Earlier this month I shared why I don’t set New Years Resolutions, and how valuable it can be to look back over the previous year during the goal setting process. Today I’d like to encourage you to take a look at your goals for this year and ask yourself two questions:

- Why? 

and

-What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?

Last year, my private goal  – the one I accomplished – was centered around my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my kids. I needed to strengthen my family relationships.

If I didn’t, my family would suffer. My marriage would crumble, and that was unacceptable to me.

My kids, specificially Z, J, and K are getting older, they aren’t little kids anymore. And I needed to strengthen our relationship as we move into the older tween and teen years. I was unwilling to risk “losing” my children because they had moved on, but our relationship hadn’t.

That was my why. That is why my other three big goals did not get accomplished, because the “why” I had for them was not as large and as important to me as this one goal’s “why”.

So, when you look at your goals for this year, for this month, or even this day, ask your self “Why” and “What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?”

Write down in positive terms how your life will be different when you accomplish your goal. Hold it in your mind. Re-read it periodically.  Filter your decisions through it.

Whatever you focus on, grows. So focus on the positive,  focus on what you can accomplish, and do it.

I believe in you.

…Shannon

The life of a homeschooler looks different for each family. Each family has its own routines. Some are more relaxed, others are very scheduled, and then there are those who are in between.

Here we are a mix,depending on whether it’s a full school day, light school day, or unschooling day. Today at our house it’s a light schoolwork day, with a play date, and a bunch of errands schedule. Plus a couple key deadlines looming this week for me.  So what does our day look like?

Since I needed the car today, my day started at 6:15 to take my husband to the mass transit bus stop. Instead of going back to bed like I normally do, I decided to take the quiet time to get in some extra work and mapped out some thoughts for a coaching client.

As the kids started waking up, we talked, laughed, and spent some time together. Everyone was up by 8:30, which is very unusal for us. Usually my morning risers are up by 8:30, while K is usually up later because she and I stay up much later at night. But today it is necessary to be up and going much earlier in order to meet the commitments of the day.

This morning K made biscuits for breakfast, while I worked and answered questions from Little E and Z. J and K then started in on their chores and schoolwork.

K is on trip preparation duty for schoolwork this week, so she’s gathering things up and prepping things for me, and helping me with some adminstrative details.  As a teenager, one day soon she’ll be doing this all on her own, so part of her education is to be proficient in all the things that go into putting together a road trip and running a household. All this goes under the category of Home Economics, entrepenuership, personal finance, and technology.

J is working on Fractions, reading, writing, and later will listen to an audio book while doing his chores. Plus he also has responsibilities in preparing for the road trip. Just not as many as K does.

Z and Little E and I will work on their reading a little later this morning. But right at this very moment they are watching Go Diego Go rescue some animals while I write to you. Both are studying animals, and I’m not really up for Animal Planet this morning (Little E’s favorite TV privelege!). So Deigo is a good compromise for TV Schoolwork.

Lunch is in the refrigerator defrosting. About 11:30 I’ll go down and get that going, after I get all the kids through their baths.  During bath time, I’ll be working on some client work.

Around noon, I’ll ask the olders to start gathering up the library materials that we need to return, and remind K to renew anything that needs to be renewed. She does a great job as my libary assistant, and helps keep our library fines down and me on track with library visits.

We have a playdate with friends we haven’t seen in a while scheduled for this afternoon. Between their schedule and ours, especially since we are both WAHMs, sometimes it’s hard to get a visit in, so we’re looking forward to visiting in person.

After that it’ll be the libary visit, and then a stop off at the bank to take care of the weekly banking.

It’ll be a early dinner tonight. I’ll get that going and leave it for K to finish off while I go pick up my husband. Then we’ll be back to eat and get the kids ready to head off to youth group and AWANAs. While J, Little E, and Z are off at church, K and I will go do the grocery shopping for the Fall Road Trip.

Then it’s family time and then bed time at 10. I’ll talk with Greg, squeeze in another 2 or more hours of work, while K listens to her audio book and has her quiet time.

And then tomorrow begins another day, with different, at-home all day, schedule. But that’s part of balancing life as a work-at-home, homeschooling mom and staying sane – creating a schedule that works for you.

…Shannon

P.S. As you can see K plays an important role in keeping my life balanced. It is part of her education, her training, but it is also something we pay her a small salary for. A couple years ago, when she started taking over some of the work her daddy used to do and doing it well with a good attitude, we decided then that she should be compensated for it, and that works out well for both her and I.

Balancing life as a busy at-home mom is an interesting juggling act. Between managing a household, planning meals, getting the kids to where they need to be, and being a wife, there’s not a lot of time left over. Add in working from home, and possibly even homeschooling, you’ve probably got more on your plate than time to do it all in.  I know I do.

Jennifer Tankersley from ListPlanIt.com with her family

In this week’s podcast episode, I had a fun chat with Jennifer Tankersley, a busy work at home mom to three kids, ages 5, 7, and 9, on how we can be better organized as busy at-home moms. 

Jennifer is not only a busy mom and wife, but she is also running an online business from home.

Jennifer’s website, ListPlanIt.com, shares planning and organizational tips for professional organizers and moms a like, and she has over 500 lists and worksheets for her members to use to be better organized in all areas of their lives.

In our interview, Jennifer and I talked about:

• How she turned her natural talents as a planner into an online business
• Ideas on how to plan your time and manage multiple schedules and priorities
• How you can to save time and energy with menu planning and shopping lists
• An idea for budgetting on a 26 week schedule
• Overcoming the guilt and anxiety of not having a perfectly “clean” house
• Goal setting and defining success as an work-at-home mom
• Ideas on how to manage your plans and lists, and keep it all organized

Jennifer gave us a great glimpse into how she manages life as a busy work-at-home mom with three kids in school, and I shared a few tips on how I manage life, business, and the household as a work-at-home, homeschooling mom.  I hope that you enjoy meeting Jennifer and learning from her as much as I did chatting with her.

To listen in, simply click the play button below. To download the recording to your computer, right click on download link below and choose ‘Save Target As’.

Organization and Planning Tips for Busy At-Home Moms [ 1:11:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Enjoy!

…Shannon

P.S. Be sure to check out Jennifer’s site for more orgnaization and planning tips. Her blog has some great information.

P.S.S. Prefer to read the transcript? Download the Transcript. It’s free and loaded with great tips!

Judging by how much I’m posting lately, the world’s been pretty quiet. But in actuality, it’s exactly the opposite!

So, where have I been?

Eating Frogs.

No, not those type of frogs – GROSS! 

(Though the kids did have one in our teranium for a few days.)

What I’m referring to is the time management concept that Brian Tracy teaches in his book,  Eat That Frog!

Basically, the concept is in order for you (and I) to avoid procrastination and truly be productive, you need to determine what the biggest most important thing that you have to do each day is and then do that one thing (i.e., eat that Frog). Then pick the next biggest and important thing and do that.

In a months like April and May, where I am over committed both professionally and personally (can you say baseball and swim team season!), I have had to pick and choose between what I want to do and what I really need to do.

Basically to use Brian Tracy’s analogy, I have had to pick out the biggest and ugliest frogs (tasks), and eat them first.

Unfortunately that means not doing some things that are fun and good, like personal blogging. And, I have to say, I Miss You!

But I have been working on some fun new things, that hopefully I’ll be share with you over the next few weeks. In the meantime, know that I am thinking of you and hope you are having a great Spring.

…Shannon

Photo Credit: BullFrog by  BaylorBear78

For the last five months I’ve been experimenting with a Success Calendar, a time management concept I ran across in December when reading Carrie Wilkerson’s ebook: Juggling?? Time Management Tips – Strategies for Your Success from 3 Experts!.

Basically, the concept is to plan out first your time off, including vacations and free days (where you aren’t working); and then to schedule out your support/administration days and your focused work days. Everything is color-coded and marked with moveable stickers (so its easy to make schedule changes).

My 2009 Success Calendar (in January)

Since I ran across this concept at the end of December, when I was doing my whole planning and re-evaluating thing, I decided to give this a try. Right off, it proved useful because my husband and I were able to iron out what our vacation/holiday wish list and get those scheduled and start the planning/budgeting process. Definitely a first for us and so far successful.

Next I scheduled the free days, days where realistically I’m not going to get much work done anyway (too many activities or family commitments). Doing this made me realize why I was getting into bottlenecks with my work. I really wasn’t taking much for free days in some periods of time and in others was taking too many. This helped me kind of plan what I wanted to do, and then schedule around it.

Three types of work days schedule with free time and support days

Next was the work days. Now I have three types of work – magazine work (a steady client), client work (project-based), and then work on this blog and other personal projects. So I ended up scheduling those out. First the magazine work, because that’s on a production cycle and I can predict when the work is coming and how much time it will take. Then, I had to look at the client work I was doing. That was an eye opener. No wonder I was working so many late nights! I had a lot more work than I had time. (oops)

After using this for five months, I’ve discovered that 1) my kids like to come look at it to see what type of day it is (a free day or a work day); 2) I needed move things around a lot; 3) I really needed to make some changes to my habits to get this to work. 

It’s interesting moving things around; because the theory is that once the calendar is completely scheduled out, you should only swap days around. Well, it’s harder than you think. I keep wanting to add in work days, skip the free days. Now it’s getting difficult to swap out days because I’ve moved so many free days to the latter half of the year. But it is good for forcing me to really look at how much I’m accomplishing in the days that I am working and how much I’m not. 

I expect that as time goes on and I learn how to use this method more effectively and really carve out those focus times during the day (instead of the middle of the night, which has been my habit for the last twelve years). I find its good for me to go back to the interview Carrie did with Sarah Robinson and re-read how she implements it and how it works for her. It helps me keep perspective and learn more about how to make better use of my time.

For now I’m going continue to work with this method. It’s a different way of thinking about my schedule than I’ve used in the past, and it’s hard to break habits. But so far, I have experienced definite benefits to using this method, and think that over time I can make this work further.  If you are looking for a way to balance work and home, I would suggest giving it a try.  For more information, check out Carrie’s ebook Juggling?? Time Management Tips – Strategies for Your Success from 3 Experts!. The info is in the second interview. (the other two interviews are very useful too!)

Anyway, food for thought

…Shannon