Nosa Aigbe: Are You a Parent Working From Home? Check Out These Tips to Help Increase Your Productivity

Parents usually dread this time of the year when the kids are around 24/7. The needing of attention and assistance for everything, especially when you work from home. Here are a few tips that can help ease things for you and the kids, and improve your productivity and bonding time.

Give them what interests them
For example, my four-year-old loves cartoons and animations that have lots of songs. So I download enough for her that will last a long time. My one-year-old, well, we are still getting to know her. For now, she likes music, wandering around the house, changing TV channels and following me around the house.

How do I balance this? While my four-year-old is watching and singing along to an musical, I hide the remote, hang around and work from my phone. This way, my one-year-old can also learn and enjoy these rhymes, and I can get some work done. You can apply this to colouring time, or any other fun thing that involves your passive participation.

Run your schedule like school periods
Get them dressed and be done with breakfast before 9 AM like you are going to drop them off at school. Apply point number one. Take a break at 12 PM. Lunch and nap. Then some academic work, colouring, writing, dinner, etc.

Be bathed and refreshed like your kids before 9 AM. This will help make your body ready and focused for work.

Plan your schedule with time tags
Write out your schedule for the day and attach the time you want to start and finish that task. For example: Feed the kids 8 – 9 AM. Create video content 10 – 11 AM.
Etc.

Working with kids comes with certain unforeseen circumstances that are out of your control, and things might not always go as you planned. But it’s better to plan because it gives you more chances of having a successful day.

N.B: Make sure you write out your plan. It’s very important. Don’t just make it up in your head; you won’t achieve it.

Organize your space
I really hate looking for things. It seriously upsets me. So I rather save myself some pain and time by organising my things, kitchen cabinet, kids clothes after
laundry, pair socks and shoes, etc.

Your workspace is the most important space and must be clear of clutter. It gives you clarity and in turn improves productivity.

Try to reason things out sometimes from the kids’ point of view
This could save you a lot of yelling at and fussing and tantrum from the kids. For example, my four-year-old daughter likes to play with water at the kitchen sink. When she does this, she spills water on the floor. So I told her not to play at the sink anymore. One day, I saw her at the sink and I yelled, “I told you not to play at the sink, what are you doing?” And she replied, “I was washing my plate.”

She had actually washed the plate she used in eating and didn’t spill so much water on the floor. I felt so bad, I had to apologise. I could have saved myself the stress of yelling if I had seen things from her point of trying to help mummy.

Get help/outsource
As a parent, you need all the help you can get to save you some time and energy. You can call someone to visit so the person helps you out with a few things like chopping, mopping, laundry, etc. Or you can outsource and pay someone to handle all these chores. Or hire a nanny to take care of the kids for sometime so you can have a good amount of productive time to put into your work.