When I saw that the trick of winning the day started with winning the mornings, I decided to delve into it further to understand what exactly went wrong with my mornings? Why I could not find me-time in the mornings, when many others had it? Suddenly I got my hands on these 5 magic mantras those could change the way I spent my mornings. So I changed few things, made a few tweaks to my schedule and I started getting more me-time while using these 5 magic mantras to make mornings easier.
Mom, my uniform is still in the dryer…
Ira, you forgot to tell me about your hindi HW…
Mom, I am supposed to take Ganpati cuttings to school today..
Hey honey, my meeting is preponed, I would like my lunchbox half an hour early…
Mornings are extremely crucial in the life of working moms. They are always pre-planned with extreme precision and no minute to spare. Situations like these turn a perfect morning into a national disaster. We easily get spiralled into extreme panic mode further leading to more disasters. Nothing seems to be in control and it all looks like a big chaos!
For many years, I dealt with mornings like an emergency in ‘The Situation Room’, fire fighting all the time, leaving me exhausted at the end of my morning routine. The idea of facing the entire work day after that was just torturous!
Then I came across these magic mantras, which literally changed my life and left me in more control of my mornings.
5 magic mantras for making mornings easier and get you more me-time
1. Get a kickstart the night before
You can control everything [prep for the morning cooking, lunch boxes, school uniform, school backpacks, home assignments, etc] from the night before. This was the most crucial step in making mornings easier.
I know you feel like hitting the bed soon, but trust me it’s extremely crucial that you spend at least an hour the night before prepping for the coming day.
Plan and highlight important things to be completed next day. Also, it is always easier if all the family members help to prep for the day to come.
2. Eliminate decision making from the morning routine
That’s why the night before routine is very important. Do not keep anything which needs decision making on the D day; tackle it the day before. If everything is planned then just the doing part is easier to be achieved in the mornings and less stressful on the brains. You get more control over your mornings and can easily get me-time in the mornings.
[Still not convinced? Then, click here: Why you should do the meal planning]
3. Get up before the household wakes
There is a peace and warmth that resides in your house in those early hours.
Get up 15-30 minutes earlier than the others. Grab some me-time with a cup of tea (or coffee, whatever gives you a kick) before the hustle and bustle of the day starts.
Believe me, its totally worth giving up the sleep for!!
4. No mobile for the first 2 hours in the day
In fact keep it in the other room. If anything is urgent people will call you, but unless they do you do not need to check any social media updates or other chat messages during this extremely important time of your day. After some days, your contacts will get used to the fact that you don’t check messages in the morning, so they’ll call for whatever they need.
[Read our blog to know more: Cut short these time eaters]
5. Work allocation to family members
You can do an appropriate work allocation amongst the family members during these extremely crazy mornings so as to get all the important work done. As Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico says ‘we must create our own support groups’. Start with your own near and dear ones. Tell them what needs to be done and how they can help everyday. Build it into their morning routines.
Also read: Household chores your can delegate to your guy to get more me-time
So, there you go… You should pin up this list on your fridge as a daily reminder! It is quite possible that even after all this, you would still have some emergencies in the morning. But, since most of the part is already taken care of, you are much better equipped to deal with that emergency with repose. That itself is such a big relief, I don’t have to tell you that!
So girls, are you ready to get control over your mornings?