15 Tips for Working From Home with Young Children

How pleasant it is at the end of the day,

no follies to have to repent,

But reflect on the past, and be able to say

That my time has been properly spent!

~ Jane Taylor

When you are a mom – juggling motherhood and a business is tough. Trying to do both with young children while working from home is no picnic in the park either. It is no wonder that many moms who work from home are exhausted by the end of the day. What’s worse is, there are many days that you feel that you have nothing concrete to show for all your tiredness. You love being home with the kids. But you also know that it’s taking care of the customers and employees that allows you to pay your bills and be at home with them.

In the nine years that I have been a work from home mom, I know that the key to productivity is managing your time. Like money, you have to plan for and manage how to spend your time. Or else you will waste it and wonder where it went.

When you work outside the home you know what’s expected of you and the tasks you have to accomplish for your employer. Without a planned daily schedule it is easy for other people’s agendas, interruptions, and distractions (e.g. internet, texts, and tv) to get you off course.

The following are some productivity/time management tips for moms who are working from home with young children, I learned through trial and error and the wisdom of others:

• Make sure to eat a healthy breakfast and exercise regularly

• Have a designated area to work

• Develop a regular daily work schedule with a start and stop time

• Plan and write down your Must-Do work activities for the day/week (as much as humanly possibly) in advance, otherwise you’d end up wasting a lot of time. Do the most important and urgent activities first

• Organize activities to be done in 30 minute – 2 hour time blocks. For example you can group checking phone calls, faxes, and e-mails or responding to them in the same one hour time block

• Use a clock, timer or visual timer e.g. The Timed Timer to help you stay on task

• Wake up earlier or stay up later than the rest of your household so you can do your priority tasks without interruptions and distractions

• Teach your child(ren) not to interrupt you when you are on the phone

• If your preschool children are in the home during work hours, plan structured activities for you and them to do each work day

• Hire a babysitter (relative) a few hours a week to help you with the kids and/or household chores

• Have older children help with menial office tasks such as shredding paper, sticking labels and stamps etc.

• Train your family members and friends not to drop by or call just to chat during work hours unless it’s an emergency

• Outsource/delegate business tasks that are overly time-consuming, yet important e.g. bookkeeping/accounting

• Check e-mails later on in the day

• Identify and eliminate time vampires e.g. personal texting during work day, checking emails more than 2x per day, surfing on the internet, television etc.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit there are many times when I too, have failed to heed my own advice about scheduling my time. By failing to plan my days – both my personal and business lives suffered.

Sherry Daniels manages a 20+ year Orlando based sprinkler system company. She is the author of “Working Moms: How to Quit Your Other Job”- available at Amazon.com. To find out how she can help take your family owned trade contractor service business to the next level, send her an email at [email protected]