How Has Becoming a Working Mom Affected Your Productivity, Energy, and Focus?

This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

How has your productivity, energy and focus shifted during “work” hours now that you’re a working mom? Have you felt that before kids you could have an unproductive day because you could just stay late at work or make it up on the weekend, whereas now that you’re a working mom those are last resorts?

On the flip side, how do you manage your energy at work so you have “something left” for your kids at the end of a draining day at work — whether it be an extra reserve of patience, a burst of energy to quiz them on spelling words, or even run around and do something mildly physical, like push a swing? 

Readers had a great conversation about this the other day — specifically, having “nothing left” at the end of the day for your kids after a draining day at work — so we thought it would be good to talk about it today. 

For my $.02, I’ve written about how the dinner/bedtime funnel often interferes with my naturally productive time (4-10 or so), so I’ve had to change my focus and energy a lot as a mom — and honestly it’s still something I’m working on. Getting up early is a great way to maximize your productivity if your kids are sleeping well enough that a) they aren’t disturbing your sleep and b) they will be asleep soundly enough to sleep through whatever noise you have to make to get out of the house — and neither a nor b is true of my kiddos!

My youngest hasn’t napped for almost two years now but I somehow am still trying to find the extra 2-5 hours I had those two weekend days when he napped, and now that my boys are 5 and 8 I’m trying more and more to have energy/patience/wit/charm left over for those evening hours. (Especially patience, though.) So… yeah. 

{related: how to work after your kids go to bed}

These are some of the ways working moms can manage their productivity, focus and energy during the work day:

• Holding meetings at a certain time because your energy is best then — for example, setting a 9:00 a.m. meeting knowing that you’ll probably otherwise get there late, catch up on office gossip, and surf the web for 30 minutes or more (or on the flip side, preferring meetings to hit during your afternoon slump).
• Putting like tasks together — this is OG advice from Getting Things Done (affiliate link). For example, keep a separate list of which phone calls to make, and then sit down to do them all at once. If you have errands to run, try to think of other errands you can do in the area so that you don’t have to go back twice.
• Working in intervals. Some people find that their energy is best managed this way; the Pomodoro technique is famous for setting 25-minute work periods with 5-minute breaks, but you may find that anywhere from 20–55 minutes works best for you to be more productive.
• Time-shifting low energy tasks to moments when you know you’ll be tired, or when you can pair them with another half-attention-required task (like, er, watching a CLE).

What do you do as a working mom to manage your productivity, energy and focus? What have you tried, and what has stuck? For those of you who work very long hours, I’d love to hear from you — as well as people who had to maybe shift from an office culture of very long hours to one with tighter hours.

Stock photo: Deposit Photos / CLIPAREA.