As we head into the Summer holidays, many parents are going to be faced with juggling work and childcare.

Here in the UK holidays tend to be anything from two to six or even eight weeks off from school. This can be a logistical and financial juggling exercise if you're a busy working parent, who only gets four to five weeks holiday a year.

It's not practical to take all your holiday in one go, especially over a longer Summer holiday.

This creates a challenge when planning work around family responsibilities:

• paying for holiday clubs or holiday childcare;
• alternating parental time off, unless you're a single parent;
• relying on grandparents or friends to cover childcare;
• working from home, if you don't already;
• taking unpaid time off.

How can you make the most of both work and holiday time, when you're trying to juggle both?

Your choices may depend on whether you work for yourself, work from a traditional office or work from home and your children's age.

Boundaries

When you're working, let the family know and create holiday routines for them. There's no reason why they can't help around the house, clean and tidy their rooms, wash up, put clean clothes away, while you're working. I know! In an ideal world!

Be clear from the start with clients and colleagues as to when you're working and when you're not. If they know you're on holiday, they're less likely to contact you or expect a reply. Set your Out of Office message accordingly.

Stop feeling guilty you 'should' be working when you're actually on holiday. This is your time to relax, recharge your batteries and take a break from work.

Avoid working when you're actually 'on holiday'. Unless it's a quick check of your email to keep on top of your Inbox or pre-empt any problems. Enjoy quality time with the family and taking a well-earned break for yourself.

Plan

WHAT needs to be done?

WHEN are you going to do it?

PLAN your work time AND family time. You want to spend quality time with your family and avoid feeling guilty you should be working or stressed about how much is on your to-do list when you're not working

Depending on the age of your children:

• Get up early to get a couple hours of uninterrupted work before they wake up.
• Work in the morning, then spend the rest of the day together.
• Spend a couple of hours in the evening catching up, when they're in bed.
• Work a whole day or few days then arrange a family day.
• Share childcare with friends and family. Grandparents often love to spend time with their grandchildren and vice versa.
• Makes plans with friends and other working parents to share childcare. You can all have a few uninterrupted hours during holiday time.

Give them activities to do or take them to places where they're occupied with activities, puzzles or games while you can work, even for an hour or so. Swimming pools, play parks, trampolining centres offer supervised activities with space where you can sit and work. They may want to do some of these activities with you, so don't miss out on active family time being distracted by work.

Plan ahead to reduce the amount of work (if any) you'll need to do while you're on holiday. Clients, customers and suppliers are also likely to be off at this time of year, so your workload may be less.

Prioritise

Be realistic. Don't attempt to squeeze the same amount of work you'd expect to get done in a full working week into three or four days.

Stay focused and be selective. You can't do everything so prioritise what's on your list.

Select the 'most important' things you need to work on. What's the minimum you need to do to keep things moving? You get better results when you spend your time focusing on the right things.

A few focused hours is a far more effective use of your time than being distracted or trying to juggle work around family commitments. You're more likely to end up feeling guilty, overwhelmed and distracted, as you split yourself between work and family.

Identify the key tasks and actions you need to get done and allocate the time to do them.

Set time limits on tasks. When you have a limited amount of time, you'll get things done quicker and be less distracted. You could get a lot done in one or two hours a day, leaving the rest of the day clear for family time.

If you're heading off on holiday in the next few weeks, start planning now, so you can feel less stressed getting organised and actually take time to relax.

How do you manage your time during the longer Summer holiday? Let me know in the comments.

Read more:

Managing and prioritising to-do lists. (Blog post)

Manage your email while on holiday (Blog post)

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