How I balance work at home mom life with my freelance business

Join me for a realistic but productive day in the life as a creative entrepreneur and mom. I think it’s important to try to show you the reality of juggling both mom life and business building. I’m interrupted multiple times a day. Not every day goes as planned. Most don’t! And yes, it’s a lot of work. But the work I do is so rewarding across the board. I get to work with dream clients as a freelance copywriter, coach other freelancers and personal brands to build similar flexibility into their business model, and raise my babies.

Despite all the messiness, I still think that yes, you can have it all. You just need to have safeguards in place to achieve whatever “all” means to you. And it still won’t be perfect. I never want to sell the idea of perfection. This is about realistically living and working in alignment.

I hope this video gives you inspiration for the work-life integration that’s possible when you prioritize the right things in your business. Because there’s so much more to life than grinding for the weekends. I feel so lucky to have ended up here.

A productive day in the life isn’t what you’d expect

These days, life looks pretty sweet. I get to spend my days the way I want, sneaking in work things in between life things. Because that’s the way it should be: Life first. Work second.

And that’s what I want for all my clients too.

But I didn’t just fall into all this. It’s on purpose. It’s by design. 

I worked for years in my business to get to this point, but now that I’m here, I’m so glad I put my effort into the right places in my biz. So what does life really look like now? This post is going to show you a snapshot of exactly that.

Because if this is possible for me, it’s possible for you, too. I truly believe that.

A productive day in the life as a freelancer is flowy

A flowy routine works better each day than a schedule right now. Rather than stressing out about sticking to a rigid schedule, my days are more fluid lately. I’m still very much Type A and like my blocks of time, but there’s some flexibility that’s required when juggling mom life with running my online business.

I do get to coordinate focused and uninterrupted work with my husband, which I reserve for things like coaching calls and bigger client tasks. But then there’s more flowy time blocks that I squish into naptimes for tasks that can be interrupted, like filming and editing this vlog and attached blog post.

It’s funny because on the day I filmed the video to go along with this blog post, even my camera interrupted me with a dying battery. But it worked out okay because the toddler had 2 naps that day, which meant I had time to charge up and start over.

While writing this post, I’m sure I’ll be interrupted at some point too. Nothing is ever finished in a single sitting lately, but that’s okay. The point is that while I have goals for each day, there’s also flexibility. My business and life have systems in place that ensure things don’t get off track if a day gets derailed. I’ll share some examples of these with you below.

Time blocking for productivity

Throughout the week, I get time blocks that are coordinated with my husband for focused and uninterrupted work. These are in the windows outside of his typical work schedule. But then also more fluid time blocks when I’m on Mom Duty where I do things that can be interrupted, like create content. It’s okay if I have to pause because the toddler wakes up from a nap.

Develop habits for maximum productivity

I don’t know what I did with all my time before having kids… Wasted most of it, probably! Since having my first son, I learned what I call “Mom Speed.” It’s this superpower where suddenly I was able to accomplish the same tasks in fewer hours without sacrificing quality.

This is probably why time blocking works so well for me. The tight containers force me to focus versus letting things go and stressing at the last minute.

I wrote a blog post about developing productivity habits as a creative entrepreneur here. These are habits I implemented years ago and have continued to refine—I credit a lot of my business’ growth to maintaining these.

What counts as “productive” can change

The day I filmed the vlog that goes along with this blog post, I had a few things on my list. A productive day in the life isn’t just about how much work I can get done anymore. There’s always a mix of things on my list, especially because I’m the primary parent during work hours.

All this was my list for the day of filming:

• filming videos (not just the vlog… I did 2 others!)
• getting back to messages in Slack from my mastermind members
• updates to the tools and resources in their dashboard
• food prep
• move the toddler’s toys to a new designated playroom spot… officially giving up our potential living room…
• hang paintings in the baby’s room
• day-to-day chores like dishes, laundry, etc.
• daily movement: workout, family walk, outside play
• other things I’ve already forgotten

There’s always a lot going on, which means I while might not be the most “productive” with my work some days, the day was still productive overall.

At the very least, a productive day in the life includes keeping a toddler happy and healthy. That’s always a win.

Build in lots of buffers

The most important structural change to my work since having kids: Nothing is last minute anymore. There’s no such thing as a rush job. Everything needs to be planned ahead with the presumption that it may need extra time. Not extra hours, but time.

For example, I may intend to start and finish a project in the same day. But life never happens that smoothly. Instead of stressing about a deadline looming tomorrow, I know my actual deadlines are days or weeks after the time I dedicated to this project. At the time of writing this blog post, it won’t go live for another few weeks. These built-in buffers to timelines allow for the flexibility required.

A productive day in the life might not look the same as before now that I have kids, but it’s probably for the better. Planning ahead saves everyone involved a lot of stress by eliminating the need to rush or crunch.

A productive day in the life can change

At the time of writing this post, I’m 9 months pregnant. Baby 2 could show up any day now, and I’m also chasing my toddler around while running my business. Often, my daily routine changes to align with what the family needs that day while still prioritizing my work—I love what I do, so I want to make sure it fits in too. Typically though, a productive day in the life looks something like this…

5am – 6am early morning routine

Before the arrival of my son last year, I started my mornings at 5am every day to journal, reflect, and set intentions for the day.

Lately, my mornings still start at 5am, but they look a little different now. Often, I set my alarm to get up and work from 5:30/6am until 7:30/8am (before my husband clocks in for his work day and I’m on Mom Duty). But sometimes I just want quiet time before the world wakes up. Other days, the baby has decided it’s time for everyone to get up… So naturally, we do. Because he’s the boss.

But it’s not always like this: Some days the family sleeps until 6 or 7, and other days everyone is up and ready to go for the day.

The best thing is that my schedule isn’t set in stone. It’s fluid by design, because there’s more freedom here to let the day start without “falling behind” or getting frustrated because it’s different from one day to the next.

Ex. If I have a rough night with the baby, then I can turn my alarm off to get some extra sleep, and my biz won’t burn down.

Focused work before the family rises

A productive day in the life always includes at least a few minutes for myself. If I have time to focus early in the morning before the rest of the family wakes up, I try to take a few minutes to journal and sit before jumping into things. If I don’t get that quiet space until nap time, that’s when I’ll take a few minutes before digging into work. Mind first. Business second. When I “officially” clock in, I’m mentally prepped for business mode.

At this point, it’s work time. I’ll get my most important focused tasks out of the way first. Things like…

• content creation
• client work
• anything to do with strategy

Then it’s checking in with The Inner Circle members, my inbox, and setting eyes on the team’s (and my) to-do’s. This is just to put my finger on the pulse of what’s going on: Often I don’t take action on any of the emails or ClickUp yet—I just want to know what’s up or if I need to adjust my priorities for the day.

Mom Duty starts at 8am latest

This is the point where I switch into coordinating the house mode, because even though I have tasks for work, I’ve got life stuff, too… Walking our dog. Meal prepping, grocery shopping, coordinating playgroups, etc. 

I don’t spend a lot of time getting ready—usually I throw on activewear knowing that I’m going to work out at some point. Then typically we start on some chores after breakfast is wrapped up. This is one of the sweetest parts of the day. I move around the house with my little best friend following me—he’s very helpful right now. We make the bed, put a load of laundry on and bring up last night’s, hang more up on the rack so it can dry through the day. Tidy the kitchen, and put around getting all the little things done that make our days go smoother.

I love playing in my studio, strategizing and copywriting for brands that are going places. But I love playing with my little dude even more. He’s so curious, so we try to spend some time in the morning reading or playing learning games after the chores are done.

Some days we leave the house around 9 to run errands or join play groups. On days we stay home it’s baby nap time by 10/10:30am, which means it’s time for me to work.

Nap times are for focused work

The ideal time for me to work outside of my focused morning session (if I get it) is while B naps. Sometimes I have scheduled meetings at this time, but if not, it’s mostly smaller tasks, like coordinating with clients or the team. Wrapping up my day. Crossing things off my list.

Sometimes work during this time actually means working out, because moving my body is still a priority and even though sometimes I don’t want to, I always feel better after.

A productive day in the life prioritizes life

In the afternoon, we’ll do something fun like go to the park or set up the kiddie pool if it’s the summer. On rainy days, we go to the local indoor playground. We play until the baby’s tired if he didn’t have a long morning nap. But sometimes he’s in party mode and he might stay awake all afternoon and it’s just fun, fun, fun. Honestly, most days he’s like Let’s F*cking GOOO all afternoon, so we play until dinner and bedtime routine. Big surprise that my son is super high energy. 😂

I try to get dinner mostly ready early so we have lots of flexibility with how we spend our afternoons.

Around 4/5pm, I usually get a few minutes of hands free time to check in and wrap up my day. That could be communicating once more with clients or the team. Even though I have processes in place that keep things moving, I still have things to do to help projects and tasks move forward. But these are small… Giving the go-ahead on one thing. Adding my take on another. Double checking the status of a client.

I’m not stuck working through endless projects or having unnecessary back and forth with clients. Because I’ve set boundaries in place. Strategies. SOPs that keep me and the team on track without constant check-ins. 

And it’s all intentional.

Evenings are for me and the family

The dinner rush or gym night for me twice a week. We have play time and bedtime… doing the whole parents of a toddler thing. After B goes down for the night it’s free time for me and my husband. When I’m not pregnant (like right now) that means a glass of wine and my latest home project. When the new baby is here, that’s all going to change again.

Yes, it’s a lot in a day and I’d by lying if I said I wasn’t tired! But it’s good tired. Rewarding. I feel so lucky that I get to run my biz that I love around my family’s schedule. This is what I’ve worked so hard to have—to get to raise my kid and keep my business going. Then to relax at the end of the day.

A productive day in the life is never perfect

It’s honestly been a lot to manage the last few weeks, adding getting ready for baby 2 into the mix, homeownership stuff, and work. But we have safeguards and systems in place to make it all work.

For example, sometimes the toddler might nap 2x in a day, depending on how early he woke up or how long his naps are. We try to be flexible with his needs vs trying to push him to survive without a nap longer than necessary.

Things aren’t perfect. They’ll never be perfect. There are days that get derailed, but that’s okay. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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