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Effective yet flexible rhythms are one of the key building blocks in a sustainable and intentional lifestyle. But trying to copy a guru’s routine, whether for work or home life, quickly becomes overwhelming. There are dozens of “best practices” out there, so where do you start? How do you decide what you need in your personal rhythms?

Create a rhythm for your unique lifestyle

In this episode of the podcast, you'll get long look into how each of us approaches our morning and evening rhythms. Although we all have similar values—and we're even in similar stages of life—each of our rhythms look different.

Here's the thing about rhythms: they have to be crafted for your lifestyle, congruent with your season of life, and based on what you and your family value. I remember listening to a podcast years ago that said that "'should' is not a sustainable why." This idea holds true for rhythms. Feeling like you "should" get up before the kids, will not be a strong enough "why" when your alarm goes off at 6am. But if you begin to know in your core—because you've taken the time to reflect on your personal experience—that getting up before the kids sets you up for a better, more peaceful morning, this core knowing can easily become a very strong "why."

The Pomodoro Method

Tonight, I (Shelby) am using what’s called The Pomodoro Method—but with my own twist (which I’ll get to in a minute).

The method was developed by a university student who had a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato (pomodoro means tomato in Italian). With his original time-management technique, you use a kitchen timer to discipline yourself to short, focused bursts of work, with short breaks in between.

This is such a delightful post, because it was written by Meeka Malone, mother of the sister-founders of Evergreen Planner, McCauley and Shelby.

Mama has always challenged us to reach for excellence, and to never settle with making excuses for ourselves. It's been so fun to watch our Mama embrace this planner system that we created and gain a whole host of brand new skills in time-management and goal-setting for herself.

She's been a behind-the-scenes secret weapon for the success of our business, from staying up late into the night helping us field test and work out the last kinks on our ROOTED Goals Workbook to watching her very large gaggle of grandkids so we can record the Make Space to Thrive Podcast.

If you've been in our community for long, you know that I (Shelby) have often shared that I am not a natural at prioritization. It was watching my younger sister McCauley live her ordinary (and yet remarkable) life that propelled me into the time-management space. She's a queen at getting the right things done, the right way, at the right time, and in the right amount of time. I'm the late bloomer in that area.

When I'd complain about how much better her life was than mine (just keeping it real here), she'd always go back to the same thing: prioritization.

That answer really used to annoy me because I didn't have a clue about how to prioritize. I'd try to get her to explain to me how she figured out what she needed to do next—and she didn't know how to explain it to me! She'd just kind of look at everything she had on her plate and then...know. It honestly seemed like magic to me.

It took me reading stacks of time-management books and articles, binging podcasts, and enrolling into workshops and webinars to start to get a sense for how this prioritization thing worked. From that research, I hobbled together some planning worksheets that applied the 80/20 rule to the Eisenhower Matrix, and helped me translate all of that into a time-blocked plan for my day. (It was actually in showing those worksheets to McCauley that the idea for the Evergreen Planner was sparked in the first place!)

When you are in an overwhelming season, it can be hard to know where to even begin. Crazy seasons can come out of nowhere, and often come from things outside of your control. But what we have found is that when you go back to the basics, and gently work on getting back to your life-giving rhythms, that there is always something you can do to relieve some of the pressure.

The steps below aren’t pie-in-the-sky ideas, these are the real steps we have each taken to bring more peace to the chaotic seasons we’ve been through.

One of the most essential features in our Classic booklets is the time-blocking section on the day spread.

When researching how to increase productivity — especially when needing to balance multiple roles in one day — there was one practical skill that came up again and again: time-blocking.

It’s highly recommended by productivity experts, and after using it in our own lives, we get why. When you make space to get realistic about your time availability, set up habits and rhythms, thoughtfully organize your tasks, apply prioritization and batching methods, and pad everything with ample margin—your productivity will increase.

Have you ever had this experience? You dive deep into goal setting, chart out a strong schedule, and then start to work the plan. 

But then, dun, dun, dunnn. 

Life happens. 

And after several weeks, you start to realize a lot has changed since you laid your plans, and you’re really making only like 20% of the changes you’d planned to make!

This phenomenon is especially true for goal-oriented mamas. We might be as determined and diligent as the sky is blue, but our kids are always rolling into new phases of need, surprising us with the twists and turns of their own growth journeys, and presenting regular challenges to the best laid plans. 

So what’s the point of reverse-engineering goals and setting intentions? Why bother to sketch out your ideal day in a time-blocking planner if you know things will change?

The R.O.O.T.E.D. Goal Setting System helps you to identify and reverse-engineer essentialist goals that bridge the gap between the future you want and the life you’re living right now.

Sustainable, Life-Giving Goals Are:

• Rooted in your core calling
• Organically growing out of your context 
• Outlined for clarity (part 1 & part 2)
• Tailored to your lifestyle (what we're talking about in this post)
• Etched into your memory
  
• Developed by Providence

Story time.

When I was seven months pregnant with my first, I decided I wanted to be a work-at-home mom. My husband and I had been discussing all of our options, and I had been dabbling in the family business for a few months.

Do you want to start using a planner to make sense of your time management, but you feel intimidated by the actual process of planning? Or perhaps you were an organizational rockstar at one point, but it feels like your wherewithal has flown the coop?

You’re not alone.

Most women have (or currently do) struggle with those same feelings. Even the ladies at Team Evergreen are intimately acquainted with them!

Last week, we asked this question:

What are the most overwhelming areas of my life? If I were proactive in these areas (instead of operating in a default, reactionary state), how could I clear the excess and focus on what matters most?

In this post, we're going to get really practical and tactical.

Understanding the (Designed) Problem

I used to think my life was overwhelming by default, and that I simply didn't have enough time and mental energy to do everything I believed I was called to do. I didn't sit around and watch TV, and I'd even turned all of the notifications off on my phone, but I still found the days to be far too short.

Last week, we wrote about the importance of having the proper perspective when it comes to valuing time. If you haven't had a chance, it's worth reading right now.

For many of us, time-wasting doesn't look like one would expect. We're not laying around on the couch all day every day, eating Cheetos and watching reruns. We're actually really busy—always going, doing, hustling, and racing from one thing to the other. That's how we feel, anyway, and the result all too often does look like Cheetos-and-reruns-on-the-couch for a lot longer than we think is healthy, because we feel too worn out to do anything else with our pockets of free time.​

It's the typical song and dance of our busy culture.

But what if a large amount of our busy-ness itself is the drain on our time?

Stop for just a second and ask yourself: what is a week of your life actually worth?

We only have 4,452 weeks from the moment we're born until our 85th birthday (if we're given that many years).​

Just...let that sink in. We have fewer than 5k weeks in an entire (generous) lifespan, and yet, sometimes we just let a "bad" or "off" week (or several) slip away without seriously evaluating underlying causes and lessons we could be learning.

Now, don't misunderstand: sometimes a week that's way more heavy on rest, fun, or flexibility is needed. Sometimes, crises (internal and external) endow a week with a heavenly purpose that we cannot immediately grasp from our point of view in the moment.