Simple habits to help you have a productive day
As a busy mum it can feel impossible to have a productive day, even if you start the day with the best intentions. However, with a few small habits, you can end the day feeling productive, instead of feeling like you’ve accomplished very little.
This article provides some easy habits that you can do to feel more productive, such as starting the night before, planning your time efficiently, starting routines, learning the art of saying “no” without feeling guilty, plus much more.
By the end of this article, you’ll have some simple habits that you can draw on to help you reclaim your time, sanity, and feel ultra productive, every day.
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Start the night before
Starting the night before is my favourite way to have a productive day, which means doing as much as you can for the next day, the night before.
Some of the things I do the night before, so the following day is a productive one includes:
- Laying out school uniforms
- Placing keys, school bags, and school essentials by the front door
- Preparing breakfast ingredients like cutting up fruit, or putting cereal containers on the kitchen counter
Doing a few small things the night before allows you to have a calmer, more organised start to the morning.
Wake up before your kids
This isn’t always possible especially if you have early risers, or babies, but if you can wake up 15–30 minutes before your family, you can have a relaxing start to the day, or make a start on any productive activities that will set you up for a great day.
Plan your day
As well as being a massive time saving tip for mums, planning your day is a great way to be more productive.
You can plan your day based upon any weekly planning activities you do, or you can plan each day as it comes.
A quick way to get started planning your day is to write a brain dump of all the things that you want to get done, then choose the top 3 things from your brain dump that you need to get done, which brings us to the next point.
Choose your priorities
When planning your day you may be tempted to write a to do list that covers everything you want to get done during the day, which in my experience means having too many things on my to do list, that I don’t have time to actually complete.
If you have too many items on your to do list, you’ll feel unproductive at the end of the day, or too overwhelmed by your list to even start ticking things off.
Instead of writing a massive to do list, choose 3 things that you need to get done, so if you only manage to get these 3 things done, it will be a successful day.
Your top 3 things don’t have to be major tasks, they can be anything from:
- Booking a haircut
- Folding laundry
- Going through emails
- Spending quality time with your kids
Use time blocking
Time blocking is a great way to have a productive day, it entails breaking your day up into blocks of time, and allocating certain tasks to each time block.
Some examples of how I use time blocking are:
Morning time block 6–10am
- Make beds
- Get ready for school
- School run
Afternoon time block 10am – 3pm
- Work
- Lunch
- School run
Afternoon time block 3–6pm
- Dinner
- Kid’s bedtime routine
Use a family command centre
A family command centre is an area of your home where everyone’s schedules, school reminders, meal plans, and anything else you need to organise your family live.
Some things that can live in your family command centre include:
- Shopping lists
- A family calendar
- A family planner
- Chore lists
- School paperwork stored in a paperwork file
- Charging station
- Hooks for keys
- Bowls for coins
To learn more about how a family command centre can help you become more productive, here’s an article on how to set up a family command centre.
Batch tasks
Batch tasking is another answer to the question how to have a productive day, it means grouping similar tasks together, and working on them at the same time.
Working on similar tasks is an efficient way to get things done, because you don’t loose any time switching to a new task.
Some examples of tasks that you can batch together are:
- Vacuuming, dusting, and mopping
- Washing, drying, and folding laundry in one session
- Running all errands in one go
Set a timer
Setting a timer for 30-60 minutes once a week and doing as many small tasks as possible, is something you may not think about when trying to decide how to have a productive day.
If you don’t have 30-60 minutes, smaller chunks of time can also allow you to get things done, such as setting timers for the following:
- 10 minutes to do a kitchen clean up after breakfast
- 15 minutes to tidy up before school pick up
- 20 minutes to power clean before bed
Here are just a few things to do in 20 minutes or less, that you can do next time you have a small window of time:
- Unsubscribe from emails
- Go through your fridge
- Make appointments
- Clean your car
- Make a summer holiday list
Start some routines
My days definitely run much smoother, and I feel more productive when I have routines in place.
Routines provide order to your day, and let everyone know what’s expected of them.
One of the routines I have is a school morning routine, which looks like this:
- 6.30 – 7.00 everyone wakes up
- 7.00 – 7.30 breakfast
- 7.30 wash hands and face, brush teeth and hair, get dressed
- 8.10am shoes on
- 8.15am out the door
Everyone’s routines will be different, but whatever routine you start make sure it allows you to get things done, and it’s easy to keep up.
Say no
I find saying no really hard, but I try to remember that when I say no to something, I’m saying yes to something that I need, or want to do.
Saying no in a productivity sense means not overcommitting yourself, or doing things you don’t have time to do.
If there’s something you want to add to your to do list, or someone asks you to do something and you don’t want to do it, you can say the following:
- “That sounds great, but I can’t commit the time right now.”
- “Let me check my calendar and get back to you.”
- “I need to focus on home tasks this week, but maybe next time.”
How to have a productive day – a recap
Having a productive day as a busy mum is about finding simple habits that work for you.
Whether it’s laying out school clothes the night before, waking up before your family, setting a timer to focus on tasks, or any other idea in this article, small habits make a massive difference to how productive you feel.
When choosing productive activities, start with one or two that are achievable, and build on them from there. So perhaps you can start by time blocking your morning, or writing your top 3 priorities for the day.
What’s one productivity habit you can start today?
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