Time Management Hacks with Special Guest Michelle Byrd

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast, where we choose to deal with and overcome the behavior problems in our home by putting those problems in their place so that they don't cause even more problems. I'm Jackie Finneman, parenting coach and strategist, and I've helped hundreds of families over the course of 30 years and with over 50,000 hours of experience addressing behavior problems head on and nipping them in the bud. I teach and support parents in the day-to-day ups and downs of parenting on how and how not to respond to your kiddos' behavior so that you can be the confident leader your kids crave you to be. And if after listening to this episode, you'd like to strategize on how to get your family back on track, go to NoProblemParents.com and book a strategy session with me. Keeping with our theme this month of April about all things organization, decluttering, home management. I brought on a really fun guest for you today.

I'd like to introduce you to Michelle Bird. Michelle, welcome to the show. Thank you. I just love doing time management and organization, and that's kind of how God has gifted me. And so I feel just need to bless other moms. It's so tough being a mom and trying to juggle everything, kids and school schedules, and then also trying to work and all the things.

So I'll just put it on my heart to, uh, help other moms. Well, I just love that you have made this into a business, a thriving business. And it's like, because one of the things that feeds you is being organized. I know for me, I cannot stand any clutter on my countertops. And, you know, fortunately for me, I had one child, so I didn't have four or five kids bringing all the school papers home or like, you know, if you're homeschooling, like having all of that on the table or on the counters. But still, even though I'm a family, we're a family of three, it drives me crazy to have clutter. So and then also just managing the calendar and making sure that it syncs with my husband's calendar and we're all on the same page. You just have some really great ideas for how to kind of get it all together and make it not so stressful. You have a thing called time blocking basics, how to fit in all the things without feeling overwhelmed. Let's start there.

Oh, that's a great place to start. So when you're thinking about time blocking, it's, it's really, you just want to make all these kinds of things simple. So you want to make organizations simple. You want to make being at home, trying to get all this stuff done simple because moms, we've got, we have so many other things that are coming at us. We just need to simplify stuff. So in time blocking, how it kind of works is you're blocking out a certain amount of time in your day. And if you're moving through your day with the idea that you have certain blocks of time, you'll be more productive within those blocks of time. So for example, you usually would have like a morning routine as a mom where you're getting up getting dressed getting maybe going to the gym maybe doing a devotion and then you have another little block of like getting kids to school like getting them all ready and then you probably once you drop them off you have like your work block for the day pretty much of okay I have this many hours my children are gone and I can work. And then you have a block of when you pick them up and it's kind of an afternoon block and then kind of an evening and everybody's system and everybody's kind of calendar looks a little different and they're weak, of course. So you kind of just vary it. But the idea with time blocking is that you're blocking out in the morning. I have from this time to this time, and this is what I do in this routine. Also, it helps your mind not have

to think about all the things. Just have my morning block. I'm going to get these three things done, or these three things are in my routine in my morning block. And then you kind of move throughout your day. So I like that you're, you're calling it a time block too. I think just mentally, when you say it, like, this is what I'm doing during this time, it helps you not get distracted with the phone, the email, the things that you could in that time block. Oh, I have 10 more minutes. I'm get caught in the weeds of social media, or I'm, you know, going to start another project or something. And then that project isn't done. It's not, it puts you into your next time block. And it's like, no, if you have extra minutes in your time block, chill out.

That's like rest time, right? Yeah. So you kind of just want to plan, okay, these, this is the time I'm going to work, or this is the time I'm not going to work. So, you know, okay, this is the time when I'm getting things done. And it just helps you be a little bit more productive instead of thinking, oh, I have the whole day. I just dropped off my kids and then kind of floating through your morning. Okay. Oh, I should get to this. And then you look at something else, you get a little distracted and oh yeah, I should get back to this. So it's just helping you kind of keep on task so that you don't look up and look at the clock and think, oh my gosh, I have to go pick up my kids in five minutes and I haven't gotten any of these things I need to get done.

Yeah. And I can see how this would be really effective for stay at home parents or work at home parents. I've had a home office pretty much my whole career. Even when I was a counselor at my other job for 20 years, I had a home office and then we, sometimes I had to go to the main office, but there's that temptation to throw in a load of laundry or to clean a bathroom or to do.

It's like, but my work time, I need to block off. It is work time. If I want to put a 10 or 15 minute break in there and go through in the laundry, that's great. I can do it during my break, but my work time is, is my work time.

And then it also does, like you said, it helps you become more productive during that work time. Cause you can make your list of things you need to get done or have your appointments. And it's like, I only have this much time for this. And there's that goal or that pressure to get it done during that time.

So you do kind of become more productive, right? Yeah, it helps so much. It just helps with your perspective. I think of the whole day, especially as a work from home mom.

I remember I used to drop my kids off and then be like, now what am I going to do? And just kind of my day would just kind of flutter by. And then I'd get into, oh, okay, I guess I should get this done or whatever. But it keeps you a little bit more on task and helps your brain to focus.

not for the whole day, but to focus for just two or three hours of, okay, for these two or three hours, I'm just going to work on this and then kind of move to the next thing. Got it. You have a thing called declutter like a mother, easy tips to declutter and get organized. Let's get into some of those. Oh, I love decluttering. So one big tip is not to do too much. I think a lot of times people think I'm going to do this huge space and then they get overwhelmed once they take it all out. So do small little decluttering things and plan that into either your day or your week.

Do like a drawer. We all have that miscellaneous drawer, right? That the junk drawer that everything goes in. So maybe like we have one in the kitchen and while we're watching TV, I might like go through the junk drawer, like just take 15 minutes. So you want to plan a few minutes to get everything out and then medium amount of time to kind of go through it and put it away and figure out what you don't need and what's broken, what you could throw away. Right.

And then the end time is to clean up, put those things in the trash, put those things in the giveaway pile so that at the end, you don't have all this stuff out everywhere. And schedule a drawer a day or a drawer every other day or a drawer a week, a cabinet. For me, it's the container drawer, like the Tupperware. That drawer is constantly a mess in our home. It's actually two drawers. And I know that that sometimes it's like once a week, I got to get in there and organize it because it saves me time later trying to find the right size container for the leftovers or for my husband's lunch the next day. And then also sometimes I'll do like do a room a month.

We sometimes we'll do like a room a month. I've done some episodes about how to help your kids declutter. I think that's really important because it teaches them what they need to live with and that they don't just need more and more toys and what kind of things they may be okay with giving away. It just helps them kind of go through their stuff.

And then it also helps you not to have to manage as much stuff, right? All the shoes, all the things everywhere. If you just have less of it, it helps so much. So just those little spaces, try not to take on too much.

Just pick out like 15 minutes and go through, as you said, a drawer, the Tupperware drawer, the cabinets underneath the sink, right? In your bathroom, maybe a medicine drawer that you have a bunch of medicine that's expired. Like there's little spots that you can just do a 15 minutes. Yeah. And do you have any hacks for us about like managing the kids, you know, the papers they bring home or the things that they're doing? Give us some ideas about that. Oh, that is a big tip.

If you have kids from any school, right, they bring in papers and you have three kids, they bring in more papers. So we have, let's see, an art rack where I just put everybody's artwork. They don't do as much artwork now since they're in elementary, but it all goes there. So I don't have to worry about where it goes.

And then every once in a while I go through it, toss out stuff, maybe keep some. But I think the key is right when you get home to take the backpacks out, go through the backpacks, toss whatever you can toss. And then whatever you decide to keep, like maybe there's a report that they did, or they did a great job on a test and you want to save that or a cute journal that they wrote something really amazing. I just date it and I put it away in a folder. And then at the end of the year, I pull out the age kids folder and kind of go through it that way. But the more stuff you can just go through and that first five to 10 minutes of being home and just the more stuff you can throw away the better. Yeah. I think a lot of this has to do with being organized yourself and sticking to the time instead of just, Oh, I'll get to it later. It's like being really disciplined yourself because what you do right in the moment is going to save you worlds of time later on.

And even if it's not even just the time it takes, but just the disorganization in your head, when you see the clutter and the mess around your house, it's just like really stressful. It's so true. If you just wait and the kids take out their backpack and it like explodes all over the kitchen counter. And then you come back and you're like, I don't know whose papers are whose and what are these yours? Do you need them for another test? Is this test coming up?

Is it done? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You also have a top five productivity hacks for how to stay on top of your day. I'll put a link in the show notes for your website so people can get more information on these, but this is just kind of an overview of the things that you offer.

Yeah. So I think with the top five kind of productivity hacks that I would have to get through your days. Number one, we talked about time blocking, knowing kind of those blocks within your day where you're going to be productive or you're going to get kids blocking out your day. having a planner is very is key either a paper planner I love having a paper planner where you can write it down and see it visually there's something really amazing about that looking at your whole week visually there's also having a digital calendar where you can share with your husband or your spouse so you don't double book things and everybody's kind of on the same page. I think that's really a key tool, especially when you kind of know, oh, okay, you're going to be doing these late nights or you're working a little later. You're going to need a little bit of extra help those nights or these nights we're going to be out at sports events. We're going to need a quick meal. So just those kinds of things are helpful in looking at your week, either through planner or a digital calendar. And then also I would say just be really mindful in your work block to minimize distractions, to put your phone on work, to plan, to work through what you're working those two hours, maybe have five things that you're are on your top to-do list. And you can either use like any kind of software, if that's helpful. Some people use, you know, MindMeister

or a sauna or click up to kind of do their tasks within their work block. So that can be helpful. But I think the key is to use tools that are helpful for you. Somebody may rave about a planner or something else, and you have to figure out if that's something that works for you. Do you enjoy it? Because you can have a beautiful planner and just carry it around like a book all day, and it doesn't do any good. Exactly. It's like, it could look nice, but is it productive?

So I think the key to any of these tools, whether it be planning out your day, time blocking, time management, keep staying organized, all those things is to use those tools that work for you. And maybe it's just a couple, maybe it's two or three. So just kind of figuring out what's the simplest way possible, what works for your family and what works for you and your brain of how you think about things. You have a course called the simple time management method. So what are you covering in there? Kind of break down your course for us. If moms are interested in learning more about this, how does that work? Oh, thanks for asking. Yeah. So you can find everything on my website, but it's basically taking your current week and looking at your current week and then dreaming a little and saying, okay, what if I had extra time in my week?

What would I ideally want my week to look like? And how do we get there? And so it's taking you from your current week now to kind of where you would want to be in a dream week. And then we go through different ways you may be wasting your time without knowing it, different tools that you can use with time management to help you stay on track and get to that dream week. And kind of what that would mean. What would you, how would you feel once you're there? What would you use two or three extra hours for? Would you invest those in yourself? Would you go on dates with your kids?

Like what kind of things would you want in your week that are not currently there? Yeah. So this is for the mom that's saying that you're busy all the time and you don't have any time for yourself or you don't have time to get it all done. And you're just feeling really frantic. It's probably that there's a lot of wasted time or unnecessary busy time throughout your day. So what you're really helping moms do is kind of doing an inventory of their week. Right. And then like a time audit, like where are you actually spending your time?

And then you're walking them through how to become a power planner and then create, like you say, that dream week. So how long does it take? Is this a DIY course? Is this an interactive group thing?

Like how does it, how long? Cause if you're a busy mom right now, you're like, okay, I don't have time for another program, but really at some point you almost have to hit that pause button and then just like reset. And this, I think this program that you have is really brilliant for that. Oh, thank you.

Yeah. I wanted to help moms in, so it should be a four week program, but we all know that life happens. So ideally it would be four weeks, but giving yourself some grace to just go through at your own pace. but we would have weekly meetings to kind of keep on track where people can ask their questions and kind of get answers if they get stuck. Because I know for me taking courses, sometimes you get into it and you're really excited and you do a little, and then you're like, I don't know where I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to do this next spot.

And so really having accountability and a place where you can ask your questions and get answered is so key. So that's part of the, uh, all the course and everything like that. So they actually will come away with a personalized 90 day dream schedule, right? When they're done with all it, when this is all said and done. Um, so they have access to your Facebook community, they have access to the course and they get weekly accountability calls with kind of staying on track of, of getting this accomplished, this dream schedule accomplished.

right? So true. Yep. That is most of the course. And so I'm super excited that moms will be able to kind of look at their schedule, revamp it to what they want and really stay accountable for that. As we said, as you said, a 90 day dream plan that you can sustain that will work for you within your schedule. So I'm super excited. Even if they get off of track, off track, um, with the four weeks and they don't get it all done, they do have access to the course for a full year. So if you can't figure it out within a year, you're probably not going to mama's.

Um, but you do offer that because life throws us curve balls and our kids certainly do. So, you know, you get it. You're there for that mom that is like, Oh no, I intended to get through the course in four weeks and now, you know, somebody got sick or something happened. Life happens. Life happens. And you also do one-on-one coaching.

I do. Yes. So I do one-on-one coaching. I have either just get to know you kind of hourly session, or if you need a little bit more help, we kind of work together for several weeks, or if you need more help, we can meet more often, but it's just a one-on-one coaching kind of looking at your schedule and a personalized kind of look at where are you having problems and where do you need more time in your day, in your week?

I had one client who was teaching at a church. She was a children's ministry director and she had to work in the evenings and she was so sad. she had to miss her kids bedtime and not be there when they're going to bed and just get those special memories. So we worked it out where we kind of just looked at her schedule and where can we move things? And then she was able to get all of her work done during the day and not have to go in, in the evening. And I was so excited because I was like, now you can spend time with your kiddos. Yeah. And I think sometimes we feel like we just have to do it all and then some and more.

And we say, we say yes to things way too often, but I do love that you help moms become more productive in the time block that they have, whether it's for work or, you know, house cleaning or scheduling or doing whatever, like you just really help people get focused on, okay, what has to be done. Stay in the focus mode. Don't get all caught in the weeds and, you know, distracted. But you really help kind of that mom organize their brain enough to get it on paper and then to follow through with their plan. Definitely. All right. So parents, you can find out more about Michelle by going to birdbyrdmichelle.com and then check her out on the podcast. Tell us about your podcast. So my podcast has all this kind of information for free.

You can come and listen to it. There's all kinds of episodes about decluttering, time management, home organization, all the things. It's called The Busy Vibrant Mom. The Busy Vibrant Mom. So I'll have the links in the show notes for your website and for the podcast and your social media.

You also have a blog. So you just have all kinds of great tips and tools and ideas out there for parents. And much of it is absolutely complimentary. And if they want to work with you, your pricing is just so good.

Your course pricing is really good. You make it very doable for any parent to have access to this. And I really appreciate that, Michelle. Well, thank you.

All right, parents, before we wrap up today, make sure you get registered for our May Roundtable event. Our topic for the month of May is all about confidence, self-care, and support for moms. You can join us on May 10th at 1 p.m. Central Time by going to Eventbrite and searching for Hello World and No Problem Parenting or clicking the link in the show notes.

Are you ready to become a no-problem parent? We have a couple of options for you. If you're the do-it-yourself kind of person and you really don't have time in your day to meet one-on-one with somebody, but you really want maybe a different perspective and some acknowledgement, validation tips and tools and ideas that you can get started with right away. The do-it-yourself becoming a no problem parenting program is for you in just a few simple modules. I'm going to lay out for you the foundation for solving behavior issues in your family and with your kiddos. You can literally transform your child's behavior after watching just the first lesson. Another option is to work one-on-one directly with me. There are three coaching packages to choose from. Parents coaching packages are limited. I only take a couple of new families each month. You're going to want to get in and grab your parent coaching package right away.

There's a link in the show notes for that. And have you heard of our resource playground? Well, you can go to noproblemparents.com backslash resources. You'll find professionals and products and resources on a variety of topics, anything from relationships to health and wellness, finances, business support, self-help, and then of course lots of parenting, niche parenting experts that are going to help you and your kiddo. So head on over to noproblemparents.com backslash resources and take a look. Parents on particularly rough days when you feel like you cannot possibly endure, I want you to remember that your track record for getting through those days so far is 100% and that's pretty darn good. Hugs and high fives, Jackie.

Thank you.