How to Find Balance as a Work-at-Home Mom by Jennifer Janechek

These days there are a plethora of opportunities that enable mothers to stay in the workforce while remaining at home, which is fantastic. However, working from home as a mother of small children is no small feat. While I certainly would not dare say that one mom role is harder than another, being a WAHM can be a very trying position: in many ways, the WAHM is, in addition to being a working mom, a stay-at-home mom (SAHM), someone who is responsible for childcare and/or household duties at some point in the day. And in my experience, because you’re juggling these two positions as a WAHM, it is easy to feel like you’re failing at both. Below are some tips for managing the stress and challenges that come with being a WAHM. 

1. Wake up early. 
   The morning can be an incredibly productive work time. Try to wake up at least an hour before your children (unless they’re very early risers) and register an hour of work time in the quiet and calm of the early morning. 

2. Get the necessary childcare. 
   This is a biggie, and it was a difficult one for me to accept. When I first had my daughter and was doing freelance work, I struggled to determine whether projects merited the cost of additional childcare. I often (wrongly) decided that I could handle both the extra project and the childcare responsibilities, which always ended up being extremely stressful. I relied entirely on my daughter’s erratic nap schedule, so I was a nervous wreck every time a loud car would pass the house or the UPS driver would ring the doorbell. And there were days when she simply would not nap, something for which I could never plan. Once I started hiring sitters to come to our home in the mornings, I became a better worker, a better mom, and yes, a better wife. It’s important to note, too, that if you have a full-time telecommute position with a company, they might require you to have your child(ren) in full-time daycare outside of the house. 

3. Pretend you’re going into the office. 
   As a WAHM, I’m very busy and constantly tired, and, quite honestly, the last thing I feel like doing in the morning is fixing my hair and getting dressed (in something other than at leisure anyway). When I started finding myself going through the entire day in a tank top and sweatpants, I knew something had to change. I began pushing myself to practice more self-care and to prepare for the day as though I were going to work at an office, and the results were amazing: on days that I put myself together I felt so much better physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and I was immeasurably more productive. 

4. Set strict boundaries.  
   Real talk: this is really tough to do. It’s often incredibly difficult for husbands, friends, and family to understand that just because you work at home doesn’t mean that it’s easy for you to do chores during the day. Emptying the dishwasher, meal prepping, cleaning up around the house—these activities may not take much time on their own, but each little chore interrupts the work day, hampers productivity, and can add up to a significant loss of time over the course of the day. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do these things—indeed, part of the benefit of being a WAHM is that I’m able to take twenty minutes and throw dinner in the slow cooker before lunch. What I am saying is that you need to determine what you’re capable of doing in a day and set strict boundaries about everything else. For me, this means that I dedicate a specific hour of the day to household tasks—an hour when I don’t have a sitter and my daughter is awake, so I wouldn’t really be able to work anyway. As a WAHM, boundaries are key to managing your stress level; I can’t overemphasize their importance.  

Do you have tips for finding balance as a WAHM? Let us know in the comments below!

Jennifer Janechek is the director of content strategy for Sound Wisdom. She has her PhD in English literature from the University of Iowa and her MA in English from the University of South Florida. She is also the founder of The Work-at-Home Mom Blog, which provides inspiration and community for moms who juggle work and parenting simultaneously. Her writings can be found in Entrepreneur, The Good Men Project, and many other publications.

Creating a Daily Work Rhythm by Jennifer Janechek

As the mother of a toddler, I have been reading a lot of parenting books lately, and I have been struck by a notion introduced in a few of them—that of the importance of creating a daily rhythm. In Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids, for instance, Kim John Payne suggests that “by surrounding a young child with a sense of rhythm and ritual, you can help them order their physical, emotional and intellectual view of the world.” According to him, cultivating a daily rhythm provides a strong foundation for children, giving them the security to explore their world confidently and allowing their creativity to flourish while keeping them grounded in home values and traditions. 

I started to wonder: How might a daily rhythm be beneficial to my adult life—and more specifically, to my adult work life? 

I began implementing a daily work rhythm where I scheduled my day according to ebbs and flows, dedicating periods of time to different tasks that best suited my energy levels and creative rhythms. I quickly realized that the days I was the most productive, at peace, engaged in my work, and present with my family when at home were those in which I maintained a rhythm at work. I suppose acclaimed poet Mary Oliver was right—“Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue.… When it becomes reliable, we are in a kind of body-heaven.” 

Below are some ideas for how to cultivate a daily work rhythm in your life: 

1. Determine the core activities of your day, and dedicate a block of time to each one. 

While companies often value employees who can multitask, this activity can leave us feeling harried, stressed, and frenetic. If your work situation allows you to do so (not everyone’s will), try to engage in only one “core activity” at a time. Your core activities are the basic work activities in which you engage on a regular basis. For me, this is communication, research, creation, and revision. Various activities fall into these larger categories (e.g., communication entails responding to e-mails as well as participating in conference calls, and revision includes both copyediting others’ writing and reworking my own), but stick to performing one mode of work at a time. This is similar to business and organizational expert Rachael Doyle’s advice in Organize Your Business—Organize Your Life: “I recommend creating blocks in your daily calendar that are set aside for all like activities: there are blocks of time to answer email, blocks of time to work on projects, blocks of time to make phone calls.” Which leads to my second suggestion… 

2. Don’t check your e-mail (or social media) throughout the day. 

And don’t keep your e-mail open in your browser (unless of course you work in customer service or another industry that requires quick response times). Or if you want to keep your e-mail open, silence the notifications: the noise and distraction they cause can unsettle rhythmic work patterns. The same thing goes for social media notifications—giving in to one alert can lead you down a wormhole of mindless newsfeed scrolling. Doyle recommends checking your e-mail either at the beginning or at the end of your work day. This was very difficult for me, a chronic e-mail checker, but I noticed that on days when I saved e-mails for certain times of day (for me, both the beginning and the end of the work day), I actually found pleasure in reading and responding to e-mails, was better able to process their content and give thoughtful responses, and made greater progress on work projects. 

3. Make sure your daily work rhythm correlates with your circadian rhythm. 

The Harvard Business Review published an article a couple years ago about how the ideal work schedule is one in tune with your internal bodily clock. According to it, studies suggest that attending to how our internal clock affects our energy flows and organizing our work time accordingly enhances employee performance. The author’s advice was that

employees should take their own circadian rhythms into account when planning their own day. The most important tasks should be conducted when people are at or near their peaks in alertness (within an hour or so of noon and 6pm). The least important tasks should be scheduled for times in which alertness is lower (very early in the morning, around 3pm, and late at night). 

This is why I said at the beginning of the article to first chart your ebb and flows and then organize work time accordingly. Below you will find a sample work rhythm chart that I made, but keep in mind that everyone’s natural rhythm is different. Try to create a work schedule that honors yours. 

Do you follow a daily work rhythm? How has it benefited your work and/or home life?