Holiday mistake #2: Not creating a specific plan

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There are 6 common mistakes that create stress and overwhelm for working moms during the holiday season. During this mini-series I will cover each mistake and teach you how to correct it. In today’s episode I dive into mistake #2: not creating a specific plan to achieve the holiday experience you want. To ensure you are successful this holiday season, all the tasks, activities and rest time must be scheduled into your calendar. In today’s episode, I explain how to calendar your holiday plan with ease so the holidays feel easy and doable.

Topics in this episode:

  • Why you should calendar your plans, tasks, activities and leisure time this holiday season

  • The importance of scheduling in time for rest and fun

  • How to determine if your plan is doable or overwhelming

  • Ways of keeping yourself accountable to your plan

Show Notes & References:

  • Need to create a plan to stop overworking and schedule in more leisure time in 2024? Click here to learn more about coaching and to schedule a free call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com

  • Want ongoing support as a working mom? Sign up for the free 19-day audio series: How to be a present and connected mom. Each day you will receive an email with a downloadable audio of 5 minutes or less that will teach you a tool or strategy for being more present and in the moment. Click here to sign up and receive the first audio: https://www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/be-present-optin

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Transcript

Intro

Hey, working moms. If you're just picking up the podcast this week, you'll notice that we're in the middle of a series. The top six mistakes that create stress and overwhelm during the holiday season. This is a six part miniseries to help you create a calm present and restful holiday season. 

These short ten minute episodes drop Mondays and Wednesdays, so there's a few bonus episodes during the series. And today we're diving into mistake number two. You ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast. The place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it. 

Not having a plan.

Okay, working moms, let's dive right in. Mistake number two is not having a plan. And I mean a very specific plan, one that includes accountability in a lot of ways. 

The last episode and this episode, these sort of mistakes are very intertwined because last week we talked about having a really clear picture of what success this holiday season looks like for you. 

Like a very clear picture of what it looks like and what it feels like and what you're doing. It's really knowing the end destination, if you will. 

It's treating the holiday like it's a goal. And there's a lot of working moms out there that have no idea what a successful holiday season looks like for them. Like they've never thought about it in that way, let alone create a really specific plan to make it happen. 

And that's the mistake. It would be like saying, I want to drive to Yellowstone or I want to drive to New York, any destination for that matter, but not looking up directions, like sort of having a general idea. 

Well, for me in California to go to Yellowstone, I have to go north. In order for me to go to New York, I have to go east. I'm sure I will figure it out, but not really having a plan for exactly how to get myself there. 

This is one of the pillars in coaching, creating a plan with accountability. 

And it's something I do in every single session with every single client. At the end of every session, I ask you, okay, so what's your homework for the week? What are you going to specifically do this week? What's your plan? Some form of that question, and usually there's an obvious answer because we've been talking about that during the session and we've framed up the homework together. 

But here's where the crucial question comes in. 

Okay, so when are you going to do that? 

Deciding and committing.

This question focuses my clients to literally open their calendar and make a decision. They have to decide when they're going to do whatever it is that they're committing to doing that we talked about doing in our coaching session, whether we're talking about journaling or an actual workbook that's going to help guide them through something. 

Or maybe they need to have a really intentional conversation with someone, with their spouse or their boss, or there's some kind of boundary they're going to work on. 

Like, whatever it is, whatever the homework is or the commitment is, the plan is, I ask them, when are you going to do that? And then I have them put it in their calendar. 

Keeping yourself accountable.

And then I ask a last very important question, which is, how are you going to keep yourself accountable to doing that? That could be as simple as a reminder that goes in your calendar or maybe something you share with a friend or a spouse, somebody that's going to ask you about your plan and make sure that you're holding to your plan. 

I once had a client actually decide to give accountability to their boss. They went up to their boss and they said, I need to be leaving work at 05:00 to be with my family. It's imperative for me to be really successful at this job that I'm able to turn off my work brain and I get home at a decent time. 

So if you ever notice that I'm not wrapping up my work by like, 4:45, like, maybe I'm still emailing you or you notice that I'm kind of sitting at my desk still, like, typing away at 4:55. I need you to tell me, tell me to get up and go. 

Super brave, isn't it? With structured accountability, you are 90% more likely to achieve a goal. That's why we do that in coaching. 

So in this case, as we talk about the goal being a successful holiday experience, however you have defined that, for you, whatever you want the holidays to look like. 

If you don't have specificity on that yet, I really do encourage you to go back to the last episode and listen to how I walk you through a really specific exercise on how to do that. 

I want your holiday experience, though, to be filled with joy and calmness and presence and fun. I want your holiday experience to be as guaranteed as I possibly can make it. 

And you do that not by just hoping that it's going to work out. You do that not by just saying, well, this is what I want, and kind of, putting it out into the universe and hoping that the universe makes it happen for you and manifests it somehow, right? 

You do that by creating a very specific plan and having accountability for that plan. 

So let's talk about what your plan needs to look like. The goal of the plan, if you will, is to have a calendar with all of the appointments for all of the things that you need to do this holiday season to have the kind of experience that you want this holiday season. 

Family dinners, holiday experiences, cooking, cleaning, present buying, present wrapping, meal planning, coordinating who's taking who, when to what event and what activity. All of that needs to go in your calendar. 

And here's my rule of thumb. I never schedule more than two activities or tasks in a day. 

On a Saturday, I might go shopping from nine to noon and then later in the afternoon I might prep and bake some pies or some cookies or some kind of dessert that I'm prepping for a holiday meal, if you will, or something like that. 

I would not try to squeeze one more thing into that day. That's it. I do something in the morning and I was doing something in the afternoon. 

There isn't going to be an evening, a present wrapping, there isn't going to be some other cocktails out with friends or something like that. Even two things, usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon. 

And if it's a work day, I'm working in the morning. So that means that's my first thing I'm going to do, and I'm only going to choose one thing to do in the evening. 

Now, you don't have to take my rule of thumb if you don't want to. You can create your own rule for yourself. 

My goal is to create a calm and present and connected holiday experience.

But the reason I have this rule for myself is because my goal is to create a calm and present and connected holiday experience. And if every day is filled with things that I need to do, that goal would be near impossible. 

Well, that's why a plan is so important and necessary, because without one you would likely leave a lot of things to the last minute, cram everything in just before the big family meal or just before you're traveling, or just during the holiday itself, right? 

And you'd be frantic on the day of the event with no ability to rest, no time for fun, no time for feeling connected. And you just feel exhausted, like you need another vacation after the vacation. 

Now, for me, as I'm writing this podcast, it's still a few weeks before Thanksgiving and I'm not thinking about Christmas quite yet. I just like to take it one holiday at a time. 

But I already, in my mind have like a seven day schedule sort of mapped out and I haven't quite put it to paper. 

That's my next step that I'm going to be doing. But I sort of already know how the flow of the seven days is going to go for me basically from maybe the Sunday before Thanksgiving to the Sunday after. 

The kids are off from school the whole week of Thanksgiving. And so I'm off of work as well. And I also have my best friend here who is spending several weeks with us and is participating in all these holiday activities with us. And there are things that she and I want to do with the kids. 

And so I'm already starting to slot my morning and my afternoon evenings with activities and chores and tasks and things that are both fun and are preparing me for the actual holiday events. 

I want your brain to look at your calendar after you've put everything in and to think, oh, I'm super excited about this upcoming holiday. Oh, this looks like fun. This looks doable. This doesn't look exhausting. 

It should feel that way because you haven't over scheduled it and because you have also scheduled in a lot of the fun restful things as well. 

Schedule in your sleep time.

For some of my clients, I even have them schedule in specific times for when they're going to sleep. Because if they don't decide ahead of time when they're going to sleep, they just find that they stay up and they do more and they don't rest and they do one more task on their list or they wrap one more present, whatever it would be. And so sleep for some of you might need to go in your calendar too. 

So first thing you do, just like we talked about last week, you need to decide what the successful holiday season looks like. 

Break down your tasks.

And then number two, you need to start breaking down the things that you need to do that creates that holiday season. 

The tasks, the activities, the planning time, the times of fun, the times of rest, you break it all down. It can be literally an appointment in your calendar. That's how specific it should be and you find a time to do it. 

And like I said earlier, make sure you're not squeezing too many things in your calendar because that's the second thing I want you to do. 

How does it all feel?

After you've put everything in your calendar, all the things that you need to be doing, I want you to take a step back from your calendar and I want you to look at it and ask yourself how does this plan feel? 

And if you, generally speaking, feel like it's doable, it feels good. You feel calm when you look at it, then you're A-OK you're on the right track, thumbs up. 

But if you look at this plan and you feel super stressed out by it and you feel overwhelmed and it feels like way too much just looking at it, of course that's what your holiday experience is going to be as well. 

So if you feel overwhelmed and stressed out by your plan, it's time to edit out something or probably multiple things. 

You simply can't do all of the things that you're planning to do. And this is not the time to decide to just add three things into your day or four things instead of going with my two suggested. 

I know some of you would try to do that - this is the time to edit out, to say it's too much, what am I going to take out? What are the kind of low hanging fruits? Or what are some of the expectations I need to let go of. 

Something along those lines that takes some things out of your calendar until you get to that point where you look at it and it feels very doable and easy and you feel calm as you look at it. 

Create accountability for yourself.

The last part of this plan is to create accountability for yourself. How are you going to keep yourself accountable to this plan? Mostly it's probably going to be to not add anything into it. 

You can, of course, move things around. I mean, things happen and there's information you don't know about and things that you can't plan for and that's all okay. 

But that's part of the reason why you haven't scheduled in things back to back to back to back and have multiple things. There's actually some white space, if you will. There's some empty space there should be in your calendar to take on any of the last minute stuff that comes on. 

It's another good reason to only plan on doing two things each day so you of course, can move some things around. Of course there could be some last minute things that come in. 

But how are you going to keep yourself accountable to following through with your plan, not adding things to your plan that you don't need to be adding to your plan, and particularly to follow the parts of your plan that involve rest and fun? 

Do you need to print the calendar out and put it in a few places? 

Do you need to have a conversation with your partner and talk to them about how they can help and support you and the family in this plan? 

Perhaps you need to have a conversation with another family member that might share some of the load with you. 

Do you need some reminders in your calendar to leave work at a really specific time every single day or to go to bed at a certain time every single day? 

Do you need to block out two or three evenings during your week where you schedule nothing, where you don't plan to get anything done just to create some space and margin in life? 

Do you need to ask a friend to check in with you on your plan or a particular part of your plan? 

With accountability, the goal is to keep the plan top of mind and not to change it when it feels uncomfortable to stick to it. 

That's the whole part of accountability to keep you focused and moving forward towards the overarching goal of that plan. 

Remember, your brain can only think four to six conscious things at any given time. And I guarantee that fun and rest and games, your brain is just not going to remember to do those things if you don't have some mechanism of reminding you and holding yourself accountable to doing it. 

And it's going to sound really convincing in your brain to want to get one more thing done or add one more thing to your list or like just knock that out a little later today. 

It's going to feel really convincing to do that when really what you want to be doing is resting and connecting and playing and having fun. 

And in coaching, we create a plan to get you to stop overworking and have a fulfilling and balanced working mom life. 

What does a balanced life look like?

First, we get clear on what that fulfilling and balanced working mom life looks like, and then we talk about the behaviors that need to change and the mindsets that need to be adopted in order to have that life. 

We take the guessing out of it. You decide what you want. You get crystal clear on what it's going to take for you to achieve the life that you want. And together, we create a doable plan where every day you're making progress towards a more fulfilling and balanced life, towards that goal. 

You're not doing it alone. I am the one that's helping keep you accountable to moving forward. 

And if you are someone that's been trying to figure out what you want out of your career now that you're a mom, or you've been trying to figure out how to stop overworking and prioritize your family more and prioritize yourself more and prioritize rest more, and if you've been trying to figure out how to get out of some of your negative mindsets and you've been listening to this podcast, or you've been reading self help books and you just can't get yourself there, that is what coaching is for. 

Coaching is the next step.

Coaching is your next step, and I can help you end this year with more calm and more balance. 

You can learn more about coaching by going to my website, www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com to learn all about the details of my six month coaching program and to find a time for us to connect through a free coaching call. 

All right, working moms, until the next one of this series. Let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson