Balancing Work and Family - Tips for Working From Home During School Holidays | 091

If you're working from home, the school holidays can feel like

trying to juggle two full-time jobs.

So I'm sharing some tips to help you stay on top of work without

missing out on family life.

In this episode of Architecture Business Club, the weekly podcast of the

small firm founders who want to build their dream business in architecture

and enjoyable freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment in what they do.

I'm John Clayton, your host.

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We can help you with everything from podcast strategy and launch

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Or if you're interested in being a guest on this show, email, John.

That's JO n@architecturebusinessclub.com.

Now let's explore how you can approach your work during the school holidays.

I, Hey there.

Thank you for joining me today.

Now, working from home during the school holidays can feel hard, especially

if you've got younger children.

Now, at the time of recording this episode, it's the first week of the

school, summer holidays in the uk.

And both my children are teenagers now, so I'll be honest, they're pretty

self-sufficient, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel guilty about not

spending time with them when they're off school and I'm still working

during the school holidays and.

I am not comfortable leaving them completely to their own

devices for the six week holidays.

And actually in the case of my son that means devices literally because

he does like his screen time, shall we say, you know, anything with a screen,

video games, that sort of thing.

He's a fan of that.

And.

Left unattended, he would happily spend all day on screens.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that there are considerations

and concessions that I need to make when my children are not in school.

When your children are younger, juggling childcare and your work

during the holidays can be even harder.

So I thought it might be helpful to share a few quick practical tips with

you that just might help you navigate the coming weeks without going stir crazy.

So the first tip is to accept that productivity will look different.

During the school holidays, I think it's okay to not get as much done

as you would during term time.

Perfectly understandable.

I'd focus on consistency, not perfection.

Define what good enough looks like for you and your business

during the school holidays.

I would consider that you design a flexible routine that has some boundaries.

So you could use something like time blocking if that works for you.

Could be that you alter your working hours to suit.

So it could be that if you normally work a nine to five.

Monday to Friday type of day could be that you consider

having some, some early starts.

Maybe you start early and get some time in before the, the kids are

up, which might work well if you've got older children, or in my case,

teenagers that don't necessarily get up quite as early as they used to.

You could try split days.

So a split shift where you do a little bit of work in the morning and maybe have

some time off in the middle of the day, and then you catch up on some work later

on in the evening or whatever works for your family, and communicate that plan

with the rest of your family and your clients to let them know if there's gonna

be any different arrangements during the school holidays, and give yourself

permission to change the plan as needed.

You might think.

That a split shift is the way to go, that that could work for you.

And maybe after a few days or the first week, you might think, oh

geez, this just isn't working.

It's absolutely fine.

You can change the plan.

Just I would go with your best current thinking, give it a try, and then

just adjust accordingly as you go.

I'd involve the kids in the plan, so talk to the kids, get them involved in helping

to set that daily or weekly schedule.

And you could agree on some signs or signals to let them

know when you are on or off work.

And that could be as simple as if you are fortunate enough to have

a dedicated office space at home.

If you have your own study or room where you work on those work from

home days, it could be as simple as a sign on the door, something like

that, Explain why your work matters.

Because if your kids understand why your work is important

they'll respond well to that.

If they understand that you're not just pushing them away.

You're not ignoring them, it's just that you need some time to work on

your business during the holidays.

Prioritize ruthlessly.

So this is about picking the essential tasks to work on each day.

It might be that you just pick one to three essential tasks that you work on.

You focus on getting those tasks done first, and anything else

that you get done is a bonus.

You could use something like the 80 20 rule.

It's like, uh.

PIOs rule, PIOs principle.

I think that's right, and we have mentioned this in previous episodes,

but it's about looking at what is the small amount of work that you can

do that drives most of your results.

What's the 20% that matters?

If you focus on that, maybe there's a lot of the other things you've been

doing that you don't actually need to do during the school holidays.

You could try using micro work sessions.

So try having short focused sprints of work.

So this comes back a little bit to this idea of looking at your routine.

I mentioned earlier about perhaps testing out time blocking, and these short

sessions could be as short as 25 minutes.

It could be a little bit longer, it could be 45 minutes, an hour, maybe

up to an hour and a half depending on.

How long your kids can be self-sufficient for.

So this is gonna be somewhat on the age of your children, how self-sufficient

they are, and I would give that a try and, and look at having a

series of sprints throughout the day rather than one sort of seven, eight

hour big block of working hours.

Try splitting it down into smaller sprints.

I would suggest that you plan any deep work, so any work where you really need

to concentrate those highly cognitively demanding tasks where you really need

to think and you don't want to be interrupted, try and plan that for times

of the day when the kids are occupied.

So it could be when they're having screen time, when they are

in the lounge watching a movie.

That could be a really good time.

If you know that they are watching a movie and you can leave them for

90 minutes or maybe up to a couple of hours, they're gonna be engaged

watching the TV for that time.

That's a great time for you to get on with some of those important tasks

where you need to work without being interrupted or to minimize interruptions.

You can take breaks between these bursts of productivity, do

allow for breaks for family time.

And if it helps, you could use things like timers, accountability tools.

So it could be something like, um, uh, a Pomodoro timer.

There's other tools, I think there's one called FocusMate that you could

try out or just simply a, a clock or a time or whatever works for you.

But, um.

I mean, this is something that I did today, actually this very

day of recording this episode.

My kids didn't go out anywhere throughout the day yesterday, and I thought

it'd be really good to get them out.

So we had a family dog walk together.

I did a little bit of work first and then I broke off and I had a good hour long

break where the kids and I went out and took the dog for a walk and it was lovely.

Really good.

And I feel like.

We've all had our daily dose of vitamin D, our fresh air and a bit of

exercise, and we spent a little bit of time together and now that means

I can do some, some guilt-free work for the next few hours, um, knowing

that I've done that full for my kids.

And, uh, my dog enjoyed it too, I think.

Another tip is to, to batch your work.

So particularly if you've got some, some easy stuff that you can batch, uh,

admin and emails, any light design work that you might be doing, batch those

together for the times of day when you're more likely to be getting interruptions

because you don't want to waste your high focus time on low value tasks.

So again, that's coming back to the idea that.

Plan your deep work for the times of day or the periods when you're

less likely to get interruptions.

And then the other stuff that's less important, that's less

cognitively demanding for you.

The easy stuff, do that the rest of the time.

Just slot that in.

At other times when you, you more likely to be interrupted.

You could also use tech to simplify things if you're not already

utilizing things like calendar, booking links to schedule meetings.

Templated emails, so you can create standard emails that you

use to send to your clients.

You can save them, you, well, either simply in a Word doc,

if you are a Microsoft user.

If you are using Google apps like Gmail, you can actually save those as template

emails in your Gmail system, and that's a really quick and easy way to be able to

respond to emails much faster than before.

What you're trying to do is to just remove that friction and remove and

reduce the back and forth between you and your clients wherever you can.

The next thing I wanted to mention is outsourcing.

This is something that we've talked about on a couple of other

episodes, more specifically on those episodes about outsourcing your,

uh, drawing and drafting tasks.

But you can consider hiring freelance support for other tasks too.

So it could be that you get some support with your drafting work with drawings.

It could be that it's admin.

It could be that you have a VA or virtual assistant that's helping you

with some of those admin tasks to.

Check up on your emails on your behalf to keep on top of your

inbox to schedule meetings for you.

Or it could be marketing tasks.

Maybe you are taking some time off during the holidays with your family and.

You want some support to keep on top of your marketing.

Maybe you've got a, a case study you want adding on your website.

Maybe you've got some posts that you want to go out on your LinkedIn

account, so that's something where you could get some, some support with.

Even a small amount of outsourcing can help win back a valuable

amount of time and your time.

It's your most precious.

Resource that you have it, it's the only thing you have that's finite

you, you're never gonna get it back.

So outsourcing definitely is a really valuable way to win back some of your

time and be transparent with your clients.

So tell your clients that your working school holiday hours,

that you may not be quite as available or responsive as normal.

Because of that, if you set those expectations early, then most people are

are understanding about this as long as it's communicated clearly to them and

you've managed and set those expectations.

And most importantly, make sure to look after yourself.

It's very easy to try and juggle.

Everything.

You know, as I mentioned in the intro, it can feel like you're juggling two

full-time jobs, uh, two full-time roles as a a parent, um, particularly

if you're the primary caregiver and the owner of your business,

and to try and juggle all of that.

But you really do need to look after yourself because I think that it's

very easy to try and cram in as many hours and and to try and maintain

the productivity level that you have outside of the school holiday

period, during the school holidays.

And on top of that, spending this extra time and giving this extra

attention to your children, your family.

And if you're not careful that that's just the road to burnout.

So I would say don't sacrifice your sleep or personal downtime.

You need to allow time for you as well.

You need to have some r and r yourself during the school holidays, so even a few

minutes a day, even a short amount of time could make all the difference for you.

So make sure that that is built into your day.

You're not just managing projects, you also are managing your own energy

levels throughout the school holidays.

And finally I would reach out to other people.

I think that when you're going for a period that feels hard, and for many sole

practitioners and business owners that work from home, working during the school

holidays doesn't feel like a holiday.

It can feel hard.

So I would talk other people that are in the same boat as you.

You know, have a, uh, have a chat with, with some of your friends, your

peers, your connections, discuss your experiences with them and find out

how they are managing their work.

How are they?

Getting through the school holidays and balancing family time with time on

their business too, because they might have some great ideas and tips for you

based on what's been working for them.

And also, I just think that it feels like, you know, you're not on your own.

If you talk to somebody else about your experiences, you know,

it becomes a shared experience.

You're not tackling all of this on your own.

So I don't think the school holiday should mean that you have to

choose between work and family.

It's about finding a rhythm that works for you.

So I hope you found this helpful.

If you have, then please share it with a friend who is

working from home this summer.

And if you've got your own school holiday survival tips, then

drop me a message on LinkedIn.

Uh, there's a link in the show notes to my LinkedIn profile, so

reach out and connect with me there.

If you haven't done so already, I would love to hear from you.

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Remember.

Running your architecture business.

Doesn't have to be hard and you don't need to do it alone.

This is architecture business club.