Welcome back to another episode of the MilSpouse Mastermind Show! Do you ever feel like you just have too much on your plate? I think a lot of us could answer yes. To that question. Especially if we have kiddos at home or kids, activities, spouse, activities, it’s so easy for our schedules to get really full and for us to find ourselves in this place where we feel stretched too thin.

[00:00:24] We feel like we don’t have any margin, especially margin that helps us show up as the people we want to be, as healthy and whole human beings, living from a place of rest, a place of mental and emotional health, a place of physical health and vibrancy and joy.

[00:00:48] We get to this place where it’s hard for us to even imagine being in a place where we’re not just surviving day to day, where we can actually live a life of freedom and joy and be fully present for life. Sometimes it’s just so much easier to none out with Netflix or a glass of wine or two in the evenings, than to consider how in the world we can go from where we are today to living a life that we actually love.

[00:01:14] What the core question I think that we’re asking is, how do we create this life we want, and how do we make all of this possible, so that we feel less overwhelmed. How do we fit it all in? How do we actually pursue the things that matter to us and live a life that isn’t in this place of overwhelm and burnout?

[00:01:39] When I stopped to think about this question, the answer I came to was my number one productivity tip for the work from home military spouse. But honestly, the more that I thought about, it’s really the answer to living and crafting a life with purpose, a life that both lights you up and impacts the world for good.

[00:02:03] This productivity tip applies to your life whether you work outside the home, whether you work from home, whether you’re a stay at home parent, whether you homeschool your kids. If you are in school full-time, wherever, whatever season of life you find yourself. This is applicable to your life today.

[00:02:24] Basically anybody who is on the planet, this productivity tip is going to help you. So what do you say? Let’s dive into what my number one productivity tip is and how you can start implementing it in your own today.

Now, before we dive into my number one productivity tip, can I ask you a very quick question? Would you consider sharing this show with someone in your life? You can do that by going into iTunes and leaving us a review, you can do it by sharing about this episode or an episode that has been really meaningful to your stories or making a post about it, or just using word of mouth to share this show with someone in your life. The more that we share, the more that we all become knowledgeable and come together as a community here to support each other on our journeys as military spouses. So if you take just a minute to get the word out about this podcast, I would be so, so grateful to you.

[00:04:23] All right, let’s dive into my number one productivity tip for your life. Now, the funny thing about this is that my definition of what this looks like and how we implement it, has drastically changed over the last few years. But when somebody sat down to ask me, Hey, what is the biggest productivity tip you have for work from home moms?

[00:04:46] And my answer was time-blocking. So let’s talk about what time-blocking is, how we do it, and how my definition and implementation of time-blocking in my life has evolved over the last several years. Now before kiddos, I really didn’t have any kind of concept of time blocking. I just kind of got up, went to work, went home and lived my life.

[00:05:14] I’ve said this before, but I really I’m not a super scheduled person. I kind of like to live in the moment, but that’s not really practical when you have littles at home. So the first thing when it comes to time-blocking is that you have to get to this place where you choose to take control of your schedule.

[00:05:38] And this is an important thing to do because I know where I was several years ago. When I first heard people start talking about the importance of how you spend your time in choosing how you spend your time. And the thought going on in my head was, I don’t control my time. My time is basically scheduled out for me from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed at night,

Especially in the season where my husband was deployed and I was working full time. I had an hour commute each way and a toddler home at home. I was pregnant with my second child, and it literally felt like I had no control over my schedule. So I could not grasp what people meant by taking control of your schedule. But really what I want you to understand is that we all have 24 hours in a day.

[00:06:37] And it is a choice of how we will spend that time. One thing I want you to know is that you have to make the choice to take control of your schedule. And that comes down to two things: Getting clear on what you really want and deciding what matters most to you in this season. So let’s quickly unpack these two things, and then I’ll talk about how we do time blocking and how that has evolved for me over the years.

[00:07:09] So, first thing is to get clear on what you really want. If your life and schedule feels out of control, you need to first understand what you really want. What are the things that are most important to you? What do you value? What do you want your legacy to be? How do you want to show up? What do you want people to say about you at the end of your life?

[00:07:37] You’ve got to get clear on what things are most important to you. And then we start to reverse engineer our life and the ways that we are spending our time today. Do they align with what we really care about? Is this the life we actually want to live? Is what we are currently doing, going to lead us to the outcome we want, or does something need to change?

[00:08:04] And so the first thing we’ve got to do is figure out are we doing the right things? Are we spending our time in the way that will lead us to the outcome we want? And so once we determine what we’re doing, and if that’s going to lead us to the outcome we actually want, then we have to decide what matters most in our current season.

[00:08:29] Sometimes it’s we need the financial income. And so the job is that a priority in this season, even if it’s not leading us to the life we want. We know that for season, this is going to be our priority. Or perhaps we say, Hey, you know what? My sanity is the most important thing in the season. And I’m going to make some significant shifts.

[00:08:56] That’s not an easy word to say, but we may decide, Hey, we need to make a big change in our life. So we have to decide what matters most in our current season and how do we prioritize that appropriately? So once we decide that, then we can begin time-blocking auditors. Now, what does time-blocking out our schedule mean exactly? And how do we do it?

[00:09:21] In the beginning for me, it just was as simple as saying, okay. My day is not my own from about 5:00 AM until. 7:00 PM at night, but I’m not going to go to bed until 9:00 PM. And so what am I going to choose to do between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM each evening? I’m making a choice with what I do with that time.

[00:09:54] And sometimes it’s okay to choose the TV show or the glass of wine, as long as we are making that choice intentionally. If we are trying to make healthier choices, or we are trying to practice self-care, or add in a reading goal or whatever it is for us, but we are not putting that into our schedule, it’s not going to happen.

[00:10:20] My first step was simply saying, okay, let me be a little more intentional with how I am spending each evening. Now time-blocking really became a thing for me when I got to this place where I felt like working, full-time having these long commutes and having young kids at home with an active duty spouse who was often working long hours or gone on trips was just not the life that I wanted to live.

[00:10:48] I was ready to make that big change. I was ready to say goodbye for a season to my full-time job. But I wasn’t ready to give up having a career altogether. I wanted to be able to work from home with young kids. And so that’s when I started getting really intentional with, okay, how many hours am I going to be working?

[00:11:17] And when is that going to go into my schedule. So I found a blank weekly schedule available online, printed it out, and then I started just time-blocking everything out. When are my kids going to nap? What kinds of childcare programs are available? I, in that season, I put them into a part-time preschool program that would give me some blocks of time where I had quiet and I could focus on my work.

[00:11:43] But then I could show up and be present for my kids and have more time with them to be able to spend my energy in the right places. And, really it came down to putting all of these blocks of time on a piece of paper and saying, okay, this is how I’m going to feel.

[00:12:07] All of this it now, when I first started this process, my only question was, how am I going to fit work blocks in? Where are those going to fit into my schedule? What am I going to do when life happens and the babysitter cancels, or there’s no school today, or worse note in or whatever the case may be.

[00:12:30] That is something that happens that throws the schedule off. How am I going to get my work blocks in? And what ended up happening in that season is I ended up having to either work really early in the morning before my kids were awake, or having to work late at night after they went to bed. And after a while, I just really got tired of spending my evenings when I had the least amount of energy and reserve, because two kids two and under is a lot to try to spend those evenings working.

[00:13:04] And so I started the search for. What’s the best way for me to do time blocking, how can I make this work for my life and for my schedule. And this was definitely a process that evolved a lot over the last several years. So what I have gotten to today where I’m at with time-blocking is a very specific way of doing timeline.

[00:13:30] And I do this on a quarterly basis where we’re going to go through four specific steps. And the first step is to prioritize what matters most in this season. So I write out, okay, what are all the commitments and obligations on my plate? Right. What do I have upcoming on the horizon? What what’s are we planning a big trip?

[00:13:56] Are we going to be PCSing?What’s coming up that I need to be aware of? What’s my fuel? So what is it that brings me life? That brings me joy? That fills me up and allows me to operate from that healthy place? And then what are all the things that are distracting me right now? What, what are the things that I spend wasting time or that, you know, don’t really give me a return on that investment. What are my distractions? And so once I place all of that out, now, I know for this season what I’m going to be prioritizing, and then. And then I sit down and say, okay, what needs to change about my schedule in this season? So I’m prioritizing the things that matter.

[00:14:44] And then I would sit down with my schedule and I would time block it out and say, okay, these are the hours that I’m going to spend working. These are the things that I am prioritizing in this season. These are the things that distract me and they’re not going to be in my schedule. These are the things that I need to eliminate or reduce for this season.

[00:15:03] So I went from watching a lot of TV in the evenings, to only having one or two nights a week where I watch some TV because I wanted to prioritize my personal growth and learning how to show up as the person that I wanted to be and to do the volunteer work that I wanted to do.

[00:15:27] But I found really hard to do with young kids at home. So. That was iteration two of my time blocking, if you will. But the most recent iteration that I, that has made such a huge difference in my life in the last year was establishing my core commitments. And that was really thinking about what needs to happen on a weekly or monthly basis that is helping me show up that is filling my buckets of balance.

[00:16:01] So it’s asking the question, am I caring for myself? Am I connecting with others? And am I pursuing my purpose in this season? Am I making a contribution that matters? Am I using my skills, my passions to serve others in some way in my current season. It was sitting down and figuring out what those non-negotiables are, what are the things that I need to have as regular rhythms in my life and making sure that those get time blocked into my schedule as well.

[00:16:39] So it’s not just, how am I going to have Work time blocks fit into our schedule. It’s about how do I make sure that I have time to work out or to have my morning routine or whatever it is for you to help you show up as the person you want to be. So it might be scheduling in those workouts or scheduling in that weekly date night that keeps falling off the calendar.

[00:17:09] It might be that time, that hour, that you can get away to chat with a friend. It’s whatever is filling your cup right now, making sure that you have time for that in your schedule. It can take a lot of trial and error to figure out what those things are and how to make them fit and how to work with your spouse to figure out how you can both add in things that are fueling you and filling you with life so that you can show up as the person that you want to be.

But once you figure out what your core commitments are for your current season, then make sure you add those into your schedule. So now on a quarterly basis, I sit down with a blank calendar and say, okay, what are all the things that we are trying to fit in in a given week and where those things going to fit. How do I schedule out time for work? How do I schedule out time for cooking and cleaning and doing laundry and how are we going to make all of this work right now? We are about to start swim lessons with my kids. And so we are scheduling out okay. All the things that I was doing during that time, how are we going to move things around to make all of this fit and still make sure that I am getting the fuel that I need, that my husband is getting the fuel that he needs.

So that we can continue to show up and serve and become the people that we are meant to be. This was kind of time-blocking at a really high level, but I wanted to show you how it’s evolved over the years. And what I feel like is most important when it comes to time blocking today is that if you do not see times, if you are not intentional about your schedule, then there are so many other things that will dictate how you spend your time and your attention. Life will feel chaotic. You won’t feel like you are in control of your schedule. If you make the choice to take control of your schedule. If you get clear on what it is that you really want and you take the time to prioritize what matters most in this season, then you can set up your time block that not only support your ability to work or do whatever your purpose is, they hope support your whole life and you becoming the best version of yourself. You showing up as the person you want to be mentally, physically, spiritually, socially in every single area of your life.

[00:20:03] The last thing I will add to this is if you are not clear on what it is you really want and what matters most in a season, how to time block in a way so that you can live with less overwhelm and more joy in your daily life, then I want to help you get on step two, get clear on how to do this. I want you to consider hopping into milspouse purpose playbook.

[00:20:29] And we’re going to go on a journey together to figure it out what it is that lights you up, what your sweet spot is, what matters most to you and how to began to move towards discovering who you’re meant to be and how to build a life that both lights you up and impacts the world for good. I know it’s a commitment and when your time blocks and your schedule already feels completely full, it’s hard to figure out how we carve out that time to really do that.

[00:21:02] The next step to know the direction we want to go in, but I truly believe that getting clarity is so, so important for us to begin to show up and step into our story. So if you want to just learn more about this program. Go to morethanamilspouse.com. I would love to support you on your journey. If you have any questions about the program, or you’re not sure how you can even find the time to start moving out from where you are today.

[00:21:37] If you feel like you have no control of your schedule, and you just want someone to help you take that next step. Then send me an email: Christine @milspousemastermind.com.  I would love to help you and support you in your journey. I hope you have an amazing week and that you live filled, fueled and full of joy.