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Life as a parent can often feel like a constant balancing act. Trying to juggle work with parenting is a challenging task and one that can become pretty exhausting.
Many moms are increasingly opting for starting a home-based business and putting their mompreneur skills to use. Being a mompreneur often provides the flexibility parents need to earn money while taking care of the kids. But, while running a home business may seem like the ideal way to balance your home life and work life, it is rarely as simple as it sounds.
There are so many positive reasons to launch your own business and make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. However, finding ways to balance your parental responsibilities, manage a household, and run a successful business is often tricky.
If you are planning to launch a home business, or you already have one, you should find these tips a helpful way to balance parenting with being an entrepreneur:
Organize Childcare
Organizing childcare may sound counterintuitive if you aim to spend time with your kids while making a living. But, looking for part time daycare childcare can be a really helpful compromise and means your little ones will not be in full-time childcare, so there will be plenty of time to spend together while also having child-free time to work. Using the time your kids are at daycare to attend business meetings and take phone calls is a great way to maintain a professional image for your clients and allows you to concentrate fully. Focusing on these tasks without worrying your children will interrupt mid-meeting is a great way to reduce your stress levels.
Focus on One Thing at a Time
Trying to do too much can send your stress levels spiraling and can result in lots of half-finished jobs. Attempting to multitask may seem like the right thing to do when you are busy, but it can be counterproductive. Focusing your attention and working on a job until it is complete will help get it out the way and means you don’t need to think about it. Juggling lots of tasks at once can take up too much headspace and make you feel overwhelmed especially if your children are constantly interrupting. If possible, it is beneficial to complete one task at a time and organize your workload and prioritize as needed.
It is vital to resist the temptation to carry out jobs around the house while you are working. Sorting out laundry and doing chores may seem like a good idea, but you may feel like you are busy without getting anything done when it eats into your work time.
Set Your Work Hours
Running a business from home can mean that the lines between home life and work-life become blurred. This can cause your work to spill over into family time and leave you without any time to relax. Keeping a divide between work and home is especially difficult when you are busy, but trying to stick to a set start and finish times can make you more productive. Knowing that you have a limited amount of time to get your tasks completed can help you focus, and knowing that you will stop work at a specific time provides an incentive to get your jobs completed on time. If possible, it is also helpful to set break times for your working day. Taking breaks can help you return to your tasks with a clear mind and enable you to complete your work more productively.
Pack Up Every Day
If you tend to leave your work scattered around the house and your equipment on the kitchen table, this can make it hard for you to switch off and relax. Packing up your work and all your equipment at the end of each day is an excellent way to mentally ‘clock out’ without any reminders of work lurking in the background. It should be so much easier for you to enjoy time with your family and to give the kids your full energy when you do not have work playing on your mind. Packing away your work stuff is also helpful if you get tempted to keep dipping into your work when you should be relaxing.
Following these tips should help to reduce the stress involved in balancing parenthood and running a business. Trying to complete both of these roles can be challenging, but seeing your business grow in success and your kids thrive will make all the hard work worthwhile.