Now that my husband Graham is back to work following a layoff, it seems as though my days are even longer and more quiet than usual. I love that my professional time is increasingly mine these days to manage, but sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on building my business and staying in touch with my customers when what I really feel like doing is eating brownies and watching episode after episode of the Wonder Years on Netflix.

I remind myself that we are not paying for daycare so that I can watch television all day, and try hard to stay focused. There are a few things I do to help keep myself on track work-wise so I can be productive when Nate and Graham are both out of the house. Here are my top three pieces of advice for work-at-home moms who need to stay focused on work during the day while the kids are at school or daycare.

1. Make lists. I noticed a couple of months ago that I was waking up really early in the morning and was unable to fall back to sleep. As soon as I woke up, a switch in my brain would flip on, and I’d start running through all of the things I needed to accomplish later that day. I described this to a friend of mine, who recommended I start keeping a notebook for my ideas and lists of tasks. This was great advice, and now I keep not only a daily list, but a weekly list of appointments and tasks that I can fit in and around my appointments and errands. Now, if I wake up early, I just think of that list and I can go back to sleep, secure in the knowledge I have everything written down.

2. Shut down. When I really need to focus, I close all of the program windows and browser tabs on my computer that aren’t in use for the task I’m tackling right then. I switch my iPhone over to silent mode and flip it over so I won’t be distracted by any visual notifications. When I need to stay focused, social media can be a real distraction for me, so I eliminate it from my surroundings until I’m ready to take a break.

3. Prioritize. When the list of items gets too long to accomplish in one day, I start moving things up and down the list. For example, I can send out product samples another day in order to meet a deadline today. I do the tasks that require my undivided attention during the day, and save housework and other jobs that require less focus for the evenings. Laura Watt, owner of Cubits Organic Living agrees.

“Do not do laundry when kids are out! You can do that with them or with your partner or have [him or her] do it.”

Smart advice, Laura!

Do you work at home or run a home-based business? What’s the best method you’ve come across for staying focused?

Have you ever tried to think of a word that you would never imagine being used to describe yourself? For me, that word is entrepreneur. The word always seemed really exotic to me. I can recall my grade nine business teacher, Mrs. Bezaire, using it to describe people who ran their own businesses. I sat there in that classroom wondering why anyone would want to do such a thing when there were big companies like McDonald’s and Sears to work for.

Later on I fell in love with a man who owned a seasonal small business and although I could certainly appreciate that owning his own business was satisfying and appealing to him, I still didn’t really understand why a person would rather be responsible for generating his or her own income. It seemed much more safe and secure to work someplace where a steady pay cheque would be issued on a regular basis. I kept thinking that it would be much better for one of us to always have the kind of income that was steadily reliable and provided by a big company with a well-known logo.

Recently I decided to dig further into the idea of running a business. When I Googled the term, I discovered that the very definition of entrepreneur can include a scary, financial risk factor:

The word entrepreneur…is commonly used to describe an individual who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so.

The last couple of years have marked a transition for me out of my financial comfort zone into running my own business. Now that I’ve had a taste of working for myself, I understand much more clearly why Graham loves it so much. I get to decide how my day will be spent, which tasks I’m going to tackle, and I’m responsible for providing great customer service to the people I deal with on a daily basis. While it is a bit scary sometimes to rely only on myself to be successful, I’m surprised to discover that I love every second of it.

Image source: work.chron.com

Do you work for yourself in some capacity? What do you love about it?

This week the major topic of conversation in my Twitter stream is CEO Marissa Mayer’s assertion that employees at Yahoo! would no longer be welcome to work remotely due to the fact that the practice is bad for productivity. The general consensus among those I follow ranges from outrage to disappointment.

As a person who once worked a full-time permanent position as a Content Editor from the comfort of my own home office, I have an opinion about Ms. Mayer’s decision: I think it’s silly. It’s silly to say that employees who are often more productive at home should now spend money out of pocket on travel expenses to get to work. It’s silly to assume that being present in a cubicle will make an employee more productive. And it’s silly to assume that an employee will be more engaged in his or her work simply due to physical proximity to colleagues and management.

I’d argue that working from home makes employees more engaged with their work. Photo credit: Monster College.

For the past two and a half years I’ve been teaching communications classes online while teaching various general education credits during the day in the classroom on campus. The debate over the merits of work-at-home employment arrangements was a timely one for me because I was presented last week with a choice: I would have to choose between teaching classes in person, on campus and teaching online. This, due to a rule that is still foggy to me, and is never very clearly explained by my employer.

In any event, I had to weigh up the choice. Would it be best for me to continue to drive to the college at my expense for gas, parking and commuting time, or would it be better to stay in the comfort of home, where I could schedule my time to interact with my students according to my own schedule? I think Marissa Mayers would say, without hesitation, that I should choose the option that would take me on campus regularly, where my students would benefit from the “speed and quality” of my presence at school. I think my online students would argue with her; I’m in contact with them on a daily basis and thanks to technology, as constantly available to them during business hours as I am to the students I meet in person.

In the end, I decided that I prefer my online teaching job. It allows me to do my work without spending any extra money to go to work, and I can really put my professional strengths such as communication, technology and time management to good use. There will be no more need to rush home from campus in another city in time to pick Nate up from daycare. There will be no more need to wake Nate up and get him to daycare early in the morning on those days I have an early class. The ability to juggle my home and family life with my professional aspirations makes me more appreciative, more engaged with the work I do from home.

I wonder what Marissa Mayers would say to that?

Do you agree or disagree with Ms. Mayers’ decision that employees are more productive when they work in the office? If you worked from home at Yahoo!, would you find a new work arrangement that would allow you to continue to work remotely, or would you head back to office life in a cubicle?

When Graham and I had only been married for a few years, I took a job at a brand new arena in a city about a half hour away from our home. The arena was just opening up and my job was to be the Assistant Manager of Suites and Catering. If you’ve been part of any brand new enterprise, you’ll know that opening a venue like an arena for the first time is no small feat; getting all of the private boxes or suites ready for the guests who were paying top dollar to occupy them during concerts or hockey games was a hefty job.

Doing that job required some long, late hours at work. Graham was very understanding when I would text him at midnight telling him to go to bed, that I wouldn’t be home for a few hours. I distinctly recall arriving home after a particularly long night at the site around four o’clock in the morning. I was barely in bed and asleep before it was time for Graham to get up for the day and head to work.

Several years, many jobs and one kid later, we are now experiencing the phenomenon of the night shift once again. Graham was offered some work during the night shift at his job site and decided to give it a try, since it would be for short term and also because the pay would include a premium.

Image source: Alday Consulting Services

Last night was the first night we ventured into the world of shift work. Nate went to bed around 8:00 and that left me wondering what to do with myself when the usual time for my bedtime came along.
I tweeted, “It’s throwing me off completely! Shift starts midnight. Do I just go to bed? Do I wait up? What’s the etiquette?”

While it may seem ridiculous to consider etiquette when it comes to one’s spouse’s work schedule, I was baffled. It felt rude to just go to bed but I didn’t want to stay up until he left the house after 11:00. In the end, I watched old episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 until I dozed off and he came to kiss me good night and left for the night. I slept horribly…waking up repeatedly to check and see that yes, he was not asleep beside me (although it was certainly a more quiet night than I was used to).

The whole experience got me thinking about families who deal with shift work. I put the word out this morning, asking my Twitter followers to tell me what their favourite thing is about shift work, and asking what their least favourite thing about shift work is, too.

Some of the responses I received included:

@theanykey:

“Favorite part? Maybe the bed to myself.”

“He definitely doesn’t sleep well because of the transition, and it is difficult to let him sleep well because the kids are noisy.”

@minderella:

“Fav is that during the days he’s home (even though he’s sleeping) I could put a toddler down for a nap and leave with the older kid if I wanted to.”

“Least is that he doesn’t get proper sleep.”

I didn’t hear from any women who actually work night shifts, but I’d love to hear from them and how this affects their family life.

Do you deal with shift work in your family? What is your favourite thing about working at night? What is your least favourite aspect of working shift work?

Is there a working mother alive who doesn’t feel like something is missing if her smart phone isn’t nearby? If there is, I’d like to meet her, and ask her how she manages to stay connected to her job and her family without the use of the technical tools I’ve come to rely on so much to do business and be available to my family. Of course, I realize that it’s physically possible to get through the day without my iPhone at my side, without Facebook to connect me to my network of colleagues and customers, but it would be a challenge!

I use my phone not only to make calls, but to make sure that my daycare provider is able to get in touch if necessary if something happens with my son. I use my phone to answer e-mails from students and clients who get in touch with me throughout the day. Judging from the responses of other working moms I’ve talked to about smart phone use, this is pretty much par for the course.

There are some other apps, though, that I’ve come to rely on almost every day for staying organized and running a business and household.

Motivated Moms. Motivated Moms is “a yearly chore calendar”, and it has been a lifesaver for me on occasion. When the house is just too cluttered, too dusty, too messy, I start using this app to help me get the house back on track. Every day there is check list of household chores that need to be done and I just check them off as I go. After about a week of using the app, I’ve made my way through the house and feel much better about things. If I had the time, I’d love to use this 365 days a year but a mom has to sleep, right? Motivated Moms isn’t a free app, but it’s one I feel is worth buying.

Track My Mileage. Now that I run my own small business, it’s important to keep track of the mileage on my truck to make sure that I can claim the right amount for our taxes next year. I started doing this task in a notebook but I was really bad at it. I forgot all the time in the beginning, until I got an app installed on my phone to take care of this. The best part is, you can e-mail yourself the tracked data as an Excel document for business bookkeeping purposes. I’m using the free version of this app.

ArtKive. Once in a while, Nate brings home something special that he’s made at daycare. I’m totally the kind of mom who would keep every piece of artwork he creates throughout his entire school career. The collection has started and he’s not even in school yet! Then I discovered ArtKive. According to the Apple App Store, “Never again feel guilty about throwing away artwork your kids bring home. Get rid of the clutter and start to enjoy your child’s work.” This description gets it just right…all I have to do is take a picture of Nate’s creation and I have a copy saved for good! I can also send the picture to a select network of family members if I want to.

What are the apps you can’t live without as you go about the business of working and caring for your family?

I have dreaded potty training for a long time, now. In fact, I avoid writing and tweeting about the experience because every time I express some sort of frustration about the process, I’m met with disheartening responses that commiserate at best and discourage at worst. Moms hate potty training, it seems. (I realize this is a sentence that feels a little bit like saying the sky is blue or that water is wet.)

One of the reasons I’ve dreaded potty training is that Nate is a daycare kid, which means that for the majority of his waking hours, the task of encouraging him to use the potty falls on someone else’s shoulders. I’ve felt a lot of self-applied pressure to get him trained using some sort of miracle three-day method that would eliminate the need for Nate’s daycare provider to bear any responsibility for helping him learn to use the toilet (or, heaven forbid, for cleaning up the result of any accidents he might have in her care).

Over the weekend we took a real stab at getting Nate to use the toilet and with some success. I learned to watch for the telltale expression on his face and twice managed to whisk him onto the potty in time to get the job done. Stickers and sessions of Angry Birds were the reward.

Monday morning when I took Nate to daycare with tales of potty success to share, the woman who looks after him was excited. She had been telling me that he was ready for potty training for a little while. “Between the two of us, we’ll get it done!” she told me, with enthusiasm. I realized that morning that I wasn’t butting up against her or piling onto her responsibilities with this business of potty training; instead, I had an ally. She cheers Nate on with the same eagerness that we do. There’s a whole team of us encouraging him, making the experience of potty training nothing for me to dread, after all.

My three tips for potty training a child who goes to daycare include:

1. Keep your reward system consistent. We decided that stickers would be rewarded for using the potty, so Nate’s daycare provider tells him the same thing.

2. Dress your child in comfortable pants that are easy for your child and for your daycare provider to take up and down, too, multiple times a day, when necessary during training.

3. Share the joys and successes of the training experience with one another, and in front of your child. He or she will be excited to share the good news!

What advice can you provide when potty training a child who goes to daycare?

Most weekday mornings Nate and I have our regular routine…he eats his cereal bar or toast with honey and watches his cartoons while I inhale coffee and read my Twitter and Facebook streams. When he asks what I’m doing, I tell him I’m reading my news. Among the “headlines” I encountered earlier this week was a tweet written by a woman I follow on Twitter. She wrote there about how badly she is suffering now that all of her kids are in school full-time. She is a full-time stay-at-home-mom who is feeling lost at this point in her children’s lives and doesn’t know quite what to do with herself.

I could not relate to this at all.

Whenever I hear other mothers talk about how much they would love to quit their jobs and stay at home full-time, I become uneasy. It’s not that I don’t support their wishes and goals; it’s just that their wishes and goals are so vastly different from mine at times.

I’m a very happy work-at-home (and some days outside of the home) mom. I would not be a happy stay-at-home mom. This is a notion I feel responsible for justifying all the time. For example, I mentioned to an acquaintance at the end of the last school year that I would only be working at the college one day a week this year. Her response congratulated me on the fact that I’d be able to save a lot of money on daycare since I’d be home with Nate the other four days a week. I sheepishly informed her that we’d be keeping him in daycare full-time.

“He’ll be going to school next September anyway, so we want to keep his routine going,” I said.

“I’ll still be working from home some days with my school work and I still teach those online courses,” I went on.

“He loves going to daycare…he has so much more fun there with the other kids than he’d have at home with me,” I concluded.

Nate goes off to daycare with his buddies.

I felt the need to explain myself because mothers are supposed to want to be home all the time with their kids, aren’t they? Activities like creating homemade craft projects and healthy lunches together and peaceful, productive outings with our children are supposed to be the epitome of mothering small children, aren’t they? Well, Pinterest lies. Life with kids at home isn’t like that.

It doesn’t matter how I try to describe the reasons why I don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, they always come out wrong. At first, my defensive nature kicks in and my justifications for continuing to send Nate to daycare full-time while I work from home always rouse my own inferiority complex about the kind of mother I am.

Then I take a breath, tell myself to relax, and remind myself that it doesn’t matter what my reasons are…having Nate in a great daycare arrangement is what works best for all of the members of our family, even on the days when I’m at home by myself.

It’s my job to make sure supper is made for my family seven days a week. On occasion my husband will help out by barbecuing something for supper, but even then, the planning of that meal and figuring out what side dishes will go with the barbecued portion of the meal usually falls to me.

Most days I work from home, so the planning and execution of dinner isn’t too difficult to manage. It’s those days when I’m working at the college, heading out the classroom door at 4:00 on my way to pick up my son from daycare by 4:30, and hoping to have dinner on the table by 5:30 when my husband gets home from work that are the real challenge. Phew. It tired me out just writing that sentence!

Fortunately, I have a few tricks up my sleeve in the dinner department. There are a few meals that I like to have ready to go for those hectic days when it seems like everything has to be done and ready all at once. I rely on my crock pot a lot on the really busy days, but it’s not always necessary to use the slow cooker to make a good, quick, meal that will satisfy a carpenter’s appetite.

Here are five meals that are my favorite to cook when I know I’m going to be pressed for time to make dinner for my family.

Chili: My son Nate is a picky eater, but one food that he has always loved is chili. This baffles me, but I don’t question it because chili is one of few dishes that all three of us can sit down and eat together. My crock post chili recipe is very easy and can be put into the crock pot in the evening and turned on first thing in the morning before heading out the door. There are so many chili variations out there. Pick one, practice it on the weekend, and make it work for you through the week.

Spaghetti and Meatballs: Is there any family who does not rely on spaghetti and meatballs once in awhile when in a pinch? I buy large jars of sauce and leave frozen meatballs to simmer in that sauce in the crock pot during the day. Then all I have to do when I get home is cook the spaghetti noodles and open the wine.

“Clean out the Fridge” Chopped Salad: For this meal, a little bit of planning is needed. The night before a busy day, I comb through the contents of my fridge for any tidbits that would make a garden salad into a deluxe, dinner-sized salad. I chop lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, celery and any other vegetable I find and store this in the fridge in a sealed container. Leftover roasted chicken, pork tenderloin or even cubes of leftover steak are wonderful additions that tend to please the meat-eater of the house (my husband). I also like to add things ingredients such as chick peas, black beans, dried cranberries or small chunks of cheese. When I get home from work, all I have to do is toss everything together and choose a dressing.

Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches: Because we have a preschooler at home, we eat chicken fingers fairly often. Graham and I don’t care for them plain, so we toss ours in Buffalo wing sauce and throw them on a crusty bun with a slice of tomato, lettuce and a squirt of Caesar salad dressing. Sometimes I’ll serve it with raw veggies and dip, but sometimes I’ll just serve it with fries. The prep time on this meal is low and the enjoyment factor is high.

Pulled Pork, Burrito-Style: This combination of foods is a new one to me, as my cousin’s wife just shared it with me last week. She told me to throw some pork chops or pork tenderloin in the crock pot with a pouch of taco seasoning, a jar of salsa, a can of black beans, an onion, some garlic powder and any other ingredient I’d like such as chopped green peppers or corn, then cook on low for at least eight hours. Then I shred the pork and stir everything all together, then serve on warm tortillas. I tried out her recommendation the day after she suggested it and the meal immediately became a new favourite of ours.

What is your go-to meal for busy weeknights when you’re on the clock?

I consider myself to be a “Jill of all trades”. I’ve had a lot of jobs since I began working at the age of 14. My first part-time job was as a wedding photographer’s assistant. I attended weddings with the husband of one of my eighth grade teachers who ran his own business, carrying around equipment and being his general helper. I liked fluffing out the bride’s dress before the photograph was captured. This was in the days before everyone used a digital SLR camera. The photographer was Greek and this meant we attended a lot of Greek weddings, complete with obscene amounts of food for the hired people. It was the most delicious job I’ve ever had.

My next job was at McDonald’s and I loved almost every minute of it. I went from Rookie of the Month to Employee of the Month to Employee of the Year! I was an angel in a polyester uniform.

Fast forward twenty years and probably dozens of jobs later, I now find myself among the many working women who hold more than one job at a time. I’ve done stints of work in several major industries, including hospitality, travel and tourism, publishing, marketing and education.

According to Statistics Canada, as of 2009, 6.3% of Canadian women aged 25 to 44 held multiple jobs. The United States Department of Labor reports that in 2008 there were 3.8 million women working multiple jobs. It seems like few of us are working regular 9-5 jobs and calling it a day.

My home office back in 2007.

I’ve been thinking about multiple jobs a lot lately because I’m one of those women. I currently wear four or five different hats, depending on whether you count blogging as a job and depending on the time of year. The balls I have in the air include:

• a seasonal business that my husband and I run jointly in the summertime
• a small business with a direct selling company
• teaching one day a week at a community college
• teaching online communications courses
• writing this column
• writing my family blog

Wait, that’s actually six gigs, isn’t it?

Phew. The many small jobs I do more than equal the amount of work I’d be doing if I was working one regular full-time job, especially when you consider the work that we working moms do to maintain our homes and families, too. So yes, I do the majority of my work from a room in our house, but I’m one busy mama!

Are you a multi-gig mom, too? I’d love to hear from you if you’re among the millions of women who work multiple jobs while juggling family.

It’s late. Our room is quite dark, and now that Graham and I both use our iPhones for alarm clocks, we no longer have the red or neon blue glare of the current time in our bedroom. Our son is down the hall in his bed, coughing. I can’t let it go on any longer.

I sigh, get out of bed and head down the hallway to his room, where I give him some cough medicine by the glow of his night light.

“Mommy, you snuggle me?” he asks. It’s what he always asks when I end up down the hall in his room in the middle of the night.

“In a minute, buddy, I’m going to get the humidifier for you,” I answer.

I bring the humidifier down to the kitchen to fill it up and discover it’s two o’clock. No wonder I feel so groggy…my own cold medicine is still working in full force, making me feel fuzzy as I stand by the sink and wait for the humidifier base to fill with tap water.

Once I get Nate settled back into bed, I lay beside him, but I’m restless. I’m restless because he’s restless. He’s wide awake, and coughing almost constantly. There’s no way I’ll get to drift off here beside him.

I begin to count the seconds between coughs to keep my busy mind occupied and away from other thoughts that are invading my middle-of-the-night brain. I count to twelve between coughs and begin to feel there’s a little bit of hope that I might get some more sleep that night, after all.

Finally Nate seems calm and still enough that I sneak out of his room and back to my bed. I’m not there five minutes before I hear his small footsteps come down the hallway and settle on the floor beside me.

“Come on, Nate, back to your bed,” I say quietly.

He protests.

“I’ll come with you. Come on to your room so Daddy can get some sleep.”

And there it is, the thing that creeps into my tired mind while I tend to our sick son. The need for Daddy to get his sleep always seems to trump Mommy’s in our house, especially on a week night. Graham works on a construction site all day long, so of course it is important that he is alert enough to stay safe. I know this logically but in the middle of the night it seems so unfair. I work from home most days lately, full days in front of a computer instead of on a construction site. So naturally I can get by a lot easier the day after a rough night with Nate than Graham can. It’s still hard, though, and in the middle of the night, lying down next to a coughing kid for an hour, I resent that I have obligations the next day beyond caring for our son at home.

Who gets up with your kids on a week night when they are sick? Do you and your spouse take turns?