Could this idiot-proof productivity tool actually make your messy mum life more simple?
I’m testing out this simple productivity hack to improve how I organise my time as a work from home mum juggling family life and a business
I’m testing out this simple productivity hack to improve how I organise my time as a work from home mum juggling family life and a business
The Problem
As a work from home mum my hours and days can often end up becoming one big block of time with no-distinctions between business work, household work and parenting. You could say I’ve set poor time boundaries or that I’ve failed to even define a boundary, and you’d be totally right.
I’d often task switch from “oh let me just pop a washing load on” when I paused worked to make a tea, which could easily lead me down a rabbit hole of “let me just give the kitchen-diner a quick vacuum while I wait for the kettle”. I’m sure many work from home mums can relate.
This way of operating would give me a false sense of being efficient with time but the reality was the constant task switching was in fact creating mental burden from ‘unfinished loops’.
The Solution
It was this recent realisation that caused me to rethink how I was spending my time and that I needed a protocol in place to bring structure to my days. This lead me to look into the art of time blocking.
According to Todoist.com:
It sounds stupidly simple.
So simple that it’s easy to dismiss it, but in actual fact I believe this basic time management hack could in fact be the answer to my problem.
A few years back I had discovered the YouTube channel of Jordan Page, FunCheapOrFree. She was praising this simple time management hack as the way — the only way, she manages to get everything done as a hyper-busy mum who runs a business and has 5 kids, plus one on the way (and that was at the time, she now has a gazillion kids ;-)
Her high energy on the topic got me completely curious so I tested out her productivity tool and yes, it did work and I did love it. Unfortunately, I didn’t stick with it for long because I hadn’t developed the habit of using a planner consistently. At that time I was drowning in a sea of planner fails.
However, I’m now a fully fledge planner addict and use my planner everyday, yet most of the time it becomes a fancy looking to-do list, hence my scatter gun approach to completing tasks and the reason why I need even more structure.
The Experiment
I’m going to test out time blocking with the aim of clearly ring fencing my day into blocks of ‘tasks’ and doing my best to stick to the plan (which will not be easy as a recovering multi-tasker), and I’ll design my own time blocking insert for my planner because I’m extra ;-)
If you’re interested in joining me then drop a comment below. I will of course do an update in due course so until then…
Keep aiming for 1% improvements 🎯