Riham Monzer
Learning to manage your time wisely is essential to meeting deadlines and maintaining your sanity. Nowadays, time management is a big concern for modern mothers. Between managing children's time and activities, household responsibilities, family care, and cleaning the house, numerous moms end up not having time for themselves. Trying to juggle several tasks at once may feel impossible. Working moms can find the following steps practical to help organize their daily life and increase their productivity:
1- Identify What Wastes Your Time
Being a superhero when it comes to focus and time management can prove challenging. If your phone is constantly distracting you, it will be impossible to get anything done. When you’re trying to get some work done amid a busy office with people stopping by to chat constantly, you’re going to be highly unproductive. Figure out what distracts you the most and eliminate it. Put your phone on airplane mode, silent mode, or keep it in another room. Move to a quieter space and focus on the task at hand. Technology and social media are the main reasons why so many mothers lose valuable time by constantly checking these platforms. Regulating how much time is spent on these platforms and specifying the target and purpose can help with time efficiency.
2- Use Fringe Hours Well
Fringe hours are those tiny pockets of time we all have throughout our day. Typically these are the times we pull out our phones and mindlessly scroll through social media. This could be time spent in waiting rooms or pickup lines, waiting for the microwave to ding or the pot to boil, standing in line at the store, or any other small part of your day that feels insignificant. What if you stopped thinking of this time as unimportant or wasted and learned to use it well? Instead of wasting your fringe hours try to use them wisely. You could read a book, send encouraging cards or texts to friends, fold some laundry, jot down ideas for the challenge you’re facing at work, etc.
3- Visual Organization
Lack of organization can lead to confusion and poor choices in time management. Visual organizers are currently available almost anywhere. Using calendars, planners, agendas, and personalized organizers can help manage a mother’s work. Having such an organizer provides a sense of accomplishment when a mother can cross out all her planned activities for the day or week.
4- Put a Time Limit on Tasks
Parkinson’s law states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” If you give yourself two weeks to write a paper, it could take the whole two weeks, but if you procrastinate and only had a couple of hours, you could still somehow get your essay written. If you limit the amount of time you give yourself to complete a task, you will achieve many more tasks. One can leisurely fold a load of laundry in an hour while watching a TV show or can focus and get it done in 5 minutes. If you want to do more, give yourself a time limit and force yourself to stick with it.
5- Prioritize and Set Realistic Goals
To avoid distraction and procrastination, learning to set priorities and goals helps mothers stay focused and manage their time effectively. Focusing on one task allows mothers to maintain momentum and speed to achieve their goals without setbacks or distractions. Follow the urgent-important Eisenhower Matrix to decide on and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance:
6- Use a Timer
Timers are valuable tools that enhance productivity, help maintain commitment, focus on the task at hand, sustain discipline, and avoid distractions.
7- Take a Break
Maintaining focus for long periods is draining and ineffective. Taking a break from the task at hand by stretching, having a coffee, taking a brief walk, or even talking to a friend can help refresh the mood and mindset.
8- Plan Beforehand
Before going to bed, plan for the next day and write a to-do list of essential tasks that need to be completed. This way, the next day is set in motion with a planned outcome.
9- Prepare Beforehand
Preparing school lunches, cooking, and packing school bags can all be prepared the night before. By doing so, a mother saves time in the morning, which gives her more time to complete other chores that may have been unattended.
10- Delegate
Delegation is a realistic alternative that a mother should resort to from time to time in the family. Allowing children to acquire several independent skills such as: preparing breakfast, washing fruits, putting away groceries, and planning their lunchboxes are all part of delegating tasks. These tasks teach children responsibility and independence while saving mothers from spending so much time on these tasks to complete more essential tasks.
11- Learn When to Say No
Learning to say ‘no’ to people’s requests may be an obvious time management tip for mothers, but that doesn’t make it an easy one. It’s essential to prioritize while learning to say no to unnecessary requests.
12- Have Lazy Days
Ordering takeout, staying in pajamas all day, and having a messy house is all part of the equation. Accept that there are days where things don’t need to be done and that this is part of a healthy process.
13- Be Flexible
Even though planning a day or week is an ideal way to set time management goals, something may come up. Expect the unexpected, and that sometimes changes to a schedule need to be adapted. Having a sick child, a flat tire, and being stuck in traffic are examples of unexpected changes.
14- Don’t Aim for Perfection
As incredible and unique as you are, you will never be perfect. You’ll never do anything perfectly. Allow good enough to be good enough. Most things can be tweaked and updated in the future. Stop limiting yourself by aiming for perfection and accept for now that this is the best that you could achieve.
15- Schedule Self-Care
While dealing with all the duties of being a wife and mother, a woman tends to forget to take care of herself. Yet, a mother should fit self-care into her schedule. Planning time for herself helps maintain her social, emotional, and psychological well-being. Eating healthy, exercising, shopping, and meeting up with friends are examples of self-care time for a mother. Assigning 30 minutes to 1 hour per day of self-care can help a mother in the long run.
