Episode 66 - Why Your One Habit Needs a System

Jan 6

Written By Lucy Clarke

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Welcome to Episode 66 of the Time for Living Podcast!

TRANSCRIPT

show notes

You protected your one habit on Day 1. You showed up. You did the thing. So why does it feel like you're still drowning? Here's what nobody tells you about building habits as a mom entrepreneur: protecting 15 minutes doesn't solve the problem if the other 23 hours and 45 minutes are complete chaos.

This episode is for mom entrepreneurs who are tired of starting over every Monday, wondering why their habits keep falling apart when real life shows up. If you've been protecting your one anchor habit but still feel scattered, overwhelmed, and like nothing's actually moving forward—this is the missing piece you need.

In this episode, you'll discover:

Why your Day 1 matters more than you think (whether it went perfectly or was a complete disaster)
The real reason isolated habits collapse during December chaos, sick kids, and business launches—and it's not about your discipline
What the "23 hours and 45 minutes problem" reveals about sustainable habit-building for mom entrepreneurs
The two systems every habit needs to survive long-term: a Home Hub (infrastructure for your life) and a Business Engine (strategic clarity for your business)
How to identify exactly where you need systems by tracking what's actually breaking in your day
The specific homework that will set you up for the complete system-building workshop coming later this month

READY TO TAKE ACTION:

Grab the Hidden Time Finder at timeforliving.co/timefinder o discover where your time is actually going—then listen to find out what to DO with that time once you find it.

Let’s Connect:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeforlivingco/

• Email: hello@timeforliving.co

Final Thought:

Your habit needs a home. Your habit needs fuel. And you're about to build both.

TRANSCRIPT - Why Your One Habit Needs a System

INTRODUCTION

So it's been about 24 hours since some of you protected your one anchor habit for the first time. And I have to know—how did it go?

Did you actually do it? Did you get those 15 minutes? Or did you wake up at 5am ready to knock it out, only to find your toddler standing at your bedroom door asking for breakfast an hour and a half early?

Maybe you planned to work during afternoon nap time, but nap time didn't happen. Or you were going to tackle that business task after 8pm bedtime, but bedtime turned into a two-hour negotiation and by the time you sat down you were too fried to think.

Listen—I want to hear about it. All of it. The wins AND the disasters. DM me on Instagram because here's the thing: Your Day 1 matters way more than you think, even if it didn't go perfectly.

I'm Lucy, and you're listening to Time For Living—the podcast for mom entrepreneurs building businesses in the pockets of time between pickup and dinner, between bedtime and exhaustion, between wanting more and feeling guilty for wanting it.

Today we're doing a quick Day 1 check-in. But I'm also going to tell you something that took me way too long to figure out—something that's going to change how you think about building habits in this season of life.

Because here's what nobody tells you: Protecting one habit isn't enough. Not long-term. Not when you're building a business around kids and chaos and a life that refuses to stay on schedule.

DAY 1 CELEBRATION & REALITY CHECK

Okay, first things first. If you showed up yesterday—if you protected those 15 minutes even though it wasn't perfect—I need you to hear this: That was a big deal.

You made a decision on Sunday and you followed through on Monday. In the middle of everything else you had to do yesterday, you chose yourself and your business for 15 minutes.

Do you know how rare that is?

Most people make goals and then abandon them by Tuesday. You didn't. You showed up.

So celebrate that. Text someone. Put a checkmark on your wall calendar. Screenshot your timer and post it to your stories. I'm serious—the wins you celebrate are the wins you repeat.

Now. If Day 1 didn't go the way you planned? You're in good company.

Maybe your one habit was supposed to happen at 5:30am but your baby woke up at 5:15. Maybe you were going to batch content during school hours but you got a call from the school nurse at 9:45. Maybe you planned evening work time but your kid melted down at bedtime and you fell asleep next to them.

Here's what I need you to know: That's not failure. That's just life with kids.

And it's also really valuable information.

Because now you know something about your habit. Maybe 5:30am doesn't actually work in this season. Maybe you need a backup plan for when school hours get hijacked. Maybe you need a different anchor time that isn't dependent on your kid's bedtime cooperation.

All of that? That's data. Not a verdict on whether you're cut out for entrepreneurship. Just information about what needs to adjust.

So whether Day 1 was a home run or a complete disaster—you learned something. And that means you're already ahead of where you were on Sunday.

THE THING NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT BUILDING HABITS

Here's what nobody tells you about building habits as a mom entrepreneur:

Protecting one habit doesn't actually solve your problem.

I know, I know. That sounds contradictory after I just spent the last few minutes celebrating your Day 1 and telling you to keep showing up.

But stay with me, because this is important.

When you protect 15 minutes for your business every morning, that's amazing. That's real progress. But here's what's also true: You still have 23 hours and 45 minutes left in your day. And if those other 23 hours and 45 minutes are complete chaos? Your 15-minute habit isn't going to save you.

Let me show you what I mean.

You wake up early, you do your 15 minutes, you feel great about yourself. Gold star. You showed up.

But then 9am hits and you realize you forgot about the thing you were supposed to bring to school today. So now you're scrambling.

Then 1pm—the time block you had planned for work—gets hijacked because you never dealt with that admin task that's now urgent.

Then 5pm rolls around and you're staring into your fridge trying to figure out dinner because you don't have a meal planning system.

Then 8pm—the time you were going to work on your business—you're too exhausted because you've been putting out fires all day.

Your habit survived. But your day was still a disaster.

And here's the part that really gets me: We blame ourselves for this. We think, "I must not be disciplined enough. I must not be organized enough. Other people can do this, why can't I?"

But that's not the problem.

The problem is that your habit doesn't have a home. It doesn't have infrastructure supporting it. It's just floating in the middle of chaos, trying to survive.

WHY ISOLATED HABITS COLLAPSE

Think about what actually derails your habits.

It's not lack of willpower. It's not lack of commitment.

It's your kid getting sick and suddenly you have zero time because you don't have systems that can run without you.

It's December hitting and all your routines falling apart because you don't have a plan for managing the chaos of holidays, events, and schedule changes.

It's launching a new offer and everything else collapsing because you don't have business systems that tell you exactly what to prioritize.

Real life eats isolated habits alive.

And the thing is—you can keep rebuilding that habit. You can start over every Monday. You can recommit every January 1st.

But until you build the infrastructure around it? You're going to keep ending up in the same place: exhausted, overwhelmed, and wondering why showing up for 15 minutes isn't actually moving the needle.

Here's the pattern I see over and over: Mom entrepreneurs get really good at protecting one thing. They show up for their morning routine, or their weekly planning session, or their content creation time.

And they're committed. They're disciplined. They're doing everything "right."

But they haven't built the infrastructure that makes that habit sustainable.

They don't have a system for meal planning so they're not figuring out dinner at 5pm every day. They don't have a process for managing household admin so they're not constantly putting out fires. They don't have a clear business plan so they know exactly what to do in those 15 minutes when they finally get them.

So when real life shows up—and real life always shows up—the habit collapses.

WHAT YOUR HABITS ACTUALLY NEED TO SURVIVE

So here's what I figured out after watching this pattern play out—in my own life and with so many mom entrepreneurs I talk to:

Your habits need two things to survive long-term when you're building a business in pockets of time.

And I'm going to tell you what they are, because understanding this changes everything.

The First Thing: A Home

Your habits need a HOME. They need to live inside a system that handles all the life stuff that competes for your time and attention.

I'm talking about a Home Hub System—a real, functional system for managing your household so it doesn't constantly derail your business time.

Because here's what's true: You cannot protect your morning business routine if you don't have a system that gets everyone fed, dressed, and out the door without you managing every single detail.

You cannot focus during your work blocks if you're getting interrupted every 10 minutes with "Mom, where's my water bottle?" or "Mom, what's for snack?"

You cannot build a sustainable business if your home life is held together with stress and last-minute scrambling.

Your business habit needs a home that runs without you micromanaging it 24/7.

That's not about being a perfect Pinterest mom with a color-coded pantry. It's about having simple, repeatable systems for the stuff that has to happen every day anyway—meals, laundry, schedules, the administrative burden of running a household.

When you have that infrastructure in place? Your habit has space to breathe. It has protection. It has a home.

The Second Thing: Fuel

But here's the second thing—and this one's just as important: Your habits need FUEL.

They need to be connected to a bigger Hub—your business goals, your revenue targets, the actual strategic work that moves the needle forward.

I call this the Business Hub System. It's the framework that tells you exactly what to work on during those 15 minutes you're protecting, based on what your business actually needs right now.

Because showing up for 15 minutes every day is great. But if you're spending those 15 minutes doing random tasks that aren't connected to growth? You're just busy. You're not actually building.

Your habit needs fuel—clear priorities, strategic focus, and a plan for how those 15-minute blocks add up to real business results.

So that's the framework: Habits without a Home Hub collapse during chaos. Habits without a Business Hub create busy work, not business growth.

You need both.

THE CONNECTION YOU'RE MISSING

Now, some of you already grabbed the Hidden Time Finder audit at timeforliving.co/timefinder and if you did, that's amazing. You know where your time is going. You've identified those pockets of 20 minutes here, 45 minutes there, maybe a full hour on Tuesday mornings.

That's step one. That's huge. You found the time.

But here's the question that tool can't answer: What do you actually DO with that time once you find it?

How do you organize it so your home runs smoothly AND your business grows?

How do you make sure that when you sit down for those 15 or 45 or 60 minutes, you're not wasting them trying to figure out what to work on?

How do you protect that time from getting hijacked by home chaos or business fires or the million other things competing for your attention?

That's what these two systems solve.

The Home Hub creates the infrastructure so your life doesn't constantly interrupt your business time.

The Business Hub creates the strategic clarity so your business time actually creates results.

And when you have both? That's when your one anchor habit becomes truly sustainable. That's when you stop starting over every Monday. That's when you actually build momentum that lasts through December, through sick kids, through launches, through all of it.

WHAT'S COMING (AND WHY IT MATTERS NOW)

So here's what I want you to know—and I'm telling you this now because I don't want you to waste months figuring this out the hard way.

I'm teaching you exactly how to build both of these systems—the Home Hub and the Business Hub, how they work together, how to customize them for YOUR life, YOUR family, YOUR business—in a live workshop later this month.

I'm going to walk you through the complete setup. The templates. The step-by-step process. The troubleshooting for when it doesn't work perfectly right away.

This isn't theory. This is the actual infrastructure that keeps my business running and my home functional while I work in fragmented 15-minute blocks with a 7-year-old who plays hockey and a property management business and a podcast and all the things.

And I want to build these systems WITH you so you're not trying to figure it out alone at 10pm after everyone's finally asleep.

I'll give you all the workshop details in next week's episode—the date, the time, how to register, everything.

But I'm telling you now because I want you to know: This is coming. And if you're feeling like protecting one habit isn't enough—you're right. It's not. And there's a solution.

WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW

So here's your homework for this week—and this is important because it's going to set you up for what we're building in the workshop.

First: Keep protecting that one anchor habit.

Show up tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Keep proving to yourself that you can do this, even when it's imperfect, even when life is chaotic.

Second: Start paying attention to what's breaking.

When your habit gets derailed, notice what derailed it. Was it home stuff? Business fires? Lack of clarity about what to work on? Write it down.

When you DO protect your habit but feel scattered or unproductive, notice that too. What's making it hard to focus? What would need to change?

Those aren't signs that you're failing. Those are signs of exactly where you need systems.

Here's what you can do in the next 15 minutes: Grab a piece of paper or open your notes app. Write down the three biggest things that hijacked your time yesterday. Not the one habit you protected—the OTHER stuff. The fires you put out. The forgotten tasks. The scrambling.

That list? That's your roadmap for what systems you need to build.

And if you're already thinking, "Okay, I hear you—I need more than just one habit, I need actual infrastructure for all of this"—perfect. Stay tuned. That's exactly what we're building together.

CLOSE

One more time: If you showed up on Day 1, I am so proud of you. Send me a DM and tell me about it. I want to celebrate with you.

And if you didn't show up on Day 1? No shame. Just data. You learned something. Use it. Try again tomorrow.

Keep protecting that one habit. And get ready—because next week I'm giving you the complete workshop details and teaching you exactly what these two systems are and why you need them both.