Are you feeling burnt out and overwhelmed? Do you find yourself sacrificing your own needs to take care of everyone else? Are you over living the same yelling, crying, messy house, rush to get dinner on the table, disorganized life on repeat every day?
I was too. Until I created this simple system I call the fundamental needs. With this system, you’ll know how to make time for yourself when you’re busy so that you can show up as the the mom, wife and friend you really want to be.
It’s time to get your daily routines and your mental space aligned so that you can put some calm back into your life. Let’s dive in to how I time block my fundamental needs each week to reduce stress and anxiety.
Why Do We Need To Spend Time On Ourselves?
In the beginning years of my marriage, I didn’t understand my strengths and I didn’t understand what I could bring to the table. I also didn’t know how to manage raising children, and being a wife, working outside the home, and running a small business. Sound familiar?
I had been giving my time, my heart, my love and all of my energy to other people. At the same time, I was searching for my self worth in being productive and keeping busy. At the end of the day, I was left feeling completely depleted while also feeling like I was really achieving it.
There was a voice met me in the quiet spaces of my life. I knew that the snippy woman that I could be in my darkest moments was not me. The tears, frustrations and that dying need to just be alone were warning signs that I needed to take care of myself too.
Even though I loved my family and I loved my community, dedicating all my free time to pleasing someone else and meeting their needs often came at the cost of putting off own self-care another day. That “day” then became another week, another month, and eventually, years.
How I Found Enough Time For Me-Time
I’m sure you can relate.
Is there something you know you need to find time for in your life? Maybe it’s a relationship, losing weight, chasing a goal, getting your house organized, or becoming the mom that doesn’t yell so much. Whatever that looks like for you, that nagging voice is there for a reason. It is your body begging you to spend a little time on your own needs.
I made so many excuses for why I was strong enough to stay in survival mode. People needed me. I couldn’t slow down or give any of my limited time to me. I needed to be filling those responsibilities every single day. My kids needed it, my husband needed it, the bank account needed it, whatever the excuse may be.
The reality was, I was a burnt out mom and wife that desperately believed in herself and her dreams. I just didn’t know how find time for them.
So, what did I do? Well, the Enneagram 1 in me did what she always does. I started making charts, graphs and mind maps. I organized the living life out of my struggles. I found patterns and read books on my strengths and weaknesses. The change started when I took a closer look at it all and said, “alright let’s just take everything off the plate and look at what is extremely fundamental”. Those became what I now call the fundamental needs.
What Are Fundamental Needs?
If you’ve listened to any of my podcast episodes, you’ll know I talk a lot about these fundamental needs. They are so incredibly important!
When we aren’t meeting our fundamental needs, stress and anxiety show up. Most of the time, things that give us the most stress and anxiety are things that we are imposing upon ourselves. All of those things that I talked about, those people that needed me, they didn’t actually need me in the way I thought they did. Instead, I learned how to use time blocks to start taking time for my fundamental needs too!
We All Have Core Needs
First, I had to figure out my own core needs. What was going to support me to be the best wife, mom, coworker, community member, daughter, that I could be?
For me, it was about not being stressed and anxious. Often, we continue to live in that space because we are so caught up in all of these other things that we’ve put on our plate. Tasks and to dos, roles that actually don’t need to be defining us and taking time from our days.
Determining Your Fundamental Needs
I sat down and I made a list of these fundamental needs for myself—the things I needed most. Then, I took them to my husband and he also made a list of his own fundamental needs. Next, we sat down and we prayed about it.
We also aligned our needs with our own beliefs and scripture. That helped us make sure we were prioritizing things that we felt called to do. We looked at how we were parenting and how we were stewarding our money. Then, we looked at where we were spending our time. We talked about how much time we were going to be giving to family, our marriage, ourselves, our social obligations, our home, etc.
The Great Eight – The Key to Your Fundamental Needs
Through looking at this at great depths, and asking ourselves the hard questions, our great eight was born. They became our fundamental needs.
For us the great eight are:
- Meal Prep
- Gym/Work Out
- Date Night
- Family Fun
- Weekly Plan
- Zone Clean
- To-Do
- Personal Time/ Work Block
How To Find Your Fundamental Needs
If you’re serious about putting some calm back into your life, then you absolutely are going to have to dig in deep and answer some of these hard questions for yourself. Download the fundamental needs workbook to help you prioritize and spend time on what matters most.
Then, be real with yourself and your spouse. These aren’t fluffy questions. This is the pivotal point in your life when you get to decide that enough is enough. You get to say you are done with all the chaos that you’re dealing with and start doing different things with your life.
Ask yourself:
- Am I modeling the adult life that I want my children to grow up and live out in their own lives?
- Do you want your children to be hustling, hustling, hustling every moment of their lives?
- Moms, do you want your daughters to grow up and to carry the same burden and the same weight you carry?
- Do you want your sons to grow up and have these expectations of their wives?
- Is this the life that you want your children to live?
I looked at my life and I was like, no. I do not want my daughters to grow up and feel like they have to carry the burden of constantly being responsible for all the things. It’s time to find ways to build more me time and self care into my busy days so I can model that for my kids.
Time Blocking Fundamental Weekly Tasks
Once I had my fundamental needs, or my great 8, laid out, I had to figure out how to set boundaries with my time to make sure they actually happened. Here is what my great 8 look like in everyday life:
Meal Prep
This includes planning the meals, grocery shopping, organizing the fridge, and prepping food for the week ahead. I set aside time each week to meal plan so that I can feed my family nourishing meals and not feel guilty about what we are eating. It’s okay if your meal prep looks like going out to eat twice because you can’t manage anything else. At least it is set up and you have a plan.
Exercise
Right now I’m getting to the gym once a week. I know that to feel really good about myself and have the strength I need to carry my children and carry my groceries in the house, I need to exercise more than one day a week. But right now, one is all I can give. If all you can fit in right now is a weekly yoga class, that’s OK. At least you are putting something on the calendar and intentionally taking time to care for your body.
Date Night
This can be in or out of the house. The point here is to make this time that is free from distractions so you and your partner can focus on each other. If your date night looks like doing the meal cards that you get from your Chick-fil-A kids meal, that’s OK. It’s okay if these things aren’t perfect.
Family Night
This can be in or out of the house too. The point here is to have fun together as a family doing something you all enjoy.
Cleaning
I use this time for my zone cleaning system. Some weeks we have more time than others but there is always a block of time for this category. Even if cleaning this week means I only have time to Lysol the counters, that’s fine. At least you’re making a point to put intention into these things and not just putting them off completely.
To-Do List
When it comes to the to do list, we talk about what absolutely needs to be done for our family. This is not a to do list where we bring in what we’re trying to do in our personal life or even talking about our daily tasks. It’s more the things that come up each week like something that you need to do for the PTO, an appointment you need to schedule, things like that. We figure out how much time we need to get those things done and then write it in our schedule.
Personal Time
This personal time block is something that a lot of us feel guilty about implementing. I am so grateful that my husband understands this. He sees time to develop ourselves individually, away from children, away from the home, away from our spouses, just as vital as I do. My husband has his own things that he wants to grow and he feels called to do. He knows that I need that and deserve that just as much as he does. The personal time block is when we can focus on those personal endeavors.
Make Personal Time A Priority
I can’t say this enough, you can decide what should be a priority for yourselves, but mommas, please make sure that you give yourself permission to have personal time. I don’t care what that looks like. If that means that you are taking a bath by yourself, give yourself at least an hour, once a week to just be alone.
As moms, we are called upon all the time. I can’t cook without someone pulling on my pant leg. We all know that you can’t go to the bathroom by yourself either, right? There is no time to be alone unless you make it happen. Taking time for me time is not selfish. It is necessary.
Bible Study/Heart Check
This is where my husband and I sit down and we check in with each other to make sure we aren’t derailing from each other. We have a set of six questions that we ask each other.
- How can I pray for you this week?
- What brought you joy this week?
- Is there anything left unsaid that you would like to discuss?
- How can I support you this week?
- What is a dream you have for yourself this week?
- What was something hard this week?
I got these six questions from an awesome podcast called Work and Play with Nancy Ray. Check out the specific episode on these questions here
(As my time blocking and great 8 have developed, we now call this one our weekly planning or Sunday sit down. We take some time fo review the week ahead while we talk about how we can support one another.)
Why Should I Time Block My Fundamental Needs?
It’s one thing to talk about self-care and know you need me-time. Now it’s time to set boundaries within your busy life and make them happen. That is why I teach my students to add their fundamental needs to their calendar so that you make time for them.
The reason that we add these things before anything else is because it reduces stress. It reduces my anxiety tenfold. There were weeks after weeks after weeks that I was looking back and saying, why is the house always a mess?
Well, because we didn’t prioritize cleaning it.
Why have we not had a date night in months? Well, because we didn’t prioritize it.
Over and over and over again, these things that we really wanted to see happening were not happening. So now we make sure that we sit down and we put them on our calendar.
How To Start Time Blocking Your Fundamental Needs
If you’d like more information on my time blocking system, check out The 5 Steps You Need to Make Your Schedule Work For You. It outlines in detail how my time blocking system works.
For Those With A Set Weekly Schedule
For those of you that have a set schedule where every week looks pretty much the same, this will be cake for you. Sit down and put these in your calendar on repeat. You can set your gym times for every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You can set your family time for every Friday night and your date night for every Wednesday night. You can always do cleaning on Tuesday morning, etc.
For Those With A Rotating Schedule
If you have more of a rotating schedule like I do, because my husband is a firefighter, this will be more cumbersome but also MORE VITAL. Your great eight will give you consistency ensure that you are taking time for the most valuable priorities—your fundamental needs.
For Stay At Home Moms
If you are a stay at home mom, I do not time block all of my tasks on top of those working hours. Sometimes you can get your to-do list done with your children and that’s perfectly okay. I love that because it’s a great teaching opportunity, to go to the grocery store with your kids and to teach in that environment.
I also love cleaning with my children because I think it’s an amazing teaching opportunity. I love what they’re learning. This allows for my children to be involved. So, there are some of these that I do with my children. Most of them, though, are geared towards things I am doing outside of the times when I’m working, either as a mom or in my job.
It Is Possible To Make Time For Yourself When You’re Busy
Now, I know that there are so many of you are thinking this sounds great and everything but I don’t have the time. Listen, we all have busy schedules. I do, too but I’m making this happen.
I’m not a unicorn, not some random gem with some amazing opportunity to just have this miraculous schedule. I work and I am raising children. I have a small business that I’m running. My husband works like 60 hours a week. If I can do this, YOU can do this.
The best way to find more time in your day is by getting rid of the fillers and the fluff that keep you from taking time for your non-negotiables.
The Hard Reality
Often we push these things aside, not because we don’t have time for them, but because we would rather fill our time with tasks that don’t challenge us. It is hard for me to do these things in my life every week because they take intention. They take work and they take energy. It requires discipline.
I know you guys have a million reasons as to why you have zero time for date night or personal time, but, you are currently making time for other things. Everybody has the same 24 hours in the day. What we choose to do with it is our own.
All the priorities that we have in our life are pushed aside, not because we don’t have time for them, but because we would rather fill our time with tasks that don’t challenge us.
Be Intentional With Your Time- Limit Screen Time
Social media and technology: the addiction that we all want to say we don’t have. I am being extremely cognizant of this in my own life right now because I have little eyes watching me every day. I know that I am spending more time on social media than I want to be and it sucks. It is teaching my children to grow up into humans that I don’t want them to become.
To help me break that habit, I set screen time limits and app limits. Either one of those make it so inconvenient for you to access any of your social media. Some even shut down your screen time altogether so that you can focus.
It’s a great idea is to limit yourself to two hours of screen time a day. Even better, set your phone to only allow incoming phone calls all day long except for a window of time that you want to be able to be on social media or to open your emails or whatever that might look like. Find healthy boundaries for you.
This is the number one go to spot that I coach people in finding more time in your day. Unless you are already managing this, you probably have at least two hours every single day that you are on your phone. That time can be dedicated somewhere else.
Tips To Make Time For Yourself When You’re Busy
Use Time Blocking
Time blocking these fundamental tasks into your life should be a core part of what you do. They absolutely need to be non-negotiable and a focal point every single week. I promise you, it will significantly reduce the amount of stress and anxiety that you feel. Remember that this is an evolving set of needs. As seasons in our lives change, our needs do, too.
To get started fill out my fundamental needs workbook and start taking time for the things that matter most to you.
Be Patient
This process takes time. Start slow and take note of what is working and what isn’t. Jot down notes on how you feel throughout the week. Implement your fundamental needs for a couple of weeks and be really diligent about keeping your heart and your eyes open to how this process is affecting you. Find ways to improve it and make changes so that it can serve you in the best way.
Use A Calendar
If you’re not using a calendar at all, you absolutely need one. My favorite paper planner is the dream planner from Horacio Printing. I also recommend using a digital calendar so that you can share it with other people in your family.
Make A Commitment
To make this a success, you have to commit to sitting down and looking at this once a week. Give yourself 30 to 60 minutes. In the beginning, this took my husband and I a solid hour. Over time, we have become much more efficient. This is something you have to do because it’s meaningful for you, for your family and your future.
Honestly, there’s nothing about this season of life that needs an excuse or reason to be put off. You’re here right now in this season of your life to be everything that you were created to be. Not to be a vessel that’s being sucked dry from every other person, from every other demand that you have chosen to put on your plate. Choose to spend time on the things that matter to you.
If you have any questions about what this looks like for you, come over to Instagram and send me a D.M. I would love to talk to you about this, and I cannot wait to see what you guys are doing out there with your time blocking.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know what my fundamental needs are?
My free fundamental needs workbook will help you sit down and reflect on the things that fill you up. It will give you space to think through all the areas of your life and figure out what is going well and what needs to be worked on.
Where can I learn more about time blocking?
Time blocking is an essential part of getting your core needs met each week. You can learn more about my time blocking method by going the the podcast vault and searching “time blocking” to hear all of those episodes.
You can also join my group coaching program, Systemize to Scale. You’ll get my plug and play home and business management program plus 12 months of support from me and my team to help you fine tune your systems and find more free time for the important things in your life.
