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By Little Mummy, May 7, 2007 6:22 am

I am trying to introduce an element of conscious self development into my life to keep me focussed on my goals and ambitions. The first book I read was The Sedona Method, which I reviewed (albeit briefly) last week. I have just finished another book – How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be: The 25 Principles Of Success, this has provided a lot of food for thought and I want to try and apply the principles, specifically, to motherhood, parenting, juggling work and home, basically to the kind of things we deal with day in day out to see if we can find more time, more peace, more happiness in our hectic lives.

Compartmentalizing Time

My life over the past few months has become increasingly busy. Here’s what I need to try and make fit.

Full-time Parenting – What I mean by this, is that I look after Erin full time, Alex is out the house for between 45-60 hours a week, Erin doesn’t attend nursery at all yet, my family live away, Alex’ family are on hand to help out but we don’t have a regular arrangement, so much of my time is spent directly caring for Erin.

12 hours of work per week – This is a ‘proper’ job where I am contracted to do 12 hours a week from home, the hours are flexible but need to be completed between 4pm and 9pm or on a Saturday.

Housework – Alex is pretty handy and we split this 50/50, unfortunately in times of crisis (time crisis) it’s probably the first thing to go.

Studying – An open learning maths course which I should probably be committing a few hours a week to, but have yet to get started, I must rectify this.

Multiple Streams of Income – Doing things that earn income other than directly trading hours for money. This includes blogging (which just so happens to be a hobby), ebay and the like.

These are the main things but obviously house management (finances etc), relationship time, ‘me’ time etc all need to find their place too.

Most mothers, and, indeed fathers have similar ‘line ups’, and from speaking to friends and reading other parenting blogs it’s apparent that most manage by multi-tasking.

Compartmentalizing

In the past I have been a whizz at multi-tasking, increasingly I’m finding that it simply isn’t conducive to the current line up. Each task seems to need 100% concentration or focus to achieve accuracy/safety/productivity. I have begun compartmentalizing my time and trying to focus 100% on the job in hand.

I have taken this approach from a quote – “do more of what is working, do less of what isn’t” – from the first principle – Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life – of Jack Canfield’s best seller . Obvious really, but it’s amazing how many of us have destructive habits and systems. Smoking, drinking to excess, watching too much tv (one of the major time suckers), and, in my case, multi-tasking to increase productivity which is having exactly the opposite effect.

I’d be interested in how everyonelse manages – if you are willing to share…