I’m sitting at my laptop. It’s Sunday evening. Meals for the family are done, cleaning is done, large jobs are set-aside for next weekend, and TV is boring …

So, let’s go to McDonald’s and cruise the net.

Quiet browns and coppers, quiet music, caramel frappe’, listening to calm and not so calm conversation, plug in lap top and check email, mess around with the new website, think about new column that’s three weeks late, relax and let it come.

I’m too old for stress and life is too short for drama. Moms can use time management to avoid both.

The secret to getting things done is priorities and sticking with them and somehow fooling yourself (or treating yourself) to stay with it. Here are some tips that work for me:

Choose one fun thing to do first when you sit down to work. It’s a warm up. You need it especially if you have a huge monster project staring at you. Keep the warm up to 5 minutes. Don’t check email as a warm up. Do a writing exercise or schedule the work for the day/ week/ month or write a How-are-you? card to Mom.

Don’t check email until a good chunk of your project for the day is done. You decide how big the chunk is to be, but email really wastes time and gets you side-tracked, unless you are really self-disciplined. I am not.

Have more than one project going on at once. That way, when you run out of juice on one project you can switch to another. This can clear the mind for a little while. Many times working on another project helps out with the most pressing one that needs to be done. I have 5-6 projects going on all at once. That may be too much, but it’s the only way I know how to work.

Always offer yourself a carrot – after I finish the first draft of a short article or a chapter rewrite, I check email, go for a walk, check Facebook, have a snack, make coffee, get ready for another session or read a portion of the book my head is in. The second session works the same as the first with the same rules (i.e. Get something done before checking email or getting that second cup of java.) My sessions last about 1-2 hours. Your sessions may be longer.

Don’t ignore stray thoughts or brainstorms. Our minds are a wide web of random thoughts bouncing around looking for meaning and when an idea, no matter how bizarre, pops into your head when you are deep into project #1, write it down in a notebook or on a sticky note. I have a notebook by my side all the time for stray thoughts. Keep them. Some you will use. Some you will not. If you don’t write it down those valuable thoughts will be lost forever.

Be careful not to get burned out in your work or in a specific project. Always take a day once a week or once every two weeks where you don’t work on your projects AT ALL. Even the project that has to be done or the one that is HOT. You have to take forced time away – it’s to keep balance in your brain. Too much break time and the motivation is lost. Not enough time off and the mind dulls and the subconscious doesn’t have time to work on the project on it’s own. The subconscious is a very powerful tool if you rest your conscious brain.

To illustrate how that works – Once I was stuck on chapter 9 of a book and decided to let it rest for 2 days. I worked on other short projects during that time. The second night of the break I awoke at 2:35 a.m. with an awesome twist that launched the last half of my book. I jumped to my desk (quietly) and got it down on paper. I had one more break with that book – chapter 12 – and I finished the first draft a month later.

Your subconscious mind can do work for you if you take a break.

Remember, Moms are too busy for stress or for drama. Prioritize and avoid both.

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