It’s no big secret that any working mother has a lot on her plate and it’s often said we’re expected to work as if we don’t have a family at home and expected to run a home as if we don’t have to work. It’s a lot and after I returned to full-time work 6 months ago, after our first daughter turned one, it’s been a real struggle to balance both. With this post, I will go over what I’m using to help me overcome this feeling of being overwhelmed, what tools I used and how it's all going.
“Working mothers are expected to be supermoms, but we’re only human. We can’t do it all without feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.” — Arianna Huffington, Founder of The Huffington Post
My main gripes…
I love this quote, it validates the way I’ve been feeling and after watching way too many tiktoks, I know I’m not alone. But feeling supported isn’t going to solve my problem of being overwhelmed. Although it does make me feel a helluva a lot better about it.I started to think about what changes I could make to ease the pressure from both responsibilities, without having to give up working.My husband, daughter and I took a month off to visit my family and our friends in the UK. A long way to travel with our then 15-month-old from New Zealand, but that's a story for another day. During this trip, I took the opportunity to change up what wasn’t working for my mental load and returned home with some ideas.I knew I needed a way to organise my frazzled brain, I’d forgotten birthdays, and appointments and felt I was falling behind at work because I simply couldn't keep it all in my brain. That's when I went down a productivity YouTube rabbit hole and discovered the PARA system from Tiego Forte’s “Building a second brain”.
What is PARA?
PARA, stands for:
Projects
Areas
Resources
Archive.
It’s an organisational framework used to effectively categorise and manage information and tasks for improved productivity and clarity developed by Tiego Forte. I’d highly recommend reading his book but this YouTube video by Lucas Prigge also sums it up darn well.
After reading Tiego’s book and watching fellow productivity expect Ali Abdaal’s YouTube videos, I wanted to give this a go. The biggest pull for me is the clarity outcome, if I could find a system of capturing all my tasks and thoughts at any time. My brain would be free for some deeper thinking, a pretty valuable headspace I need as a software engineer.There’s plenty of other useful information in this book, such as the CODE:Capture, Organise, Distill and Express.Once I feel more comfortable Capturing the data I need and Organising, I can move on to the other principles he talks about in his CODE framework, but for now, I’ll concentrate on the PARA system.
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How am I doing it?
It didn't take me long to see Notion is the tool most productivity nerds recommend for PARA, so that seemed like the logical place to start. I already had an account but I honestly just used it to write down a few meeting notes and it was an unorganised mess so I tidied it up and created my system.There are so many great resources online on how to use Notion effectively, how to create amazing dashboards yourself or you can buy pre-made ones.I decided to create one from scratch following Simon from Better Creating YouTube series. This way I can understand how it all works in the event I want to make some changes later on.Other than Notion, I’ve been using Todoist to capture most of my tasks and Zapier then pushes this into my Notion task inbox. I found Notion is too slow on my phone to capture these tasks so plugging in another tool solved that problem.
So, how has it been going?
I’m only two months in so I suspect a follow-up post will come about this as I settle more into it, but so far so good.I’m finding capturing my to-do list in one place for literally everything has been the biggest game changer. I’m slowly training my brain to trust the system but it's a mind shift that will take a while, one day I want to use this as a true second brain.Since implementing this framework a couple of months ago, I’ve already found it helpful. Setting up my areas so I can quickly add handy links and make notes to easily find them again has been amazing, especially for work. I’ve been able to pull up notes really quickly with Notion’s global search and find what I’m looking for instantly.
I’ve also tailored my dashboard in Notion to better suit my needs, for example, I’ve created a Birthday database that gives me a place to store all my friends' and families' birthdays and write down gift ideas. Taking all of this out of my brain.I also added a dedicated space for my stand-up notes, meeting notes with my manager and a weekly menu. You wouldn't think I could forget what we were planning on eating that week but I do, now I just list the 3 or 4 recipes we’re making and know they’re there when grocery shopping or cooking time comes. It sounds so simple but often the little things add up to make a big difference.
In summary…
Overall I’m really happy with the new system, it’s given me some more headspace I was craving and I’ve kept it up after two months which is a sign it’s working. Would I recommend it to other mums? Yes, but you have to commit to it and it won't work if you’re not willing to let go a little and trust the system. I’m still working on that part but we’re getting there.If you've made it this far, well done! But also I’d love to hear about any more tips and tricks fellow working mums have used to cope with the overwhelm of managing both home and work lives.Follow me for more musing’s on Productivity, Front End Development or mum life ✌️