You want to start your own business or already have. You have this dream of building the business around your lifestyle. Take care of your family during the day, run your business in the evening and everything works out swell.
The number one complaint Mompreneurs have is that they don't have enough time to spend on their business.
If you’re anything like me, you work on your business and feel guilty about not spending time with your husband & kids. When you do spend time with your kids, your mind keeps drifting to work and all that needs to be done.
Giving one up, is absolutely not an option. I love my family more than my business, but my work is what keeps me sane. It is something I love to do, in all honesty, it makes me a better Mom, and Wife.
To be an entrepreneur and have your own business, you need to be able to set deadlines for yourself and stick to them.
How do you juggle everything? How do you feel like you’re not neglecting something or everything?
There is one myth I would like to bust. There is no work-life ‘balance’. With your own business there is only work-life ‘integration’. You’re not always able to shut off the one and focus on the other. You’re not always able to go on holiday and not work.
If you follow Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanks, self-made Billionaire, yes with a B. You see her story and how she travels with her family, camping in an RV, and doing Skype interviews from the RV. Is that work life balance? No that is integration and your business, your second child which integrates with your life. For this to be successful you need to do a few things.
Here are my 5 Top Tips to integrate your work and your life so that you have more quality time for both. Quick & easy tips that you are already doing.
Top Tip 1: Chunking
Chunking is a term for looking at everything that you need to do, break them into ‘chunks’ and then putting similar tasks together.
This has done wonders for me. On a Sunday evening, write down everything that needs to happen. Group things together. I find it hard to group all things together, as most things need to happen every day. But things like meal planning and food shopping, now happens once a week. I make lunch for the whole week in advance.
Things like content creation I try and do once for the month ahead.
This means that if there are things that I did not plan for, I now have space to integrate them.
Here is more on this: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/productivity-performance/power-of-chunking/
Top Tip 2: Meal Planning
This has helped me to gain at least 1 hour a day. Take today and create a menu of 7 Dinner meals as well as 1 lunch you can make in bulk for 5 days. If you say, no I don’t want to eat the same thing for lunch every day, then you apparently don’t need an extra hour. Do I love eating the same thing for lunch? No. Do I like having an extra hour to work? Yes.
Make a shopping list of everything you need for the week. Share your menu with the family on email. I do this on my phone as an iPhone note and share it with my husband.
This way, if I run late, he knows what is in the fridge and what’s the plan. Worse comes to worse we eat a pre-made lunch for dinner and buy pizza on Friday.
Top Tip 3: Identify and Delegate
Delegate the $20 tasks so that you can focus on the $200
This can be anything from cleaning, ironing, walking the dog, kids in nursery, meal boxes, Granny visits, ANYTHING that saves you time. Do not under value yourself. Your focus is worth the $200 tasks. This can be admin, getting a virtual assistant to create marketing content, reply to emails, do invoices, getting someone to do your taxes etc. But sit and write down everything you have to do in a day and a week, and identify what can be delegated.
Mom’s, this is SUPER important for you. This took me a good year to get used to. 2019 was my year of learning to delegate. We have been programmed to do everything perfectly, I can hear my mom saying… “if you want a helping hand, there is one at the end of your arm” or “if you want something done right, do it yourself”, sound familiar? We need to learn to ask for help and accept help once it is offered.
Top Tip 4: Schedule "me time"
Stop trying to want to do more & more. Sometimes you get more done, when you force yourself to do less.
My morning routine:
-06:00 -06:30 Walk the dog
-06:30-07:00 Journaling, Meditate
-07:00 - 07:30 Work, work, work
7:30 No work, Family breakfast time
“Me time” is SUPER important. I can already hear you, yes but if I have an extra hour of uninterrupted work time, I’m not going to spend it journaling and doing meditation. I can use that time more efficiently.
Well I beg to differ. If you are a mom, you tend to spend so much time running after everyone else and not enough time on yourself. You need to fill your jug before trying to give to everyone else.
The Parkinson's law explains that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Meaning the task, you set out for yourself will expand to the time allocated. If I allocate less time to a task I tend to feel forced to finish what needs to be done in the time allocated. This is also why they say, if you want something done, give it to a busy person.
That is super mom quality right there!! Look at the rest of your life for examples.
Today I swept the backyard in 10min. This is something I’ve been putting off for weeks. Making the task larger than it was in my mind. Today, I knew I had to take my daughter to school and had 15min before I had to leave. Suddenly something that took me weeks to start, ended up taking 10 minutes to complete.
Back to “Me time”. Meaning that if you spend 1 hour on yourself and allocate 1 hour to work, chances are, with a clear mind, you will be able to complete the 2 hour’s work in your 1 hour as you will be more level headed and more productive. I beg you, try it for 2 weeks. I have been doing this, and stopped for about a week and I could feel the chaos returning to my life. Waking up early and spending time on myself, makes me proactive. I’m ready for any situation. If I don’t spend time on myself in the morning, my whole day ends up being reactive, and all I do is put out fires.
Top Tip 5: Remove Distractions, like really!
Identify what distracts you and remove it. Leave them in the bedroom or in the charger. While I’m recording, my phone is on ‘do not disturb’. When I’m journaling I leave my phone in the kitchen or bedroom. When I’m doing breakfast time I close my laptop and focusing on my daughter. Am I always perfect? No, I still have my smart watch and have my phone close by. But if I do let the one overlap, I try and stop myself and say, “Nope, I’m not doing this” and return my focus to the main priority at that stage.
BONUS TIP:
STOP FEELING GUILTY. It is not wrong to want to focus on something you love. Stop with the Mom Guilt! If you want to have a career, then you can do that AND love your kids. If you want to be a stay-at-home mom and not go back to your old job, I FEEL YOU! No more guilt! Love yourself and have empathy for yourself. I’m sure you are doing the best you can!
As the air-hostesses always say during the safety briefing, “Apply the oxygen mask on yourself before helping anyone else.”