Avoiding Distractions When You Work From Home

I'm pretending that I'm going to work that I'm physically leaving the house, and that I go to work and that I have the exact same amount of ability as you do when you're not here to do the dishes, which is not. So there they are sitting on the counter and nobody's mad about it, because we've talked about this and it's a clear expectation that we have set with each other.

This is The Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO, while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

I'm coming at you with a special episode of Entrepreneur School today that was actually a listener request. So pause on that. And I just want to let you know that if there's anything that's coming up for you, as you're navigating this life, of being a mom being an entrepreneur, doing all the things and you're wondering if you can get some advice on a particular topic, please send us a note, you can reach out on Instagram, you can connect with me via email. And I would love to hear what is on your mind. This topic is so good, I had to make a podcast about it right away. Because what we're talking about is how to create a schedule for yourself how to avoid distractions, while you are working from home, because it's super, super challenging, right. And I wanted to get into this, there's a lot of things that I'd like to say. So I have made some notes for myself. And I'm breaking it down into sort of four big ideas on this topic. But first, I want to talk about why this is really important. One of the things that we can experience as entrepreneurs and work from home moms is that feeling that we're being pulled constantly in a million directions, it's, I should be doing this for my business, I should be doing the dishes, I should be doing the laundry, I should be doing whatever all the shoulds are that are going on in your head, right? And so everything sort of feels like it's in a conflict. Because if you're working, then you're not spending time with your kids, or you're not getting done some house chore that needs to happen. All these things are constantly like playing on your mind. And honestly, what I think is the real underlying challenge here is a debate internally about value. So where are you feeling the most valuable? Or what do you perceive as being valuable in terms of the efforts that you're making on a daily basis. So there's bigger work here to do for sure. And for myself, I have spent a lot of time in the last little while digging into trying to detach personal value with the outputs, and outcomes of literally anything that you do. It's not about what you do, or how you do it or how much money you make or how clean your house is, or whether you have groceries in the fridge or you decide that you're going to have takeout tonight, all of those things are a bigger conversation about your values. So this is why I wanted to talk about this topic right away. And I want you to know that everything that you do is valuable. And that's the one main thing that we have to constantly battle with ourselves. So I've got your back. And I'm gonna give you some tips here. Some strategies and ways that you can maybe look at things a little differently. You can try and apply into the way that you are managing your time, in your day in your business and with all the other things that you have to do in your life. And speaking as a very busy mom of very busy kids who have a lot of activities that I have to go to pretty much every single day. The season that we're in right now is daily after school activities five days a week. So between trying to manage that, make sure that we have groceries, make sure that we're eating healthy because I care about that and I don't want to have takeout all the time. All of these things. So I'm just coming from that perspective and having almost seven years My business now to let you know that I've experimented a lot. And so here are some of my top tips on how to avoid distractions, get it all done and feel good about it at the same time.

So the first thing that I highly recommend is setting some kind of schedule for yourself, which is deciding what your work hours are. And this doesn't mean like, of course, you're not a nine to FiVER, that's the whole point of being an entrepreneur, you have flexibility. But sometimes when we have too much flexibility, we don't know what to do with that either. So creating some kind of consistent schedule for yourself, which again, could be different every single day. And that's going to depend on what else you have to do in your life. But maybe look at I know, for me, when I first started, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna work between nine and four, or nine and five, even I actually did, because my kids were going to childcare after school. And I felt like I had the time to do that. Or maybe I wanted to end at four o'clock so that I could start getting dinner ready, or maybe squeezing a workout before they actually got home, which was great. And during the time that you have set for yourself, that our work hours, what will you and will you not do? What are the clear boundaries that you can set for yourself, during those hours of this is fully focused on work hours, where I'm going to do, you know, administration, marketing, for my business promotion, business development, client work, whatever it is that you have to do, that's what's allowed during those hours, which means no to doing the dishes, no to washing the floor, no to changing the laundry, if that's like, just start with a little bit more structure there and then see about allowing some flexibility in because it feels like when we allow all of that like, and I'll be honest with you, I'm doing laundry right now, but I'm going on a trip tomorrow. And there has to be some flexibility. But as you start maybe being a little more structured, and then allowing it to flux from there. Another thing to think about with respect to your schedule, and your boundaries, is when you will respond to clients. So if you have a lot of client work or inquiries coming in, or you're a service provider, and you have to book multiple people all of the time, you need some boundaries around when you will and won't actually engage with them. So if they're sending you messages all kinds of hours of the day, you need to set that expectation for yourself, and even communicate it like put an auto responder on your Instagram, DMS or put an autoresponder on your emails, I'll get back to you between these hours. This is the expectation that we're setting for ourselves and for how you're going to engage with them. If you are a client, like a coach, and you have clients that you engage with through apps like Voxer, and whatnot, when are you going to be able to respond to those, I like to set a certain number of hours like, I will respond to you within 24 hours. So I get a message at nine o'clock at night. Sometimes I'll respond to it. Sometimes I won't. And sometimes I have to try hard not to because I want to. But it's all about just creating some clarity there. And ultimately all of this is so that you can feel good about the way that you're engaging, responding and interacting and not feeling guilty about not getting back to people, etc.

And another thing to think about around the schedule, and this boundaries is when you're going to let clients into your calendar. So we live in an age where we have so much access to automation and technology. And there's some really great tools such as Calendly, et cetera out there that allow you to have people booked directly into your calendar. So I find this really helpful in my business is I let my clients book their their calls with me. So if we're working together in a coaching capacity, they have access to my calendar, which I have set timelines around like, I only have these hours available, you get a one hour session, it's going to automatically figure out whether it's going to work or not, which I love. However, there certain days of the week that I don't want my calendar to be controlled by other people. So I just have it shut off for those days. So for me, it's Mondays and Fridays. There's no There's nobody who can just book into my calendar and and sort of affect my plans without having to communicate with me first. So those are some suggestions that I have around that around scheduling and creating boundaries and just See where you go from there?

I have to say. So number two is this idea of having themed days. So I recently interviewed a Tabitha Crocker on the podcast. And so that was episode 17. I'll make sure to link to it here. She's got a productivity background. And we had a really great conversation actually, about this idea of having different theme days. So that the concept here is that your brain works in different ways, depending on the kind of task that you're doing. And also that you need to know certain things about yourself in terms of, you know, when are you most productive? Are you like, really good at thinking in the morning? Or are you like better in the afternoon? So if you have to do strategic kind of heavy brain work, as we'll call it, what's the best time of day for that for you? And how can you stack these sorts of things together, there's certain things that we all kind of have to do in our business. And some of those might include the administration stuff, which I know for me is like, always the last thing on my list that I never ever, ever, ever, ever want to do. Having some time to actually be a CEO, and to strategize and dream and plan about, if you're going to change something about your business, or you want to launch something new, what's that going to look like, you have to have some time set aside in your calendar to actually give space for those kinds of ideas. So that we're not constantly just in a reaction mode all the time. Content Creation is another one that is generally has to happen for most businesses. So whether you're doing social media content, emails, YouTube, if you have a podcast, those kinds of things like, ideally, in an ideal world, I would have a day a month, where I would batch four episodes and have them all ready for rolling out over the next month. Instead of doing that every single week and try to squeeze it in. It's much better. So that's, that's an idea. They're called batching, where you take similar type of tasks, and you do them all in a row, because your brain is already thinking about that. And you're in that kind of creation mode. So if I even broke down my podcast creation bore you, there's a couple of things that are involved. So I have to sort of map out what the content is going to look like. For an episode like this, where I wanted to make sure I covered certain points, I made some notes. But then I wanted to record it right away, because I'm still thinking about the content. And now I want to deliver it to you. Now I'm probably going to leave it at that. And then on another day, come back and write the show notes, and create the social media posts that are related to it, because it's more of a like promotion brain instead of a content creation brain. So these are just different ways that I think about how I navigate through the days. So if you were to look at your week and go, Okay, I want to make sure that I have one day where I'm doing CEO tasks, admin tasks, like even if you break it into chunks of the day, like a morning of this afternoon of that a couple hours here and there, it's really helpful to just have that direction in your schedule, you know that, you know, maybe you allow clients to book only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays themselves. And then you want to have like Thursday and or Friday the days where you can do clients, but you don't necessarily have to or you don't give them the power of booking into your, into your calendar themselves. So lots and lots of options there. And I definitely recommend going back and listening to Episode 17 as well, where Tabitha actually shares her five day theme day schedule. So that's really helpful as a reference to,

Hey, I just want to pop in for a second and chat with you a little bit about content creation, you know, that thing that you know, that you're supposed to do in order to get visibility and find clients online? And you know, you're just not finding time to actually do that thing? Because it can be overwhelming to think about, what am I supposed to write? What video should I be sharing? Where am I going to have the time to make all of the beautiful graphics that go along with having a lovely Instagram page, all of the things? Well, I made for you a tool called The Simplified Content System. And inside of this, you're gonna find exactly what I use to be able to plan and create all of my content in an hour a week. So it's a calendar that you can edit that you can put in what you're doing where for any kind of platforms, whether you're using Instagram, other social medias, whether you're doing email marketing, whether you're on YouTube, all of it can go in one place that links nicely to this beautiful caption document. And I've also created a number of trainings and templates for you to make it even easier to get your content out and into the world so that you can be seen, so that you can get clients and so that you still have time to go to all of your kids sports activities. Okay, so you can grab it at entrepreneurschool.ca/content.

Okay, so the third thing that I wanted to talk about with respect to this topic, is the reality that the seasons will shift. So whatever you are planning, whatever you figure out as your schedule right now, is likely going to be different during different times of the year, for different reasons. So, a couple of the main influences here, especially in my life, are child care. So when my kids are in school, versus when my kids are not in school, which, obviously there's like times of the year Christmas holidays, they get two weeks off, they get two weeks off in February, there's time off all the time, and then the summer of the two months off of school, this is going to be a huge one for me this year, because I have not booked them in nearly as many camps as I normally do. So I'm going to have to be a lot more flexible to take them somewhere work for a three hour chunk or have longer workdays on the days that they are in full day camps. So I have a lot of flip flopping that's going to be happening this summer. Stay tuned, I will report back on how that goes. Because I have no idea. I'm a little bit nervous. And as some of you may know, I did actually take my kids out of after school care back in October. So we've been navigating through sort of them being at school until about 230. And then having this after school time, where I'm pretty much not working. I don't plan anything, I don't have book any meetings, I only just allow myself to do things if I have the extra time and or energy at that point in the day. But I'm generally my workday is nine to 230, Monday through Friday, and that's it anything else is bonus, if I'm launching something, I might want to work more, if I feel inspired, I might want to work more. But those are sort of the core hours that I'm setting for myself. And as the seasons change, your kids schedules might change. So I know like hockey season versus ball season versus, you know, this is my life. When we have to be somewhere at four o'clock in the afternoon. That's it, I just have to be ready and organized and out the door with my kids at that point. And so it changes my ability to do other things as well. And the other thing that I want to also note in here with the shifting of seasons and the flexibility is you may have a desire to do different things like if you're a winter sports person, maybe you're like, I want to make sure that I'm getting out hiking, snowshoeing, or skiing or something in the winter. Or if you're like me right now it's summer, and I want to get out of my paddleboard, I want to go golfing, I want to do an outdoor workout once a week, I want to make sure that those kinds of things are happening and in my schedule, and I'm allowing for them. So that kind of just makes me want to talk about personal appointments, too. That's something you might consider in your theme days, like what day of the week, would you be good with bookings and personal appointments? During your, quote, work time? Or does all of that happen outside of work time? Those are kinds of things that you can put into your boundaries as well.

Okay, so the last point that I want to make, which I think is a really important one, and it depends on your your personal situation, but that is communication with your partner. So if you have someone at home, who is supporting you, or anybody else who like is part of your part of your team, which is let's be honest, that's what we need as a team to manage his life, especially with the kids, and trying to get them everywhere that they need to go is to set some clear expectations. So communication with your partner is really important. I know the feeling of like when my husband comes home, and there's a pile of dishes on the counter because I just like took my lunch and it just set it on the counter and I didn't empty the dishwasher, or do any of those things during the day. At first, I felt really bad about that. I was like, oh, I should have, you know, been able to take care of that during the day. But instead I'm like, I'm pretending that I'm going to work that I'm physically leaving the house and that I go to work and that I have the exact same amount of ability as you do when you're not here to do the dishes, which is not there they are sitting on the counter and nobody's mad about it. Because we've talked about this and it's a clear expectation that we have set with each other So I think that's a really important thing. Because we are often just feeling guilty based on our own thoughts and how we feel we should be doing. Or maybe they're actually also expecting you to do that. And in which case, you need to have a conversation about what is and isn't an option or something that you can or can't do during the day. So I just highly encourage strong communication here, so that we can, you know, get on the same page. Because I think the underlying thing around all of this is a feeling of guilt, right? The mom guilt, we should be doing this, we should be doing that we should be doing this. But in reality, you're doing so many things already. And I want you to remember that you are valuable, because of all of it, because you are you because you're amazing. Because you are putting yourself out there and you're trying. And I like extra credit, extra credit for you for wearing all of these hats, trying to make a go of having a business, it is challenging. And this is a very complicated part of your life to navigate with all of these pieces that are constantly moving. And I hope that in just hearing some of these thoughts, and knowing that, you know, other people have experienced it, too, it's a little bit reassuring, to just know that it is doable. And I'm not gonna lie, I've definitely had periods of time where it's been more frustrating or more challenging, depending on you know, what's going on with the kids or the season or, you know, somebody got sick, and it just ruined a whole week. But in you know, it, it's all doable, we can make it happen. And every day is a new day. And it's all an experiment. So I guess that would be my bonus tip for you is that when you're thinking about this, try it on for size. Like try your theme days, try your schedule. If it doesn't work, try it differently the next week or the next day. I'll give you an example here. Because we're so busy with ball season and ball is a different time every day. It's like at five or 530 or six or 630. And then I have another kid who's somewhere else sometimes on the same days. I don't know when we're going to eat dinner like this is the thing that stresses me out the most. One is supper, what is supper? And who is going to be there? Like? Is it two of us, three of us one of us? Are we all eating separately? How's that gonna go? And then I have an activity that I do a workout class on Wednesday nights right now. And I'm like, well, it's at 625 Do I want to eat before do I want to eat after and it was all stressed out the first time and I I tried eating after and then I was like, okay, that's fine. I didn't starve, I didn't die. That's how we have to approach this is just with some flexibility and sort of experimentation mindset and allow it to like work. There's that kind of balance between being really structured and rigid. And being structured and flexible, that we have to sort of find, as we go through this thing called motherhood and entrepreneurship, well, I just want to shout you out because you're doing the most you really are. And if you know, if you don't feel like you're recognized for it, I just want to recognize you for it right now. acknowledge you and hope that this was helpful, and that you have some good tips that came out of this episode. And if you know anybody else who's a mom and an entrepreneur, please send this podcast to them. That would mean a lot to spread the word about entrepreneur school. We're here to support you. And again, if you have any other ideas for future episodes, please let me know. Here. This has been a entrepreneurship in real life, which is the type of episode I like to do, at least on a monthly basis, give you a little behind the scenes of just the like, navigating it all sort of conversation. So have a wonderful day. Enjoy what you're doing. Good luck. Good luck today, with all the things that you have to do. I know it's a lot, and I have your back.