Welcome to The Real Mom's Playbook, the movement where we elevate your life. Brought to you by our premier sponsor, Earthley Wellness. In season two, we build onward from the intentional transformation to conquer the chaos, live in alignment, and build systems that work. So grab a notebook and let's get going.
All right, and welcome back to the Real Mom's Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Autry.
Today I want to talk about the burnout. Something I am very familiar with as an entrepreneur, mother and homeschooling mom, and I'll be sharing with you today how you can mitigate it and how you can come back from it stronger than ever.
Per usual, let's open up our episode with a huge thank you to our sponsor, Earthley Wellness. It is time to start making the transition for your health with natural products in your home. Head on over to earthley.com to shop their remedies and use the discount code diaries, that's D I A R I E S at checkout to receive 10% off your order.
So what is the burnout? Why do we fall into this cycle of just excessive exhaustion and overwhelm all the time?
The burnout is the feeling of just taking on way too much, and as moms and entrepreneurs and working women, we are really good about taking on too much, and when we don't have good boundaries in place and we're trying to be everything for everyone, that creates chaos.
And what ends up happening is we take on too much and we burn ourselves out where we feel extreme fatigue and oftentimes depression and anxiety.
When you're feeling the burnout coming on, what are some signs that you're starting to burn out? You're going to feel a reduced productivity, anxiety, detachment, low mood, difficulty concentrating, lack of creativity, fatigue.
There's so many realizations we have when a burnout comes, that it can often be very overwhelming for us and it's really hard because when you notice that lack of energy, creativity, inspiration, and motivation, you're like, no, I have so much to do.
And oftentimes we pile on way too much consistently, and you're going to notice these burnouts coming on.
Are you someone who is struggling with doing too much? Are you piling it on? What I want you to do first at the beginning of this episode is write down all the roles you are. Who are all the people you are on a daily basis?
I'm an average of eight people every single day, and pretty soon I'm going to be caretaker of a newborn baby, and that creates a lot of chaos and overwhelm.
Over the last few weeks I was struggling with burning out because we got really sick. Our whole family got sick, and being eight months pregnant, I am just struggling.
And I don't have a problem admitting when I am struggling because we all go through periods of struggle. If you have even one person that needs you in your life, you're going to face the struggle and it's hard bringing yourself back into it.
It's almost like a reset. We're gonna be talking about that today and going back to the basics, but I was feeling withdrawn. I was easily exhausted and I wanted to retreat into my home and speak to no one.
And that is what we face as women and moms on a consistent basis, even without being sick or without being pregnant because we do take on too much.
And I had to stop. I had to pause. And after burning myself out consistently so much over the years as an entrepreneur because I felt like I had to do everything. I'm now about a decade in, really understanding, whoa, I need to slow it down.
And I want you guys to know that you set the tone for your life.
You're the one that sets up your success or your failure. It is up to you. If you want to be successful, you set the tone for that. You're the one that defines your success, and so many of us feel like we have to do it all or not doing it well.
But how do we mitigate this?
How do we see it coming so that we can mitigate the damage it does? And it used to be in the past 10 years ago that I would just fully burn out to where I became very sick and had to take a long period of time off.
And we know as moms and as working women, we can't just disappear from the world for a long period of time.
You can get maybe a week, but you're not going to get much more than that. And I want you guys to mitigate by realizing, so you're seeing the pattern. If you're seeing yourself withdrawing and becoming easily exhausted and becoming irritable. That's my big thing, is I start becoming really irritable about the silliest and littlest things and it starts compounding and it creates a compound effect, because it's like this little thing, that little thing, that little thing.
Have you ever been brought to tears because of the littlest thing, like someone ate your candy bar?
Yeah, that's because of the compound effect and just doing too much to where you are burning out.
So when we see that this is happening, when we're getting that lack of energy, that lack of creativity and inspiration, the increase in irritability and just the overwhelm, and you'll notice the simplest things are going to start throwing you and causing more chaos in your life, we want to make sure that we are mitigating it successfully.
So really quick before we talk about mitigating techniques, I want to take a quick break with Sparkle and Shine. Be right back.
And we are back.
I am all about keeping it super simple. If you are in the Tribe, we just went over Simple Success and we talked about how to scale it back to be successful and how to keep things just really clean. I don't like to overcomplicate my life. I don't like to do too much because of where I am in my pregnancy and just I'm noticing as I'm getting older, I'm having a hard time multitasking and we can talk about how wrong multitasking is.
When we look at our focused workflow, when we are multitasking and we're switch tasking between tasks, it actually increases our reorient period to where we're taking a lot longer for one task than if we were to just finish one and then move on to the next thing.
And we know that switch tasking has to happen sometimes because we have children. We're going to have children interrupt us, that's just life.
What I want to do is I want to mitigate the multitasking. I want to keep it super simple in your lives, and we have to keep it simple because then we're going to be far more productive and we're actually going to mitigate the amount of times you actually will burn out.
We will always get sick. We will always get overwhelmed. We will always try to take on too much, and when you are a mom, that's just life. We're going to have to adjust and pivot. And when you are sick, scaling it back is important. Going back to the basics, building in that rest time, planning time, and keeping it simple.
When you are a mom and an entrepreneur, you have to keep it as simple as possible.
Let's talk about really quick why we struggle with time as moms and as entrepreneurs .
Number one, we cannot decipher importance because everything seems important to us, especially when you write down all of your roles. Think about all the people you are on any given day. It's really hard to say what's more important than the other. And we know family is always going to be at the top, but oftentimes family isn't urgent, right?
And so when it's not urgent, we feel like we can give them more time later and then we fall into this habitual cycle of taking care of urgency rather than importance. And so when you can't decipher importance, it's really hard to fulfill. It is really hard to feel successful.
Number two is you pile it on and then you feel guilty when you cannot fulfill. Keep it simple. I love making it simple. We talk about this in the Tribe all the time about how to simplify. You don't have to do 30 things in a day to be successful, and we're going to talk about that at the end of this episode.
But stop piling on so much to where it's hurting your ultimate productivity. Wouldn't you rather do a few things consistently than a ton of things and then burning out and going through a period of time where you can't be consistent? And this is so many entrepreneurs.
We are doing a huge push in social media right now where we're really engaging with our followers and really engaging with the people that we follow.
And I can't tell you how many times we go in and see so many dead accounts because someone ramps up, it's a great idea, and then they lose steam because they don't have clarity. They have just piled way too much on, and you can see it even on their Instagram page. They piled way too much on and then all of a sudden their page has been dead for six months because they burned out and they lost their why.
And that's a whole other topic for another time, but your why is extremely important. This is how Daughter Diaries is going on five years. Because the why has always led, even if we have periods where we're not posting five times a week. We're not always being active. It's been a slow build, but it's because we weren't piling on too much.
We're like, okay, let's lead with our why. Sometimes our why is scaled back about what we can achieve, but ultimately we want to make sure we can fulfill this mission.
And what is our mission? Our mission is helping the work at home mom organize her whole life so she can elevate in her business and beyond. I want it to be so simple for you. I want you to feel fulfilled and passionate and jump out of bed every single morning and be like, yes, this is why I'm doing what I do.
For me, it's now rolling out of bed. It's gotten so hard and sometimes it's yelling for Matt and being like, "Matt, I'm ready to get up. I need help," cuz you know when you get this big your abs just don't work real well.
But stop piling everything on and feeling like it must be done tomorrow. We're now in a new phase and transition in The Daughter Diaries where we're starting to add new layers.
So last year the layer was podcasting, and now we just released a private podcast. So those of you that are in The Real Moms Tribe, you also get a private podcast as well. We have really dove into podcasting and we're getting really good with it now.
So now we're adding another layer and we're going to be sharing with you soon what we're going to be doing.
But now you can see, okay, now we are starting to refine our website again. We're starting to refine our Instagram again. And when we add these layers, we're fine tuning everything, but it didn't happen over. We stayed consistent and we've made the transitions over time.
And that's something I'll tell you guys, the minute I get more income, I bring someone new onto my team or I pay someone that's already on my team more so that I can stay creative and I can stay high energy.
And especially now being pregnant with our third child, I need more help and there's nothing wrong with asking for help.
It's better than me piling it on and then me dropping everything because ultimately I need to show up consistently for The Real Mom's Tribe. I need to be there for those women, and I can't do that if I'm adding on too much and then burning myself out.
Also a huge reason why you're struggling with your time is your sleep is not working for you.
I'm going to be honest, my sleep is not great right now. I am so pregnant. I'm having so many contractions all the time. You know, things happen in our life that are kind of outside of our control.
But when we put in good boundaries of saying, this is the time I'm going to go to bed, this is the time I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do the best I can with that.
Sometimes the best you can is good enough.
But sleep must be a priority. You can't stay up till two or 3:00 AM and be like, ah, it is what it is. I'll just make up for it the next day because you won't. Studies show one night of poor sleep takes three nights to make up.
And of course as moms and women, we can only do so much when little people need us, but if you're making it a priority, it will be better than if you're just putting it on the back burner.
Number four, you don't segment properly based on your chronotype. When you go back and listen to season one about time and your time management, when you're leaning into your natural chronotype and your natural biotime, this is why I'm recording this early in the day when I have more energy because I'm listening to my chronotype and I'm allowing myself to show up as I best can at that specific time versus leaving, you know, parts of my business to when I have nothing left, and I'm really trying to pull out that creativity.
That's when you're going to burn out faster. When you're pushing yourself beyond what your mind is even capable of.
When you lean into your chronotype, you guys are going to find that things become easier. Things become simpler.
I listen to my girls' chronotypes. I have typed my girls. One is a lion and one is a bear, and my soon to be middle child is going to be starting school next year.
I already have the plan of when I'm going to homeschool her versus my older daughter who is a bear. And that is going to help us not only mitigate the chaos when we're homeschooling, they each get their own table time, their own quality time, but it's actually going to make me more productive versus trying to homeschool two kids at once.
Maybe you're good at that. I am not good at teaching multiple subjects at one time. My brain has a hard time reorienting, and we were just talking about switch tasking. We aren't as effective when we're trying to manage everyone.
And having young children that aren't independent readers yet, it does require more of your management versus a 14 year old, a 14 year old is just going to ask you for help when they need it, versus you sitting down and reading the prompts to them.
And as homeschooling families, we need to be really understanding and cognizant of everyone's chronotype and everyone's bio time because when you do that, you're gonna lean into the natural ebb and flow of our energy.
And then the last reason you are struggling with managing your time is that switch tasking.
It increases your reorient period. It increases the chaos, and it increases the likelihood of you burning yourself out. This is why I don't homeschool both girls at once. I set one down, I get them set up and then we go through our whole curriculum for the day and then we move on.
There are things we do as a group. We do science and social studies as a group, it's no big deal, but we're learning the same topic. We're going over the same things. Maybe they're doing slightly different things. And I want you guys to be more in the focused workflow. I want you to say, this is what I'm doing, versus I'm doing a little bit of this and had a little bit of that and a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
And every once in a while we will multitask, like I'll be folding laundry while I'm giving Ava, my oldest, her spelling test. Because I can just read off a word while folding laundry, but you have to know what requires your focus and what doesn't, and making sure you're not piling on too much. You're not gonna also be taking a call while you're doing that.
I put my phone on silent when we're doing homeschool for a reason, because I don't want to interrupt that focused workflow. I want us to get it done as quickly as possible, and that is going to help you guys mitigate the amount of times you burn out because if you're feeling like you're piling on too much, you are going to burn yourself out.
What I want you guys to do is if you find yourself starting to burn out, is build in that rest time, planning time, and keep it simple.
You're going to fuel yourself as a mother and as an entrepreneur. Seeking joy is one of those ways to fuel yourself. Keeping it super simple helps. And after the next break, we're going to talk about three weeks to make your week simpler to give you more energy.
Let's take our final break with Crystal Cosmo. Be right back.
And we are back.
We're going to close out today talking about three tips to make your week simpler. I'm all about simple, and this is actually going to give you more energy to fuel yourself away from a burnout. This is what we did when we were sick because I knew I couldn't handle a whole lot.
And I even built in nap times, like it feels weird to be building in nap times, but it's going to make you far more successful.
So number one is prep period in the morning. I feel everyone needs a prep period. And what is a prep period? A prep period is the time that you are going to spend every single morning determining your objectives for the morning.
This is about a 5, 10, 15 minute pause to plan. And when you're sitting there with your prep period, this can be done over coffee and even with the family. The girls like me to read to them at breakfast, and then I'm like, okay, here's what we're doing today. Everyone likes clarity.
Everyone likes to know what's going to happen, because it gives them a sense of control.
It gives them a sense of control when they know what is coming and it actually decreases their anxiety and overwhelm as well. And so I like to do my prep period with coffee and with the family, and I'm like, okay guys, here's the things I've got to accomplish today, here's the things you need to accomplish today.
Clarity controls the chaos.
So I want you guys to spend about five to 15 minutes each morning saying, what am I going to be doing throughout the day?
And that leads into your power of six. I want you to consistently conquer six items per day. You guys hear me bring this up every couple of episodes because I truly believe what we are doing is important and those six things are going to help be a catalyst for your success.
Three large objectives, three small objectives. I was talking with one of my newest one-on-one clients the other day, and I kind of threw the power of six at her at the end of our meeting and I said, this is what I want you to do, here's kind of how you do it, I set it up for her and I said, just dive in and then our next session we'll talk about it.
And so we got together last week over coffee and she's like, "Lisa, I am loving the power of six. It's made all the difference in my business." She said for so long she was trying to do it all, and she's in a very labor intensive industry with baking. And I told her, I said, you're going to get it all done.
You set the tone for your success. Create the power of six, three large objectives, three small objectives. How you weight them is based upon you. I'm not gonna tell you, oh, that's not important or that is important. It all depends on how much time you need to allocate. And so, you know, a workout can be 30 minutes, so you're giving yourself another hour and a half for another objective and you want to divide them up 12 hours, six objectives. You can do it equally, or you can say, okay, a couple of objectives are gonna be three hours, a couple are going to be one.
Just pull whatever time you need within that 12 hour period, and that still gives you 12 hours a day to eat and sleep. And we want to keep it super simple with this power of six because you're going to find it's a lot easier checking off the boxes.
Today I am recording the podcast, so one of my objectives was write and record podcast, and I'm going to edit it if I get a chance to today, that's on my nice to-do list. If it's after the Power of six and so I probably won't get to it today, I'll probably get to it tomorrow, but that's okay because I already built out my power of six, I have time allocated for it. And so if I need to move it to tomorrow, it's no big deal. That Power of Six is going to be your success. And if you struggle with it, that's what I'm here for. You can set up a simple coffee date, I'll post the link in the show notes if you want to do a coffee date with me, we can have a time where we sit down and I show you how to allocate the power of six successfully for your life.
Everyone is different. What's important to you and what you need to succeed with in your life is different for everyone. We don't believe in cookie cutter. It's not like saying their three objectives will be X, Y, Z, and then you're gonna put health and family and something else in the last three. No, what you devote your time to is based on your lifestyle where you're currently at.
Homeschool takes a large priority in our life right now because it's just such a new learning curve for us, we've only been doing it, we're coming up on two years. To me, that's still pretty early in a homeschool journey and we are adding a new child in the fall and we're adding a new child too in a couple of weeks. And so that is going to add a level of chaos to where we're going to need a little bit more time, you know, it might take us normally 45 minutes to do school, it might take us two hours because we are having to switch tasks, we are having to pause and reorient ourselves. And those little chunks of time can be really successful.
But giving yourself that buffer time is huge. That's what the power of six does.
The power of six helps you build in that buffer time. And then number three, so number one, we have prep period. Number two, we have create the power of six.
And number three, do one fun thing per day. Build that into your time. Make that one of your power of six.
You can read, you can walk, you can watch tv. You can take a nap. Do one fun thing for yourself every single day. Have your kids join you. We'll lay down midday and turn on the TV and watch a movie, and there is nothing wrong with that. Something to where you're not having to think so hard where you can just enjoy yourself. And maybe for you it's going out and being outside and working in your garden. It can be work if we find it fun.
And so for you, I want you to create a list of things you enjoy doing. Do you remember what you enjoy doing? Maybe it was scrapbooking, maybe it was building albums. Maybe it was just listening to music while you cook, or baking. I know my oldest loves baking.
She's all about baking. And so make that list of what's fun for you. What's fun for one person may not be fun for another, like, to me baking is exhausting, and I'm not good at it, but it is for my oldest. My youngest loves to be active and loves to use her imagination. And so what's fun for one person may not be fun for another.
And I want you to create a list of what is fun for you and build a little bit into your day.
So many of my clients have lost themselves over the years, especially because if you are homeschooling, if you are running a business or if you have a career, if you are in the season of having young children, we lose ourselves along the way.
It's time to rediscover yourself so you can enjoy yourself a little bit, and that's going to help mitigate the burnout, that's going to help mitigate the chaos. We are worthy of the life we desire, and we are showing the next generation what's important to us and why it's important to live a life of joy.
So do one fun thing for yourself per day, whatever that one thing is, and it can just be a simple 20 minute bath. If that is what happiness is to you, that is what you need to be doing.
And you can't work and grind all the time, that will lead to the burnout.
I'm really excited because in The Real Mom's Tribe, we're going to be talking about beautiful boundaries over the next week.
I would love to have you in there because boundaries are a beautiful thing that allow your yeses to breathe.
I want you to join me in The Real Mom's Tribe, that's where balance becomes a lifestyle. That is where we work on our prep periods, where we create that power of six and really lean into it, and that's where we learn what joy means to us.
Self-care is not selfish, we hear this all the time, but oftentimes we don't know how to get started on that journey. We don't know how to put time into ourselves.
And so beautiful boundaries over the next week is what we are going to be talking about and what I want you to be a part of.
I'm excited because the next episode we're going to be talking about has Marie Kondo really given up? If you have read the recent article of what she really means in that and how you can live a tidier life simpler each and every single day. So make sure you're subscribed so you can find out when that is live, and you can hear all of my opinions on that, even though I don't talk to her PR team. So this is my personal opinions, but I hope you have found that boundaries can be a beautiful thing and it can help you fight the burnout.
If you find yourself heading towards a burnout, simplify, go back to the basics. Create that prep period, and get yourself prepared for the day. Make sure you're using the Power of Six, seeking a support system and doing something fun for yourself every single day.
Until next time, I'm your host Lisa Autry, and this is The Real Mom's Playbook. Thank you for joining me for The Real Mom's Playbook, which is the main possible by our amazing sponsors. Make sure you check the show notes for links access to the amazing resources.
You can find me at thedaughterdiary.com and on Instagram at The Daughter Diaries. See you next time, I'm Lisa Autry.