25 Time Management Guide For Working Mothers (Doable)

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Even though it sounds cliche, still you can’t deny the fact that moms don’t have enough time for doing everything. 

Especially when you are a working mother, here you need to balance your life between your kids and job and focus on your health and self. 

The very best thing working mothers can do is to learn how to manage time. It will help you have enough time for everything you need to pay attention to, including yourself. 

And to do that, here are some of the best doable and productive tips for you. 

Don’t Start Your Day Without Having A Plan 

The worst thing you can do is to start a day without having a plan. You are too dependent on external factors but since you have no idea where to go and what to do, the day won’t end up productive and satisfying. 

As moms, you have the ability to be flexible which is good when you have a plan. 

You can choose a planner depending on what suits you, and schedule your daily and weekly. 

For example, you can start with scheduling time when you need to get kids from school, then going for an exercise class. You can also fix Fridays for cleaning the bathroom. 

To Not Forget Anything, Put It In A-List 

It’s very easy to forget things, and it can be something important. Maybe you had to make a call at noon, but you forget as if you didn’t remember. 

So your time management should not just include planning but making a list for helping you to stay organized. 

Even with a daily plan, you can go off track when a lot of things start to pop up. So you end up forgetting things and it takes more mental energy to keep track of everything. 

To help yourself, make a list, add everything you need to do in a day and it will be much easier to remember. 

With this, you can get more benefits such as : 

  • You don’t have to depend on your memory which reduces mental energy. 
  • Its helps in reducing stress as you have everything written
  • You can move forward in a positive way instead of random
  • You learn how to prioritize the tasks every day
  • You can see the progress as you tick off the tasks from the list

Also, you can make list depending on what you need, it can be : 

  • Your office related work 
  • Grocery shopping list 
  • List of bills with the date that you need to pay 
  • Chores and activities regarding your kid
  • Planning for any upcoming trip or day out 
  • Chores or errands you need to do 

Know What Can’t Wait For Later 

The key to time management is knowing what is actually your priority and what can wait. 

When you are a working mother, you feel everything is important, and it can be but what is actually urgent and important both. 

That’s why you need to learn to prioritize.  So start with creating three sections and divide the to-do list based on that. 

It includes 

  • Things that need your attention immediately and require taking care of. 
  • Things can be important but they can be done during the week 
  • Things that are ongoing projects or long-term. 

Once you are done with making a list, put those tasks divided into these sections, to make it easy to remember, you can choose three different colors, ist called color coding. 

So you have the list of things arranged according to their priority level. 

Take Help From Your Kids 

Well, it depends on how young your kids are. If they are young enough to do their chores, let them do it. 

Remember it’s not the rule of handling everything on your own, you can include your kids to do some of the tasks. 

You can put the checklist of things that your kids can help you in doing. Put them in the role and hold them to the responsibilities.

So you don’t have to take the stress and add things to your checklist, saving time and allowing you to handle more important tasks. 

Kids can be very useful and capable; also with this, you are teaching them to do their work on their own and giving them responsibilities. This helps in making them responsible and independent. 

Do The Early Preparation And Planning For Meals 

Meals take a lot of time especially when you have kids, they are not very into eating everything. 

Also, there are breakfast, lunch, and dinner along with treats that you need to plan while focusing on your job and managing time for other work. 

So instead of wasting hours and hours every day deciding what to make, create meal plans. make sure you have everything in the kitchen, so you can avoid the urgent trip to groceries. 

You can even automate this, as a lot of services provide the ingredient directly to your home. 

Focus on creating a system that can save your time and wrack your brain every week. 

Automate What Can Be Possible

The life of a working mom is not easy, but with the help of automation at least you can save time on repetitive tasks. 

This includes doing meal planning, grocery shopping, supply delivery, and bill pay. 

You can automate everything which can be possible, so this reduces the stress, freeing up more time and space to adjust to other important tasks. 

Delegation Is Your Best Friend 

Successful and famous women who look like they got everything together and have balance, well it’s because they are not doing every single thing on their own. 

Learning how to delegate can help you a lot, track all things you require to handle, divide them into two categories, things you can do and things that can be handled by others. 

You can find someone else to do it for you, for example, you don’t have to clean your house on your own, you can find helpers or consider deleting it to family members and even include kids to handle basic chores. 

Working Mothers Are Allowed To Say No 

When you are a working mom, a lot of times, you end up taking on tasks that you shouldn’t. Maybe you want to handle the balance so no one puts any allegation of not being a capable manager or employee and a mom. 

But it’s okay to say no when you can’t handle it or if it’s getting out of hand. 

Part of the reason why you are always busy is that you have things on your list which are not your duty. 

The key here is to focus on your communication skills to politely say no without hurting anyone. 

Focus On Developing Routines And Good Habits 

More habits, as well as routines, can help you in guiding the decisions throughout the day and help in improving better. 

You can create habits and routines for supporting life, it can help you in making better chances of managing the day.

So if you want to be better and have a much more relaxed morning, plan your day in such away. Create the morning routine and add things that make you feel relaxed before you jump to start the day. 

Put Time Aside For Self Care And Relax

When you are doing all of these things, it’s obvious to feel tired and need time to relax. 

On top of everything, you are a mom too. So it gets more tiring and exhausting. 

You need to fix a time and day when you put effort into improving your health and self-care.  You can add things you like, including reading books, meeting with friends and relaxing time for yourself. 

Schedule Time For Family And Kids 

To understand that your family and kids are important, even though you want to spend more time, there are chances your day is too loaded. 

So schedule time for your family, include activities that can be fun, and invest in boosting the relationship. 

You also need to pay attention to kids, how they are doing in school and other things. 

Put Good Use Of Fringe Hours 

Fringe hours are tiny pockets of time that you get throughout the day.  Typically, these can be when you use the time to scroll down social media or use phones. 

However this can be time for better use, and you can use this time well for reading your favorite book, folding the laundry, jotting down ideas regarding projects you are working on, etc. 

Never Skip The Breaks 

You think that doing work every single second will make you feel productive and get more things done. 

However it’s not true, you need a break, not just it’s good for your brain and health. 

When you don’t take breaks, you might feel more easily distracted, lag in energy, and feel annoyed, and lethargic. 

So take 5 to 10 breaks while you do work, you can increase it as long as you work and help in feel more productive. 

Perfection Is Not A Real Thing 

All those women who are handling the family and work, they tend to strive for perfection. 

You want to be a perfect mom, a perfect employee, and a perfect yourself. 

However, perfection is not a real thing, which can be tiring and demotivating. 

So focus on being good enough, and let the feeling of perfection let it go. 

Do What You Promised To Yourself 

When you promise something to others, it can be your boss, husband, and kids. You do it no matter what it takes. 

However, when it comes to yourself, you are not that honest and put attention to doing it with that level of dedication. 

So instead of ignoring yourself, put yourself first and do what you promised. 

If you decide to go for a walk after dinner, do it. Or if you promised to join a gym, go for it. 

Multitasking Is Tempting, Don’t Do It 

Multitasking is indeed tempting, you need to handle the kid’s homework, but require to do skype calls. Even though you find doing both things together, don’t do it. 

Also if there are different things where you find multitasking, don’t do it.  Focus on one thing, your brain is built to focus on one thing, so don’t add more stuff. 

Reduce And Avoid Distractions 

The two basic clothing you should wear to be productive, first reduce the amount of distraction you get if it’s possible.

Don’t be a superhero when it comes to focusing.  There is always something around you that causes the distraction, it can be a phone or other media, you might end up chatting with others when you should be focusing on the work. 

So keep the phone away when you work. The next thing you need to do is to avoid, there are a lot of distractions that you can’t remove, so the best is to avoid them. 

Do Important And Demanding Things Fast 

Start with tracking what is important, and prioritizing, when you do it is to understand what is the most important and demanding task in your life. 

Since your day starts to process, your energy and focus tend to lower. and at the end of the day, you have less will to do the work than when you have started. 

So the best thing you can do is to complete those tasks first in the morning which demands more attention, focus, and energy. 

Give A Space To Future List 

Something in your day will pop up randomly, it can be an urgent task in a project where you need to handle it or your kid gets sick or something else. 

It can be hard to handle these sudden pop-ups when you plan a tight schedule. 

So you need to give space and help in improving the chances of not messing up with the schedule. 

Know Your Purpose And Desires With Outcomes 

You must know what you want from the end.   It can be a meeting, activity, or task. it can help you in knowing if it actually needs the amount of time and focus. 

So if the work can be done with an email, you don’t have to do meetings which take more time as compared to email. 

Also, meetings are time wasters, so avoid doing it if you want to save time. 

Track The Time And Use Spreadsheets 

One of the things you need to pay attention to when you are following your schedule and time management rules is to track the whole process. 

Use the spreadsheet to write down everything you have to do or have done so far. 

Also time track all the activities, see what is causing the time waste and what can be reduced to not take that much time. 

Do the audit when it needs to make sure your time management is on point and actually helping you. 

With wrong time management, you might end up wasting more time and energy. 

Be Flexible With Your Schedule And Timing 

For all working mothers, they might agree that kids can be unpredictable. Depending on their age, you need to pay attention to them. 

Not just that, it can be the project you are working on, to handle the sudden issue or problems you need to be flexible with your schedule. 

Also, you can be much more flexible,  for that you need to add buffer time and be easy with the schedule.

Consider Using Visible Weekly Planner 

So the important rule you should follow when you are managing the time, get a visible planner that you can see on a daily basis. 

It will help you in understanding quickly what you need to do. Also, even though you can use the technology, it’s better to consider writing things in handwriting. It will help you in remembering things. 

Trade The Time But Be Smart 

Well in order to have more time, there are chances you have to give up on something. 

So you might cut down the playtime with kids or give up reading for 1 hour to 20 minutes. 

One to stop when the time is up for work. You need to give up on something in order to save more time and get those free minutes or hours. 

It is the price you are paying when you trade the time. So when you are trading it, make sure you are being smart as no one is going to tell you what and when you should give up.

Look at what is less important from your list, you need to pick what won’t get the effect if it’s not done now or today. 

Get Your Sleep 

Working moms feel that giving up on their sleep will give them more hours. 

Even if it did, the price you pay is too much and not worth it. Lack of sleep makes you less productive, and more sensitive and decreases your efficiency. 

Also, it takes a toll on your health and mental strength, so give yourself proper sleep in order to be the version of yourself.

Time Management Guide For Working Mothers

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