How I’m Working 3 Days a Week as a Mom
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ Why I decided on a 3-day workweek
⋒ How I used The 5 Keys to Hustling Sanely to create a plan that works best for me in this season
⋒ A breakdown of exactly what my work days and weeks look like right now
I’ve been doing a 3-day work week since mid-February, and at first, it was messy. I was still trying to do as much as I used to do in a 5-day work week in a 3-day work week and obviously, that wasn’t feasible. So I did what I do best and I went to The 5 Keys to Hustling Sanely to help me come up with a plan that made sense for my season.
I’m going to share what that process looked like for me because I really think that you can apply the 5 Keys to just about anything you’re trying to figure out in life.
Here’s what using the 5 Keys looked like for me as I figured out how to structure my work weeks as a new mom:
KEY 01: Get your mindset right
I started by neutrally assessing what my thoughts were toward work. Thoughts like “I feel rushed.” “My days feel overloaded.” “I’m not getting things done.” popped up.
Okay noted.
How could I shift those thoughts so that I wasn’t operating from a victim mentality but instead taking ownership of my thoughts by recognizing them and making changes so that my thoughts reflected an action-taking problem-solving woman?
I came up with some affirmations:
When the thought “I feel rushed” came up, I redirected that to: “My direction is more important than my speed. I am focused on doing less work with higher quality.”
When the thought “My days feel overloaded” came up, I redirected that to: “I get to decide what is on my calendar. I am in charge of my project timelines.”
When the thought “I’m not getting things done” came up, I redirected that to: “I am equipped to give my best time and energy to tasks that matter most in my business.”
Our thoughts become our reality so it’s really important to harness our thoughts in a way that supports how we want to be showing up for our lives. I needed thoughts that supported healthy work/life harmony.
KEY 02: Get clear on your vision
After assessing my thoughts, I realized that a lot of my limiting thoughts showed me that what I needed was a smaller task list – I felt spread thin. I was having a hard time managing and maintaining what needed to be done for my business to keep running at the caliber I want and having time to work on new products and projects.
When I thought about how I wanted my work days and weeks to feel, I knew that I wanted to be able to focus on work a few days a week rather than try to do a little bit of work each day during Everly’s nap times or at night after she went to bed.
The most important part of my vision was being able to focus on work when it was work time and momming when I wasn’t working. I know myself and I do better when I can compartmentalize. I call myself a recovering workaholic and if I work in the fringe hours, it’s really easy for me to overwork. I’ve been really intentional about my work hours since 2020 and I wanted to keep boundaries in place to protect my time off.
That meant that I needed to arrange childcare. We are really blessed to have my mom come watch Everly 2 days a week and Adam’s mom come and watch her 1 day a week so that I can work.
If this wasn’t an option for us, Adam and I were going to look into hiring a part-time nanny to come to our home to watch Everly because I knew that if I wanted to be able to get good quality work done in a short amount of time each week, that I would need that support.
So that part of my vision was clear and now I needed to get a little bit more granular and decide how I wanted my days and weeks to flow.
When I imagine my ideal work day, I imagine having a solid morning routine first, because that sets the tone for my day. I imagined not having to wake up earlier than 6. I imagined working from 10-4, with a lunch break nestled in there.
So I was clear on my vision and the next step was to define my priorities so that I could live out that vision.
KEY 03: Define your priorities
For this, I wrote out a list of all the tasks that need to be done in my business every day, week, month, quarter, and year.
I also wrote out a list of all of the projects and products that I planned to work on this year (I nailed these down during my yearly vision meeting for my biz last year).
Looking at those lists, I knew that I couldn’t make it work with my vision of working 3 days a week.
So I either had to change my vision OR lean out my lists.
I was pretty set on a 3-day work week so I set out to lean out my lists using automation, delegation, and rescheduling.
Starting with the task list, I went down the list and circled everything that needed to be done by me (like recording podcast episodes, creating courses, leading coaching calls, etc.).
Then, I underlined things that needed to be done but could be done by someone else (like answering customer service emails, scheduling podcast interviews, managing my Hustle Sanely Pinterest account/Instagram account, and prepping the podcast episodes/blog posts for release every week) and delegated these to people on my team. Yes, this meant that I would be spending more money to run my business BUT it’s an investment I’m willing to make because the return is my time and energy that I could focus on being with my daughter.
Finally, I went through the list one more time and crossed out things that didn’t need to be done in this season (like adding books to the Hustle Sanely library page on my website, revamping funnels, offering 1:1 coaching – this one was tough because I had to get real about what I was doing because I thought I was “supposed to” as a business owner.)
Me tabling these things for this season isn’t me saying “never again” – it’s just me defining what isn’t important right now so I could focus on what is important right now.
Which speaking of tabling things, I went through the list of projects and products I wanted to work on and release in 2023 and narrowed that down because I realized that it was too big to accomplish during a 3-day work week for me… all of us have different capacities and I know mine so I rescheduled some of these projects to next year.
Once I had my mind right, was clear on my vision, and had my priorities defined, I could use that information to create a schedule and routines that supported my vision and priorities.
I mentioned in my podcast episode 178: 5 Routines Keeping Me Sane as a New Mom that I made a pivot from primarily using batching to structure my weeks to using time blocking more to structure my work days.
In case you missed that episode, here is a recap on that – which I’ve actually made some small shifts in my work times since then:
My work schedule looks like this right now:
Tuesdays: 10-4
Wednesdays: 10-4
Thursdays: 9:30-3
Before I was a mom, I was working 5 days a week and I was using a pretty structured weekly batching schedule to run my business and it was awesome. So basically, each day of the week had a focus and I’d do work that fell into that focus on that day.
Monday was product development day
Tuesday was content creation day
Wednesday was product development day
Thursday was calls and coaching day
Friday was open loop day
When I was working 5 days a week, this worked so well! Now that I’m working 3 days a week – it doesn’t really feel as good to structure my work week this way.
I tried to keep to a weekly batch schedule for work in March and the first part of April – but only having 3 days made me feel like I was trying to cram too much into each day. I was finding that if I didn’t get all of my “product development” tasks done by the end of Tuesday that I would feel stressed because I knew I didn’t have time to focus on that built into my schedule again until the following Tuesday.
So since mid-April I’ve been trying a different approach and so far, it feels really good!
I’ve been leaning more toward a time-blocking approach combined with batching.
I still use batching because I schedule all of my calls and coaching on Wednesdays. I prefer to batch those because I don’t feel like I can get good quality work done if I’m constantly having to pause to get on calls all week. I also batch my podcast by the month so I dedicate one week a month to getting the podcast episodes for the following month written and recorded.
And here is how the time-blocking comes into play – I assign certain tasks to certain blocks of time every workday. Whereas before, I’d have a focus for each day but I’d kinda just bop around and do things as I wanted to within the day because I was working more days and hours so I had that flexibility. Now, I have to get things done efficiently because I’m only working 3 days.
I know y’all love a concrete example so here is what my time-blocked work days look like right now:
Tuesdays: 10-4
10-10:30 – Quick email/voxer check + check-in with Hustle Sanely BFFs
10:45-1:00 — Focus 3/Deep work
1:00-1:30 – Lunch break
2:00-2:30 — CEO Tasks + answering emails
2:45-3:30 — Focus 3/Deep work wrap up
4:00-4:30 — Make IG posts
Wednesdays: 10-4/5
10-10:45 – Quick email/voxer check + check-in with Hustle Sanely BFFs
11:00-1:30 — Calls
1:30-2:00 – Lunch break
2:15-2:45 — CEO Tasks
3:00-5:00 — Coaching
Thursdays: 9:30-3
9:30-10:15 – Quick email/voxer check + check-in with Hustle Sanely BFFs
10:45-12:45 — Focus 3/Deep work
1:00-1:45 — Planning + Content Check
2:00-2:30 — CEO Tasks
2:45-3:00 — Make IG posts
Like I said – this is working well in this season but it might change next month. Our schedules and routines are tools, not chains and I’m always just trying to do what works best for me in each season without getting frustrated that I have to pivot.
And I wanted to take some time in this episode to go a little bit deeper by sharing how I have my months structured because I got some DMs asking me if I’d expand on that – and you know I do my best to make it happen if you want it!
I have a focus for each week of the month – these focuses, foci?, help me know what I need to be working on during my deep work/Focus 3 blocks each day.
Weeks 1-2 of the month: PROJECTS + PRODUCTS
This is when I’m focused on whatever projects and products I’m working on for my business at the time - could be a new course or the paper product line – just depends on the time of year
Week 3 of the month: PODCAST WEEK
I spend 2 days writing the podcast scripts for my solo episodes and then one day recording them. And that’s the whole week for me because ya know… 3-day work week, lol. I don’t schedule calls during my call block on Wednesdays this week – that is the time I use to write.
Week 4 of the month: Monthly Email + Quarterly Batch Work + Monthly Planning
The 4th week of the month I always write the monthly email that goes out the first Friday of every month and fill out my biz planning document that I share with my team so they know what sales, launches, and podcast episodes are coming out the following month (I already know what these are in a broad sense because they’re planned by the quarter - this is when I get nitty-gritty with the dates and sale specifics)
Then the quarterly batch work looks like this:
Month 1 of the quarter: Doing the 3 podcast interviews for my show for the next quarter
Month 2 of the quarter: Planning the podcast episodes and broad launches for the following quarter
Month 3 of the quarter: Creating the content for the BFF membership
I use the Hustle Sanely Planning System, which I teach inside of the Peacefully Productive Schedule course, to help me plan out when everything needs to be done.
Using this system makes it really clear what needs to be done each quarter, month, week, and day to make consistent and sustainable progress on my goals. It also helps me to know what I need to say no to – because honestly, in this 3-day work week season that I’m in while Everly is so young, means that I’m saying no to good opportunities sometimes because they don’t align with my vision of a 3-day work week.
And of course, I have to remind you that our schedules and routines are tools, not chains! Things don’t always go perfectly according to this plan and that’s okay. I also usually have like a 1-2 hour window on Mondays if I need it to close any open work loops from the week before.
Alright, that is what I’ve got for y’all today – how I’m managing working 3 days a week as a mom. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, you can use the 5 Keys to Hustling Sanely to help you create a plan for just about anything!
Curious about the Hustle Sanely Planning System?
Loved this blog post? Tune into the full podcast episode below!
