Four Habits for Better Time Management (as a Homeschool Mom)

I know I’m not the only mom who feels this way. Who looks at her children, and feels like time is slipping through her fingers. Who feels desperate to make these precious years count – the years where her whole family is still snug in the nest – yet finds herself in a daily struggle to make the most of the moments as they happen. I’m not the only mom – the only homeschool mom – to struggle with managing time well.

But while I continue to battle against frittering and stay focused, I have made progress in this area of life. I’ve gone from daily Netflix binges to no TV or streaming services. I’ve culled my social media use, and successfully completed five years of active homeschooling with Ambleside Online. I’ve become more disciplined and effective and while I can (and do) fritter away time with the best of them, I’ve slowly developed techniques to combat some of my worst tendencies.

My Time Management Failure

Before I got married, I never would have guessed that I would have a problem managing my time. After all, I had spent years managing a schedule of school, extracurriculars, church, and work. I upheld my commitments. I was reliable. 

Things changed when I got a part-time job after I got married. Suddenly I had a few extra hours each day in which to clean, cook, organize, exercise, volunteer…except I didn’t. I spent a lot of time watching TV shows online. And not a lot of time doing other things. This trend continued into parenthood. In fact, I only managed to quit Netflix because my eldest son stopped taking naps. I shudder when I think about how much time frittered away into nothingness.

So what happened? When I think back to this time, I remember a sensation of feeling untethered and disconnected. I felt aimless. I was tired and (at least after we started our family) had some legitimate Mom Brain going on. In the midst of that fog, I wasn’t happy with how I spent my time, and knew that there were a lot of things I ought to be doing. But I couldn’t seem to get any leverage to get started. Unless, of course, we had people coming over. Then you bet I could get that bathroom clean!

Why Time Management is Different for Homeschool Moms

So much that is written about time management assumes that you are plugged into some sort of a system that is telling you what to do. Even if that system is telling you to come up with your own tasks and goals, it is still expecting you to make progress (preferably in a measurable and within a certain amount of time). And when you’ve done what is expected, you get rewarded with good grades, a degree, a payrise, a promotion. 

The challenge for stay at home mothers – including homeschool moms – is that you’ve unplugged from the system. You have no boss. Yes, you can set goals and tasks and prioritise, but no one is telling you to do that, or rewarding you when you do. You are left to your own intrinsic motivations, your ability to choose to do what is right, your own self-governance.

As Lane Scott shares on The American Mind:

What happens when life suddenly requires decades of unseen work that is not celebrated? What happens when you remove yourself from a system and go rogue? All of the supervision, all of the motivation, all of the structure must then come from you. You must become precisely the type of thing America no longer produces: quietly self-directed, self-governing, and self-motivated.

This is part of what makes time management different for homeschool moms. It’s not just about the chaos of a busy household, trying to remember how to teach fractions to a nine year old while teaching a four year old to tie his shoes. It’s not even just the number of distractions and interruptions when trying to think one single complete thought. It’s that you, the mom, are in charge of this crew and in order to do that, you must first be in charge of yourself.

Self-Governance and Time Management

Time management, really, is an indicator of our ability to manage ourselves in general. Using our time well means that we are doing what we ought to do when we ought to do it. A mature person is one who is able to do that without the structures, incentives, and accountability of a system.

Self-governance and good time management does not mean that we are rigid with our time. I’ve tried time blocking – it doesn’t work. My family and my schedule are too fluid to accept hard and fast limits on how I’ve spent my time. I don’t have the luxury of telling my children to wait two hours until I’m done with my deep work session. Neither does time management mean that we are relentlessly productive, say yes to everything, and consistently run off our feet: sometimes the right thing to do is to rest. 

Good time management also requires something beyond tips, tricks, and hacks. Instead, we need some amount of mindset change, some techniques (because this is an art, not a science), and ultimately the strength of good habits. 

Four Time Management Habits for Homeschool Moms

With that in mind, I’d like to share some of the techniques which I am practicing and are becoming habits. These are ways of approaching time management that give plenty of flexibility for the homeschool mom – because anything inflexible will break the first time you try to use it!

Time Log

I came across the idea of logging time a few months ago when someone mentionde Laura Vanderkam’s work. In many of her books, she has asked people, especially moms, to log their time for at least a week. I was intrigued, and tried it out myself. I created a worksheet, printed it out, and wrote down how I spent every half-hour of an entire week. (I’ve since done this twice). 

Here’s what I learned:

• Knowing that I will log my time keeps me focused. Knowing that I will be writing down what I do after the fact was incredibly motivating. If I wasn’t sure what to do with my time, I asked myself what do I want to write down? Turns out, I never want to write down that I spent twenty minutes scrolling on my phone. Time to look for something better to do.
• How I spend my time is always a choice. When you have kids – especially young kids who need feeding, changing, dressing, bathing, and so on – it feels like the way you spend time is out of your hands. Here’s the thing, though: you choose to prioritize the care of your children and your home. It feels like an interruption or a distraction from something else, but really, it’s a shift in priority that you choose to make because you are the type of person who values caring for your kids. 
• I have way more time than I think I do. I just don’t recognize it. I have a tendency to feel like I don’t have time for a break because I need to be leaving the house soon…but my timelog reveals that I actually have two hours before I need to go. If I need a few minutes’ peace, why not use thirty to read a book?

Here’s an action point for you: keep track of how you spend your time this week. Scroll down to get my printable time log, or make your own. Fill it out as honestly as you can and let me know how your perspective on time changes. This is not planning your time. This sheet should only be filled in as the time passes. It’s so you are aware of reality, not what you wish were true!

Vision and Goal Setting

I love setting goals. I am an idea person, and it is easy for me to come up with dozens of things I would like to do, whether it’s in life overall or in the next hour. I’ve had to accept, though, that given the range of my responsibilities, I need to keep my short term goals focused.  

To do this, I typically think about four categories: school, work (this blog and tutoring/teaching), relationships (family, friends, and church), and myself. First, I spend time thinking about the really big picture. What do I hope will be true in ten or twenty years? What do I hope to accomplish over years of home educating? Blogging and teaching? What do I want to be true of my relationships with my husband, children, extended family, and friends? How do I hope to have grown in that time?

I then start to narrow it down. Similar questions, but what about three years from now? How old will I, my husband, and my children be? What sorts of events or choices are on that horizon?

After that I think about the next twelve months. Thinking about where I’d like to be a year from now is much more palpable. It feels very close. Ideally, moving toward this one year vision will move you toward your mid and long-term goals.

I always find these sorts of exercises clarify what I need to do in the here and now, but I appreciate the wisdom from The Twelve Week Year that says that a year is actually too much time for a short term plan. It doesn’t feel urgent or pressing. It’s easy to delay taking action on something in January if your (self-imposed) deadline is in December.

The action step? Choose one to three goals or priorities in each category to work toward over the next twelve weeks. Make them proportionally smaller than your one-year hopes and goals. Write them down. (I have a printable available at the end of the post!) My goal this year is to review my vision and set goals each quarter – not frequent enough to be a habit, but valuable nonetheless.

Charlotte Mason says that education is a method, not a system, because method implies an end goal, and step by step progress toward that goal. Even if our goals prove unattainable, I think they still help us orient our time toward better ends than if we don’t articulate how we hope to work, live, and grow.

Weekly Review

We have a vision in hand, and some goals for the short term. At this point, I am notorious for getting distracted and forgetting what I ought to be working on. The habit I am actively working on now is regularly reviewing my vision and goals, and setting weekly priorities that line up with what I really want to do. 

These priorities are not necessarily a to-do list. Instead, they inform what I put on my to-do list. If one of my priorities for the week is to deliver great tutoring sessions, then my to-do list will have items on it like, ‘Complete practice problems; outline lesson plan; collect manipulatives’.  I set my priorities once a week. I write a to-do list for the next day every evening. (Weekly priorities and to-do list printables also below!). I deliberately only allow space for four or five to-do list items on each day. Any more than that and I get overwhelmed and give up!

Keeping these things fresh in my mind really helps me stay intentional with my time. It’s so much easier to do what I ought to do when I don’t need to also choose what I ought to do. Armed with an idea of what I want to accomplish and faced with a spare half-hour or so, I’m much more likely to use that time well.

Acceptance

My fourth and final habit for time management is a mindset: acceptance. So often I will read a book or a blog post and I will be inspired. I can’t wait to enjoy deep work, to focus, to go to bed at night feeling that I’ve done well. 

But productivity books are problematic because homeschool moms are forming persons, not products. We might be inspired to try new strategies to manage our time, and we might even find that we do get more done. But we also must understand that our responsibilities to care for, educate, and disciple our children will disrupt our plans. As I said above, our priorities will need to shift to meet the needs in front of us. That will mean dying to ourselves. It will mean that some of those goals, as treasured as they might be, fall to the wayside. 

I find it hard to let go of personal ambitions. Individual projects and ideas may fade into the background, but the larger desires remain. What I am learning, though, is to gratefully accept the limits to my time. Those limits mean that I am blessed with family and friends. It is far better to show gentleness and gratitude than to strain against the bit of these good things.

The Real Goal of Time Management is Time Stewardship

I’ve written a lot about time management here, especially for homeschool moms. But I wonder whether ‘time management’ is the wrong word. It suggests that we can control our time, maximise it, and twist it for our own purposes.

Really, I think it’s better to think of time stewardship. While we are wise to be proactive with planning our time, it’s really about submitting ourselves to God’s governance.

Charlotte Mason’s fourth volume is about virtue, vice, and what it means to be a self-governing, mature person. She brings her volume to a close with this statement:

But the Christian is aware of Jesus as an ever-present Saviour, at hand in all his dangers and necessities; of Christ as the King whose he is and whom he serves, who rules his destinies and apportions his duties. It is a great thing to be owned, and Jesus Christ owns us. He is our Chief, whom we delight to honour and serve; and He is our Saviour, who delivers us, our Friend who cherishes us, our King who blesses us with His dominion.

A Toolkit for Time Stewardship

I’ve put together a collection of printables that I use to log my time, set a vision and goals, and plan my week. I’ll send everything to you when you subscribe to my email newsletter! You’ll receive printable PDFs of:

• A weekly time log to track how you spend your time
• A vision and goal setting worksheet to orient your time
• A weekly priorities worksheet to focus your time
• A daily to-do list to plan your time

Sign up below!