5 Tips on How to Balance Motherhood and Freelance Work

With the rise of technology, freelance jobs have become a magic wand for mothers who prefer not to be tormented by the pressure of choosing between career and family. Freelancing and parenting give contemporary women the possibility to work remotely, make money and still be perfect mothers. Hence no need to spend fortunes on babysitters and rely on husband’s gains to keep growing professionally.

Still, many mothers question the effectiveness of this approach, struggling to manage their time and give equal weight to both tasks. Sounds familiar? The good news is that you don’t need to have a superpower to combine work and motherhood successfully.

Read these 5 practical advice and learn how to experience the joy of being a parent and feel a sense of career fulfillment while taking care of children.

1. Create To-Do List

First things first, task management is an essential process of activity planning for all people, let alone freelance mums. Creating a list of daily workload allows mothers to distribute tasks properly and complete them successfully. It helps not to mix everything up and get lost in a stream of countless responsibilities. Ideally, it should be a list that separates work-related and personal obligations. This way, it’ll be easier for a mom to concentrate on the needed tasks.

Another great idea is to prioritize the tasks in order of importance. For this, you’ll need to put the most urgent tasks on the top of the list and keep the least time-sensitive ones at the bottom. Then, when the task is done, cross it to track the progress and visualize how many tasks are left.   

2. Know Your Limits

Keeping the fine line between motherhood and freelance work from home is definitely a challenging thing. But as long as you put one job over the other, there’s no way you can keep the balance effectively. At this point, you need to create a schedule that best fits both your needs and the needs of your child. For example, you might be occupied with freelance writing jobs, such as custom essay writing, which implies dealing with deadlines. And then you have to bring up a toddler who needs constant attention.

In this case, you should plan every hour of the day according to your preferences, and stick to this schedule on a regular basis. Also, ensure that you’re not overloaded with additional work tasks whenever the parenting time comes. After all, no mother wants to miss the most important events in their child’s life.

3. Create a Workspace

When it comes to freelance writing or any other remote activity, most mothers find it hardly possible to focus on business tasks while being in the home environment. Such an atmosphere can distract, resulting in disruption of deadlines and complaints from dissatisfied customers.

In order to get away with such misfortunes, creating a separate working space is the right solution. The advantages of working in a different space are twofold: it allows freelancing mothers to get motivated to do their work without external interruptions and makes the child respect your privacy.

4. Don’t Hesitate to Ask for Help

Tight schedules and complex projects are those elements of the working process that are practically impossible to avoid. And each time it happens, freelance mothers have no choice but to multitask, which is not great either for a child or for clients. Therefore, it’s important to ask for a little assistance from a partner, relatives or friends whenever it comes to burning deadlines and children who need attention. Eventually, it’s always possible to pay some money and hire a temporary babysitter. In any case, an extra pair of hands will be a great solution to help you deal with the crazy workload.

5. Use Your Time Smartly

24 hours a day is obviously not enough for working mothers to do all tasks and have time for themselves. That’s why it’s necessary to stress the importance of time management. A perfect option is to wake up a couple of hours before children and start the day from working some time without distractions. It is an excellent practice that will help you stay focused in the morning and put aside other obligations that you need to complete throughout the day. It is also a good occasion to work in quiet, which in turn will help you boost the productivity level.

Parenting and freelancing might sound like two incompatible terms. Certainly, there are lots of hardships that come with these jobs, as both require much time and sweat. But in reality, the situation is not as complicated as it sounds. The key elements which define successful motherhood and effective work management are patience and practice. With such powerful instruments at hand, mothers can easily take care of children make the most of their freelance work.

By Bailey Belmont
Photo by Rustic Vegan