Shifting Focus Strategy - Planning

If we have not met yet, I am the founder of Crunchy SuperMom, which was a project I had created in order to serve overwhelmed moms who wanted to be more productive while being present with their kids.

It came about because I’d heard so often moms were giving up on their dreams and being shamed for having ambitious goals of keeping a clean house, while still raising children.

I was hearing too often that women were being told to just take care of your children. I’ve been a mom since 2008 that has homeschooled the entire time. We love taking lots of time off while still incorporating rigorous material for our children, because they're avid readers.

My husbands been a marine for almost 20 years, and we've been married for 12 years. I've spent many nights, weeks and even months on the solo parent team while he's been deployed and. When he's home, he's amazing so no complaints but I've had to figure it out on my own. And I think my can do attitude is really what fueled my fire for creating systems for myself which to allow me to be a supermom, who runs a million dollar business from home on keeping up with my household duties.

My desire to do more than just be the present parent is what fueled my ability to create the system of managing my home. And I know that's what you're here to learn about.

First things first. Having the right mindset is the first step in preparing your daily routines. It’s not just about positivity and optimism but also just understanding your goals and what you actually want out of life.

You can't go to Pinterest and decide, well, I want to look at Pinterest today and figure out what my house should look like. You can get some creative ideas of course. But you need to be crystal clear in your mind on what you want out of life and what you want your day to look like.

Do that first. I do something that I called a mental download. Some people may call it a brain dump or mind dump.

Start by writing out everything that you’re thinking about. All the things that I want for today, tomorrow, and right now. If I'm stressed out, then I’ll write down everything that's stressing me out and then pick through that list and find three that I can actually accomplish or attack. It’s looking at 3 problems I can solve or three projects I can work on.

Do that first.

From there, I look at my thoughts on the piece of paper and I move them to fresh sheets of paper or put them on my task list. I then just break it down into small steps and they get prioritized.

I ask myself what things are coming up right now that cannot be moved?

What don’t I have any control over like my husband deploying, having surgery or kids having a piano recital?

Those aren't in my control and they're not flexible. Those things go into my calendar as soon as they come up. I also share a calendar with my husband so that we’re on the same page. Once those tasks are in place, I will specifically look at my homeschooling goals for the week, then my business plan. My career does come after homeschooling, which comes after priority family stuff.

When scheduling my routine, the homeschooling stuff goes in first. We don't do many hours of homeschooling, but we also measure by goals. My kids don't have to meet a certain requirement every single day or week, but we must spend a certain amount of time on each of the subjects for a certain number of days. Most of the time, my kids complete one or two entire curriculum books like math in a year because they're got that flexibility, and they get to do as much or as little as they want. I just care that they're putting in the effort.

Next, I place my absolute must do’s into my calendar which allows me to have a quick win. I’m using iCal, but Google Calendar works just as well. We also have something called the battle rhythm in our calendar that I share with my husband. The reason I plug our daily routines is not just to have our schedule or our  daily routine but so my husband knows when he can task me with something or if he asked me to do something, he knows what to expect. It helps as well to know if I have a busy week coming up, or if I just don't have time to put anything else in there.

And quite honestly, it also helps him have a little bit more appreciation for why the house might not be as tidy as it could be. Because that's the first thing to go when I'm running out of time is keeping the house clean. I don't make the bed either and I forget to sweep and things like that. So it helps him understand where we're at.

Once I have my schedule built in my calendar, I then transfer things to my daily routine app called Home Routines and you'll see a streamlined daily routine from there.

Let’s show you how to figure this out. While this works well for my family, remember that this won’t work the same for you. Don’t spend a lot of time getting caught up in mimicking exactly what you see me doing.

Instead, I want you to see the concept of budgeting your time that I want you to test drive what you learn here and refine it until you achieve your own success.

Get ready to see how I budget my time  by watching the video above.

I trust this was super helpful. Because of this time of Corona, I wanted to create an opportunity to help as many moms as I could. And since you’ve seen my schedule you know that I don't have endless amount of time to help everybody.

I really hope this was helpful and I look forward to chatting with you about your homeschooling endeavors.