Dr. Celia
00:00 – 00:12
You know that feeling when you finally exhale? Not the kids are in bed exhale, but the deep one. The one where you’re not mentally writing tomorrow’s to-do list. The one where you actually feel okay.
Dr. Celia
00:12 – 00:30
Like things are actually going to be okay. One of my clients had not felt this in years. She was running her business, raising her kids, showing up for everyone, and slowly, quietly drowning. Not in like that dramatic way, but just that like low-grade, constant, I’m fine, kind of way that we moms are so good at.
Speaker 2
00:32 – 00:35
By the end of our time together, she said something I’ll never forget.
Dr. Celia
00:36 – 00:59
I now have a plan and a sense of calm about what to do next. A plan and a calm at the same time. And if that hit you somewhere, stay with me because today we’re going to talk about how working moms manage their time. So if you’re tired of feeling like you’re bad at time management or you’re constantly choosing between being a present mom and a successful business owner, this episode is for you.
Dr. Celia
01:02 – 01:24
Welcome back to the Biz Mom Life podcast show. I’m Dr. Celia, and if you’re new here, hi, I’m so glad you found this podcast. This podcast is for experienced mom business owners, women who know what they need to work on, women who have a vision, the skills, the drive, women who just somehow sit down to work on their business but cannot follow through. If that’s you, you’re in the right place.
Dr. Celia
01:25 – 01:38
Today, we’re getting into the why, and I’m gonna give you the real reason time management has not worked for you. even when you tried every single method out there. Let’s get into it. Let me ask you something.
Dr. Celia
01:39 – 01:48
How many punters have you bought in the last three years? Like I’m serious. Think about it for a second. That beautiful one with a gold foil cover that you found at Target last January.
Dr. Celia
01:48 – 01:56
The one that was going to be the one. The one that lasted maybe around like three weeks or so. Or the sticky notes. Oh, the sticky notes.
Dr. Celia
01:57 – 02:14
You have a system. Color-coded everything. Until your daughter peeled off the most important sticky note, the one with everything you need that you could not forget, and used it as a bookmark for her library book, which you just returned and you didn’t even know it was in there. Like, that sticky note was gone.
Dr. Celia
02:14 – 02:24
Just literally gone. And then there’s the work itself. You sit down, you have 30 minutes, 30 whole minutes. You open your laptop, pull up a task.
Dr. Celia
02:24 – 02:49
Maybe it’s pitching to a potential contributor for your summit or following up with a lead, or maybe even starting a project that you’ve been putting off for two months. You try to work on it, but you feel pulled to quickly check Instagram to see if you got that DM from a contributor. 30 minutes later, you save the reels on making chicken fajita, but didn’t actually get your business tasks done that you need to do for the day. And then you look up and the time is gone.
Dr. Celia
02:49 – 03:12
The kids need you, dinner has to happen, and that quiet voice in the back of your head saying, what is wrong with me? So you’re looking for help and you ask ChatGPT for help. You got this perfectly structured answer that felt completely disconnected from your actual life. Because ChatGPT is built out of data that everyone has used in the mainstream and is now giving you generic advice.
Dr. Celia
03:13 – 03:29
And you try the apps, the subscriptions, the time-blocking methods, the eat-the-frog advice, the 5 a.m. wake-up calls that last exactly one week. Year after year, same system, different packaging. And you keep coming back to the same conclusion.
Dr. Celia
03:30 – 03:38
I am the problem. But this is what I want you to hear today. You are not the problem. And here’s the truth how working moms manage their time.
Dr. Celia
03:39 – 03:49
The truth that nobody says out loud. You do not have a time management problem. I’m going to say it again because I really want this to land. You do not have a time management problem.
Dr. Celia
03:49 – 04:03
What you have is an outdated system that was never built for your life and the internal blocks that no planner on earth is ever going to fix. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And I’m going to actually break both of these down today.
Dr. Celia
04:05 – 04:18
So let’s start with the system. Here’s what every productivity system ever created assumes about you. That you have long, uninterrupted blocks of time. That your brain is fresh and focused at the same time every day.
Dr. Celia
04:18 – 04:32
That your to-do list exists in a vacuum separated from the mental load of running a household, raising kids, managing relationships, and showing up for everyone around you. They assume that you have a linear life. And you do not. None of us do.
Dr. Celia
04:32 – 04:41
You have a life that looks like this. You’re in the middle of a deep work session and someone needs a snack. You finally get into a flow and your phone starts ringing. The school is calling.
Dr. Celia
04:41 – 04:57
You have a hard deadline and a sick kid on the same day and you’re trying to do both at the same time from the couch. A planner does not account for that. An app does not account for that. A subscription productivity service definitely does not account for that.
Dr. Celia
04:57 – 05:09
These systems were built by people who were not thinking about you. And every year, they repackage the same approach. New aesthetics, new interface, same fundamental flaw. The flaw is this.
Dr. Celia
05:09 – 05:23
They treat time management like a scheduling problem. It is not a scheduling problem. And that is why when we talk about how working mothers manage their time, we have to throw out that old playbook completely. Because the answer is not in a bed or calendar.
Dr. Celia
05:23 – 05:32
The answer starts somewhere else entirely. And if you’re already thinking, okay, where does this start? Hang tight. That’s exactly what we’re going to get into.
Dr. Celia
05:32 – 05:45
By the end of today’s episode, I’m going to share something that might be exactly what you’re looking for. Stay with me. Okay, here’s the part that even the best system in the world cannot fix on its own. And this is where it gets real.
Dr. Celia
05:45 – 05:56
Procrastination is not laziness. Procrastination is information. I want you to write that down somewhere if you’re able to do so. Procrastination is not laziness.
Dr. Celia
05:56 – 06:13
It is information. When you keep avoiding a task, like when you sit down to do it and somehow you end up doing anything else, your brain is trying to tell you something. And until you listen to it, no amount of time blocking is going to fix it. So let me give you an example of this.
Dr. Celia
06:13 – 06:19
Let’s say you’re planning a summit. You know you need to pitch a potential contributor. It’s on your list. It’s been on your list.
Dr. Celia
06:19 – 06:31
And every week you look at it, every week it does not happen. Why? On the surface, it looks like a time problem, but is it really? Ask yourself, what happens to your body when you think about sending that pitch email?
Dr. Celia
06:31 – 06:49
Does your stomach tighten a little? Do you suddenly feel 17 other things that need to happen first? That’s not a time problem. That might be fear of rejection or fear of visibility, fear of being seen and found, fear that you’re not big enough in your business that the contributor would actually say yes to you and your summit.
Dr. Celia
06:49 – 07:06
But if you don’t know the exact fear that’s running underneath, you keep avoiding that task and you keep thinking it’s because you do not manage your time well. So what do you do with that? You start small. You start making a first step that’s so easy that the fear does not have room to stop you.
Dr. Celia
07:06 – 07:27
Instead of cold pitching someone you never met, can you get a mutual introduction from someone who knows you both? Can you start with a contributor that you feel will be like the easiest yes? Or can you make a list of three people and commit to one message that week? And you could even send one message, close your laptop and walk away, letting you feel the discomfort of actually sending that message.
Dr. Celia
07:28 – 07:31
You acknowledge the fear until the fear is not running the show.
Dr. Celia
07:32 – 07:42
You treat it as your mind and body telling you something important. And when you address it, you can change it. Like when your kid runs to you because they hurt themselves stepping on a Lego. You acknowledge it and address it.
Dr. Celia
07:42 – 07:57
You do not ignore it and continue your day while your kiddo is still in pain and crying. And this, this is what no one tells you about how working moms manage their time. Half of it has nothing to do with the time at all. Half of it is about what’s happening underneath.
Dr. Celia
07:57 – 08:11
And this is the kind of work we do inside of Biz Mom Balance VIP Blueprint. And I’ll tell you what that looks like in real life. So I work with a client. She’s a brilliant woman running her business, showing up for her family every single day.
Dr. Celia
08:12 – 08:24
On her very first call together, she mentioned a holiday project she wanted to launch. And I looked at her and I said, no, I do not think you need to do that. You’ve got enough on your plate. And she told me later that was the moment she knew that this program was going to be different.
Dr. Celia
08:25 – 08:42
because no one had ever looked at her life and told her the whole truth. And on our last call, she said something I still think about. It’s like, you help me take off the fairy tale hat where I’m Superwoman, put the crown to the side, and let’s get real. How many of us have been walking around in that hat right now?
Dr. Celia
08:42 – 08:48
That’s the work, and that’s what’s waiting for you on the other side of this. More on that at the end of the episode.
Dr. Celia
08:50 – 09:01
So what does it actually look like to do this differently? And here’s my process. I call it looking at the whole picture and it has two parts to it, the internal and the external. Part one is the internal audit.
Dr. Celia
09:02 – 09:13
Before you look at the calendar, before you write a single task on a list, you ask yourself this, what’s happening inside of me right now? What am I avoiding and why? Is there fear underneath the task? Resistance?
Dr. Celia
09:14 – 09:29
A story I’m telling myself about when I’m trying to make this work and it’s not working for me. Name it, because once you name it, it loses some of its hold on you. And once you address it, even partially, it becomes so much easier to actually sit down and do the work.
Dr. Celia
09:30 – 09:39
Part two, the external audit. Now that you look at your actual life, not your ideal life, the actual life this week, what does your week really look like?
Dr. Celia
09:39 – 09:54
If you’re having a heavy week, hard deadlines, commitments stacked on top of one another, a lot of moving parts, then your most important task that week is one thing, that’s it. One income generating task done well, that’s a win.
Dr. Celia
09:54 – 10:16
And if you’re having an easier week, like maybe the kids are at summer camp, maybe you have the house to yourself for a few days, or maybe you knocked out already like three to five bigger goals in your business, that’s available to you too, to adjust the week to what’s actually happening. The point is your capacity is not fixed. It flexes and your system needs to flex with it.
Dr. Celia
10:16 – 10:33
Because here’s what happens when working moms manage their time this way. When they look at the internal and external, they stop fighting themselves. They stop sitting down, avoiding work, and actually get the work done. Not because they have more willpower, but because they actually address what was in their way.
Dr. Celia
10:34 – 10:50
And this is how working moms manage their time. Not with a prettier planner, but with a system that finally sees their whole life. So let me walk you through what this actually looks like in real life. I was working with a mom, she was running her business, homeschooling, raising three kids, and showing up for everyone.
Dr. Celia
10:51 – 11:06
And she came to me with this never-ending to-do list. She told me, I have all these tasks and I just don’t have enough time in the day. What struck me was that she didn’t even fully realize how stressed and isolated she felt until we started working together. That’s how sneaky overwhelm is.
Dr. Celia
11:06 – 11:26
It just becomes your new normal. So, the first thing we did was tackle the external, the strategy, the plan, because you cannot fix what you cannot see. And that meant getting honest right away. She mentioned a holiday project she wanted to add to her plate, and I just shook my head and said, no, you already got a lot going on already.
Dr. Celia
11:26 – 11:41
And she said that was exactly what she needed to hear, somebody to objectively look at her life and help her see reality. So we built her a realistic calendar. One that accounts for her business, her family, her personal time, all of it. Not the superwoman version of it, the real one.
Dr. Celia
11:43 – 12:00
And that’s when the internal blocks started surfacing. Because the moment you have a clear plan in front of you, everything inside that’s been holding you back starts to show up. She had to challenge everything she thought she should be doing. She described it as taking off her fairytale hat while I’m superwoman, putting the crown to the side and getting real.
Dr. Celia
12:00 – 12:14
And something started to click for her. She said to me, when I’m clear about things, I get more confidence. And when I get to that confidence, I feel a sense of calm, like the foundation is going to be really solid. Clarity, then confidence, then calm.
Dr. Celia
12:15 – 12:26
She stopped white knuckling every month. She started to show up differently for her kids, her husband. And she told me the world is not going to fall apart if this does not go perfectly. I’m just following the steps and little by little it’s building.
Dr. Celia
12:28 – 12:45
And by the end of our time together, she said something that stayed with me, I now have a plan and a sense of calm about what to do next. A plan and calm at the same time. And that’s what it looks like when you work on both sides, the external and the internal. So let me bring this home.
Dr. Celia
12:45 – 13:00
You came to this episode thinking you had a time management problem. I hope you are leaving knowing the truth. You’ve been using an outdated system that was never designed for your life. And you’ve been carrying internal blocks that no app, no planner, no subscription was ever going to fix.
Dr. Celia
13:00 – 13:22
That is not a character flaw. That is just information. You know that feeling when you finally exhale? Not that the, all right, the kids are out of the house and I’m going to relax type of exhale, but the deep one, the one that you’re not mentally writing your to-do list, the one that you actually feel okay, like things are going to be okay.
Dr. Celia
13:22 – 13:46
One of my clients had not felt that in years. She was growing her business, homeschooling, raising her kids, showing up for her husband, her family, her household, and slowly, quietly drowning. Not in a dramatic way, just in that low-grade, constant, I’m fine, kind of way that we moms end up being so good at. By the end of the time together, she said something I’ll never forget.
Dr. Celia
13:46 – 13:58
I can do this. I actually have a plan that works for me and I feel so calm on what to do next. A plan and feeling good about it at the same time. That is not a miracle.
Dr. Celia
13:59 – 14:11
That’s what happens when somebody finally helps you get real about your real life. Not to shrink it, but to build on it something solid. And that’s what Bisman Balance Blueprint is. It is not another productivity hack.
Dr. Celia
14:11 – 14:35
It’s a thing that you come to when you tried all the productivity apps, all the time management solutions, and you still feel like you’re running in circles. And if you’re tired, really tired, and ready to feel like yourself again, and get that income generating project off your to-do list, the link is in the show notes. Your future self is already exhaling. I’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks.
