How to stay business-focused in the summer holidays


Every parent knows that the summer holidays can affect your business. Depending on your child’s school, you could be looking at your kids being at home for about six to ten weeks. And as lovely as it is to spend quality time with your children, the summer holidays can play havoc with your work life. So what can you do about it? Here are some suggestions:

1) Prioritise

Decide what is both urgent and important in your business, things like existing clients or new business requests. Make sure you give yourself time to action these at work, also remembering to give yourself time to arrange childcare if needed.

2) Ditch and automate

Ditch the urgent but not important stuff. For example, you can schedule social media updates to be posted when you aren’t in the office (on weekends, etc.) so you don’t feel sucked into unimportant social media chats that aren’t really making a difference to your business.

3) Make a list

Take an hour out of each week to list all the big strategic stuff you want to focus on. This will give you a rough idea of what important stuff you can get out of the way, leaving your mind at rest for when you’re spending time with the kids.

4) Work from home

Choose one topic from your list each day or week and spend an hour or two solidly working on those things. Perhaps do this during a time where the kids are occupied watching TV or having a nap. This will leave you feeling as though you have achieved something meaningful and will take away that lingering feeling of ‘I should be working’.

5) Start planning

Create a plan with each small task and calendar item so that by the time the kids are back at school, you have done your planning and are ready to roll. 

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