Emilia is now 4 months old and I am just loving spending time getting to know her, she is just the cutest and has brought so much love to our family, but all my pregnancy delusions that working in my business and having a newborn would be so easy (because they just sleep all day!) have been well and truly crushed!
She is a great baby sleeping well at night and happy during the day (I know I’m so lucky) the only issue is that during the day she only likes to sleep on my lap! If I put her down she will only sleep for about 10 minutes and then is awake again! Which has made trying to get any work done really hard and a little frustrating, so I’ve had to develop some new ways of working to get things done!
So here are my 10 tips for getting work done with a newborn!
Tip 1 Use a Tablet
There are a lot of things you can do on your tablet and they’re portable! Before you sit down to feed set yourself up with a tablet, water bottle, phone, note pad and pen.
Tip 2 Batch
Don’t multi-task! Instead do one lot of similar tasks at a time. Shut down facebook and the 20 other tabs you have open and just work on one thing eg emails, then blog posts, then orders, then invoicing, you’ll get much more done this way rather then flipping from screen to screen.
Tip 3 Outsource
Outsource everything you can, even if its just for the first 6 weeks, you will feel so much better knowing there is someone getting more than 2 hours sleep a night keeping things going! VA’s are fantastic and can work at an hourly rate so have a look at your budget and discuss what areas of your business they can help you with emails, social media marketing, website updates and more!
Tip 4 Ask for Help
On the weekend for a few hours I have asked my husband to help out with Emilia for me so I can get a few continuous hours of work done, this is great for getting big jobs done that do take a bit of time to complete.
Tip 5 Plan
Sometimes I find breastfeeding really frustrating, while I love cuddling my little girl, I can’t stop thinking about all the jobs I could be doing! So I’ve started making sure I have a note pad and pen with me before we start so I can use this time to work “on” the business! I’ll brainstorm new ideas, write out plans and strategies for new programs and go through our current processes and look at areas we can improve, this way when I do get a minute to get some work done the planning and thinking is done and I can get straight into it!
Tip 6 Set Up your Office
I’ve set up a swing next to my desk so Emilia can still see me and feel close to me while I work and sometimes if I’m lucky she will have a little cat nap here too!
Tip 7 Be flexible
If your baby loves to be near you find ways you can work where they are, again I love my ipad for this!
Tip 8 Scale back
Scrap all projects that are not making you money or will take a big investment of your time. This is not the time for these projects, it’s ok to change your plans and put projects back 12 months.
Tip 9 Automate
Put systems in place to automate as much of your business as you can, even better get a VA to do this for you!
Tip 10 Be Kind to yourself
And most of all take deep breaths and remember that this is such a special time in your life that really will go by in a flash! Breathe in that beautiful baby smell and hug those chubby checks, take naps when you can and remember that in 12 months time you wont have a little baby any more, she will have grown and you will have more time to take on the world!
So that’s my 10 tips, I hope this helps and I would love to know any tips you have for making working from home with a baby a bit easier for us all!
Katy x
