The life of a working parent is full of errands to run and projects to complete at work.

Being as productive as possible during the day can allow you to get some well-needed relaxation time by the end of the day. Every mother deserves this time when they don’t have to worry about anything but their favorite show on the TV or curling up with a book. A simple few tweaks to your existing schedule can make a world of difference. The following are productivity hacks for both home and for work.

Set A Daily and Weekly Agenda

With children, there are plenty of practices and games that they need to attend on a weekly basis. Setting up a schedule that is clear for the entire family will help reduce any confusion as to which parent is picking up which child. Setting this up can allow you to plan your workday around your children’s schedules. Many offices now have flex schedules which allow people to come in early and leave early if need be. This can be a huge help once or twice a week for those who generally take the responsibility of taking children to their extracurricular activities.

At work setting weekly and daily goals can help keep you focused. One of the most important things a professional in any industry can do is realize the amount of work they can finish in a given period. This will allow you to give realistic completion times for projects and can allow you to plan accordingly when quite a bit of work has to be done. Set goals for the end of the week and try to surpass these goals by working smarter week after week. Increasing productivity on a monthly basis will have you in the front of the line for that promotion everyone has had their eyes on.

Caffeinate Strategically

There are plenty of people who use caffeine as a performance enhancer in their everyday life. There are those people who drink a pot of coffee per day and others who use a single-serve coffee machine when they need to perk up. Those people who are very sensitive to caffeine need to watch out for the amount they consume as this can increase anxiety and jitteriness which are productivity killers. If you tend to get extremely tired after lunch, make sure you have some caffeine to help you out or eat smaller meals throughout the day. Chart your caffeine intake and productivity to find the appropriate amount of caffeine you should be ingesting on a given day.  Remember, OnGo energy spray is the perfect caffeine buddy, it's perfect to "dose" and you can take it anywhere with you.

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Delegate Efficiently

Delegating chores and other tasks to family members is a great way to free up some time for you. Whether this is sharing meal preparation duties with your significant other or enlisting your teenager to take their siblings to school, there are plenty of options to do this. There is no reason that a child shouldn’t do the dishes after a meal especially if they are home all day while everyone else is working. This doesn’t mean throwing all of your responsibilities on the rest of the family but you should share some of the workloads.

Get An Early Start

Waking up early seems to get easier as we age with many working mothers having quite a bit of trouble sleeping in at all. This can be used to your advantage as the early morning can be a great time to visit the nearly empty gym or even a time to get ahead on some work so the day isn’t so stressful. Getting into work early will allow you to get more work done as there will be few if any distractions.

Above are great ways to increase productivity as well as free up some time for you. You owe it to yourself to be the best mother and employee possible!

Written by Natalie Bracco for Working Mother and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.