How-To Basics for Balancing Work and Family
How-To Basics for Balancing Work and Family Life.
We are all challenged with balancing our work and family life. Our guest blogger, Christina Martin, of YouRelaunched has some great thoughts on the subject.
Being a mother is difficult enough, but add to the mix a home-based business and you can see why most working mothers stress about the fine art of balancing work and family life. It can be done effectively and comes down to time management for working mothers.
How do you go about it? What’s the secret sauce to balancing work and family life without pulling out your hair?
Goals and Schedules – First and Last Thing
The first order of business is to make sure you begin and end your day with organization. Write down your goals, both parental and professional. Answer these questions:
• What do you hope to accomplish in your business?
• What about as a mother – how will you proactively let your kids know they’re loved today?
• What did you accomplish come the close of the day?
• What do you still need to accomplish? This will get added to the next day’s itinerary as you plan out the next day…
It seems easy, and it is when you get down to brass tacks. What do you want or need to do? What did you do? What do you still need to do? The fun part is that you can take control of your day, and be prepared.
Use Bite-Sized Tasks
How do you swallow an elephant (if you ever wanted to do such a thing)? Simple: a bite at a time. When your goals seem insurmountable and bigger than you can chew, you can break them down into smaller parts.
For example, if your desk is out of control, you can easily become overwhelmed – where do you start? By breaking the entire project down into smaller tasks, you can work through a punch list of one thing at a time to accomplish the greater goal.
This goes for mothering goals as well as business goals. Bite-sized tasks are easier to chew.
Work in Batches
When you have broken the tasks of your goals down into their individual baby steps, you can also take the approach of focusing on one type of task at a time. Say that you wanted to generate leads for new business – there are many ways to go about this, with many little tasks.
One of the ways to approach it would be to list out the various ways you can generate leads (cold-calling, networking, setting up a lead-capture website or a dozen, direct mail, advertising) and then choose one.
Say that you wanted to cold-call, for example. You could work for a few hours on collecting the phone numbers or other contact information of your prospects. The next batch would be calling them all, etc.
Reap and Share the Rewards
When you finally get to the point where you are accomplishing your goals, you should celebrate somehow. It could mean dinner out with your significant other, a good friend, or the kids.
Whatever motivates you, make sure you celebrate your benchmarks. Do the same for your kids: give them some goals, “By Wednesday, your laundry and this term paper should be done,” and then celebrate.
Keep it simple so that your celebration doesn’t become a chore, but is something you can practically accomplish and enjoy. This is a way that “working mother’s stress” doesn’t overwhelm you. Call it a pressure relief – but having fun with your goals will help accomplish them.
What’s the secret sauce to balancing work and family life without pulling out your hair? Share on XMaking sure your family is a priority will help relieve your stress, and help you remain focused on what you need to do as a mompreneur. Try these How-To Basics for Balancing Work and Family Life.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s blog post, written by my special guest, Christina Martin, of YouRelaunched. For more information about Christina, please visit her website.
Subscribe by email
Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
This brings me back to the early days of starting my organizing business. Our daughters were six months and two and a half years old. It seems like finding that right work/life balance was an ongoing pursuit. At least it’s one I’ve always been aware of and worked on. There were a few things that helped me during those early days. The first was compartmentalizing. When I was working, I did just that. When I was with the girls, I was just with them. So I could be full in and present in both situations.
I also had the appreciation that they would grow up faster than imagined. That time was precious. So there were times when they wanted to play or needed some extra attention and I was trying to finish that newsletter (at night or in the wee morning hours.) I did my best to stop “work,” and engage with them. Was it always possible, no. But more often than not, I could wrap up what I was doing for that time and come back to it.
It helped to have distinct client and work hours, have the coverage I needed, so that I could build a business and raise our daughters. Was it always easy? No. Would I trade it for anything. No.
Linda, I didn’t start Basic Organization until my boys were older, so they didn’t need or want a parent around all the time. That made it easier for me to focus on the business when I needed to. But I did the same as you when they were young. I only worked part time, a few days a week. That way I had work days and home days. The kids had all my attention on home days. Of course it was before cell phones and all, so the ability to be available 24/7 was not there.
This is very true for me and close to home. My current home-work life is similar to what Linda described! My girls are almost 2 years and 4 months. The balancing act is a hard one to get right. I love the idea of starting and ending your day with organization. I abide by this idea and it saves me!!!! Wonderful post thanks for sharing!
I love bite-sized tasks. I have a ClickUp list for everything in my life. For example, I have every step in writing a blog from picking a title to the Instagram image for business. In my personal life, I have each room in my house broke down into specific cleaning and organizing tasks.
Lists are super helpful to stay organized. I love it.
Thanks Melanie. You do have a similar situation as Linda. She’s just years ahead. I applaud you for starting your business when you kids are so young. Give yourself some grace. I didn’t start my business until my boys were 13 and 15, so they didn’t need much hands on parenting. It was easier for me to concentrate on work when I needed to. But, as I told Linda, it was before cell phones!
I so like that you started out with goals and schedules as the first and last thing of the day. That, along with a routine will definitely get your day rolling.
The tips are just like your business name, basic organization. It’s such an important part of the process.
Thanks Ronnie. I live by “goal setting” so preach that to clients.