The Importance of Priority and Time Management

For work at home moms, twenty four hours a day is never enough. Juggling between children, family and your career or business is a delicate skill. It is important to remind ourselves that we stay at home to give the best care to our children. So trading your quality time with your children and family with your business or job is never an option. Moreover, what about time to ourselves? That is important too. Having so many things to take care of, to avoid burn out and over stress, we have to learn how to prioritize and manage our time. 

In order to manage your time effectively, the first thing is to decide what your goals and priorities are. The next decision is managing your priorities efficiently. You can do this by determining what is more important to you. By listing the list of priorities starting from the most important, you can then analyze how much time you should spend on a particular task in life. Keeping a journal is very helpful to make a list of to-do tasks and an estimate how long you will spend on completing them. You should include activities such as working, sleeping, relaxing, exercising, learning as part of your list. You can then go on to evaluate the use of your time and determine the best schedule for making better use of it. 

Next, after you have a working list of priorities, you need to match your available time to your list of priorities. While the time spent on each of the task at hand is important, you should also ask yourself if you are spending enough quality time on each task? A good example of this would be that if you are taking up part time courses, are you studying during your productive time or are you studying during a time which you can get easily distracted. 

Here are some practical tips of using your time more effectively. Break down large tasks into smaller ones and tackling each individual part one at a time can ease the stress considerably than facing one huge task. 

Get rid of routine tasks, if a task is done just out of routine instead of necessity then eliminate it if possible. Look at your habits to see if they could be changed, maybe you could do certain things different ways and save yourself some time in the process. Evaluate yourself to determine if you are a morning person or night person and organize tasks to use whatever time suits you best. Learn to say the word “no” when asked to do something for someone. Since we work from home, we are easily taken for granted that we are free to run errands for others. Be firm especially to those who know you cannot refuse them. It is alright to do favors once a while but remember your priority. 

Last but not least, do not forget to give yourself "Me" time. This is the time you allocate for yourself. It does not need to be long, but just some personal time daily to do what you enjoy most. It may be having a relaxing bath, a facial at home, meditation, exercising or any activity which can help you relax and calm your mind. I find this "me" time very helpful in keeping me focus as well as minimize stress. 

In conclusion, working from home is one of the best choice for any mothers who want to be at home for their children. However, time is often a constraint. Learn how to manage time effectively and you are on your way to be a successful work at home mom.