Time Management Tips for Busy Moms

Our family isn't the greatest with time management; my husband is always late, I'm a chronic procrastinator, and the kids are always going somewhere. But with so many people in our home (my husband, me, our 2 year old, my 10 year old stepson 50% of the time, and our 15 year old niece 98% of the time) and so little time to get everything done, we had to up our time management game.

It's possible, I promise.
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1. Make your Cooking Time More Effective

• If you can double a recipe, do it. You're cooking anyway, might as well have leftovers for lunches (or when you don't want to cook later in the week).
• Spend a Sunday afternoon preparing freezer meals; you'll be prepped and ready to rock for at least a week.
• Invest in a slow cooker (or an Instant Pot - that's on my Christmas list!). I'm all for cooking where all you do is put the ingredients in, wait 8 hours, and have a healthy, delicious meal. Whose with me?
• Want more tips for effective meal planning? Read here! 

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2. Get a Really, Really Good Planner (or 3)

When it comes to planners, I am firm believer that you have to find what works for you. For me, that looks like: a planner for social media business stuff, a planner for my soul/personal development, and a planner for our family schedules.

I've tried Google calendars, but found that I would forget to check it; I tried setting it to send emails around scheduled activities, but I was getting 20 emails a day. So, pen and paper just works better for me. 

Here are my 3 favourite planners:

1. The Content Planner - A physical planner for your social media and blog content. You can use it to plan an entire year of content, set monthly business goals, stay ahead of important dates, store hashtags and collaborations, and get valuable tasks and tips for social media experts. There is also space to track your business growth, create a theme for each month, and track your wins. Ok, I'm obsessed and it will help this mama - who is pulled in about a million directions daily - stay on top of her biz stuff.
2. The Desire Map Planner - Based on Danielle LaPorte's Desire Map book, this planner is for women who "want to put their soul on the agenda." Um, yes please. Daily declarations, soul prompts, gratitude notes... this planner is where inner attunement meets outer attainment. In my opinion, scheduling time for you as a form of self-care is a crucial piece of time management... and this is one purchase that can help you do that in 2018.
3. For my family planner, I grab a calendar for the kitchen wall and a simple agenda from Chapters to keep myself sane.

What it comes down to, though? Find what works for you and your family and actually use it.
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3. Single Task Everything

Multitasking has been proven ineffective over and over again. You'll be a better mom, wife, employee, entrepreneur... if you just do 1 thing at a time. 

So, learn to write a to-do list, prioritize your tasks, and do 1 thing at a time. When it comes to your daily to-do list, I recommend picking 5 tasks. Don't make your to-do list crazy long (it's hard, I know). Pick the most important, time-relevant tasks that you need to do in the next few days. 

Then do them... one at a time!
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4. Embrace the Word "No"

You can do anything you want to do... but you don't have to do everything, mama. Skip a PTA meeting. Cancel that lunchtime coffee with the frenemy who sucks your energy. Don't say YES to every single extra work project.

You'll save yourself time in your schedule (plus, you know, your sanity) AND it's good for your kids to see you set healthy limits and boundaries for yourself. 
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5. Stop the Scroll

Let's be honest, social media is a time suck. It's easy to lay in bed first thing in the morning catching up on your notifications, scrolling mindlessly during the day, and catching up on social media in the evening.

But is it worth it? Nah, mama. Just put it down. 

The Newsfeed Eradicator is a great Chrome extension to install if you work at home (instead of the Facebook newsfeed, you get an inspirational quotes). 

Scrolling on social media is the enemy of time management. 
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How do you stay productive and on top of your time management as busy mama?