MOMENT | Never enough time? Try this new way to plan work and home

0:07Hi everyone, Zoe here. Welcome, welcome. It's Monday, which means it's Motherkind. moment day. These are little snippets of powerful conversations and today this boost comes from Rachel Swamami Corson, an incredible entrepreneur and mum of four. If you know me, you will know I do not believe in work-life balance. It is a myth and one area will always need us more in any given moment. So I love how Rachel describes her goal for work-life harmony. The core message is that you become the conductor of your life when you actively choose and calendar what matters instead of letting those external demands dictate your time.

0:54I think you are going to love this short clip. Here it is. And don't forget to subscribe.

1:03Craig's never shown an interest in beekeeping before, but that's the sound of him buying 2 ,000 worker bees rather than doing his self-assessment. Craig, you live in a sixth floor flat. The deadline is 31st of January. Less distraction, more action. Don't be like Craig. Visit gov.uk forward slash self-assessment today. Payment support may be available. so i want to get more practical about work life harmony yes because i think the reality for the majority of working mothers is that it feels like there's always more plates spinning than capacity a lot of working mothers tell me that they feel like they're constantly lurching from one thing to the other kind of teetering on the edge of burnout often you know having to work late to catch up and then children are up.

1:53And I think that's the reality, isn't it? And so I'm wondering how, what are some practical steps that someone can take to get more of this harmony? Yes. Harmony that we want. Yeah. Very good question. Okay. So two kind of big initial practicals. I'm going to talk about one that's more in the moment and one that's more long-term and big picture. So the big picture one is to do a priority audit. So in a priority audit, you can do this various different ways. So what I like to do two things, either get a big blank sheet of paper and write down everything I'm spending my time on. Sometimes I even do this with my kids and I'll talk about the way I do it with my kids in a minute.

2:36I do this very honestly. So there's a resource called the year compass. You can do it at any point. I love the year compass because it says go through your diary and write out what did you actually spend your time on yeah so I'll do a mini version of that with my big sheet of paper what have I spent time on this week I use lots of planners so I'll copy things out from the planner and I also I have like a habit tracker so I'll look at my habits what what habits am I doing what is dropping off once I've done that I like to do something like a wheel of life which I think a lot of coaches use this tool I saw it from a from a life coach and I will do the whole, you know, shading in the different areas of my life and think about, you know, how's my will looking?

3:17Then it's really, really important to think about the difference between where you are and where you want to be, but also take into account the season you're in. So this is completely different when your kids are little, you know, when they go, go to school, that's a whole different shift when they move through different year groups, going from primary to secondary is a whole big thing as well for lots of mums. So when you do this audit, you're just trying to better understand what are the different stresses, what are the different joys. And I would definitely advocate for them doing some journaling.

3:48I think a lot of mums know the kind of life that they want to live and have honest conversations with yourself first and then also with your partner, your support network. So I remember doing this in a really big way after I sold my company and I sold it a lot earlier than I wanted to. So I had raised VC funding. I'd become the ninth black woman in the UK to raise VC funding in a decade. It's incredible. I'm really sad. And really sad. Really sad that less than 0.003 % of VC funding goes to black women. So I felt all this pressure that I had to succeed as a mum, as someone who, you know, was in the papers, was in the public eye.

4:28And then I had these twins and they were really unwell. They needed surgery. I had all sorts of issues and I just, I couldn't focus on the company, especially with the economy being a mess and everything being bumpy. So I ended up selling the company and I was so burnt out at that point. I didn't, I didn't feel proud of the fact, you know, I'd sold in this three-way bid. I felt like a massive failure, which I later learned was part of burnout. And I did this kind of big order and I sat with my husband and I said I think I need extended maternity leave so how do we make this work you know financially we'd been used to having two incomes and I was in a privileged position where I could say okay you have to hold down the four I'm gonna do bits and pieces of inbound work as they come but this is a time where I'm focusing on the kids and going through that rediscovery of myself after having twins going from a mum of two to a mum of four what was that like oh gosh that's that's i could talk about that for an hour it was difficult though it was a really big shift especially because you get less support with the second or third or fourth child because everyone thinks you have it figured out and actually no one has twins figured out but even going from one to two it's i've doubled my number of children twice it's such a shift and who you are as a person changes in the amount of resource you have changes so i did this big audit and actually i've got some prompts on my Instagram if you kind of scroll there's some work-life harmony prompts how to get started where you think about doing this all day and you think about things like your energy and even your cycle I've done a post on how to work differently you know during your menstrual phase as opposed to your luteal phase or when you're ovulating and the different types of work you do if you're ovulating that's a great time for meetings for photo shoots you look your best you feel your best and then when you are in your luteal phase you're not feeling so great but you're really reflective and if you don't watch it you can get into these spirals of you know thinking about a conversation you had six years ago actually using that time for retrospectives and audits and reflection is really good so you can use my audit questions that are on my instagram or come up with your own but auditing is a first step so you can look at what plates am i spinning what do i need to put down even if it's put it down for now yeah so that's that's kind of the big one and the other one is really quick and easy that's the more complex one.

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7:05So a tool I use most days it's the 5-4-3-2-1. So it takes five minutes before you set your five minute timer you take four deep breaths and what I like to do is I will breathe in for four hold for four, release for four, do that four times. It's easy to remember because it's just four. Then I set my five minute timer. I write down three big things I have to achieve that day. I write down two things I'm going to do that my future self will thank me for and one act of self-care. And there is always time. You always have five minutes to do that. Some days I do find that the three things I've written down, I don't get to achieve more, but I'll make some progress on each of them.

7:45And the two things for my future self, maybe I'll only do one, or maybe it's a really small one like put on this low cooker do a food order book a cleaner but those are massive though because those are the things that just run in the background of the tabs that are like there's nothing for dinner there's nothing that'll really stress me out all day yeah so stressful yeah exactly but the big thing is once you've done your five four three two one that's taken five minutes you don't leave it there it's not just another list it's not another tab in your brain you then schedule it in so I will get out my phone calendar and I'll put these things in or if I'm using a paper diary because I'm at my desk that day I will physically write down this is the time I'm going to do all of these things and what you're doing with all of this stuff we're trying to create harmony is you are scheduling your priorities because if you don't a lot of us we prioritize what comes up on the calendar so if my boss has put a meeting in if you know my husband wants to go to dinner, whatever it pops up, you know, the birthday parties, the this, that, and we're pulled in multiple directions, then you're not the conductor of your orchestra, your life.

8:50It will be difficult. You'll be out of harmony. Whereas if you step back and you say, these are the key things I've done my five, four, three, two, one, I need to schedule in these three things. I need to schedule in my one act of self-care, even if it's, I'm going to read a book. I'm going to take a lunch break as sometimes, if we're honest, that act of self-care. Or even 10 minutes. even 10 minutes. If you don't schedule that in, it's not going to happen. So schedule it in, set alarms if you have to. For me, a really big one when I was figuring out this whole work-life harmony thing is I love creative writing.

9:22I'm a big writer. I've been writing since I was a kid and I'm working on a novel. So for me, finding time to write is almost impossible, but I have a writing group I now run on the Saturdays and I've scheduled it in and nothing can take up that time because I have a responsibility I have to run this group for people so because of that it happens and if there's birthday parties usually my husband will take the kids if we both have to take a child to a party then I'll ask someone else to run it but then I've missed a week and because it's in my schedule most weeks I get to do some writing it's not in your schedule it's not going to happen so do your 5 4 3 2 1 and then schedule in your priorities it's the same with your audit whatever comes out of the audit because I think most mums we know deep down what's important yeah we know we don't want to miss the birthdays okay so book holiday for all of your kids birthdays that's something I do at the start of every year I book off my birthday my husband's birthday and my kids birthday from my calendar so that I'm not stressed even if they're at school that day I want to make sure that I've got time to make everything really nice for them and I'm not worried or thinking about making a cake at 3am which you often hear oh my gosh it's so common for mums right yeah but we can think in advance birthdays are the same day every year so we've got that going for us that came out of doing one of my audits so when we do our audits you'll be surprised at what you unearth but we do have those answers deep down sometimes we just need to give ourselves the time and the luxury of thinking you know about our own lives and how we want to conduct it because i think what i hear from so many mothers in our community is your life becomes about your work and your kids yes and ultimately it's so easy to forget and i really like that conductor analogy that we are conducting yes what an incredible episode i hope you loved it too if you've got this far then i am guessing that you did so make sure that you share it with a friend and subscribe so you never miss an episode and I will see you Thursday for more.

11:28See you next time.