What You’ll Find in the Post:

• Saying No to Procrastination
• Making a Plan
• Prioritizing the Plan

Being a work at home mom has its advantages. But often it comes with a price. Not only do we have to do your jobs to make money (and that sometimes has a million parts to it), but because we’re at home, we need to take care of all those other problems.

Case in point: My plan for the week was to finally get ahead on my article writing, but instead I’m 1) taking the car in to get the tires rotated, 2) taking one of the grand-kidlets to the doctors, and, 3) figuring out how to be back at the house for a propane delivery. And of course, that doesn’t cover the rest of the 101 things needed to be done around here along with… MY work!

And now it’s been scientifically proven that multi-tasking does not work! So what’s a WAHM to do?

Well, when I was that A student, I had a few methods to keep up my productivity. I call them the 3 P’s: procrastination, planning, prioritizing.

Saying No to Procrastination

I know, I know, you’re saying that’s an odd thing to start with, but it does have a lot to do with managing my time.

Truth is, nothing destroys time management faster than procrastination. It is that the typical procrastinator is lazy. That’s a common misconception. Many people procrastinate because they are perfectionists.

What I’ve found is that if I wait until all things are perfectly aligned, I’ll never get a project started. Those receipt stacking p in a shoe box, sure I’ll do it when I  have time to color code the files. Write that welcome sequence for the email list, yes, I’ll  do it when I learn the newest software. That’s bad self-talk of procrastination. When those simple tasks are not done, it’s the foundation for a train wreck of work left incomplete.

Making a Plan

The best way to give procrastination the boot is to plan. Instead of the need to do all the work at once, create a plan that tackles those delayed jobs in thirty-minute intervals each day.

Then set up a plan to avoid starting the same problems over again. Not every task needs to be done every day. Set up lists of daily, weekly and monthly work tasks with an assigned day to do the weekly or monthly tasks.

Having a work plan is a sense of security that methods are in place to complete the necessary tasks. With each complete task, the sense of accomplishment pushes procrastination farther away.

Prioritizing the Plan

Learning to prioritize time use is vital to get the most important tasks done even if everything does not get finished. Unless you have a small “to do” list, don’t expect all the items to be crossed off each day.

The best-structured work plan can be changed when new situations arise. If you don’t have practice in prioritizing regular work tasks, then you will be unable to make the fast break necessary to change the priority of today’s schedule when something more lucrative or imperative happens.

In simple terms, you prioritize anytime you decide that one task is now more important to do than the other one. Of course, you have to set up some basics for making this choice. What is the priority in your business?

If you’re working from home, then the priority needs to be what will make you money. For a blogger that might be monetizing the highest traffic with an affiliate link instead of writing new content. Or, an online seller might be better off listing product from that stack of stuff in the back bedroom than going out to buy new inventory.

It doesn’t matter what type of work from home you do, you need to identify which tasks are the genuine priorities. And which ones can be done later. Just be careful not to make everything a priority because then nothing will get done.

Oh, and one last thing. Relax. Understand you don’t have to be everything to everyone. Or that you have to do it all. Concentrate on the most important. And try to implement these productivity methods when you can. You’ll be happier and in the end, you’ll get more things done.

Keep on working,

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