WAHM Cave

Once we digress from the life of office cubicles and meeting schedules we are in charge of maintaining new levels of productivity. Some of us are producing in makeshift offices depending on how fast we jumped into the work-at-home phase of our professional careers. Others have planned well before making the leap or have been working at home long enough to have progressed to specializing in work at home management.

New work at home mom or not, you need to be productive. Here are three tips to manage your work at home office and stay productive.

Organize your children’s schedules.

Whether you are working around their schedules or they are working around yours, the schedule needs to be organized. No one knows your children better than you. You know when you can best have a conference call, who will play the longest with a particular toy without interruption and who takes a nap when.

A good grasp on any child at their varying stages will give you an idea on how best to set your office hours. Consider a mother’s helper if you have a few children who require more attention than you can possibly manage on a busy work day.

Set office hours.

After assessing the above, you will need to contemplate what times you will be the most productive. Do you like working before the break of dawn? Are you a night owl? Does your job allow for productivity before and after normal business hours with limited client or employer contact during the day? If so a work day split before and after your children take over your space is perfect.

For those with jobs that require interaction with clients or employers in your work at home capacity it is great to set up blocks of time and label each block for what tasks are best performed when.

When you set your office hours try to stick to them. Know what blocks of time are for what tasks. Keep your schedule handy so you know exactly when to tell a client or an employer when you are available for them for a particular task.

Schedule email and phone time.

Managing emails and pending phone calls seem to be the easiest but most distracting tasks we have. If we want to stay productive we need to know when we can and can’t take phone calls and when to respond to emails, instant messages and the like in this social networking day and age.

Phone calls should be penciled in on your office hour schedule. Try to stick to the same times and be consistent and like your office hours you will always be prepared to tell a client when you can take a call without interruption.

Email maintenance should be timed and at consistent times in your work day. If you run out of time, the less important emails can be relegated to pending for later consideration.

Organizing your family, setting your schedule and managing the simplest of office tasks will help you stay productive. A productive work at home mom is a happy work at home mom with a happy family and happy clients.

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