The Unbusy Mom - take your time back strategies for business moms

Balancing Both Ep. 4: Do THIS, and you’ll always know what belongs on next week’s to-do list! (Both the mom side and the biz side.)

Alyssa Wolff - Work/Life Balance Coach for Business Moms

Here’s how to triage your to-do list - because all a priority task list really is, is that you first brain dump out every single thing you’re working on, think you should be working on, or are planning to work on. 

(All of it. I don’t care if it takes up 20 pages of your Google doc; just get it all down!)

And then this is what you do with every single line item on it.

(It’s like giving yourself white space for your CEO brain!)

You’ve got this!

Alyssa

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

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This is the Unbusy Mom, and today we’re talking about how to always know exactly what you need to work on next week in your business.

In other words, how to triage your business to-do list (if you have one), or set up a priority task list for yourself in the first place!

And if you’ve never heard of these concepts, I’ve got you. Keep listening. 

So all it really is, is that you first brain dump out every single thing you’re working on, think you should be working on, or are planning to work on. All of it. I don’t care if it takes up 20 pages of your Google doc; just get it all out.

Now, once you’ve got all that, we’re going to triage your to-do list – and here’s how. 

Gray out every single line item that you already KNOW is non-essential. You know, like changing the colors on all your website buttons. Or taking another “how to sell on reels” course when you should really just lean into the IG bootcamp you’ve GOT (or ask your coach to troubleshoot for you!).

(It’s called KonMari for your business to-do list, and you should be doing it every week!)

Then, I want you to italicize the stuff that’s probably a good idea, but certainly not crucial right now (like rewriting your welcome sequence for the zillionth time to make sure you’re up to date on your copy). Or doing the show notes for your latest guest interview - that doesn’t come out for another 6 weeks.

Those don’t have to happen NOW, so they aren’t going to. Got it? (Aka, more space for YOU!)

Next, cut/paste all of your normal-font tasks into one spot at the top of the document. 

Go through your Google doc one more time to make sure everything that’s left is truly important, and if it doesn’t feel like something you could do this week (and feel good about devoting the time to), italicize it.

See? Now you’ve created your very own priority task list. Congratulations!

And by the way, every time I do this I find another batch of tasks that DON’T have to get done quite this week - but I’d been putting a ton of mental pressure on myself to HAVE them checked off by end-of-day Friday - so this is a really powerful tool to clear the space in your to-do list! 

It’s like giving yourself CEO white space every week for your brain.

Okay, here’s the next step: segment your approved tasks into “must do this month” and “must do, but not quite as urgent.” That’s it. 

Make ‘em different highlight colors or something – plain for “not right now,” bright purple for “must do.” Whatever your favorite color is.

Now, whenever you’re planning out your biz week, I want you to grab from that bright purple section of your task list. Just those. Not all of them – only what will fit into your week. And keep doing that till you’ve crossed off every one of these purple highlighted tasks.

After that, you get to pull up your plain, non-urgent-but-important to-do’s again, and see which ones rise to the top for you – which ones get the purple highlighter treatment this time. 

(Remember, feel into your intuition for this if they’re all equally prioritized in your brain - OR go with what set of tasks aligns with your current cycle phase if you’re cycle syncing - OR you can just go by deadlines and pick whichever ones are due soonest. You choose.)

Because YOU getting to live every single day in the confidence that everything your content and clients needed from you got done is 100% to do with mindset. And using a super simple “how to pick next day and week and quarter’s priorities” system is exactly what you need to SUPPORT that mindset and value.

So there you go – my comprehensive tutorial on how to always know what you should be working on tomorrow. Because you deserve a non-flustered, non-overwhelmed work-at-home mom life.