Many home-based professionals have families. Our families are very important in both our personal lives and our professional lives. Family members can be the inspiration for starting a home-based business, people who help out with the work of the business, emotional and financial support for you as you go about starting and running your business, and many other wonderful things. Our families also help to shape our businesses in other ways, such as our work schedules and work loads.
Changes in the schedules of family members may make it necessary for a home-based professional to switch up their work schedule. Sometimes this can seem frustrating, but the end result can be both good for your business and good for your family. Recently, my work schedule has gone through a couple of transitions and I feel better about my work schedule now than I have for the past few months.
The first change that I made in my schedule happened a few weeks ago when I realized that my son’s need for his daily nap is definitely not daily. I sat down and rearranged my work schedule so that there were no longer any expectations of getting work done during the nap, only during the three hours each night between the time by which my son is asleep ninety percent of the time and the time that I go to bed. Now, on no-nap days I do not find myself getting frustrated with my son for not napping. It is really not his fault – life is exciting and sometimes a toddler simply enjoys it too much to take time out for a nap if his little body is well rested from the night before. Since I no longer have my mind on the work that I has planned to do at that time, I can fully engage in and enjoy the things that we do together.
The other change that I have made in my schedule is to not pack it so full that I fall behind if I miss one or more of my three hours of work time each night. This has really come in handy the past couple of days. My husband is currently training for a new position in his company. The training involves a few different things, including working a few days on a shift that he has never worked before – the overnight. Yesterday was the first overnight for him and it certainly took my son longer than usual to settle down for the night. I can imagine that if it was strange for me to eat dinner with my husband and then see him off to work, it must have been strange for our son too. By the time I got him to bed I was so tired that doing work was just not an option. I was able to go to bed without any guilt because of the flexibility that I had purposefully included in my schedule.
Photo by mensatic on morguefile.com.