Biting Off More Than I Can Chew, What's a WAHM To Do?Do you ever start a project and about mid way through it say... "What in the world was I thinking?"
I found myself in that predicament awhile ago. One of our sites was in need of a redesign for a long time... for many reasons - the main reason being the Content Management System we were using. It was not url friendly and did not mesh well with SEO. I searched and searched and just could not find one that gave me the kind of control that I needed or wanted. All were too limiting so I made the decision to go back to html and shml pages to manage the content and pages of the site as opposed to a CMS. And considering that the site had close to 1500 pages, this was a major undertaking.
I had a very large job in front of me, something that actually could take up to two people doing this full time for two weeks to complete. And, as a typical WAHM (work at home mom), I don't have a staff of two extra people to dedicate an entire week's worth of their work time to do this. (Most of my staff are contracted employees) Nor, could I afford to pay two people for full time HTML coding, when I am the only one budgeted for HTML code work.
My solution was to divide and conquer. Instead of getting overly frustrated and to the point of giving up before the entire project was done, which, in the past I have done and regretted it.... I divided the project up into many parts and only completed a certain amount of the project each day. I made sure that I also stepped away to work on other projects. This not only kept me from getting burned out on the existing job, but it allowed me come back to the large task at hand with fresh eyes.
I was able to hire a couple people part time to do a part of the project that didn't require any special training or knowledge of html to do.
If you have a large project, before you start, make a game plan and try your best to stick to it. If you piece it out and spread it out over several days or weeks (depending on what the project is and time line required to finish), subcontract out what you can afford, if necessary, you'll find that it will be much more doable and won't be as unmanageable as you may have thought.
Cyndi Webb is the Founder and President of Moms Network -
www.momsnetwork.com - an organization dedicated to the promotion and success of Moms in business. Since 1997 she has promoted and worked with thousands of work at home moms in coaching and guiding them in how to help grow their businesses. Over the years Moms Network has evolved to include more than 15 websites offering free resources to moms from all walks of life, the Connecting @ Home print magazine and the annual Celebrating Moms Expo which attracts thousands of moms in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Cyndi makes her home in Minnesota with her husband and two children.
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