How to get anything done when your kids are around

Whether you have a full-time home office or are working from home temporarily while the kids are out of school for the summer, it’s likely you’re juggling competing demands. Between making snacks and refereeing arguments, it’s still possible to be productive while working with young kids at home.

Here are some tips from those who have done it on how to work from home and maintain your productivity and your sanity:

It’s unrealistic to think you’ll be able to get in a solid eight-hour workday when you’re working with kids at home. You likely won’t have an hour straight at any point during the kids’ waking hours to concentrate on a task. Katelyn Patton, a “chaos management coach” with Yellow Rose Management and mom to three kids under the age of six, organizes her workday into  10- to 30-minute chunks, since that’s the amount of time her children can be entertained by a single activity.

“This is a quick and easy place to look at when you have a pocket of time and will keep you from wasting your time trying to figure out what to do,” says Patton. Her 10-minute list includes things such as writing a social media post, while her 30-minute list includes writing a weekly newsletter.

When creating a schedule for the day, consider when your kids have the most energy and plan your work in accordance with their activity levels. Violette de Ayala, founder & CEO of FemCity and mom of three, does most of her work during the morning hours, when her kids are calmer and content reading or watching videos while she works. “In the afternoon they would turn into wild beasts with energy,” she says. Adjusting her routine to get all of her work done in the morning means she can take the afternoons off to spend with the kids.

Having a plan for work is only great if you let your clients and coworkers know about your work schedule. To avoid clients getting upset if she doesn’t respond to an email within 10 minutes in the middle of the day when her kids are most active, Patton created a “How I Work” document that she sends to every client describing her office hours, turnaround and response times, and priorities.

“I’m open about why I build my business. I’m building this so I can be home with my kids while supporting my family. It’s on my website and in a lot of my social media posts, videos, and conversations,” says Patton. She says explaining this means her clients aren’t surprised when a kid pops up on the screen during a video call.

Source: Fastcompany.com

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