Very few of us have lives focused on just one thing. Most of us instead juggle multiple roles, and try to do well at all of them. Author, attorney, and homeschooling mom Cara Putman understands the challenges of a multifaceted life. Dubbed by a friend as the “Do-It-All Mom,” Cara shares openly about the not-always-pretty realities of managing a busy life and a busy household, and encourages us to live our lives by grace, rejecting the temptation to compare ourselves to other women.
Doing It All? Or Doing What Matters
Like most of us, Cara juggles a multitude of roles and commitments. In our conversation, Cara shares some practical tips and tools she uses to manage her life and time so she can accomplish the things that are important to her personally, while still loving and serving her family and her community. Some days it all works . . . and some days, not so much. But always there is the opportunity to extend and accept grace and a fresh start each day.
Set Aside Comparison and Live in Grace (and in Community)
Cara and I talked about the struggles we women have with comparing ourselves with each other, and how it isolates us from each other. The comparisons are never fair, because we tend to compare our insides to other people’s outsides. Cara wrote a great blog post about comparison recently. Her points about how comparison isolates us really resonated with me:
If I’m feeling the need to compare, then I’m going to hold people at arm’s length. From that distance I look like Wonder Woman. Get too close and you see the fact that I hate to cook. That the corners of my house can create an encouraging habitat for a farm of dust bunnies. That I lose my temper when I feel stressed and overwhelmed. That I long for me time and girl time when others think I should be completely fulfilled with my kids alone.”
Please visit her blog to read the whole post.
About Cara
Cara C. Putman, the award-winning author of 20 books, graduated high school at 16, college at 20, and completed her law degree at 27. FIRST for Women magazine called her latest novel, Shadowed by Grace, “captivating” and a “novel with ‘the works.’” Cara is active at her church and a lecturer on business and employment law to graduate students at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management. She also practices law and is a second-generation homeschooling mom. Cara is currently pursuing her Master’s in Business Administration at Krannert. Cara serves on the executive board of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), an organization she has served in various roles since 2007. She lives with her husband and four children in Indiana. In addition to her own blog, Cara writes online at The Grove and The Writer’s Alley.
Connect with Cara online
Resources
- Cara uses a big calendar on the refrigerator to manage the family’s activities schedule.
- If social media is part of your business, try Buffer to schedule your social media posts.
- Cara is reading (and recommends) Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters!.
- If you loved the movie, The Monuments Men, check out Cara’s wonderful novel, Shadowed by Grace: A Story of Monuments Men.
What productivity rules DON’T work for you? I need your input for an upcoming episode . . .
I’d love to have your help for an upcoming episode on “Productivity Rules That Don’t Work.” No matter what “they” say, nothing works for everybody all the time. I’d like to talk about the “rules” that “everybody” says we must follow. What time management or organization “rules” have you heard that just do not work for you? Please send your thoughts to me via email at feedback@theproductivewoman.com or send a voice message by clicking on the button near the top right of the website (or the “voicemail” button at the top of The Productive Woman Facebook page. Thank you for helping me make the upcoming episode really helpful to listeners!
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