These days we are all wearing a lot of hats in the midst of a pandemic. All moms are working moms in my opinion and we can all use some time-savers and efficiencies to try to get it all done. I’ll warn you in advance — these aren’t small tips and quick tricks to save time, but rather changes you can choose to make to establish efficient and productive mindsets, allowing you to optimize your presence and overall mental wellbeing:  

 1. Ditch the Guilt. This isn’t an efficiency tip so much as a mindset shift, but it’s necessary just the same. Guilt, especially mom guilt, or even business guilt takes up tons of valuable mental and emotional space that could be used for more productive and self-serving energy. Guilt – by definition – is what you feel after you've done something wrong. I like to remember this definition when guilt creeps in because doing my best as a mom and business owner (and wife, friend, sister, daughter, aunt, colleague, community member, etc etc etc) is never wrong, it’s just a lot. And in that “a lot” is a beautiful life I’ve been able to build of motherhood, flexibility in schedule, financial independence, professional joy and pride in what I do. I’d rather fill my mental and emotional space with those thoughts, rather than the idea we’ve been conditioned to think that we are not “enough.” Because we are – we are a LOT. 

 2. Get it Delivered. And by “it” I mean everything you can. COVID shifted a lot of things out of stores and into delivery, which isn’t great in a lot of ways for our local businesses, but I will say it’s been a huge time safer as a working mom. We get all of our groceries delivered (which takes about 15 minutes to order in bed rather than the hour plus it takes to go to the store), and when we do carry out we typically use a delivery service like Door Dash or Uber Eats. Our Chase Sapphire card gives us $0 delivery fees, so I’d recommend checking your credit cards for any time-saving benefits you may have. 

 3. Be Present In the Thing You’re Doing. It may sound counterintuitive, but multitasking on things that are in two different areas of your brain (answering emails while playing with your kids), actually takes up more time than if you focused on one thing at a time. Re-reading that email 10 times while building a Lego tower means a half absorbed email and a lame Lego tower. While we are master multitaskers, try to reserve that skill for times when you can do multiple things in the same brain space (answering emails while on a call, or singing silly songs together while doing the laundry). 

 4. Let Something Go. Just because we can do it all doesn’t mean we should. Try to think of something you can outsource – to a pro if you have the means, to your partner or even to the kids. We recently decided pet care would be my husband's responsibility. I’m in charge of my daughter’s doctor appointments and medications, and he's in charge of the dog’s . It’s something small, but it’s just one more thing I don’t have to manage and it helps me free up that space to focus on the things that I need to get done. 

 5. Batch Your Life. I find it really helpful to batch things in my work and mom life. For example, I try to stack all my calls on the same day or two, and have at least one day that is meeting-free to get things done. Right now I have Fridays “off” and I try really hard not to schedule anything for work on that day. Instead I’ll make that my “home” day where I can get things done that are not work-related while spending time with my daughter.