Time Management Tips from a Former Company Director

Hello and welcome back to the blog!

Today we're talking time management, a topic important to working moms, stay-at-home moms (this is me now!), and the growing number of Hybrid Moms that are watching babies while working from home (that was me not so long ago!).

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For those who don't know me, I have close to a decade in the instructional design sphere and am now a full-time stay-at-home momma. My last few years in instructional design were spent working remotely while watching one baby, and then two babies as our family grew.

I left my corporate job holding the title of Director of Instructional Design when my babies were 2 and 10 months. During the past decade, and especially during the two-plus years I spent as the Hybrid Mom, I learned a thing or two about time management. 

Things that have people asking, "How do you do it all?" "When do you get it all done?"

(The answer to both of those is "I don't" and "I'm tired," but we'll get to that some other day.)

Time management tip #1 - Take notes.

Take notes on everything. Do not ever depend on your brain to remember something. Ever. Write it down in whatever system you use for note-taking. 

And don't wait to take notes until your note-taking system is perfect. I know some of you lovely ladies like things to look nice or feel nice or be organized, and you make the world a better place for it. You may also forget 100 things before you find your perfect note-taking system.

I use a combination of a calendar app and the notes app on my phone. When I was working, this allowed me to schedule client meetings, pediatrician appointments, and write down that one thing I thought of while we were outside, all without needing to lug around a planner.

Whatever works for you, use it. Over-use it. Write things down, because there's no reason to expend mental energy remembering something when you could be using that mental energy to problem-solve or be productive.

Time management tip #2 - Chip away at the big tasks.

You know how you feel when you look ahead and see that one job/chore/project that you know is going to take so long and you know you probably don't have time to do it all today, so you'll just wait for another day? That kind of despair-procrastination combo that turns into a recipe for many undone tasks sitting on your to-do list? 

No more! From now on, we chip away at big tasks. Some of them are hard, maybe the ones where we aren't even sure where to start. Someone just said "Figure it out" and now we have to...figure it out. But that's fine! This is how we earn management roles, both in and out of the home. 

Some of the tasks aren't hard, they're just tedious. Repetitive, boring stuff that's going to take a long time. 

Stop waiting for the day when you have two or three or eight hours to work on your big task. Do a little bit at a time. Just start doing it. Stop avoiding it and get it done.

Procrastination is terrible for time management. 

Time management tip #3 - Minimalism in all things.

Have you ever watched any of the minimalism content on YouTube? Or read about it on someone's blog? Time to put it into practice!

If you don't like to think of "minimizing," think of "simplifying" or "streamlining." Find the synonym that you like and go with it. 

Pare down your possessions at home. Less stuff to organize, clean, and look at is more mental space to focus on rest or productivity. 

Pare down your calendar, the folks you follow on social media, your screen time, your extracurricular activities, and on and on. 

The more you streamline, the more you minimize, the more margin you'll have to take care of the responsibilities you can't get rid of or that you love (like work and taking care of babies), and the more margin you'll have to rest. 

Your Sabbath can become a Sabbath instead of a chore day, your evening can include family time instead of end-to-end chaos.

I think minimizing our lives falls into the realm of "big tasks" we talked about in tip #2, so instead of going at this all at once and then giving up because it's too much to do, pick one area and just start. Work on the rest when you can, but chip away at the excess bit by bit.

Time management tip #4 - Schedule one task per day.

I believe there's a common bit of productivity advice that encourages you to write out your top three tasks for the day at the start of any to-do list, with the idea being that you'll need to make those three your focus before moving on to the rest of the list.

Good idea, but too much, I think. I say schedule one task per day. I started implementing this heavily as a momma of babies. The day is too unpredictable to have three must-dos. One must-do is enough. 

You already have all the daily odds and ends you need to get done. A load of laundry, a load of dishes, dinner prep, answering emails, returning phone calls, brushing your teeth. 

Then we know things will come up. Someone on your team needs help with a problem, a baby gets sick, a meeting pops up. 

Days fill up fast, and it can be discouraging to look at your to-do list and see several hours' worth of items that still need to get done. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

One task each day is manageable. One task could be chipping away at a larger task that will take several days to complete, doing the one annoying thing you've been avoiding that'll only take a few minutes, or something in between. 

Have one must-do item on your to-do list for each day and get it done.

Time management tip #5 - Kick the phone addiction.

Raise your hand if you know someone who doesn't want to be called out for what is, honestly, an addiction to their phone? Maybe someone who says they don't spend that much time on their phone, but always has their face glued to the screen? All of us? Everyone has a hand up? Good.

I know what it feels like to be so exhausted you don't want to expend the mental energy to pursue your hobbies, even to read a book. You just want to shut your mind off and watch a show or scroll through TikTok and not have to think about anything. But we need to avoid having this become a constant in our lives. 

If you need to rest, do something restful. Pursue a hobby, exercise, spend time with friends, go sit on the porch swing, and just be still for a bit. Rest doesn't mean zoning out, rest means doing something that leaves you rejuvenated.

If you're so tired you don't want to think and all of those restful things sound impossible, start minimizing your life. Some seasons will be busier than others and no amount of minimizing will prevent that. Chipping away at the load on your shoulders until you have a manageable load, though, is going to ease that mental exhaustion.

Less mental exhaustion means more room to put the phone down. If you need rest, do something restful. 

The hard truth is that your phone addiction is keeping you from doing loving things for and with your family, your community, and yourself. Kick the addiction and do something better with your time.

Time management tip #6 - Stop worrying about people who aren't your responsibility.

Are they part of a team you manage at work? Be concerned with what they're doing.

Are they part of your family? Be concerned with what they're doing. 

Are they part of your circle of close friends? Be concerned with what they're doing.

Other than that, stop worrying about it. Do not google them, Facebook stalk them, talk about them on your company's instant message system, sneak around to figure out if they're doing the right thing the right way, crane your neck as you drive by to make sure they're pulling their weeds, or gossip about them to your husband.

Sub-tip: Stop gossiping. It's sinful and it's also a waste of time. Learn to be positive and think positive things about others, and stop saying things about people behind their backs that you wouldn't say to their faces.

Back to what we were talking about: If they aren't your responsibility you're going to be wasting your time thinking about what they're doing. You could be using that time for rest or productivity. 

Time management tip #7 - Willpower will get you everywhere.

All of these tips require willpower. You're going to have to put in some effort.

There's no fantastic app, planner, or meal plan bundle that will magically make you better at time management. Those things are tools, and a garage full of tools is useless without the knowledge to use them. 

And gaining knowledge in this case looks like a whole lot of exercising that willpower muscle until time management, be it steady productivity or genuine rest, becomes second nature. 

That's it for today! Let me know in the comments below your best time management tips! 

All the love,

Emily

Please feel free to contact me at admin@tulipsandbasil.com!