What are we really trying to achieve by all this list making business? One word: BALANCE. You can keep on juggling away in fear that you may drop the ‘ball’ or ‘balls’. But wouldn’t it be nice to take that anxiety and fear out of everyday for good? YES! I agree with you on that one. I hope you find the following tips helpful, I would love to hear your own tips that help you Manage your Mothership!

1. Prepare:

• Prepare, lists, focus… Create a plan of your week, and then create a map of your day. This helps you to be more productive by not wasting countless precious hours on unproductive tasks. 
  Family Time. Family time is important, so make sure you include family time in your calendar. This can make a big difference in your commitments to your family without sacrificing what needs to be done.
• Regular reminders. Time is your most valuable asset, remind yourself of this regularly and how important it is to spend some of that time with your family. 
• List checks. Remember to mark off each completed task on your list, and review it regularly. You will start to feel a sense of achievement after finishing each task. This helps you move down through the other items on your list. 

2. Lists: 

• Approach lists and priorities as you would in a job, look at time sensitivities and resources required to complete the tasks and set them in order. 
• Clearly define what is on your list and priorities for your commitments and look at the timing to keep in balance. 
• Commitments. It’s easy to become anxious over lists not being completed or over committing to tasks for others. If you have more than five specific tasks in any given day, look at the priority they are given and be realistic about what you can accomplish in that day. Delegate, reassign and/or reschedule. 
• Reflection. At the end of each day, reflect on what you have accomplished and what you want to accomplish on the following day. This will help to improve your prioritisation skills, especially if you have not done it before. Soon you will see a balance starting to happen in your life as you become more efficient at balancing your responsibilities. 

3. Flexibility: 

• Be flexible in both family and work life, be open to communications on what you need and what is needed from you. 
• Be clear and honest in communication with your employer, which will assist greatly in having a flexible work arrangement accommodating your personal and family situations when you need to take off. 
• Be flexible to negotiate terms and if there is a commitment from both, maintain regular communication with your employer. Being flexible means being open to any and all changes. 

4. Maintain Your Focus: 

• Remain focused on the main tasks which need your commitment.
• Achieve what needs to be done within the time set in your schedule for that task.
• Stay focused on what is really important to you and your business.
• Distractions a’ha… the dreaded dangling carrot…! Looks great doesn’t it?
  Too many of these can keep you from achieving your priorities, so remain focused on your list. 

Some tips I use for this are: 

• Put the mobile on silent. Put the answering machine on. Or take a brief call and make a time to call them back.
• Close your email program and set times to open it every hour or so for urgent emails. Set out times in your day planner to read and answer emails, check facebook, etc.
• Make this a plan for your home life as well. Don’t answer the phone during family/dinner time, let voicemail take it. My last article on ‘Family communication, are you REALLY listening???’ focuses more on this topic Click here to read previous article on Family Communication…

5. Delegate: 

• Delegate parts of a large project where possible, or do not take it on. The project will be completed faster, includes interaction with others, and it will promote team building and working together in the home or at work, this creates balance. 
• Share some of the household responsibilities with other family members. Engage family members over the weekend in bigger family projects, like clearing out the garage, make it a family event and fun!  

6. Be Creative: 

• Create a Goal board or an action plan to achieve the overall balance in your life and get your family involved as well. Assess all the options before they become too much for you and your home life. 
• Step back and think about what you can do to achieve greater balance in life, more than you currently have.
• Combine tasks. If you work at home, you may find creative ways of doing both work and home responsibilities together. 

•  Me Time. We often, particularly mums and single parents, leave little or no time for ourselves. But again, start by implementing small changes and you will start to notice an improvement in the balance of your life. If you follow my specially designed Balance Sheet you will be able to keep yourself in check.
• Mindset shift. Start by finding an outlet to shift your mindset into another place. In my case, I like to paint, write or do photography.
• Exercise/Diet. This is a great way of having me time, a walk along the beach is a great way to clear the mind. You could even write your daily achievements in the sand as you go. This also helps to release a naturally occurring painkilling chemical in the body called Endorphin; They are the body’s natural “happy pills”. In some cases the euphoria can last for up to 12 hours. Hello! Endorphin is the reason some people run to reduce stress. So worth a try don’t you think? Don’t forget to drink plenty of water and eat well for overall wellbeing and balance. 
• Be flexible with family, work and other personal areas of your life for balance and be open to making some of the changes shared with you here.  
• Be aware of yourself and know the signs that happen when you are becoming unbalanced: tired or fatigued, overwhelmed, sad or depressed, displeasure in the workplace, irrational, unhappy in family life, teary, and even forgetful because you have so many concerns and worries in your mind. All of which can lead to triggering thought viruses which can spiral out of control.

These tips will help you get back on your Go Train! And help you deal with these situations. Remember to breath, take time out for yourself and remember make the changes gradually to enable you to adapt easily to the changes. The balance you are creating not only affects you but your work and your family, getting the balance right can very much help your overall wellbeing. So I say no more to juggling everything in your life, it’s time to balance it out and keep it more controlled, without the fear and anxiety attached.We are all striving in our fast-paced environments to improve our lives by finding better balance with work and family life.

This is certainly a step closer to achieving the balance you desire amongst further efforts of your own.So, as you start to balance all the competing demands in your life, you will feel more in control of how your life travels. By implementing some of these changes into your life, you will not have to worry about ‘juggling’ anything and focus on ‘balancing’ what is important to you and your life. You’re the driver of this “Go Train…” it’s up to you to get to the next station, all aboard! “Next stop Happyville Station…” Toot Toot, Enjoy the ride! 

• Balance > Success > Growth 

If you like this article and would like a further reminder to continue to manage your balance, feel free to download the A4 Poster (PDF) file to thr right here and to put in your office or on your fridge. I use it everyday, I would love to know how it helps you too please leave a comment when you download the file so I can wish you well and thank you!

“Never doubt what you can achieve when you have a passion, apply yourself and respect others. Listen. Learn. Laugh. Love.”
~ Heather James

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