How To Increase Productivity In Your Homeschool

Have you read our recent Victorious Kids book, Multi-Task Disaster? If you haven’t, you can check it out here.

Not sure what Victorious Kids are? Read our Victorious Kids backstory here!

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Do you know how to increase productivity in your homeschool?

Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off? Having raised and butchered our own chickens and ducks, I can tell you that this popular saying is only a slight exaggeration. When you initially chop the head off of a chicken or a duck, the nerves in their bodies don’t realize they are no longer connected to the brain, and they react. Spastically. It is quite a sight to see. I’ll let you in on a secret – running around like a chicken with its head cut off is no way to increase productivity in your homeschool.

In this microwave world we live in, people often feel pressure to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Never stopping to breathe, always feeling the need to get a million things done all at once. This not only causes undue stress and exhaustion but, believe it or not, it also lowers productivity.

What about the pressure?

Women and mothers feel an added pressure to multi-task and get absolutely everything done at once. Especially working mothers and homeschooling mothers. I’ve been there, guys. The pressure is real. Before you know it, you’re trying to keep house, cook dinner, keep babies calm, and school older kids, all at the same time. Like a chicken with her head cut off.

Signals and Brains

Electronic signals have to take turns to travel through the same circuitry area. This is true for electronics and brains. No matter how you square it, at the end of the day you can only do one thing at a time. You may be able to switch back and forth from one thing to another quickly and have the appearance of muti-tasking, but that is all it is – the appearance.

Why is knowing this so important? If you don’t you will be never be able to put enough focus on the most important things that need to get done to actually be able to say at the end of the day I got stuff done.

Let me put this in a real-world example.

You show up to the office and promptly get to work doing the highest priority item on your list. About 10 minutes in, a coworker shows up with a question that takes 10 minutes to answer. You spend 5 minutes refocusing on your original task. You get about 10 more minutes into your work and the phone rings. Another 20 minutes later, you’re hard at work again on the one thing you’re supposed to do.

Another 5 minutes go by and an email you need to respond to comes in, so you get that shot off before you forget about it. Before you know it, an entire hour has passed…but you only have 25 of that on your particular task. That’s less than 50% effective focus on that one really important work item.

Mothers can definitely attest to this problem.

How on earth are we supposed to answer an email or make an important phone call with a couple little kids constantly calling out our name and needing our help?

I fall victim to this multi-tasking disaster more often than I would like. I like to pretend that I am super woman and therefore I can keep 7 kids schooled and calm while singing along to my Spotify playlist and cooking dinner. Do you want to know how often I mess up dinner or snap at my kids while trying to do all this? More often than I’d like, that’s for sure.

So what’s a mom to do?

Our newest Victorious Kids book illustrates this in a child-friendly manner. In the book, Nicole tried to do everything at once in an effort to save time. This backfires in an amusing way. The lesson is simple. Doing one thing at a time actually increases productivity rather than decreasing it. Even as I type this, it seems counter-intuitive. But when I get my head out of the superwoman cloud and come back down to earth, I have learned first-hand time and time again (and again…and again…and again…) that while focusing on one task at a time, the day goes better.

So next time you are feeling the pressure to DO IT ALL, take a deep breath and relax.

10 Steps to Increase Productivity in Your Homeschool

1. Make a list of things you need to get done that day.
2. Prioritize that list in order of importance.
3. Go through and accomplish your list one item at a time.
4. Check off items you have completed.
5. Feel free to add or rearrange items on your list as needed.
6. If you run out of day before you run out of list, relax! This is why you prioritized your list, remember?
7. At the end of the day, move the items you didn’t complete to the next day’s list. (I know I ALWAYS have items left on my list at the end of the day)
8. Look around and smile at a job well-done. You’ve done it, momma! Now doesn’t that feel great? Eat a well-deserved cookie. Or carrot stick. Whichever makes you happier.
9. Now that you’ve had such a productive day, you can get a head-start on tomorrow’s list! If you want. Or you can go binge-watch Netflix. Because moms need fun too, am-I-right?
10. Sleep well knowing your kids are watching your example and learning how to have peak productivity in their own lives.

I know when I focus on one task at a time, I am happier and much less stressed. And as a result, so are the kids! Cause if Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Our home, and our homeschool, are much more peaceful places when I stop trying to do it all.

Not only will your kids learn this important life skill by watching your good example, but you can help them grasp this lesson in an easy-to-understand manner by reading them the new Victorious Kids book Multi-Task Disaster. This book illustrates the dangers of multi-tasking in a humoursous way.

What tricks have you found to increase productivity in your homeschool?