Episode 628: 5 Steps To Tweak Your Week (Mindset & Self-Care)

EBT628 – 5 Steps To Tweak Your Week

Intro  00:01

Hey food bloggers. Thank you so much for joining me in this mindset and self-care focused episode here on Eat Blog Talk. One of the reasons I started a blog talk was to hold a space to talk about the importance of mindset and self-care. Being an entrepreneur can be a lot. If we are not taking care of ourselves, then getting actionable information about SEO Pinterest or whatever else is all moot. I will meet you back here every Wednesday to discuss various mindset and self-care topics. So you have the energy and space to tackle the rest.

Sponsor (Ella Gilbert)  00:36

Hi, food bloggers is Ella from Alpine Ella. Picture this food photography and blog posts without the hassle. That’s where I come in. I offer food photography and blog post writing services tailored just for you. Email me at [email protected]. And let’s chat about how I can bring value to your business.

Megan Porta  00:55

Food bloggers. Hello. How are you doing this week? I hope you are doing great. Welcome to this mindset and self care focused episode of Eat, Blog Talk. So happy to have you here. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about five steps to tweak your week. I love this topic because I’m always in constant pursuit of achieving my dream week. I have this far off dream week that I think about often and that I know I’ll achieve down the road, but it’s not quite here yet. In the meantime, I’m a week to week, week tweaker.

Megan Porta  01:32

Things can always be improved on, right? Even when I get to the end of a week and think it was really successful and balanced, there’s still room for improvement. Always room for improvement. Are you someone who streamlines and optimizes each week as you go, whether you are or not, I hope you will be inspired to either start streamlining your week or just optimize a few little things so next week is a little bit better than this one. If you have not ever taken the time to sit down and think about a way future version of yourself and what a week in the life of future you looks like, I really encourage you to do this. Pause now actually, imagine what your dream week looks like. How much work will you do? What will you be working on? Maybe imagine what you will not be working on. What time do you wake up? How do you feel when you wake up? What do you do when you wake up? Do you have a morning routine? Do you have something you do to move your body or to exercise your mind, or to fill your mind with inspiration to start the day. How do you feel your evenings? Is food a central focus? Do you have more people helping you with work and other daily tasks? Maybe you have a house manager, this is a big dream of mine, someday, or a home chef, or maybe you cook dinner with your partner every night. What do you eat? How do you feel your time on the weekends? Does it involve your family, friends, all of the above. Also think through specifics when you’re eating dinner with your loved ones. What do you eat? What do you eat for breakfast? This is a really fun exercise, and if you do it often, you’ll build upon your week and start thinking of more creative ways to round out your dream week. And it’ll give you something really fun to strive for. Start building your weeks now so you can lead up to that future dream week. 

Megan Porta  03:39

I’ll tell you a little bit about my dream week. I won’t tell you all the details, but here are a few. My dream week entails work. Yes, I don’t foresee myself not working in the near future, but I don’t work more than 20 hours. I work on projects that really light me up, that are creative. I have an awesome team supporting me and my businesses. We have a great rapport and great communication. I trust them completely with the tasks that they are responsible for. I have a house manager and a chef who helps to run the day to day in my home. This person, or persons, makes sure that my entire family is well fed and with nutritious, delicious food. I have a morning routine that I jump into every morning, no matter what day of the week it is, that involves a hard workout, so weights and cardio, this is followed by a walk outside with my dog and then a meditation. Then I sit in the hot tub for 30 minutes and I get ready for the day, a delicious, high protein, high fiber breakfast is waiting for me, along with my favorite cup of coffee and creamer. On weekdays, I ease into work, which doesn’t feel stressful, because my team has my back, and they are doing their jobs awesomely, and I get a lot of accomplished in just a few hours of work. I continue to support and connect people in my work so they can find freedom in their lives. I have a hard cut off time for work on the days that I do work where my computer and my phone go away and I completely disconnect mentally and emotionally from my work. This is a key point and something I am definitely working on. I focus on quality family time, going out on fun outings when we can maybe out to dinner once in a while, and having friends and family over often. On my dream week, our dream backyard is completed in this future time, so we have a weekly gathering, including dinner and fun where all of our favorite people are invited over to enjoy our home yard and each other. I could go on and on with this, but I will stop there. 

Megan Porta  05:46

I don’t know if you ever do this, but sometimes I’m out in public and I look around and I just observe people. Some people I look at, I feel like they’re just sleepwalking through their days and their weeks. I used to be one of those sleepwalkers, just walking through life mindlessly, not striving to improve or grow or fine tune how I was spending my time each day and each week. I believe that you are not a sleepwalker. You are different. You are the type of person who wants to grow, who wants to achieve big things and big dreams, who wants balance? That is why you’re here. So let’s get to this episode. Let’s talk through five steps to tweak your week.

Megan Porta  06:30

Number one, do a time audit. Yes, I know. I include time tracking in many of these mindset episodes. The things that come up regularly are the most important, right? Knowing where and how you spend your time is very important. If you have never done time tracking before, you’re about to be blown away by the power of this little exercise. Log everything you do for one week. And I know that seems like a lot to some people, so three days minimum, but preferably seven days. I love to use Toggle. It’s a free app, T, O, G, G, l, where you can log everything you do. You can categorize your time, sub categorize your time. It is a dream. When the week is done, you will have all kinds of valuable data to comb through. This data is gold, and this data doesn’t lie. It’s a big truth bomb, showing you exactly how you showed up in your life for the past week. Because somehow, in our minds, we tend to warp the way we think we’re showing up. So when we see this data, it can be a little bit alarming. So once you have the data and you’ve assessed it, ask yourself how you feel about it. Are there any glaring changes you’d make that would make you feel less stressed or more balanced or more rested, etc? Maybe you’ll find that you have some things just totally nailed, such as a fulfilling morning routine or balanced evening time with your family. Write your findings down and evaluate them. Don’t dish the time audit. It holds so much power, and if you do one, please send me an email. I want to hear how it goes. 

Megan Porta  08:09

Number two, look for easy wins, whether you do a time audit or not, because I know not all of you listening will do it, and that’s okay. Think of some easy wins that you can implement next week, identify just a few small changes you can make that will have a really big impact. For example, if you’re always scrambling to make dinner, consider meal prepping on Sunday or Saturday next week. Or if you find that you’re starting work 20 minutes later than you’d like to every day, this just happened to me recently, make a point to wake up 20 minutes earlier for a solid week and see what happens. Maybe you notice that you’re spending way too much time on admin tasks every day. Ask your VA to take over your email or other admin tasks for just 15 minutes a day. This really can go a long way. Small tweaks like this can create super powerful changes without feeling like you have to do a complete life or business overhaul. In a recent time audit that I did, I noticed that I had gotten into a bad habit of pushing a few tasks off to Sunday every single week. These were things that needed to be done before Monday started, but I never felt like doing them on Friday. I cherished my weekend time, and I was becoming resentful of these few little things that interrupted my weekend and that were building up, and I was a little bit mad at myself for allowing this to even happen in the first place. Seeing this data made me realize that I needed to do something to change this. So I moved those few tasks to Thursday of the previous week instead of Friday. Friday is kind of my loosey goosey workday, but Thursdays, I’m still in the zone of being productive and getting things done, so I had a much greater chance of doing those few little things, and it worked great. No more Sunday stressing over those few little things that I had allowed to slip through the cracks. over time, I was able to be much more present on the weekends with my family, not worrying about getting those things done. It felt so good to figure that out, find those easy wins every week and just keep building on them. 

Megan Porta  10:20

Number three, set boundaries. It is so easy to let the lines blur between life, family and work. This is one of the downsides of being your own boss. We do not always have firm boundaries with ourselves. Maybe some of you do, but I have really struggled with this over the years when planning for next week, define one or two boundaries that will help protect your time. Maybe it’s setting a hard cut off time each evening, or reserving mornings for working out, or reserving mornings for focused work time with no interruptions. If you are not used to setting boundaries for yourself, start small with this, because it can otherwise feel really overwhelming. One small boundary can improve your productivity, it can reduce stress, and it can help you to feel so much more balanced Once you’ve chosen your boundary, hold yourself accountable and evaluate how it affects your week. I have talked about this on the podcast a lot before setting and sticking to small boundaries has literally changed my life. The key has been committing to them and not reverting back to the way things were before. A few months into the pandemic, I found myself just so supremely frazzled beyond anything I had ever felt before, even though I hadn’t left my house or done anything to cause this feeling in literally months, that’s when I made the decision to remove email from my phone. That one tiny change made a huge impact on my life. I still do not have email on my phone, and I have no plans to ever put it back on another boundary I’ve set for myself in the past few years has been a hard cutoff at the end of each day. I’ve also experimented with leaving my computer in the basement overnight and on weekends. I love doing this. Another really impactful boundary was removing Facebook from my phone. I only check it on my desktop maybe once a month or so, just to see what messages I have, and that is literally it. This has also changed my life. Define one boundary. Just start small with one. Implement it and commit to being consistent with it from week to week. 

Megan Porta  12:32

Number four, eat your frog first thing in the morning. Have you read the book? Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy? If not, I highly recommend it. It’s a super quick read, and I found it so motivating when it comes to doing the tasks I don’t love to do, and doing them quickly in order to open up space for the things that I do love, rather than having a long, confusing to do list that makes your head spin when you sit down to work, choose one single, high impact task that will move you closer to your goals each day, determine what the task is before the day even begins. So maybe the day before, pick something that you know will drive your business forward in some way, or that you just know you need to accomplish, and perhaps that you’ve also been avoiding. Some ideas could be brainstorming content, ideas, pitching a brand or brands, or making changes to your blog that you’ve been putting off. Maybe you’ve been avoiding updating your about page. This is so important right now. Please add this to your to do list if you haven’t done it recently. Or getting a project started. I know I have a hard time sometimes just starting a project such as an ebook, or making graphics for something, or fill in the blank with any number of project ideas. Start each day by completing the task at hand, then allow the rest of the day to fill in naturally with other items on your to do list. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the weeks start adding up with intentional progress, something I’ve been doing lately is reviewing my weekly to do list toward the end of each workday, I will pick one thing that needs to get done this week, and usually it’s something I’ve been putting off because it seems too daunting or too overwhelming. I put that thing at the very top of my next day’s to do list, and I do not allow myself to work on anything else until that task has been completed. It has been a total game changer. So this week, I encourage you to commit to eating your frog maybe three times. You don’t have to do it every day. Start out small and just see how it impacts your productivity and your overall sense of accomplishment this week.

Megan Porta  14:45

Number five, reflect and reset weekly. At the end of each week, take, I don’t know, 10 to 15 minutes to reflect on what went well and what you would like to improve upon. Ask yourself, What were my biggest wins this week, and what didn’t serve me this week. Write down one small change you’ll make for the following week. This tiny habit with such a minimal time commitment, only 10 minutes a week, not only keeps you aligned with your goals, but it also helps you to let go of what is holding you back. Maybe it’s shifting your schedule around a bit, delegating some work, or making an adjustment to your mindset, whatever it is reflecting on each week will bring you one step closer to that dream week, that future you is enjoying. Over time, you’ll see your ideal week start to take shape little by little, week by week, in a way that feels achievable and empowering. Your dream week can happen. It’s not just a dream, but you do need to work toward it instead of just believing that it will magically transpire overnight. This week, I challenge you to pick one of these steps and just truly commit to it at the end of the week, reflect on the impact that it has had and celebrate your progress, no matter how small it seems. Imagine how just one improvement every single week can transform your schedule over time, making space for bigger wins and evolving into that dream week that is in your mind. 

Megan Porta  16:20

That’s all I have for you today. Remember that achieving your dream week is not going to happen overnight. It is a process where you will have to build those small, consistent habits over time by tracking your time, making small, impactful changes, setting boundaries, tackling high priority tasks first, and reflecting on each week you are taking intentional steps toward a life and work schedule that truly serves you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I will see you next week.

Outro 

Thank you so much for listening to this mindset and self-care episode here on Eat Blog Talk. If you are a food blogger providing a service for other food bloggers, and you want to spread the word about the value that you offer. I would love to offer you a free way to do just this. Send me a 60 second audio clip to be featured in a mindset and self-care episode here on Eat Blog Talk in 2024. Go to eatblogtalk.com/audioclip to learn more.