Halloween: A great example of mental load & how a calendar can help

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Halloween is such a great example of how something that sounds like one event/evening of events has a broader scope than we often realize and a lot of mental load. Let’s tease that out – and talk about how this goes beyond just Halloween, too.

Below is a transcript of the episode. Enjoy!

Full transcript:

Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.

Hey, hey. All right, so today I wanna talk about Halloween, but also why I think Halloween is such a great example of everything, of what I talk about and what I love about a solid time management system. Now, I’m not a big Halloween person, and I just wanna share that if you are like, eh, I’m not really into Halloween.

I, this is not for me. I’m right there with you. It’s not. My favorite holiday, no knock on anyone whose it is like that’s also great. It’s just personally not mine. But I still think there’s [00:01:00] a lot of value to get outta this, even if you’re not a Halloween person, because it just has these ripple effects on other parts of our lives that we might not fully appreciate ahead of time, and that’s more the point I’m trying to make today.

In addition, while I’m not a big Halloween person. I now have kids, so I want to partake with them and enjoy my time with them and help them enjoy it because I’m more calm and all that. And so that’s really what I wanna talk about today. So what I’m gonna do is dig into all the logistics. Of Halloween that come out of it.

That might surprise you when you kind of hear them all laid out and more. So I want you to view it as, okay, this is useful for Halloween and I’ll calendar all these things if I wanna do them, but more so just take it broader. Like this applies for everything that we do. This is just such a good example of how one thing, one kind of event, or.[00:02:00]

Couple events over a couple days. Sounds like it’s just so limited in time to that when really the ripple effects of what we need to do beforehand and after and all that kind of stuff can kind of surprise us until we run into them. And what we wanna do is instead of running into them plan for them ahead of time so that we experience it in a more enjoyable and calm way and with a lot less like scramble and the stress that comes outta scramble.

So here’s what I want you to keep an eye on as I go through the logistics. Really understand that this is one event, but it sneakily comes with a lot of to-dos that take up a fair amount of time depending on what you wanna do. It also demonstrates how helpful it is to get clear on what’s involved ahead of time on the front end.

And the reason that that’s so helpful is that it helps you delegate out. You might be like, I don’t wanna deal with dinner that night, or I don’t wanna deal with this. And you can delegate it all out earlier. You also might be able to get more support. So for example, you might see, you know what, we have one little kid and one bigger kid.

I really [00:03:00] wanna do trick or treating with a bigger kid. Should I line up a sitter to stay home with a little kid? Should I have a parent come over? Whatever it’s gonna be, but seeing this ahead of time is so, so valuable again, so you’re not running into that a day or two before and being like, oh, I wish I’d gotten support on this earlier.

So I could’ve enjoyed it more and been where I want it to be. I also think it’s a great example of how when you lay all this out in a calendar and the way that we’re gonna talk about, it’s not mental load anymore. We carry such amount of mental load in our head, and while there still might be load that you’re going to have to do.

It’s no longer just in your head. It’s not weighing your brain down and it lightens up your brain and allows it to be more creative on anything like, on any other things, but then also on this, because you can see it now, and as I said, issue spot things ahead of time. I will also throw out there that you’ll notice, you might be like, yeah, this is what I wanna do, and then you lay it all out and you’re like, this is more time consuming than I thought it was gonna be.

I actually don’t wanna do this. And you [00:04:00] eliminate some stuff, which is wonderful to realize on the front end, instead of, again, running into it and being like, this was too much. Why did I do this to myself again? And I want you to see that with a calendar versus a lot of other time management approaches and systems and all of that, you can calendar all this out and you can repeat it annually.

You are getting the benefit every year from here on out and Sure, like the time that you do that thing next year or the year after might shift. And sure as kids get older, what you do with Halloween might shift, or if you don’t have kids right now, what you might wanna do in future years might shift, but it allows you to get these kind of alerts when it.

At least used to be relevant and you can adjust the plan going forward, save it going forward from here on out, and you’re good. It just helps you not, again, I keep saying this, run up on these things and be like, ah, yeah, I should do this differently next year. But then we move on to the next holiday and forget about it.

To me, it’s just such a great mini example of what I [00:05:00] truly believe that time management, like solid time management, that gives you really what you’re looking for. Not just efficiency and productivity, but like peace of mind feeling on top of it, having more breathing space, having more calm. All of that is, it doesn’t come from a quick fix, unfortunately, but the front end work really can have long-term payoff, and I just think this is such a small mini example of that that sounds, I don’t, I mean, not silly, but it’s just, it’s about Halloween.

But when you start seeing the potential behind this approach when you’re doing it just with Halloween, I find it really exciting. So I hope you do too. Okay, let’s turn to the actual logistics that go into Halloween. Again, one, ’cause they’re useful, but two, they’re just such a great example. If you’re like, okay, I mean, okay, I need candy and Halloween costumes like that sounds great.

Obviously there’s more that is entailed, but I think really spelling it out is illuminating that there’s even more. So what [00:06:00] I’d love for you to do for whenever you wanna do it, I will put all of this in the show notes as well, or at least link to the Instagram post where I. Laid it out, so you don’t need to write all these things out right now.

Just know you can come back to it. Just more take in how much there is. But also that you can decide not to do something too. Always keep that in mind. All right, so the first thing I like to think about is work availability. Do you wanna block your meeting availability at work on October 31st now, or another time too, if there are other events going on?

For me, when I was practicing, one thing I like to do is not hold any meetings after 2:00 PM It just helped me get out of there on time. It didn’t mean I was leaving at two, but if I wanted to leave it. 3 34, 4 30 to be home and ready and like eat dinner before and all that kind of stuff before Trick or treaters came.

Then that was really nice. It allowed me to actually get out the door. I also want you to consider calendaring something for November [00:07:00] 1st as a full day event in all caps. So you really see it is do not schedule a like a deadline here. Halloween is the day before. I just think sometimes we don’t always.

That little jump to, okay, the day before is Halloween. Let me do a deadline here. We don’t always click with that, so give yourself that heads up. If you do get a deadline, then you’ll just have to schedule the work earlier before the 31st probably if you wanna do anything for Halloween. And so that’s just something to keep in mind too.

It’s not the end of the world, but going forward it’s helpful to not inadvertently put something there that you could move around. Next up, costumes, obviously for yourself, for your kids, if you have ’em, for a pet, if you do that, obviously if you don’t do this, that’s totally fine, but if you do wanna do it, things I would calendar are, I would calendar in late September, about 30 to 60 minutes to think through costumes for you kids and or pets.

Also, in late September. After that, I would calendar when [00:08:00] you’re gonna buy the costumes or the supplies to make the costumes if you’re gonna make ’em. If you are making costumes, I would schedule times when you’re gonna do that, and I would very much overestimate on what that would be If you end up with bonus time and can delete things going forward, awesome.

But better to overestimate both because it might take you longer and if something goes sideways and you don’t get to it one time than you know you have other times. Protected in your calendar, and if you’re gonna buy costumes, which I am in that camp, is scheduling time to try them on beforehand with time to reorder if necessary.

Especially for kids, if you know your kids are growing, if they have sensory issues, if whatever it is, you wanna have time to have the kids try them on with the time to reorder, and then I’ll leave it up to you on whether you let them continue playing in them or put them away. I, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer, and who knows?

Alright, turning to getting candy or alternatives, if you decide you wanna [00:09:00] hand out candy or alternatives to trick or treaters, these are things to think about. Around October 15th, I would schedule time to buy or order candy alternatives. So alternatives are like clothes sticks or temporary tattoos, things like that.

If you’re going to do that, then one thing you can even do that is actually the step I need to take is I just write, add candy to the shopping list. It’s one of those things that if I get the alert, I’m like, well, I’m not shopping right now, or I’m not even putting an order in, but if I add it to my list on October 15th, then I will get it before October 31st.

In addition, just as a backup measure on October 20th, I would calendar something like All set with candy for Halloween just to make sure that you have it. Next up is planning the Halloween night itself. In early October, I would schedule like two 30 minute blocks, about three days apart to think through, and then follow up on the logistics of Halloween night.

You could even do three of these blocks, three [00:10:00] each, three days apart if you think it’s gonna be a little more complicated. During those times, and again, this is all written out for you, I just wanna kind of like really tease out all the things that go into this. You might wanna figure out where you or your kids are trick or treating or celebrating, and any commuting involved with that.

If you have kids is one parent trick or treating with some kids or one of the kids while the other parent or someone else stays home with the tiny kids and gives out candy or just stays home and leaves a bowl out. Whatever you wanna do. Do you wanna leave a bowl out along those lines and just stay inside like.

If you’re really not into Halloween, just put a bowl out and stay inside your house and watch Netflix in bed and turn the lights off if you want, or leave. Go out to dinner or whatever you wanna do. Just thinking through what do you want to do? Do you wanna leave a bowl out? You don’t have to do that either.

Just if you’re going to do anything, thinking it through and owning these decisions really helps. Another thing that came from a comment on this post from last year [00:11:00] is what are you gonna do for dinner that night? And if you want to have like takeout or delivery schedule, when to order it, that can be a big one.

So if you’re like, I’m not cooking dinner that night, or we’re just gonna order pizza, when are you gonna order the pizza so that it’s there on time? Or if you’re like, I really wanna get a lot of like protein and food in these kids before they go out and eat a ton of candy. What’s that gonna look like, and when will I want to cook that?

I really don’t think there’s any right or wrong to this. It’s more, again, just helping you think through what you want to do, help you bring it to life by putting it in your calendar, and also like helping you own those decisions and knowing what you wanna do without feeling like. What do I wanna do in like kind of winging it at the last minute, which there’s no knock on that.

If your energy shifts, feel free to shift, but I think that this helps us like kind of just own our decisions a little bit more. All right. Another tip that was added this year based on another comment from a different woman from last year is Halloween [00:12:00] Decor. If you do it now, if you do it, if you don’t do it totally fine.

It’s more like if you do wanna do it, pick when you wanna do it, and then schedule when you wanna put the decor up and when you wanna take it down. If you wanna get pumpkins or squash or anything like that, schedule when you wanna buy ’em. If you carve pumpkins, schedule when you wanna do that. This is a thing that I really, you can move these things around.

Everything I calendar, I’m very flexible with. If I’m like, yeah, actually we wanna do it during this time, or the energy will be better here. Great. It’s more just like. If I put it on a Friday evening after school when I think we could do it, that’s really fun. And if something comes up, then I just move it to Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon or something, and it just helps us remember to do it.

But I’m flexible with when we do it, so I hope that that makes sense. I know that time blocking things can sound so rigid, but I truly believe that the magic is when you’re flexible, the purpose is not to. Carve in stone when you’re gonna do [00:13:00] something. The purpose is just to get it out of your head, see how it plays with everything else, not forget about it, and just move it around as life makes sense.

And I do this for Halloween type examples, all the way to work and all sorts of things. All right. Another addition from another woman that I thought was really smart is, are there any school events? If you have kids and their school or daycare, does anything for it? A party, a parade? Do you know when that is?

Do you wanna block your work availability for it? Consider it. If you don’t know right now, when you listen to. Emailing to ask. It can be really helpful. Another thing I should mention here is like even if your kids wear costumes to school one day, it’s helpful to know what that’s gonna look like so that you’re ready for it.

I think our school doesn’t do anything thankfully on that front, but I know some schools do. And so I do think that’s really important, just so that like you have things ready, or let’s say there are seven pieces that go with a costume and your kids been wearing it around and [00:14:00] suddenly it’s the morning of school that they’re gonna wear it.

Like it’s just helpful just to know that the night before, so you can gather up the seven pieces, have them ready to go and avoid that scramble in the morning. All right, and with all of these. I would, I mean, I think all of them, I’m pretty sure you could schedule these on a repeating annual basis. So this is that front end work of sitting down and plotting all of this out.

But as long as you schedule everything on an annual basis future, you is gaining these benefits for years to come. And again, as I just said about flexibility. It’s okay if you’re like, well, I don’t know exactly when. I’ll do that every single year. I don’t know when it should repeat. Don’t worry about that.

You can always future. You will move it to a time that works. It’s just giving her a heads up, maybe probably weeks before she might think to do something of like, oh yeah, she should probably start thinking about that, and she can move it around to the right time. In tandem with that. What I think about a lot here is I teach that weekly planning session.

I believe it’s episode eight that digs into that. [00:15:00] And for me, what I teach is a planning session where you look at the next two weeks and so know that if future you is doing this. She’s sitting down on a Thursday or a Friday looking at the next two weeks and a year from now, two years from now, we’ll see those calendared events come up, and then she can move them to a right time, and it isn’t just like running up on them for the first time in that day.

So I hope that was helpful. Just in terms of the logistics of Halloween. I really wanna go over though that this is a much broader takeaway and I think that for some people, this one example for some reason really clicks on wow, like maybe. Both teasing out all of this stuff and then laying it out in a calendar so that I do have a game plan ahead of time to do things.

It just clicks for some reason, and I, I love that. I love that it clicks for some people, and I just really wanna spell it out again. Halloween sounds like one [00:16:00] event, but it is such a great example of how one thing or one event, or one project sneakily comes with a lot of to-dos that take up a fair amount of time depending on what you decide to do, and always understand that the scope is probably much larger than it sounds at first blush.

I have about four more points I wanna go through. Just so you know. Point number two is getting clear on what’s involved and what you wanna do on the front end helps lighten that mental load because you can make a lot of that load no longer only mental because it’s not just in your head. You can see it, you can evaluate it, and you can play with it.

And that’s so powerful when your brain is freed up to bring its creativity, it can do that versus I think when it gets clogged up with the logistics. It prevents that creativity from coming out and finding those solutions. In addition, as I mentioned, laying it out ahead of time helps you delegate out the work so you don’t have to do it all yourself.

Now, we could get into a whole thing of whether you have to delegate or not. I am a kind of embrace reality person. If [00:17:00] your partner can do, I mean just even forward them. Instagram post with all this stuff laid out and have them do it if you’d like, which is totally fine if you are the one who tends to do this type of stuff.

Then for me, what I like doing is just a little bit embracing that reality and delegating out more of the physical stuff, not just like splitting it evenly, but like being like, you do more of the physical stuff. For me, it’s dependent on if my husband’s around, but for you, hopefully it’s not, and that helps.

You part of the work here is coming up with all these ideas, and so I would factor in this work as part of the work that’s divided evenly so that your partner, if they don’t shine on the mental admin side of things, they carry not 50% of the physical stuff, but more than that because you are accounting for the admin stuff.

Okay. That was a bit of a tangent side note. Along those lines though, you also not just delegate at work, but you can get support earlier. So if you stumble up the day before [00:18:00] Halloween and you’re like, oh gosh, one of my kids is not gonna go trick or treating, and the other one is, and there’s only one of me home today, that’s a tough spot to be in where you’re like calling friends last minute to be like, can someone take my kid?

And then maybe your kid didn’t know that and they’re upset and all this kind of stuff. If instead you think about it. A month in advance, you could consider getting more support on asking a friend to take an older kid, but then the older kid is informed of the plan ahead of time and you can kind of like gas it up and all kinds of stuff.

That works well. Or you’re like, I wanna go trick or treating with the kid, the older kids or kid, and asking like a sitter or a parent to stay at the house with the younger ones, that can be really great. That’s what I do a lot of the time, but I have to get that on my parents’ books ahead of time so that we have that clarity and just know how we’re gonna work it.

I also very, this is so important is that laying it out ahead of time, and again, it’s so important about Halloween, but like everything. That’s why I feel so strongly about it is this applies to [00:19:00] everything. You might have a plan in your head of how, again, Halloween might go or something else, and you think like, this is great, this is what it’s gonna do.

But when you lay it all out, you might realize, oh, those initial plans were way more time consuming. Then I want, like, I thought I wanted to do all this, but now I see it laid out and I’m like, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna do all this. This is too much time. And what that allows you to do when you do it on the front end like we’re talking about, is you can adjust the plans.

And I just think that is so wonderful because you can eliminate some things and spare yourself the time and energy and peace of mind entirely of tackling that thing versus thinking you’re gonna do it, starting it. Feeling kind of stuck, like you have to finish it because I don’t know, you promised your kids you were or something like that, and it’s just too much.

And then you’re just like scrambling and feel committed and like you have to scramble to do it. And what I just love here is this front end work allows for more informed decision making. [00:20:00] And allows for more breathing space throughout your life and less overcommitting and scramble. So yes, it has that upfront cost, but to me, the ROI on that time spent planning is so, so worth it.

I also wanna note here, this was not a point that I was thinking about talking about, but here we go. Is that doing all of this. Really helps you see it in line with your work. So this is, we think Halloween, it’s very personal, but you start to see the interactions with work. So for example, obviously we talked about blocking work availability, but also let’s say you were like, I’m gonna make costumes this year, and then when you.

Start plotting out when you’re going to do that. You’re like, actually, October is a crazy month for me at work. I cannot commit to making these costumes. And again, that might be a bummer realization and you might have dis some disappointed kids, but I mean the finding the comparable bot costume and sparing yourself hours and [00:21:00] hours and hours of stress as you manage a busy work month with making that Halloween costume.

Is super valuable to realize on the front end. Another element of this, which I do think is a dangerous suggestion, I’m not sure I’m actually recommending this, is you could say, Octobers are always busy for me. If I wanna make costumes, I have to do this in September. That’s also a great outcome. The reason I say it’s dangerous is your kids could change their mind.

That’s why it’s dangerous. So I’ll leave that up to you. You know your kids best, but that’s just. More if setting Halloween aside. That’s another great example is if something in your personal life and your work life constantly but up against each other during a busy month, could you move one of them to like a month earlier or later and that it makes sense for you.

So just throwing that out there as well. The final point I intended to make that I know I’ve said a few times is just by putting it in your calendar, you get to see it not just for this year, but it helps benefit you for years to come if you repeat everything annually, and this is where a digital calendar truly [00:22:00] shines.

There are other ways it truly shines too, but this is one of those areas and I think that it’s such a critical piece here that time management, as I said, not really a quick fix. There’s just. So many roles, so much nuance. I just don’t think a quick fix can solve it, but often the upfront costs, even if it’s high, really can benefit you for years to come if you put in the work.

And I think this is just such a great example of not a lot of upfront work, but a fair amount sitting down, calendaring, it probably would take like 20 minutes to calendar all this out, but again, future you is gonna benefit this from this for a long time. And that’s how I view a lot of what I teach is.

I’m gonna make you spend a lot of time with me upfront to really set a lot of the systems up, but then it runs for you and like helps benefit you for years and years to come. So I hope this helps. I hope that you see. How quote unquote calendaring everything, which sounds [00:23:00] so rigid and micromanaging and kind of weird actually weirdly lightens the load.

It gets a lot of work off your plate and it just helps life feel easier, and I think that that’s surprising to a lot of people, and I think this is a great example that really brings this all to life. So I hope that you’ve experienced that as well. Just know that the Bright Method is all about doing this for everything in your life.

All the repeating holidays. Yes. And I give you a guide inside the program for every single holiday like this, but also across your entire life. Personal, professional, one-offs, repetitive, all of it. If you wanna learn more about the program, you can visit Kelly nolan.com/bright at the time. I’m recording this, actually the September, I’m recording this on September 9th, so enrollment opens tomorrow, so I’m not really sure where things stand.

It’s probably full right now, but enrollment will open soon again, and my guess is stay open through March. So that’s my hope. You can jump in when it works for [00:24:00] you. And if you want this for the upcoming holiday season, so just focusing on Halloween and most of the winter, like Thanksgiving and the winter holidays.

Go to the link in the show notes and you can get your hands on the free guide for that. And you can also DM me the keyword holiday guide one word, and you should get the link to that and you can grab it for free. And I hope that’s helpful for you. Most importantly, thank you for being here and I’ll catch you in the next episode.

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Halloween: A great example of mental load & how a calendar can help

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