Well, I am feeling the pressure this week. Ultimately, I don’t really want to be just blogging for a living here - I have so much more I want to do with this business, and that of eSelfHelp. But at this point, it is a fairly critical component to the path to success. At the same time, coming up with quality content for the blog is time consuming… and this week everything is picking up steam! What can I do to get everything done, yet still keep myself sane and my kids from catching cabin fever? (more…)

I’m just posting to say that after the most successful week for this eMoms at Home blog ever, I am off this weekend for a big group camping trip with some of my best friends in the world, along with their families. Ironically enough, one of them is a work at home mom, and I didn’t even know it! I thought she ran her business out of an office!

 I feel blessed to have the work-life balance I have by working from home. Certainly, I could take off for a camping trip even if I had a real job. But I was the coordinator for the entire trip, and it would have been difficult to pull that off on “office time”.

I was commenting on another blog this week as to just how important it is to maintain work-life balance when you are working from home. It’s much easier to maintain when we work in an office, because it is so much easier to leave work ‘at work’. When the lines blur in the home, the effects can be disasterous, on both your business and your mental clarity and sanity! I speak from experience on that one…

More on this topic will start creeping into this blog as I take a personal turn in content - meaning that if we can’t keep ourselves happy and healthy, we certainly can’t keep a business healthy and thriving.

So I am off to have some fun to keep my happiness as a priority… have a great weekend everyone!

Yes, I have been having FOCUS challenges lately! The short Chicago summer is here, we have a new (well, used, but new to us) boat, and three very rambunctious and active kids who tend to bounce off of walls easily.

How timely it was to receive this emailed blog entry from Rosalind Gardner. The post is entitled, “Affiliate Marketing: Mixing Pleasure with Business” and is SO appropriate for these summer months when what I really want to be doing is taking my kids to the zoo.

I am writing about focus, or more specifically, Boredom, on the eSelfHelp blog this week - I’m creating fuel to keep me on top of my game even when the boat is calling my name, and the kids are going stir crazy…

Wow. I’m GLAD to see this topic get such great exposure. ReEntering the workforce after having kids is a hugely important discussion that needs to happen on a national - if not global scale. 

“Seeking to tap a pool of professionals who are of increasing interest to employers, Harvard, Dartmouth and other graduate business programs are launching executive-education courses geared toward women who have put their careers on hold to raise families and are ready to return to the professional world. The new courses aim to help women overcome the big gaps in their resumes with job-seeking strategies, and also to help bring them up-to-date on changes in their fields while they were gone.” Read the full article here. (And thanks to Elana’s FunnyBusiness Blog for pointing me to the article in the first place!)

I was able to fairly easily reEnter the workforce by doing exactly what I am doing now - by staying active in my career and the business community, and by keeping my skills up to date by running a home-based business while my kids were small. I had no gaps on my resume, was able to point to some great successes while I was working for myself, and was also able to apply what I learned during those 4 years to my new position. Most of all, it made me a more valuable employee because I had certainly learned how to keep myself motivated by being in a home office environment for so long!

Tags: ReEntering the Workforce, Work and Kids, Harvard, Dartmouth, Work and Parenting, Stay at hom moms

I’m going to think out loud here as I try to determine how the heck I am going to manage the upcoming summer. I am heavy in the trenches launching eSelfHelp. I have one more week of kids in school, then my 3, 6 and 11 year olds will be home full time with me. It’s also Memorial Day, and the official start of summer, in which I long to take my kids to the zoo, the ice cream parlor, downtown Chicago to Millenium Park, out on our boat and just for walks in the nearby forest preserve.

At the same time, I have a business in the earliest stages, and the foundation I lay now will be the key to my success later. I need to get into Chicago to meet with my friends who have been successful in their own business ventures to work with them to refine my business plan and strategy. I need to spend about 10 hours a week working on my consulting gigs, and need a large amount of time to concentrate on marketing the site when it is done.

What to do?! First of all, I think I need to frame this with a good question that is guaranteed to give me great answers. (Read more about empowering questions here). I’m really not coming up with any good ideas right now, so I will ask myself the following:

“What can I do this summer to guarantee that I will accomplish everything I need, as well as create a fun and rewarding summer-break for my children?”

My Answers::

• Schedule time weekly for a fun outing we will all enjoy. I will commit to this by putting it on my work calendar, and by having them choose where we go. This way I have the time set aside, as well as the leverage I need to ensure I do what I say I will do
• Add small commitments to my weekly commitment lists to do little things with the kids to fill in the time between big outings
• Buy the kids a good sprinkler, sidewalk chalk, and other outdoor games to ensure they have the incentive to go outside and play rather than sitting in front of the TV
• Find another mom who needs some time away from the kids and swap weekly babysitting time so that we both have a set amount of hours every week that we can count on to take care of business tasks and errands
• Sign the kids up for swimming lessons and schedule my tasks during these times so that I can be productive while I don’t have internet access
• Get organized with the kids and their chores by putting together a chores chart. By doing this they will take more responsibility for their home, and I will get a little extra time to work

Wow. I still get surprised sometimes by the power of a good question. Now, in the past I wouldn’t follow through on all of these things. but with my Mastermind Group in full swing - I am accomplishing more than I ever thought possible in a week. So by adding these things to my commmitment lists, I am guaranteed to make the most of the summer. And I’m absoutely excited about it now!

Tags: Work at Home, Summer, Kids, Summer Break, Kids at Home, Summer Vacation