Summer is here! Er, well, almost! My kids have 8 more school days until they’re out. And then we’ll spend the first week looking at each other wondering what the heck to do. I always find they need a few days to remember how to entertain themselves. There will be a lot of “I’m bored” followed by a lot of “if you tell me you’re bored again, I’ll give you a chore to do, because I’m so busy I don’t have time to be bored.” Then they’ll roll their eyes and disappear before I make them clean a toilet or two. (geesh, I honestly wish they’d stick around a few more minutes so I could delegate some of my TO DO list to them.)
If you’re a work-at-home mom, you know summer can be very disruptive. Even if you don’t have children or they’re out of the house, there are summer activities that pull us to the out of doors, lingering on a bright evening long after we would have on a dark winter evening.
The trickiest part for me, is getting my work done efficiently and still spending part of the day pouring into my kids. The only way I’ve figure out how to have balance is to change up my morning routine.
For me, summer means four kids at home who constantly want to eat and need to be retrained to entertain themselves. Often, my creative work suffers with the many interruptions – making it difficult for me to think in complete sentences, let alone write them. So, for me, getting up before the children is a must.
This isn’t my first rodeo, or working summer home with kids, so I’ve experimented with a few things. This is important – don’t force yourself to be someone you’re not. For example, I’m naturally a night owl so my body doesn’t love being up early. While you can retrain your brain to be productive earlier than you might like, there’s a bit of a wall. I’ve tried getting up at 5 am and multiple times after that. I do not feel good at 5 am. I do not feel good at 5:30 am. 6 am, while I don’t love getting up that early, works for my body. It’s the sweet spot of my brain saying, “okay, I’m awake already,” and my kids still being asleep.
Unlike winter where my morning hours are for self-care, my early morning summer hours are for getting things done. The things that I can’t get done with the constant interruption of four kids who want, need, or think they need something. Let’s say each child interrupts me every five minutes. That leaves one minute for uninterrupted thoughts.
Writing and creative work takes uninterrupted thoughts, as does math. While I enjoy reading my Bible every morning quietly by myself, and I feel more mental clarity when I exercise without kids working out beside me, and my shower is more enjoyable when 1-4 kids aren’t standing outside the shower stall talking to me (is this just me?), during the summer, my priorities shift.
I will still wake up earlier than the kids, at 6 am. I still steal these hours for myself to make me feel productive. I put my top three goals into those few hours so when I’m done I feel like I put in a good work day. It’s about feeling productive as the day gets going, because once my spawn awaken, there will be calls for the pool or the park or a sandpit.
This doesn’t mean my kids don’t have to wait around on me… quite the contrary – I still have clients to see or talk to and I haven’t had any volunteer yet for the 6 am slot! Nope they start more around 8:30 or 9, but by then I’ve put in a solid 2-3 hours of uninterrupted writing, planning, or admin time. I can finish my clients by noon and still hit the pool with the kids while the day is young.
How can you personalize this? What do you find yourself stressing about in the summer that seems to get put on the back burner because the kids are home or you’re socializing at night more than winter hours? Is it painting? Projects? Practicing an instrument or learning a new language? Is it reading a novel or writing a book? Whatever it may be, taking the next 11 weeks to prioritize it in the morning can help you check it off your list and give your mood a boost to boot. Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.
