Our Mommyhood

Posts Tagged ‘Mommy Must Haves’

By Mommie V, Staff Writer, My Little Slice of Mommie Heaven (@mommiev1)

The previous posts in the series talked about the philosophy (link to that post) underlying the tools and an online to-do tool (link to that post) to use to manage your lists. Next up in the discussion: The Calendar.

Outlook? Google? Outlook? Google? I first started using Outlook since it’s attached to my email at work. For several semesters it was very helpful, and it even helped me to prove that I did, indeed, have 176 advising meetings over two semesters one year. I could put my classes in as a repeating appointment, I could color code them and I could print out a weekly calendar.

Then I had a kid, moved down the street from my mom and we started trying to figure out how to coordinate schedules easily.

We tried to use Cozi. While Cozi will let you import any kind of calendar you want into their calendar tool, they don’t let you export your calendar to anything else. So there is no way to sync changes between my Outlook calendar and Cozi.

My solution was to start to use Google calendars. I made a MommieV calendar and a Dr.V calendar. The Dr.V calendar could be shared with selected colleagues and/or students trying to schedule advising appointments. The MommieV calendar could have personal and family events and could be shared with my mom. I could select to view them both at the same time, so I could at least see everything, but the sharing could be kept compartmentalized if necessary.

By Julia Magnusson, Staff Writer, It’s Not Like a Cat (@notlikeacat)

My Maya ring sling used to be my must-have item with a baby. It worked great for most of Max’s first year and for Ben’s early months.

But for Ben, my second baby, the ring sling just wasn’t quite as useful. I am constantly leaning forward or crouching down (or crouching down while leaning forward) to help Max with something or to pick up Max. Ben didn’t feel as secure in there and I never had both hands free, as I was trying to keep him from falling out.

Imagine my glee when he was finally big enough to ride in the Ergo baby carrier. You can get an infant insert to wear a baby in an Ergo, but I preferred to wait until Ben was big and old enough (four to six months is the recommended age). Ergos retail for about $90 (price varies depending on style). With comfortable, padded shoulder straps and a wide, padded waist strap that sits on my hips, the Ergo is a great way to secure my baby to my front or back.

I was even more gleeful when Ben was ready to ride on my back. The Ergo is so comfortable. When we go to the grocery store, onto my back he goes. I can carry groceries and herd Max (or carry Max, or put Max in the cart, or whatever). I can hike with Ben on my back or wear him while I walk Max to daycare. It’s quick and easy to put on and put him in. If he falls asleep, there’s a nifty hood that can go up over his head to support it. My back, shoulders, waist and hips don’t hurt when I wear Ben in this carrier. I even still wear Max now and then and he weighs almost 35 pounds!

I even wear Ben on my back in the house sometimes, if he is fussy and doesn’t want me to put him down.

Best of all—and this is the real reason the Ergo is a mommy-must-have, I confess: I can ski (cross country) with Ben on my back. I love to ski. First major snowstorm? I was out there with Ben dozing on my back, skiing around by the river with my husband before we picked up Max from daycare (at which point Ben went into the Baby Bjorn and Max went into the Ergo, so we each carried a child, although for the last two blocks I wore both children, which I do not recommend unless you like skiing while wearing more than fifty pounds of very small boys).

When we taught Max to ski this year, I wore Ben the whole time. He took his morning nap on my back, in fact, while Max figured out how to ski. Ben is quite happy back there and loves when I go “fast” (the “fast” I go with a baby on my back is not at all like the “fast” I go without him on my back, but he thinks it is fast, which is really what counts!). He shrieks with glee and babbles happily away the whole time, if he’s awake.

Not only does the Ergo help in my daily life, but it’s enabled our family to enjoy many outdoor winter outings.

Plus, Ben keeps my back warm when we’re out in the snowy woods for hours. What more could I ask for?

By Mommie V, Staff Writer, My Little Slice of Mommie Heaven (@mommiev1)

As a teacher, I was off for two weeks around the holidays. I am now back at work preparing for a new semester. Finding myself with limited time and a long to-do list, I realized the productivity tools that I use to keep myself on track actually seem to be working.

I have had a neurotic tendency to obsess about time management, organization and personal productivity ever since my life started getting complicated. When I first started teaching college, I had a reasonable workload, a few advisees and life was grand. Then I became a Division Chair and my workload became increasingly unreasonable; I was the only advisor for students wanting into a popular program and work life suddenly became more complicated.

Then? I had a baby. Enough said.

So I thought I would present a summary of the productivity tools that I use. The funny thing about personal organization is that it is very personal; if your system doesn’t work for you, then you won’t use it and it won’t work. By trial-and-error, this is the system that I have developed. It relies heavily on the use of technology that not everyone has access to. I am still tweaking the parts that need to be fine-tuned (see below).  But overall it seems to be working, so I thought I would share.

The previous post in the series talked about the philosophy underlying the tools.  Here I discuss one item essential to any organization system – and even natural to people who don’t use a system – the To Do List.

This is probably the basis of most people’s organizational system, second possibly to the calendar (discussed in the next post.)  Even people who don’t keep a calendar, however, tend to write themselves to-do lists, so that’s how it ended up top on the list.  For this function, I use a website called ToodleDo.  Most of the functions are free to use and if you think the other functions are helpful then they may be worth a small investment to you. Other websites also offer to-do list capability, one popular one is Remember The Milk.

The benefit to ToodleDo, for me, is the use of contexts. I discussed the use of contexts in the previous post. Generally, it’s a way of organizing your task list so you only see the items to do in the time/place related to those items. So you’re not looking at “bake brownies for the bake sale” sitting in a work meeting and “edit the suppliers memo” when you’re at home with the kids.

In ToodleDo, you have the option of adding a context to each to-do item. You can then sort your list by contexts, so all of your @home items are grouped together, all of your @work items are grouped together, etc. I have two different work offices on two different campuses. I have an @Tech campus context and an @Downtown campus context. I used to go to my office Downtown and leave with the nagging feeling that I was forgetting to do something there, that I would remember as soon as I got to my car, or back to my other office.

See, you usually think about things you need to do when you are someplace other than where you need to do them. (Otherwise, you would just do them then, right?)  The problem is that when you change contexts, you have also changed your thoughts enough to not be able to remember what you were thinking about – and what you were thinking that you needed to do. Rather than have to search through your entire to do list – and have your eyes glaze over and miss the one phone call in the entire list when you have time to make a phone call – use contexts. With the online programs, it’s incredibly easy.

You can add contexts when you first type an item onto your list, or after it appears in the list; a simple drop-down box helps to change the context. A tab at the top or just clicking on the top of the context column sorts your entire list by contexts. Have two minutes to knock out a phone call? Look at the @phone list. Want to get one of your emails out of the way? Check your @email list. You could even have an @blog posts to write context, so when you have a minute to write you can check that list for posts you need to work on.

One of the best benefits of ToodleDo came when I got my new phone. (I got a huge discount on it, so it wasn’t as expensive as it looks.)  I downloaded the Toodle Droid app, which allows me to access my to-do list from my phone. I can still sort by folders or contexts, I can still add new tasks or check off the ones I’ve completed.  Just remember to hit the “Sync” button to upload the items you add on the phone to your online list, or the next time you look at your computer they won’t be there yet. If you don’t have a smartphone, you can access your to-do list anywhere you can access the web. You can also print your list off and take it with you; I found portability of my to-do list difficult when I was using a planner. I would forget to put it in the diaper bag, then when I had time to do something, like make a phone call, I didn’t have my whole planner and therefore the phone number I needed.  Having your to-do list on the web does mean you have to access the web to update it.  I have Toodle-Do as my home page on my work computer now because I use it so much.

Yes, there is something very personally satisfying about writing out your to-do list by hand and crossing off the items one-by-one.  However, it’s difficult to then reorder them, to comb through to find the ones that are the top priority. Once you get addicted to the many ways ToodleDo can sort your to-do list, you’ll never go back. It helps your focus immensely. You can sort by due-date, so when you sit down to your computer or start your day, you can see what needs to be addressed immediately.  You can sort by priority, so the Top priority items are in front of you. It even creates a Hotlist, which takes into account both due date, priority, and whether you have starred an item, and creates a list of those items which need to be addressed immediately. If you don’t know where to start, this function on your list can definitely help.

If you like the idea of using contexts to order your to-do lists, but you also want the capability to just look at the items due today or this week, Toodle-Do is your best bet.  I love doing the Mind Dump and getting all my to-do items onto the list so I know they are there, then only looking at the ones due today.  There, that looks do-able!

By Jill, Social Media Editor, Hagler Happenings (@HaglerHappening)

If your kids bring home as many school papers as mine do, then you’ll appreciate this DIY project. I can’t tell you how much easier (& more organized) life has been since I made these books. I no longer have baskets & tubs full of every stinkin’ paper my kids bring home; with 3 kids in school I have a lot!

This project is easy and cheap. It’s this cute and oh-so-functional ‘book’ to keep school papers in.

Instructions

Get 5 portfolio folders (without the clippy thingys). I got mine for 15 cents each.

Cut 1 of the folders down the middle. This folder will be your cover. Fold the remaining 4 folders backwards.

Place the cut-folder cover on top & below the 4 bent folders. Put the cut edges of the cover on the opposite side of the folds.

Take it to a local printing company to have it spiral bound along the edge opposite of the folds. This cost me $3.

Now, decorate and label it!

Use each pocket for every month during the school year – with 1 pocket to spare. You can take a picture of your child during each month and tape it next to the name of the month.

Here is what all 3 of mine look like now.

I plan on doing this every year for all three kids. This way, they will have a cool (one of a kind) keep-sake-type-thing at the end of every school year!

And it only cost me $4.00! How cool is that?!

Now, go make some with your kids and let me know how it goes!!

By Mommie V, Staff Writer, My Little Slice of Mommie Heaven, (@mommiev1)

Have you ever been somewhere and thought, “I need to do X when I get home”? And then forgot all about it? Working mamas, ever been sitting at your desk knowing there was something you needed to do, but your entire to-do list relates to home items?

This is the first post in a series on Mommie Productivity. As I began to write the posts about the tools that I use to try to keep things straight, I realize that I rely heavily on a particular philosophy/system of personal productivity. Explaining my use of the tools will perhaps be easier if I first explain the system – or, my version of how I have adopted and use the philosophy behind the system.

I first read the book Getting Things Done by David Allen when I first became an academic administrator. Lots of people had recommended it. Lots of geeks and scientists use it. People devote entire blogs to implementing it. Most people on the web refer to it as GTD for short, and everyone has their version of how to “do” it that works for them.

I honestly didn’t find that it helped my productivity any at the time. Sure, my huge planner looked nice and organized, but I didn’t see an impact in my ability to actually, you know, get things done. So I abandoned the system and didn’t give it another thought.

Until I had a baby, went back to work  and found that I really wanted to limit my wasted time at work to get back home to my snuggly little wee one. So how can I become more productive? Suddenly I realized that a selection of the concepts in the GTD system were helping me to be productive, both at work and at home.

Helpful Concept #1: Contexts. This is the aspect of the system that addresses the questions that open this post. You spend your life in different contexts. Shouldn’t your to-do list be organized in the same way? What’s the point of looking at a long list of to-do items that requre a computer if you’re not near a computer? Or a list of work to-do’s that bury the one item you need to work on at home?  A single phone call buried in a list that includes “buy peanut butter”? It’s no wonder our eyes glaze over when we look at a task list; it’s hard to sort out what we need to do given the time and place where we are and the amount of time available.

Allen’s solution is to organize your to-do list by Contexts. @Home is a separate list from @Work. @Phone should list your phone calls and @Computer might list tasks requiring a … okay, you get the idea. There are electronic methods of doing this (covered in the next post) or you can just devote the next page of your planner or notepad to a different context.

I thought the idea sounded convoluted and ridiculous when I first started trying to organize my task list in this way. At the time I was single and a workaholic, and I was pretty much always near a computer and/or working, so I didn’t really need to organize things in that way. Now that I have to try to accomplish tasks in small snippets of time, and I am trying desperately to keep home and work life separate, it suddenly makes tons of sense to me. Funky Mama Bird wrote a post once about all the hats she wears – it might make sense to have a different to-do list for each of those hats.

Helpful Concept #2:  The Mind-Dump. That’s what I call it, at least. The heart of Allen’s productivity program rests on the idea that your mind can really only hold a few items in attentive memory at a time; the rest will be forgotten. If you want to truly remember something, you need to write it down and put it someplace where you will come across it in a time/place (context) where you can deal with it. Everything; write it down. Once a week, or more often if it works for you, you gather up your post-it notes, your scraps of paper, your emails and voice mails and half-done lists and you “process your inbox”. You go through all the items and put them on context lists or figure out what needs to be done with them.

I loved this part of the system. I’m never far from a piece of paper. If I am, I use my phone. Have a thought? Write it down. Don’t have to spend the effort and energy to remember it.

I had an “inbox”, i.e. a wire tray on my desk at work, and I had a notepad in my planner.  Between the two of them I collected lots of little pieces of paper.  I would process twice a week, once on Friday morning to make sure I wasn’t forgetting to finish something important by the end of the week, and once on Sunday evening to plan the week ahead.

I haven’t been as diligent about this part of the plan lately.  I’ve been really bad about trying to keep things in my head.  So you can imagine I have been horribly bad about forgetting things also.  When I get like this, I get anxious, my blood pressure goes up and either my kid or I don’t sleep well (sometimes both).  I’ve started carrying a small pad of post-its in the pocket of the diaper bag, one in my work bag and one on the kitchen counter. When I get things out of my head and down on paper, I feel SO MUCH better. You know the items will be dealt with as you “process” and put things on your contextual task lists.

Helpful Concept #3: Next Actions. Do you ever write something on a to-do list and keep skipping it? Go back and look at that item; is it really just a task? Allen makes the distinction between projects, which require multiple steps and individual tasks that he refers to as Next Actions. Anything you write on your context lists should be Next Actions.

I really believe that there has to be some psychology behind this concept. Even if there isn’t, I know that it works for me. If I write “Schedule a meeting for X”, I manage to skip that item on the list time and time again.  It’s too big, and the way it’s written, too amorphous. What is really the thing to DO there? Call the secretary to schedule the room? Write an email to see when people are free?  If you want to be more productive and get things done, write your task list so it’s a list of things to get done.

I suggest giving the book a read, since I have really only lifted a few relevant ideas and explained them in my own way. The next few posts in the series will outline some tools I use to be more productive using some of these helpful concepts.