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How to Make Your Goals Work with Your Lifestyle
Story time.
When I was seven months pregnant with my first, I decided I wanted to be a work-at-home mom. My husband and I had been discussing all of our options, and I had been dabbling in the family business for a few months. While I'd always imagined that I wouldn't take on any serious income-earning projects until my kids were totally self-sufficient (like in high school, or something), certain life events combining with my studies of Scripture had me looking at things from another angle. My husband and I started charting out financial goals for our family. I looked over them with excitement because I was starting to believe that I would be able to help us reach our goals through grit, determination, and good old fashioned hard work.
At the time, designing my own planner was nowhere on my radar. I had a complex system of todo lists and digital calendars that honestly makes my head spin to think back on. But what was worse than my lack of a cohesive system of organization, was my total lack of understanding about the concept of trade-offs.
That's why, at seven months pregnant...
McCauley's Week Rhythms
Recently, I (McCauley) have been doing the hard work of shifting my rhythms. Seasons are changing, and I've felt scattered because of how much time I was allowing for overlap between focused time with my kids and time that needed to be set aside for business tasks.
I know that the best way for me to get business work done later in the day is to make sure I connect with my kids in the morning. Whether it's working together through school, doing a craft, or going outside, I know I have to tend to my children first to help them feel grounded. This also helps them know what they need to do for the rest of the day.
So when I started tweaking my week rhythms, I knew it was important to not allow overlap between my focused time with my kids, and business work.
How to Prioritize (The First Domino Effect)
If you've been in our community for long, you know that I (Shelby) have often shared that I am not a natural at prioritization. It was watching my younger sister McCauley live her ordinary (and yet remarkable) life that propelled me into the time-management space. She's a queen at getting the right things done, the right way, at the right time, and in the right amount of time. I'm the late bloomer in that area.
When I'd complain about how much better her life was than mine (just keeping it real here), she'd always go back to the same thing: prioritization.
That answer really used to annoy me because I didn't have a clue about how to prioritize. I'd try to get her to explain to me how she figured out what she needed to do next—and she didn't know how to explain it to me! She'd just kind of look at everything she had on her plate and then...know. It honestly seemed like magic to me.
It took me reading stacks of time-management books and articles, binging podcasts, and enrolling into workshops and webinars to start to get a sense for how this prioritization thing worked. From that research, I hobbled together some planning worksheets that applied the 80/20 rule to the Eisenhower Matrix, and helped me translate all of that into a time-blocked plan for my day. (It was actually in showing those worksheets to McCauley that the idea for the Evergreen Planner was sparked in the first place!)
How To Do Lists Hinder Your Productivity - Podcast Episode 10
We know the to-do list cycle all too well.
You have a hundred things rattling around in your brain, so you write out a massive list out on a piece of paper, and then jump into frenzied action.
But you feel like you're spinning your wheels, like you are working all the time, and still have so much to-do and can't get ahead of the to-do list that grows faster than you can manage.
The Problem with To-Do Lists
To-do lists tend to fragment your focus. Alone, they can never be the time-management strategy you need to organize your tasks within the context of your week. To-do lists encourage you to take action, but it is most often un-prioritized action, meaning you will never make progress on the things that actually matter most to you.
Planning While Postpartum - Podcast Episode 7
Planning while postpartum? At first glance it sounds over-the-top, almost an oxymoron. In the past we've even written about how the postpartum season can be an excellent time to take a break from your planner. So why did we choose to do an entire podcast episode on planning while postpartum?
You have to remember that when we say "planning", we are talking about self-compassionate planning. And perhaps there is not a better time to practice self-compassion than when you are in a season of recovery like the postpartum season. When we say planning while postpartum, we aren't talking about planning our biggest goals, or mapping our business' trajectory for the next year; we are talking about the simple, but extremely useful, form of day-to-day planning that helps us get out of our heads, sort our priorities, and let the non-essentials fall away.
Etching Your Goals Into Your Memory
The R.O.O.T.E.D. Goal Setting System helps you to identify and reverse-engineer essentialist goals that bridge the gap between the future you want and the life you’re living right now.
Sustainable, Life-Giving Goals Are:
- Rooted in your core calling
- Organically growing out of your context
- Outlined for clarity (part 1 & part 2)
- Tailored to your lifestyle
- Etched into your memory (what we're talking about in this post)
- Developed by Providence
3 Tips for When Your Day Went Differently Than You Planned
You had great plans and then...whelp, you don't know exactly what happened, but none of your targets for the day were accomplished. Your planner looks like a snapshot of someone else's ideas because it definitely wasn't the day you just lived.
You had great plans to make plans, but the baby was up all night so you missed your alarm. You threw a brief glance at your planner before you headed out the door, and now you're home again staring at a blank spread and wondering why you even tried to start using a day planner to begin with.
We've been there.
Why Make Plans When You Know Plans Change?
Have you ever had this experience? You dive deep into goal setting, chart out a strong schedule, and then start to work the plan.
But then, dun, dun, dunnn.
Life happens.
And after several weeks, you start to realize a lot has changed since you laid your plans, and you’re really making only like 20% of the changes you’d planned to make!
This phenomenon is especially true for goal-oriented mamas. We might be as determined and diligent as the sky is blue, but our kids are always rolling into new phases of need, surprising us with the twists and turns of their own growth journeys, and presenting regular challenges to the best laid plans.
So what’s the point of reverse-engineering goals and setting intentions? Why bother to sketch out your ideal day in a time-blocking planner if you know things will change?
How to Make Your Goals Work with Your Lifestyle
The R.O.O.T.E.D. Goal Setting System helps you to identify and reverse-engineer essentialist goals that bridge the gap between the future you want and the life you’re living right now.
Sustainable, Life-Giving Goals Are:
- Rooted in your core calling
- Organically growing out of your context
- Outlined for clarity (part 1 & part 2)
- Tailored to your lifestyle (what we're talking about in this post)
-
Etched into your memory
- Developed by Providence
Story time.
When I was seven months pregnant with my first, I decided I wanted to be a work-at-home mom. My husband and I had been discussing all of our options, and I had been dabbling in the family business for a few months.
How to Set Goals That Are Organically Growing Out of Your Context
The R.O.O.T.E.D. Goal Setting System helps you to identify and reverse-engineer essentialist goals that bridge the gap between the future you want and the life you’re living right now.
Sustainable, Life-Giving Goals Are:
- Rooted in your core calling
- Organically growing out of your context (what we're talking about in this post)
- Outlined for clarity (part 1 & part 2)
-
Tailored to your lifestyle
-
Etched into your memory
- Developed by Providence
Last week, we talked about how to start uncovering the soil of your core calling. Core calling goals resonate deeply, compel you to follow-through on them, and start bearing fruit immediately. The soil of your core calling forms a rich environment for setting sustainable, healthy goals that actually energize you.
This week, we’ll be getting super practical.
Creating Intention Lists
One of the main benefits of using a planner on a daily basis is the resulting automation of thought processes.
Automating thought processes can do so much to free up mental bandwidth and reduce decision fatigue (did you know that was a thing?!).
On our day spreads, we have our regular prompts which lead you through a set of intention-strengthening exercises: "What are your top targets for the day? What are you thankful for? What are your seasonal goals and why are they so important?" etc.
But there's so much space in your planner system to make it serve you in unique and powerful ways. One of the ways to automate your own, personal thought processes is to develop a series of "Intention Lists."
How to Lean Into a Cozy Christmas
Can you believe Christmas is the day after tomorrow? And goodness, it feels like there's still so much to do!
How about you grab a quick cup of coffee and cozy up for some words of encouragement before you launch into action? Let's take a deep breath, settle down, and get reoriented on what matters most.
Now, I could never outdo Isaiah 9:6-7 or Luke 1:46-55 in an attempt to explain how incredible the Incarnation has been to world history. It is fitting that a celebration of Christ's birth is a day with so much focus every year. God with us. It's a profound thought. A revolution. The Light entering the darkness of history and chasing away sin and death "far as the curse is found." It's phenomenal.