Time Management Strategies for Moms: Plan Your Day Right [Guest Post]
By Souhaila Acquah Addo
As a woman, we’re naturally blessed and endowed with many branches, i.e., being first a woman, wife and/or mom, sister, employee/employer, mentor/mentee etc. Planning is one skill on its own. Being able to execute is another amazing skill I admire. Lol. When the year began, I told the Lord to help me, as I take every step, with him in mind first. It’s been an interesting journey so far.
My struggles
I’ve been struggling with quite a number of things as a mom. Organisation, procrastination, and forgetfulness seem to top my list all the time. I have “tried severally” using my own wisdom and “strength,” which I realised produced more shortcomings and potholes. This produced a lot of worry, feeling bad, beating myself up, amongst others. I concluded and confessed to my husband at a point that I thought I had ADHD (Attention Deficiency and Hyperactivity Disorder). I had already done a thorough research and found out how females especially, are misdiagnosed as having anxiety disorder and depression all because of how similar the symptoms are and also because it’s said that females are not hyperactive, but females’ hyperactivity plays out differently from males.
Why am I giving all these plenty of background talks and not going straight to the skills of planning/organising and execution? Well, I also observed that, from the way many of our boys and girls are brought up in our Ghanaian culture/environment, where, girls are mostly home bound/kitchen bound and boys are given more of a free range, explorers kind of “liberty”, females are more prone to realising they have ADHD whilst boys are most likely to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Either way, it appears that the more any of these genders are restricted or bound to a specific task, duties or lifestyle, the likelihood of them having Attention Deficiency/Hyperactivity Disorder, and the more another gender is exposed to being on free range, the more the likelihood of them feeling entitled hence the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The root cause for people having these disorders may however vary.
Either run the day or the day runs you.
Jim Rohn
I had to give all these background checks and personal observations to help us understand and have a better perspective of the various differences in our natures as moms when it comes to “simple tasks” like planning, organising and execution, and how a blend of these upbringing will go a long way to help the upcoming generation. Planning and execution may not come easily to neurodivergent sisters. Let’s be calm and guide these sisters, wives, in-laws, employees etc., lovingly rather than thinking they’re just finding excuses to be lazy amongst others. We should know that they also have incredible strengths in other areas that when harnessed and guided well will produce great results.
Right! So, these are basically some of the struggles I faced majorly as a wife and mom. This made me feel really bad. All the time, I always felt unhappy and under pressure as I also didn’t have help, it made issues look huuugggeee for me! I struggled with time management, my finances, meal plan and prep, cleaning scheduling, losing interest easily, losing focus, in fact, almost everything looked and felt huuugggeeee to accomplish.
Enough of me losing focus, going back and forth. So, this year, the Holy Spirit used a simple illustration to help me. I haven’t gotten a firm grip of it entirely yet but I know it will be super helpful to other moms.
My time management approach
We all have 24 hours in a day. 8 hours is supposed to be for sleep, another 8 hours for work; with all things being equal, we’d be left with almost 8 hours for others.
One day = 24 HOURS
Sleep = 8hrs
Work = 8hrs
???? = 8hrs
How do we utilise the remaining hours with our many branches as women? For me, the Holy Spirit asked me, and I put the same question to you: WHO ARE YOU? Literally, for me, I’m first a woman, then a wife, mom, employee/employer, sister, an in-law, a friend/acquaintance. So 8hrs of sleep is gone. We can choose to reduce it, which is cool but may not be the best for our health. So if you’re an employer/employee/fulfilling purpose/entrepreneur/mompreneur/wifepreneur etc., work takes another 8hrs. How do we share the remaining hours to accommodate the other branches as individuals, spouses, being there for our children, our family, in-laws, friends and acquaintances/network?
The remaining 7-8hrs has at least five(5) categories to satisfy.
● As an individual, it includes my time with God, self development, (please feel free to add on).
● Husband involves what I can do to show love each day using the five love languages.
● Children also involves caring through the love languages, homework assistance, etc.
● Family & inlaws; calls to check up, visits etc.
● Friends & Network; calls, texts, meet ups.
● Home; chores, meal prep, etc.
Let’s try and allocate time out of the 8hrs for each of these other branches so none of them suffer.
Me and myself = 90mins for quiet time, reading a book, meditate etc
Hubs. = 90mins
Children = 120mins for homework, play, bedtime stories, etc.
Home = 120mins for laundry, cooking, cleaning, shopping/errands etc.
Family & in-laws = 30mins
Friends/Network = 30mins
There are days, some branches will demand or take more time than others, which is normal but at least, having a fair idea of how my day is broken down and how my time needs to be spent gives me some sort of accountability and a little pressure knowing that the more I postpone or procrastinate, the more it affects other days, the people in my life and my time on earth. We do not have the whole time on earth. We’re all here for a purpose. When our times are up, we’ll have to leave for others to continue. The more we don’t do our part on earth, the more time is wasted and we end up being unfulfilled and unhappy. We always need to remember who we’re accountable to and why we’re doing what we’re doing.
For the work bit, even if you don’t find yourself in a typical corporate environment, you can still set aside 8hrs starting from 8 or 9am to fulfil your purpose as an entrepreneur etc, which is equal to work, taking breaks in between to attend to the other equally important tasks on the list if you work from home amongst others.
I pray this has been helpful and the Holy Spirit helps you with your own peculiar stage of life to navigate and structure yourself. Wasting no time on the many assignments that has been bestowed on us on earth. Let’s always remember the parable Jesus told his Disciples about the three servants as recorded in Matthew 25:14-30 or the parable of the Ten Servants as recorded in Luke 19:11-27.
Writer Profile
My name is Souhaila Acquah Addo. I’m a comforting young Christian wife guardian, a learn through play activist and I love all things PRESENTable! I’m a teacher by calling. I love to break things down to a level that anyone that comes close can understand. My hustles/ministries includes @confession_ayoungcrystianwife on Instagram, @ayoungchristianwife on YouTube, @theweekendhomeschool, @cheersandtiers and @Wrapxologyghana all on Instagram. New branches are springing up and will be announced accordingly.
