Tag

working - Business E Suites

March 4, 2021
0
Picture1

A Sanity-Saving Guide to Working From Home With Young Children

By | Tips

As a mother with young children, working from home is both a blessing and a curse. You can spend more time with your little ones, avoid the daily commute to and from work, and save money on childcare, but you’re also faced with constant interruptions and distractions that make working seem close to impossible. And due to COVID-19 concerns, you may not feel comfortable hiring a babysitter or sending your little ones to child care — even when you’re desperate for a break.

To help you juggle it all, the team at Business E Suites is here to share some sanity-saving tips and strategies to make working from home with young kids much more feasible. Read on to get started!

Work While the Little Ones Sleep

If you’re a sleep-deprived mother of a newborn, you may be tempted to catch up on some sleep whenever your baby goes down for a morning or afternoon nap. However, nap times are the perfect opportunities to power through your important work tasks — even if you only have 20- to- 40 minutes to yourself. The same goes for napping toddlers and young children!

In addition to working while your little ones nap, you’ll accomplish more if you aim to work when your children are at their calmest. For most children, this usually means immediately after waking from a nap or eating a meal.

Share Responsibilities

If you and your partner are both working remotely during the pandemic, try splitting your parenting duties between the two of you, and scheduling childcare shifts throughout the workday. If your partner has deadlines, phone calls, and meetings in the morning, you could care for your little ones in the morning and your partner could take the afternoon shift. If each workday looks a bit different, however, you’ll want to sit down with your partner every evening to plan out the following day’s activities.

Try Virtual Babysitting Services

To keep young children entertained so you can focus on your work, you could turn to online games and activities — or you could enlist the help of a virtual babysitter. To find a virtual babysitter to engage with your little ones via Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime, Kelsey Hurwitz of Woman’s Day recommends:

  • Obtaining referrals from friends and family.
  • Visiting websites such as SitterCity and Care.com.
  • Asking for recommendations on Facebook.
  • Looking for virtual sitters on NextDoor and other neighborhood platforms.

As another option, you could check with your friends and relatives to see if they might be interested in a virtual visit with your little ones. Grandma and grandpa, for instance, can read stories to your young children, draw and color with them, and play fun virtual games like I-Spy and Mad Libs.

Preserve Your Sanity

When you’re at home with your young kids all week long, some days may test your sanity — and you may start to feel as if you’re on the verge of losing your mind. However, this is where self-care comes in. Even as a busy work-from-home mom, self-care is a must!

Here are some simple self-care strategies to keep you happy, healthy, and sane:

  • Try a coworking space. One day a week away from home could be a boon for your productivity. If you can work it out with your partner, plan to use a coworking space for a whole workday. You may be able to work ahead to lighten up the rest of your week.
  • Dress comfortably. Skip the tight jeans and business clothes and opt for comfortable yet stylish leggings, tanks and joggers. When you’re chasing toddlers and young children around all day, comfortable clothing is a must.
  • Remember to breathe. Try a meditation app like Insight Timer, Calm, or Omvana — even if you only have a few minutes to spare.
  • Drink plenty of water. Nourish your body and mind by sipping on water throughout the day, and aim to drink at least eight glasses of water daily. If you’re breastfeeding, however, you’ll need to increase your water intake by about four glasses.
  • Do something for yourself. Extra time at home may have sealed the deal for you on future plans. For example, if you aspire to become an entrepreneur or finally want to get your MBA, you can join a program that fits your busy schedule but allows you to advance your career. You owe it to yourself.

The Bottom Line

Whether you’ve been working from home for years or you’re still adjusting to remote work amidst COVID-19, the challenges of being a work-from-home mom are vast — especially when you’ve got young children to feed and care for. However, focusing on the many advantages of working from home with your children will help to keep your sanity and remind you of how fortunate you really are to be given this opportunity.

Some days will certainly be tougher than others, but in time, you’ll fall into a routine that works for you and your little ones. Before you know it, working from home with a baby or toddler (or both!) won’t seem so impossible after all.

Are you looking for an affordable office space away from home? Look to Business E Suites for a monthly membership that allows you the opportunity to work in a professional environment so you can be more productive.

Image via Pexels

Article by: Janice Russell

July 7, 2020
1

Manage Your Time Better

By | Business, Tips

Time management is harder than we think and understanding how to manage it is even more complicated.  But when done right, you learn that you accomplish a lot more in very little time.  Working 8-12 hours a day is not the ideal scenario for you and your brain, so what can you do to manage time better and spend more time doing what you love.  Here are a few tips, we hope it helps.

  1. Keep an eye on how you allocate time – make a list of your entire to-do list for this day and really dig into that list and find out how much time you actually need to allocate for each one of your to-do list items.  Keep a record on a piece of paper to see how much time goes on each one of your projects, if you’re not old school like me, then download a time tracking app to help manage this better.  The ideal scenario out of this approach is to really understand where most of your time gets invested and that way you can break it down in different tasks to make sure your work gets completed in time.  You can also find out what project is dragging you the most throughout the day and perhaps find a way to do it better or get help from your team to make it happen in less time than if you did it by yourself.  No matter what it is, there is always a better way to automate and do it better.
  2. Identify what’s more important – we all have so much to do but you have to make a first list which is your priority list and a secondary list which is the next thing to do once you finish with your first list, aka… prioritize your to-do list.  It is proven that if you create a list of priorities, “the must-dos” you have automatically set some time to get things done on your priority list first than anything else and if you worry about the list of items rather than the deadlines, it is proven that you become more productive and goal-oriented.  In addition to identifying your priority list, understand if the items on that list are actually of greater value to your business and what you can’t do or does not need your presence or time, well, pass it on to someone else in your team so you worry about what you consider important for the business.
  3. Go off the grid – as humans, we are programmed to do many things at once, some of them are done without even thinking, it’s part of our habits – we have a cue the moment we come into the office, we automatically implement a routine which we do on daily basis (i.e. check emails, get on a call, conferences, get on Quickbooks, you name it). and we wait for the reward which is getting things done on your list.  But this amazing loop only gets done successfully if we get off the grid, we have constant distractions such as text messages for weekend plans, social media updates from your friends and cute little pictures from your kids, but these distractions only drag you to taking longer to get things done.  Going offline, you can actually get a lot more done and enjoy these distractions towards the end of your day or even during a well-deserved break.

Focusing on what matters at that very moment, is the key to productivity and the key to a successful business.  Looking to find the ideal place to stay focused and productive, visit Business E Suites for workspace options – they’re affordable, professional and with 100s of amazing features.