One thing we can all struggle, and especially if you are working from home mum. I love the quote by Hester Mundis – “There is no such thing as non-working Mother”. I mean I listen Clubhouse and writing the blog and only going to get the boog to get quote correct, I also emptied and filled the dishwasher and filled the sink to mop the floor little later. We are always on the go.
There is no such thing as non-working Mother.
Hester Mundis
Over the years I have implemented few time management hacks. Best one so far is – Kids are in school or after school! Kidding! But it does help to get through your stuff when you don’t have to make nutella waffles and wipe some butts. I have palyed around with them and as your life evolves, so does your time management. There is no such thing that one fits all. I want to bring out some of the ideas to you today, so if you are struggling you can add to it. This is not just for working home, it is also to add your hobbies, exercise, cooking and the rest in your day.. So if you are SAHM and juggle multiple school runs with house chores and extra curriculums.
1 Blocking your day or week
First time I heard about it was from Robin Sharma. You can check out his yourbe channel, where he talkes lot about time management and if I have picjed up something from him, then this is definetly it. Blocking means that you block out your days or weeks for certain activity. It works treat if you have multiple items on the go. Do it on sunday morning for week ahead and lay it on your kitchen wall so everyone knows what is happening just by glance. See Video below from 2 minutes where he discusses that, but the whole video is actually pretty awesome.
2 Five priorities for the day
Write out the five most important things and do them first. And when you have five things done, you can create new list of five things… and so on. But don’t do more than five. If yuo don’t get all five done, then you put the ones what are not finished to the next days top of the five. OR.. you can make yourself cup of coffee, put your feet up and feel great about your day -bear in mind; that’s important do! We don’t need always to be so busy. Like Gino D’Acampo says: Minimum effort, maximum satisfaction!
Minimum effort, maximum satisfaction.
Gino D’Acampo
3 90:10 rule
This has been controversial, but has helped me a lot. Especially if my kids are at home and I have to work from home. How does it work? I set my timer for 90 minutes, and that is the time I do my top 5 tasks-ish.. Depends how time consuming they are. When I was homeschooling, my kids also sat down to do their school work with me during that ninety minute cycle. When timer ran out, we took 10 minute break. It could be easy to also work into time blocking as the first point. That also stops you to get distracted with going to put on dishwasher or make sandwiches and end up doing something way out of the topics you suppose to do. As I said: It has helped me alot.
4 Start with 15 minutes of the most important task of the day.
Try to make sure that most important and the things you might be trying to avoid, are on top of your list. Only 15 minutes is enough that you get passed that energy block what stops you to actually doing it. There is no point to do the things you like at the beginning of the day, unless they are urgent and leave the not so liked stuff at the bottom of the list, as more likely you will push them to next day. Then just get over and done with them first. Besides if you promise yourself: only 15 minutes – that’s usually enough to finish the task.
5 Don’t try to over do it
Yes, sounds like a plan, doesn’t it.. Yet you find yourself to still doing it. I know I can put two hands up “guilty and should be charged!”. I like the idea of opposite of the top 10% of work and 90% of results. It was 80/20 and now it is 90/10. So what it tries to say that you should work only 10-20% of time and let the rest to be done automatically. So you don’t have to hover continuously over your kids, home and work, but rather make the work count and then take time out so you could let things to just flow. If that means you hire cleaner, or admin for work (setting up automatic email response is great) or whatever suits best to your life. Life should be for living not for trying to survive.
So these are my top five. Some work for you, some won’t. Some things take time to develop and become as habits. I have done 90 day plans ahead for me and all of them have block in my daily life and they are the only 10% of my day of each part of my business and when the work is done, it will be doing the work by itself, so I can do my morning and evening routines – or go away for weekend with my family, kids or boyfriend.
But don’t be so hard on yourself if you fall off the wagon.. it takes time to get rhythm, and as we move from summer to school season, from school season to christmas – maybe to next lockdown and you have to adapt new routine again. Its life, it is evolution.. so if everything goes “tits” up – then pour yourself a glass of wine or bubbly or orange juice… or all together and gather yourself together again. You got this!!
MissAnnulaLaLand 