How To Be Productive As A Mom with Michal McCracken

Self Development

How do you determine if you are being productive?

If you’re a woman who is struggling to balance your priorities in your fertility journey, and your productivity levels, you might be feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how to achieve your goals without burning out.

It’s time to stop feeling frazzled and scattered. In this enlightening episode of the Make A Baby Podcast, your host, Carolina Sotomayor, invites the incredible Michal McCracken to the conversation. Michal is a productivity coach who helps entrepreneurial women prioritize tasks and follow through on their plans so they can build their empires while enjoying more time, energy, and financial freedom. Together, they will delve into the differences in productivity levels between women with and without children.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • The importance of defining productivity on your own terms.
  • Strategies to be efficient and focused during your limited time as a working mom.
  • How to set boundaries and communicate your needs to others.
  • The significance of self-care and celebrating every achievement, no matter how small. Discover how becoming a mother can lead to an incredible shift in productivity and how you can harness this newfound efficiency to create a fulfilling life while on your conception journey.

When you finish listening, I’d love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, share it with your Instagram stories, and tag me @thecarolinasotomayor

While you’re there, make sure you follow me on Instagram so you can see behind the scenes how I create the magic behind my Make A Baby Membership and Next Level Fertility and how I create the magic behind my Make A Baby Membership and Next Level Fertility and how you can join the fertility revolution.

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Professional Bio

The Make A Baby Podcast is proudly presented by the incredible Carolina Sotomayor, the Make A Baby Membership, and the Next Level Fertility Program.

Meet Carolina Sotomayor, your go-to Expert Reiki Womb Healer! She’s your partner in the journey to motherhood, helping women all around the world bring their baby dreams to life by tackling physical barriers with Reiki magic. 🌟

But that’s not all – she’s also the heart and soul of the Make A Baby Podcast, where we dive an amazing Reiki meditations, empowering healing tips, and taboo topics you won’t hear anywhere else. 🎙️Over the past 7 years, I’ve had the honor of helping over 90 babies come into this world through the power of Reiki.

We believe that healing is not meant to be done alone nor should it be. That is why we created the Make A Baby Membership. It’s like a cozy online reiki healing haven where you can heal at your own pace and supercharge your fertility. 💪

Carolina’s on a mission, and she’s already helped over 700 women find their healing path. She’s all about making your family’s dreams a reality. No wonder there are now more than 95 Reiki babies in the world! 👶❤️

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Podcast Episode Transcript

Welcome back to the Make a Baby Podcast. I’m Carolina. So it’s my, your, your podcast host and Reiki womb healer. And today I know it’s going to be a little bit different topic, but he’s so important productivity. That’s what we’re talking about. And it’s really productivity is a tricky subject. And it’s a very personal thing.

Like how do you determine if you’re being productive? Well, certainly I’m going to tell you first up Amber, your neighbor doesn’t get to tell you if you’re productive, if not. She does it. So how to be productive as a mom with Mikkel. McCracken. Kel, how are you? Where are you in the world? Thank you for having me.

So I’m in New Zealand and I do my productivity coaching online via zoom. So I have Australian customers and Canadian and American customers. So yeah. So you’re global. I am. You’re a global mogul. I love it. So what exactly you do is a productivity coach. So I help women. Figure out pretty much what you just touched on.

Like what is productivity to them? I help them prioritize their tasks and so that they can reach their goals. I help them prioritize things so that they can follow through. I help them work through the mind drama that comes up when you’re working towards things. And in terms of productivity for moms, it’s really about figuring out.

What needs to happen and letting everything else go. So creating space and in your schedule so that you can actually enjoy being a mom and get what needs to be done. Done. I love that so much. I think that I love the word that you use, mind drama. That’s actually a really good, we should put that on a shirt.

It’s not mindset. It’s mind drama. I think that what you touched upon is I’m an entrepreneur. I have two companies and my fertility Reiki is one of them, but I think it’s really important. And like something that you touched upon was. actually doing the things that actually matter, like in creating space to enjoy motherhood.

So what does it mean to be productive? Can we define what productivity means or being productive? Yeah, so to me being productive is not cramming as much into your day as possible and creating a massive to do list that always makes you feel like you’re failing. To me being productive is having a really big bird’s eye view.

Of what you want to achieve and really focusing on those things. And then because you have different productivity during different seasons, right? And if you’re a mom, especially, but you’re running a business or you have work responsibilities that you need to get done as well. I really like to take a step back and put a filter on it.

So if you were to look at your massive to do list, which Never gets completed, by the way, and always makes you feel like crap. If you were to look at that with the filter of just a feeling or a vibe that you want to have throughout that season. So, for example, let’s say you’ve got a brand new baby at home.

You’ve got a business to run or work responsibilities. How do you want to feel? at that, for that, even if you go a month at a time. So do you want to feel calm? Okay, well, let’s say we’re going to put the filter of calm on top of it. How much of that can you just Cross off as if it’s, it’s just not relevant right now.

It’s not going to make you feel calm. It’s going to keep you busy. It’s going to make you feel like you’re failing. You’re going to be utterly exhausted. What can you do on your schedule that will make you feel calm and make you feel like you’re winning. As a new mom, for me, it was keeping. Like it was literally keeping him fed.

It was changing diapers, making sure that he was okay, that I was pumping on time to prevent my, I was very prone to mastitis. So just like making sure like these new duties were being mastered and learning them with my postpartum as a mom, taking care of him was super consuming for me because I had never been around babies.

So for me, it was. Feeding him, making sure I ate. And I didn’t understand the importance of a shower necessarily daily, but if I showered, I ate and he had eaten all of his things and I had pumped or I had breastfed him successfully. That was a good day. I didn’t even bother cleaning the house at that point.

I had postpartum doula, so I was blessed and fortunate enough to have support and my husband did the rest. I didn’t even open the mail like literally. So for me, productivity was about, if I had to have defined it back then, it was simply just focused on taking care of that tiny human and keeping them alive because that’s all I could do at that season of life.

Exactly. And taking care of yourself in order to take care of your baby, right? Like, I ate a lot of beef jerky and ham sandwiches. And they need to be close. Like I remember sitting down, you know, cause you go to feed your baby. Well, that could take 45 minutes, especially if you’re breastfeeding because you’ve got to do right.

And then triple feeding, we were, we struggled with the breastfeeding for a long time and we had to supplement too, until we were exclusively breastfeeding. So yeah, it was usually an hour ordeal. Yeah, which is massive. And so, and I don’t know about you, but whenever I was feeding my baby, I just was hit with this massive thirst.

And so I learned really quickly, I’m going to be sitting here for an hour. I need my book. I need my phone. I know you’re not supposed to, you know, check your phone, but I actually just, I felt too isolated. Maybe not. Yeah. How do you sit there now in the 2020s, like, and not look at social media and like, how do you not?

Exactly. I mean, I’m not a, I’m not a book reader. Like I was on Facebook. Yeah. Which actually I don’t think is a bad thing as long as it’s Making you feel good as long as you feel like you’re missing out on anything. And there are so many mommy support groups out there. And so if you can find them, I can guarantee that you’ll be sitting there feeding your baby and somebody else will also be sitting there feeding your baby, feeding their baby.

But yeah, just making sure that you’re taken care of. So you’ve got your water, you’ve got all the things that you need. You know, you’re going to be sitting there for an hour. Which is so rare, especially for working mums. Like how many working mums just sit still for an hour? I’m sorry, just working women in general sit still for an hour.

So even learning that skill of like Oh, this is what I’m doing right now. And this is how it is. And this is how long it’s going to take. And this is okay. And I’m still a high achiever. I’m still an amazing human being. It’s, it’s kind of about resetting your, not your standards, but just re prioritizing what’s important to you.

Right? So maybe you feel important because you were able to work hard and you had a massive list and you were able to multitask well now. You’re doing something else. I guess turn that into a win. Like, I’m growing a human. That’s incredible. I had a little bit of body image issues. And then after I gave birth, I had the C section scar.

And I remember the IBCLC, the International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, for those who don’t know, they’re women who are highly specialized in breastfeeding. And she goes, wow, you know how strong you are for carrying this child, giving life to them. And now you’re making milk for them. I was like, no one had ever called me strong before.

Not in that capacity. They had said I was emotionally strong and I was like, and I’m an overweight woman and I was overweight then. And I was like, no, one’s ever called my body strong before and I thought, you’re right. I’m spending these hours pumping and caring and trying so hard for all of these things using even like a medical grade pumping carrying around this monstrosity and.

I’m like, yeah, I am strong and I am like doing this. Like it was something to be proud of and I was, yeah, I also, when I, when women are in that breastfeeding stage and they are pumping or they are breastfeeding, I encourage to get an interest that you want to learn about. I am a natural nerd. So at that time I was obsessed with baby wearing.

So I would watch YouTube videos. On how to wrap your baby and I had this one wrap that I was trying to do and I would just watch it over and over again and try to memorize all the things you need to do. Pull the fabric super high and double tuck and knot. And I always encourage audiobooks or things like that.

If you don’t want to get on social media, those are really great things that you still can do and pay attention to baby and see if they’re tooting or their latch is correct. You know, all of the things that are still like can be very soothing to you during that hour or so or time that you’re, you’re doing.

breastfeeding or pumping. So you can be productive in that case and also soul like relax while you’re listening to the audio book or to the YouTube. And I love how you said soothing to you because it’s so important and it’s so important that you don’t let anybody else define. What you should be doing.

And I think it’s really important to, as you’re going into it, like when, when you’re heavily pregnant and you’re about to have a baby, but you’re working in an office or you, you know, you’re working for someone or even for yourself, just take the time to define how you want it to look for the next month, two months, three months, six months.

What, how do you want it to look? How do you want, how do you want to feel? What is success to you in that moment? I, I really struggled with that. I’m a productivity coach now, but I had another business when I had my first baby and I didn’t know any of these skills. And so I was just trying to cram all of my business into the times when he would sleep and he barely slept.

Oh my goodness. I know so many women that do that. And it’s, and when they don’t nap, you lose your mind. You’re like, What am I going to do now? What am I going to do it? And then you stay up till two o’clock in the morning. It’s like a double edged sword. It’s so hard to do that. Yeah, I did it. I would never recommend it, but I didn’t know any better.

And like what you said earlier, like I, I hadn’t been around babies. I didn’t have anyone around me. I didn’t have, you know, my mom or my sisters or anything like that. So, and I didn’t even know about Facebook. Mummy groups at that point. So I, yeah, I was really trying to just figure it out on my own, taking all my own personality into it.

And my personality is just to work longer and harder to get everything done. Like that’s my go to move. And so I’ve really had to unpick that because especially, I mean, he barely slept at all, like during the day or, or at night, I was. And I completely burned out, like it was, I was an absolute, I was an absolute wreck.

No, I, you know, I felt like I didn’t come out of my postpartum depression anxiety until Ollie was, oh my gosh, probably, I think I woke, I told my husband, I think we woke up around when he was 14 months old. Yeah. Like. I think that his sleep deprivation lasted way until he was 2, and even now it’s a struggle bus to get him to sleep.

He’ll stay asleep, but like, the struggle is real, especially like, if they don’t sleep, you have to, you have to stay awake with them. And I just didn’t know exhaustion to that level before, and I still worked. 50 hours a week. It was crazy. Yeah, I think that that’s really important to understand that. So we have different phases in life.

You talked about seasons and how you define being productive as a woman and as a mother. And through different phases, your life can look different when I, when I, I used to live on the East coast. I used to live in Miami and then I moved. I live now in the middle of America in Nebraska and I was in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

So, I moved for a job and they relocated me from Florida to Nebraska, my level of productivity then. Was I thought was high, but not seasonal life. I was deemed a high performer. However, when I became a mom, I learned how to be efficient and I had already known what lean Six Sigma was in lean processes because I wasn’t manufacturing.

So I knew how to make processes lean, but there was something about when I became a mom. Things sped up for me, time sped up for me, but also I got mad efficient. So my productivity, I think as a mother, as a worker, as a mom completely shifted. It was a massive shift. So can you talk about the differences of productivity levels as like, maybe I.

Uh, person or a mom that a working person that doesn’t have children yet versus then a working mother. Yeah, well, I love that you touched on that because something well, let me answer your question and then I’ll go off on a little tangent. I wanted to go on, but I love your tangents. It’s all just about being, being focused in the time that you’ve got.

And so whether you are a mom or a mom to be, if you’re working, how can you be as efficient as possible during that time and put boundaries around that time so that you can go and do the things that you want to. So there’s. Thank you. Thank you. I don’t think there’s any glory in saying I worked 80 hours that last week.

I really don’t think there is. I think there’s glory in saying I worked 10 hours and I still am achieving the goals that I set for myself or, or whatever those numbers are. Right? Those numbers are going to vary. I also think it’s really important to just put boundaries around, especially when you’re about, when you’re about to have your baby put boundaries around when people can contact you and when you’re going to respond and just really set everybody up for success.

So they’re not waiting on you and you’re not sitting there feeding your baby panicking that you’ve got somebody who’s expecting a phone call or an email or some sort of project. But yeah, I mean, the. The things that you can achieve are going to be different. But as you say, like when you’re a mom, your time is so constrained at that point, so you have to be efficient.

So how can you make that as easy as possible? And I like to have a really solid plan. I like to break everything down into tiny tasks so that when your baby wakes up, which they will, you’ve at least not. One tiny thing off the list, as opposed to nothing off the list, because you had massive things on your list.

I can relate to that. Yeah, I’m just going to do. I’m going to just do a little bit. So then when I pick off, I’m a little bit ahead. I would just do it. Even when I’m doing, I was designing my website when Ollie was very small, or I would design an image and I’d be like, okay, At least the image is done and I can move on the next, I would break out into small fragments.

Like you’re saying it moves slower, but I got it done. And when it was done, I was so happy. Yeah. And celebrating every single win, right? Celebrating the fact that you had a shower today, celebrating the fact that you fed your baby. For, you know, however many hours in the day, or you’ve got a load of washing on, or you managed to take the dog for a walk.

Just being really, really nice to yourself because your entire, your entire identity is going to shift. If you’ve been a high achieving corporate woman, and then all of a sudden you’re sitting there with a baby and you haven’t made that mind shift for yourself, then you might feel like you’re failing or that you’re not as.

amazing as you were. And so, and there might not be anybody like your boss is probably not going to call you and say, Hey, well done. You’ve been sitting at home feeding your baby. So it’s up to you to make yourself fee good and reward yourself and celebrate this amazing time. You know, this is an incredible time that you’re not going to get back.

Absolutely. So we touched upon it. So just, can we recap on how to define productivity? I want to add. We can how you define being productive as a woman and as a mother. I want to add is that there’s my 2 cents is what I took away from when I moved across the country and I was working and it was my dream job.

I really identified working a high number of hours as being productive, not necessarily having a. strong outcome ratio, or I thought saying I worked 60 hours a week or more, it was a validating thing for me as an identity as a career woman. I was really young and I just didn’t know about what it meant to be productive, how to be efficient in my hours when I was there and how to get the most out of my day.

And Also didn’t have work-life balance. I really, I had some interests out of work, but like when I became a mom, I had reason to be super efficient because I wanted to get home as soon as possible. Yeah. And I think, I mean, being productive is about having it to me is about having a plan. That directly ties to your goals, whatever they are, breaking everything down into tiny tasks, like I said before, so that you can keep achieving and creating space.

So especially if you work in an office, you need to create space around the things that you need to achieve, right around the things that you are going to focus on. You need to create space around those because you will get interrupted. Actually, that goes for if you’re a mom as well. Whether you’re trying to get stuff done at home or at work, you need to kind of allow space in your schedule for those interruptions, for stuff to go.

Bonkers, you know, like sometimes I used to plan it down to an 10-minute increments. This was before I knew what I was doing now, but then, you know, maybe the cat would bring in half a dead animal or something, you know, and, and it would throw me off my entire game or the dog would vomit on the carpet. And, you know, so you need to just create space around the things that you want to achieve so that.

You can allow for disruption, so that you can allow for things like sitting down and putting your feet up for three minutes, which might be all you’ve got, and so that you can actually go outside, outside of those working hours, and do the things that, that light you up. Because if you’re not happy, and if you’re not fulfilled in other ways, then you’re not going to be able to give your best to your baby.

So taking care of you first is top priority. I used to think taking a shower was like, Gosh, this is a vacation. Yeah. Like I didn’t have to work. I didn’t have to be like, I don’t have, no one’s touching me. Well, see, I used to multitask the showers as well. Right. So it was me and the baby. You did.

Somebody said, no, you need to separate those out. I don’t even know who that was, but it was somebody that I saw when I was in my massive kind of period of burnout. We, I need to know, how do you multitask in the shower? I mean, I’m busy scrubbing and like doing like a sugar scrub or shampooing. Yeah. Did you listen to like, did you, did you take calls in the shower?

Like, what were you multitasking? No, but it was just, it was my shower, but it was also my baby shower. So that’s what I mean by multitasking. Oh, well that’s smart. Well, it wasn’t though, cause I didn’t get that time to myself that I really needed. Even if it was a five-minute shower, at least as you just said, right?

You’re it’s just you and no, you don’t have to pick anybody up. Nobody’s touching you. Nobody’s interrupting. Anything

as a person that did attachment parenting, where we breastfed baby wore and co sleep, I can honestly say that the amount of touches eventually overwhelm your sensory system. Like, I, I sometimes they asked me what I wanted for my 40th birthday. I was like, to sleep alone for the rest of my life. I get it. I don’t want the dogs to touch me.

We have a family bedroom. So my husband and I sleep together and my son has his own bed and I don’t want the six year old. He’s now six. I’m like, I don’t, I don’t need you to touch me. We had a lot of hugs today, but I love his hugs. I love him very much, but I do love to have a no touch period. Okay. So next question.

I am just like super, this question I think is going to blow some people’s minds. Because, and I think it’s a bit of a controversial one. So I love it. Good, juicy question. Does a completed to do list mean you’re a productive person? I would say a completed to do list means that you’re frazzled and scattered and burning out.

So I am. I’m not a huge fan of a to do list. Sometimes it’s sometimes it’s necessary, but what I would rather people do is rather than just continually jotting down things. Oh, I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. I’d rather that they take even 10 minutes and just. Really look at all that stuff, put the filter on it.

Like what do I need to achieve? Or what’s my top goal this month? Is it making money or is it having some peace of mind or whatever, whatever feeling or vibe you want to attach to it. And then just crossing stuff off or you don’t even have to cross it off if that freaks you out. You can just add it to another, like I use Evernote.

I have an ideas vault and which is just. Or you could put it in a Word doc. It’s just a running document of things that I would like to do so that I don’t lose the idea, but I don’t, it’s not on my to-do list and it’s not distracting me from the stuff that I’ve already committed to. Got it. I use ClickUp for my business, but I also then have a section.

ClickUp is like a project management tool. So I’m. Techie and nerdy, and I have a space that’s just a running list of ideas. I want to do. I even have a section for like, my dreams. So I just put everything in there. Okay. So what you’re saying a to do list is actually not necessarily a positive sign that you are a productive person.

We need to make sure that we are being mindful of the things that we want, and we want to have a, like, a running list. Can you explain that more. I think I missed that part. Yeah. Well, I think if like, for example, I’ll put, I’ll use myself as an example, because I’m constantly generating ideas of things I want to do.

Now I know that I can’t do those things in 20 minutes when baby’s sleeping. Right. I know that that’s not possible because I learned that the hard way. So I keep those sorts of ideas on. My in my ideas fault, which is just I use Evernote because it’s on my phone and I just write them down in there and I can go back to them when I have space, but I I’m just a really huge fan of just.

Especially in the season, right? Let’s, let’s say you’ve just had your baby or maybe you’ve had your baby for three or six months and you’re starting to try and work again, like, how can you be as efficient as possible, as focused as possible during the small amount of time that you have and let everything else go and how can you train the people around you to also appreciate.

That, that is what needs to happen. You know, maybe you work for, yeah, like maybe you work for people who don’t normally appreciate people who are on maternity leave. So how can you train them beforehand? How can you incorporate them into that conversation so that you’re both on the same page? Because you’ve just gone and had a baby, which is a full time job in and of itself.

And if your co workers are expecting you to come back to work at six months or three months, how much maternity leave do you guys get over there? It varies. I stayed home for four months. But I had a co worker who did not have Like, you have to work a certain number of hours to get what’s called the federal family medical leave act, which is a federal law, but it’s unpaid.

So, if you take that, you don’t get paid. So, but your job’s protected, but some people’s jobs. Typically have like, well, I can’t say typically because also the size of the company matters. I’ve always worked for large head when I had corporate career. I had always worked for large companies and they had a short term disability, which would pay you.

a certain percentage of your wages or a hundred percent of your wages for a certain amount of time. So you would get paid maybe eight weeks or 12 weeks. My company benefit was four months. So I think it varies. I think four months is actually not the norm. I think that’s longer than most people have. So that’s kind of a problem.

That’s why we have, we have a high death rate of women. Actually in our country, we have the highest death rate of women who are giving birth. I think the maternal. Morbidity rate is the highest in the United States of any developed country, because we do not have a federal paid maternity leave. We don’t.

And so I know I had a coworker that came back 1 month after because she couldn’t afford to stay home and she didn’t have. The benefit, um, that was at a smaller company I had worked on like, really early in my career, but most people I had been working with took their full maternity of at least 8 weeks, which was paid.

And then if you went to 12, some of them, they were not. If you didn’t buy the additional insurance, then you only got to 8, but if you have a C section, you get 12 because you need all 12 to recover because that’s considered a major surgery, but. That is so small, right? I know Canada has a two year.

Maternity leave, I think in recent times in the companies, I left corporate 2 years ago and when I was leaving, they just had implemented a paternity leave where fathers could have a leave up to 6 weeks before they didn’t. And they also included adoption. So if you were. Adopting a child or fostering a child, you also could get under the paternity to and the benefits are very vastly different between the size of the companies that are and also, like, under that law, like, you have to work a certain number of hours to even.

Earn that federal, it’s a federal law, but the family medical leave act, you have to qualify for it. So you have to have worked a certain number of hours for the employer or been there a certain number of a certain amount of time and also they’re not in the company has to be a certain size for them to, like, give you that.

If so, if the company is too small, they don’t have to follow that because it’s, it’s a certain size of company. So, yeah, a lot of women have varying degrees of what their experiences postpartum and what their, their paid benefits are, if at all. But I think a lot of women that I have come in contact with, they don’t have a paid benefit.

So that, that short term disability is not universal across the country. It’s a, it’s a private company benefit in part of your compensation package. And that’s just disgraceful. I mean, I’m not saying we do any better. No, we agree with you. There’s marches for it. We are agreeing with you. Yeah. So I guess in that case, like New Zealand is not perfect by any stretch.

It, I think. Now, not when I had my babies, but I think now the maternity leave is longer, the paid maternity leave is longer and they do have to hold your job open for a year. But yeah, it’s still, it’s still really weighted against the woman and you know, the mom. So I guess in that case, it becomes even more important.

If you’re about to go out on maternity leave or just, or about to have a baby really bringing in your manager and, and. The HR department, if there is one, and just really getting some things in writing, like, what are you going to expect from me? How much am I going to have to produce? And just really getting that at the beginning, because your brain is not going to be working as efficiently when you’ve had a baby because of the sleep deprivation and the hormones.

You just can’t, I mean, it’s just impossible. And I don’t think. I think there were many times when I shouldn’t have even been driving a car because I’d kind of arrive at my destination and I wouldn’t have remembered anything about it because I was so tired. I can relate to that. I remember like pulling off on the side of a rest stop because I was so exhausted.

Like, cause I would drive an hour each way from, from that job. And I was just like, I need, I need, I need to rest for a second. I took a little nap, literally in the, in the rest job. I can relate to that a hundred percent. And I think just, you know, the lack of being able to even form a coherent thought, you’ve really, it’s.

I had never experienced sleep deprivation. Like when I had a baby, I’d never had any reason to. And people are like, Oh yeah, I’ve been tired. Or I was awake all night or whatever. But it’s like, you try being awake all day, all night for nine months. And I was lucky as it turns out, like I thought that the nine month mark when my baby started sleeping through was a long time, but I’ve since met plenty of women who’ve got children who are six and seven, who still aren’t sleeping through the night.

So. Yeah, it’s real and it’s hard. And so how can you make it as easy as possible? And especially if you’re a working woman, how can you plan out your day, plan out your week so that you’re still achieving and hitting all the things that you need to hit without being completely burned out and exhausted and resentful.

It’s the worst. So I think we answered my last question, which was, does productivity stay the same level, whether you’re trying to conceive or if you’re childless. Yeah, I would say no productivity is different in every season, but what I would encourage, and I say this as a coach, not as somebody who managed to achieve this myself, because I didn’t know these skills when I had my baby, when I had my babies, but I would say even if you are in the stage where you’re trying to conceive, start trying to be more productive now.

So start trying to create your identity so that you’re not the person who, who says, I, you know, who’s really proud about working 80 hours a week so that you’re crafting this personality so that you are thrilled with yourself for working 40 hours a week or 30 or 20 and still achieving the things that you set out to achieve.

Yeah. I love that. I wish sometimes when I hindsight’s 20, 20, right. I tell my husband all the time, I was like, man, if I had the motivation, the drive. The focus that I do now, when, when we first got married and we didn’t have our son yet, I said, we would be so rich, we would be so rich because I, I feel like I would have done my entrepreneur journey earlier, I would have started my business earlier.

I would have been, I was like, Boy, would our lives be different. It’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be, Carolina. But right. It was a perfect answer, but I want certain things now because I want to raise the bar for my son. Like I want to give him this great life and I want to have flexibility. And I do have that because I’m an entrepreneur, but I think also.

Is you had, you had mentioned this, but you have to check in with yourself because what were your priorities, which goes with what drives your productivity changes my priority when I first moved to Nebraska. And when we were 1st, married was serving that company that I worked for and being a high performer.

And then once I got pregnant. And with our son, it switched. What do I need to do for sustainability? Sustainability was not part of my language. before I was pregnant because now I have to provide for this child and I was a breadwinner. I also provided health insurance for my husband and myself. So I think it’s really super important not just how to be productive as a mom, but also know what is driving the productivity.

Like what is, to be productive, that means you’re doing things. What are those things in relation to Your priorities slash your goals, and are those goals what you want to do an emotional check in? I would say daily, weekly, quarterly, because what I wanted when we 1st got married when I 1st moved to the state when I 1st got when we moved to the state got married and then when I was trying to conceive and then once I was pregnant, and then.

The heftiest shift was when he arrived, when my son arrived, what I wanted was very different. And what I thought I had won in when I was pregnant and versus like the circumstances I lived through during his birth vastly changed what my priorities were. I no longer cared about climbing the corporate ladder.

And that was my descent out of corporate. I wanted to be home. I didn’t want to be a stay at home mom, but I just wanted more time at home and I want to be in charge of my time. So all the decisions. About how I could get closer to those goals and the activities, long term goals and like little things we were doing to get to being productive and being at home so that I could what was like the end result of being doing and all of those things is vastly shifted.

Once I was holding that baby in my arm. So it’s so important for you as a, as a mom, as a mom to be, or as just as a woman, as a person, To go ahead and check in with yourself. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s also okay to change your values. I improved over the years. I’m a way better person. I’m a way better spouse than I was when we first got married.

A hundred percent. I’m a better listener. I’m a better communicator. I’m more patient. So it’s okay to recognize that you can quit things. You can quit people and you can quit patterns. And I think that that’s not often talking about quitting is okay. Quitting is healthy quitting. It doesn’t mean that you’re a loser or, you know, or when we say we are not quitters in this family.

I think that that was something that my friend told me. She goes, we’re not quitters in this family. It was like, well, do you change your mind? She is not often. I was like, maybe should. Yeah, it was like, and she was really stressed. She was really stressed all the time. It was like, it’s okay to quit, quit a behavior too.

Like, you can just change it. You’re allowed to change your mind. And she’s like, what? I was like, your mom and dad are not going to tell you this, but like, I’m your friend. I’m your bestie. I’m going to tell you it’s okay to change your mind. And when I learned that and I could, I could decide all of this on my own, but I didn’t really learn all of that until I was married because my husband gave me like the security and he created this space for me to, to learn those things, to say no, no to myself, no to behaviors, no to people.

I didn’t have to go to my mother-in-law’s every Sunday. She’s like, he’s like, you don’t have to go. You can say no. Like, whoa, so, like, my priorities and being productive is, is they go hand in hand and it’s really and I’ll, I’ll say it 1 more time and it’ll be last time. But so important to check in with yourself.

Why do you want to do it? Is this for you? Is it for someone else? And is this still serving what your goal is going to be? Yeah. Beautifully put. And, and I’m a big fan of just writing stuff down. So just blank page and writing it down, because like you said, with that family motto, like we are not quitters, like, Oh my God, that needs to be changed because there’s so much pressure.

That’s so much pressure. And, and we are responsible for ourselves ultimately, right? And it’s, we need to take responsibility for ourselves and our thoughts and our feelings. So. There’s, there’s a lot of unpacking that needs to happen, especially if you went from university to corporate and you were on that trajectory.

And so you understood those rules, right? I do this and then I get to this level and I do this and I get to this level. And this is, it’s all very. Layed out when you’re a mom, it is an absolute free-for-all all. Like you have no idea what your body’s going to do, what your baby’s body’s going to do. You just, you cannot plan for that stuff.

So you need to create the space so that you already have some ideas in your mind of how you want it to go, what you want it to look like. And like you said earlier, like I knew that right away that I didn’t want to be in corporate. So. You kind of created this plan and you worked through that plan to get to where you are now.

You’re constantly tweaking and adjusting and evolving and that is normal and that is okay. I think people put a lot of pressure on themselves if they’ve got a high-powered job and then they have this baby and they expect it to just completely fall into line and babies don’t. Babies come when they want to.

They, they do whatever they want. You’ve got to keep up. Mikkel, thank you so much for being here. Can you tell people where they can reach you on social media and what platform are you most active on? So I’m most active on Instagram and I will give you the link in the show notes because it’s terrible to admit, but I can never remember what it is.

It’s got too many hyphens in it for my liking. We will link it in the show notes. Well, friends, we’re so thankful that Mikkel was here. Mikkel, do you have any, any last words of wisdom for our listeners? Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. And I would just say. Make a plan and be willing to adjust your plan, but just make a plan that is going to make you happy because when you’re happy, baby’s happy and everybody around you catches up to being happy as well.

So that’s really important to prioritize your own health. I love that. Friends, if you love this episode, please be sure, because I know you’re listening on your phone. If you could please leave us a rating review, a five star rating review would be so grateful. Also screenshot this episode, share it on your socials, tag me in it.

My handle is the Carolina. So it’s my, your and all major social media platforms and shoot me a DM shoot a McHale, a DM on, let us know what you think of it until next time. My friends, let the Reiki flow.