264 How Danielle Plans and Manages Her Time With 5 Children

If you've ever struggled to keep your family on track between your kids' busy schedules and your partner’s demanding job, this episode is for you. Hear from one of my students who’s found a way to bring work+life harmony into her family's life.

In this episode, I sit down with Danielle, a full-time homemaker and mother of five, who shares her story of transforming overwhelm into harmony. With her husband working unpredictable ER shifts and five kids with busy schedules, Danielle explains how the planning strategies I teach finally made all the difference. She opens up about how structured planning improved her family’s communication, allowed more spontaneity, and helped her develop critical skills like task estimation and time budgeting. Don't miss this conversation if you’re ready to stop feeling overwhelmed and create a harmonized life!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] megan intro: I have been talking about this thing called Planapalooza for quite some time and really leaning into helping you understand the benefits of longer term planning, like annual planning, quarterly planning, and I can sit here and tell you the benefits all day. But I think it's a lot more impactful when you get to hear from people who've actually attended Planapalooza before and kind of share their real world experiences as they start to navigate these waters as well.
[00:00:26] megan intro: So I couldn't think of Another amazing person as Danielle to bring on here today when you learn about all that she is juggling everything that she has on her plate and some of the more subtle nuances and wins that annual planning has given her and her family, it's going to start having you thinking about planning a little bit differently.
[00:00:45] megan intro: So let's go ahead and jump in.
[00:00:47] Hey everyone, welcome back to Work Life Harmony. I have a delightful guest with you here today. Before we hit record she's already shared two things and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, stop. We got to hit record. I want everybody to hear this. Danielle, I would love if we could kick things off. If you introduce yourself, let everyone know just the few small things that you have got.
[00:01:09] Megan: in your life and give everyone a feel for kind of everything that you are juggling right now.
[00:01:14] Guest: Okay. Well, first time I'm, I'm a full time homemaker and mom. I studied biomedical engineering and nursing and all those skills are just put to use in my everyday life. We have five kids aging from age four to 18.
[00:01:27] Guest: My husband is an ER doctor who has a varied schedule that comes out a month at a time. We spent the first 10 years of our marriage in the Navy. My husband trained through them and did his emergency medicine training with the Navy. So we had a lot of moves when our kids were really little.
[00:01:44] Megan: Yeah.
[00:01:45] Guest: Thankfully we're kind of, we're settled now in Wisconsin. And so we're a big, busy Midwestern family. I said, I've got five kids and two, there'll be four different schools this fall because my Elvis has head out to college and I'm kind of at a big transition point in my life, which is kind of exciting.
[00:02:02] Guest: My Elvis is heading to college and my youngest will be in K four full time. So this is
[00:02:07] Megan: going to be the first time in what 18 years that you will maybe have all the kids. Out of the house for a couple hours at a time.
[00:02:15] Guest: There's a big space between my number four and number five. So I have like a year or two of a taste of that before we hit the reset button.
[00:02:22] Guest: But yes, I'm really
[00:02:23] Megan: looking forward to
[00:02:24] Guest: it.
[00:02:25] Megan: Oh, there's so much there. And I, I thank you for sharing all of that because I think it's important for, you know, before we kind of jump into our conversation for people to realize, you know, Okay. I talk about my planning systems and how they help me and how they help our family.
[00:02:40] Megan: But there are a lot of women like you looking at me going, yeah, but you got one kid, like, come on, how hard can it be? I'm sure it works for you, but this can't work for me. And so I think it's important for people to hear, you know, five children at home, a husband with a non conformative schedule. I mean, when you are in that line of work, it's, There's ever changing shifts, there's on call, there's all of that involved with it.
[00:03:03] Megan: Plus, you know, I grew up in a military family. The moves and all of that that you all dealt with, with, you know, being in the military, it's a lot to juggle. So Danielle has been a student in my planning programs for a while now. I have seen your beautiful face on calls for quite some time. When did you first start in on the planning programs here?
[00:03:27] Megan: Oh, that's going to test my memory. I knew you were going to add that. I know, me too. I was like, is it two or three years?
[00:03:32] Guest: I've done Planet Palooza. This is my second year through Planet Palooza, and I jumped into the T. O. P. program, I think, March before that year. So it's about two and a half years that I've really been in, and I probably, Saw some of your stuff for maybe six months or a year before that, just little clips.
[00:03:47] Guest: I felt like it
[00:03:48] Megan: was like two, somewhere between two and three years now so Danielle is a student in the top program, which is where we really learn weekly and monthly planning mastery. But today I kind of want to focus our conversation around what we do in Planapalooza, which is more of that longer term planning.
[00:04:04] Megan: So the Planapalooza event is where we go through my annual planning process, where we learn annual planning. And then inside of that, we also start nailing down that quarterly planning, where we're taking our annual plan and breaking it down. So this is going to be your second time in Planapalooza. Had you ever done a third time?
[00:04:23] Megan: That's right. Third time. It will be my third time. This is my second time doing it. Prior to coming to a Planapalooza event, did you do, how did you handle kind of longer term planning for the family, coordinating, scheduling, all of that?
[00:04:37] Guest: because of my husband's schedule, it was just sort of all, that was the main trigger for us to sit down and plan.
[00:04:44] Guest: Cause he gets his schedule a month at a time and he has to put in vacations and stuff. About three months in advance. So, I always felt like I was behind him. Like, he's like thinking three months, four months out. And I'm trying to keep up with the daily grind at home. You're trying to pack lunches and get kids to places and all of that.
[00:05:04] Guest: Yeah. We would sit down usually like when the school year starts and in January and kind of go, Okay, what do we want to do for this year? And I would write down lots of lists of goals in a notebook and they would get shoved aside. Yeah. In the daily grind I'd pick them up maybe a few months later and be like, Oh, yeah, that one's still important to me.
[00:05:21] Guest: Maybe I should do something. So it's kind of like fits and starts. And we did that. And then with military too, it's like, you can only plan out so far. It's like, our orders are for 18 months. Our orders are for 3 years. So I think that got me in the habit of. Well, we'll, we'll plan until then and then we'll be open.
[00:05:38] Guest: So both my husband and I are very flexible as far as, okay, what's on our plate right now? Which direction do we want to go? And not really worrying about the future until we get there. But there are certain things that it's nice to plan ahead for.
[00:05:50] Megan: Yeah.
[00:05:50] Guest: It's
[00:05:50] Megan: kind of nice to have a little bit of both. I bet.
[00:05:52] Megan: Yeah. So what would you say has been the biggest shift for you since joining Planapalooza?
[00:05:59] Guest: The biggest shift for me is understanding. I can have all these goals at the beginning of the year, but I, I don't have to worry about them all right now. I can pick just a couple and work on them and I, I'm confident that I'll get back to them to reassess if they're still important and pick them back up.
[00:06:15] Guest: So it's like kind of spreading them out throughout the year. It's just a bigger sense of calm. So it's, there's less anxiety about, oh, my gosh, how am I going to get these all done? And More awareness of time as a limited resource and then sort of respecting and honoring my time in a different way.
[00:06:33] Megan: Oh, that's beautiful. I really like that. You said respecting and honoring my time. I think as you know, anyone else listening, that's a mom. I think it's very easy and I can only imagine with 5 kids that our time we start to feel like it just everyone else owns it and we don't own it. And in different seasons of life, I felt like, wow, I literally just handed it all over to all these other people and I don't have any of it set aside for myself.
[00:07:03] Megan: Are you able to have time for things that are important to you now outside of serving all the people that you take care of?
[00:07:13] Guest: Yes. And I would say that's actually something that I haven't particularly struggled with as much as some, because I had some really good mentors when we were in the military that just kind of said, you got to take care of yourself.
[00:07:23] Guest: And so maybe I'm not reading a whole book, but I would take five minutes to read a book, or I'd take 10 minutes to go hide out on the front porch and drink a glass of cold water before entering back into the chaos. But I definitely have more time and I feel like I can. dream a little bit bigger and like kind of think about what I want to do more now.
[00:07:43] Guest: And so that's, I don't know, it's just, it feels really freeing to be more in control of my calendar and not in control as in I can control how things go, but understanding the time available to me. That's something I really underestimated prior to coming to this program. I
[00:08:02] Megan: remember you being on one of the monthly calls.
[00:08:07] Megan: It was a long time ago and coming with your reality of your schedule and with this like, Oh my gosh, like I didn't realize. Literally, my time is all spoken for and it was, I forget what window of time that you were showing
[00:08:20] Guest: I don't know, but that,
[00:08:22] Megan: that revelation for you of, okay, now I'm not going to feel guilty for this project not being done or us needing to pause on this thing over here because I can see the time just isn't there right now.
[00:08:34] Guest: Yeah, the concept of planning and buffer time to and then doing the time tracking to really see, oh, with five kids and a husband whose schedules sporadic I need a lot of buffer time every day because there's just a lot of stuff that pops up that is important for me to handle. But I wasn't capturing that.
[00:08:53] Guest: And then I was at the point where I was trying to fit my major homemaking tasks into the little edges around the day. I'm like, Oh, grocery shopping. I can do that in half an hour. Like, no, really, that takes me like two hours if I do transport and buying the groceries and getting them all put away, put away.
[00:09:08] Guest: Yeah. All the things. So, The time estimating skill has been valuable to me. And that's more, I think, in the top program than Planapalooza,
[00:09:17] Megan: but it all, we do it at the annual level in Planapalooza to get some realities of like, Hey, this is not the month or the quarter to be planning certain things. Or
[00:09:27] Guest: yeah.
[00:09:27] Guest: And as I was preparing for this, I was thinking about that. I think the number one question that's shifted my planning. Has been how much time is already spoken for in my month in my quarter and like I said, that's a revelation that Oh, like once I get all the things in. A lot of it spoken for. So then I'm more able to be realistic and compassionate with myself about what I can get done and set more realistic expectations, not only for myself, but what I expect out of my husband and out of my kids, like, because we'll need some rest.
[00:10:02] Megan: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, a lot of people, I hear them say, well, my life is too crazy. There's too much uncertainty. So I can't plan. And knowing that you have five children and only one, one, just one who's driving. Or do you have another driver license
[00:10:19] Guest: in July? And that's a game changer in all the things.
[00:10:24] Megan: Yeah. But with that many people where you are responsible for chauffeuring and carpooling and who's sick and who's got this and then the changing schedule with the husband, a lot of people think there's too much uncertainty there. I can't plan. I just need to kind of go day to day. What would you tell them
[00:10:40] Guest: that just gives me anxiety thinking about it planning or the going day to day the going day to day, like the planning is also challenging. Yeah, sure. We'll say my husband and I do a good job planning together. He carries just as much as stuff around the house as I do it with chauffeurs kids a lot because he's got a non traditional schedule.
[00:10:57] Guest: So if he's home, he's willing to help me understanding how long My homemaking tasks really take and how, like what my goals are and being able to communicate that lets him better help me or give me space for me and like to be Danielle and not just mom. So I, that's one of the biggest benefits of joining Plantapalooza for me is it's improved my communication with my husband.
[00:11:23] Guest: He actually told me the other day, you know, I know we have a lot to do and a lot of projects. But I'm not feeling stressed about it. Like he used to, because I'd be like, we'd have little conversations here and they'd be like, Oh, I really want to do this. I really want to do this. And he's a taskmaster.
[00:11:38] Guest: So he's like, okay, I'll make a list. And if I give him a list, he'll go through and get it done. But I wasn't talking about, well, this is something I like to do, but maybe three years down the road. Like for him, it was like, I said it right now, how are we going to fit all this in? Because he is really good at time budgeting and understanding how long things take.
[00:11:57] Guest: So we compliment each other. Yeah. So we just made a travel board and threw it all in there. So we've got our house like parking lot and that's, I don't know, it's calmed us both and enabled us to work together. More effectively and manage
[00:12:11] Megan: that we do. So like for my husband, I, this has been a big shift just in the last couple months.
[00:12:16] Megan: So I have my huge wall calendars in my office that, you know, what I teach in plan a Palooza, that level of information that we put on our year at a glance is what I put up there. And I know, you know, before having that visual space, you know, When there was something that was important for me, particularly when we're planning out like weekends and trips, I would, you know, I'd be knowing in my head, well, that's when finals are and this and that.
[00:12:39] Megan: So that wouldn't be, you know, all these things in my head. But if I'm verbally trying to say, like, I really need a day this weekend for me, because, and I'd start rattling off all the other things going on for him, he'd be like, oh, my gosh, you know, just too much verbal vomiting, whereas now. I can come, you know, we can, we meet in my office and it's, we're looking at our year at a glance.
[00:12:59] Megan: And on it, we're visually saying, okay, well, no, this is spring break week. We know you're gone these two weeks. So here's this one little weekend in between. And if I'm going to be carrying the load before and after I'd like a day, you know, to myself in here to kind of regroup in between all those. And because we have that visual communication tool of our kind of year at a glance, I feel like that's been a big help for us communication wise, because he is very.
[00:13:24] Megan: Very visual with that level of planning as well.
[00:13:27] Guest: Thank you. And my husband works a lot of weekends as an ER doc, too. So, our weekends are precious. And then we've got kids sports stuff, so. Looking further ahead and really starting to try and say like, Oh, that's a free weekend. Let's reserve it and highlight it on our calendars and really be careful before we say yes to anything on that weekend.
[00:13:45] Guest: So it gives us more time for our family, but also for us in the last year. So last year for my birthday, my husband surprised me with a ballroom dancing lesson. Oh my God. I'm so jealous. Yes. And we've been able to fit it in this year. Like, it's been hard, but there's been space for that. And that's a big time commitment for us.
[00:14:03] Guest: Like, usually we'd get on a regular day and night schedule over the summer. Because there's just not as much running after our kids in the summer. We don't have baseball, or we kind of chill out. Chill out the summer. Summer activities. But then school year would come around and, We're like trying to find a date night once a month and it's just hard.
[00:14:23] Guest: So it, it's been good for a lot of reasons.
[00:14:28] Megan: You mentioned also before we were kind of hopping on here that you shared that planning has helped you be more spontaneous, which I, that was like music to my ears. I would love for you to share what you mean by that.
[00:14:41] Guest: I really like routines, but I hate schedules.
[00:14:45] Guest: Like, like, okay, here's the things I have to get done, but don't not every Monday at 9am. Yeah. Right. However, with this many people in this many activities, a lot of our life is scheduled. It's just is. And I think knowing school year is really busy this summer. We really made a conscious effort to not over schedule ourselves.
[00:15:02] Guest: And I think we finally found sort of that sweet spot. And yeah, It's just kind of calm. So I'm ready to go into the school year, but having, I just listened to your podcast on time budgeting essentially, or like, are you trying to margin? And I was like, this is perfect for that because I want to be spontaneous, but just like if I would want to be spontaneous and go, go out for dinner real quick, or go buy myself a new outfit, have to have money in my bank account to do that, half of open time.
[00:15:32] Guest: If I want to go do something super fun on a whim. And in the summer, because we had so little planned, I actually got to take my girls down to a conference in Indianapolis where Catholic, it was a National Eucharistic Congress, and somebody from our parish couldn't go, so they were offering their tickets up, and I called my girls.
[00:15:52] Guest: I was kind of surprised they were interested in going but we ended up being able to take a whole weekend. Yeah. Kind of last, I mean, we still planned it a few weeks in advance, but for us, that's a really last minute for planning, especially when
[00:16:05] Megan: it's a whole weekend away. That is, and I think that just serves, you know, I'm always saying, and I've got the sign behind me structure creates freedom.
[00:16:11] Megan: Right. And that's what this planning. Does is it allows you to be realistic with your time and then ideally have the freedom to to do some last minute things to be spontaneous because now either you have that time available or you know how to replan stuff with ease to create the space for the thing that popped up that you wanted to, you know, be able to do.
[00:16:34] Megan: To go and do. So I love when you said that, I was like, Oh, it's such a great win. Now, learning planning is not, you know, I'm always very honest with people. It's like anything, right? You're not going to listen to a 45 minute video and be like, my whole life has changed. Right? So I know this has been a journey for you.
[00:16:50] Megan: What has been the most challenging part of it? And how long were you working on your planning techniques till you started feeling like, Hey, like this is who I am. Now I do these things.
[00:17:02] Guest: Honestly, it's been the full two and a half years. I feel like things are really coming together now. And I feel like I would jump into stuff and I, like, I spent probably three or four months really working on just that weekly planning, weekly planning, moving up to the monthly planning.
[00:17:19] Guest: But. For our family situation, I feel like the monthly and the quarterly planning really make the biggest impact because my husband's schedule comes out a month at a time. Right. It kind of like, it fits in so well with that. Yeah. And he and I are actually going to sit down once the kids are in school and kind of try and do this process for our family, but not calendar quarters.
[00:17:40] Guest: Now that we're kind of going like, what are our family chunks of time for the year, three to four ish months. Based on when school activities change, because for us, it's kind of more like, like September through like November ish and then November basketball star. So there's like November through March ish.
[00:18:01] Megan: Right? Yeah. And for us, we're always looking at September to December, like semesters, because with my daughter's school, that's kind of when activities all align. So it's the same thing. It's like, okay, you know, Your semester one and then now let's look comprehensively at semester two. So it doesn't always have to be aligned with traditional calendar dates.
[00:18:18] Megan: It can be in whatever rhythms work best for you and your family.
[00:18:22] Guest: If for me, the benefit of joining the planet Palooza and having the calendar dates to do quarterly planning to do monthly planning really helped me just pick it back up when I dropped it because, you know, And with anything new, like I'm doing it.
[00:18:35] Guest: Oh, it's great. Oh, I don't have time to do this. Oh, is it really worth the time I'm putting in to do this? I think it was just this past March. I dropped my weekly planning for like three weeks. The life was just crazy. We had full weekends. I just, I had planned to do it at a certain time and other stuff came up and I, I missed my weekly planning session, like three days in a row.
[00:18:53] Guest: And then I missed like three or four appointments, which I haven't done in a really long time. Oh my gosh. Am I losing my mind? What's going on? And it was really easy to stop that negative self talk. Cause it's like, No, I just didn't do my weekly planning. What did I expect? Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, I know how to prevent that in the future.
[00:19:13] Guest: It's not that I'm having early onset dementia or something. No, I just, we have a busy family and the investment of the time in planning pays back in spades. Sometimes I get irritated with how much time my husband and I spend planning. Both together and myself and in different stuff because it just feels tedious at times.
[00:19:35] Guest: But because we've been doing it effectively for so long now, when I drop it, I really feel the pain of not knowing what's going on
[00:19:43] Megan: or And it's the same with finances, like our, my husband's alliance, you know, quarterly finance, like those are tedious. They're not great, but Oh, the benefits of doing them on the back end.
[00:19:53] Megan: Like if we didn't, it wouldn't, things would not be great. So I'm glad that, that we have that you know, something I always think it's important to share with folks, you know, talking about, yeah, it's been two years and, you know, still learning, still improving. You know, there are so many different studies out there in terms of how long It takes for us to have something become, you know, kind of habit or routine or easy.
[00:20:16] Megan: And a lot of the experts now, a lot of people used to say 30 days. Now they're saying 60 is our 58 somewhere around there. And that's assuming you're trying to do something Every day for that window of time. Well, when we think about weekly planning or monthly planning, right, if you did weekly planning every single week for a year, you're still only getting 52 opportunities to do that.
[00:20:45] Megan: And so this is why I always tell people don't beat yourself up. If you've done your weekly planning for the 3rd time and it wasn't just like, oh, yeah, I knocked that out in 10 minutes. I'm You've only done it three times. You don't get to count three weeks worth of time. And so the fact that you're sharing, yeah, this quarterly and monthly, like now, like it's really starting to tick for us.
[00:21:05] Megan: Well, guess what? It's only been a couple years of that. And monthly planning is only 12 times in a year. And so I get excited to think for you two years from now, what that's going to look like, right? It's just going to be muscle memory for, for how you guys operate as a unit, Really what we, what
[00:21:23] Guest: we want.
[00:21:23] Megan: I
[00:21:24] Guest: feel like my husband and I have been really good at calendaring on a monthly basis, but the whole, like, bigger planning, like, and owning our time as opposed to letting all the activities and other commitments that we're community that we're part of schedule our time. It's more of a, okay, this event's happening.
[00:21:41] Guest: It's not an automatic. Yes, we're going to it. It's a, you know, How did that fit in with us and our family and does that really is that how we want to spend our time that weekend or do we just want to kick back at home and watch a movie together and and that's okay so just sort of empowering us to live the life that we want with our family.
[00:22:00] Megan: Okay, I'm gonna have to end on that because I think the perfect that's what this is all about. There is no, you know, when we come into plan a Palooza and I walk through the annual planning, I'm not telling you what should go on your calendar. I'm not here to tell people what's important or what's not.
[00:22:15] Megan: I'm here to give you the tools and resources and skills. To empower you to plan for and create the life that you desire. And there's no wrong, there's no wrong output to that in your plan and your priorities get to be different than mine. And both of them get to be right. All right. As long as we're being true to ourselves.
[00:22:39] Megan: So hearing you say that you guys are having those conversations now, like that's what it's all about. And so that just, that makes my heart so happy. Thank you for sharing
[00:22:47] Guest: that. You're welcome. I will say. For me, like pulling the trigger to join the program and pay, you know, a decent amount to, to invest in this, the course and the top program and everything.
[00:22:58] Guest: I'm like, I'm just a stay at home mom. Like, do I really need this? I don't know. I think it's one of the best things, biggest values that I've spent money on in a long time. And I think part of that is, Megan, you've done a really good job of taking all these components that go into planning an organization and breaking them down into their various skill sets.
[00:23:19] Guest: Cause I'm like, I know how to plan. Like, I I know a lot of stuff. What am I really going to learn that I haven't already been exposed to? And it's like, oh, well, yeah, I know how to plan, but I really suck at estimating how long tasks are going to take. But there's this whole module on like how to estimate stuff.
[00:23:37] Guest: It's like, oh, well, that's a skill I haven't actually learned. And I haven't learned to ask the question of Okay. I've got all this stuff on my calendar. How much time is actually spoken for us? Like it seems so basic. It sounds so simple and obvious through that lens. It really is.
[00:23:56] Megan: It's life changing. Oh, thank you for saying that.
[00:23:59] Megan: And I will tell you, I spent a painful weekend. It was a two day conference on a Saturday and Sunday back way back in my earlier days. on estimating literally two days of training on estimating techniques to be applied into my corporate job. So I had to condense that down. I was like, we're not going to do two days of estimating, but to your point, there's so many nuances.
[00:24:24] Megan: That are actual skills that, let's face it, most of us aren't being taught in anywhere in our lives that we don't even recognize. Oh, yeah, that is something like I've never really thought like, what are the best ways of doing that? And how do we tackle that? Yeah, and estimating is always a big one and priority prioritizing is always another one.
[00:24:43] Megan: That's, that's always a big one for folks. So, well, thank you for sharing your precious, precious time with us here today. And I appreciate everything that you shared here.