Category: Productivity

Some people seem so productive that it looks like they have more hours in the day. They don’t have the same 24 hours that we all have, but so much more. Those are the people who are the happiest and despite having more responsibilities than me, they get more done than me.

I don’t know about you, but I can admire and hate them at the same time. Most of the time I’m curious how they do it. They don’t procrastinate for one, but is there more to it than that? I’ve been asking around and reading about it and I’ve come up with some rules these people live by in order to get more done and be so happy.

When I think of time management I think of companies with big shot managers, whose job is to make sure that all projects finish on time. I guess that is really what time management is about, but it does not only apply to companies and managers. Time management is also a good skill that can be used by everyone: it can be beneficial to students, stay at home parents, work from home parents, parents with out of the home jobs or even people who aren’t parents. But what is time management exactly?

The mornings can be a very hectic time of the day. Kids needs to get dressed and they can move soooo slow in the morning, breakfast needs to be made, lunch packed. My kids can dress themselves, but it takes forever and of course when they’re finally eating their breakfast, they’ll make a mess and the dressing can start all over again.

I wake up earlier in the mornings to prepare myself for the day and for the morning rush and I also prepare as much as I can the evening before. This is not a minute-by-minute routine, but it doesn’t have to be. In my experience when I do plan everything minute-by-minute I’m just setting myself up for failure.

Here are the steps I’ve taken to set up an evening routine.

Procrastination….who hasn’t been there at one point or another? I procrastinated before writing this post. “I will start writing as soon as I finish watching this Grey’s Anatomy episode”, “I can’t write when there are dishes that need to be loaded in the dishwasher”. And of course, I need to look at Facebook for 5 minutes or an hour.

I know I procrastinate because of some bad experience in the past. I would have a project in my head and in my head, it would be perfect, but when it was time to do it, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I wanted to sew some pants for my son and I saw on YouTube how it was done and it looked pretty easy. However, it was horrible when I did it. It took me hours and I broke 3 needles on my sewing machine.

Do you know those people who wake up early every morning and are very productive and cheerful as soon as the day start? I’m not one of those people, though I desperately want to be. I’m the type of mother who always seems to find the snooze button on my alarm clock. After hitting the snooze button some 10 times I jump out of bed, cursing myself out because once again I’m late while I had every intention of getting up early.

I hurry to get the kids ready and of course, they move super slow! By the time I arrive at daycare or school it’s late and just before I walk them inside I see that they still have a milk mustache on their face. Sigh…