Working at Home and Managing Your Time...or not

Remember that stack of magazines I had a while back? Yes, they're still in that stack. But yesterday while I was waiting to participate in a market research panel I tried to get caught up on a little bit of that. I came across this great article in O Magazine! It's all about deciding what's important in life and what's not - what you should be spending your time doing because it's important to you and not just because it's pressing. Often what we end up doing is the things that must be done now (you know, squeaky wheel and all of that) which allows the important-but-not-urgent things fall by the wayside.

It's based on Stephen Covey's principles which he discusses in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People which I would love to read if ever I could manage my own time to do so. It also considers Randy Pausch's lessons - the professor with the "Last Lecture" - whom I find incredibly inspiring. Watch it on YouTube here.

As moms we all have that mommy guilt. I sometimes feel like working at home still leaves me with quite a bit of that guilt. I'm always taking on something new and since there are only so many hours in the day, it has to come at the expense of something. Since we're on a tight budget around here, making money and saving money are urgent issues for me. Unfortunately, that urgency tends to let me push tasks like reading bedtime stories to my kids onto Serge (my husband). And I tend to spend my daughter's nap time doing transcription, rather than getting alone time with my 4-year-old.


As anyone with a school-aged child already knows, this time I have at home with my little ones will go very quickly. My son will be a kindergartner next year and then before you know it, he'll be graduating from high school! Every day I tell myself that and every day I go to bed feeling like I wish I had spent more time with him doing this or that. This time doesn't come back. So I really feel like reading that article was a little tap on the shoulder from God, telling me to figure out how to do what I'm doing and still get what I want out of life - and separate what I have to do from what I want to do. The needs don't always have to make the top of the list.

You may have noticed that my blog posts aren't always happening every single day like before. I really enjoy blogging and while it's not an income earner for me, it's something I really enjoy doing to give information I have to others who will find it helpful. I've decided to set time aside each week for blogging, but I have cut out a lot of the deals information. I'm still doing some -especially when I find a really great one - because deal seeking and couponing are all part of my "saving money" mission. For the best deal info, check out Mommy Snacks, which is my favorite deal spot.

And maybe I'll be blogging more about how I've managed my time - working at home and being a more attentive mom.