I use a planner...literally it's a must for me...On Monday mornings I usually plan out my week personal and business....I add events to my planner calendar and my digital calendar whenever they are scheduled or booked...I also schedule family time and my self care time....I truly believe you have to schedule things that are important to you and make it a priority to follow that schedule....Things change yes, that's why they make white out!!!!
This is such a great question @tranguyen @maxpete -- I feel like I could literally talk about this topic endlessly. But who am I kidding? There's no time for that!! The baby is crying, the emails are piling up, there's laundry everywhere, and it's Payroll day, ha! 😉
In all seriousness though -- I feel like 5 years into motherhood and 10 years into business ownership, I'm starting to hit somewhat of a stride. There are lots of "practical" things that help me stay organized: a list app on my phone where I can quickly input something when it crosses my mind (I use Todoist), a very organized calendar, a loose routine for my days (I find this better than a super structured routine which almost immediately goes out the window). But one of the things that has helped me most is simple to do my best to be fully where I am at the moment. If I'm in Mom-Mode, put the darn phone down. Work can almost always wait, there are very few things that are life and death, and I don't want to spend my kids' childhood looking at a screen. And when I'm at work, be fully at work. I used to be a person who took a lot of pride in being able to do-everything-at-the-same-time, but I found that trying to work & take care of children simultaneously felt like I was being physically & mentally ripped in two, and it was really painful (and inefficient). So, that's what I'm working on -- be fully where you are. It's freeing, honestly.
(A big part of this, which is a whole other topic, is that I finally had to release some control and hire managers to handle most of the on-site, day-to-day operations. Which allows me to work primarily from home, stopping in briefly a few times each week. It's really hard, but also a total game changer.)
@Helen Oof, I don't know why it's so hard to put the phone down, but it really is! We ended up putting a charger in the foyer, and I'm trying to the practice of plugging it in there at the end of my workday. I mainly work from home, so I keep trying to think of things I could do that would be like a "commute" -- some kind of signal to my brain/body that "I'm done with work now, time for Mom mode." It's hard!
