You have children and work remotely: 12 ways to increase productivity in "extreme" conditions
Being a parent and working from home is incredibly difficult. However, if you know how to organize the process, you can increase your productivity to the maximum level.
The Make Use Of website writes: "Raising children is a difficult task in itself, but if you also have to work from home, the problem becomes insoluble. Constantly switching between work and household chores is extremely tiring."
However, there is a solution. SSPDaily prepared 12 effective strategies to help you balance work and parenting.
Optimize your to-do list
Make a list of all your tasks. This will allow you to clearly prioritize and allocate time for each of them. Once you have a holistic view of your work week, you'll be able to evenly distribute tasks and chores.
Create rituals to build habits
People are made up of skills, and you can use this property to your advantage. Automate good habits and you'll get an invaluable tool for improving various aspects of your life. And to make the process go faster, create your own funny rituals and follow them.
Set priorities for each day
If your weeks go by in the same order, why not stick to it and prioritize a topic for each day? This way, you can categorize tasks and keep the whole family in sync with your program.
Divide the house into several locations
Set aside separate areas in the house for specific tasks - a corner for quiet reading, a play area, a workplace.
This approach will help you switch your attention when moving from one zone to another. This will not only increase your concentration, but also make your day less chaotic.
Write down your ideas
Have you ever had a brilliant idea while doing the dishes or taking a shower? Try capturing it with a mind map. These tools aren't just for office projects. They can be useful when planning family trips, creating curricula for homeschooling, or even when organizing a personal business.
Block distractions
The digital age is full of distractions. To get rid of them, turn off the most annoying apps, notifications, and messengers on your iPhone (Android) while you work.
Use a digital assistant
Sometimes there is so much work that you can't do it alone. In this case, you should turn to digital assistants for help. Ask Siri or Alexa to set reminders, change your calendar schedule, or even order an urgent batch of crayons for your child's upcoming project.
Plan menus with apps
It's no secret that creating a menu that satisfies the preferences of everyone in the house is a task with many unknowns. And when you combine work and family responsibilities, meal planning can turn into a disaster.
Luckily, there are many apps out there to solve this problem, especially if you have a specific goal in mind, such as losing a few pounds or following a particular diet.
Save recipes for meals
If you spend too much time wondering what to cook, recipe apps can help you experiment with meals based on what you have in your pantry. There are also artificial intelligence recipe generators that allow you to create meal ideas based on the ingredients you want to use, as well as your dietary needs and preferences.
Learn to manage your time wisely
Effective time management methods - blocking or dividing it into parts - can be crucial in organizing work at home. There are various techniques for this. For example, Pomodoro, where work is divided into intervals, usually 25 minutes, followed by a short break.
It is not necessary to manually set timers, the program will automatically determine them along with the necessary intervals.
Take care of your health
Immersed in caring for our family, we often forget about our own well-being. Programs that gently nudge and remind you to drink water, stand up, or even breathe will be very useful in this case.
Consider also working with your family doctor and using patient monitoring devices to keep up with your health indicators.
Control access to the Internet
Parents are responsible for protecting their children. And in the digital age, many threats lie in the devices used by the child. That's why it's imperative to set up parental controls over screen time and ensure that age-appropriate content is available.
