Balancing motherhood and work is the ultimate work-in-progress, one that never quite seems to end. For the entirety of my life as a mother, I’ve worked to create a system that works for me - and surprise, it’s ALWAYS changing.
As your children get older and your work life demands change, we find ourselves struggling to maintain the small amount of balance that we’ve achieved. Often, this causes us to revert back to our stressed-out state.
Even as we struggle to find create some resemblance of sanity in our lives, there are a few things we can do each time to help out - aka these super simple tips for balancing your work-mom life:
Delegate Home & Work Tasks
“Hands-off” is not really in our vocabulary, but we can at least try. No one said being a working mom was going to be easy, but they also didn’t tell you that it’s 100% okay to delegate tasks to other household members or (if you own your own business) to outsource a few business tasks.
Delegate tasks that can easily be handed off at home or are time-consuming in your business. This can be as simple as asking a family member to pick your children up from school or extracurricular activities once per week or hiring a VA to manage your calendar.
Make “To-do” Lists
A simple addition to your typical morning routine, start creating two to-do lists every morning - one for work, one for home. I highly recommend separating each list into mini-list categorized by:
-Need to Do
-Want to Do
As you’re making each list, try to limit yourself to three-five major need to do items, allowing the rest to fill in your want to do section. This will keep you from being overwhelmed on one side versus the other.
Prepare in Advance
Have a little freetime on the weekend or maybe you have a little extra time on a certain day of the week? Use this time to start preparing for your week in advance.
Start prepping lunches, activities, and building nighttime and morning routines that prepare for later in the day or the next day (like tidying up toys every night before bed).
Know What Time of Day Works for You
Are you a morning person or a night owl? Identify what time of day works best for you to accomplish mentally taxing tasks or ones that require high-concentration and assign those tasks to that time of the day.
You’ll find that knowing WHEN you’re most productive and utilizing that time will keep you less stressed and allow you to finish tasks more efficiently - leaving more time for mom-life. If you don’t know what time works best for you, take a week and rotate!
Have Designated Break Times
Have designated break times from both your family and your work - you can suffer from both mom burnout and work burnout and neither are great for keeping your mom-work life balance.
Taking time to have a lunch break, just sitting after a strenuous task, or just planning a 15 minute stretch can help keep your mind clear and help you stay productive.
Balancing Mom-Work Life
Finding a healthy mom-work balance can be hard, and it can’t be done alone. You should always be open to accepting help (and understand that it’s okay to ASK for help).
Being a working mom doesn’t mean that we should sit back and be okay with never moving forward in our jobs and businesses - or that we should miss out on the key w=events in our children’s lives. It’s about finding a balance between the two and discovering what you’re okay with doing and what you’re not… aka establishing and sticking to boundaries.
But, that’s a problem for another day. For now, start with the simple things, like learning to establish a routine to help you balance or getting help from moms that have been in your shoes!
