5 Ways to Help Manage Your Time As a Busy Mom!
As a mom, we've learned that time is the most precious commodity.
Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day while others, we spend watching the seconds pass until nap time.
Now that Charlie is a toddler we have to be conscious of how we spend time as a mom first, but also as a business owner. Definitely a tricky balancing act especially since we are the primary caregiver during the weekday.
Anyway, we thought we would share 5 Ways to Help Manage Your Time As a Busy Mom. Again, these are just suggestions or tips because know that whatever you are doing to raise/spend your time with your child is a reliable way! We hope these are helpful!
1. Tame Your To-Do List:
Have you ever sat down with your planner in the morning while sipping a cup of coffee and thought you could conquer the world in one day? It’s a running joke between our mama and us that once you have that morning cup of coffee you feel like you could do anything. Fast forward to 5pm and you look at your conquering to-do list planner like, what the hell was we thinking? Sound familiar?
Once you have a child that conquering-the-world-to-do-list just becomes shorter. This past year in particular we've had to break our to-do list down into two columns: Fisiz NEEDS & Personal NEEDS. Within these two columns we can only put 5 things down that are of importance that day. Of the five, the top three are the most important. This way we know if we can only do 3 things today, we're okay with that. If we get 5 that’s a huge accomplishment. Again, it’s managing expectations, but also being realistic about time.
2. Delegate Tasks:
We're always annoyed when people say you “CAN’T” do it all. For us, it’s such an oversimplification of the obvious. Like who am we to judge someone if they want to try to do it all. You’ll find no judgement from us. But the reality is that if you want to do all the things you have to be smart about it. Enter, delegating.
We're still working on delegating. Just like Charlie right now, we are doing baby steps. We finally took the leap of faith and hired a virtual assistant for our business (Hi, Becky!). DAMN. We should have done that a long time ago. Our stubbornness got in the way and truthly we shamed myself for not being able to do it all. Delegating is hard when you’re used to doing everything by yourself.
But! We promise once you start delegating stuff out you start to become a better person, mom, etc. Now, we realize throwing money at daycare, an assistant, housekeeper, might not be feasible. Case in point: our friend Katie (who is memorable) offered to come by the house and watch Charlie while she takes a nap so we could go to Orange Theory during the week if we needed to. Literally the nicest thing possible. Don’t worry, we return the favor by giving her lots of wine and food!
Our point is that you can’t take care of someone if you don’t take care of yourself first. Delegating tasks is a great way to get rid of stuff you don’t like to do, but also to allow you to do what you do want to do! Start small and work up!
3. Work Ahead:
People often ask us if we work early or late to get stuff done. Sometimes. Life’s not reliable, but we are a huge believer in working ahead. What does that exactly mean? Well, it means taking a project, task, event, and giving it a deadline. Once you have a deadline you start to work backwards. Hear us out….
Let’s say we have a sponsored post due Thursday February 21st. Here’s a general rule of thumb when it comes to workflow:
Saturday Feb 9th: Brainstorm ideas for sponsored recipe post
Sunday Feb 10th: Shop for products for photoshoot
Monday Feb 11th: Photoshoot of product
Tuesday Feb 12: Blog Post written
Wednesday Feb 13th: Editing of photos
Thursday Feb 14th: One week before the scheduled due date we will tell myself to have the post completed. This way if sh$t hits the fan we have a buffer built in.
Doesn’t this seem way more manageable than for us to put into our calendar sponsored post due February 21st? We're such a visual learner that if we see the cadence of the project we know what to expect and then it doesn’t overwhelm our brain! Plus, as the only caretaker for Charlie during the work day we have to budget our time again realistically which goes back to that to-do list!
4. Multi-Tasking is a F$CKING Joke:
No, for reals. We've tried and tried this past year to be as efficient as possible while raising Charlie and we thought multi-tasking was the answer. Oh, we can answer this speedy email while Charlie bangs on these pots and pans. Guess what? The email is sloppy and we end up shouting at Charlie for being loud and not letting us think. Sound familiar?
And maybe we feel more this way because Charlie is 16 month-old and a complete busy body. Sometimes we miss those newborn days! But we truly believe that trying to do seventeen things at once ends us making us feel bitchy and depleted at the end of the day. Our brains weren’t meant to work that way so it’s okay if you don’t multitask! If you do need to multitask, make it mundane tasks that don’t take up your bandwidth. you’ll have more energy and time to spend on things that are the most important!
5. Flexible Planning:
Sometimes we feel like we live in the movie “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray. Every day feels like the same day over and over again. It sucks at times. So, to combat being repetitive whenever we plan out our week we schedule in flexibility. Sounds weird, right?
This goes back to working ahead. This is our first world problem, but this past week we wanted to take Charlie to get new shoes. Sounds simple, but every day something came up in the morning and we couldn’t get around to taking her. We didn’t get mad or pissed, we simply moved the task to a different day. We also try to pencil in days to go to the park, Target runs, walks around the neighborhood, lunch to-go, etc.
Basically anything that gets us out of the house. We schedule it and if it doesn’t happen it’s okay. We've caught myself sometimes thinking, “Ugh. It’s too much work to get out of the house.” we immediately shove that thought out because not only is it good for us to get out for our sanity, but also for Charlie to see the world.
Curious, what do you do to help manage your time as a busy mama? Any helpful tips that we should know about?
