If some of your goals are to have more energy and be more productive it’s important for you to understand how to schedule your day in light of your body’s natural energy rhythms. If you’re a busy homeschooling, working mom wanting to get more done in less time, today’s episode is for you…
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Connect With Toni Hench on IG @tonihench
Learn More about working with Toni Hench
Submit Screenshots of Simply Freeing Podcast Reviews to Jackie@whole9family.com
This Episode Discusses:
How to pay attention to your ultradian rhythms
How to schedule your homeschool day
The importance of taking brain breaks
Children’s attention spans, movement and learning
Your environment and learning
Today is the 2nd part of a 2 part series in managing your energy with toni hench an energy coach for moms. Today we’re building on what was talked about in the last episode and discussing planning your day in light of your natural energy cycles. This one is so good! I hope you enjoy it!
Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT:
Do you have any tips in particular for homeschool moms and how they could schedule their day so that they can keep their energy levels up?
Yes! One of the things I think that's most important is to pay attention to, we talked about the circadian rhythm already, but to pay attention to the other rhythm running our day which are your ultradian rhythms. So these are about 90 minutes to a couple hours. Your brain goes through these energy rhythms where you have like a little bit of a warmup period. Then you have like a focus period where your brain is really like optimally ready for learning or focusing on a task and then you kind of have like a winding down period where your brain and body needs to recharge.
So as a teacher, I really saw these in the classroom but I really see them in my day everyday that when I plan around those like 90 minute to two hour chunks, it's really much more productive. Because we generally tend to think that we're going to get more done if we just kind of push through those energy slumps, if we just like just like muscle our way through and we just keep going. The problem with that is that at the end of the end of the day that adds up. When your brain needs to recharge and it’s not getting that, your brain is going into the exhaustion mode and so we're just kind of creeping slowly and slowly and that's why most of us get to the end of the day and you're just like spent and you're completely exhausted.
So regarding planning, here's how I would do it. You would mostly you set up your day for about 90 minutes so like let's say in the morning at 90 minutes, what can you do for the last 20 minutes of that? So for an hour let's say it takes you an hour and 10 minutes to get up, get ready, get breakfast going maybe you're sitting down and eating for that 20 minutes and that allows you to kind of rest and slow down and your brain to recharge.
Then let's say you’re working or you're starting school and maybe like there's a small warm up activity for about 15 minutes or so and then you have that brain time. (For kids it's a lot less. I think we all notice that actual focus time for kids is less) But their bodies and brains still work on that about 90 minutes to 120 minutes clock. You’ll notice that generally your ultradian rhythms peak and get a little bit longer between 10 and 2pm. Before 10 they're a little bit shorter and after 2 they're a little bit shorter just because they're no longer in that optimum period. So if you can kind of pay attention to this and you just notice this, once you kind of have that like 90 minute marker you'll start to notice like “oh I could see they're all kind of like zoning out” or “I'm getting tired” and you can take a rest break…and it always doesn't have to be something like sitting down or what we generally tend to think of restful. It’s like during the middle of the day it's mostly active rest like a walk or putting in a load of laundry or something, just getting my brain a second to switch out of that like heavy working mode or teaching mode if you're homeschooling…something that's more taxing on your brain kind of switching it to something else.
Okay so you mentioned that before 10am and after 2pm are not the most optimal energy level times. Is that true?
Like it's 10:00 AM is most people and sometimes it's 9 or 8 for some people but generally around then we Ihit like our focus brain time. They call it like biological prime time. It's like when your brain and your body wakes up and you're ready to go. So when you kind of notice this, the ultradian rhythms will be a little bit shorter like you'll need a little bit of rest time more frequently before that. Then generally after about 2:00 PM you'll need a little bit more rest just because you're getting to the end of the day.
So if you kind of think about that rhythm as you set up your day you’ll start to notice that kids will start to follow our rhythm because their bodies and brains are set up the same way because we're generally kind of orchestrating their day. So when you wake up you're triggering that first ultradian rhythm with the light, with how hydrated you are, with the moving of your body so you start to do that and you can use those same things as rest breaks throughout your day….hydration, movement, light and breathing. Those can be the little brain breaks that you put in there. But even like simply switching from like brain heavy tasks like maybe you're teaching math or instructing something and then just switching to something else like, OK now we're going to put in a little laundry or go on a walk or something like that will give your brain that time to recharge 'cause you literally have little batteries. You have this like certain amount of energy that your brain can hold and that's what causes the ultradian rhythm so as you use it, and you get toward the end, you need to recharge it. It's kind of like you know you spent that day with your phone always never above like 20%. You’re always running around trying to find a charger…If you don't start the day like fully charged or you don't stop and like fully recharge that phone it actually ends up being a lot more frustrating and costing you a lot more in the end because you're always running on that low end of the battery but literally just paying attention and saying like OK I'm I'm starting to feel that energy dip. I'm gonna take five to 10 minutes and recharge. Then when you come back to that task (and I know that's it's hard to think that way as a mom especially) but involving your kids like what can I do in a way that they're gonna give me a break and they're gonna get a break too? So maybe it's a walk. Maybe it's a dance party. Maybe it's like we're all gonna stop here and clean up for a minute or throw in a load of laundry and you give yourself that break and then when you get back into that rhythm, your brain is ready to engage in that task.
This is this is helpful to know 'cause I think for me personally sometimes when I have everyone's attention, which I feel like is so rare, it's like I don't really want it to stop because I feel like if I do that dance party or that walk, I'll never get this back. You know it's like it's so much work to gather everybody again so I'm I like really want to maximize on the time that we have together 'cause I know it's so short but there is so much that you could do outside (and this is what I talk about a lot) There's so much you can do outside of sitting at a table and doing homeschooling anyway so it's kind of that mindset shift where you can learn through the walk. You can learn doing other things. Learning how to do the laundry is a part of homeschooling as well so you can take your brain breaks and still do so much learning and educating through that.
And actually this is a helpful mindset 'cause I get that, especially as a new teacher, we always talk about time. We stuff all this into this time and that's just kind of our culture but I think it doesn't come out anywhere more than in education. The problem is that after a certain point of stuffing (and I like to think about it as like having an overfilled bag.) At a certain point your stuffing more in there and it’s actually more likely that stuff is gonna start to fall out. So when you are maximizing that time, it really is paying attention to their attention levels. And with kids we all used to say it's their age plus two so if they're three, they can pay attention for five minutes and actually if they're ten they can pay attention for 12 minutes and actually hold and retain that information so when we think of it like you could actually get more attention and more understanding and more learning with less time if you’ve got their attention and you get like one main idea or something in there, they're actually going to retain it and their brain is going to have the time to start to make connections. And the point is they're actually learning more after you stop talking, which is an odd thing to think about, but their brain starts to put the connections together and their brains need that energy and time afterwards to process that information.
Yes! This is this really true and I think the educating model is like the teacher teaches. The students listen and that's how they learn but it's just not true. They don't learn as much that way. They learn more by telling other kids what they learned about or telling another parent what they learned and thinking about it afterwards. It's so true and this is something that I think is missing a lot with the way the school system is set up. It doesn't really promote the best learning. I know that they are trying to change things and I do see a difference in our education system. We've come a long way from where we used to be but there's still so much room for growth and it's very hard when you have so many kids in a room and in one classroom and with one teacher to be able to have as many breaks as they actually need to be able to thrive.
I completely agree and that's why I think the beauty of homeschooling is that you do have so much control over your schedule and we've never been shown that your schedule and your environment is really your productivity. How you are setting up your day is really all you're getting out of learning. 70% to 80% of the learning depends on the environment in which you're doing it.
Yeah. It's really true. I talk about this all the time, regarding clutter, I cannot think in an environment like that so I have to have less stuff and a clear table in order to really process what I'm doing and I would imagine that a lot of children are the same way so there's just so much that goes into learning.
And when you think about that, clutter is and the environment part of it, people don't understand like that is energy management like when you are looking at something and there's just so much visually to process your brain is spending energy just processing that visual clutter. It's not sending energy focusing on this task. And for kids it's even more so. I think in a lot of traditional classrooms you had so much stuff all over the walls and it's like their brains are literally spending energy just to tune out that visual clutter to try and focus. I was on different podcast and I was talking about the fact that you'll see that adding movement into your day will change how you feel. But we've all been taught to sit still and think that means focusing. If you look at a young kid, they're never sitting still. They're always moving and their bodies are always in these odd positions and they're like sprawling off the bed or laying off the chair but that's actually what our bodies were designed to do. The more you can incorporate movement into your day in natural ways that's a huge energy booster there 'cause there's nothing that will make your body shut down your energy production faster than sitting still.
Yeah, and depending on how you were raised and if you weren't homeschooled and you were sent to school, it’s another mindset shift to see that and to say there's no way they could be retaining information but I have been blown away my oldest daughter when she was little, she would be moving around so much when I was reading to her yet she understood everything. She answered every question and I was like, how is this even possible? because I was so used to teaching in the schools reading books while everyone was sitting on the floor and then I had my daughter and I see that “wow she's really getting it” but yet she hasn't sat still for a second and that kind of is what opened my eyes to see that there is another way to do things, you know? You don't have to have everyone sitting down to be able to understand and learn.
Yeah that really has a lot to do with energy. It takes energy to process information and when your body is moving it just makes it (especially for kids) much easier of an environment for their brain to incorporate that information because their brains just light up when you're moving.
Thank you so much! I learned a ton. I'm so excited to have this one air! Tell us where we can find you on social media and how we can work with you.
Thank you! I love talking about this especially when it comes to education because it's such a passion of mine to have kids learn in an environment that makes sense for their brains and bodies where learning is fun. You can find me at tonihench.com and then also on all the socials: tick tock, Facebook, and Instagram at the same handle @tonihench and I offer a program called design you day which is all of these tools with an energy tracker with a scheduling system so that it teaches you how to pay attention to those energy rhythms, how to put those breaks in there and it just makes designing your own schedule and system for you easy to do because I feel like we're always trying to work by somebody else’s schedule and it doesn't work for us or for our families or for how our life is set up and then I also offer individual one on one energy coaching for moms who wanna be able to be optimized with their energy and work less but do more.
That’s what we all want right? Thank you so much coming on and sharing!
Thank you thank you thank you to those of you that took the time out of your day to write a review for this podcast. It helps me get this podcast in front of more moms! I’m running a giveaway for the month of march 2022. If you take the time out of your day to write a review here on apple podcasts, please email me a screenshot of it at Jackie@whole9family.com and you’ll be entered to win a Target gift card. I truly appreciate you and hope you are enjoying this podcast as much as I enjoy recording them for you.