Working at Home

Tips for Work at Home Moms of Young Children

2011-05-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

This is an article from MyLifeShift.org

20 productivity tips for work at home Moms of young children

January 28th, 2008

I’ve been looking for productivity tips for WAHMs who are taking care of young children. By young children I mean anywhere from newborns to about 4 years old, or children who are not yet in school.

I must say that I have been disappointed. I have not found any help at all for Moms like me who have to squeeze in some work while caring for one or several young children. General tips for home workers are simply not applicable to me: Set definite work hours? Close the door of your home office? Quite impossible!

One successful WAHM whose advice I sought basically told me to lay low on my home business while my youngest child, 16 months old, is still young. The woman who gave that advice is an empty nester.

Certainly, my family comes first before my home business. But what if I were a single mother who had to earn a decent income but also wanted to stay home with my young child? Would working at home be impossible? Would office employment be the only solution? I refuse to believe so!

So I sat down with DH and brainstormed ways in which I could somehow manage our household, care for myself, DH and our three kids — including a toddler — and still get some serious work done. Many of these tips contradict productivity advice for home workers. I think that’s because such advice is usually given by either unmarried individuals or married men who are not primary caregivers of their children. DH and I came up with three general strategies:

* identify and create pockets of time when you can work with minimal disturbance
* double-task or piggy-back simple work tasks with household or child care tasks
* maximize your productivity during those times when you are working

Using these general guidelines, we came up with 20 productivity tips for work-at-home Moms of young children:

1. Work when your child is napping.
Nap times give Moms chunks of free time. Use these times to work. If your baby isn’t on a regular routine yet, find his natural body rhythm and encourage a daily routine. Pretty soon, you can predict roughly the times when your child gets tired and ready for a nap. Encourage long, peaceful naps by keeping the room a bit dim (but not as dark as if it were nighttime) and minimizing noises or masking them with music or white noise. I use a sleep CD by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson and my toddler gets at least a one-hour nap in the morning and another in the afternoon. When my toddler doesn’t nap peacefully, I let him sleep in my arms and nurse him while I work on the computer. A sling is very useful for this. If you have several young children at home, it can be a challenge to get everybody to nap at the same time. You may have to try the other tips instead.

2. Keep children happily busy when awake.
Even very young children can happily amuse themselves for a few minutes while Mommy works. Set up a play corner in your home office with fun, safe toys that he can play with even without your supervision. Rotate the toys every few days or so to keep them interesting. Young children love to imitate adults, so get him a small desk and chair, a toy computer, cellphone, and toy versions of other gadgets you use in your work.

3. Child-proof your home office.
Make sure all power outlets and table corners are covered. Keep breakable objects out of his reach. Anchor all big pieces of furniture. Basically just make sure the little tyke can’t get in trouble, hurt himself or break anything when he’s out of your sight. Some young children, like my toddler, are sometimes perfectly happy just walking back and forth in a room, toys in hand. If your home office is child-proof, you can work while your baby amuses himself.

4. Ask somebody else to look after your children.
Plan to work when DH is home and can look after the kids, or when older siblings are home from school. Even if they just bring the little one to the park for 30 minutes, you can already get a lot of work done. Or swap babysitting with your girlfriends. Or hire a mother’s helper or a babysitter for a few hours every week. See if you work better if you allot an entire afternoon to work and get a babysitter for half a day a week. “But I left my office job to be home with my child!” you say? Well, it’s only for a few hours a week and you’ll still be home with your child. So it’s not nearly as bad as leaving your child in day care every day while you’re in the office.

5. Work when the children are asleep at night.
I enjoy working after everybody’s asleep. The whole house is quiet and there are no interruptions. But I tend to overdo it and end up sleeping very, very late. Which means I’ll sleep with the baby the next day instead of working during naps. Plus, sleep deprivation is bad for your health. Besides, this is usually my time for DH. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend doing this night after night. Maybe once or twice a week, or when you’re truly behind on your work.

6. Make your work mobile.
Equip yourself for mobile work by going digital. Buy a laptop and cellphone and subscribe to a Wifi Internet connection. This way, you don’t have to be in your home office to work. You can work in your kitchen, backyard, playroom, baby’s room, even in the playground. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done by sneaking in bits and pieces of work when you can get away with it. At the very least, always have a small notebook and pen so you can jot down your thoughts or add to your to-do list. I can often make outlines or mind maps for blog posts when I have as little as 5 minutes of free time.

7. Minimize distractions.
When you are able to work, make sure nothing short of an emergency distracts you. Turn on your answering machine. Put your cellphone on silent mode. Turn off your Email alerts. If necessary, put a sign on your front door that baby is napping and you can’t be disturbed.

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Eight Steps to Landing the Perfect Job

2011-05-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

The following is an article by Jeff the Career Coach

And don't forget to check the latest Work at Home Job Postings

Eight Steps to Landing the Perfect Job

1. Creating a Resume & Cover Letter

Before writing a resume, there are two numbers to keep in mind: 70 and 20. A company gets 70 applicants for every professional job opening (blue collar jobs are even higher) and candidates only has 20 seconds with their resume to make an impression on a recruiter. Learn how to create a resume that sells! Read more.

2. Get on LinkedIn

Networking sites, such as LinkedIn, have changed the way recruiters seek job candidates. Today, recruiters and job candidates are connecting, interacting, and sharing information proactively. Learn how to rapidly grow your Linkedin network so that you can be found by top recruiters and hiring managers. Read more.

3. Use Recruiters

Job seekers have many options and various resources to rely on nowadays when conducting a job hunt. These include professional job boards, social/networking sites, and personal referrals, as well as others. Given all of these options, one might ask if it is still necessary to work with a recruiter. And the answer is a resounding: YES! Read more.

4. Post Resumes

While there are many job boards available, not all will be well suited for every job seeker. Each job board has a set of differentiating factors that help build the jobs board’s success at helping job seekers quickly land the perfect job. Read about the top job boards and decide which one is right for you. Read more.

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5 Ways to Maximize Your Time Working At Home

2011-05-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

Balancing your home life while working from home takes practice and experimentation. Many work at home professionals are also mothers of young children. How do we make time for it all?

Here are 5 tips that may help:

Set goals. Weekly goals will help you stay organized. What do you want to accomplish each week? How many hours do you want to work? Do you have a home project that needs to be completed?
Identify roles and priority. For example, I am a mother, a wife, employee, and blog designer. Within each role, I have a number of responsibilities and need to make time for them all.
Create a schedule and start with the “big rocks” first. Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” has written and presented a demonstration he has big container with pebbles in it. He has an audience member try to put in several large rocks, and it’s impossible to fit them all in. He has another container of the same size with big rocks in it. When the audience member pours in the pebbles, they easily fill in all the cracks and all the rocks and pebbles fit. This is a metaphor for scheduling the “big rocks” first, or the activities that mean the most to you for the roles in your life. The rest of your responsibilities can then be fit in the spaces of your schedule.
Schedule in regular time for personal renewal. Self-care is critical for maintaining energy and emotional and physical health. Be sure to schedule time for yoga, lunch with a friend, or those music or art lessons you’ve been wanting to take on a regular basis. Define what your self-care “big rocks” are going to be so you can be sure to nurture yourself and the important relationships in your life. You will find that the time you invest in your self-care will give you huge returns in your energy level and business and household productivity.
Create structures in your life to support your family and your business. A structure is a system or routine that you follow to ensure certain areas in your life run more smoothly. This will help you to sustain your energy and create more time for the things you enjoy. An example is a structure for getting your house clean. Will you do it? Will your kids help? Will you hire a housekeeper? Another structure would be for your business and how you track your paperwork. Will you keep paperwork in a binder or manila folder? What information will you include for each client, and where will it be stored? Will you print out several sets of paperwork at one time or on a per client basis? Yet another structure can be created so you can find care for the kids when you get called to a birth. Is there a list of people to call? Do you have backs packed and meals made while you’re at a birth? What does each child need if going to a friend or relative’s home?

The initial time investment that it takes to do these tasks may seem large, but by creating supportive structures, understanding your roles and responsibilities, scheduling time for self renewal, organizing your responsibilities by priority, and identifying goals to move towards, you will find that you are more focused and productive when you work, and your time outside of work is more rewarding and less stressful.

We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment :)

Why Work at Home

2011-01-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

My main goal for working at home is the flexibility. Having two small children, I would like to spend as much time with them as I can. It is very important for my husband and I to be able to choose an out of district school for our kindergartner. It would not be possible for her to attend that school if I worked a full time job outside of the house. Also, we love having our three year old in preschool a few days a week without having to leave her there until 6pm at night.

Here are other great reasons to work from home:

Save Money in Gas - With the ever-rising costs of fuel, your commute can be a huge expense, in dollars and in time. Working from home decreases your gasoline costs as well as wear & tear on your vehicle.

Tax Advantages - Using your home as a place of business offers a number of tax advantages. For starters, it allows you to deduct a part of the operating and depreciation expenses on your home. This means that a percentage of your rent or mortgage payment, depreciation, property taxes, insurance, utilities, and expenses for household maintenance, repairs, or improvements is deductible. You can also be entitled to deduct expenses from using a vehicle for your business, including gas, insurance, depreciation, and others. Consult your accountant for a careful evaluation of what can be and what cannot be deducted from using your home office.

Flexible Schedule - Freedom, in most cases, to set your own hours and work when you want to work.

Be Productive During Work Breaks - Throw in a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher, water the garden. If you schedule and use your time wisely, you will be able to get things done around the house and work.

Leave a comment with your reasons for working from home :)

Types of Work at Home Jobs

2011-01-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

Are you curious about some of the jobs you can work at from home? Depending on your skills and experience, there are options for working at home. However, keep in mind, that, in most cases, you need both the right qualifications and the right equipment, along with a high speed internet connection, to work successfully from home. You also need to know, despite what you might read to the contrary, that you're not going to get rich working from home. The chances of doing that are slim.

You can work as a home based agent where you are an employee of the company who works from a home office, providing customer service to client companies. Virtual assistants provide administrative, secretarial, and clerical support, as well as creative and/or technical services for clients. Work at home transcriptionists are usually independent contractors who transcribe and edit recorded reports onto their home computer. Online tutors work for internet based companies that offer help, within a variety of subject areas, to students of all ages.

Keep in mind that many of these positions are part-time or independent contractor positions, so check into what benefits, if any, are provided. Also, carefully investigate the company before you agree to work for them to make sure both the position and the organization are legitimate.

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