Here's a breakdown of my values and how I apply them to my own to-do list. Yours doesn't have to be this complicated, but I wanted to give you a better idea of how I work through this on a daily basis.

My top 6 values are:

1: Learning (I am both teacher and learner as a homeschool mom, entrepreneur and in a life-long pursuit of self-development and discovery).

2: Integrity: It might not always be easy, but I strive to be as authentic and transparent as I can be.

3: Safety: I function better (fewer struggles with anxiety and PTSD) when I feel that my family and I are safe.

4: Creativity: Having some creative outlet that I spend time absorbed in daily allows me to cultivate a sense of inner peace (read: I'm less cranky when I can be creative).

5: Spirituality: While organized religion doesn't hold a place in my life, I do need and enjoy time in nature, meditation and rituals that celebrate the turning of the year.

6: Close connections: My immediate family (both by blood and by choice) are the first that get to lay claim to my time, after I take care of me - I cannot be effective as a mother, teacher, friend, wife or partner if I am not at my best.

How my values affect my to-do list:

1: Learning: I have time built into my schedule daily for some kind of learning. (Yes, Skillshare has an actual time slot in my daily calendar, whether it's for creating content or taking courses taught by others.) I also schedule around the time it generally takes my daughter to get through her homeschool lessons, so that what I am doing in the morning are projects that I can easily be interrupted for. One day a month is slotted for doing the next month's lesson plans (streamlining), even though it usually only takes me a couple hours at this point - I allow time to interact with Sam while writing her plans, because she's the one who has to do the work, after all. [I have a core content list that I ensure she follows, but rather than writing me book reports, she's taken to writing reviews that include plot and character development, and as a family, we've started her own vlog channel on Youtube.]

2: Integrity: We lived on an extremely tight budget for a number of years, and fell behind in a number of older bills. While it would be very easy to sidestep most of what is no longer on our credit reports, I've pushed to live on a smaller budget so that we can pay off old debts. I schedule time weekly to pay bills and put money into savings, and review our budget monthly to make sure we're staying within our goals. And while it's tempting to gloss over the bad days on social media, I am honest about feeling crappy, but try to put some positive spin on it. (a recent tweet I shared was something to the effect of, "Nothing's going right and I have a migraine, but dammit, I'm going to have a good day anyway.") Those in my community that understand chronic pain and illness got it, and it spread - lots of other people were having crappy days, but decided that if I could choose to make it a good day anyway, they could, too!

3: Safety: Back to paying those bills - Rent and utilities are the very first things to get paid every month, and our food allowance is set aside so that I'm not stressed about anyone going hungry (Hubby is a type 1 diabetic, and it is insanely stressful when we don't have anything to fix his blood sugar lows). Meal planning gets a slot in my schedule, so that I know exactly what food I need to buy, and exactly what we're eating. That also allows Hubby to know how much insulin to take, and we're not as worried about him dropping precipitously.

4: Creativity: Throughout the week, I have various creative projects that I work on. Blogging became a headache last year, and fell off my to-do list completely for a while, but I was able to shift my focus during an author platform development class, and realized that if I see it as a creative outlet in itself (both writing and creating visuals/graphics), I enjoy it much, much more. I also have a weekly date with my writing buddy (this also feeds Value #6) when we sit down together for 4 hours of working on our fiction manuscripts. This might be the only time during the week that I actually work on my fiction, but it's an honored date.

5: Spirituality: This one is difficult for me to make time for. Too often, I wake up and fall straight into #6 - relationships, #1 - Learning (Sam starts school as soon as she finishes breakfast) and #4 - Creativity (I tend to dive into work projects as soon as Sam starts school). However, recognizing that it's a priority that wasn't getting my time, I made a conscious choice to wake up earlier in the morning so I have a few minutes of quiet to meditate - even if I get nothing else done. The more projects I can streamline, the more time I can free up for the other parts of this value, such as ritual and celebration, which right now, are tabled because I only have so much time and energy. I also have added an evening gratitude journal practice back into my day, which I fit in before my daily #6 (below).

6: Close Connections: Regardless of how much I haven't finished in a day, by the time Hubby walks in the door at 6 p.m. (-ish... his end of day can vary), I've wrapped up my day, reviewed the next day's work and am finishing up my nightly journal so that we can spend an hour or two together with Sam before I need to crash. I'm in bed by 8 p.m. most nights, so that I can get adequate rest and be my best for Sam and Hubby in the morning. As mentioned above, I also have a weekly date with my writing buddy, and make time each week to touch base with a few other close friends that I don't get to talk to as much as I might like, due to schedules and crammed to-do lists.

What I no longer do:

- I dropped parts of my content calendar creation for both businesses, because they were taking me upwards of 15 hours a week, with absolutely no social media interaction resulting from the work. It wasn't giving me any return-on-investment, I'm not sure it was giving other content creators any return on my investment, and it was a HUGE time suck in my day. Instead, I've built a tidy but busy content calendar that I review weekly for results, and am in the process of creating a menu of social media posts I can pull from for each category - New time spent: 3-4 hours a week, 3 weeks a month.

- Exercise: Yes, this is a critical part of health - however - I have to juggle a painful medical condition AND a new injury. At THIS time, I've removed exercise from my daily list, because for every one hour of yoga, I was loosing as much as 10 hours a week in work time, trying to mitigate pain. Instead, I've incorporated mindful eating and meal planning into my schedule, so that I can continue to drop excess weight.

- Supervise every minute of Sam's schoolwork. She's at a point now where she's mostly self-directed. Instead, I work closely with her on one or two subjects that require my assistance (French, math, life skills and home ec), and worked my schedule around so that I am available as she needs me without too much delay in HER day.

Delegated:

- Cooking: Sam is learning to cook and loves to be in the kitchen, so I've built our meal planning in such a way that she is able to cook a bulk of our dinners.

- Housecleaning and Laundry: Yes, the Joe conversation is *sort of* based on my life. Sam gets a little extra allowance for doing a good portion of the chores, and I start laundry each morning, with the understanding that the other humans in the house need to get it into the dryer, get it out of the dryer, and get it folded and put away. "If it wasn't in the dirty clothes basket and you didn't tell me you needed it..."

Jenn Bradshaw

Author of Meaningful Romance

15

24