Episode 58: Back to Basics: The Real Secret to Getting Things Done
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
Feeling scattered, behind, and short on time? What if the fix is so much simpler than you think? In this episode, Katelyn gets real about why we often overlook the simplest solutions—like getting more sleep, writing things down, and previewing your calendar—because they seem too basic. But what if simple is actually the secret to being consistent? Tune in for a refreshing reminder that you don’t need a complicated, automated system to feel on top of things—you just need to do the basics, consistently. Bonus: Learn Katelyn's exact planning framework - 4 simple steps - in a free upcoming training to help you plan your time with ease.
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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Hey there. I've got a quick question for you. Do you ever feel like there's never enough time to do all the things that you need to do as a working mom? If you're anything like my clients and a lot of the listeners I've been talking to, I'm guessing the answer is yes, no matter what. You try from time blocking and turning off notifications to fancy planners or intricate lists, full of color coded categories.
Nothing seems to really have an impact on the size of your to-do list, let alone how you feel about how much you got done each day. If you resonate with that, I've got something for you. I am bringing back my popular training called Plenty of Time, four Steps to Create More Space in Your Working Mom Schedule.
During this class, I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to get things done in the time that you have, no matter what season of life you're in or how busy you are. It is happening on Thursday, July 31st at 12 noon Eastern time, 9:00 AM Pacific. No complicated tools or just double down mentality. This is just a simple, repeatable way to make progress on that never ending list.
Go to the mother nurture.com/class to get all signed up. Again, that's the mother nurture.com/class. I can't wait to see you there.
You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm curious if you ever overcomplicate things like add extra steps. Overthink things. Just, you know, make it harder than it needs to be. I've been thinking about lately the simple things in life. , the basic advice, the steps that we've been told or have heard since we were kids that work.
And yet we discount those things.
And what would change if we actually took. That advice to heart, if we actually believed
that the simple actions in our life were the things that would change everything. A while back, I was interviewed for a podcast. I was a guest on someone else's podcast. It was all about time and time management. So right up my alley and this host was such a great. Interviewer. I'll put a link to the episode in the show notes.
If you didn't catch it, but she asked all of these questions. I wanna say nosy questions, not in a bad way, but I think that's what makes such a great interviewer. Someone who. Knows that as a listener, as someone in the audience, what we really want to hear is all of the behind the scenes stuff that you wouldn't get to hear anywhere else.
So she was great at asking those types of questions, but I knew ahead of time that we would be talking about. The tools and the strategies that I use to manage my time, like , what is it that I do? That allows me to work full time, run my own business, raise three young kids, take care of our house, and all of the life admin that happens behind the scenes in a family of five.
How to take care of myself and make time for lots of hobbies. I have lots of hobbies and interests, and I had a list of a few things that I, I wanted to share in terms of what I use, how I do it. What popped into my head in the moment as she was asking the question was sleep. Sleep is what came out of my mouth when she said, what are your favorite tools or strategies or practices for getting all this stuff done?
Sleep. Once I said it out loud, I. Second guessed myself. Why did I just say that? That wasn't what I had prepared? That's not what I'm looking at here on my little cheat sheet of notes in front of me sleep. Surely everyone listening is thinking, duh, I thought Katelyn was going to share something profound.
Or a tool. Or a strategy that I've never thought of or heard of before or used before. Sleep is a no brainer. Everyone knows that in order to function, to make decisions, to have the executive function skills that we need to get through our work days and the patience to parent our kids and remain calm through their big emotions that we need to be rested.
You can't do that when you're running on fumes. Everything breaks down when we're tired. Especially when we're tired over prolonged periods, we snap more easily, we get frustrated more quickly. We are distracted and have a hard time focusing. We eat more sugar or drink more caffeine throughout the day. We don't have the energy to move our bodies and on and on and on.
But as I gave that answer, I felt more and more confident in it. I still shared some of the time management tricks that I use as well. I think there's so much value in those, but I believed myself as I was talking about sleep that. Nothing else works when you're not rested, and everyone may already know this, and I know that everybody knows this and I'm just sharing again what is not new, but I'm not sure that everyone is doing it.
Because here's the thing about the quote unquote simple things. The strategies that feel like, duh. Everybody knows that It's not about knowing it, it's about doing it, and it's about doing it consistently. If we were all getting enough sleep, we were all drinking water, getting things out of our head and onto paper, creating a plan for our days, instead of winging it, we would all be getting things done.
We'd be feeling great. We'd be feeling rested and energized and like we were living our lives the way we want to be living them. We're not doing those things because I talk to so many women who don't feel like they're getting enough done, who have trouble focusing, who feel so scattered and overwhelmed and rushed, and then they feel frustrated and
they're snapping all of the time at the people they love, who they actually want to be enjoying their time with.
And so, even though you may already know the things that I share. Even though I may think everybody already knows this, or this is too simple, you're all gonna just roll your eyes. I will continue to remind you of the simple things because number one, they do actually work and they work better than 99% of the more complicated strategies out there.
And number two, you're not doing them consistently because if you were there wouldn't be a problem. What is it about complicating things or the complicated systems that's so appealing? Seriously? I do it too, and, and I often wonder why am I looking for something that has multiple steps and all of these different ways of doing things?
And I wonder if it's maybe because our lives feel complicated, especially now that we have kids in the mix alongside our careers, our responsibilities have. I don't know, doubled, tripled. Since adding a family to the mix, there are relationships to manage emotions, to manage parenting strategies, to think about our health, to consider our career advancement, our finances, household maintenance.
All of those things feel complicated, so therefore we think that the only way to manage it all must be with something that's intricate or a series of steps that is a more complicated process.
And if I can be honest, as someone who has read a lot of productivity and time management books and listened to authors and podcasters and thought leaders in this space. It's often the bro business books, the ones that are written by men who probably have somebody at home taking care of everything for them.
It's those books and those resources that recommend the most complicated systems. I think if we, the women, the moms, the working moms, tap into what we know. It is that it's often the simplest things that make the biggest difference. Think about it. Your kid is crying because they're tired.
Get them some sleep. Or, my favorite response is, take a drink of water. I mean, when has water or getting some rest not solved? Everything. We need a shower or a bath. We need a drink of water. We need a good cry and we need a nap. Problems solved.
About a month ago or so, I was having a girl's night with a couple of girlfriends, and my one friend who has been my friend for a long time she was saying that , she didn't know what was wrong with her lately. She was telling us how she can't focus and she's just not getting things done like she used to.
She used to drop the kids off at childcare and just blow through all of these tasks and projects, and it just wasn't happening lately. And so she had started looking into all sorts of things, trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. Was she in perimenopause and should she start trying HRT?
Should she get screened for A DHD? And she was asking me as well, like, what do you do? How do you do it? Katelyn? What do you use to get things done? And I said, I know this is going to sound so basic, so simple, but I wanna ask you, are you writing all of these things down, like on a piece of paper? Are they somewhere outside of just in your head, in your memory?
And are the things on that list broken down into super simple next steps like so simple. You feel a little silly writing it down. Draft the email. Send the email. Look up this phone number, open the drawer and spend five minutes pulling out the trash. Just a few examples. I'm sure you can guess what her answer was when I asked that question.
She said, no, I don't. How do you do it? Then she wanted to know how and what does it look like and where should she do it? I said, just get a piece of paper. Do you have a notebook lying around one that you know has half of its pages still blank? Can you grab a piece of paper from the kids' art table, which I know she has.
It doesn't need to be complicated.
I didn't know when we left girls night, what she thought of my answer. I probably thought that's a little too basic. That wasn't what she was looking for. That's fine. Right. You can always take my advice with a grain of salt. You do what works best for you. But about a week or so later, after our girls' night, she texted me and said, oh my gosh, I feel so much better.
I put everything onto a list, and I just started getting things done. She said, I didn't realize how much I was holding in my head and how paralyzed I was by all of the things that I was mentally carrying around.
Writing a big brain dump list is one of. The most simple strategies. It's so simple that we discount it, we think it can't possibly work. It's too easy, and so we go looking for something more complicated, something that's automated, something that uses chat, GPT, something that has several steps in a fancy app, and some of those things might work.
In fact, I'm sure they do, but they also take more time, more time to set up and more time to maintain more opportunity for things to go wrong or fall through the cracks. The magic in the simple is following through and when you choose the simple strategy. Then do it over and over again. Each day, each week, each month, and each season, that's where you see results.
It's about consistency, not about how complicated it is. I plan my day each morning. I do it in my remarkable, but I could do it on a piece of paper too. All I need is access to my calendar so I can view it and my brain dump list so I can be reminded of all of the things that I want to do and not have to hold them in my head.
It's not a complicated process. It's actually extremely simple. It's four steps, and because it's so simple, I do it every single day. It's what helps me make progress on bigger projects, like a new website that I'm starting to work on, those things that live in that important but not urgent quadrant of the time matrix.
It's what helps me not forget registration deadlines for camps and sports, or that I need a birthday present for my sister whose birthday is actually today. Happy Birthday, Kelsey. It's also what helps me make sure that I drink enough water throughout the day, walk 10,000 steps and get through those smaller tasks before I have to go pick up the kids.
Simple steps done consistently mean more time. It doesn't have to be fancy to work. In fact, I think it shouldn't be fancy. You need to sleep. You need to drink water, eat fresh whole foods, move your body, look at your calendar and plan your days right. That's the answer. You don't have to look any further.
You don't need to research for some new strategy or way of doing things. Life is complicated enough. Let planning your time be simple. All right. I wanna prove to you that simple really does work. I want you to join me on July 31st for my free live training called Plenty of Time, where I'm walking you through the exact four steps that I use to plan my time.
It's a process that's so simple and so effective. I want you to try it for yourself. You can head to the mother nurture.com/class to register. I cannot wait to see you there. And until then, keep things simple and take care. Talk to you soon.
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