Time Management Strategies for Busy Moms
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Homeschool moms are busy. We take care of our families and homes while also taking on the enormous task of educating our children. In order to get it all done we need to squeeze every minute out of every day. Busy moms need solid time management strategies.
I have always been a fan of time management self help books. Each author proclaims to have found the perfect solution. There is a big problem with most time management books though:
You need to read the full book to understand the strategy . . . which is time consuming.
What if that particular strategy doesn’t work for you? Then you have just wasted all of that time reading only to end up right where you started! I don’t get nearly as much reading time as I would like, so the books need to either be helpful or enjoyable.
Dr. Melanie Wilson, a homeschool mom with a Ph.d in psychology, noticed this problem too. Thankfully for us, she set out to fix it.
Time Management Strategies for Busy Moms
Melanie created the ultimate book of time management strategies – A Year of Living Productively. This book contains a brief synopsis of more than 80 time management strategies such as:
- Time blocking
- Eat that frog
- Covey’s quadrant approach
- Pomodoro
- So much more!
These time management strategies are reduced down to their core – the most important part that will help you work more efficiently.
Having one book that contains so many various time management strategies changes the personal narrative. Typically if I read a book and the strategy doesn’t work for me then I assume that I’m the problem. What is wrong with me that this great strategy doesn’t help? A Year of Living Productively changes that. Now if a strategy doesn’t work for me I know that it just isn’t a good fit for my personality. That is okay! There are 80+ other time management strategies that I can try. Something is bound to be the right solution for me.
How To Choose the Right Time Management Strategies
I think we can all agree that we are a diverse bunch of people. What works for me might not work for you and vice versa. So, then how do we know which strategies are right for us?
Dr. Wilson uses her clinical background to recommend certain strategies for various personalities.
Many time management strategies can be used concurrently. For example, you can get proper nutrition, adequate amounts of sleep, and use a paper planner all at the same time.
The biggest way to find the right strategies for you are trial and error. Try a few strategies, record the results, and see what happens. If it works for you, keep using it. If it doesn’t, drop it. It is easier to abandon strategies that don’t work when we haven’t spent a few weeks reading a book praising that strategy as the only solution to your time management woes.
Trial and error was how Melanie tested the theories in the book. She experimented until she found what worked for her. She read all the books so that we don’t have to.
My goal for 2019 is to be more productive and A Year of Living Productively will help me with that goal. I have already started putting a few strategies to work and I am getting more done each day. This Christmas break has been more productive than usual, while still allowing me time to relax and enjoy my family.
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