Who manages your time?

“You are writing about time management now? What time management?”, you may ask me with a sad smile on your face. And I totally get it. You do not see yourself as a manager of your own time. How can you? They become our little managers from the moment they come to this world. From that moment all we do is for them, adjusted to their needs. And that is ok. Good moms do that. 🙂
But, on the other hand, what about our feelings? What to do with thoughts that all of us have probably had: that we lose ourselves?

We all agree that “we need more time”. But we also know we can not have it. Many trainers who cover this topic say that upgrading this skill is not about managing time. It is the thing we can not impact. It is a resource which we can not collect or keep. What we can do is think of improving our efficiency in the time we have.

I do not want to persuade you that you are able to organize yourself better based on some techniques, scientific research and methodologies. I believe you can find and read tons of those kinds of articles. But let’s try to do a quick practice.To do it, you need to find a quiet place and 15 minutes with yourself. (Try skipping laundry just for today while they are sleeping or playing or, if they are older, while they are doing their homework. Or, maybe, try to order food to have some time for yourself.)

When you do that – take a notebook and a pencil. And – take a deep breath. Try to feel calm, chase away thoughts of chores i and start writing.
Write what you would like to achieve – one of your goals.
Take a deep breath again. Pause. And now think about that goal. Imagine it, visualise it as if it was achieved.

Now, think of how important that goal is for you. Why?
Write down those reasons.
(For example, my goal was to achieve an important certificate in coaching from the International Coaching Federation. It was really challenging to be consistent in all obligations during pregnancy, but I made it. My following goal is to reach the next level with a little baby before going back to work. Why is it important to me? Certificate, in my opinion, adds value to my work, represents compliance with the highest standards in the coaching field and, most importantly, it raises my self confidence in the endless sea of people who call themselves coaches.)

Now, pause again and take a deep breath once more.
Read out your reasons.
These are going to be your motivators and reading them should “push” you to find time.

As this exercise was important – you found the time to do it. Now – think of the strategy for realization of your goal.

We are probably never going to have enough time for everything we want. Especially if we want to be the people who take care of others and who want balance. Because of that – prioritizing is everything!

To skip writing about theory, as I said in previous lines, I would like to encourage you to find your own way of “managing yourself in the time we all have on this planet”. So what I did is that I asked other working moms to share their experiences so that maybe you could find something here you could try.

Let’s start with the encouragement from one mom: *Always remind yourself there is time for everything.* Another mom wrote to me that: “creating a schedule is the key.” And there was one who shared a very detailed method:
“I use Google calendar to plan. It’s so hard for me to remember my meetings and tasks. I also add extra time before or after something on my calendar because I am indenial of how long certain tasks actually take. We also have a family calendar that is color coded: when dad watches the kid, when mom watches the kid, mom and dad time, family time, nap time. Then, we plan around those main events”. Another mom added she has something she calls “focus days” when she dedicates time to something important to her.

One more response was something called – time blocking. “I have a list of tasks I want to get done each week that aren’t really time sensitive. When I have 15 minutes, I bust one out. I go back through the week at the end and see what didn’t get done and move it to the next week. I have a list of back burner ideas so when I do have a day with a few hours every other week or so, I bust out a longer project. Turn on, do not disturb and focus! Also, I make family time and self care a priority each day so, when I get overwhelmed I remind myself that I’ve tried to do too much” shares another working mom.

When we started creating this program, Milena was working on a website. Since she lives with her husband and two children far away from friends and family, she does not have the help and support I do. We had a deadline, and one day she just recorded a WhatsUp voice message saying that she knew she should finish something but she had been so tired working around the kids and home for days, and that although she had time then, she just wanted to sit, have a coffee and rest.

This is something that will happen to you. No matter how hard your commitment is to work on your goal, a moment when you have free time and you just need to be… just to BE, not to DO… will certainly come,so let yourself relax.
And then, on other occasions – read the list of reasons why your goal is important and find your way to schedule some time to work on it.