Monday Musings Ep 2 - Productivity Goals

 Welcome to Monday Musings with Kissa, where I share what the heck happened last week, what I have planned for this week, and a story time, not in that particular order.This is an audio companion to my Substack newsletter that I send out every Thursday. So if you're not already subscribed, there's a button somewhere here where you can do so, and content. As of this recording is currently free. So welcome. Let's talk about last week. So last week. Was actually my birthday week.I had my birthday on Thursday, July 10th, and I was talking to a friend about this, but honestly, I feel like turning 40 is very polarizing. You're either. Thinking that it's a milestone birthday, so you're gonna have some kind of party and you're like ready to celebrate, or you're on the opposite end and you're like me, where I just wanted to keep things quiet, spend time with my family and not really celebrate.Not in a negative way, but just more of like I don't feel the need and either one is okay, but I feel like people turning 40, maybe, y'all feel me? It's very polarizing as one or the other and possibly nothing in between. But the great thing is last week my bestie came into town from Colorado and I was so excited to be able to spend some time with her.She is going to be here through the week this week, and so I have been trying to soak up all the time that I have with her because. We don't get to see each other very often, even though we do love to send voice memos to each other back and forth, just checking in and chatting about stuff. Another thing that happened this past week was we got our first investment offer.Now, it wasn't a big offer, but it was still our first investment offer, and we are so excited. It's just almost validating, you know, to know that someone believes in you, your business, your product, enough to put in their money to grow your business because they see potential in you expanding and growing and excited to walk through that with you.So we got our first investment offer last week, which was a huge, huge milestone for our business. Let's talk about what actually worked for me last week. Last week, I was very intentional about opening up my weekly agenda every day in Notion. And I have to say that I know that this is something that I personally need.It's something that's important to my productivity, and if I just kind of wing it and I don't open. It up on a regular basis. I just start flying by the seat of my pants and I have no idea what I'm doing, and I feel very scrambled. and I said, no, I don't want to act like that anymore.I want to have control. It's not about getting things done when I scheduled it, but being flexible on changing things up when things get added to my schedule, because let's be real. What I say I'm going to set out to do on Monday is going to look very, very different come Friday. I have intentions, I have things that I find are important, but as the days go, you guys know this.Things come up and sometimes it's important and sometimes it's not. But things come up and they do have to get dealt with, and it's me going into my notion setup, my weekly agenda, and prioritizing what's going to get handled today and what's going to get handled later. So let's talk about this upcoming week and what my goal is, and just in general.My overall theme for this week is to focus on being proactive versus reactive. And what do I mean by that? That means not using my inbox as a task manager keeping it in my inbox just does not work for me.I've gotta take it out of my inbox and put it into my system. That also means checking in on my weekly agenda, not just once a day, but two times a day, once in the morning and once. At night, and I'm not gonna put a timer on it. I'm not gonna set a certain amount of time. What I want to do is just have the act of checking my weekly agenda.And another thing this means is getting a little bit clearer on what is required to complete a task or move forward on a project. I do not have a good sense of how long something is going to take me. Sometimes I think it's going to be really quick and it turns out to take way longer. And sometimes I think this thing is such a daunting.Task or project, but it actually doesn't take me very much time. And I think getting into the practice of just listing out all the required steps to complete a task or to move forward on a project is going to be what is going to be the game changer for me. Let me give you a couple examples.One, when we got this investment offer, it was such an exciting thing and I thought, okay, we can just simply move forward. That's not going to be a. Very difficult, but then I realized, wait a minute, I should probably consult with an attorney. I have to wait for that attorney's response.I should probably also ask the investor the questions that we have and get clarification and then also wait for their reply. So things like these small menial tasks might not sound like a big deal, but they do take up time and what I think would only take me a week or maybe a day might take longer because I did the action on my part.But there are other parties involved that. Require their response to continue to move the project. Another example would be meal planning for the week. It isn't just about setting up meals for each day. I also need to think about what do we already have grocery wise? What do we need to buy? What is something we actually will happily eat?What is something that the kids can eat too, or we can break down so that they can have a version of what we're eating. And it's not just as easy as saying, okay, I'm going to eat this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, et cetera. There's still a lot of thought that still goes along with it.Now let's ask that question. What will happen or what do I believe will happen if I do this one? I will definitely feel more grounded and in some kind of control whenever I allow my task manager to be my inbox or my email. I do not feel a sense of control because I just feel like I'm putting out fires and I'm just reacting to whatever is showing up in my email inbox instead of looking at my weekly agendathere's no movement on it until I make a move and I might not be looking at my inbox to remember that this is something that's in notion and it's a project that I need to take care of, and I'm not waiting on anyone. It's on me. Another thing that'll happen is I will set up myself with a good foundation for the week, which will give me a higher success rate.At the end, right? Because if I check in on a regular basis and being proactive versus reactive, I'm going to have that habit of moving those things that are just internally important forward instead of moving on the things that people are asking me to move forward on. And then another thing that I believe will happen is I'll have forward movement.On goals that are on my radar, even when unexpected fires arise. And that's just a part of life, right? As the days move forward, someone will reach out to you and ask you for something, or you'll make a connection and you wanna have a lunch with someone, or you have an unexpected opportunity. Show up or an unexpected emergency show up, and that's all part of life.The ebb and flow of life is unavoidable, but having a centralized place where you can go back and say, hold up. Let me write this down. Let me jot this down and let me look at what else I have on my plate. And taking that pause. We'll help move things forward and not just move the fires forward or put the fires out.Everything will move forward in its due time. All right, now we have gotten to the story time of this episode, and it had to do. And this week's story has to do with last week's newsletter. Last week, I wrote about how I stopped selling certain products for our business because it just didn't serve us anymore and it didn't align with what we wanted for our personal life.And I'm a firm believer that business and personal life, especially when you're a small business, just go hand in hand. I didn't realize how intertwined they were until I really dove deep and went all in on my business and. That's what I wrote about last week. So the short version of this story is we had a restaurant, a Philippine restaurant here in the San Fernando Valley called Nino's Pastries Cafe.When we first opened the place, it was started by my aunt and my uncle, and my mom and my dad. And the goal was basically to become the next famous Philippine Bake shop, not just here in the San Fernando Valley, but. Just be known and. For a while we were doing that, we were selling pastries.And then along came the UBIT pancakes that we started selling at the restaurant. And then we were finding success in that area of the food industry and the restaurant industry. And then the pandemic hit and I had a baby, and then I had two babies. And, I realized that I. There was a sign for me to walk away from the restaurant to say, I need to close this chapter because what I want to do isfocus on my family and cherish these years while they're still young and being in the restaurant industry. I'm not saying that you can't do that, right? Our plan was to do that, but I realize now how much, I realize now how much our restaurant would have been un prioritized compared to the. Level that I was performing at prior to having kids, , because the restaurant was my baby, and now I have two babies, human babies, and I knew that it was time to walk away.Well, then we decided, we're just going to sell online and, and sell prepackaged things. So we moved and started selling pastries online and at popups and things like that. And then we were also selling our pancake mix and other things. And then we realized, wait a minute. I think the pastry aspect of the business just does not align anymore because even though that's what we first set out to do, the other products that we grew and evolved and changed into align more with our values and what we want for our family, our pancake mix.And our CPG products, which are consumer packaged goods. Our prepackaged products allow us the freedom to make an income but distribute them throughout the United States. It still accomplishes the mission of sharing Filipino food and culture with the world and. It takes less time, less cleanup. And so we decided, and we made that difficult to decision to say, we're closing the chapter on that and focusing on what's really performing and focus, on what aligns with our family and personal values.So that's the story for today. I just wanna thank you so much for taking the time to listen. If you enjoyed this audio audition, please share it with a friend and let me know what your current goal for this upcoming week is going to be. I would love to know for the full just Kissa experience, subscribe to my substack at the notion mama.substack.com.And I'll see you in your inbox on Thursday. Have an awesome week, fam. Talk to you soon. Get full access to Kissa - the Notion Mama at justkissa.substack.com/subscribe