Tips for Working From Home and (Actually) Getting Your Work Done

Since becoming parents, and consequently, sleep consultants, we’ve learned a thing or two about working from home with kids! Between the two of us, we have 5 children (+1 on the way!), spouses, homes to run and care for, all while running multiple businesses.

Since 2020’s pandemic, many other parents found themselves in a similar situation – *trying* to work from home while also tending to their children. It’s not easy, especially when you’re stuck at home together 24/7. Luckily, restrictions have been lifting since spring, and we work-from-home parents are enjoying a bit more freedom with being able to leave our homes and save our sanity.

Maybe you found that working from home was your jam, and you want to continue to make it a thing. It can definitely be stressful at times, but it can also be a HUGE blessing to your household and family. We personally love the flexibility working from home offers our families. It helps that we’ve also been able to build multiple successful sleep consulting businesses while running our households and raising our families.

We’d love to share our best advice with you about working from home, especially if your children are involved. Keep reading for our 6 best tips for working from home with children!

1. Overcommunicate with your partner.

Notice how we use the word partner – you can’t do this alone and expect to be successful, although we’re sure it’s possible. We know that over-communicating with our partner or whoever is assisting us in this season might seem annoying or naggy, but we’d rather have them know more than they need to about our schedules, clients, or current workload in advance so they can step in and help more if needed. If they don’t know what your needs are when it comes to working from home or running your business from home, they won’t understand the weight of your work and why it needs to get done when it needs to get done!

Be open and upfront about everything coming up so it’s not a surprise when it’s Saturday morning and you need to sneak away to chat with a client for some follow-up support after night one of sleep training.

2. Use a shared calendar.

This goes right with over-communicating! Having a shared calendar allows your partner to see all of your meetings, appointments, consultations, and calls all in one place, and vice versa. You can tag-team each other in and out of kid duty based on your schedules.

If you’re a service-based business provider, like sleep consulting is, it’s essential to have a calendar system that can automatically sync your work calendar to a shared family calendar. Bonus if your partner’s calendar does too! Anytime someone books with you, it will automatically show up in all the places it needs to be, for everyone to see.

3. Only take calls during scheduled, dedicated work time.

If you don’t have additional childcare available, you shouldn’t be taking calls, unless it’s absolutely necessary – like, say, in the middle of a pandemic! But really, as a professional, it’s best to be fully present with your leads and clients when they’ve scheduled time with you. Respect their time as you would want them to respect yours. We know that it’s hard with little kids, but trust us, just don’t schedule calls unless you have childcare available.

4. Be intentional with your time.

When you work from home, you might feel like you’re working constantly. Our best advice here is to put your phone down when you aren’t working so you can prioritize what matters most – your children. Having time set aside solely for work will allow you to feel and be totally present with your family when it’s time to do so. In the same respect, you can be totally focused on your work and your clients when it’s time to do so.

5. Use priority lists.

When it is time to work, have a list with things you need and want to get done, starting with the most important and vital work first. Get these items done first so you aren’t feeling like you didn’t get anything worthwhile accomplished during your work time.

If you’re a service-based business, start with taking care of your current clients, then revenue-generating tasks, and move into the daily, weekly, or monthly more mundane tasks that aren’t as time dependent.

For example, as sleep consultants, we would start with checking our clients’ sleep logs and any follow up support calls and/or writing sleep plans and prepping for consultations, then focus on some social media posts and interactions with some discovery calls scheduled in there, and finally move onto some content creation for our business. We’re always moving from most important to least important on our priority list.

6. Use timers.

Finally, we would recommend that you use timers to help you stay on track with your time! Knowing you have a set amount of time can actually help you finish a task more quickly, and in turn be more efficient with your time. I know that if in an hour I have 15 minutes dedicated to answering questions on my social media and then 45 minutes to draft a blog post, I’m going to be more focused and efficient if I’m working against the clock. It helps to actually set a timer and move from one task to the next in each dedicated amount of time. Bonus if you can use something visual like a Time Timer – these work as great visuals for toddlers too!

While working from home with children can sometimes feel like it’s A LOT, it is also the most rewarding, best-of-both-worlds situation we’ve found ourselves in. We can love up on our families and our clients and have the freedom and flexibility to make our own schedule and income. We also don’t feel like we are missing out on our babies growing up right before our eyes.

If you’re interested in becoming a sleep consultant and working from home, we would love to help you make this a reality for your family. And, lucky for you, we have just the thing to help you achieve this dream! Check out our free online-course module from our Sleep Consultant Academy. In our academy, you can work at your own pace and become a certified sleep consultant by working through the most comprehensive and holistic sleep consultant certification program on the market.