Q: I work from home, and with my kids home for the summer, I am having a hard time getting things done. What should I do?
A: Working from home brings a certain sense of freedom– you can set your own schedule, create your own office culture, and perhaps best of all, relish the joys of the world’s shortest commute.
What do you do when 30 minutes of free time falls in your lap? A client with two school aged kids shared this story the other day:
“Pat was grocery shopping, Max was at a playdate, Eliana was taking a nap. I suddenly found myself with a glorious window of time and I should have done something fun, but I had no idea what to do with myself.”
Ever lose your temper with your kids within the first five or 10 minutes of walking in the door? I hear this from clients all the time: “I’ve had long day and just need a little space before I can handle the onslaught!” Switching gears -- between work and home, fast-paced adult world and a kid’s dawdling pace – is one of the biggest challenges parents face.
We have become a nation of phone zombies. Everywhere I go, people are looking at their phones – on street corners, park benches, in line at the grocery store, waiting for the subway, even while out to dinner with other people. Just like table manners and four-letter-words, kids imitate what their parents do. If you want your kids to have a healthy relationship with technology, you must model it yourself. Here’s how.
Exercise is often one of the first things to go when parents feel spread too thin. People say they don’t have time. Or that they are too tired. Or that they feel selfish taking time away from their kids. More often than not, though, moms and dads just don’t know how to fit exercise into a crammed schedule.
To fit in exercise, parents need to redefine what it means to work out.
In my early days as a professional organizer, my company was called Task Masters — with the tag line “we do life’s drudgery for you.” One year in mid-December, I got a call from a new prospect who wanted help preparing for the holidays. There were 2 weeks until Christmas, and she hadn’t had time to decorate her house, shop for gifts, wrap, send cards or prepare for Christmas dinner. We worked non-stop 8 hours per day for 8 days, and by December 24th everything was flawless and ready for its closeup
