Time Management Tips for Starting a Business as a Stay-at-Home Parent

Being a stay-at-home parent is a full-time job on its own. Adding business owner to your role can make managing your time, energy, and focus even more challenging. But with a little structure and the right tools, you can successfully balance both your family and business responsibilities. These five time management tips will help you navigate the demands of both your jobs—parent and business owner.

Keeping Track of Priorities and People

Making the decision to start a business from home as a stay-at-home parent requires practical strategies to stay focused on what matters most in the moment. It won’t always be easy and sometimes you’ll choose wrong, but with these tips, you’ll be able to manage the fall out as well as your time.

Practice open communication

Being transparent with your family about your business hours and goals can set clear expectations. Let your children and partner know when you’re working and important deadlines you are trying to meet. You can do this by:

• keeping set work hours everyone in the house knows about
• telling collaborators or business partners when there is a roadblock
• asking for help during moments of stress or needed support

Using open communication to let people in your work life and family life know what’s happening will also help you carve out focused work time without guilt.

Create a moveable workspace

Sometimes, parenting doesn’t allow for a fixed office space. A moveable setup—a laptop, portable file organizer, and noise-canceling headphones—can help you work effectively from different spots in your home and the world.

This will help during those times when you inevitably will have to work on a project while waiting for school drop off. For your digital workspace, having a domain name and business website is essential. Together, a domain and website ensures your business can grow beyond your home.

Separate work from life (where you can)

Blurred lines between work and home life are more than an annoyance, they can cause delayed payments, lost mail, and missed phone calls calls when you’re running a business from home.

To minimize overlap, separate your work out from your life by setting up a dedicated business phone line or opening a business bank account when you start forming your business. Keeping what you can separated and organized can reduces stress and make switching roles easier.

Learn project management

Parenting involves constant multitasking, and running a business does, too. Adopting project management skills—like breaking down big tasks into smaller ones and prioritizing deadlines—will keep you productive. Start by reading some of beginner project management books to develop your skills as a stay-at-home parent starting a business:

• Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager by Kory Kogon and Suzette Blakemore
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• Harvard Business Review Guide to Project Management by Harvard Business Review
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

Don’t sweat it if you don’t have the space or time to invest in sitting down with a good book. The above titles are all available as audio books you can get on Audible or Libby.

Protect your family time

As a parent, time with family and loved ones isn’t just valuable, it’s sacred. Spending a day with your kid on a trail identifying bugs is equally or more important than responding to that email or deciding to take that meeting even though you made a promise.

That’s why many business owners use virtual offices and digital calendars like Google Calendar or Apple’s iCloud Calendar to keep everyone in their personal and work life in the know about their time and availability. Tools like Calendly can also help you set up meetings that fit your availability and schedule.

At Northwest, we make starting a business simple. Whether you use us to help start your business or as a registered agent to stay compliant, we provide everything you need to keep your business organized and running smoothly—all in one place. Ready to streamline your business and life? Let us help you form your business today.