How to set goals for yourself as a work-from-home mom?
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When you have to juggle daily chores, workflow, and spending time with family, even thinking of setting goals can be overwhelming. You’re not alone: 31 million other women are in your shoes.
Since all of your responsibilities link to your home, you are in a great place to set goals that reflect your aspirations and interests so that you can make the most of your flexible workday.
How to set goals for yourself: the step-by-step process
If you’re not used to it, setting goals can be challenging. You should follow a specific process to ensure that the goals you write down will lead to results.
Define your goals
The first step in setting goals for yourself is to define them. Make sure that they’re achievable and relevant to you! You can create goals for your personal and professional life to keep yourself motivated and constantly achieve something. Go a step further and write your goals in a journal. Writing down your goals is the first step to keeping yourself accountable and accomplishing your dreams.
A few examples of goals you might include are:
- Exercising every day (with an amount of time that fits in your schedule).
- Cooking a healthy meal three times a week.
- Completing your most important task first thing in the morning.
- Getting more sleep (eight hours might not be possible with kids, though!).
- Spending time with your partner and children individually.
- Meeting and exceeding your supervisor’s (as well as your own) expectations.
If you can’t think of any goals relevant to your life, sit down with a notepad and paper and have a brainstorming session. With some thought, you’ll develop something you want to change about yourself or achieve in the short or long term.
Decide on a measurement
How will you know when you’ve achieved what you set out to do? Objectives and Key Results (OKR) help you determine what you want and how you will know when you’ve achieved success. It’s important to define measurable goals because making progress on a long-term plan will keep you motivated and help you follow through with your commitments.
Get to work
Once you have your goals written down and have given them measurable attributes, it’s time to sit down and get to work. This is where the magic happens!
Work hard, and keep yourself motivated with little rewards along the way, like breaks or your favorite candy. Don’t give up if your goals take longer to achieve than you expected. Everything happens on its own time, and as long as you’re working toward them, you’re making progress.
WFH tips for moms
Since you work remotely, you don’t have a clearly defined office space and home space. This can lead to interruptions from kids and pets and breached boundaries. It’s essential to optimize your working life to fully enjoy the time with your family once you clock out.
Set boundaries
As hard as this may be, you need to set boundaries with your family. Saying something to the effect of, “When my laptop is on, I am working” can go a long way. As a mom, you want to be in every place at once, doing everything at once. Unfortunately, you can’t do that, so boundaries exist to keep you sane. Having a “work mode” is a promise to your family that you’ll devote your evenings to them.
Designate your work space
Having an office with a door on it is ideal, but any space without people passing by constantly could work. Wherever you choose to work in your home, make sure that area is yours and that everyone knows it is your “office.”
Designate your ideal working hours, too! You have some flexibility while working from home, but everyone has those hours of peak productivity — as well as hours they don’t want to do anything. Keep track of your time and how you spend it, and you’ll soon know which hours are best for you to work and which you should avoid.
Pick your top three tasks
Since you never know when an interruption will happen, it’s important to schedule your day with one thing in mind: which top three things do you need to complete? These things, ideally, should be some that would make the day feel productive even if you accomplish nothing else. By defining these mini-goals, you’ll stay on target for your workday and for your goals beyond that. Always be working toward your goals — that’s the most important part!
Make the most of your work from home goal setting
Being a working mom, you need to learn not to sweat the small stuff. It’s okay if something slips past you, but this is why it’s essential to learn how to set goals for yourself. How would you keep track of your progress otherwise?
Learning to balance your family with your work is a skill that doesn’t come easy to everyone. Once you outline your goals and create an actionable plan to achieve them, though, nothing can stand in your way!