How to Confidently Stick to Your Working Hours as a Mum
I’ve worked with a lot of different mums with different occupations, including doctors, marketing managers, nurses, personal trainers, lawyers.
And they all have one thing in common.
They work part time and “technically” have one or two days off from work each week.
However, they don’t actually take that time off, and I’ll admit, I didn’t used to take my days off either.
I want to share my best tips for actually sticking to your work hours, which will give you that extra time for family and yourself that you’ve been looking for.
I’ve seen these tips work in all the jobs I’ve mentioned and they can work for you too.
The first thing I’ve seen make a big difference in sticking to your work hours is to schedule what I call ‘focus time’ for at least an hour a day, if not two. You’re going to want to produce something during your focus time, whether that be a document, a process, or a plan for a client. Something that will shift your week forward. If you spend one to two hours a day for a week, that is 5 to 10 hours of focus time for that week. It’s going to make a huge difference to your output at work, which will move you closer to sticking to your work hours. Mums often say they feel they can’t be present at work and these focused chunks of time will help you really hone in and produce something important each day.
The next tip is learning to manage distractions. People find it really strange that I only use one monitor when I work. Most people I know have two monitors so they can have email or their messaging app up on their second screen. If you want to be distracted all day, and work outside of hours, this is a likely cause of it - checking email and messages all day. If you want to stick to your work hours, schedule certain times to be on email and messaging apps. It might need to be once per hour, or you can maybe check twice a day, but please don’t have them open all day. That’s when you’ll get to the end of the day and wonder why you didn’t get much done.
I’d really like you not to be working outside of hours, either at night or on your days off. Using focus time and having less distractions will help, but if you do need to work at night or on your days off, I would really encourage you to get into a good headspace (I call it ‘alignment’) before you work. When I used to work at night, I would put V down, scoff dinner, and then get straight on my laptop. It never felt great and I usually wouldn’t produce at a high level. If I took the time to relax for a few minutes, make myself a tea, stretch, then sit down, I would always go in with a clearer mind and produce more. Try getting into alignment before working, rather than rushing straight into it.
The last tip is to stop worrying about what other people think of you at work. When I returned to work part time, I was really concerned about a couple of people who would always message me on my days off. I literally thought they were testing me to see if I’d write back... and I always would. I figured they thought I was slacking off and were judging me. So I would go out of my way to make sure I was available to write back to them. This of course distracted me from V and reinforced my belief that I shouldn’t be working part time. I ended up communicating to them that I check my messages in the evening before my work days (I find this sets me up well and is an intentional choice) and that I’d get back to anything urgent from them then. They appreciated the clarity and had no problem with this boundary that I had stressed about sharing. I can barely remember what it was like to check my messages on my days off and they got used to it very quickly.
Take at least one of these tips into your work week and feel free to message me on Instagram with the tip you chose!
It is totally possible to set boundaries at work, but that does have to begin with you. If you want more time for yourself and your home life, take a baby step this week to creating that work life you really want.