Being a mum means that you’re always on the go. The work never ends, but it’s even worse if you are also running your own business. 

Don’t you get annoyed when you hear about people that have a job, have the perfect (spotless) house and even have time to do one or two side-hustles and bring in more money that way? How can they do everything?

I mean, it’s not like they can add another 6 hours to their day. A day is just as long for them as it is for you, after all. But they always seem to do more.

Keep reading to get 7 productivity tips for mompreneurs:

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Best Productivity tips for mompreneurs

The most important productivity tips for mompreneurs and busy moms

The most important productivity tip for busy moms is that you must have a goal and a plan. If you don't have a goal and take the time to plan how you're going to achieve it, you'll end up being distracted by other tasks.

Start by writing down 3 goals and make a 90-day plan.

Cos putting pen to paper and writing your goal makes it more real.

And writing and prioritising all the activities you need to achieve it gives you a pathway to follow.

The goals don’t have to be business goals only, you can have personal goals as well or money goals, which is great.

This means you spend less time trying to decide what to do and you feel more in control. Or rather, you spend the time at the beginning but after you’ve decided what to do, it’s much easier because you know the steps you need to take to achieve it. It doesn’t matter if the goal is big or small, you know what to do.

The best thing about having a 90-day plan is that it seems much more achievable than a year plan.

And planning big and small tasks means it's easy to see your progress. I find this very motivating. 

scheduling everything is my number 2 productivity tip for women

Another great productivity tip for mompreneurs is to schedule everything.

Productivity tip: Schedule everything "Things that don’t get scheduled don’t get done." #productivitytips #timemanagement

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I used to think it was a bit weird to schedule everything for the week. I mean everything, from recurrent business tasks to house cleaning, kid’s stuff, time for entertainment, etc. It doesn't matter if they are recurrent tasks or one-off tasks.

Schedule everything for the week. On paper and/or electronically.

For me, having a schedule means that I know how to use my time and don’t have to spend time deciding what to do apart from at the beginning of the week.

It also makes you do things that you never feel like doing but are necessary. So you get a lot more done. 

You can also set up a simple daily work from home routine.

You will see real progress at the end of the week because you've completed task a, task b and task c and got to the end.

Add time for your family as well. This is very important to avoid the overwhelm, don’t just cram your schedule with business tasks or chores.

Your family and personal goals are as (or more) important.

#ProductivityTip:  Your schedule is not set in stone, so be flexible and rearrange things. You’re in control.

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get things done, not perfect

When you have a bunch of projects with the same deadline, you realise that the most important thing is to complete them. It would be great if they were perfect, but most of the time “complete” is more valuable than “perfect”.

You made a mistake? So what?

If you notice your mistake before anybody else does, you can either change it or let them know there is a mistake. If somebody else notices the mistake, say thank you for pointing it out and then change it.

Do you know how many times I have read books and articles saying that everything needs to be perfect or people will go away and pay somebody else?

What they don’t tell you is that perfection will take you much longer to achieve than getting it done.

What they don’t tell you is that most people don’t care as long as they get the service they wanted from you and as long as you solve any issues to their satisfaction.

If you’re in business to make money, the longer it takes you to complete something, the less money you are making.

So stop being too critical with yourself, don’t compare yourself to others. Just do your best and get things done.

try the pomodoro technique

There are apps you can use, but I like using a physical Pomodoro timer like this one. There are different timers for different settings and you can have one at home and one at the office.

Or if you want a tracker that has its own mobile app so you can log on how long it takes you to do stuff, you can try the TimeFlip2:

Once you know how long it takes you to do things and you can rearrange your timetable, start using the Pomodoro technique.

When I am online, I like to use the timer included in Kanbanflow. It’s already set up to work as a Pomodoro and it’s free. But if you’re offline you can use your phone or a timer like this one.

wHAT IS THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE?

The Pomodoro technique generally uses chunks of 25 minutes. During these 25 minutes, you work on one task and one task only. Once the 25 minutes are over, you get a 5-minute break. So stand up and walk around, go and get a coffee, go for a walk in your garden, do some stretches, fold some clothes… Anything, as long as it gives your brain a break.

This technique increases your focus on the task that you are doing and you end up doing more because you are not distracted.

If you finish your task before you’ve finished one Pomodoro, you can start another task, that’s OK. You can either do things that are similar or are part of a process. This way you don’t get distracted with completely different activities when there’s no need.

And if 25 minutes doesn’t work for you try 30 or 45. See what works for you.

other timers and trackers to boost productivity

deal with your environment if you want to be more productive

To be productive you need to focus on what you’re doing. But you can't do that if your environment is not right.

Creating a space where you can do this without distraction would be ideal. Then you can close the door and concentrate.

But that’s not always possible (you won’t believe how many people who work from home make do with a tiny desk in the living room or have to work every night while everybody else is watching TV) so try to do some of the following things:

GET COMFORTABLE

So you can concentrate on the work, rather than on how much your back aches. Also, make sure everything is handy and you have a cuppa so you don’t have to make lots of little trips to get things you need.

DECLUTTER your environment

Or at least, declutter enough so there is no mess in your direct line of vision. So you don’t feel tempted to get up and sort everything out when you’re not supposed to ;). 

It's easier to start with a clutter free place, though. 

If you need help with decluttering, check out Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up.

Remove distractions

It's not always possible to close yourself in a room and have a quiet area to work from.

So one of my best tips is to get some Noise Cancelling Headphones, so you don't have to listen to other people chatting at the office or listen to football or My Little Pony while you're working from home.

My top choices for noise cancelling headphones

TOP OF THE RANGE - WITH ALEXA

#1 BEST SELLER

GOOD IF YOU PREFER EARBUDS

Removing distractions also means stopping notifications on your computer and turning off your mobile phone (or you can leave it in your drawer or in a different room so you're not tempted to look at it).

USE MUSIC

You can use your favourite music if it works for you.

But have you tried listening to music to improve your focus? The same way you listening to some music for relaxation, you can also use music to be more productive.

Do a search for Music for Concentration or Music for Focus on YouTube. You will find lots of recordings.  If you want to work offline, some of these might be helpful.

You can get CDs or use Amazon Music Unlimited so you can play it wherever you have an Amazon Device. 

We have a couple of Echo Dots and an Echo Flex, too.

USE AROMATHERAPY

Some essential oils can improve concentration, memory and alertness.

If you have some basil rosemary or lemon essential oils kicking around, try using them in an essential oils diffuser.

eat that frog is another great productivity tip for busy moms

'Eat that frog' is the title of a book by Bryan Tracy, the idea behind it is that if you wake up in the morning and eat a frog, you know that that’s the worst thing you will eat that day.

Working on things that are difficult is hard.  It’s also hard to work on things you don’t like doing. But they need to be done.

And these are usually the things you keep delaying and delaying. They are also the things that can contribute hugely to getting closer to your goals and will make an enormous difference to your business.

So schedule your BIG TASKS at the beginning of the day. Do them then and you will have more energy to complete them. You also get a genuine sense of achievement as well and you feel more motivated to get on with the stuff you like.

In 'Eat that Frog', Brian Tracy explains over 20 steps you can take to stop procrastinating. From the ABCDE method, the 80/20 rule or the slide and dice method, they all help you to figuratively take the bull by the horns, get your hard tasks done and increase your productivity.

here are some of my favourite Productivity Books

use the right time-saving tools for your business

You can automate things like your social media work quite cheaply. Load your posts once a week or once a month, depending on the tool and the social media network. And ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS go for one that will requeue your past posts so you don’t have to keep uploading your own stuff over and over again, like SmarterqueueMeetEdgar or SocialBee (the last two have a free plan).

Email marketing automation means you can make money on autopilot. You can even set it up with your calendar to arrange meetings for you without you having to do anything. (See my post How to choose an email provider to check which tools are good for this.)

If you are working with Gmail, you can also automate some of your email communications by using canned-responses or by adding Customer Relationship Management tools like Streak. Try their free plan to see what it can do.

You can also use productivity and project management tools like Focuster, ClickUp, or Asana to build systems and processes. This will save you time because you know exactly what steps to follow every time. 

If you have no idea how to do this, my friend Dani has a course that will help you Organise and Grow Your Biz with Asana. The course is super helpful if you've never used a project management tool, or you once went into Asana and didn't have a clue what to do with it and stopped using it.

The course includes templates you can copy and start using immediately, so a lot of the work is done for you.

Check out Dani's course here.

AUTOMATE ALL THE OTHER STUFF

Use IFTTT or Zapier to connect apps so you don’t have to do everything: add things to do to your Evernote, or your Trello, and connect your Google Calendar and Gmail to your other tools. If you use Amazon’s 'Echo'  with Alexa, connect it to Todoist or your Evernote.

SUMMING UP

It might sound a bit OTT for some, but the secret to getting more done is to stop leaving time for wasteful activities.

So plan everything and schedule everything according to priorities and goals, both business and personal. Create an environment that allows you to be more productive and get more done. And don’t forget to add some free-time and be flexible!

You will also like this blog post about how to stay sane when you're working from home and this one about 5 things you need to stop doing to get more done.

Do you have a tip that works for you? Share it in the comments.

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  1. All of these tips are great, but I really like the idea of the pomodoro technique. I’ve never heard of it before but it’s something that I think could really work for me.

    Thanks for sharing this. I’m definitly going to be coming back to this post!

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