Work at Home and Homeschooling
Now don't get me wrong, it's still a lot to take on. In addition to all the work at home tasks that I have to do to maintain and grow my business, there's planning school lessons, working out special projects, teaching new concepts each day, and lots and lots of grading and looking over papers... all in addition to the normal Mom stuff (like coffering children to sports and lessons). But I'm happy to say that it's all totally do-able and very rewarding! I'm still learning as I go along, but I have picked up a few tips along the way that may help others who are thinking about trying to work at home and homeschool their kids or those who are already living the dream. 1. Work at Home in Chunks. If you plan to sit down at your computer for four straight, uninterrupted hours to work on a business task while you've got homeschooling kids around the house, think again. That's just not possible. When the kids were in regular school, there were days that I would sit down in front of the computer from the time they left for school until the time they came home without stopping... except to use the bathroom and fill my coffee cup of course. Now that we're homeschooling, I'm fortunate to get more than a half hour chunk of uninterrupted time during their waking hours. So how can I work like this? It's easy... don't fight it! I sit down at the kitchen table every morning over breakfast with the kids and plan the tasks that I need to accomplish for the day while the kids take a look at their own homeschooling schedules. I see when they will be doing their independent work and plan to accomplish my own quiet-time tasks at the same time. I'm still available to them if they need me, but it gives all of us a little quiet time to get things done. In addition, I've let the kids in on my business so that they understand that I have my own "homeschooling" to do. The rest of the time, I break my work at home tasks into small chunks. That means that I might spend a few minutes here and there throughout the day getting my work done while I'm still working with the kids at homeschooling tasks. It sounds totally crazy to work that way, but it really works... especially if you follow my next tip! 2. Keep Your Work at Home Tasks Focused When the kids were in regular school and I had the whole day to myself, I spent a lot of time doing tasks that didn't really relate to my business. For example, I did a lot of internet surfing, watching online videos, and piddling around looking at this and that. I had so much time that I really didn't need to stay focused. Well buddy, those days are over! Because I have a lot less free time now, I have to keep extremely focused on the tasks at hand. In fact, I make lists of all the things that I need to get done each day and I simply work through the list. Okay, I can almost hear you saying it now, "Why didn't you make taks lists before? Isn't that how smart work at home businesses do things?" You got me there. It would have been a lot smarter for me to keep task lists all along... but I didn't really need to since I had so much time on my hands before. (Perhaps that's why I've had so many unfinished projects over the years!) Well now that I work at home and homeschool, I have not only started keeping task lists for my business, I also have a lot more focus over exactly what tasks I do. In other words, now I try to only focus on doing revenue generating tasks myself and hire out the rest of my regular business tasks as much as possible. Whew! What a load off that is too! But working in chunks and focusing your efforts only goes so far if you don't practice my third tip. 3. Teach Your Children Basic Courtesy I'm sure you have the most polite children on the planet, (I know that I do!) but let me tell you right now, when they need help with a homeschool assignment they are not very patient. In fact, when we first started homeschooling, they would interrupt anything that was going on to get my attention and ask me the silliest questions that they already knew the answer to. It's perfectly normal, if not a little (or a lot) irritating. They have a question and they expect Mom to have the answer to it right that second. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. But you just can't concentrate on anything when you've got three kids asking questions about three different things all during the course of the few minutes that you're trying to write an article. It just doesn't work. Se we had to work out a system so that I could finish a thought before they blurted out their question. Now, if they have a question while I'm on the computer, they must wait quietly for their turn. It really works great! I get to finish typing out the sentence I'm working on before they blurt out whatever tidbit they want to tell me about and they get my full attention when they talk to me. No frustration. No irritation. No yelling. Whoohoo! Wearing Two Hats Isn't Always Easy Trying to wear the work at home hat and the homeschooling hat at the same time isn't always easy, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's a lot of work, but the rewards are so much more than I expected. I still have the occasional late night, but I had that before I homeschooled. And I do occasionally have to work while the kids are asleep or out with their dad so that I can get a big chunk of time. Some things just can't be done in ten minute spurts. But the point is that our family has pulled together into a partnership where we all get what we need. The truth is, now that I've combined working at home with homeschooling, I'm more focused on both my business and my kids and I'm glad I took on the challenge of doing both. By the way, if you're thinking of starting a work at home business, I highly recommend Site Build It! I couldn't have started my work at home business without it.
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I've been a work at home mom for many years now and have always absolutely loved it, but recently I took on the role of a homeschool mom as well. Frankly, I worried how I'd be able to manage it all by continuing to work at home and homeschooling at the same time. I even thought of just giving up my business altogether. I envisioned lots of one a.m. computing sessions and yawning through the kids' lessons, but nothing could be further from the truth.
