5 tips on how to kick chaos and organize your week as a home business owner

So you started that Home business and now what? all hell is about to break loose.

How are you supposed to take care of your kids, do your family duties, be nice and look good for your hubby while still running a home business or perhaps working from home?

You probably lack organization skills and you have never thought about how to organize your week,

Talk more of having to organize your home office to fit into your daily home activities.

You are beginning to think you just got into deep water without knowing how you got there, the baby is crying and hanging onto you for dear life, he wants to breastfeed.

Moooom I am hungry, or  I want to fix my broken toy and  then the proverbial we have to do my homework ( I am actually thinking no child loves to say that, but  some do, my son likes his homework time even though I suspect its because he gets to correct my pronunciation or tell me why the workbook is wrong lol)

Whichever condition your life is in right now, there is a way out. Don’t lose it just yet or give up and go back to your before business life, there is what to do and I will show you what to do, the how and what to use. Follow me, I will start by laying out a month’s plan which you can then break down into weeks then into days.

To organize your week as a home business owner, here is what you have to do.

1 Define your priorities

In one new month, there is only so much that you can achieve, especially if you just started a new home business and you are trying hard to build it. Running all over the place and splitting hairs everywhere will not move you forward, you have to decide what is your priority for that month as a business and then face it, tackle it and get it done. For you to do this, you will need to focus on knowing what you need for now.

Since you work at home, you may know have noticed that you are consistently moving from your work to your home activities so you can’t just prioritize your business activities without including your home activities it will not work.

To start off, you will need to answer an important question yourself, and that is what is the one thing that you want to achieve this month as a family and as a business?

Write it down on a Post-it note and stick it on your table in front of you and your planning has just begun. You can name it your Big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) like Jim Collins in the book  Built to last

2 Set your Goals

I already mentioned setting up your goals in the above tip, that is your overarching goals for the month, I don’t want to even use the word year here because it may send some people running for cover, so lets stick to planning for one month and then  one week and perhaps you can replicate it each week and then a month and finally make up your year.

I know this looks like its in the reverse order, but I am writing from the perspective of one who may not be a planning addict but realizes that you need it now that you have a business. One day or one week at a time helps, that way you ease in nice and good without feeling overwhelmed.

Now set your business goal for the month and also your family goal for the month. For example:

-Family Goal

– I will study a chapter of the Bible with my family and ensure we internalize the teachings by writing out what we learned and what needs to be implemented.

Business Goal

– Focus on growing my Instagram following this month.

Whatever you need to do, you just write it down and then you move on to the next stage.

3 Break down your Goals into Tasks that need to be accomplished

At this stage you are feeding the pipeline of achieving a more organized family and business, so you get to break down your goals into tasks that are doable within the time slots you will apportion to them. For example

Family Goal Task

-Read verse 1- 3 on Monday

-Read verse 4-5 on Tuesday etc

-You now choose the time slot in which you will start and complete the Bible study for that week.

-Business Goal Tasks

-Research Instagram hashtags to use

-Create content for your Instagram followers

-Search for competitors or collaborators that you will follow

-Join Instagram pods to help improve engagement and following.

Each task must be completed within the time slots assigned, of course, you have to make room for interruptions or disruptions that may make it difficult for you to finish your tasks.

Amongst the tasks you will list are those that will be recurring every week, for example, your kid’s swimming lessons will hold every Tuesday.

For example, my first son takes swimming lessons every Tuesday so I make sure that his swimming gear is in a place where I can easily pick it up and bag it on our way out in the morning.

If you are a mom whose kids are not of school age yet, you can outline activities that you will get them to do at specific times and thus create a routine.

Tips for planning to organize your week

To help you get started here are examples of the list of activities you are likely to plan for in your family.

List of your Family activity

-Childcare

-Meal planning & Prepping

-Cleaning

-School work

-Family time

-Hubby time

-Personal time

-Healthcare for family

-Home maintenance

List of weekly activities for my business:

This is what my list looks like, you can write yours down depending on what you do as a business from home.

-Content planning & creation

-Social Media promotion, marketing, and engagement

-New opportunities research/ product development

-Client meetings/ email response

-Business side overview

After you have done all this, move on to the next step

4 Assign activities to time slots for each day and schedule 

Now that you have listed all your activities, you will now have to separate your activities into recurring activities and non-recurring ones

Recurring activities are the ones you do daily, while none recurring activities may be done once a month. For example, house maintenance may be done once a month, or for your business, you may choose to plan all your content ideas for a month so that you can use the weeks for research and creation.

Another non-recurring business activity may be to use a scheduling app like Tailwind to schedule all your posts for pinning to your Pinterest board for the month, that way you cut down your social media marketing time by half and then focus more of your energy on content creation.

If you have not heard of Tailwind before it’s a scheduling tool that helps you automatically schedule your Pins to your chosen Pinterest boards at times that you choose.

It’s a very useful tool that has helped me tremendously to cut down time used in pinning to boards manually, what’s more, it also has a feature called tribes where you can add your content to increase the exposure of your Pins. I have a tribe on tailwind so if you had like to join my tribe, click here

If you want to sign up for a trial of Tailwind, click here, its free for your first 100 pins during your trial period. If you eventually sign up, your first month is free of charge.

Depending on what kind of business that you are running from home, your schedules may differ but what matters is that you are planning your way to be more effective and productive in your business hence you are able to succeed.

Using our initial example, the recurring activity for both family and business can be

-Read verse 1-3 etc every day from 5pm-6pm

-Share content on my Instagram account and engage with my followers from 12 noon- 12.30pm.

Nonrecurring activities example could be

-Write down what was learned at the end of the chapter reading and what we will practice as a family going forward based on what we learned.- Friday

-Schedule all the Content I will use this month on Sunday

The next step will be

-Put the nonrecurring activities first on your calendar, before you enter your recurring activities. This is because your non-recurring activities may often take chunks of time so you want to get that off your table first before you add the recurring activities which you can maneuver around should you lack for time.

-You can use some scheduling tools that I will later mention in this post to help you create your to-do lists for the day, that way you wake up knowing what you intend to achieve for the day.

-Color code your different activities, for example, you can use different colors to indicate which one is a home activity and which one is a business activity this helps you to avoid mix-ups. For example, All home activities are in green, while business activities are yellow.

5 Assign Time Blocks for Activities

The next thing to do is to assign time blocks for your activities, for example, you can assign time blocks that are for when you get to spend time with your kids or time blocks that are for writing or product development.

This time blocks are then broken down into different time slots for different activities. Using our initial example.

-Time for bible study – 5pm – 6 pm

-Preparation and setting- 10 mins

-Word reading – 10 mins

-Discussion -20 mins

-Questions and Answers- 10 mins

-Wrap up- 10 mins

Tools you may need to organize your week as a Home business owner.

Planners and Binders

This may include Blogging binders, Home cleaning binders, Medical binders, and home business planners.

One of the best materials I have seen when it comes to planning for your work from home business is my Work at home survival planner.

It is made of 101 pages of planning concepts that will help you to plan all aspects of your work from home.

This includes your job or business, your kids homeschooling, your mealplanning, cleaning and laundry.

You get a chance to design a one snapshot plan that takes care of all aspects of your home and business leaving nothing out.

This plan helps to seamlessly move from one aspect to the other and to achieve your set goals easily.

I created this planner because I was honestly tired of running my home business and my home without a plan.

I needed a planner where I could put all my plans, especially for the new year in one place.

This planner is not only detailed and easy to follow but also evergreen

It’s not bound to a year, so you can print it and use it time and time again.

To get this planner now, click on the picture below

The planner is on sale right now you can snag it before the price goes up.

Other tools which are digital in nature are

Cozi.com

Color note notepad

Evernote

24me

Any.do

Calendar 5

Google calendar

Finally ensure that you involve your family in planning out your monthly activities to avoid constant disruptions, one of the apps above, Cozi Family organizer to be specific has the ability to collaborate with family members in such a way that is so useful.

For instance, if you are going for grocery shopping and your Hubby will like you to get something that’s not in the list, he can add it to your schedule for that day and you are notified of this new addition.

There are many ways you can stay organized to ensure that you achieve your dreams as a home business owner.

If you are not used to planning and organizing, you will find this piece a bit overwhelming, the most important thing is to start off and stick to your routine, don’t forget to be flexible as nothing is rigid, sometimes you may have to move things around to see what works.

A word for anyone that has a baby that is still young in age perhaps some few months, knows that his or her nap time is the best time you have to do uninterrupted work.

Starting the sleep training of your baby on time may be the key that unlocks your productivity.

One of the best times I get to work uninterrupted is at night, because all my kids are in bed by then, I can then do my writing because I love to concentrate while writing, I hate interruptions as it often disrupts my flow.

For you It may be early mornings, whatever time it is, ensure its something you are comfortable with, there will be no need setting up schedules that you keep missing and ends up increasing your stress levels.

Now over to you, what ways can you organize your week as a home business owner? Drop your comments below

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