10 Genius Hacks to Help You Crush Your Goals as a Busy Mom

Crush Your Goals and Live Your Best Mom Life

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Are you ready to crush your goals and get things done as a busy mom?

The only thing I love more than setting goals is achieving them.

Getting into the goal-setting habit can help you tackle all those big (or small) things you want to achieve.

If you’ve been feeling stuck in a rut or you’ve pushed some of your dreams to the backburner, this post is for you.

Here are my best tips to help you be a more productive, happier mom while achieving your goals!

10 Smart Hacks for Crushing Your Mom Goals

Before I dive into my favorite tricks you can use to crush your goals, let me offer a little disclaimer.

From my own experience, I can tell you that these tips can work for big goals and small ones of all kinds.

I’ve used them to:

Grow my freelance writing business
Pay off all of my debt (except my mortgage)
Save over half of my income for the past several years
Buy a house
Lose weight (and commit to healthier habits)

Bottom line?

These tips can work for you, no matter what you’re pushing for. Sound good? Then here we go!

1. Figure out how much time you have to work on your goals

As a busy mom, I get that you might not have a lot of time to work on your goals.

And that’s okay. What matters is finding some time each day to focus on your goals.

So go over your daily and weekly schedules to see where you can carve out time.

It could be a few minutes in the morning before your kids wake up and an hour or so at night after they go to bed.

If you’re feeling discouraged by how little time it seems like you have, don’t.

For setting and reaching goals as a busy mom, it’s all about quality over quantity.

So even if you only have 15 minutes a day to focus on your goals, you can still make the most of that time.

And if you need help finding the time in your busy mom day to work on your goals, consider checking out the Family Routines course from Pulling Curls.

It breaks down everything you need to know to organize your days and manage your time wisely as a busy mom!

👉 Sign up for Family Routines and streamline your daily schedule!

2. Start brainstorming goal ideas

Before you can crush your goals, you need to know what you really want to achieve.

So it’s time to do some brainstorming.

Grab a pen and a notebook and start making a big list of:

Things that you’ve been putting off
Things you want to do
Books you want to read
Places you want to go
Experiences you want to have
Skills you want to learn
Personal improvements you want to make

Get the big picture down on paper first. Then, go back and pick out the things that speak to you most.

3. Choose three big goals to focus on

If you want to crush your goals as a busy mom, you can’t have too many of them.

Three is kind of the perfect number for setting big goals.

It’s not too few so you won’t feel like you’re accomplishing nothing. And it’s not too many, so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

So go back to your big brainstorm list of goals from earlier and find three big things you want to work on.

I like to pick goals by category. For example, you might pick one financial goal, one health goal and one personal goal.

You can break your goals up any way you like. The key is to pick goals that are meaningful to you.

4. Make your goals S.M.A.R.T.

Setting S.M.A.R.T goals can make such a difference in what you’re able to achieve as a busy mom!

If you’re not sure what S.M.A.R.T. goals are, it just means setting goals that are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic/relevant
Time-bound

In other words, your goal should be specific and something that you can measure over time.

They should also be something you can achieve within a reasonable time frame. And you should have a set end date in mind for hitting your target.

This is a big part of the secret sauce formula for reaching your goals. It’s a lot easier to hit your goals when you have a clear plan to follow!

5. Break your big goals into mini-goals

Here’s the thing about setting big goals. It’s easy to lose track of where you are.

So what works better is dividing up big goals into smaller, mini-goals.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say you want to save $6,000 in an emergency fund for the year.

That’s a lot of money, right? Now, say you break that down into a mini-goal of saving $500 each month.

Now your goal isn’t so big and scary, is it? The next step is figuring out what you need to do each month to hit that number.

So for example, say you get a $1,000 tax refund. You can bank that in savings. Now you only need to save another $5,000.

From there, you can figure out ways to save that money.

Going over your budget is the first step but you could also try ways to make money. For example, you could:

Take surveys in your spare time
Earn cashback when you shop with Rakuten or Ibotta
Learn how to be a freelance writer and get paid to write
Declutter your home and sell your extra stuff on Decluttr
Start a mom blog of your own!

These are all small things you can do that could add up to big savings to help you reach your goal.

And you can use this same strategy if your goal is losing weight, starting a business or anything else!

By going small with your goals, you can make them less overwhelming and easier to tackle.

6. Develop a mantra to reinforce your goals

So right now you’re probably thinking, What’s a mantra and how does that help me with setting goals?

In a nutshell, a mantra is an easy-to-remember phrase or a slogan that you repeat to yourself.

Mantras are usually associated with meditation, prayer or yoga. But you don’t have to do any of those things to make a mantra work for you.

Your mantra is your self-talk. It helps you get your mind focused on a single thought.

But how can a mantra help you reach your goals?

Simple. It helps you stay focused on your goal.

And when you’re able to stay focused, it suddenly becomes so much easier to do the things you need to do to make your goal happen.

If you’re doubting whether a mantra can help you crush your goals, my best advice is this: Just try it.

I’ve used mantras for years to reach my goals and it’s worked 99% of the time!

How to choose a mantra to crush your goals

Creating a personal mantra around your goals is a pretty easy process. It involves three steps:

Get clear on your ultimate goal.
Pick a simple phrase that reflects your goal.
Put it on repeat.

The key is to pick a mantra that sums up exactly what your goal is.

So it might be something like:

Lose 50 pounds
Save $5,000
Be a calmer mom
Stop wasting time
Seek out adventure
Just have fun

As you think about your mantra, spend some time thinking about your “why”.

Then shape your mantra to reflect your purpose and the ultimate destination you want to reach.

7. Change your passwords

The next tip I’ve got for you to help you crush your goals might seem a little weird but believe me, it works!

Are you ready?

Here it is:

Change the passwords to your online accounts to reflect your goal.

Here’s what I mean by that.

Say your goal is to lose 20 pounds. You could change your password to your email account or bank account to a phrase that sums up your goal, like lose20in2021.

That way, every time you log in and you have to punch in your password, you’re getting a reminder of your goal.

Sounds a little crazy right? But this totally works.

Changing your passwords to reflect your goals works because it’s a mental reminder of what you’re chasing after.

Think of it as a form of visualization.

The more times you tell yourself you’re going to lose those 20 pounds or buy a house or make $100,000, the more you begin to believe it. Once you believe it, it’s just a short step to making it happen.

I didn’t invent this technique; I first read about it in a Medium article forever ago. But it changed the way I approach goal-setting.

And it can change the way you approach your goals too if you’re willing to give it a shot.

8. Get a goal-setting buddy

One of the biggest challenges of goal-setting as a busy mom is simply sticking with it. That’s where an accountability partner can help.

Having someone who can follow along with your goal-setting journey can help you stay accountable.

It could be your mom, a sibling, your spouse, a friend–anyone you feel comfortable sharing your goals with.

Checking in with your accountability partner weekly can make it easier to stay on track with your goals.

And they can offer motivation for those days when you feel like giving up.

Just make sure you choose someone who’s going to encourage you. There’s nothing more harmful to your goal-setting efforts than having a Negative Nancy picking apart what you’re trying to achieve.

9. Reward yourself

Setting big goals as a busy mom can seem daunting. Because you’ve just got so much going on already.

One way to stay motivated to crush your goals is to give yourself rewards along the way.

So, say you want to lose 20 pounds. You could give yourself a small treat, like a new book or a pedicure, every time you knock off another five pounds.

The reward doesn’t have to be something huge.

But it should be something that keeps you pushing toward your goals, even on days when it feels impossible.

10. Be flexible and don’t get discouraged

Here’s the thing about setting goals as a busy mom.

You won’t always reach them as quickly as you’d like.

Life happens, especially when you’ve got kids in the picture. There’s always going to be something that’s distracting you from working on your goals.

It’s happened to me plenty of times. And when it happens to you, you can either give up or you can dig in even deeper.

The key is to stay flexible and be prepared to adapt.

So instead of saving $6,000 in a year, it might take you 18 months to reach your goal.

Or rather than losing those 20 pounds in six months, it may take you nine or 10.

When your goals aren’t happening in the time frame that you originally planned, don’t get down on yourself.

Instead, remind yourself of the progress you’ve made. Then adjust your timeline if necessary.

And most importantly, keep going!

What are you doing to reach your mom goals?

I’ve shared my best tips for being a goal-slaying mama, now over to you!

Do you have your own secret hack or tip for achieving your goals? Or do you have a big goal you’re proud of accomplishing?

Head to the comments and tell me about it, then please pin and share this post if it helped you!

Read these posts next for more busy mom motivation:

12 Best Planners for Moms to Help You Get Organized

9 Effective Ways to Deal With Mom Burnout When You’re Feeling Stressed

8 Genius Organized Mom Hacks You Need to Try Now