Helpful Scheduling Hacks For Working Moms

I can’t say enough about working moms and all the things we have to juggle. Family, career, social activities. It’s like we’re on all day every day.

In an article by Forbes, they shared stats of a recent McKinsey study that found more women than men report exhaustion, burnout and pressure to work more.

And another study by My Perfect Resume found 75% of women—compared with 59% of men—felt their employer expected them to be always on.

It’s a major challenge all working moms face. And the stress of trying to be on our A-game in both aspects of our lives can cause serious health issues.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Hacks For Working Moms

I’ve been a working mom for 20 years. And by trial and error, I’ve learned what I need to focus on to keep all the balls in the air if you will.

They are:

Scheduling
How to deal with a million little tasks
Remembering names (on the soccer field and in the conference room)
Time balancing

Throughout this month, I’ll go into more details about these hacks in a blog post.

Let’s start with the first one on my list: scheduling.

For me, if it’s not in the calendar, it doesn’t exist. I have learned to never rely on memory for meetings, events, and deliverables. Really anything.

But the calendar can turn into an absolute cluster when you have multiple (or even one) kid with activities, your busy work schedule, your partner’s schedule etc. If you don’t keep a handle on this aspect of life, things tend to go badly.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of systems out there for calendaring like paper planners, electronics, etc.

Keep in mind, those are the tools. But what’s more important are your scheduling habits.

If you want to free up your brain from all the various things happening in your life – get them into an external system right away, whatever that is.

Here are some useful scheduling tips I recommend to all working moms.

From A Personal Standpoint

If you workout, schedule in your workouts a week (or two) in advance.

For me, if I do this a week and a half out, I can usually protect my time. This will give you a much better shot at actually getting your workout in versus skipping and feeling bad about it.

Scheduling Tips From A Work Standpoint

Think about what your deliverables are.

Take a look at your projects and determine what those next actions are that you need to take to move that project forward and – even if it’s a 15 min task – put it in the calendar.

For example, if you need to send an email to someone requesting information critical to your project, get that in the calendar. It helps to keep you focused and moving forward.

It’s much easier to get sucked into your email inbox than keeping discipline to move your key deliverables forward and if you have that task in your calendar two things happen. 1, it shuts out other requests for that time and 2, it gives you the satisfaction that you are moving forward on your key deliverables, which will lower your stress overall.

In Terms Of Family/ Kids

As soon as I learn of anything going on, whether a birthday party, dance recital, soccer game, I get it in the schedule.

Even if it’s just to block out the time until you get the details. Then you can start planning who is in charge of doing what – like drop off/pick up, buying gifts, purchasing tickets, etc.

Keep in mind, the further out you plan, the more you have an opportunity to delegate the task to someone else. This sort of ahead planning will greatly reduce your stress.

Include Buffers

We always believe things will take a shorter time than they do in reality. I fall into this trap all the time. I book work meetings so close to my workouts that I miss out on the drive time I need and miss exercise classes.

Now I build in buffers and “drive time” if I need to get somewhere. This is important too for taking breathers and breaks throughout the day. If I don’t do this, I can be in back-to-back meetings for six hours straight.

The other buffer I add in is for follow-ups. How often are you in meetings and there is some sort of follow-up action? If you don’t give your time for those, there’s no forward progress on projects. Either that or you are taking up precious evening hours you can be spending with your family doing all your follow-ups.