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April 7, 2021

5 Ways Moms Can Delegate to Get More Done

Guest post by: Michelle Laurey

Work-at-home moms often face the unique challenge of balancing work needs with household management. Childcare, meal preparation, and household chores can eat into your work time if you are not careful.

If you postpone chores to finally get some work done, then the house is in disarray.

It doesn’t have to be like this!

Next time you’re struggling to balance your work and home life, try these five tips to delegate your workload.

 

1. Split Up the Chores

Your spouse and older children can each take on their own responsibilities around the house.

Delegating the household workload helps you focus more time and energy on your business.

Use the following tips to successfully delegate chores:

  • Assign one task to one person. Whether it’s loading the dishwasher, putting away laundry, or writing out a shopping list, designate a single person to be in charge. Sharing tasks can cause confusion about who is doing what and when.
  • Set goals and deadlines. Assign different tasks to different days of the week so everyone knows when they need to finish their chores. Plan errands and shopping around your schedule, and choose times when fewer people are out.
    Soon your family will adjust to your routine and won’t have to keep asking when you’re picking up groceries or mailing that package.
  • Go through the task list with each person. Sometimes a spouse or child doesn’t know how you want a chore accomplished. Maybe they are unfamiliar with the right settings for the washing machine or where pots and pans are stored.
    Walk them through the task so they can learn to do it without you around.
  • Put it in writing. Whether you use a smartphone app or a piece of paper on the refrigerator, keep a list of what needs to get done and whose job it is. Having a visual plan helps everyone stay on track.

Delegating chores will also reduce the stress that often affects your productivity.

 

2. Arrange for Childcare

First-time work-from-home parents often assume they can care for their young children while working. Unfortunately, they quickly found out that is not the case!

Childcare is a full-time job all on its own.

If you can’t afford a babysitter or daycare, consider asking a retired family member if they can watch your children a few days a week.

If no family members are available, reach out to other work-from-home moms in your neighborhood. You may be able to take turns watching each other’s children on days you’re not working.

Alternatively, you can hire a young adult in your neighborhood to watch your children while you work from home.

You can typically pay a cheaper rate, and you’re available in case of emergencies while still being able to shut the door to your home office while you work.

 

3. Consider Extended Family and Friends

Your immediate family members aren’t the only ones who can help you out.

When someone offers to lend a hand, take them up on their offer!

Some easy tasks you can delegate to others outside your house include:

  • Driving children to and from school. Coordinate with other moms in the neighborhood to take turns dropping off and picking up children from school. This provides extra time in the mornings and afternoons for you to work.
  • Helping with housework. If you have a close friend nearby, ask if they want to arrange dates to help each other with cleaning. One weekend you help clean their house and the next they help with yours.
    This is a great way single parents can stay on top of the household workload without being overwhelmed.
  • Assisting with meal prep. Consider arranging weekly meetups with friends or other moms in your neighborhood to prep meals for the upcoming week. You can buy in bulk to save money and split the costs among the group.

In return, you can step in to help when they are feeling overwhelmed.

 

4. Simplify Scheduling and Organization

The best way to ensure everyone completes their tasks is to organize and schedule everything.

There are numerous apps that can help you make lists and remind family members of their chores.

By taking advantage of these, your family can add items to the shopping list, create reminders on the family calendar for upcoming appointments, and check off tasks they’ve completed.

This helps everyone stay on track without you needing to lift a finger.

There’s a number of apps available to help create family lists and chore charts to digitally divide up the workload and set important reminders.

 

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Hire a Professional

If the workload is too much and you don’t have enough people to help out, consider hiring a professional.

Many services offer cheap task-based help, such as mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, and doing other odd jobs.

Several grocery stores offer pickup and delivery options to save time without spending a lot of money.

You can also purchase box meal kits with pre-measured ingredients ready to throw together quickly for a healthy dinner.

Meal delivery is another way you can get a quick lunch or dinner on the table without leaving the house.

 

Final Thoughts

Whether you need help with meal planning or could use an extra hand on the laundry, work-at-home moms have plenty of options.

You can outsource your chores to professionals or delegate responsibilities to other family members.

Mobile apps make it easy to create everything from chore charts to grocery lists so each person can do their part around the house.

Once your household is running smoothly, your business will too.  If you need to delegate some of your work, consider posting your job on HireMyMom where virtual professionals in a variety of fields are ready to take on new jobs and projects! Or if you need more work, we can help with that too!

 

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Michelle Laurey is a telecommuting wordsmith who especially enjoys writing on a cloudy day at Assignyourwriter UK. Always interested in ways that can help individuals reach their full potential in life, she enjoys producing stories on entrepreneurship, productivity, lifestyle, and health. Outside her keyboard, she enjoys visiting cozy coffee shops and taking long urban strolls with her partner. Reach out to her on Twitter.

 

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November 9, 2020

Moms (& Dads), This is How to Work Smarter (Not Harder) in the Kitchen

Are you running through groceries at an astonishing rate and finding dirty dishes in your sink every time you turn around? Like many people, I’m surprised by how many meals and snacks are pumping through my kitchen with so many of us home due to COVID 19. Here are our best tips for taming the associated workload.

 

Create and Post a Weekly Menu

If I could only do one thing to ease the cooking and kitchen clean up workload each week, it’s this: Create a weekly menu that covers all meals and snacks and hang it on the refrigerator. Direct your children to the menu when hunger strikes. (Make sure that some of the snacks can easily be grabbed and opened by young kids. For really young kids, include pictures of items they can select and make them easy to reach.) Having a posted menu reduces the discussion around what’s available to eat, eliminating a distraction for you as you work. Frankly, this one action will buy you untold peace of mind and help you reclaim time every day.

If creating a menu sounds like one more task to add to your already full to-do list, help is available through online meal planning services. Several options are available, and they all let you select a week (or more) of meals quickly and easily. They cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so it truly eliminates the scramble that accompanies menu planning and food preparation. You can choose meals based on your health goals, family preferences, and budget. Good options include eMeals, SideChef, Plan to Eat, and Recipe Keeper (my favorite). Once you choose your meals, you can automatically create a shopping list for the meals specified. A few additional tips:

  • Cross things off the menu as people eat them–you may find that the dinner you planned for Wednesday night gets moved to Monday, no problem–swaps are easy as long as you keep track.
  • Leave a blank space on the menu where family members can jot down meal and snack requests to incorporate into your planning.

 

Make it a Family Affair

There are many good reasons to share meal planning and clean up across your family and involve the kids. For starters, it gives you a break during a season that includes a lot of cooking. What’s more, your kids can develop valuable life skills in running a home, managing a budget, and healthy living. There are many ways to delegate responsibilities between family members. For example:

  • Put an older child in charge of generating a weekly menu using the menu planning app you prefer. Set a budget and provide goals to consider while planning. (Bonus if the kid is old enough to go to the store and get the groceries.)
  • Assign a day of responsibility for planning, sourcing, and preparing all food for one day each week to older kids. (For example, Connor owns Monday meals, Lindsay owns Tuesday, etc.)
  • Share duties by meal, with one person responsible for breakfast, lunch, or dinner all week. 
  • Ask younger kids to set the table, clear the dishes, or help prepare salads. 

Finally, create a task-specific cleanup calendar, so everyone shares in the clean-up load. Kitchen clean up goes a lot faster if everyone participates. Assign clean up duties to each family member on a rotating basis and agree on the standard of clean that counts as done. There’s nothing worse than having to call back a reluctant cleaning crew who forgot to wipe down the counters.

 

Master Lunch

Let’s talk about lunch. It’s smack in the middle of the day, and people eat on a rotating schedule with different meetings and classes ending at varying times. Let’s face it, stopping to prepare a meal in the middle of the day is disruptive when you are trying to work. A little planning can go a long way toward making lunch easier for you and more convenient for everyone. Try this:

  • Use school lunch services, if possible. Even if school is not in session, lunch is still available through many school districts. If your school district is offering lunch to-go, consider taking advantage of the service. Check with your school for details. 
  • Think leftovers. When you create your menu each week, plan for leftovers that family members can quickly reheat and eat for lunch. You can even have the cleanup crew package leftovers into single-serving lunch options that can efficiently serve each person when his/her lunch hour rolls around.
  • Go big. Prepare large pots of soups or chili and leave them simmering on the stovetop so people can self-serve when they are ready to eat. 

 

Inject Fun!

Last but not least, try to add some fun to mealtimes. When you cook all the time, it’s easy to fall into a rut making the same things over and over. But, thinking of themes can help bring the fun back to mealtime. Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • A week of Tex-Mex cuisine.
  • Italian dinners, including an old school pasta night and lighter options inspired by Italy’s different regions.
  • A retro week focused on popular menu items from decades past, such as meatloaf or Salisbury steak to celebrate the 1950s. Check out old recipe books to find some gems that your family will love.
  • Ask each family member to pick a number, turn to that page in a seldom-used cookbook, and ask the number chooser to prepare the item that appears there.

 

Please Share!

I’d love to hear what’s working for you and how you are managing mealtime. Send me a note with your best meal-time tips.

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May 8, 2019

Top 10 Productivity Hacks Every Mompreneur Needs For Her At Home Business

Figuring out how to get “all the things” done might just be the biggest achilles’ heel as a mompreneur.

It’s easy to look at our never ending list of to-dos and feel anxious and overwhelmed at the thought of how we will ever get it all done. Along the way, as a mompreneur, I have learned a few tricks and hacks to getting more done so I can be more productive and move my business forward.

Let me share with you a little secret about doing “all the things” right up front before we even dive into these productivity hacks.

You will never get it all done.

I know, I know. Not what you wanted to hear.

The truth is, your list will never be completely wiped clean and you will never feel all the way done for the day. It’s just the reality of being a mompreneur and business owner.

But what I will tell you is that even though you won’t ever really get it all done, you can implement these 10 productivity strategies that will help you not only get more accomplished during your work day but also focus on the most important tasks that will help to make your business profitable and successful.

 

1. BRAIN DUMP

Most of the time, overwhelm simply means that your brain is a jumbled mess of thoughts, ideas and tasks. The best strategy that I have learned to calm the chaos is to dump it all out on paper (or Evernote or OneNote if you are more of an electronic app kind of person).

There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Just dump every task, to-do, strategy and creative thought that is bouncing around in your head.

I always end my work day with a brain dump of what I want to get done the next day (or even for the upcoming week on a Sunday night). I immediately feel better once my cluttered thoughts are down on paper. I can see things more clearly and can make an informed decision about what gets my attention and what has to wait for a later time.

 

2. EAT THAT FROG

Now that you have dumped everything that feels like a chaotic, unorganized thought onto paper, it’s time to decide what to tackle and in what order.

This “eat that frog” process is based on Brian Tracy’s wildly popular book Eat That Frog. This strategy will help you take all those things off your brain dump and put them into an ordered list that makes sense for your business.

The key to “eat that frog” is to focus on tackling the hardest, most important tasks first. These are the tasks that are the easiest to procrastinate about because they are usually the ones that push us outside our comfort zone. But they are almost always the tasks that will move us forward in our business and are the most important.

From your brain dump, place an A, B, C, D, or E next to each item on your list.

  • An “A” item is something that is very important, something you must do to move your business ahead
  • A “B” item is a task that you should do, but it only has mild consequences either way. Reviewing email would probably be considered a B task, depending on your business.
  • A “C” item is something that would be nice to do but there are no consequences to your business success if they they get done or not. Calling or meeting a friend for coffee would fall under the C category.
  • A “D” task is something you can delegate to someone else. The rule here is to delegate everything that someone else can do so that you can free up more time for the A tasks that only you can do.
  • An “E” task is defined as something you can eliminate all together and it won’t make any real difference. These may be tasks that you should have gotten rid of a long time ago but because of habit haven’t done so yet.

Now that you have labeled every task on your brain dump, it’s time to get to work immediately.

The key to making this method work is for you to discipline yourself to start immediately on your A tasks and then stay on each task until it is complete, not moving on to another task before hand. And…most definitely, not moving on to a B task until all of your A tasks are complete.

In essence, you have “eaten that frog”. You have done the hardest, yet most important tasks first. Look at how productive you are!

 

3. BATCH YOUR WORK

Batching your work simply means that you are clumping together all of the similar tasks and tackling them at the same time. Here are a few examples of business related items that can be batched together.

  • Blog writing
  • Writing email newsletters and sales funnels
  • Social media posts
  • Sending out invoices
  • Checking email
  • Creating products that you sell

Look at your list of tasks and decide what items can be batched together.

For example, instead of checking email each time a notification pops up, set aside a chunk of time in your day twice a day, like morning and late afternoon for example, to focus on reading, responding and organizing your emails. This is key! Otherwise, so much time can be wasted switching your brain back and forth between tasks!

 

4. PLAN YOUR WORK DAY AROUND YOUR ENERGY LEVELS

Knowing when you are the most creative and have the most energy is crucial to hacking into your productivity as a mompreneur. Plan your day around your highest energy levels. When are you the most creative? When are you the most focused and less distracted? When does your energy start to lag?

Knock out your “A” tasks during your highest energy times and leave your “B” level tasks (checking email and returning phone calls) for those times when your energy starts to lag.

 

5. HAVE SET WORK HOURS

Now that you have identified your highest energy times of the day, make it a point to work during those hours. My most productive work time is from 9-12 each morning so those times are blocked out on my calendar as “focused work time”.

During these high energy hours I am focused on knocking out my “A” level tasks. I also know that after lunch, I am less focused and my energy starts to lessen. That’s when I focus on responding to email and other tasks that don’t require as much focus.

My best hack for sticking with your designated work hours is to put them on your calendar as a non-negotiable. Because you run your own small business, it can be easy to schedule doctor’s appointments or lunch dates during your most effective work times. Consider blocking out Monday-Thursday for work and saving Friday afternoons for errands and appointments.

The key to this strategy is to schedule work time and schedule it during your most energetic and creative times of the day and week.

 

6. HAVE ONE MEETING FREE DAY EACH WEEK

Interruptions and a lack of focus can be the biggest downfalls of controlling our time spent working on our business. What would it mean for your productivity if you have one day a week that you keep free of meetings and appointments?

My designated day of the week is Monday. I try my very best to protect Monday and keep it free of meetings and appointments. It is my day to crank out a ton of work projects and set myself up for success for the rest of the week. I know that if I am able to crush it on Monday and mark a ton of tasks off my list on this first day of the week, I feel more accomplished and energized to tackle the rest of the week.

 

7. CREATE WHITE SPACE ON YOUR CALENDAR

Because you run your own business and are your own boss, it can be easy to let obligations and commitments sneak into your work time. If we aren’t careful, we can say yes to too many things and find ourselves bogged down with commitments and our available focused work time is cut in half (or more).

White space is the available space on your calendar or schedule where you don’t have other obligations. If you feel overwhelmed just by looking at your calendar, take some time to reflect on how you are spending your time, what you have said yes to that is adding overwhelm and stress to your life, and how much focused time you have saved to work on your business.

It might be time to say no to some things so you can say yes to your business more often.

 

8. ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS

One of the biggest challenges for mompreneurs is distractions. There is a misconception that as moms who run a business, we should be great at multitasking.

Think about the last time you sat down to tackle an important task for your business. Usually, like I talked about earlier, the hardest tasks are often the most important and the ones that we can want to put off until later.

Did you find yourself checking Facebook, email and watching a stream of Instagram stories while you were “working” on that important business task?

In order to be the most productive and tackle the most important tasks in your business, it is important to head off the temptation to procrastinate by eliminating distractions.

Shut down Facebook, turn off email and put your cell phone in “do not disturb” mode. Whatever is distracting you the most and allowing you to procrastinate, shut it off for the duration of the project you are working on.

A popular method to getting disciplined and focused work time is the Pomodoro Technique. This method allows for some break time and helps you stay focused on the task at hand, with a little bit of down (reward) time throughout.

 

9. CREATE AN INVITING WORKSPACE

Where you work is as important to your productivity as all the other hacks I have shared so far. Your workspace should be designed to help you get work done. It should be a place that you are drawn to, a place you find inspiration and enjoy being in.

The environment in which you work is as important as the space itself. Choose colors, furniture, and decor that speak to your soul. I actually painted my home office to match my fun branding colors, and I love it! You may also want to consider adding a house plant or two to bring life to your office. Your productivity will thank you!

 

10. MAKE YOUR HEALTH A PRIORITY

As a Mompreneur, your health is usually the last thing on your to-do list. But the right foods and exercise are key to your productivity. You might think otherwise, that you don’t have time for a run or taking your favorite Zumba class at the gym, but even going for a brisk walk can make a huge difference in your mindset, energy level and overall productivity.

The key to this hack is to actually value the time you spend with your own self care.

What helps you recharge, gives you energy and keeps you healthy?
Exercise, eating your fruits and veggies, reading a good book, etc.?

Whatever it is for you, make it a priority.

 

What are some productivity hacks that you use to up your game and get more done as a mompreneur? Will you implement some of these productivity strategies to help you better tackle your to-do list?

Contact us and let us know. Would love to hear from you!

 

Are you a Mompreneur looking for more freelancing opportunities and client work to build your home based business? Check out more of what HireMyMom.com has to offer!

 

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August 14, 2017 0 Comments

3 Tips for Effective Time Management

We’re always looking for more time in our days, but sometimes it’s a matter of managing the time we do have in a better way.  There are tons of time management tips out there, and they all work if we do them consistently.

Read along for some quick, best tips and practices for managing your time and busy schedule.

Write it down

Every success begins with writing something down.  We all hear time and time again that goals, schedules, and priorities should be written down – and for good reason!  When we write something down, it becomes more solidified in our minds.  Also, we can visually see what we’re supposed to do or remember.

Write down everything you can in regards to managing time.  A to-do list, schedule, calendar/planner, and any priorities that will keep you on track.  Get into the habit of writing out your day in the morning.  This will allow you to check items off as you move through the day, as well as keep you on task.  Rate your tasks by order of importance, and implement your calendar to block off periods of time for work.  It’s important to keep up with your workload as much as possible, as playing catch up can truly mess with your time management.

Look at your priorities

Where are your truly spending your time?  You might think you’re only watching TV for 2 hours per day, but if you really look at your day, it might be more like 5 or 6 hours.  It’s easy to spend time on mindless activities, so getting very clear about where your time is going is crucial.

Prioritizing also involves saying “no” sometimes, which is a powerful way to clear some time in your schedule.  Say “yes” to the things that bring you joy and time with those you love, and “no” to those that are more obligatory.  Prioritizing isn’t always an easy thing to do, but it’s crucial to saying sane and staying on task.

Add to your breaks

If you work from home, you’re lucky enough to be in your own home for most of the day.  There’s typically laundry to be done, dishes to be put away, and hutches to be dusted. Since breaks should be a part of your day, it can be helpful to use your breaks to fit in other items.

This doesn’t need to include housework, but that’s the most common task.  Throw in a load of laundry during your 10-minute morning break, fold a load of laundry after lunch, or water the garden during your afternoon break.  Most breaks can seem fairly mindless anyway, so it can make you feel more accomplished to check off those little things that need done anyway.

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February 13, 2017 0 Comments

4 Ways to Save Time During the Week

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Between being a working mom and juggling home, family, and other obligations, weekdays can be a mad rush of timing and scheduling issues.  It’s important to keep the peace as much as possible, but that’s tricky when there’s so much going on Monday thru Friday.  Read along for some best practices in saving time during the bustling workweek!

Get into a groove

Schedule and routines are helpful for everyone involved.  Start by setting a general weekday schedule that’s appropriate for the whole family.  Write out a list or calendar that features everything that needs to be done in a typical week.  From here, create your schedule for what needs done, who needs to be where, and where free time is located.

When you have a schedule that is fairly the same week-to-week, it’s much easier to handle spontaneous changes, as well as find the time that you can be more productive or spend with friends and family.  When you don’t know where your time is going, it can feel chaotic and things can begin to get missed.

Plan meals

Weekdays are characterized by work and a lot of running around, so cooking can be a time-consuming process.  To eliminate some of the time spent prepping and shopping during the week, ensure that this is done on the weekends, or a specifically designated day.

If you have several free hours on Wednesdays, maybe that’s your time to shop and food prep.  Find out what’s best for you and your schedule.  Take a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to plan your meals for the week.  Utilize Pinterest and other cooking sites to find recipes or ideas, then build your shopping list and get everything done in one trip.  It’s also helpful to spend a few hours prepping the food, or at least the items that can be done ahead of time. This eliminates a lot of day-to-day thinking about meal prep, and can also save money!

Set it all up

Plan your weekends! Although weekends are typically used for family, friends, and spontaneous adventure, they can also help you a lot during the workweek.  Spend an hour or so on the weekends to set up for the week ahead.

Create your to-do lists, schedules, meal plans, and anything else that is part of the forecast for the upcoming week.  This is a great mental exercise as well, as it keeps things much more calm and organized.

Know what you need

Sometimes saving time involves others that are available to help you.  Set up a carpool for your kids, which will give you more time to work or run errands during the week.  There are also meal exchanges, play dates, and other family set ups that give your family a break during the week.  It can be helpful to look into some of these options, especially on your busiest days.  Babysitters and caretakers are also incredibly useful to free up your time during the week.  Although it’s an investment, typically your time will be worth it to ensure that you’re able to get done what needs to be done during that time.

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January 30, 2017 0 Comments

3 Ways to Maintain Your Schedule

As a work from home employee, your schedule is bound to be your biggest asset.  It can be easy to veer off track with all the distractions not present in a traditional workplace.  If you can stick to a schedule, you’ll be more productive, efficient, and able to stay focused on tasks.

We’ve compiled some best tips and practices to ensure that scheduling comes easy in your home based career!

Use a scheduling tool

Scheduling tools are extremely useful and eliminate a lot of the back and forth required to schedule a call or interview.  These tools work by keeping track of your calendar and noting when you’re free.  This way, scheduling a call is as easy as sending over a link, having the other person select a time that works for them, then following through with the meeting.

This also works to keep you on schedule because it forces you to track everything, and also keeps you from losing a lot of time in setting up these appointments.  Some tools that work for this include Calendly, Doodle, and Pick.

Track your time

To stay on schedule and keep moving through your to do list, tracking your time is a must!  Whether you use an Internet based calendar or a basic to do list, this is a crucial practice to begin and enforce daily.

Use some type of to do list with all of your items, including personal items.  This is helpful as a home based employee since some of your time might be used to be with family, friends, and completing any necessary errands and housework.  Of course this isn’t the case for all work from home employees, but it’s part of the benefits of a flexible job.

When you’re able to make time for everything in your schedule, in writing, you’re more likely to do it and more likely to keep pressing forward to get to everything on your list.  Even though these are incredibly helpful, do note that it’s important to make your lists as realistic as possible to prioritize and get what needs to be done.

Limit interruptions

Kids, pets, calls and people at the house – all things that can bring work to a screeching halt.  If you know you’re going into a very important call or interview, set up childcare (or pet care!) ahead of time.  You can also leave notes on your door for mail carriers to simply leave packages, as well as limiting calls to certain times of the day.

Keeping yourself on schedule is all about managing your time and using tools to keep that time flowing productively.  Do your best to schedule your days, manage distractions, and work towards as much efficiency as possible!

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August 22, 2016 0 Comments

7 Top Tips for Time Management

Time management is a hot topic these days.  Between family, a social life, and a career, it can be tough to make it all work.  When you work from home, you’re also balancing home activities, chores, and possibly kids as well, making it a delicate balancing act!

Read along for some tips and best practices to ensure that you’re being as productive as possible – while staying sane and making time for what’s important.

Organize your computer

When you work at a computer all day, you want it to look nice! Just as we keep our houses clean to keep mental clutter limited, your workspace is the same way.  Be sure to close unused tabs and try not to keep things running in the background.  While this can be convenient, it  slows you down by distracting you and slows down your computer with all the processing power.

One at a time

Settle into one task at a time! It’s tempting to open numerous tabs and begin flying through your work, task by task, but it’s not overly efficient.  Take the time to do one task at a time and you’ll find that you’re giving it much more focus and attention.

Set intervals

It’s been said again and again that working on a task for more than 90 minutes at a time is futile.  Work on one task for a set time, such as 15-90 minutes before taking a break or moving on to something else.

It’s also important to set intervals to get up and take a break! Time management is also closely tied to productivity, and you’re much more productive after taking a short break and coming back refreshed.

Multitask mindfully

It’s fine to throw in a load of laundry during the day – it’s one of the perks of working from home! However, if you do housework every few minutes, you’ll never accomplish your work. Take breaks throughout the day and schedule chores as needed.  For example, toss in a load of laundry in the morning, do the dishes on your lunch break, and take your pup for a walk during your afternoon break.  Not only do you get more done this way, but you aren’t disrupting your work time and you’re taking mini-breaks – a great mental management tool!

Say your schedule

Put your weekly schedule on your family calendars and let your friends and family know when you’re working.  It can be tempting to get out of the house at every chance when you’re a home based worker, but it’s important to get your work done too.

Another way to “say your schedule” is to know when to say no and be able to prioritize accordingly.  While it can be tempting to accept every role, event, and project possible, it’s not always in the best interest of your bigger goals or family life.

Get the right tools

Whether it’s client management system or a simple to-do list in Google Docs, figure out what works for you and stick to it.  Another important feature is a calendar that’s kept up to date and synced to your phone as well. This is also important for mapping out deadlines, staying on task, and prioritizing what’s most important.

Eliminate distractions

While it’s not always possible to eliminate each and every distraction if you have a house of kids and/or pets, you should have a plan in place for keeping them occupied during work hours. Whether you hire a babysitter, choose daycare or play dates for a part-time schedule, do whatever is needed to stay on task during work hours.

If you have an important call, be sure to arrange childcare and/or go to a quiet place so that dog barking and other noises won’t interrupt important business.  Of course this is not possible 100% of the time and most clients and employers know this, but do your best to establish boundaries and arrange for quiet working time when you need it the most.

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March 29, 2016 0 Comments

4 Tips for Time Management Success

Time management is a hot topic, especially for those of us who work from home.  It can be tough to plan your day – with kids and pets nearby and the distracting items of being at home (think TV, radio, interruptions, and so on!)  All of this can make managing time a full-time job.

Read along for some best practices in time management skills that will allow you more productivity and extra time to do the things you love.

Set your hours

As much as possible, set your work hours to remain consistent throughout the week.  If 9-5 works for you and your family, set it early and work around those times.  If 2-10 works better for your lifestyle, that might be the way to go as well.  Time management also maximizes what’s best for your lifestyle, family, and other obligations, so factor that in from the get go.

Set your time

Set an alarm or timer for each task that you complete.  If you need to do three things for one client, accomplish one, move on to the next client, and so on.  Of course, it’s necessary to designate these tasks in order of priority, but you can still set your time.

This will allow you to manage time so you’re allocating enough hours and minutes in the day for each task, helping them to get completed on time.

Multitask – to a degree

Over time, various sources have started proving that multitasking isn’t as good as it was cracked up to be; it can eliminate focus and draw your attention from what you started.

Even though multitasking gets a bad rap, you can do it in a productive manner – especially if you work from home! It’s not difficult to throw in a load of laundry, set your timer for your next task(s), and then retrieve it at the end.  While lunch is in the microwave, run the sweeper briefly.  It even becomes fun to work chores and other to do items into your time schedule.  This is yet another benefit of working from home, and it allows you to truly manage your work and home life time more efficiently.

See where your time is spent

Take a good look at where your time is currently being spent and evaluate it.  It’s not always easy, but it’s crucial to trim some time here and there, just as you would trim your budget or amend your health and fitness routine if it weren’t working.

Make sure that you’re billing your hours and accounting for all time spent on certain tasks.  When you track where your time is spent, you may realize that you’re spending more time on one task when you thought it was a quick, 30-minute item.

Time management is all about evaluating what needs done, where you’re currently spending your time, and how it can be used more effectively.

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July 13, 2015 0 Comments

3 Time Management Tips for Work From Home Moms

Working from home requires you to be very effective at time management. Although you may work for a company, much of your workday is still dependent on your own schedule and ability to be a self-starter.

Adding children into the mix can make this even more of a juggling act, so time management truly becomes #1. Follow these simple time management tips for work from home moms to keep you on the right (and productive) track.

Write it out

Scheduling is important, and as a work from home mom, scheduling for the whole family becomes crucial. Time and time again, people do better with time management when they see everything written out in front of them.

A solution for this is a large family calendar, either placed on a kitchen island, attached to a side door, or on the refrigerator.  Simply write out all known commitments at the beginning of each month and consult the calendar each day for a few minutes of updating. Teach every family member to consult the calendar as well, perhaps even color-coding for greater ease of use.

When everyone is in the habit of looking at the calendar and remembering commitments, it makes your days much more productive and efficient.

Delegate

Delegation is so important for work from home moms! Not only are you working, but you’re taking care of kids as well. Call upon friends and family members when you need their help, and look into programs, camps, and groups for kids when they’re home.

On the business side, especially if you have your own business or do freelance work, look into hiring a Virtual Assistant or some additional help with your busywork. There’s no shame in not doing it all, and it’s the key to reducing stress and increasing productivity.

Multitask

One of the many benefits of being a work from home mom is the ability to multitask.  You can do laundry while you work! Create a weekly plan of attack – write out your household responsibilities and job responsibilities, and add in short breaks to throw in a load of laundry or start dinner early.

This allows you to get housework done in the same time that you’re working – a double bonus!  You can really get a lot done this way, all while managing your time and having more hours in the evening to yourself and your family.

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