Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever been on a roll with work, but then your timer went off and you had to go pick up the kids and start making dinner, and before you knew it, all that precious momentum was lost?
If you feel like more hours would genuinely solve the problem in your biz, let’s look into the strategies I used with this client to free up even more of her time.
First off, make sure you’re fully utilizing your early morning hours before your kids are awake – that’s something you can control (when you get up, that is). (And of course move your bedtime earlier to match).
Second, I want you to be very clear on naptime being work time. Other than opening your laptop, I don’t want you doing anything non-work-related in this time block. (In fact, if you can, start it booting up while you get your littles down for nap, to save time!)
You’re not allowed to do any housework, scrub any dishes, clean floors, anything else right now. This is work time. House time happens when your children are awake.
Third, I want you to remember evenings and weekends. Now, evenings only work if you’ve got either tiny kids who go to bed early, like in the sixes, or teenagers who stay up late (whom you don’t need to pay attention to). So if you’re in either one of those situations, by all means put in an extra 40 minutes of work after supper, before you go to bed – sometimes it’s just that little bit extra that makes all the difference when you’re finishing a sales page or wrapping up some launch emails or podcast planning.
Now, about weekends: I’m not suggesting you give up your entire weekend here. What I *am* suggesting is that you ask your husband to take the kids to the park for a couple hours, or you take *yourself* out of the house for a few hours, and leave him with the fam.
We’re not doing a full work day here; we’re just getting a liiiitle more done. Squeezing out a couple more hours ‘cause you’re on such a tight schedule.
And especially if you do this by waking up early on Saturday mornings (just like weekdays), or doing your extra session during park time, your weekend work session can be barely noticeable to the kids. So you don’t have to worry about sacrificing family time for that.
All right. Does that help? I just threw a bunch of strategies at you, but if you’re in the time-poor, kid-rich phase, you’re going to need one or all of them.
