There are a variety of web apps and services that can allow you to streamline just about every aspect of how you run your personal and business lives
Being a mom and an entrepreneur can sometimes feel like juggling twenty different balls at once. On the one hand, you’ve got all the usual requirements that come with running a business — completing tasks and assignments, managing stock, reaching out to prospects — and on the other, you’ve got to find the time to be fully involved in your child’s life.
Anyone could be forgiven for wanting to throw their hands up in the air and have a long nap when faced with the torrent of tasks and obligations that come with this kind of lifestyle. But luckily, there are a variety of web apps and services that can allow you to streamline just about every aspect of how you run your personal and business lives, so that you can keep everything ticking along neatly.
For business: testing and market research services
If your job involves selling a product, you’re going to need to invest a good deal of time in carrying out market research and beta testing. Fortunately, various online services exist which can go a long way towards automating this entire process and freeing you from the more tedious bits of work involved. Global app testing services are a great example of this, allowing you have an app tested and reviewed by people all over the globe, in a mere day or two, while you sit in the comfort of your home.
For life: financial responsibility apps for kids
Various apps and services exist which allow you to keep track of your child’s allowance, chores, and virtual bank accounts. Ingraining good financial habits in your kids is one of the best things you can do as an entrepreneurial mom — but it can sometimes be a bit hard to keep track if you’re relying on your memory, or an old notepad, to figure out how much your child has earned for a chore, or had withdrawn as punishment.
Apps such as Apple’s “Bank of Mom” allow you to keep track of your child’s virtual bank balance, as well as allowing you to track things like time spent watching TV, or playing video games. Running your child through the app with your supervision is also a great way of getting them used to the concepts related to good money management.
For business and life: task management tools
Both in your private life, and in your business life, you’re going to need to stay on top of all the various tasks and obligations that present themselves to you.
One of the best things you can do to stay on top of whatever life throws at you, is to use good task and project management apps which allow for easy organization and prioritization of all the different errands you have to attend to, as well as convenient reminders and all the rest.
Remember the Milk is one example of an effective and popular task management tool, which keeps things about as simple and straightforward as you could hope for.
Slightly more nuanced task management apps include Nozbe — which implements David Allen’s famous “Getting Things Done” system to great effect, and Trello — which is based around a visual “list” format that is ideal for managing team-based projects without conflict.
For business and life: time management tools
As an entrepreneur, you absolutely can’t afford to waste time during which you’re supposed to be working. This is true in just about all forms of employment, of course, but moreso for an entrepreneur.
It’s one thing to slack off for a few minutes when you’re a cog in the machinery of a large company, and have supervisors to scare you back to work. It’s another thing altogether to slack off when you’re your own boss, and the entire company sinks or swims depending on your actions, and no one else is there to hold you to account.
And for an entrepreneur who is also a mom, wasting time isn’t just bad for your business, it’s bad for your whole life, as it will mean you have less time to spend with your children or on genuinely uplifting hobbies or pursuits.
So we’ve established that mastering your time management is seriously important. So the next question is, what apps and tools can help you achieve this?
Fortunately, time management apps are incredibly abundant, and many of them are quite effective.
To give a couple of examples:
RescueTime is a service which sits in the background and monitors how long you spend on various websites and using various programs, and creates productivity reports for you. Toggl is a manual time-tracking app for determining how long you spend on various projects.
