#WFH is an entirely different experience for Working Mothers especially those with young children who cannot attend school in this current pandemic. Not only do you have to fulfil regular work commitments, you are also the teacher, tech support and parent to your young children. This often led #workingmothers to feel overwhelmed, drained and spinning out of control. Here are 3 things you can explore to help:
- PRIORITISE
Not everything is urgent and important. Run through your list and decide which ones need to be done first. Which ones will give you the most bang for the buck. An important client whose trading system is down is probably something you need to attend to now vs preparing a sales presentation due next week. The Eisenhower Matrix is particularly useful once you learnt how to distinguish between urgent and important. You probably have seen it in Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”
- LEVERAGE
Don’t feel like you have to do everything yourself. Continuing from the above trading client example, is there a team that you can escalate to resolve the matter? Someone you can involve to help with the follow up? You don’t have to be everything to everyone, even at home. In Asia, we have the privilege of domestic help, empower them to do the meal plans and trust that they can do it. Even if it takes a couple of tries, even if they didn’t execute it to perfection, trust yourself that things will be ok.
- GROUNDED
When we don’t know what is truly important in our lives, we find ourselves lost in endless busy work. We know work is important but so are our children, our spouse, our parents, our friends, our community. The list just never ends because we want to achieve so much in life. It all starts from the center – YOU. Do you know what values you hold dear? What is your belief system? Is life a series of events that you have to live by or is life a bull that you take by the horns and thrive? When you are grounded, prioritizing and leveraging will come naturally and effortlessly because you have absolute clarity.
Overcome this situation rather than be Overwhelmed. Empower yourself to thrive.