and create smoother days.

The conversation extends beyond mere efficiency into physical wellbeing with simple reminders for hydration and stretching that support your body through busy days. Each suggestion aims not just to streamline tasks but to create the conditions for a more peaceful mind and present life.

Whether you're overwhelmed by daily demands or simply seeking more harmony in your routine, these accessible strategies offer a pathway to balance productivity with mindfulness. 

Ready to transform small efficiencies into profound peace?  Listen in 

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to Create Harmony. So when your life gets noisy and busy and when chaos and conflict seem to be the dominant narrative, this is a place where we shift the conversation back to things that lift your spirits and things that clear your mind. So in our world, it's easy to lose focus on what's really, really important. But right here we dwell on how to incorporate more goodness and gratitude into your life and we talk about how to refresh your life and soothe your soul. So welcome in. This is episode 119, and I am your host, sally Burlington. Today we're going to do something a little different from what we typically do. So most of our conversations are about how to save your life and how to see your blessings and not overlook them in the busyness of getting things done. All of that's very important, but today we're going to just shift our discussion just a little bit. We often I'm often urging you to take your focus off of solely being productive and take a few minutes to just cherish your life. It's the being versus doing model. But today we're going to take a few small steps towards how you do what you do and add in a few life hacks, and that's because it's easier to find ways to decompress if you're able to be more efficient about getting your tasks done. So what do we mean by life hacks? These are simple and clever tricks or tips that can help you save time. They can increase your efficiency and they can make your everyday tasks just a little bit more manageable. So making these small adjustments really can have a big impact on your day-to-day life. Things will run more smoothly, you'll have more joy, and everyone needs a little more of that.

Speaker 2:

So let's start with a few productivity hacks, and then we're going to move on to some organization tips. So our first productivity hack is what we call at our house work a little, rest a little. So you can't do this every day, because some days you just need to power through. But the concept here is to work around and then give yourself periodic breaks, and the more technical term for this approach is the Pomodoro technique. So with that technique, what you do is work for 25 minutes and then you give yourself a five minute break, and that so that's. It's easier to focus, because you just focus for that 25 minutes and then you know you're going to get a break and you repeat that cycle four times, and once you've done that then you take a longer break so you can restore a little bit more. And again, it's really good for those of us who have a very short attention span, because you really only have to focus for 25 minutes and then you know you'll get to take a break. So try that work a little, rest, a little approach.

Speaker 2:

Now our next idea is to create a done list. So usually you're making a to-do list or at least capturing all the things that you need to do in life, but I'm suggesting here and I've said this before make a list of the things you have accomplished, and the benefit here is to show you how much you've achieved, and this encourages you to keep going. Sometimes, when you see how much you've already accomplished, it makes the things on your to-do list seem a little more accessible and not as overwhelming. So just try a done list what you have done, not what you have left to do. It'll be reassuring. So our next few hacks are really more like organization tips rather than productivity hacks, and the first one is buy all your cards at once. And so what does that mean? I got this idea from my husband, and in our family we have lots of birthdays in the first quarter of the year.

Speaker 2:

So my nephew's birthday, my dad's birthday, my birthday, both of my daughters, my sister-in-law, my brother a lot of our family and friends have birthdays right in that first quarter. So one year in January, my husband went to the store and he bought all the cards for everybody for that whole quarter, and I think he even bought some Valentine's cards too. So then he kept them in his nightstand and when it got time for a card, he didn't have to go to the store because he was already ready. He had them all together. And so instead of making, you know, 10 trips to the store, he made one and he got all the cards. And after hearing this, I thought this was a great idea and I started doing it and I've even expanded it a little bit more. So for me, spring and early summer are very, very busy times so, and I have several friends who have birthdays in that time of the year, and so I sometimes will go ahead and buy their birthday gifts ahead of time, and if I have a few extra minutes, I'll even wrap them ahead of time, so that then, when it's time for the birthday, I've already thought about them, I've come up with something that's specific to them and gotten it and wrapped it. Now here's the trick. This will not work unless you remember where you put these things. So I have a little file in my office for birthday cards and that's where I check before I make another trip to the store. I check to see do I have a card in there or not. But if you don't keep them organized, then you will not. It will not be as effective as you would like. So, along those same lines, when we talked about house hushing during the winter, during our winter well-being series, I gave this tip and I'm just going to repeat it here because I think it's a helpful tip I suggested that you go ahead and get one backup item of all your personal care things. So instead of like going to a big box store and buying you know 87 ounces of shampoo, I mean just one extra. So for whatever your regular use things are an extra shampoo, an extra toothpaste. You could do this for your deodorant, whatever you need. When you run out of it and you think, oh gosh, I need another one, you've got one backup ready and that way you don't have to rush out to the store right. Then you can just add that to your next grocery trip and it just keeps things moving a little more smoothly.

Speaker 2:

So the next tip we have here is about cooking dinner. So I'm the person who usually handles dinner around here. I'm the one that does most of the cooking and to me, the hardest part about cooking is figuring out what you're going to cook. And I have the same issue, like when we get around to the holidays even if we go on like a vacation where you need to prepare food. Coming up with a go to list is really, really helpful. So I like to list things that are good. I like to create, like some, some go to meals that are good for holidays or for larger crowds, and if you're a Pinterest person, you could even create a Pinterest board with like go to meals for different occasions, stuff that's good for a family beach trip or an easy weeknight dinner or whatever, and having all those things sort of curated for yourself will help you not have to think up oh gosh, what are we going to have on Tuesday? You've got that already ready to go to.

Speaker 2:

Now one of the ideas that I used, particularly when we were raising children. We don't do this as much anymore, but I would cook. I would come up with a few options that involve mostly frozen or pantry items and that could be kept on hand so that if we were having an extra busy day I could just whip that up. I didn't have to think ahead. I had those pantry items and they were. They were ready.

Speaker 2:

Another idea is if you're, when you get into grill season which we're sort of going into grilling season, now barbecue season you can try this hack. If you're going to grill something let's say tonight you're going to grill some chicken and you have, you know, your four chicken breasts on the grill. If you wanted to, you could fill the entire grill with meat because you're going to heat it up anyway. You could grill a whole bunch of chicken, season it differently and then chop it up and freeze it in smaller batches and then you have grilled chicken ready for salads or soups or pasta dishes. You just have that on hand. It's a simple way to be more efficient. You can buy grilled chicken in the frozen section, but this is a way that you can customize it to what your family likes the best and you know you can make it healthy. So try that. If you're going to heat up that grill, just grill a whole bunch of stuff, cut it all up and put it in individual pouches in the freezer.

Speaker 2:

So when I had kids at home and I was cooking all the time, sometimes we even came up with like a routine menu. Sometimes we had like two weeks worth of rotating menu and I would just repeat them. So you're going to have taco Tuesday and you're going to have soup on Monday night, and you know whatever you're going to have and just rotate them through and then, even if you have a few leftover nights, that just happens again. You don't have to keep thinking through what are we going to eat, because we know that we're going to go through our two-week rotation. And if I made a pot of soup for my family of four, we would eat half of it and I would freeze the other half. And then we weren't tired, we weren't thinking, oh gosh, I don't want to eat that leftover soup again. But I had a whole nother meal ready, cooked in the freezer, because I had half a pot of soup, and so on some other day I could just get that out and we would thaw it out and eat it. Just a really efficient way to use your freezer.

Speaker 2:

So the last few ideas I have for you today are about making yourself feel better. They're about, like healthy living. This is helping you thrive in more ways and keep you focused on your personal health routine. So drinking water we know that drinking water and staying hydrated is important and sometimes it's hard for me to remember to drink enough water. So what you could do is set a reminder on your phone to drink water at regular intervals throughout your day, or you could just say every hour I'm going to check and see how much water I have and I'm going to refill my cup and try to drink it throughout that hour. And this ensures that you stay hydrated and you can stay, get, get your energy levels up, because you'll feel better if you drink your water.

Speaker 2:

Another thought is stretching.

Speaker 2:

I'm a big stretch person.

Speaker 2:

I like to stretch and my body really responds better to life if I focus on stretching and not holding all that tension into my body.

Speaker 2:

So start your day with a quick stretch routine.

Speaker 2:

Maybe come up with a few stretches that you do and you're going to get up in the morning and you're going to.

Speaker 2:

You're going to do that stretching.

Speaker 2:

You might focus on your neck, your shoulders, your back, your legs. It'll just give you a whole full body refresh and if you're really, really into that, you could add the stretch routine to your nighttime ritual so that will calm your body down and tell your body it's time to sleep, it's time to relax, let go of tension, so you could get two good stretches in and loosen any tension that you're holding in your body that you didn't even know you were holding. So remember to add these small habits into your day and that can be calming, it can help you face life's challenges more readily. And if you have other things like this, you might have other items. Like I said, like we have a lot of birthdays at the first of the year. You just might want to analyze is there anywhere that I can make a little bit more effort one day to avoid having to make lots of decisions and effort on a lot of other days? So maybe give that some thought and I know you'll be happy you did so for our closing today.

Speaker 3:

I'm going to read a piece from a book called Shining Like the Sun by Stephen Weans, and it goes like this, like this you are going somewhere and God is smiling. God is with you and for you in every moment of your life. May you find God wherever you are, with laughter and tears and star-struck wonder, and may you find God wherever you go, with fear and and trembling, while stumbling and falling and getting back up again. May it be so.

Speaker 2:

Y'all, we are so glad you joined us today as we talked about ways to make our lives easier by working a little harder on one day and then the next day feeling more streamlined because we got some things done. So hope you heard some helpful tips and things that you felt like you could add to your routines. I know you'll want to come back next week for some more calming and grounding content where we consider more ways to embrace our blessings and until next time, peace.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

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Sally Burlington

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