Episode 130: How to Get Ready for the Holidays Before They Take Over
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
From now until the end of the year we add a whole second list on top of everything else and just expect that we'll somehow fit it all in. It's no wonder working moms feel exhausted by the new year!
I train for the holidays the way I trained for my first half marathon. I put the mileage recommendations on my calendar, week by week, with deadlines. That’s the difference between a list and a plan, and it’s why a plan helps you pace yourself and see where you can share the load instead of doing it all alone.
But the hardest part of planning isn’t making the list or breaking down the steps. It’s protecting the time to sit down and do it in the first place. In this episode, I’m talking about why that’s so hard for working moms, and why having some accountability makes it easier to follow through.
I’m hosting my sixth annual holiday planning workshop, Stress Less This Holiday, on Thursday, November 5th at 12:00 PM Eastern (9:00 AM Pacific) to help you protect the time on your calendar to make your most important plan this season. In 90 minutes, you’ll get everything out of your head, draft your November and December calendar with tasks assigned by week, and schedule your next three action items. Tickets are $29 at www.themothernurture.com/holiday.
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
Save your spot for Stress Less This Holiday at www.themothernurture.com/holiday
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode. Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It is that time of year. I just looked this morning. There are 80 days left in 2026, and I have jars of Mod Podge and all sorts of costume supplies littered across my dining room table downstairs as we prepare for Halloween. This morning, I just thought of a couple of quick gift ideas that I added to my holiday shopping list. It is showtime, or game time, or whatever resonates with you. It's the start of the season where we don't just work and parent and keep our households running, the, quote-unquote, status quo, if that even exists when you're parenting. This is the season where we add a whole separate to-do list on top of everything else. It is arguably one of the busiest seasons for parents in general, but it feels extra busy when you are working and trying to stay on top of the inevitable rush that happens as everyone prepares for the end of the year and for things to sort of shut down at work. I know you understand what that's like. You probably live it. It is a lot, and I am not trying to send you into a panic spiral or add to your anxiety, I'm just stating what we all already know. And what I really want to do here is to implore you to do yourself a favor and create more than just a big, long list. I want you to create a plan There was a marathon here in Cincinnati this weekend. We drove by it on the way to the soccer fields on Saturday. They call it the Queen Bee. I love that name. Um, it's a race that supports and funds local charities that focus on women. Now, it has been a long, long time since I trained for a half-marathon. It was before my oldest child was born, who's now 12. But I will never forget my first race that I prepped for. I had been doing 5K and 10K races, but a half was, like, next level for me. It felt huge. I never in any imaginations thought that I would run distances like that. I was not a cross-country or track runner or anything like that as a kid. But I got a basic overview of how to train. I knew that I needed to slowly increase my mileage leading up to the race. I needed to do at least one long run a week while keeping myself active by running maybe a couple of other days a week. And there were recommendations for when to peak and how to taper into actual race day I took all of that information, and I didn't just put those mileage recommendations and the how-tos onto a list in a random order. I put them into a plan. And the difference is a list is just a list of things you need to remember or want or need to do. A plan takes that list and puts it onto the calendar. So I took those recommendations, and I put them onto my calendar so I knew exactly what weeks I was supposed to hit what miles I knew which days I needed to be running and which days I was planning to cross-train, and it all had deadlines associated with it because, of course, I was tracking toward my main event, which was the half marathon Without a plan that's tied to your calendar, to dates, to deadlines, I might have not spaced things out correctly. I might have run out of time. I might skip a step. I might forget something. Which just means, of course, in my race example here, that I would show up on race day and not run my best. I would run out of energy. I'd maybe not be able to finish. I might feel completely exhausted and wrecked at the end When you have something big that you're preparing for We naturally just wanna brain dump all of the things, right? All of the things we need to do, the different steps, anything we can think of, we want to get eyes on it, or at least most of us do but you will be so much more successful if you take that list and you create a plan for yourself. Even as I said that, my shoulders dropped like an exhale A plan helps you see the bigger picture and of course the micro steps because the micro steps are accounted for on the calendar. A plan makes you feel like, "I know what I'm doing. I know what comes next. I know that I have enough time and space for everything that needs to get done." And honestly, the bigger the event or the project the more important a plan is. You can get away with figuring things out as you go for smaller tasks or projects, things that maybe only have a couple of steps. Okay, if you tell me you don't need a plan for that, I, I can get on board with it. But the holidays, the end of the year, this is your biggest race, and you cannot afford to figure it out as you go, to grab things haphazardly or on a whim from a long list Your plan makes sure that you don't forget anything because it starts early enough for you to remember and to think of all of the things that do need to get done. It makes sure you think through the details, the invisible prep steps that make that task possible. It makes sure that you take other responsibilities and events that are going on at the same time because the rest of life and work happens alongside our holiday prep. It makes sure that you take those things into account so that you have time for all of it. Like I said, the holidays is like an extra caseload. It is an extra project on top of everything else, and so we need our plan to be able to see how does it fit together with all of the normal things or not normal things that happen during this time of year? And I think probably most importantly, a plan helps you pace yourself. It should help you pace yourself. It helps you look at, everything that's happening, everything that needs to fit, and spread things out so you can make incremental and consistent progress rather than scrambling to fit it all in at the last minute. It would be like trying to get all of those big, longer runs in the last couple of weeks before your race, rather than having done that consistently, increasing mile by mile leading up to the big day Plus, and this is a big one for me, and I think one that we don't acknowledge enough about what planning ahead and creating a plan can do for you, it can help you share the load with others It can help you see everything that is happening and when it's happening and how it's going to happen, and start to consider where might you need support? What might delegating look like? How could I share this so I'm not doing it all myself? And the biggest piece of that is because you have the time to think ahead. When you are doing things at the last minute, you're scrambling to get it done, it is so easy to just say, "I'll just get it done myself," or, "It will take more time to explain it to somebody else or to ask my partner to delegate to them. I'll just do it." But when you have visibility into all of the steps and when they happen, It makes not just sharing the plan, but figuring out how to share the actual execution of the tasks with someone else so much easier. You have the time Now, I've listed a lot of pieces that go into making a plan, right? We do need that exhaustive list. We do need to look at our calendar. We do need to take into consideration everything else that's happening alongside this bigger project that we've now put on top of everything else, and we wanna start to assign deadlines or weeks of when things get done. But those pieces are not actually the hardest part of making a plan It's not breaking down things into subtasks or any of that. The hardest part is making the time to sit down and do it To sit down and look at all of the pieces To create the list, to break things down, to look at the calendar, you have to be able to have time and space to do that How many times have you said you're gonna sit down and, I don't know, sort through all of your photos, or make the appointment to update your will, Or start that new workout plan. Or really any other thing that you know you need or want to do but it's not as pressing or as important as the current crisis or just getting through the tasks on your list for today. Maybe some of you go so far as to put time on your calendar. Okay, I'm gonna set aside an hour to plan, or I'm gonna set aside this evening to work on those photo books, or make that phone call, or take care of that paperwork You know those things are important, so maybe you do put time on your calendar, but it is so easy to let someone schedule over it or to be only half focused on the task at hand to reply to emails or pings because those feel really important or urgent in the moment. It is a hard thing to do, trust me. I see it all of the time in my clients, and it's even hard for me, too There is so much competing for our attention to take that time away from the big list, from the urgent things that are happening, from the fires that we feel like need our attention. It is hard. And yet when we have a doctor's appointment, maybe for an annual wellness check or a test of some kind, or we are meeting someone for coffee, or we have a session with our trainer, we follow through on those things. We don't schedule over that time. We protect it. We show up Probably because we know someone is waiting. I wish it wasn't the case, but there is something about knowing that someone else is waiting for you, someone else is expecting you, that makes it easier to prioritize and hold the time I think I've shared before that one of my friends that I sometimes go to the gym with in the very early hours of the morning has been known to send me a text the night before that says, "I'm going to the gym in the morning. Please don't tell me if you're not coming. I want to assume that you are gonna be there because that's what helps me wake up and get to the gym, is knowing that you're there waiting for me." We all wish we could be strong enough to do it on our own, and sometimes we can. I, I can get up and go to the gym, but there are other things that I find really hard to follow through on. We all have our thing That sometimes we need that expectation, that skin in the game, that person waiting for us to do the thing for us to actually hold the space on our calendar That is exactly why I continue to bring back and offer my holiday planning workshop year after year. Not because I think you need me to help you create the list of all of the things you need to get done before the holidays, but because I know that sometimes you just need someone to help you hold that time a reason to help you protect your calendar so that you know someone is expecting you to show up. You can set aside your work and the other demands of your day to focus for 90 minutes and create a plan for the season ahead. Not just a long list of all of the things you need to do, but a plan that looks at the calendar, your priorities, the order of things, and schedules the work so it gets done in a doable way. Not in a rushed, scrambling fashion, but in a deliberate, consistent, steady progress kind of way. And so that you have visibility into everything that's coming, not to overwhelm you, but so you can make your decisions. Decisions about what stays, what fits, what goes, what can be made simpler, where you might need some help. The goal is to run the race feeling like you trained for it. You'll be a bit tired, yes, just like you would expect to feel that at the end of a marathon, that is also the holidays. I mean, let's just be real. I don't think there's any way truly around that But you can feel a little bit tired at the end and still feel capable and strong and like you did everything you could to support yourself throughout it. And the first step to feeling that way about the upcoming season is to create a plan that you can follow step by step, even when your weeks feel busy, so that you know that everything is getting done and it's not waiting until the last minute That's exactly what we're doing in Stress Less this holiday. It's happening on Thursday, November 5th at 12:00 PM Eastern, 9:00 AM Pacific. This is 90 minutes that I am going to hold you to. I'm gonna hold you to it so you can show up, get everything out of your head and onto paper, draft your November and December calendar with tasks assigned by week, and walk away with your next three action items already scheduled. As I said, this is the sixth year I'm running this workshop, and every year women tell me that they wouldn't have taken the time to do this if not for this workshop. So come plan with us. Put that protected block of time on your calendar now so you can experience a season that feels doable and even, dare I say, enjoyable. I want you to feel capable and confident about your plan. So go to themothernurture.com/holiday to save your spot and block your calendar now for November 5th at 12:00 PM Eastern so you can show up live and protect that space. Tickets are just $29, and again, you can grab yours at themothernurture.com/holiday We've got this. I'm so excited. This is one of my favorite, favorite events of the year. We always have such a good turnout. I hope to see you there. And until the next episode, I hope you take care. Talk soon Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast, you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com. I will see you again next week for another episode of the podcast.
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