Plan Simple with Mia Moran

Choose a boundary that feels really luscious and feels really nourishing and feels really exciting. Don’t choose the boundary that feels like it’s punishment.

I’m back again with my friend and former business coach, Megan Flatt. Today is a lesson in Plan B. Normally we answer questions from listeners, but the system to take questions got hacked, so we’re going to dive into talking about boundaries this week and get back to your questions next time. Boundaries came up last week when we were talking about systems and support, and it’s a great topic to go deeper with.

Being a mom and being an entrepreneur are both 24/7 roles. You don’t clock in or out of either role, which makes it really easy to start feeling like you should be doing something as a mom or for your business ALL the time. That’s just not sustainable. That’s where parameters and boundaries come in.

Megan shares how she uses a guiding word to help set boundaries (right now she’s working with abundant ease). And we discuss how having boundaries provides structure—and more actually gives you more freedom.

We talk about:

• Creating a meal rhythm and how I actually ate more variety within this structure
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• Decision fatigue and how to cut down on decision making
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• The importance of setting work hours (even if they change week to week)
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• Creating work blocks and using them to shift tasks and restructuring our time to be more effective
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• Using boundaries to make conscious decisions and be in charge of your day (even when it’s messy)
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• Working with our own cycles instead of thinking things have to be the same all the time (or that our work days and weeks have to look like anybody else’s)
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Have a question for Mia and Megan?

Go to plansimplemeals.com/ask.

You will get prompted to record your question and we’ll try to answer it.

Or just email your question to [email protected]

Megan Flatt is a Mama CEO, a business growth strategist, and a planning pro. She’s been working with clients for years to create strategic growth plans in their business that allow them to scale while still being present for the important moments in their families’ lives. She shows Mama CEOs with big vision and great ideas how to get those big CEO ideas into a day-by-day plan where they actually happen.

LINKS

• Meganflatt.com
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• Well Planned: Systems and Support
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• Well Planned: Overwhelm vs. Laziness
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• Well Planned in 90-Day Cycles
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• Creating a Meal Rhythm
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I need to create system to save time and make me more efficient for every patient I’m seeing  and helping. Also, when should I think about getting some help to make my documents looking better?

On this episode of the Plan Simple Meals Podcast, I’m back with my friend Megan Flatt for Well Planned, the series where we answer your questions about planning. Megan is a business growth strategist who focuses on helping business owners scale and grow their businesses while also being present for all the other important things in their lives like their kids and families.

Today we have a two-part question from Ellen about creating systems and outsourcing. Ellen asks this in reference to her business seeing and healing patients, but we’re going to talk about how to use both of these tools for business and home.

Megan’s number 1 tool is the weekly workflow. I love that word and it fits so much better than weekly schedule. For a weekly workflow, you might have certain days you see clients and certain days that you work on creating content or record your podcast and certain days that you do other things. One key piece is having some fluidity or “buffer time.” This allows you to spend a little more time on a project you are super inspired on or to deal with something at comes up. Check out the link below for Megan’s weekly workflow worksheet and video.

We dive into:

• Setting boundaries and work hours to improve your business and your quality of life
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• Documenting things you do again and again, from writing up answers to the questions you get all the time to documenting a process you go through again and again—and then using some of this documentation (create a video or handout) to add value to your clients
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• Setting up systems for home (example meal planning, grocery shopping, or carpooling), which gives us a sense of more time
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• Setting up systems to make it easier to outsource
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• Working in focused two-week sprints to build momentum and cut down on “runway” time needed for multiple projects
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• Progress over perfection, or not letting a lack of perfection stop you from launching or sending things out
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• When and what to outsource and that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you need to be doing it either at all or you need to be the one doing it in your business or at home
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Have a question for Mia and Megan?

Go to plansimplemeals.com/ask.

You will get prompted to record your question and we’ll try to answer it.

Or just email your question to [email protected]

Megan Flatt is a Mama CEO, a business growth strategist, and a planning pro. She’s been working with clients for years to create strategic growth plans in their business that allow them to scale while still being present for the important moments in their families’ lives. She shows Mama CEOs with big vision and great ideas how to get those big CEO ideas into a day-by-day plan where they actually happen.

LINKS

• Meganflatt.com
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• Megan’s Weekly Workflow
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Doable Changes from this...

“The busier you are, the more intentional you must be.” ― Michael Hyatt

So often we are on the move. It feels like we never stop, but at the end of the day, we don’t feel like anything has been accomplished. In fact we feel like an utter failure because of our inability to check anything off our list.

When asked how our day was, we say, “busy,” but instantly feel like an imposter. After all, if we were really that busy, we’d feel accomplished, right?

Not necessarily.

I don’t know about you, but I have spent whole days on my computer, but at the end of the day my inbox still has 1000 emails, and I know more about my friends on Facebook than they know about the Planner I just created because I got lost in my feed and forgot to post! I have spent whole days cleaning the house only to feel like the basement is a small store filled to capacity. I have spent whole days driving kids everywhere but feeling like I got nowhere.

But there are some planning tricks that I have found really helpful, and some of them might be just the little tweaks you need today to feel less busy and more accomplished.

Know how you want to feel. Busy is a feeling. I have had days that I have decided I want to feel calm, present or even abundant that don’t look that different than a busy day, but they feel different. It is because I go through my day with a different outlook, or I tweak little things — sitting for lunch, shutting off my phone at my daughter’s dance class, listening to great music while cooking, standing and stretching for 3 minutes for every 40 minutes I work.

Block out every minute of your day. Many of us dream of times we get to be alone, with no one who needs us, no one whining or pulling at our shirt. We yearn for some downtime to just put up our feet. When we can, we leave some spaces in our days, but it never seems to work hou. It goes soemthing like this: you leave some space on a Tuesday afternoon because last Wednesday you were dreaming of a nap, or maybe some extra time to walk to the store instead of driving. You looked at Tuesday, saw it was wide open, and you knew you could wait. Then on Monday, your daughter’s best friend wants to come over. You say “Not today” because there is a dentist appointment, but Tuesday would work. You just gave up your free moment. Instead, choose a color that represents downtime or selfcare. Block out time in your digital calendar or actually draw a rectangle around the time in your paper calendar. That way, all kinds of time are accounted for—including down time—not just “busy” time.

You can only be in one place at one time, so decide to be there. Have you ever truly sunk into a moment where time almost feels as though it is standing still? Maybe you are watching your kid do something spectacular, or you see something so beautiful in nature. These are moments when nothing else matters. What would happen if you just observed your daughter dancing instead of sitting in class writing your grocery list? What would happen if you told your son that you will help him in one hour and until then you focus with out distraction on writing the email that you have been avoiding? What if there were no phones at the dinner table? Presence is powerful. You can get a ton done in a power hour, but if you are focused on one thing it will never feel busy.

Define your 3 big rocks. Your big rocks are three things that move you towards your big goals. Compare them to busy activities: things like doctors appointments, client work, driving kids to school, things you will do because you have to. Picture this visual: a glass vase with three piles next to it — 3 big rock, a pile of pebbles and a pile of sand. When the sand goes in first, then the pebbles, it fills the vase and there is no space for the 3 big rocks. When the 3 big rocks go in first, then the pebbles, then the...