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Time Management Tips to Prioritize Everything To Help You Fulfill Your Life

I’m giving you time management tips to help you out but also a printable resource to help you keep track! Happy Birthday, Rural Women Inspired Podcast!

We are celebrating the 100th episode of the Rural Women Inspired Podcast with the top 5 episodes! I’ve been sharing real rural tips, tricks, and solutions to create the freedom to live a fulfilled, healthy, and happy rural life. We’re going to highlight a few of the most popular ones today. I’m also going to be giving you a tip on time blocking and giving you all some time blocking sheets so you can begin to create more freedom in your life.

This time block sheet is the tool I use weekly that prioritizes everything I want to do from day to day. It has changed my life and helped me to take control. I hope it will do the same for you.

In this episode you’ll find:

  • Why I started the podcast
  • What tool I’m giving away to help you create a fulfilled life
  • An excerpt from each of my top 5 episodes

Why I Started the Podcast

May of 2016 I was a brand new mom with my second daughter who was two months old and I was going cray cray at home. Previously I was working as an extension agent for the the last seven years and before that I was in school. I always felt like I had a purpose in life. I loved my job as an extension agent and had worked hard receiving my master’s degree.

I loved teaching and helping people that would come in and ask me questions about gardening and goat keeping, all of the things that I have know for a long, long time. I was living my dream job and when I became a mom and everything kind of changed for us. When we had our first daughter I went back to work and she went to daycare but we were kind of overwhelmed by everything and when we had our second daughter we made the decision that I would stay home with the girls.

Any of you listening may be able to relate to the next part. I had really bad postpartum depression and anxiety and those were really dark times in my life. You can listen to past episodes here and here. So in the midst of all of that and as an outlet for me I created this podcast. I was already blogging so it seemed natural to create a podcast alongside it. I had discovered podcasts as part of my coping mechanisms for my anxiety and depression. So when I was alone on the farm, when my girls were sleeping or busy playing that silence in my head would caused me to have anxiety attacks. So I listened to podcasts and audio books which has helped immensely. I never actually got help for my anxiety or depression mainly because I didn’t feel like they were that extreme. I did need help but my husband thought I was weak if I went to get help and nothing against my husband, I love him very much, but he didn’t understand. I didn’t understand mental health and what I was going through.

Anxiety and depression does not make you weak, asking for help doesn’t make you weak, so if you’re struggling do not hesitate to reach out for the help you need.

The Top 5 Podcast Episodes

#1 Potato Prep for Your Garden

This one definitely surprised me. Potato prep is something that is so important for growing great potatoes in your garden. Here is an excerpt from that episode:

It’s important to to do this before you play in potatoes and I’m going to give you all the reasons why you should do it. I’m also going to give you all the steps for potato prep, the way that I’ve done it for years and years. And also I’m going to give you some interesting ways that you can grow potatoes wherever you are, whether you’re in town and you can’t really have like a garden spot in your backyard. There’s other ways that you can grow potatoes. It take even less space. Maybe you don’t have room. So there’s tons and tons of different ways and I’m going to give you different five different ways, five of my favorite different ways. So sit back and relax and we’re gonna go right into the steps for preparing those seed potatoes. So why is it necessary to prepare a seed potatoes before planting?


Well, first of all, it promotes healthy plant growth. When you divide the potatoes, it’s going to be basically fresh cutting into a living thing. So the curing process is basically letting the potato dry for a few days, let it dry, and that in turn will prevent diseases from happening and rotting. That is why it’s important to let the potato set for two to three days. So let’s go into the steps of how to do this. First of all, remember to always purchase new seed potatoes. I know a lot of you might be using your old seed potatoes from your basement or for last year. You can do that, but you may not have as good of a crop. You may not have as much yield or as much plant vigor. So in order to promote all of these things and grow plenty of seed potatoes to meet your needs, you’re going to want to purchase new seed potatoes every single year.

So you have your potatoes. Then what you need to do is cut each of the potatoes and two one and a half to two ounce pieces. So generally an average size potatoes you can cut into four pieces. But what you want to keep in mind is that each piece has an eye. And you know the eye is just the little sprout on each, on each part of the potato. If a potato only has two eyes, you’re going to want to just cut it into two pieces. So you want to make sure that each piece you cut has an eye because that’s where the plant’s gonna grow from. Okay. Now what if the potato only has one eye? Well, what I usually do is I usually just plant the whole potato like it is because you won’t get an eye anywhere else on the potato.

And like I said, it’s important to have that eye. You generally will not grow anything if you just plant a potato, I’ve tried before and it just doesn’t work. So you need to really make sure that you have an eye on your seed potato piece. All right, so once your pieces are all cut, you’re going to want to place them in a warm humid location for two to three days. And again, this allows the cut surface to heal. Imagine if you have a cut and you’re letting it heal. Well, this is kind of the same process. You cut the potato and you need to let it kind of scab over before it’s ready to go into the ground. So after a few days you’re ready to plant those potatoes into that fluffy seed bed.

#2 23 Backyard Business Ideas to Create From Your Hobbies

These are just some examples and I’m planning on diving into this topic more this year. These could be side hustles or if you want it to be your sole business. Here’s a peak at that episode:

You may or may not be making money with it right now, but have you ever thought about turning it into some kind of business, something that you can make an income with? You know, my mission for my platform for form fit living is to create the healthy life you can thrive in and love and maybe your goal is to create that life, but you also need to remember that you have to make an income and everything takes money these days no matter what and including your hobbies. So with that said, I’m going to share with you some ideas that maybe you already have the hobby that you could turn into a business. And I’m going to give you some tips on how to make that happen. Before I give you these ideas, there are a few little details you must consider before you start making an income on anything.

First of all, before you make money, you have to spend money, okay? You have to make an investment into your business before you can start making that money. And again, maybe you’re already doing this. Maybe you’re already doing it as a hobby and that’s great and you love doing it. You have a passion for it and that’s wonderful. But know that if you’re going to take it to the next level, there’s still some little investments that you might have to, to take before you do this. Okay? So for example, if you want to start selling your produce from your garden at the farmer’s market, there may be some licensing the you have to go through depending on what state you’re in. And sometimes that licensing costs a little bit of money. For example, like you want to sell certified organic produce, well that certified organic, take some certification to be certified organic.

That’s an example of the investment you would have to take for your business. Okay? Another one could be beekeeping. Maybe you’ve been beekeeping for awhile and you want to start selling the honey to others. Okay? So you have the investment of like the jars and the licensing and maybe maybe your state requires that you, you have certain things on the label that you might have to pay for. Of course there’s always purchasing more equipment and more bees if you want to do package bees. If you can’t find swarms. So those are just a few examples and really there’s no business venture from your hobbies out there that they’re not going to have to spend any money on.

#3 Get Fit in Your Mindset and Body with Anna Woods

This girl is a blast to follow on social media. She just competed in Florida for crossfit and she posted all of the workouts and I was tired just looking at it!

What strength training can you modify the movements to whatever age or ability. Even my gals I trained, still personal train that are in wheelchairs, can do these workouts and they’re all being empowered and excited by this concept of strength and lifting more weight and changing their mindset to that of I am enough. What I do today is important for me and I’m worthy of taking 30 minutes of my time today. We’re asking my spouse to give me 30 minutes of time today to work on myself because I’m going to come back a better mom and a better wife or a better employee, a better person in society as a whole. I think just this journey for me to strength, this journey to changing my mindset, that the idea of setting boundaries around myself. I have my clients, we make goals. I said, I want to know three goals you have for yourself and we write them down. Then I say, I want to know three dreams that you have in your life because for some reason along the way we as women quit dreaming because we want our kids to be successful. We want everyone else to do well and do great, which is amazing and wonderful but we can’t lose sight of our self in there and so guilty when we take time for herself and that is so huge. Anna, thank you so much for mentioning that because like I mentioned in my anxiety stems a lot from the concept of time and just the fact that there we only have so much and a lot of my anxiety stems from the feeling of not having enough time but we all have enough time.

This concept of not having enough time is why I started utilizing time blocking sheets and why I created them for you. Go to the resources below and grab your own time blocking sheets. They run from midnight to midnight for us night owls! I designed them with simplicity in mind so anyone could use them and you can only fit one thing at a time. The idea of it is for you to take from your list of things to do, your most important things that need to be done, and to block them. Block out the time. This can include, time with your kids, playing with your kids, time with your spouse, time with your mom, time with your significant, walking your pet, doing this thing for your business, doing this chore that you have, going for a run, exercising, etc, block that out on your time sheet and stick to it and be so very on point with what it is that is going to create your best life.

#4 Eight Spring Garden Tips that You Need to Know to have a More Successful Garden Season

I’ve been gardening for years, my parents had a big garden we used and so I’ve learned a lot over the years. Take a quick look at this popular episode:

Another goal you might have for your garden is feeding your family. You know, that was my always my mom’s goal. How many rows of ps could we eat on through the winter until we got ps again, how many rows of potatoes would feed us this winter, you know, family of five, we, we plan like eight to 10 rows of potatoes. So it’s just little goals like that. What are your goals for your garden? You want to keep in mind how many days it takes for the seed to germinate and come up. And then also how many days it takes for the crop to be ready. Along with those goals, there’s certain things you want to be aware of when you’re even purchasing those seeds. So with that in mind, if you have your goals, you’ll know exactly how much seed you’ll need to purchase or to plant in your garden. Then you’ll need to make a map.

#5 Winter Goat Care Guide for a Healthy Herd

So this is always one of my most popular blog posts as well. People are always looking for how to care for goats during winter. So I have several, several tips, but I’m only going to give you a short excerpt:

We’ve talked about how to manage goat health and what to keep in mind during those cold days and nights ahead because winter is coming. It’s important to know all that and to have a plan to be smart and stay within your budget. Most importantly to make sure that you have everything they need and to enjoy winter because it’s a long season and if you absolutely hate it, you’re going to have a long depressing season. So why not learn to love it, learn to manage and you won’t have many problems through the season. Kind of returning to the beginning of the episode number one is the parasites really aren’t a problem except for the coccidia and the lung worm. There’s another worm, it’s a what I had a little bit of trouble with last year. Tapeworms and those worms can be a problem during the winter. You still need to do some fecal samples during the winter time, but they aren’t as big of a problem as they are going to be this fall and spring. So keep that in mind. The second reason I really love winter goat care is because I get to spend a lot of time with my goats. I graze my commercial herd late spring through the fall and they are out there grazing all of those months and that’s about eight months of the 12 months that they’re out on pasture and browse and I really don’t see much of them. So these four months of winter, I get to spend quite a bit of time with them, which is kind of nice for the most part because I do like my goats. They’re just very happy out on pasture and, and that’s why I don’t see as much of them as I do in the winter time.

Wrap Up

So there you have it friends. My top five episodes of all time played during this 100th episode of the Rural Women Inspired podcast. I hope that I’ve inspired you over the past 100 episodes at least once and that you are enjoying the podcast. I always really and truthfully would love it if you would give me some feedback. If you want to, you can contact me, you can leave a review, you can leave it in a review or a comment on one of the episodes. I would love to have some feedback, maybe some topics that you want covered and I think I know my audience but there may be some topics that I’m not covering that you want to hear more about. I know that I’m not an expert on everything but I can usually generally find someone who is, I have those connections so just hit me up and let me know who you want to have on the show.

I also would also have a plan in the works to have a group, a Facebook community. This was my assistant’s idea that I need this. In the next few weeks I’m going to be starting a Facebook community just for the rural women inspired podcast listeners. So that is something to look forward to as well. It might be even sooner than later.

Resources

Time blocking sheets