Balancing Work From Home as a Full Time Mom
Hey folks! Welcome back to my blog. Are you ready to hear some helpful tips on how to balance work/home/mom life? You will notice how I said mom life, instead of parent life. There are two reasons for that: the first one is because this is my personal experience - I am a mom, not a Dad and I have a completely different view on this than would a man. The second reason is because in my experience, a mom does everything: balancing the full time job, looking after the kids and driving them to school, cooking the meals and cleaning and managing the household. This is not to say that there are not men out there (possibly single men) that do this exact same thing. Also, I am well aware that a Mom and Dad play important, completely separate roles in their kids lives. In saying all that, let’s get started on the productivity tips.
So, if you’re like me and you’re a parent and you work from home, you will know that it’s extremely difficult to concentrate on work when your kids are at home. There are a couple of factors that can change the situation: these are the age of your kids, or whether they are in school or daycare. I am at a variety of these stages. I have a 7 year old, who, in normal circumstances would be in school. The past two weeks as of the writing of this blog, he (along with every other kid) was completing school from home. In a few weeks when the kids are let out for the summer, we will all have kids at home again. I also have a 1 year old who has just learned how to walk and talk, so I am constantly away from my desk during “work time” and I am dragging her out of the dog dishes.
I don’t know about you, but I have blown a few gaskets these past two weeks. I literally thought I was having a heart attack about three times. I was so stressed out, and I cried on a nightly basis. Of course, our current “unmentionable” situation is the main cause of this. It is keeping our kids at home, and preventing us from attaining any productivity at work and preventing us from getting a good night’s rest. That’s the other end: my insomnia is back and I haven’t been able to sleep. Either that, or I am completing all my work during the wee hours of the morning.
Back in November, I had written a blog on productivity without the perspective of having kids. This was a pretty generic list of things you could do boost your productivity from home. Let’s face it: when you have kids, you absolutely will get less work done in a day. There are only 24 hours in one day, and time is spent driving places, running extra errands and spending quality time with your children, and putting them to bed. As a parent, you will have completely different routines than a person without children. But, having routines is still very important.
Also, if you work from home, but are employed with a company and it is necessary for you to work scheduled hours, some of the tips I have for you won’t work. I am an entrepreneur which means I can work at any time of the day I want to. This makes it much easier to work around my kid’s schedules and routines. If you need to work scheduled hours, the best option is to use a daycare, or have someone look after your kids. You would most likely need to shut yourself in a room where you can have quiet time so you can properly focus. It is difficult, since during these times, we are not allowed to have people from different house holds in our homes; not even to help us with childcare.
Routines
As I said above, routines are important regardless of whether you are a parent or not. Routines establish a guide for yourself; something you automatically know you have to do without consulting a notebook or your computer, which means you waste less time. Routines with kids include:
Morning Routines:
Getting up at the same time every day
Getting ready for the day (dressed, makeup)
Making beds
Having breakfast ready to go, or knowing what to make ahead of time
Having clothes laid out the night before
Pre-packing lunches
Having backpacks and supplies pre-packed
Warming up the car (winter)
Evening Routines:
Going to bed at the same time every night
Bathing/grooming before bed
Bed time story before sleep
Supper planned ahead of time, at the same time every day
Kids do well with routines. They learn what to expect and when, and it gives them a sense of safety and responsibility. It helps them to develop into healthy adults. Plus, when you know what needs to be done, it saves you time and you can lead your children by example.
2. Write out your scheduled work tasks the night before
Getting into this habit saves a lot of time. Instead of wasting time in the morning (I know the morning is when I am most productive - why would I waste time by writing tons of things down when I should be getting to work?), having a list prepared the night before will ensure you can get started ASAP. You will know what needs to be done first thing, so you can tackle the most difficult task first.
3. Write it Down: have a “Top 3” , and keep your list short
It’s easy to get boggled down with a huge list of things to do every day. One of the most important things you could do is determine which of your tasks is MOST important. Write them down in order from most important to least important. Take the top 3, write these down at the TOP of your list or planner, and make sure these get done NO MATTER WHAT. That way, you will feel accomplished because the things you absolutely had to do got done, but you don’t feel exhausted from tackling a three page “to-do” list.
Once you complete those Top 3, check in with yourself. If you still have time left, you can start to tackle the other things remaining on your list. If you don’t complete everything, re-evaluate whether it’s important enough to even have on your list. If it is, transfer the task to the next day.
4. Work when your kids are occupied or sleeping
If you have young kids, they need a lot more sleep than we as adults need. So, one thing I like to do is get up extra early, usually at 5am or 6am. Then I can sit with my coffee and start working when it’s quiet in the house. I also take advantage of when my son is in school, or when my daughter is napping. There are times when my son is at home, or my daughter decides not to nap. My son is 7, so he can occupy himself with his reading or games, and I can usually still work when he’s with me in the house.
I also work as soon as my kids are asleep. If my daughter goes to bed at 7pm, it allows me until about midnight to get some hours of work in. There are some aspects of my business that I need absolute quiet (i.e. where I’m filming) and others, where I just need to sit at my desk, and it doesn't matter if my kids are in the same room as I am. (Which leads into my next topic)
5. Create a flexible work schedule if you can
This is paramount to getting any work done and to staying sane. If I let myself get too focused on one thing, and my daughter disrupts me, it’s not fair for me to get angry at her. That’s why I leave the very important tasks to when she sleeps, and I do the editing for instance when she’s awake and talking.
I have set up special allowances in my schedule, and I’ve used a few scheduling tactics, called batching and day-theming in order to get things done.
Scheduling - My schedule is really based off of my husbands schedule, because he works two weeks rotation with one week off. So, that gives me 7-ish days to film as many videos as I need to (I schedule my work a month or two ahead), and then the rest of the days are all of my “admin” tasks, and everything else required for a blog/website/sticker shop/youtube channel business besides filming). Of course, there are exceptions and time-sensitive videos where I might need to film a video when my husband is working, but again, I will time it so I can film once my kiddos go to bed.
Batching - This is the process of doing a bunch of the same thing at the same time. As above, when my husband has his 7 days off, I will literally just film every single day. I don’t need to worry about anything else at all, except for filming. That means for the whole 7 days, I can focus on one thing and be way more focused and productive than splitting my attention to 100 different tasks. The same is true of anything - for instance, say you are writing a bunch of Christmas cards to send to family. Batching would be writing all the cards, then writing the addresses on the front, as opposed to doing each card separate. The process of batching saves time and energy.
Day-Theming - This is the process of doing only one type of thing all day, or, you can split your day in two and do only one thing in the morning, and another thing in the afternoon. For instance, this is what my schedule would look like on a week that my husband is working:
Monday - Editing (Usually I can get 2-3 videos)
Tuesday - Shop (Sticker Designing/Printing)
Wednesday - Blog (one or two)
Thursday - Editing
Friday - Shop / Catch up Day
Saturday - Planning (for the next week) / Admin Tasks
Sunday - Off
I originally had Friday as a full Shop day, but I added Catch-up, and this is one of the things that allows me to be a bit more flexible during my day-to-day work. So if there is a day that my daughter decides not to nap, I’m not trying to rush last minute to finish up a project.
This is what I do as a full time, work-from-home mom. What do you do to get all your work done? Let me know in the comments! As usual, thanks for reading, and I hope some of these things help you with your own productivity!
xoxo! SAN
