Em Creates Margin

The Margin Audit

The Margin Audit · Free · 10 minutes

Where did the week go?

Where your week actually goes, and where your hours are hiding.

Guess. Don't go track it for a week first. A rough number tells you everything you need, and precision would cost you the exact thing we're trying to get back.

There are 168 hours in a week. All of us. Same number.

No perfect tracking. No shame. Just an honest starting point.

Step 2 of 5

Where your hours go

For each row, guess the hours a week you spend now, and the hours you'd want it to be.

Sleep
Work or volunteer commitments
Driving. Drop-offs, pickups, practices
Meal planning + grocery shopping
Cooking and cleaning up the kitchen
Laundry, tidying, keeping the house running
The calendar. Planning, coordinating, remembering
School + team emails, forms, permission slips
Watching your kids do what they love
Actually with them. Present, not managing
You. Workout, Bible, a shower nobody rushes

0 of 168 hours written down

Step 3 of 5

Now the math

–Hours I spend

–Unaccounted-for hours

The gap we're going to solve

Fill in your hours to find it.

That row is what we're going to solve. It is not the row with the most hours. It's the row where what you're living and what you want are furthest apart. It's the gap between being the busy mom and the present mom. It's the hours you want back.

How we found it

  1. Add up the Hours I Spend column.
  2. Subtract that from 168, because the remainder is unaccounted for.
  3. Go row by row and find the biggest gap between the two columns.

Step 4 of 5

Three questions

Look at the last two rows: the one where you're actually with them, and the one that is just yours. Are those the two smallest numbers on the page? They usually are.

You are not behind. You are out of hours. Those are different problems, and only one of them is fixable in ten minutes.

Step 5 of 5

One last thing, the important one.

If I could take one thing off your plate this week, what would it be?

I'm asking because I want you to be the present mother you were designed to be. I build systems and guides for a living and for my own house, and the things I build come from what moms actually tell me is eating them alive. Some of it I have already made. Some of it I would make next, for you specifically.

DM me TIME on Instagram with your answer, and I'll share the solutions I've built to run our busy house and get my hours back.

DM me TIME on Instagram

Your audit, in brief

Hours I spend
–
Unaccounted for
–
The gap to solve
–

Busy mom to present mom. That's the whole move.

xo, Em