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Oni Lestari
Virtual assistant, copywriter, SEO-expert
Being a mother while also working can be exhausting. On one hand, you want to spend ample time with your children and family. On the other hand, you also want to be productive and earn an income to maintain your financial stability.
Fortunately, remote working allows working mothers to stay productive while being available for their little ones. There are various job opportunities in remote working that can be tailored to a mother’s skills. To learn more about remote working for working mothers, check out this article!
This article will provide you with a guide about time management for working moms, helping you navigate your schedule and establish priorities while taking care of yourself and your family.
Table of Contents:
The first thing you need to do to stay productive and have good working mom time management is to find the motivation to start it. When you’re not motivated, remember ‘why’ you do things in the first place. Your ‘why’ is like a spark to start and fuel to continue. Think about your goals and the opportunities they can bring in your future.
When you feel numb during your routine, pause a second and take a quick inventory of your ‘why’. Consider the benefits that the job can give you. Is it finding your dream of opening your own business? is it helping you save for an expected vacation, or does it enable you to provide your children with proper education? To help you gather thoughts about that, you can create a vision board. Finding the image that represents your why or you in the future to boost your spirits when feeling low.
Make a to-do list to end your day feel accomplished and stay on track. As we know, humans can forget, and that’s why we should start making it. Here are the tips on how to make your to-do list work:
Don’t write a to-do list in your head, instead write it down in your note. Because our mind is for having ideas not for holding them. So, if your to-do list is still in your head, choose the tools to write it down right now.
Simplify your to-do list by making it in one place to avoid confusion. Scattered lists make your brain doubt, and start to lose trust in it. Because instead of focusing on the things on the list, your brain will overdrive to continue remembering what to do next in fragmented notes. So, give your brain a break by simplifying. Whether you’re using a notepad, productivity app, or book, strive for consistency.
Make a short to-do list and avoid the long one for two reasons. First, a long to-do list will leave you feeling defeated and overwhelmed at the end of the day. Because there is still a ton of stuff left on it. Second, a long to-do list often includes unnecessary tasks that you don’t need to do today. You can automate this kind of task with the routine, the technology, or delegating to someone else. Or, you can delete all those things and make it shorter. A short and realistic to-do list is the key to feeling accomplished at the end of your day.
Does your to-do list collection of nouns? like food, house, car, etc. When you write it, you might mean something like preparing food, cleaning the house, or servicing the car. Instead, of writing the detail, you keep it in your head. You can stop that habit and start to add a verb to your list.
Write a good to-do list based on tasks, not projects. In a project, there is more than one step to complete, such as organizing a webinar event. On the other side, a task is one action item in your list. So, instead of writing the project title and using a broad action, you can detail it. Such as contacting the speaker, booking the place, or preparing the food. With this, you can plan and prioritize, whether to do it today or tomorrow. It will make you less overwhelmed and achieve your daily to-do list perfectly.
After you have all the things you need to do on the list. Then, what to do next in ‘working mom time management’ is to make a prioritization. Take a moment to scan your list and identify which items are the most important to your goals, whether it’s personal or professional goals. Write a number beside your list based on your priority.
As a working mom, you also need to put your self-care on your list of priorities. Listen to your body, because when entering motherhood, your body will change after experiencing childbirth and breastfeeding. As most moms get less than an hour to themselves daily. Self-care will remind you in the end, that you’re not only a mom, a wife, or an entrepreneur, but you are also a person with needs and interests.
To help you decide which one is more important than the other. You can consider using a prioritization matrix. It divides priority into 4 parts based on important and urgent aspects. Important tasks contribute to your long-term goals and overall success. And urgent tasks are time-sensitive and require immediate attention. Here’s how you can sort them:
The second on your priority is important and not urgent tasks. You can decide to put it on your schedule, but it’s better to do it immediately.
The third on your priority is not important and urgent tasks. You can choose who can do this task for you and delegate it.
The fourth on your priority is not important and not urgent tasks. You have the option to eliminate this kind of task from your to-do list.
Now you already know the right things to make a to-do list and prioritize. Then, set a specific range of time to do each task on your to-do list. We call it time blocking to make sure our ‘working mom time management’ works. Create one based on your available time, make it realistic, and avoid overcommitting. For example, don’t allocate only a few minutes to do some hard thing, and too much on not important tasks.
With time blocking you can visualize your available time, tasks, and priorities clearly at the same time. In time blocking, you also can block dedicated time to ‘batched tasks’. A batched task is a group of tasks that have similar activities, such as ‘replay to comments on social media’ across multiple social media that you have.
You can do time blocking on calendar apps, such as Google Calendar. Treat your time blocks as sacred. Minimize distractions or interruptions during these periods for maximum productivity. Periodically review your to-do list and time-blocking schedule to see what works and does not for you. Adjust as needed based on changes in priorities or unforeseen circumstances.
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