Maybe there are people out there who can make multi-tasking work. However, for many of us, multi-tasking is really distracting.
Think about it. If you are writing an article and catching up on blogs, you will tend to switch back and forth. First you read a blog on your Google Reader and while you wait for the next blog to load, you start writing. You get started on the first paragraph of the article, then check the blog again. At this point, one of your kids comes in, begging you to read a story. So, you balance a book on your knees, reciting the story for the millionth time, skimming blogs and typing with one hand. Sound familiar?
The question is, how much do you really get done this way? If you are at all like me, you end up jumping from task to task so much that you don´t actually get things done. Sure, you might finish reading all the blogs on Google Reader, but that´s the fun stuff!
What happens to the slightly harder work? It tends to get done in bits and pieces in the background while we tend to the more interesting stuff and work in the pauses.
Multi-tasking might sound like a great idea, but it can really kill your production. Why not try an experiment? Try working your regular method one day, then work in blocks the next day. That is, just work on one task until it is finished. It´s boring, but I´ll bet you find yourself being far more productive.
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Sorry for the absence of At Home Mom for the past 24 hours. There were some technical difficulties, namely me. I accidentally erased this blog while attempting to add a new website to my server.
The good news is that I am with Host Gator and despite many people putting them down, they were amazing! They responded promptly to my emails and once everything had been restored, I still couldn´t get into my wp-admin. Within an hour of letting Host Gator support know about this, they had restored my password file manually and I´m back in.
One thing I have learned from this (apart from the fact that I need to get more sleep and maybe let my husband get up with the baby at 3 am every morning!) is that it really is worth it to have a good host. There is no way my previous host would have responded so quickly!
For more on Host Gator, check out my previous post on them.
Did you pass the entrepreneurial streak on to your kids? Well, if they are interested in starting an online business, you might want to have them check out Carl Cab’s blog for inspiration.
Carl is a young entrepreneur (just 14 years old!) from the
He could be a pretty good motivator for you, too. After all, if a 14 year old can earn money online, why can’t you?
Carl’s blog, Make Money Online with a 13-year Old, is well done and offers great insight to many blogging issues. He is offering PR4 links to anyone who reviews his blog and links to him, which is a pretty good offer and a very smart move from a young entrepreneur.
Although written in a very informal manner, Carl’s blog offers a wealth of information on making money online, blogging, and affiliate programs and proves that kids can be successful online, too.
I was homeschooled and had three younger sisters. My father worked out of a studio beside our house and my mother somehow managed to keep track of music lessons, soccer and baseball games, karate and dance classes, my father’s clients, and heaps more. It was really quite impressive. She had one little secret.
My mother had a massive great wall calendar. She wrote everything down on that calendar, as soon as she found out about it. That’s nothing new, we all manage to scribble down the majority of things, right?
Well, she took things one step further and color coded everyone. We each had a color. Red, blue, green and pink were for us kids, black for my father’s business appointments, purple for my mother’s activities (which weren’t many, since she was constantly ferrying us around!) and orange for things the whole family was involved in.
The calendar looked a bit crazy, with all those different colors, often all on the same squares! But it worked. She could tell at a glance who she had to worry about each day and we were able to easily check what we were supposed to be doing. It was also a great way to find out whose schedules were overlapping, since she wrote times beside the activity.
Color-coding your calendar is a great way to help balance your family and work, and it is super easy to implement, all you need are a few markers or colored pens and a great big wall calendar.
Do you have a mission for your business?
A mission statement is a good way to keep yourself on track, a way to remember why you started your business. Although you might not think you will lose track of the why if you are at the beginning of starting a business, it happens to the best of us.
By writing a mission statement, you will have something solid to refer back to and to help you remember why you wanted to have this business in the first place. This can be invaluable when you are feeling down and wondering if you have done the right thing.
A mission statement doesn’t have to be a great big complicated thing. It can be as short as one line, or you can write a half page on what you want your business to be about. For example, here is my mission for this blog:
To help other work at home moms start and maintain their own businesses, find home work opportunities and improve the quality of their time with their families.
That’s it, nice and short. What’s your mission?
