Getting Back In The Saddle

If you’re a work at home parent, as I am, then you’ve probably been making some trade-offs over the summer. It’s great to have our little darlings at home, but it’s also frustrating when we can’t work in the usual way. For me, the summer has meant paring down to essentials. I have kept working, but I have had to skimp a bit on promotional activities and new projects that have been in the works for a while.

A New Routine

Once school has started again, there’s a different kind of routine, bounded by the limits of the school day, rather than whatever time you can carve out from parenting. At first, the time seems almost limitless, but it can ebb away if you don’t have an action plan. Knowing what you want to do when is half the battle in getting anything achieved.

Getting Organized

I’ve been doing a couple of things to improve my short term organisation and to help me reach my medium and long term goals. One key change is the way I handle email. I’ve been using a GTD (getting things done approach) and I’ll tell you more about that when I see if it makes a permanent difference to productivity.

Project Plans

Another project that I’m currently working on is using the nearly 500 blog posts I have here in a different way. You’ll be hearing about one way to do that some time in the next couple of weeks. I also plan to use some of the content to create ebooks. (I know I’ve said that before, but this time I plan to finish one of my own rather than simply writing for clients.) I am going to chase up recent clients for more testimonials about my writing and I’m also going to overhaul my rates.

Working For Clients

And those are just the tasks I’m handling for myself. I also have a couple of blogging and promotion gigs for clients which will lead to big things. What are your plans now that you have a bit more time?

(Photo: Gekreutzigt)