Lisa Tanner Writing provides work at home mom productivity tips in her Balancing Diapers and Deadlines course. While I do not have my own business yet per se, as a member of the Home School Review Crew and being a military wife in addition to being a homeschooling mother and a member of several book review teams, I knew this course potentially could provide fantastic information and insights for my life. This online course offers valuable information for anyone who already works at home along with anyone who desires to work at home.
Lisa Tanner provides amazing tips for time management for busy moms. Her work at home productivity tips truly resonated with me on a personal level. Lisa Tanner states on her “About Lisa” page of her blog, “I’m a homeschooling mom of 8 who uses freelance writing, virtual assistance, and blogging to help pay the bills.” I love she uses her own experiences with her own family to demonstrate how her family utilizes her suggestions and ideas. We have four children – three sons and a daughter. Our youngest (and only daughter) just turned sixteen, and our oldest son is twenty-two plus we have a twenty-year-old son and an eighteen-year-old son who also live with us. So finding time for everything is imperative.
Lisa breaks the course up into seven units, which are broken down into smaller lessons. Action steps for each lesson provide bite-size pieces to help organize every part of your family’s life. From setting goals for your business and home to meal planning and involving your family in the business and more compelled me to really think about what business at home should look like. The units include:
- Welcome to Balancing Diapers and Deadlines
- Minimize Your Decisions
- Minimize Your Decisions: The Annual Meal Plan
- Sustainable Growth
- Growing a Business with Your Kids Around
- Boost Your Productivity
- Closing Thoughts
One of the areas I had been working on before starting this course involved meal planning. We have a son who works now plus is lactose-intolerant in addition to several nights we have band and strings practice. If I do not have a plan for dinner, it makes our lives difficult. So meal planning has become my friend and close companion. So the suggestions and tips from this section were constructive. I loved how Lisa Tanner provided 5 years of her annual meal plan in the course. This plan helped generate ideas for meals for us. This weekend I plan on devoting time to making out a yearly meal plan. Indeed, meal planning provides untold blessings both to our family and to our finances.
One of the most compelling parts for me involved the use of my phone/iPad. Recently I read a story online about a family who made it a point to unplug when they went out for dinner. As a result, an older couple sitting near them paid for their meal unexpectedly. In turn, this action prompted their family to do the same to pay it forward. I really loved this idea. As our family shops and goes about our daily lives, I continuously find it amazing to see parents allowing younger and younger children using technology primarily as a means of promoting good behavior. So I know I personally desire to unplug from electronics more and plug into my family more.
The other section I really found informative and thought-provoking involved ways to include our children in an at-home business. Obviously, with our children ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-two, some sections did not apply to me, but the ones for involving teens really reflected many things I already do with our children. For example, my third child and youngest son have been helping for roughly the past year with learning coding along with learning photography using our DSLR camera (although we have not put that into actual practice yet). I also plan on developing free items and items to sell eventually, which I plan to have our sixteen-year-old daughter, who is incredibly artistic, provide illustrations and graphics for in the future.
Some of the key points I will take away from this course include:
- Just because I can do something, does not mean I should!
- Let my children be a blessing to my business!
- It is essential to begin and end my day well.
- I can not DO everything, and that is okay!
- Communication is key
- My priorities will change.
- I need to remember God made each of us unique.
You can find Lisa Tanner Writing on social media at:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/lisatannerwriting
Instagram: https://instagram.com/lisatannerwrites
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisatannerwrite
Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/lisatannerwrite
Because my husband is only a few years from retiring, I know I want to come up with some type of at-home business now that will be able to supplement my husband’s retirement income, so this course has definitely been a blessing to take. So whether you already work from or whether you would like to start your own business/blog, check out Lisa Tanner Writing and Balancing Diapers and Deadlines for yourself.
Balancing Diapers and Deadlines for yourself.
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Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy 