Here are three recent discoveries which are helping make my crazy busy life a little less so:

• Ask your kids for help. OK, so this advice is hard to take if your kiddo is still a baby, but I think it definitely applies to toddlers and older. Here is one example of what I mean: Cooking. I cook a lot and it’s one of the household chores that takes a bunch of my time. I used to do all the cooking at night, after my daughter went to sleep (a few times a week, so that there would be fresh dinner for next day or two). I tried to optimize the time with her for stuff like reading or playing or doing some art together. Recently I’ve started to get her involved in the cooking and it’s a life changer on so many levels. She actually has fun and is learning about food and cooking, which I think is really important longer term. I get a helper and a companion (she is getting pretty good at peeling carrots!) We do something together and create something together, which is awesome. And I don’t need to stay up til all hours at night cooking. Serious win-win and I highly recommend that you find something in your busy life your kids could help you with.

• If you think it, write it down. You know all those to-dos swirling in your head at 2am? Yep, those. I adopted a new habit recently which is helping a lot: If I think of something I need to do or remember, I write it down, immediately. By immediately I mean immediately, literally. I either type a note on my iPhone, send myself an email or put it on my to-do list. Sure, this is not a perfect system and things fall through the cracks, but what this accomplishes is it literally removes these to-dos from my head. Less swirling, less 2am wake up sessions in a frenzy.

• Develop one or two calm down routines. When I am really stressed or overwhelmed, I go for a walk. I actually go for a walk every morning before my family wakes up but in addition, if I am stressed out, out I go. But this isn’t always practical — maybe I’m at work and can’t leave at that moment or it’s Boston winter outside and I am just not up for braving another snowstorm. So I’ve found a few other tiny rituals that send the de-stress vibes to my brain. One is making a cup of tea and drinking it, hopefully while reading a magazine. It takes five minutes but it makes a huge difference. Another is emailing or texting or calling a friend (OK, not really calling — I’m not a phone person). If you read research on happiness, you will quickly learn that doing something nice for someone else makes you happier. If I am freaking out, I try to find something nice, even if really really small, to do for someone else. Sometimes it’s just a “Hey, I am thinking of you, hope you’re having a good day,” email to a friend.

What are some of your favorite de-stress methods or tricks to make your crazy busy life a little less so?

When we got home my husband told me that this was the first time, in a very long time, that he saw me sitting down anywhere for more than a few minutes (long car rides excluded.) He told me that he looked over at me sitting on the grass next to my friend and it struck him that he almost never sees me sitting still.

You know what? He is absolutely right. If you exclude the times when I am working at my computer or sitting in the car, I can’t say I sit very much. Of course I sit down to eat but I wouldn’t count that as sitting still. I think what he meant is sitting still like you would if you were watching TV or reading or just chillaxing.

And I don’t do very much of that. My life is in constant motion, usually at fever speed, and the only time I really stop moving is when I go to sleep (and sadly not for very long). Besides the fact that this probably isn’t a good idea long-term, I also don’t want to be setting an example for my daughter that resting isn’t a good thing to do. The other day we were talking about wishes we would ask a genie to grant us and one of hers was “a machine that would do all the cooking, organizing and working so that mama can take a rest.” I am insanely touched that she would use her wish to give me more rest but I also want to make sure that she knows that while juggling work, family and a bunch of other stuff is challenging, that it’s OK to take a break from time to time and sit still.

Do you make time to chill out and be still?

I want to feel like an awesome mom.

For this Mother’s Day, my kiddo and husband are plotting something and I think they are planning to make me breakfast. I will love that, not the least because I do 99% of the cooking at home and I do gripe about how nice it would be to be served some food. We are also doing a dinner together with all the grandmas and it’s one of my favorite meals we have as a family — I love celebrating all the moms.

But what I really really want is to feel like I am a rockin mom and that’s something that I need to feel from the inside. My biggest struggle as a working mom is that I constantly feel like I’m not doing a great job: as a mom, at work, as a wife, friend, daughter. Last night stuff at work was blowing up and I needed to answer some emails while helping kiddo do homework and practice piano. I could see her looking over at me and I hated that I was on my phone, but at the time that was what I needed to do. But you can bet I didn’t go to bed feeling like an awesome mom. (Of course I know she will be OK and we will make up the time together and life is life and not perfect. But it doesn’t make it easier.)

When I talk to my working mom friends this comes up a lot, in fact, more then the guilt discussion. They feel torn in lots of directions and they don’t feel good about themselves. I am sure moms who don’t work have similar issues just with different circumstances. In fact, the other day one of my friends, who is a stay-at-home mom, told me that she feels like she should be doing a lot more with her son than she is, things like outings and creative projects. We all have high expectations of ourselves, it seems, and maybe that’s why it’s sometimes difficult to feel like we are rocking in.

So that’s my Mother’s Day wish for myself: To give myself a break and to appreciate that I love my kiddo and I do my best to be the most rockin mom I can.

Have you found a way to not be hard on yourself or are you in my camp? Share your thoughts in the comments and have an awesome Mother’s Day!

I am in a constant struggle with my email.

There is too much of it. I feel overwhelmed by it most of the time, and just barely in control of it on the best days. I spend too much of my day answering and reading email and while I know it’s something that I have to do — for work and for life — it’s not something that makes me feel good or productive enough.

Over the years I’ve tried to develop email habits that will help me tame the animal. Here are a few of them:

• Don’t check email first thing in the morning. This is my favorite one. When I manage to stick to it, I am more productive, my day goes better, and I am much more focused.

• Check email at set times throughout the day. My worst email days are those when I leave my inbox open throughout the day. Then I can’t avoid the temptation of checking new mail when I see I have some and it just completely kills my productivity.

• Have a process for going through your inbox. The first thing I do is clear out spam or the too-numerous emails from the various places I’ve shopped online. My second step is to skim through content emails - those that I would just read, like newsletters from sites I’m interested in - to see if I want to read any of them. I delete all others and leave the few to read later. (I leave them in my inbox while I’ve also seen advice to put them in a separate Read folder). Third, I go through and reply to emails that require a quick response. I leave emails that require more work for later and try to have one dedicated time a day when I respond to them.

• Take an email hiatus. I’ve only done this once, when I went on vacation for 5 days and literally didn’t check my email once. I had an outgoing message on my personal email as well as my work email to let people know and I set my own expectations accordingly. I literally made myself take a mental email break and it was awesome. A friend of mine has taken a hiatus like this before but went a step further. His auto-reply to anyone who sent him email during it was to let them know that he would be deleting all email for a week of his hiatus. If it was important, he asked people to resend it. He said it worked amazingly well.

Few other recent pieces of advice around email that I’ve read and found useful are from Zen Habits and Boston Mamas.

Do you struggle with email? What are your favorite ways of taming the email monster?

Should I bring my laptop?

My initial answer was absolutely not. It’s been a crazy few months and I really need a break. My brain needs to disconnect and I need to spend time worrying about whether we all have enough sunscreen on instead of checking emails. Out of sight, out of mind.

At the same time, there is something to be said for being able to check email once a day (and I truly would only limit myself to once a day) and not having a panic attack when I’m back and there is a mountain of emails here to greet me. I’ve done this once before on vacation and thought it worked well. It also prevented me from stressing about the crises I didn’t know about because well, if they happened, I would know about them. Out of sight doesn’t always mean out of mind.

My husband suggested that I don’t bring a laptop but instead go to the business center at the hotel to check email if I absolutely can’t resist the urge to do it. (We’re traveling abroad so checking it on my phone is not an option. Otherwise I think that’s what I would do.) I’m considering this idea.

But tell me, when you go on vacation, do you disconnect entirely or do you check your work or personal emails from time to time?

So this got me thinking about the weekend life juggle between family time and friend time. Starting with our Friday night sushi and movie night tradition, weekends are when my husband, kiddo and I have time to spend together. A lot of times we’re definitely guilty of trying to fit too much in, but the main ingredient is us hanging out together. Once in a while we succeed at leaving an afternoon open, and as unexciting as this sounds, one of my favorite times is when the three of us just hang out at home together, without rushing off to another activity, however fun it might be.

But I know my daughter likes to have playdates so I try to arrange them for her during the weekends. If scheduling stars align she has a playdate while I get some cooking done on Sunday afternoons, and then we’re all back for dinner together as a family. Lately I’ve also started to take her and a friend somewhere for a few hours — to see a movie or make necklaces together. This way she and I are together and she gets to have a friend there as well.

I know there is no perfect solution and I know moms who stay at home and those who work all face similar scheduling challenges. I’m curious how you guys do it in your family: Do you designate one day on the weekend as family day and don’t schedule any playdates or other activities? Or do you just fit things in around each other?

There was a lot of phone calls, emails, Twitter browsing, and looking over my to-do list, but it’s not far from the truth to say I wasted a bunch of time. I hate this feeling. If you’ve had it you know what I mean. So this blog post is part of my strategy for dealing with it. Because the way I see it, I could either call this a day (which I think would be a mistake, although not always, just today) or try to get some stuff done and quick.

Starting as soon as I hit publish, here’s my plan for coming out of the productivity rut:

• Turn off my Wi-Fi. It’s maybe the oldest trick in the book but I rarely make myself do it. Without email, Twitter, Facebook, NY Times and other distractions, I know I will get more done. Or at least something done.

• Take a tea break. I think there needs to be a physical reset from wasting time to being productive. Since I can’t change where I am right now I am going to take a mini break and make some tea. And drink it.

• Put away my to-do list. It’s sitting here and scaring me. Truly. I know a ton of stuff I need to do and don’t need to be reminded right this second.

• Get something done right this very second. I’m going to cheat a little and say that writing this blog post is a to-do that I’m getting done. It is, of course, but I’m only going to count it half way. So as soon as I’m done I am diving into the world of spreadsheets because one of my unpleasant-but-must-get-done to-dos is hiding in there.

OK, wish me luck. More importantly, share your tips for climbing out of a productivity rut in the comments!

All of my friends have busy lives of their own so it’s understandable that it’s tough to align two (or more) schedules and find time to hang out together. It’s definitely not for lack of trying: I have strings of text messages and emails with friends where we’re attempting to get together only to be derailed by a work meeting, almost-forgotten playdate, a business trip, or something else. Still, this doesn’t help the fact that I love spending time with friends and I have too little of it to spend with them.

Thinking about it, I realized there were a few somewhat creative things I’ve done recently to make more time:

• Joint errand running. OK, so this is much less fun than say getting dinner at one of our favorite places, but a friend and I recently spent a few hours running errands together. We stopped for some frozen yogurt in between and had time to catch up walking around and in the car.

• Post-bedtime quick drink. Going out to dinner at 9pm on a weeknight is a no-go, but my friend and I recently decided to go grab a quick drink after we put our kids to bed (with both of our husbands staying home with the kiddos). It was just an hour or so but completely worth it.

• Business catch up & playdate. One of my friends just started a new job and wanted to talk about a few work-related things. We could find no time to meet during the week and didn’t want to take time away from being with our kids on the weekends. So he came over with his daughter, who had quite a nice time playing with mine, while he and I caught up on all stuff work-related.

What about you: Are you able to make enough time to spend with friends? Do you have any creative ideas to share to make it work more often for the rest of us trying to juggle a million things? Please share!

One of the best ways I’ve found to add quality time to our crazy busy hectic life is by setting up family traditions. It really helps to have some regular times and things we do as a family that we can all look forward to and that are non-negotiable. (Well, I’m being idealistic. We’ve skipped many a tradition because of schedules or because we simply forgot or were too tired. But the intention is there.)

Here are a few of our favorite ones:

• Family movie night. Every Friday we eat dinner together and then watch a movie. It’s my favorite part of the week and I look forward to it all day Friday. By the end of the week I’m wiped and I think my husband is too. It’s awesome to know that we have this completely relaxing family chill-out time waiting there for us.

• Sunday morning in-bed Sudoku. Sunday mornings our daughter comes into our room around 8 (yes, she hangs out in her room until then, lucky us!) and plays Sudoku on the iPad while we get to not jump out of bed like we do during the week and sort of all chill out together. It usually turns into a family Sudoku solving situation, which is awesome.

• Living room dance party. We don’t have a regular set time for this but at least a few times a week my daughter and I break out into a crazy dance party in the living room. (Confession: Britney Spears is a frequent guest performer.) Truly the best five minutes of the day when we do this.

What are your favorite family traditions or mini-traditions?

Ahem.

To be honest, it kind of stopped me in my tracks. Of course I like the weekends — who doesn’t like a break from the work grind and a chance to chill with family? But what struck me is that my kiddo has this notion in her head that I don’t like to work. Or at least don’t like to work enough that the reason I like weekends is because I don’t have to work.

Without getting into yet another stay at home or work debate (which oh, I hope we are done with!), I’ll say this: I like to work and I’ve never imagined myself not working. (Well, to be honest, I have imagined myself on a prolonged vacation somewhere warm and tropical, but that’s another story.) When I read Leah’s post, about whether she’d still choose to work if she won the lottery, I was nodding my head. I work for more than money, although money is an important necessity. I work because I love the challenge, building something, creating something, working with awesome people, keeping my brain buzzing and my sanity relatively intact.

Sure, my job is stressful and there are bad days and days when I come home and tell my kiddo how tired I am because of work. But I am clearly not communicating to her the positives about working and I need to, because want it or not, we are the first role models our kids have. I do think I am more sensitive to this because I have a daughter and because I am acutely aware that she is going to have to be making some tough choices about family, career, and some kind of juggling arrangement that works for her. I want to do my best in sharing my experiences with her and I think being honest is really important, but I think I’ve been over-sharing on the “OMG I am so tired from work!” front and under-sharing on the “OMG this awesome thing happened at work!” front.

In general, do you find that you complain about work or being tired from work to your kids? Or are you pretty balanced in sharing the good stuff too?