Productivity hacks for working from home with kids

Eat the frog first!

I have been working from home full-time for the last 3 months.

In my opinion, working a few days from home is totally different from working full-time from home. You really need to plan your time well, or you will get nothing done.

My kids are small which means their behaviour is unpredictable.

I’m freelancing which means my workload is unpredictable, and my deadlines vary on a weekly basis.

I pick up and drop off my kids everyday, take them to their classes, and make it to the gym 2–3 times a week.

In the last 3 months, I have worked with 4 different clients, worked on my own projects (this and the AI Content Co), and completed a mini-workshop sprint that helped me launch, sell and conduct my first ever live virtual workshop on creating and publishing a children’s book using AI in 1-hour.

Here are some things that really helped me maximise my time working from home:

1.Allocating non-negotiable ‘deep work’ time: My work involves research and writing. Some things I have to write about are challenging, so I need a big block of time. Getting the biggest and most challenging piece of writing I have to do out of the way in the morning (eating the frog first!), takes off the pressure of doing it during the rest of the day.

I have found that from 8am-1pm I can usually get this done. I am fresh, the house is quiet, there are no unexpected interruptions. These are my $100 hours!

I am lucky to have help at home, so if the doorbell rings, I don’t need to move 95% of the time.

Afternoon’s are for calls, emails, admin. I don’t do any of that during my morning kid-free hours.

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2. Keeping my phone in another room: This may sound silly but it is a game changer.

Not having your phone in arms reach and having notifications off, prevents you from reaching out to check it and then losing 45 minutes on the mindless scroll.