5 Time-Management Tips for the Incredible Mompreneur

Best selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford once said “Successful women don’t sleep until noon.” Obviously, no mother can sleep until noon. But the routine of waking up early has always been a practice of highly successful people. Why? Because productive mornings start with early wake-up calls. Any Mompreneueur knows time is a precious commodity. So before the day gets consumed by phone calls, meetings, projects, and kids, the early morning hours are the perfect time to get things done, or at least get a jumpstart on the tasks ahead. Starting off in a productive manner leads to better time-management throughout the remainder of the day.

You may be a savvy business woman by day, but by night you’re Mom and everyone looks to you to take care of them. Especially when they are hungry. A great time-management practice is to partially precook dinners for the entire week on Sunday. Plan a weekly menu and do necessary preparations. For some great recipes that can be done ahead of time, check out these suggestions from Real Simple: http://bit.ly/1x7hfBP.

It can be hard, but knowing how to prioritize tasks effectively is an essential part of any time-management strategy. Start by determining which tasks are most urgent. What about when everything is important? Check out this article from Inc.com on how to prioritize when everything is a priority: http://bit.ly/Re1K8b

Do you know we can lose as much as two hours a day to distractions? Whether they come from emails, IM chats, or phone calls from clients, distractions prevent us from managing our time wisely. Distractions can be especially troublesome when working from home. If you want to gain control of your day, you need to minimize distractions. Check out this article from entrepreneur.com on how to manage distractions when working out of your home: http://entm.ag/1i3xaJe.

For those Mompreneurs working on multiple projects at once, a great way to stay focused and productive is to use a countdown timer. I used to create a daily list that showed when I planned to work on different projects throughout the day. I found, though, I often swayed from that schedule. Using a timer is the best way to keep me focused and alert me to when I need to move on to the next project.

“When I use countdown timers, my pace speeds up because I want to beat the clock. The timer also brings me back from being immersed in creative flow in between client sessions.” – Sherlyn Pang Luedtke, mompreneur founder of Present Parent Training