Tips to manage your time as a work from home mom

Becoming a mother is, indeed, one of the best feelings in the life of a woman. That being said, women often have to go for a career break once a child is born.

Caring for the little one(s) is, indeed, a behemoth task and requires undivided attention all through the day.

As such, many women prefer to become a stay-at-home mom to be able to take proper care of the newborn.

However, when the kid grows a couple of years old, you may start thinking of starting to work all over again.

If a 9-5 job isn’t something that you are ready for yet, working from home would be the best choice. You can enjoy the best of both worlds – care for your child while still improving your career graph.

However, with a kid at home, many women feel that they wouldn’t be able to do much.

While your kid will still need you most of the time, you can find out time to work from as a freelancer.

Irrespective what your field is, finding work as a freelancer isn’t quite difficult these days.

What stands out as a problem for most women is being able to work dedicatedly while looking after a young kid.

Well, it may be a bit difficult to manage both your kid and your work simultaneously, but it is not impossible.

In this blog post, let me tell you how you can manage time and be productive as a work from home mom.

Start with a plan

This is the very first step towards becoming productive at work. Even before you resume your career, you have to decide what you actually want to do.

Do you want to continue working in the same field or do you want to switch. If you want to be in the same field, do you want to work as a freelancer or do you want to start your own company?

If you want to switch areas, what would you want to do and how would you gain the necessary skills?

The answer to these questions will give you an idea about what you should do.

Once you know that, you have to create a plan about how you want to go about doing it.

Create a schedule

The next thing that you should do increase your productivity in your work is create a schedule – both for you and your baby.

Whether your baby has started school or not, everything should be done according to schedule.

Make a timetable for your kid to eat, play, sleep, or engage in any other activity that you may have planned for him.

Alongside, make a timetable for yourself as well, scheduling your work at time with less or no distractions at all. This may be when your kid is asleep or is at school. This way, you will be able to have time dedicated for all types of work.

Create a daily To-do list

Once you start working from home, you will feel overwhelmed by all the work that you have to do.

Balancing your household and your work isn’t easy in the beginning. At the end of the day, you may feel that you couldn’t complete all the important things that you had to do, whether that be for your home or for your work.

This may make you feel frustrated. That is why, you should opt to create a to-do list for every day. Jot down all the work that needs to be done in
the coming week, and divide them between the days of the week.

Initially, try to assign only 2-3 tasks per day and as you get more adaptive to this routine, you can assign 3-5 tasks per day.

Do not create a very tight schedule as you may end up feeling too tired for the next days.

Create a workspace

Even if you are working from home, do not just sit on your bed and do whatever you need to do.

Create a separate working area for yourself. If you have a spare room, that would be the best.

If you do not have that, put up a desk in any room where you have some free space.

Whenever you want to work, go to that designated area and start working. It will immediately help create a work environment for you.

Create a suitable work environment

If you want to give your best to your work, you have to ensure that you have a good working environment.

Make sure that the room and your workplace is de-cluttered.

A tidy and organized surrounding will help your thoughts to be organized as well. The area must also be neat and clean.

Dirty and shabby places are not only bad for your health, but also create a poor work environment.

The temperature must be set to a cool, soothing degree to ensure that you do not have to sweat it out literally.

Keep distractions at bay

Once you have created a schedule for yourself and your kid, you have already assigned yourself the hours for your professional work. It should ideally be around 4-5 hours at the least, more if possible.

During these hours, make sure that you are not distracted in any way. Stay away from distractions like TV, social media, internet surfing, etc. during these hours.

Make sure that you are totally focused while working so that you can give your best.

If you like, you can turn on some music that will create a nice ambiance, but must not distract you.

Ask for help

If you have a lot of work at home managing your household and kids, you need to ask for help.

You can hire a maid to help you with your daily household chores so that you can free up more time for yourself, your family, and your work.

You can also allot specific tasks to your family members that will give you more time to work from home.

You can also buy appliances and gadgets that will make your work easy and save time which you can use for other important tasks.

That apart, you can also seek professional help for your work. If you find that you are overloaded with work, it will be wise to outsource some of it to a professional so that you can get things done in time.

Rise early

Waking up early may not be something that you love to do, but it, indeed, is what you need to do.

When you wake up early, you not only can keep yourself healthy which will eventually make you more productive at work, but you also get a lot of time on hand before your kids or other family members wake up.

Getting up at 5 is the best bet, but if you find it difficult to do that instantaneously, trying changing your wake up time by half an hour every week or so.

In a month or two, you will be awake before everyone is and find at least an hour or more to work with total peace of mind.

Allot time for your family

When you are creating your schedule, make sure that you allot some time for your family as well so that you do not have to take out time from work to be with your family.

This could be after your child returns home from school or play or when all the members are home after the day or both.

Whatever it is, make sure that you do not skip family time. Your kids do need attention, and if they do not get to spend time with you, they can become more clingy or disobedient, making things difficult for you.

But if they know that you will spend some time with them every day, they tend to let you work undisturbed most of the time.

Give yourself some time

In balancing your work and home, do not forget to spend some time for yourself. Take care of your health.

Take short breaks whenever possible. Pamper yourself on a regular basis. Exercise everyday or go out for walks. Go on dates with yourself occasionally.

You will feel good about yourself and that will motivate you to work more. You will also feel re-energized and ready to handle work pressure.

Being a mom and working from home simultaneously is quite an uphill task. But that doesn’t mean that you will keep yourself away from work and let your career fall apart just because you had a baby.

As soon as your baby is a couple of years older, you can get back to your work by exploring the work from home options available in your field.

You may also think of starting your own business and running it from home. This way, you will be able to care for your kid and be financially free as well.

So, what’s holding you back? Gear up mommies and make your mark!