Tuesday Tips

Hello everybody, me Emily again! Today I’m going to be talking all about time management. I have two children, my daughter is nearly a year and my son is two and a half. I’m doing a degree, I do work (occasionally) and I still have time to write. People say I’m crazy for taking on so much, and there was a point last year where I thought they were right, but then I just found a way to fit it all in, and I haven’t looked back. So here are my tips for getting everything done in a day.

1. Prioritise. For me, the most important thing I do is look after the children, so the first thing I do when I wake up is make sure they are happy and set for the day. They get all my attention in the morning, so after lunch their usually quite happy to play by themselves for a bit. Then with everything else, I make a list of what I need to do with my day, starting with the most important, and I work my way down. That way, at least I never fall behind with deadlines or anything.

2. Ten minutes here and there is better than nothing. Especially with studying, I used to think I had to sit down for hours and read all in one go, but now I read what I can, when I can, even if it’s just a paragraph between jobs, it’s better than nothing.

3. Don’t beat yourself up if things don’t get done! It’s not the end of the world if the house is left a mess for one day!

4. Know your limitations. I work from home as a manicurist, and when I first had my son I imagined I’d have a thriving business by now. But the reality is it’s difficult to do that kind of work with a child running around, let alone two. I still do treatments, but only for people I know, and only when my fiancé is around to look after the children. Anything else would probably be disastrous. It’s the same with writing, I know I don’t have the time to get a book released every month, so I set myself reasonable goals, as long as I stick to them, I’m happy.

5. When the children finally go to bed, the laptop comes out. This was so hard at first, but I made a strict rule that every night I do an hour of work for my degree, and then I get rewarded by writing. This works because my partner works late a lot, so once I got into the routine, I found it easy to stick to.

6. Give yourself time to relax. The old saying ‘a woman’s work is never done’ might be true, but make time for yourself as well. If you never relax you can get so tired that nothing with get done, so make it a rule to look after yourself too. Go for a walk, pamper yourself, try a new hobby or get back into a new one, but make sure you have fun!

Thank you all for reading and I really hope you’ve all enjoyed your Tuesday Tips from me.

Emily x x