As discussed in recent posts, working from home offers huge advantages for busy mums. Not only can mums benefit from spending quality time with their children, but they can continue to use their professional skills and contribute to the household income in a more flexible capacity rather than being compromised by the constraints of traditional employment.

If you have a fantastic idea that will kick-start your own home-run business or you are already a successful mumpreneur, balancing the hours you spend working with the time spent with your family will be one of the key motivators to pursuing this type of working arrangement.

Until you reach the rare and dizzy heights of being extremely organised 100% of the time, it is likely you need to work on your time management skills. These are skills that can be reviewed and revised constantly to ensure you are working in the most efficient way possible. Here are some tips about how to take control of your time management.

Take control of your schedule and protect your working hours so you can concentrate on your key commitments. Book time out of your diary to manage the various elements of your business, including the core function, business development and administration.

Planning is everything when it comes to running a successful business. Writing lists of all the tasks you have to do is invaluable and offers a great way to prioritise your workload. Compile your complete list, identify the most important (and especially the most difficult/unattractive tasks) and prioritise these first. You will feel immense satisfaction once these have been removed from your to-do list, leaving you free to quickly complete the jobs that remain.

Delegation and requesting the help of others are skills you need to quickly embrace. On top of your work, it is likely you have a mountain of housework to get through. Encourage your family – kids included – to take charge of some of the housework. Children do like to be involved, even where chores are concerned, so ask them to tidy their rooms, place their dirty clothes in the laundry and make the table at meal times.

Check e-mails at scheduled intervals. Constantly checking and dealing with incoming e-mail interrupts your day and eats in to a huge amount of time. Close your e-mail application while you are concentrating on other aspects of your work and only check e-mails at scheduled times, maybe twice or three times throughout the day.

Don’t try to plan more than is possible in a single sitting. Trying to complete your entire to-do list in one go is a difficult, if impossible task. If you aim to do this you are setting yourself up for failure and a downward slump. Instead, allocate times against your tasks and book them into your week at times you know you can address and complete each one. Keeping an organised diary for your week will help you quickly identify any free time that you can use as quality time for you or to attend to any unexpected events.

Allow for hiccups along the way. No one can plan for the unexpected but you can allocate time for it. You cannot avoid sudden calls from clients, your children getting sick at school or a flat tyre before a meeting but you can schedule some extra time into your diary so you can move tasks around to allow for the time needed to deal with unforeseen issues. This will help you overcome such events and recover from them quickly without too much interruption to your normal schedule.

We hope these tips will help you organise your work time so you can work efficiently. The result of this is more quality time available to spend at home with your family – one of the main reasons you started working as a mumpreneur!

Start your journey today – achieve confidence, balance and clarity for an easier, happier life!

Empowering Mums is on a mission to empower a million mums and mumpreneurs just like you with greater confidence, balance and clarity to activate your infinite capabilities within! Enabling you to enjoy an easier, happier life alongside running a highly successful business. Aligned with enjoying time out for an essential self-care routine that fulfils your own needs and delight in quality time spent with your children being the mum you really want to be!

For further support please contact Empowering Mums today on 01606 334 015, alternatively visit our website at www.empoweringmums.com for more information.