If you find yourself wondering how to feel more successful in your day-to-day time and energy management, you are not alone.
Women, especially mothers, are expert multi-taskers. With many hats to wear it sometimes feels like the best or only way to operate. But research shows that is not necessarily the case.
Multitasking seems like a great way to get a lot done at once. But research has shown that our brains are not nearly as good at handling multiple tasks as we like to think they are. In fact, some researchers suggest that multitasking can actually reduce productivity by as much as 40%.
Regardless of the age of your children, all moms carry a significant mental load. Navigating the merge of all the things you are responsible for that can really weigh you down. It makes things challenging, overwhelming, and straight-up exhausting at times.
So how do we as women with many responsibilities feel more successful in our day-to-day time and energy management?
I preach and believe in one phrase wholeheartedly. And it goes like this: you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.
This applies to a lot of things, from your career to your business to how you run your household to the activities your children participate in. You can do anything but not everything, and not at the same time.
And thinking you can is a recipe for disaster.
This shift in your mindset is the top hack on my list. Stop believing you have to do it all.
Hack 1: Check Your Mindset
Shifting your mindset towards this concept is the first step in being focused and intentional. Give yourself permission to prioritize the most important things in a given day and let the rest go.
Believing you don’t actually have to do it all, gives yourself a different perspective. It takes the pressure off from the start so rather than trying to fit a long list of tasks into one 24-hour day, you are open to flexibility and making adjustments to attack your time differently.
Shifting your mindset isn’t measurable but it’s still an important thing to consider first.
I personally prefer to take time on Sundays to reset for the week ahead. I do that by reviewing calendars and making lists to get everything out of my head. That helps me start the week with a plan of action and clear intentions.
Hack 2: The Big Three
Next try a method of prioritizing called the big three. It works big picture like annually or quarterly, or mirco like a daily big three.
This is a simple method where you narrow your focus down to the three most important priorities for the time period. And you do nothing else until the work on those three is complete.
This doesn’t mean you might not have other things on your to-do list or action plan, but you commit to writing down your top three things and making progress towards those things first.
In your mom life, your big three might include a load of laundry, a trip to the grocery store, and getting a child to practice on time. The measurement is whether or not these get done at the end of the day.
In your business, you might consider using this method on multiple levels. Create a big three projects or goals for the month or quarter. Then have your daily big three as a way to break down tasks into smaller, more manageable, and focused pieces.
Hack 3: Time Blocks
Time blocking is a method to divide your day to focus on specific tasks for a set period of time. It’s a fancy way to remind yourself to set the time you need to complete a task, focus and get it done.
If you are like me and live and die by a calendar, this method works really well.
I can go into my google calendar for home or outlook calendar for work and set aside time for the specific items on my list for the day. When the reminder pops up it’s time to shift focus and get that item handled.
One thing to consider when it comes to time blocking is Parkinson’s Law. It’s the adage that any task expands to take up the time you give it.
For example, if you block two hours in your afternoon to work on a task like your payroll or folding loads of laundry you will find yourself using up all that time to complete the task.
The downside is that maybe folding laundry or your payroll might only take you 30 minutes but since you gave yourself two hours, you might put it off or let yourself get distracted along the way.
To time block effectively, you have to be intentional and diligent to really make it work for you.
Hack 4: Batch Working
Batch working is one of my favorite hacks and aside from mindset, the one I’ve been able to stick with as a regular productivity strategy. It’s a calendaring or prioritizing system but instead of setting aside time for one task per day, it’s all the tasks of the same kind in one sitting.
When there are recurring items on my list, this works really well because it helps me minimize something I am a little too good at and that is multitasking. Batch working forces you to focus on the same task either for a set period of time or until they are done.
For example, I write a lot of ad copy in my day job. I have time set aside on Mondays where I will minimize all my other tabs and focus on updating all the ad and social copy for the week in one sitting.
Batch working is a good way to take care of things like house chores. Set aside one day a week to get all the laundry done for the family. Start to finish, just get it done and check it off until the same time next week.
This is a system to create a regular and more efficient schedule.
Hack 5: Outsource
My final productivity hack is outsourcing. Use your resources and get someone else to do things for you.
Now, before you tell me all the reasons you can’t do that, let me name a few brands that have been created for this very thing. Shipt, Doordash, Molly Maids, Uber, Instacart, Hello Fresh, Daily Harvest, Stitch Fix, Amazon Prime, and more. These brands were built and exist because they make life easier for people across the globe.
While outsourcing does require you to give up some control over the task itself, what it provides in exchange is usually so much better. It’s about opportunity cost.
If you love to cook but grocery shopping takes a significant amount of time you could be spending with your family or on another task you can subscribe to a meal prep service like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron.
In your business, you might consider hiring a virtual assistant or additional staff to help out with more entry-level tasks so you can focus on driving revenues or creating products. Spending a lot of time in the weeds could be costing you in more ways than one.
Outsourcing is also the reason services like Fiverr for design needs and Legal Zoom for legal services exist. Their primary function is to work for you on the things that are necessary but not moving your business forward on a daily basis.
Ditch the multitasking
I’m an avid multitasker so focusing on ways to improve my time management and efficiency both at work and at home, really makes a big difference.
If I set my intentions by prioritizing my to-do list first and then minimize the jumping from task to task, I feel more productive at the end of the day.
I would love to hear from you on this topic. If you have learned a thing or two along the way and have something that works for you at home or at work, please share itin the comments below.
And remember, you don’t have to recreate the wheel. If you find something you think could work for you, steal it. If not, keep working at it until you discover what works best for you and your needs.
