We all have way more obligations to keep up with than we could ever dream of being fully on top of, and we’re all failing over and over again – the important thing is to be able to regroup when you need to and get back to it. From keeping the house afloat to not letting the family drift apart to keeping your own chin above the water – it’s an endless struggle that you just need to keep doing. Just as the dishes can pile up, harmony in the household can fade out, and you can find yourself running from A to B endlessly without achieving anything. This is a guide to getting it together, to improving your productivity, preparing for disaster and finding the motivation and energy to do it all over again tomorrow.
The Household
Whether you’re going to work and finding what time you can in the evenings or you’re at home wondering why the house is demanding a full day’s worth of labour every day, there are things you could do to improve your circumstances. The trick is to work on your routine, and your family’s, so that you’re all using your time as effectively as you can without even noticing. When you’re doing a job naturally at a certain time you’ve accepted it into your routine, and it won’t seem like as big a deal – the problem, however, is that it’s easy for tasks to fall out of your routine and it’s very difficult to get new tasks into your routine. Just remember, the first few weeks of a new routine are the most difficult. Take control and delegate tasks to family members and supervise them until they’re doing their jobs naturally. To do this, you’ll need to have a list of everything that needs doing every day as well as a rough idea of your family’s schedules. You’ll know when the jobs have been assimilated into everybody’s routines because the whole house will start to tick over naturally rather than being a constant source of arguments.
Once you’ve got the house running on a day to day level, you can start to save yourself some time by planning in advance. Make sure you all know which neighbor to go to for help in case of an emergency. Make sure you have the phone numbers of your local electrician, plumber and handyperson before anything wrong – not afterwards! Not only will this save time and make disasters less stressful, but you can also save a lot of money by planning in advance. You’ll know the cheapest way to get help, and you won’t be stuck if the internet goes down as well. If you have a plan beforehand then you can get the best deals and services; for example, if you contact One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning at https://www.onehourac.com/ac-service-charlotte-nc/ then you won’t be waiting all day in the heat or cold for somebody to arrive. If you wait until the last minute to look, you can’t complain if you get a bad deal.
The Family
People need an indefinite amount of attention that, nine times out of ten, you don’t have the time or energy to give. It can be difficult to keep up with the moods of your family, particularly if you have adolescents in the house, and it can be even more difficult to keep up with the developing issues behind their moods. Are they being bullied? Are they struggling with schoolwork? Are they suffering in their love-lives? What makes it more difficult is how reluctant people can be to talk about their problems, which means that very often you only find out there is a problem when it reaches boiling point, and the person reacts. Make sure you know the basics of what your family are dealing with each week, even if all they want to share is that they’re struggling with a science project – talking about this kind of stress builds up trust, which is essential to family relationships.
Are you agreed on a discipline procedure with your partner? If you feel like you aren’t on top of everything, one factor could be your relationship with your partner. You should be helping each other out in all areas of your lives. This might mean agreeing on disciplinary roles between you, or it might be as simple as talking about your work-lives with each other, so you feel like you know each other better and find it easier to work as a team. It’s just as important to share out social time with the children as well – not just the discipline. Here, you should both be playing to your strengths – you could take responsibility for entertaining the family one weekend and your partner could take responsibility for it the next weekend, for example.
Yourself
Just as it can seem like everyone around you needs more support than you have to give, you also have a bottomless craving for it. Sometimes, particularly if you’re part of a busy family, you can’t rely on everybody noticing when you’re struggling and banding together to take the weight off your shoulders. There are times when you need to be disciplined with yourself, and there are times when you need to know how to give yourself support. Delegating tasks and getting the family into a routine is a great way to snatch back an occasional evening to yourself, but the important thing is knowing how to use it. If you’re in the habit of doing everything all the time, treat yourself to take out or run a bath – it can be difficult to stop yourself doing extra work and saving more time for later, and that’s why it’s important to fit relaxation time into your routine as well.
Get to know yourself – spend some time thinking about the things that make you anxious or that make it difficult to be productive. When you have time for rest, you spend your productive time more effectively because you can review your activities. Make sure you’re always in touch with both your long-term ambitions and your short-term obstacles, and you’ll find it easier to stay motivated when life gets tough.
