How to radically chop your calendar when there’s nothing else to cut.

“I’ve got ‘due by’ client projects to turn in; my kids need a lot of attention from me right now; there’s a bunch of food prepping and household stock-up tasks on my plate; and I’ve got 3 ‘go out to coffee’ invites from friends just sitting there in my inbox (‘cause I’ve had no time to even respond to them).... Can you help me prioritize all this so I get it done?”

That’s what my client asked me, and I told her NO. 

(So what in the world did I tell her instead?!)

You’ve got this!

Alyssa

Love your daily life as a work-at-home mom: https://yourunbusylife.com/

Subscribe to your weekly Mompreneur Life Made Easy!

🎧 New limited-time podcast series (only available through August): the real truth about hustle (+ how it shows up in your to-do list) → TAP HERE

• How to set no-housework boundaries (yes, even on the weekend!) so you can fully recharge between work weeks
• The secret behind to-do list re-prioritizing + how it saves you from hustle mode when you get off track
• How to quit the endless cycle of all those 5 or 10-minute tasks on your to-do list + stop making “to do list zero” a priority

And if you need to turn down that productivity pressure you’re feeling as a high-performing working mom, I’ve got two intensive spots open this month (we’ll help you get that elusive work-life balance - and actually keep it!).

How does 20 hours back per week sound?

‘Cause there’s no need to flirt with burnout to hold both the high achiever & the present mom identity.

Just book your High Achiever's Reset Button Intensive when you’re ready to find out what to quit.

Reserve here: https://yourunbusylife.com/high-achiever-reset-pod/

Transcript

This is the Unbusy Mom, and today we’re talking about how to radically chop your calendar when there’s nothing else to cut.

I’ve got “due by” client projects to turn in; my kids need a lot of attention from me right now; there’s a bunch of food prepping and household stock-up tasks on my plate; and I’ve got 3 “go out to coffee” invites from friends just sitting there in my inbox (‘cause I’ve had no time to even respond to them). 

Can you help me prioritize all this so I get it done?

That’s what my client asked me, and I told her… no. Speaking as your coach here, I think you need to radically cut. 

• Can you just not do some of these "good" or "useful" things? 
• What's the true, bottom-line, bare minimum here in terms of keeping your family running? 
• What would it mean to you to NOT have this level of go-go-go/no time for myself/worry that I’m dropping the ball on something a regular part of your day?

Because what I’M hearing is that you’re over capacity; you’re skipping your recharge time each day to try to make progress on your to-do list; you’re completely tapped out after handling the kid and client pop-ups each day; and you STILL’ve got all those “should get together” coffee invites staring at you accusingly whenever you open your Gmail.

And that’s not a healthy place for you to be in.

So, since *I* can see this from the OUTside perspective, I’m going to tell you that you need to cut. Work, parenting, basic upkeep, networking with friends, something - and feel free to tell me which two are your non-negotiables. You’re ALLOWED to keep the work and parenting as a sacred cow, for example, if you NEED that money and you NEED to be the one working with your kids through their current therapies. 

But you can’t ALSO put the pressure on yourself to be a great friend, cook amazing meals, run the house like clockwork, and get to all these big decluttering tasks. Not going to happen.

YOU need to treat your RECHARGE time as just as much of a non-negotiable as handling the kids - because it’s what’s keeping you from burning out on them, and everyone else.

Okay?

And listen - it’s OKAY if you get there sometimes. Sometimes life truly DOES just throw a bunch of things at you at once. 

But you can’t keep LIVING there - you’ve got to immediately put steps into place to REDUCE your task load and what’s on your plate to bring it back down to normal. Right?

Like for me, I was dealing with one (very reluctant) kid learning to read - and the next one down wanting to, once she saw big brother getting to sound out words - plus my high schooler picking physics this year (which I’d never taken, and she was expecting tutoring help, i.e. explanations from mommy), and then my OTHER high schooler needed an ACT study plan created - and just for the cherry on top, I had to hunt down a local school that would take homeschoolers (for testing purposes) ‘cause our district one didn’t want to be bothered.

Which meant *I* wasn’t getting flop time in the evenings and was feeling like I’m running from thing to thing during the day, always triaging my to-do list.

Which is NOT how I want to live.

So, I used my very own tools (the scheduling, mindset, and delegation I teach YOU inside my program) and set to work rewiring.

• Schedule? Yeah, I need an extra big homeschooling time block right now. What’s getting dropped to accommodate that? (Oh good, I’ve already uploaded 4 months of podcast episodes. I’ll skip content for now.)
• Mindset? This semester is just hard because I’ve got FIVE kids needing something from me in homeschool. It’s understandable that I’m not used to it ‘cause I’ve never HAD five in homeschool before! So this is something new I have to ramp up to. I’ll get used to it. I’m stretching.
• Delegation? I think the high schoolers are going to start making 4 meals a week for me (super fast prep ones) so that *I* can handle the ACT study plans and physics tutoring. If I’m the only one that can do that, I’m SURE not the only one who can roll out calzones and fill them!

You see? And then it all fit. 

• Yes, I had to completely rework my nice, ordinary, work-from-home and not-much-homeschooling schedule. 
• Yes, I had to hand off a lot of the supper prep that I was normally doing.
• Yes, I had to remind myself every single day (and week!) that this was my stretching time and that it was to be EXPECTED that I’d feel uncomfortable as I was adjusting to it.

But now? We’ve settled into a nice routine; some of the homeschooling has actually backed OFF; and I’ve learned that I have a much bigger capacity post stretching.

And for my client?

She hired more help; got her afternoon recharge time BACK on the schedule; and chose to back herself on the “spend money to save time” tradeoff by creatively looking over her ENTIRE to-do list and seeing what else she could delegate. (She had me to help her brainstorm with this, and boy did we turn up a lot that could be outsourced!)

This is the fun of doing less housework by leveraging the power of delegation – it’s ALL still getting done, but YOU aren’t the one handling each and every little thing! You get to live in your zone of genius forever more and keep shedding more and more tasks that fall outSIDE of it from your plate. 

Because they’re somebody ELSE’S zone of genius, and THEY want to earn money for them.

See, once you give yourself PERMISSION to admit it’s not working, and that you HATE being a martyr, things change.

But YOU had to give yourself that realization in the first place.

What about you - are you hiding a “business martyr” or “parenting martyr” or housekeeping or homeschooling martyr somewhere in there?

Is your schedule telling you “I’m too overloaded to breathe”?

Time to change that today.

Because you deserve better.