Hello, my friend, welcome to the Tralongo track. I'm your host, Giana, and this is your weekly dose of a little bit of mom life, a little bit of business strategy, and all the insanity that happens in between. I'm so excited that you're here. I also know that you're busy. You got life going on. So let's jump right into the episode.
Welcome to episode 46. So, today's episode is going to be a mix of personal story from me, and some time management. It's October 3rd, and this week, this is the fourth day of a big transition that our family is going through. Something that we decided about a month or so ago, and that is we pulled our daughter from full-time preschool to part-time preschool.
I don't, I'm not super comfortable getting into all of the details in a public way, but at the end of the day, after lots of conversation, it was the best decision for our family as a whole. In the four days that we've made this transition, I've already seen such a difference in her, in such a great way.
I already know we made the right decision, but it basically changed our entire routine, as a family, and it took me personally from about seven hours of open time, kid-free time a day, to about three to three and a half hours a day. So, we're talking about, I'm so bad at math, like 20, 20 hours a week lost.
Oh man, when I say it like that. So, I'll be fully transparent. We're still in the middle of this transition, right? We're four days in, we still have a while for it to all kind of rock out and for us to figure out our routine. It's 6:45 PM as I'm recording this, because I batch record my podcasts.
I record for the entire month, typically at one time. This is my third podcast recording. I got two done this morning, but I just didn't have time to finish this one. So, here I am at 6:45 recording this. The kids are in bed. We're really lucky that we have kids that actually, you know, want to go to bed early because they're wiped out.
What was really important to me, and is always going to be important to me is having a general plan going into a change, any type of transition, and I wanted to make sure that I had as many of my ducks in a row as possible going into this change. We had 30 days to adjust, to get ready for it.
I really want to walk you through some of the things that I did outside of mentally preparing myself, which, again, I'm gonna keep it real with you. I am burnt out already from these four days of just the transition of having so much time to myself and by myself to drastically reducing that and trying to figure out are we going to nap? Are we going to be on tablets some of the days? What are we going to do? Realizing how quickly the day goes when it's chopped up like this. Oh my gosh, it's wild. How is it already 11:30? Wasn't it just like 7 am?
These are some of the things that I did ahead of time to prepare. You've heard me say it once, you've heard me say it a million times, but I'm a firm believer in: if you have a plan A, when it blows up in your face or when things change, or it doesn't go how you want it to go, you can always make that plan B.
These are some of the things that I prepared, and for as tired as I am four days into this, I could not imagine how I'd be feeling if I wouldn't have had a plan at all going into this.
First and foremost, I looked at my overall to-do list, which I have in Asana. I used to have it in an app called Todoist.
If you have it in your brain and you're going through a transition, I would definitely brain jump it. I did what I call my D. A. R., and this goes back to old school Giana used to teach this. I still do it on a very regular basis. So I did my D. A. R. My delegate, automate, and remove. I looked at my overall to-do list and I thought,”Okay, what are things both home life and business life that I can delegate? What can I give to my PA? What can I talk to Jeff about? What can come off of my plate and go on to somebody else's?”
Then, the second thing I did was, what can I automate? And honestly, for this transition (so that happens at seven o'clock). There wasn't a whole lot that I could automate.
There really wasn't a lot of my business that isn’t already automated. There wasn't a whole lot that I could do there.
The third piece is remove. You really have to look for this season: What am I removing from my list? What am I removing from my expectations?
Now one of the things that I decided business wise was up until this point for the most of this year, I've been sending out two emails a week. A Monday email. Which is more personal. This is what I have going on this week. Here's my new podcast episode and a Thursday email, which was more training, value, and sales. I decided that I'm going to nix the Thursday email and just do the Monday email. That probably saves me an hour a month, but it's nice to have some of those things off of my plate.
The next thing I did, and this was probably the most crucial. I looked at my focus time versus my chaos time. My focus time is the time when I can be focused. It's those three or four hours in the morning when both kids are at school. It's in the evening. That's the time that I can do things like record my podcast, create content, and do client calls.
Then my chaos time, which is, that's exactly what the title means, time when it is chaotic. Time when I can't really complete a task from A to Z. I had to look at that time and decide what can I put into those categories? What do I know has to be done in my focus time? What can move to chaos time.
So an example is, I was in the routine of right after Jeff would leave with the kids for school going and working out, and I really like working out by myself. We have a speaker system built into our gym at our house. I love blasting the 2000s hip hop and like getting after it. Or, watching shows that are not appropriate for kids.I really do value that time.
However, with such a drastic cut in the time that I have to myself, working out was the first thing that I decided was going to happen, have to happen during chaos time. That means that once I get Celeste home there's a couple different options here. If she, if it is a day where she naps, and, you know, praise the Lord, if she doesn't come out of her room and she actually stays in for quiet time, I can get a workout then.
Or, if I'm interrupted, you know, it's not the end of the world. Or, if we decide she's not going to nap, and we can go outside, and go for a walk together, and I can get my steps in. That's an example of things that I had to move around. Now again, in the perfect world, would I be able to work out by myself? Yes.
Yes, and in a year when both kids are in full time school, we'll go back to that, but you know, everything can't be perfect. When you have ambition and you have goals, sometimes you have to get creative about when and how you do certain things. That really leads me into the next thing is I had to prioritize and I had to let go.
I really had to mentally prepare myself, and I've already seen it happen this week, because laundry might sit out longer than it did before. I might order in dinner more than I did before or go back to crockpot meals, which I don't love, I'm a foodie, right? I don't want to eat crockpot meals on a regular basis.
But you know, it's a season. It is what it is. What am I prioritizing and what am I letting go of completely? And there's things that I'm not gonna let go of. There's things that are, you know, Jeff and I have a couples TV show, we watch Survivor together. I'm not gonna give that up. Those Survivor Wednesday nights.
Now, I might work for 45 minutes if I have to, before the show starts at eight o'clock, but I'm going to go and watch that show and enjoy it with him. I also had to reconfigure certain things. Me taking on one-on-one clients isn't realistic in this season of life. Taking on a ton of intensives, even that isn't realistic.
What I can do, and what I have in the works behind the scenes is creating another mid-level group program membership type deal we're working through right now to support more people at a more approachable price point versus long term commitments. That's a little bit more hands off, still supportive, but more hands off than I currently am in my intensives in Hustle House, in things like that.
It really is yes, looking at the big picture, but also looking at the nitty gritty. Then, the other thing I did, and I don't know how this is going to work. I didn't do it this week, because I really just wanted to embrace the transition, and not have any expectations on it, but I also want to be careful for us to not just come home after the half-day of school and go to turn on the TV or go to just hang out and, you know, not do anything, because I want to enjoy this time with her too, because next year she will be in full time school and she's a COVID baby.
I have this level of, maybe a little bit of guilt. I don't know if that's the right word, or just bummed-outness of a lot of the things that we missed out on doing, because she was born smack dab in the middle of COVID. I know there's moms listening to this who feel the same. So, I want to enjoy it.
So, what I did was, I came up with five themes for the book. The week can be flexible, but one day we're going to bake together, and make all the breakfast goodies that I was doing on my own time. One day we are going to go have a Disney day, or have a playdate, or go try a new coffee shop, or go out and do something like that.
Even if it's just running errands. One of the days is going to be a tablet day so that I can get more work done and have a couple extra hours to do what I need to do. One of the days is a sensory bin activity. Maybe it's putting out Play Doh or doing a sensory bin or, man, she loves doing cocoa powder mixed with oil and water to make mud.
Getting the Hot Wheels and the different monster trucks dirty, and then washing them. Stuff like that, right? That's the kind of stuff that I want to do. I don't want it to be over complicated, but I also want to make sure that we're still doing engaging things together. Basically, we're four days in, I will report back to you in November.
The wild thing about this is my two kids are actually in two different districts of schools, so they actually have completely different days off. So we have a week coming off where she has, we have a week coming up where she has off on Monday, and Dom has off Thursday and Friday. It's not going to be easy.
I'm not going to sit here and say, “Oh, I have a plan. I have it all figured out.” I don't. I have a plan. It makes me feel more confident. It shows me I know what I can get done and what I have to let go of. Then, the rest, we're just blessing and releasing and, you know, taking it one day at a time.
If you go through these transitions a lot, or if you know you have one coming up, and I feel like it's inevitable for all of us, I have two options for you.
If you're like, “I need more stuff like this, I need to learn your ways,” because for me, the D.A.R., the focus time versus chaos time, setting my priorities, that's all second nature to me. The great thing is I've created two resources for you so that you can learn it, and it can become second nature for you.
That's my ultimate guide to controlling your time, which is a mini course that teaches you focus time versus chaos time, D.A.R., and a couple other different time management strategies that are geared toward moms. That actually work for moms. Then, the other piece, if you're listening to this in real time, is my Witchy Workshop, which is all about time management.
Again, these elevated time management strategies work for the mom business owner. Both of those are linked in the show notes if you want to grab them.
This was, you know, a little bit rambly, a little bit raw. And like I said, I will update you on how this transition goes, what I have to change, what it'll look like going into the new year when I actually can plan my entire business for the rest of 2025, knowing this is what I'm going into versus kind of having a backtrack.
So that'll be really interesting as well. That's all I have for you today. I will see you next week when I'm talking about why I made spooky season part of my latest launch. A lot, a lot of spooky branding for this launch, and I will get into that next week, and I'll be in your ears in the next episode.
See you later.
