In exploring time management and organizing your life is essential in creating free time. The more you organize and manage your time the more you have time to spend with your family, relax or spend time on what makes you happy!
You spend a lot of time writing schedules, downloading productivity apps, adjusting sleep patterns, and an array of other tactics only to come up short. You might begin to wonder will you ever get your life back?
The first step is to make YOURSELF a priority first. I believe that you cannot give what you do not have!
Whether you work from home or work outside the home, all women work. Keeping your sanity while working and raising a family can be quite challenging, but there are some things you can do to help get things organized and less stressful. Here are some time management basics for working women.
Being a Morning Person
You may not be a natural “morning person,” but mornings are really crucial for working women. In fact, one of the secrets to becoming a morning person is to be an evening person first! In other words, do as much as you can the night before so that the morning isn’t so rushed and crazy.
Here are some tips:
* Review your goals and priorities for the next day so you don’t wake up and start in reactive mode.
* Prepare lunches (whether for you to take to the office or the kids to take to school) the night before and freeze or refrigerate.
* Lay out clothes the night before so you don’t have to figure out what you and everyone else is going to wear.
* Get up before your kids do so you can have time to command your day. I encourage you to get a gratitude journal by your bedside so in the morning you can instantly connect to what you are grateful for and come into a spirit of gratefulness.
* Prepare any breakfast make-ahead items such as cut-up fruit or hard-boiled eggs.
Come to an Understanding
It’s important that your spouse and/or kids understand that everyone has to pitch in. If necessary, begin to ask for help from your love ones. Also, review what you can delegate, delete if necessary and outsource tasks. I have a hard one with this one. I was able to create my priorities for the day and then quickly realized I would not be able to accomplish them all so I then thought what can I outsource and delegate and my list was cut into half in a matter of minutes. Also, it felt good taking some of the things off my plate.
Prioritize
It is important to find a system that works for you. There are a lot of tips, strategies, and holy grail on how you should spend your time, but you know what you can and cannot do. You can start with trial and error the important thing is to start. Once you have a system you can live with you begin to perfect that system. You will make mistakes, miss appointments, and disappoint others but it is fine it’s part of the process – forgive yourself and do what you can.
A easy system to implement right away is the A,B,or C system:
Priority A: Critical things. Anything that must be done right away or something important will go terribly wrong.
Priority B: Business as usual. Everything you must do to meet your short-and long-term business and career goals.
Priority C: Everything else. Busy work, organizing, wants (as opposed to needs), nice to have, and goofing off (what I like to do on social media)
Hopefully, implementing some of these tips will enable you to spend more quality time with yourself and your family. At the end of the day as a business owner, you wear many hats and it’s important that you implement strategies and goals that work for your lifestyle.