Is work life balance for moms possible?
How do overwhelmed working moms balance their lives?
The maternity leave can be a good starting point to come up with your business idea. A pause in a career that occurs after a child’s birth motivates many mothers to reassess their goals and ambitions. This article will guide you on how to maintain a work-life balance for moms.
A modern woman is associated with the word “success.” It applies to any area of her activity. Nothing can stop a real businesswoman on her way to victory. And what about motherhood? Practice shows that it is quite possible to combine the chores of caring for a baby and career growth.
What prevents you from changing the title of “business lady” to the equally attractive status of “business mom”?
How to achieve work-life balance and stay happy and successful? What are the important steps to working life balance?
Stay with us and learn the work-life balance importance and the secrets of its maintenance.
How to Achieve Work-life Balance for Moms?
The mistake of many women of our time is that after childbirth, they completely dissolve in caring for their child. Of course, the baby needs the mother’s attention, but does this exclude the possibility of personal development?
Self-realization, not only in motherhood, is essential for each of us.
Time does not stand still, and we must not lag behind.
A business mother is a woman who manages to keep track of not only the child, but also her appearance, her career, and the events around her. Therefore, if you feel your inner potential, you should not bury it under a pile of diapers. If it is impossible to leave the child with someone close, it may be worth buying a stroller and taking the child with you to the seething modern world.
There are plenty of areas for realizing your potential – the main thing is to decide what you would like to do and objectively assess your capabilities.
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Why is Work-Life Balance Important?
Don’t listen to those who say children are a hindrance to business. You can go about your business even as a young mother – of course, if you want to. Besides, doing what you love can bring pleasure and relaxation every day of your maternal life.
It will also bring income, which is now very important, given the world’s economic situation.
Thus, a business mother gets satisfaction from self-realization, but can also dispel common fears that maternity leave is difficult, not only emotionally, but also financially. And the child, who is still quite tiny today, will appreciate your success in the future.
After all, everyone has a mother, and not many have a business mother. And by developing her business, a woman expands the opportunities of her child and is a worthy example for them.
How do Working Moms Balance Their Lives?
#1. Proactive Delegation
If the maternity hospital is still ahead, you have time to prepare the business front by delegating your tasks to colleagues.
First, write down all the things that you usually do in the company: For example, “negotiating contracts,” “speaking at conferences,” “maintaining financial statements,” and so on.
Then determine to whom you can delegate these matters for at least the first few months of the maternity leave and how to train your “successors.”
The more time you have to prepare, the better – do not hesitate with the news of your imminent entry into a new status. Colleagues also need time to get used to it and realize what new responsibilities (or opportunities?) will appear. You will most likely not be able to delegate all matters, but the list of what will remain on your shoulders will still decrease.
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#2. Scheduling Tasks Using the “Entrepreneur Mom” Method
Day X has come, congratulations have calmed down, and a child’s voice fills the days and nights more and more? Right now, you may feel like your brilliant planning skills are worthless, but in fact, they are not, and there are lots of work-life balance examples.
Business perfectly prepares you for an unpredictable life with a child. It’s time to build your super flexible time management.
Write down the routine events that make up every day with your child – sleeping, feeding, walking, bathing, etc. – now they form the outline of your plan. Opposite each event, write what you can do in parallel at work (or, conversely, restore your resource by taking a nap with your child).
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Through the experience and mistakes of many women, we drew the following picture:
- Tasks that require concentration for more than ten minutes – only after the evening lights out of the child
- Calls – while walking
- Short operational letters and answers in the corporate messenger – during the daytime dream and at the moment when the baby is busy studying himself in the mirror for at least five minutes
- Meetings with clients and public speaking – only if someone can handle your baby for at least four hours.
Such a list, firstly, quickly eliminates the illusion that you can do an important job with high quality – for example, make a contract – with a whimpering baby in your arms. Secondly, it allows you to adjust to the child’s daily routine, which changes with annoying constancy for up to a year.
How Can Working Mom Make Life Easier?
#1. Timing
Use tracker apps to track your child’s activities (especially sleep and baby breathing monitor).
Firstly, this will give at least some predictability of the circadian rhythm.
Secondly, the constantly turned on timer in your hand madly sharpens the sense of time – for performing any tasks. Very quickly, you will intuitively know not only that it takes you ten minutes to feed the baby, and 20 minutes to bathe.
You will also learn that drawing up a contract takes 45 minutes, preparing for performance will take at least two hours, and answering a dozen letters can be done in 20 minutes (and there was nothing to pull with them for a whole week).
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#2. Work Communications
If you don’t have a corporate chat yet, it’s time to create one. Working chat is much better than mail; it allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of events and solve operational issues with lightning speed. There is a nuance: the single chat “about everything” will quickly turn into a trash heap in which nothing can be found.
Create separate channels by topic – for each client (for b2b), store (for b2c), business function (sales, finance, manufacturing) – and include only those employees who are involved in these topics.
A general channel of hot news in the chat is very useful – about events in the industry, about competitors, etc. It is a channel in which each team member writes what he is going to do during the day and shares the results in the evening. Chatting will allow you to see what is happening in the team and quickly get involved in situations where your participation is required.
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How to Combine Work with Raising a Baby
When a little miracle is born, the mother gives it all to be the best parent ever. She gets up at night when the baby cries, walks with the child, feeds, changes diapers, etc.
Does it seem like you’ve lost yourself in your daily routine?
You turn around and see spectacular women, beautiful and purposeful, and you think, why am I not like that? We assure you that among them, many young mothers have managed to pull themselves together, organize their schedules correctly, and have become successful thanks to this.
Balancing Work and Your Maternity Leave
Many women during maternity leave face the situation described above, forgetting about work-life balance benefits. It is not to say that this state of affairs limits all women from living. In her youth, a woman is predicted to have a successful career, and after a few years, she gets married and turns into a housewife, with a bunch of domestic problems, but seems to be happy with everything.
Is this your ideal woman? Great, then you can relax and leave everything as it is. If this life does not suit you, then it is time to change something.
How to combine work with raising a child? Few employers are ready to hire an employee who will work from time to time when she is not distracted by the baby not to become the type of full-time working mom overwhelmed.
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Hence, it is necessary to create your own business and not depend on anyone. The maternity leave period can be filled with a fascinating process of starting and promoting your own business.
Tips for Being a Successful Business Mom
To become a successful business lady and reach a work-life balance for moms, you need to follow four simple rules:
- Forget about laziness – laziness is the main enemy for moms’ business, as, indeed, for any business in general. Rest when you’re tired, but avoid procrastination. Try to be effective but kind to yourself. You’re going through an important and complex period, so keep the balance between your desire to be successful and your need to be a mom.
- Give yourself some motivation. For example, I want to buy a new dress (perfume, cosmetics, a cool toy for my baby). I need money which I don’t want to take from my husband. As an independent woman, you know that you need your own finances.
- Set aside time that you devote to your work. You can work at night when the baby is sleeping sweetly, and no one distracts you. Try to sleep when the baby sleeps during the daytime to save some resources for evening business activity.
- Sign up for a gym. What does a gym have to do with it, you may wonder? Firstly, physical activity has a positive effect on your body and gives you energy. Secondly, it is the time for you, which can be used for thinking, planning, or just relaxed observation of your body stretching.
Few Reasons to Start A Business on Maternity Leave
The mother of the newborn might feel left aside if she used to work a lot and loves her job. Work involves communicating with people, and this is a great way out of a daily boring routine.
By starting your business, you can make your life closer to the way it was before you deliver.
Even a small business on maternity leave perfectly keeps a woman in a professional form (if she works part-time in her specialty or uses her competencies in her business projects). But even a not related to the previous profession business is also useful as a factor of self-development. The busier the brain is, the easier it will be to join the work process after maternity leave.
Being in demand gives self-confidence and happiness, and these feelings are passed on to the child. The key to growing a happy child is a happy mother of the little one. So, if work makes you happy, find a way to include it in your daily routine.
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How to Balance Work and Family?
In the mother’s worries and daily hard work, the first year of the baby’s life passes, and the woman begins to wonder, where am I?
If you feel you need to work to entertain yourself or improve your self-confidence, think of part-time work or launch your own business. In the last case, you may use all your creativity and realize some ideas you always wanted to try.
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Do not limit your circle of interests only to communicating about children’s needs with other young mothers. Instead, think about what you want to do, and set your personal goals. Not forgetting about the needs of the child, a true businesswoman will always find a way to achieve success, doing what she loves and having a steady income, which is undoubtedly worthy of admiration and praise!
Printable Daily & Weekly Planners
Ready to find work-life balance? Put all these tips into practice with the FREE Printable Daily and Weekly Planners. They’re perfect for time-blocking and helping you plan ahead.
Did you like our tips on how to balance work and family? What are your secrets of balancing career and family? Please share your experience in the comments below.
You want the career and the family, but how do you balance it? This is your guide to work-life balance for moms, written by a mom with a new baby. #WorkingMom #WorkLifeBalance #Priorities #Balance #FindingBalance
How do you find work-life balance as a mom?
More About Guest Contributor
Amalia Liberman is a wife and a mother of two as well as a novelist and writer, the author has been featured in Women’s Health magazine and also written different articles in lifestyle magazines. Her passions lead her to search out knowledge with all her searching and she doesn’t mind sharing her findings.
Last Updated on December 9, 2021