Guest Post – Making Time & Finding the Energy for Your Work at Home Business When You Homeschool Your Children
I work from home. I also homeschool three little inquiring minds. I’d never tell you it’s easy. But it’s the right choice for our family and we make it work.
How can you make time, and find the energy, to run a business from home when you’re also homeschooling?
Be Sure You Know Your “Why”
If you’re juggling both homeschooling and working at home, the #1 piece of advice I would offer is to know why you’re doing each. Be 100% convinced of your decisions.
There are rough days but if you know you’re doing what’s best for your children by homeschooling, and what’s best for you/your clients/your mission in the world through your business, the question isn’t, “Should I give up?” but instead, “How can I make this work better?”
It’s that certainty that will drive you to get it all done. You’ll find the time and energy to push through the challenges and succeed.
Plan Smart, Be Flexible
Have a daily plan. Scheduling to the minute doesn’t work for me, but I do schedule general blocks of time for each duty. I know generally when I’ll be focused on teaching and when I’ll be focused on business.
Never do three times what you can skip doing completely. If you’ve ever tried planning out your own school curriculum, you know it’s extremely time consuming and can make your head spin to match books to guidelines and cover everything. I have three kids. I’d have to go through that process for each of them. I don’t do it. Instead I choose curriculums that come with the plan ready to go. I take those plans and lay them out in my homeschool daily plannner as I look over each week (I use “The Well-Planned Day” and wouldn’t survive without it). I know exactly what’s required each day to complete our school year on time. It’s worth the money to know my plan is solid and I can focus my time on their learning instead of my planning. Explore your options. There are many curriculums that come with planners ready to go.
Look for areas where planning can save you time. For example, plan your meals and shop monthly. Try freezer cooking and learn to use a crockpot. You’ll save hours of “what’s for dinner?” and last minute trips to the grocery store.
Be willing to be flexible and forgiving with yourself. You’ll have to bend a bit on the days where your kids need more support or when you have a business emergency.
Guard & Leverage Your Time
Learn how to guard your time. Don’t spend hours chatting on the phone, or watching TV. We all need some down time to relax, but if you’re watching a couple hours of TV nightly, you shouldn’t be wondering where your time went…
“When people say to me: “How do you do so many things?” I often answer them, without meaning to be cruel: “How do you do so little?” It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” ~Philip Adams
Keep your priorities in mind when you’re deciding what to do. Make it a point to learn how to do things better and faster.
Look for places in your homeschooling and your business where you leverage your time to spend it on the most critical tasks and outsource, automate, or delegate the rest.
Get Support
Don’t try to do it all alone. That’s a recipe for quick burnout.
Ask for help. Involve your family and share the duties of housekeeping and meal time.
Get support in whatever form you need. Maybe it’s a charter school. Maybe it’s a mastermind group or business coach. Maybe it’s involving your kiddos in group classes, or having your spouse or another mom share teaching or kid care duties.
Want more? Click here to Visit Michelle’s “Juggling it All” page for free ecourses on crockpot and freezer cooking, menu planning tips, and more.
