Monday Motivation :: Planning for Distractions

It hardly feels real to say it, but summer is right around the corner. My kids have 3 weeks of school left… and then… my silent work at home haven will transform into a chaotic messy disaster for three months straight. I both look forward to and dread summer. I love getting time with the kids, taking them out to Millennium Park and the Zoo and all, but they also eat me out of house and home and make working well… challenging, to say the least.

So it’s time to start planning for summer now. Last year my 94 Ways to Keep Kids Busy for the Work at Home Parent post was so dang popular it made it to the front page of Digg. In fact, it was so popular that it was the reason I spun off Shannon’s Seasonal Kids Activities blog. She focuses on kids crafts and activities that only need materials you likely already have in your home, like her recipe for slime, making Origami balls, and some super cute spring crafts.

But for me, keeping the kids happy in the summer is only half the battle. I tend to want to go outside and play instead of work, and I admittedly have a harder time focusing with all the chaos in the background. So I’m toying with the idea of coming up with some kind of summer work schedule. I’ve resisted that kind of structure in the past, but the business is getting to the point where I don’t know how else I’ll manage everything that is going on. So, Brandie, do you have any time management suggestions for us?

Today, though, the kids are still in school. And I’m going to milk every last minute they are there. I’ll get a little ambitious this week with Monday Motivation, and here’s how it works:

Step 1 - let us know what you are going to get done today (your to-do list, so to speak).

Step 2 - put it in a comment below or a post on your own site.

Step 3 - let us know what will motivate you to get it done - a reward, consequences, or whatever you need to think that will ensure you do what you say you are going to do. I’ve found that the public announcement and accountability is a particularly great motivator, but throw down consequences if you really need a kick in the pants to get stuff done! Unless, of course, you are working towards a new laptop too, in which case I think the reward is particularly motivating.

We don’t care how you get it done, we just want to support you in reaching your goals.

Today before I go to sleep I will:

• Set up a conference call with Lijit to get them set up on Sparkplugging
• Create a house ad for the ProBlogger book
• Get through the 252 emails in my inbox
• 3 loads of laundry

And by the end of the week I will:

• Have a project timeline in place for a new ‘Sparkplug U’ project I’ve been planning in my head for months
• Go for two bike rides
• Update my 10 Days to a Better Blog eCourse (which still says we’re ‘eMoms’, and still hasn’t been moved to the new domain yet!)
• Send an update email to my mailing list
• Make cookies for my hubby, our 10 year anniversary is this week!!

If I don’t have all of this done by the end of the week, I will go without coffee and tea for a week (Oh, I HATE it when I fail when I throw down that leverage!!).

So what are you going to get done today or this week?