S2E5: Managing Time As A M.O.M

In this episode we’re taking Time Management…as a mom, especially a mom of multiple kids.

As someone who has been doing it for years, I’ll give you my recommendations, as well as my cautions, for finding time to build  your business where it feels like there is none.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Mom Boss Like a Boss Podcast, a podcast where we talk about mom life, entrepreneurship, and everything in between. I'm your host, Taylor B, a mom of four precious boys and an entrepreneur at heart. If you've been looking for a village of like-minded people, then I think you've found the right place. I look forward to talking with you, and I can't wait to see you inside. Hello, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is called Managing Time as a Mom. Mom, in this instance, I made an acronym as Mom of Multiples. This one is for all the moms who have more than one child, so two plus. So you probably already have trouble finding time to do all the things with one child. When you combine multiple kids, it seems like the difficulty level just goes up. If you don't know who I am, I'm Taylor B, the brand and web designer behind TB Design Loft. I'm also a mom of four and a wife to an amazing husband. If you're not familiar with my background and my kids or anything about them, let me just give you a quick rundown. My oldest is nine, my second oldest is six, and will be seven this summer in 2026. My third is five, and my fourth just turned one at the beginning of May. So you're probably thinking, oh, she's got her hands full. You might be thinking that because I hear it all the time. Yes, my hands are full, I'm busy, I'm stressed. My precious, precious, precious headaches. I call them my precious headaches. They definitely keep me busy, and the day just seems to fly by. It feels like there's never enough time to do anything. Cleaning, working on my business, being present with my kids, sleep. It feels like there's never enough time for anything. One thing I have started to learn as my kids have gotten older is that it never changes. I don't know who said that it gets easier as they get older. It does not. No, no, no, no, no. Certain things might get easier, like not having to change diapers anymore. Sure, yeah, okay. But the difficulty just changes. It adjusts. You go from the happy go-lucky baby who's super happy to see you all the time, to the moody preteen who is like, no, mom, I don't wanna wear that. I wanna look cool. And you're just like, mm-hmm. Sure, sweetheart. Okay, you do you. You go ahead and look cool. Got it. I don't know what teenagers are like yet, so I will probably have more to talk about when I actually hit that stage of life. For now, I'm dealing with the preteen stage of my nine-year-old, where there's a lot of attitude and a lot of other things to deal with. Emphasis on wanting to look cool, which I find very funny. I will say when it comes to finding time, I am of the mindset that depending on how your kids are, because everyone's kids are different, you should be able to work alongside your kids if you're able to. I have recently come to the realization that I cannot do that with mine. Mainly because my older two constantly ask me questions or ask me for things. Even if I am not on the clock, even if they are actively being cared for by someone else at the time, for some reason, they just always come to me and ask me questions if they see me. So I have come to realize that okay, when it is time for me to work, I need to shut myself away. As much as I wish I did not have to do that, there are going to be times where I have to separate myself in order to be able to focus and work. For example, recording this podcast. Me personally, I'm not a huge fan of the idea of all the noise of my extremely loud children being in the background while I am trying to record. If that's your thing, then go for it. Honestly, like there's nothing wrong with it. That's just my personal preference. You know, I'm sitting here trying to remember what I wanted to talk about and trying to stay on topic, and then there's screaming in the background, or my oldest will randomly just chime in with his opinion. So I'm good on that for me. When it comes to the younger ones, or the baby baby especially, he is a velcro baby. I've had times where he will literally stand there and cry and scream at me because he acts like it is a crime against nature if I'm not holding him. And then as soon as I pick him up, he calms down and then proceeds to start hitting me. I don't know why. I don't know why he gets such joy out of being so violent. But yeah, my five-year-old, he's kind of he's usually in his own little world a bit. So he'll he's just running back and forth, but he needs to be watched very closely. So it's really hard to focus on anything that really needs my attention while I have him, or if I have all four of them. So I have tried over the years to manage my time in different ways. The first being working while I have my kids. And while that has worked sometimes, I've noticed as my older two have gotten older, especially my oldest, they'll ask if I'm going to be working today or oh, are you working right now? So my oldest son, I've noticed he clearly wants more attention and more quality time. So now I am trying to scale back the time that I am working while I am with them so that way I can give them attention. He'll ask me, Mom, can you watch me play the game? Or mom, can you play the game with me, or mom, can you play with me? And this, that, and the other. So I have tried to scale back on working on my business while my kids are awake and while they're with me, just so that way I can be present as much as possible. It also depends on what works for you. You could get your kids involved in what you do, and it could be part of your quality time. So that's something to think about. You could work while you have your kids so that way things are getting done and you're still able to have them with you, and they can still have mom around and have mom there with them instead of having to separate and go into an office. I would like to note that this depends on your dynamic. This depends on how you are with your kids and also how you want to do things. You might not want to work at all when you have your kids, and that's fine. I am with you there. I would prefer to not have work on my mind and to not feel like I need to work when I have my kids. So that is something that you can do in order to find a pocket of time where it feels like there is no time. If it works for you, work while you have your kids. The other issue is sleep. We need sleep in order to function and bare minimum be healthy. So I work a lot at night because it's really easy to finally the house is quiet, kids are asleep. Finally, I can actually think. And if that works for you, definitely do it. However, do not sacrifice your sleep on a consistent basis. Make sure you are getting adequate sleep. If you take one or two nights a week where you're like, okay, I'm gonna pull an all-nighter, maybe the next day you have childcare assistance to where you can be like, okay, when I'm done, I'm going to sleep. So that way I'm refreshed. Then, you know, try that. Be warned. I have worked third shift jobs before. Now it's not the same when you're doing your own business, but that third shift can really throw you off. So be cautious doing that. Because once you get into that habit of being up all night and then sleeping during the day, it can be really hard to break out of. So you can work at night when kids are sleeping. If you have really young kids that are still taking naps, you can work during nap time. I've heard many people refer to it as the nap time hustle. There's even a podcast called the naptime hustle that can work as well if you have younger babies or kids who take relatively consistent naps. If you have multiple kids and you've got a mix of older and younger, what I started doing when my third was really, really small is I started doing quiet time. And I would have my oldest two, I'd say, okay, hey, I don't care what you do, but you gotta go do it quietly because the baby is sleeping. Like they have they have video games, so they can go play their video games quietly in their room. They can read a book, they can watch TV, something, whatever works best for you. Quiet time. So even if you only have older kids, you can still implement a set time during the day for quiet time. So that way it's like, okay, hey, between this period, this time, and this time, you do not bother mommy unless if it's an emergency. You go in your room, you find a quiet activity to do. And then maybe you set an alarm, and then when the alarm goes off, they know mommy's done working or whatever it is, depending on how old your kids are and how aware they are. You can start implementing quiet time that might be able to carve you out a little bit of time during the day to get some work done. You could also try doing kind of like a late night, early morning type shift, depending on your dynamic, depending on your life situation. What I have been trying to do lately is I will take a nap. Once the kids go to sleep, my kids go to sleep at 8 when there's school and 9 when there's no school. So I try to go to sleep once they've gone to sleep, usually because I'm already exhausted. So trying to stay up and think critically and work on my business does not bode well. I just kind of end up staring at the screen, just searching things, just kind of looking aimlessly from side to side on the screen because I'm like, what was I supposed to be doing? You know, like a like a zombie, pretty much. So I tried to take a nap. Ideally, I try to wake up close to 1 a.m. My goal is to do a 1 a.m. to about 5 or 6 a.m. Because that's when they start getting up between 5, sometimes 5, but between 6 and 8 for sure is when they start to wake up, start getting up. If they have school, then we're getting them up between 6:30 and 7, just depending on how much time we need. So I try to get up early if I can. I've gotten a little bit of sleep, and this allows me to have a nice chunk of time to work on my business while kids are sleeping without sacrificing sleep and making myself insane. I would also like to note, I have a one-year-old. Literally just this morning, I was up getting ready for my little work block and he woke up crying, and it took me like two hours to get him to sleep. He did not go to sleep until like three or four, on top of the dog whining very loudly. It was really hard to get him to go to sleep. So, as you already know, as a parent, every day usually does not look the same. For me, sometimes he sleeps through the night, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes at 2 a.m. I hear my five-year-old randomly echoing, I hear his voice randomly echoing through the house. And I'm just like, bro, why? And then clapping following that. And mind you, this is usually at 2 or 3 a.m. I'll check the camera. Sure enough, he is sitting there clapping, sometimes jumping over his brothers and waking them up, so that's always great. So yeah, every day is unpredictable as far as managing your time with kids, but it's definitely possible. I would also like to add in that it's really easy to find yourself scrolling. If you're in the midst of, you know, feeding a baby, you might find yourself scrolling. If kids are playing and running around, you might find yourself scrolling because it's like, oh, okay, I'm just here. In those little pocket moments where you're sitting there on your phone, you could try to find something to do if you want to. It depends on your depends on your business, but I feel like you can find something to do on your phone. Whether you're creating a sales flyer in Canva, whether you're continuing to type up a document in like Google Docs, because you, you know, you've got these apps that are on your mobile phone as well. Find those pockets of time where it's like, okay, I can't sit at the computer and do this, but I can do this on my phone really quick, or I can work on this while I'm doing this thing. I do that a lot. Again, my one-year-old acts like it's a war crime if he's not being held and not just held, you have to stand up and walk with him. Otherwise, he is not a happy camper and he will tell you about yourself. So I have to stand up and walk around with my sweet child to keep him calm and happy. So I usually pull my phone out and as I am patting him or as I am holding him and rocking him and bouncing him, what I do is I try to find something on my phone, whether I'm doing research, whether I'm typing something up, whether I'm designing something in Canva or continuing something in Canva, whatever it is. I try to find something. Even if I'm just taking notes on what I want to do later when my hands free up, that helps me feel like I don't have to start from zero when things have finally calmed down. So I said a lot. I'm gonna try and see if I can remember exactly what I said. So managing your time as a mom in general, but a mom of multiples especially. One, find those pockets of time in between parenting and calm where you can work. You decide whether you want to do that with your kids and while they're with you, if you're able to, or not. Two, you can work at night. I would not recommend only doing night shift, but if that's what works for you, then do that. Three, you can try an early morningslash late night, middle of the night shift after you've taken a nap, gotten some kind of sleep, and then maybe getting up like in the middle of the night, getting us then you boom, get a snack, and then put in a shift of work, even if it's like three hours and then you go back to sleep. It's better than nothing. Four, try working from your phone if you're able to, if your hands are mostly occupied. If you're able to hold your phone in your hand, see what you can do on your phone, even if that is just making notes about what you're going to do later, even if you're adding to your to-do list of the things you want to do today or the next day. These little moments, this adaptability is a skill that I know you have already developed because you're a mom. And especially if you are a mom of multiple kids, because it just happens naturally. You adapt to whatever life or your kids throws at you every day. So that is my recommendations on managing your time as a mom, aka a mom of multiples, or just a mom in general, because even one kid can be a lot. My sister, from what it sounds like, from what she's told me, there are some days where her son is, as she ref as she says, a Tarzan and just does a lot. My five-year-old by himself is a lot. So I understand and I hope this resonates with you. Even if you, whether you have one child, whether you have two, three, or six, I hope this resonates with you and gives you some ideas on how you can manage your time a little bit better and find those pockets where you can work on your business without having to sacrifice your parenting or anything else. Thank you so much for tuning into this podcast. Feel free to DM me on Instagram or Threads if you have any thoughts on the episode. I would absolutely love to hear from you. Also, the email list is coming soon. Working on all the domain stuff, but I think we're finally getting there. Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Mom Boss Like a Boss podcast. If you have any thoughts on the episode, please feel free to reach out to me on threads or Instagram. You can find me at the creative altruist. All one word, no spaces, underscores, or periods. It'll also be right there in the description. Until next time.