Where to Find Time for Creative Work (a mother’s experience) – 2. Continuation

How to become more organized? How to have time for everything if you care for a little baby? Where to find time for everything besides household chores? Several ideas from a mother of a 1-year-old tot. (Continuation. The beginning is here.)

Feasible Tasks with a Floating Date

The best way for me to secure the accomplishment of some task is to set a deadline. It can be next week or the following weekend, or the two hours when my hubby or mother are ready to spend time with our son.

But if I failed to fulfill what I started doing during that time, I am glad that at least a part of it is done (after all, I am an extremely busy mother ). In such a way, an arrival of the baby  freed me from the illusion that I should have time to do tons of things and accomplish everything quickly. Now I just enjoy the process not worrying that the process can be dragged out . As a result, I manage to do more!

To do more not getting tired it is also useful:

• to divide large work into many parts;
• to work for 10-20 mins (or until you are tired) at some task and then move to another one;
• to do what your soul desires (a certain part of large work) at each certain moment;
• to try to restrain your perfectionism, i.e. to enjoy any, even the tiniest, results and not to long for reaching an unreachable ideal.

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Not the most favourite activity, to tell you the truth…

«To Turn the World Upside Down»

One more secret of high productivity and good mood is to always do onlywhat you like. Of course, we all have to do tons of things because it is required and not following our personal “hot” desire . How to cope with it? The answer is simple: you should like the thing which has to be done. For myself, I call it “to turn the world upside down”.

Usually either tiredness or boredom (or they both) do not give us an opportunity to enjoy any kind of work. It is easy to fight boredom – just find a loophole for creativity in the routine work Invent in the process of work and you will notice how the unpleasant task is fulfilled.

What one can invent to wash the dishes quicker? Much time is lost when running from the table to the sink with dirty dishes? May be, you can bring all the dishes to the sink using a small table on wheels? By the way, such a table will be very handy when having tea with guests. And the little one can be driven on it like in a car… How much fun there will be!.. Thinking in such a way, you have not even noticed how you have washed all the dishes! Voila!

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That is also an idea

Strange it may seem but to win over physical tiredness is almost as simple as to fight boredom – with the same method! Imagine: you have come from work without any strength and suddenly you learn that something you have been dreaming about for a long time has happened. How do you feel now? Where has the tiredness gone? The secret is simple: your attention has been switched over to another topic. The energy goes where the attention goes. From tiredness (as usual it is not real physical tiredness but just emotional strain created by the monotony of thoughts) to something cheerful. It is important not to be obsessed with tiredness and with anything in general (the thought stuck in one and the same leads to unnecessary tension). The best way to “turn the world upside down” is to learn to switch your attention over from tiredness to creative work”.

Find Like-minded People

You have lots of ideas and plans but all of them stay only as dreams? All your time is absorbed by routine work?  Find like-minded, creative people among the parents who are as busy as you.

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After Anastasia and I had become mothers with only a 3-month difference, in a very short time such words as “idea”, “creativity”, “handmade” started appearing  in our e-mails to each other… Exchaging e-mails in such a way, we encouraged each other to make our ideas real quicker. As a result – in just a couple of months this blog was born – Parents’ Ideas.

«And what about the baby?» – you will ask. Why have not you mentioned the day regimen and specific examples of how to combine care for the baby, household duties and the hobby? What can be said here? If everything is fine with the first item of this article, the solution to any task will find you itself .

We will be happy if you share it with all the ready-witted parents in the comments and articles of this blog!

Natalie

Next time a reader of our blog will share with us her idea on what to do with diapers and advertising booklets.

Illustrations used in the article:

Children’s Cards

* – S. Byalkovskaya, A. Sazanov. 1957; ** – B. Semyonov. 1970; *** – I. Kuznetsov. Turnip. 1955