How to Work After Your Kids Go to Bed

Let’s be honest —when you’re trying to get work done — young kids can be very distracting, making it seem nearly impossible to check items off your to-do list, especially on tasks requiring more focus and brain power. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be your most productive self with younger kids, it simply means you need to employ a bit of ingenuity.

Getting Work Done With Young Kids

There are plenty of hacks about how to get work done when you have young kids, but most moms swear by embracing being a night owl.

If you’re already using nap time or quiet time to get work done, just consider how much more you could accomplish when you have hours of uninterrupted focus and some much-needed quiet time.

Prioritize Your Focus Work

You don’t have to wait until the evening to do all your work. Instead, you only need to use that time to do your focus work — the kind of work that requires you to have deep concentration to complete. Responding to an email here and there wouldn’t necessarily fall into this type of work, but if you need to brainstorm ideas for your at-home business, need to do research, or create content, consider leaving these tasks for the evening hours. Being able to differentiate between your focus work and your daily tasks, means that you can get your entire to-do list done in a day.

Consider Rescheduling their Bedtime

If your kids are under ten and still want your attention consistently, you should consider rescheduling their bedtime to give yourself more time to work. For example, if they’re currently going to bed at 9 pm, set an ideal bedtime for 7:30 pm and incrementally get them to bed sooner.

Start by getting them ready earlier and adjusting their bedtime by 30-minute increments until you’ve achieved their ideal bedtime.

Do Your Chores Before Bedtime

Try to do anything that can be a throw-and-go task while your kids are prepping for bedtime. This can include getting dishes ready for the dishwasher, doing a load of laundry, picking up toys, and packing away general little messes accumulated during the day.

You can do this as your kids wind down, watch a show, or when they start brushing their teeth and putting on their pajamas.

By the time they’re ready for bed, you would have completed the most time-consuming tasks of most moms’ nighttime routines.

Delegate Older Siblings

While it’s not ideal to have your kids in charge of each other, this can be a very effective way of freeing up some pre-bedtime hours. For example, if your kids are arguing over whose turn it is to use the iPad, you could first have them relay the core components of the argument to an older sibling, who can then relay it to you for the final say.

Doing this can help kids learn to resolve issues among themselves but can also ensure you have long periods of uninterrupted time.

However, this only works if your eldest kid is old and mature enough to handle being the interim judge or go-between. If not, consider implementing the next tip.

Embrace Rewards

Although this can also be used as a daytime tip to get you more quiet hours, rewards, also known as bribes, can help you go a long way when readjusting bedtimes.

Try getting kids excited about sleeping earlier by gifting them a dollar — or some other reward you can afford — whenever they’re ready for bed on time. By the end of the week, you can take them to a dollar tree or thrift shop to spend their rewards.

If the dollar isn’t in your budget, consider creating homemade gift cards and vouchers for things like their favorite sweet treats, dessert before dinner, or extra time playing their favorite games.

Segment Your Evening Tasks

Although you’re embracing being a night owl, you don’t want to be working from dusk to dawn while your kids sleep, as that’s going to make you less productive and attentive during the day. Instead, work until your bedtime and try to extend that as far back as feasible.

For example, if your bedtime is 11 pm, you’ve got 3 hours 30 minutes to get work done — if your kids go to bed by 7:30 pm. Given the short window, creating a to-do list with more of your focus work is essential. Give yourself a set time to complete each task on this to-do list. Ideally, each task shouldn’t take longer than an hour unless you only have one or two tasks on your to-do list, in which case you can commit all your available hours to do that task.

Then set a timer for each task to keep yourself on track.

Of course, working 3 hours every evening may not seem like enough time, but if you’re willing to embrace the routine, you’ll notice that 3 hours of momma-focus time is far more than 8 hours of interrupted work.