This article is my entry to@JonicaBradley Writing Prompt #17: Distraction.

When I first read of this writing prompt, I immediately had a thought of joining cause this "distraction" is literally part of my daily struggle to be a Work From Home Mom.

Let me site some of the factors that affects my productivity in my daily working experience at home.

Household Chores

While work from home is a big advantage to some because they can multitask and can do their household chores during their work hours, to me, being a working from home mom with three kids can be chaos at all times.

We just had our stay-out helper 2 months ago. Before that, when the pandemic has started March last year till June 2021, I work from home and take care of my three kids at the same time.

My shift starts at 4:00 AM Monday, and then 6:00AM from Tuesday to Friday. Since I am working from home, I usually set my alarm 30 minutes before my work's start time.

• In the morning, as soon as I have completed my Start of Day Checks in my work, I will grab a quick break and will go to the kitchen to prepare for our breakfast before the kids woke-up.

  I usually cook a lot in the morning so that I don't need to cook again for our lunch.

• After breakfast, I'll have to clean the dishes first and then ask my two bigger kids to take a bath, then go back to my work afterwards.

• If everything in my work is quiet and smooth, I will take another 15 to 20 minutes break to fix our bedrooms.

• After my 2 kids took a bath, it's my toddler's turn. So I will take another 15 to 20 minutes break again to give my youngest son a bath.

• I will take lunch break at 12:00 noon. This time, my husband do the dishes after our lunch, so I have nothing to worry about and can go back to my work right after lunch. My husband will leave right after he washed our dishes and go back to our store. Sometimes, he will take a nap first specially when he has "MARKET" schedule. He goes to the market around 3:00AM in the morning to buy veggies, meats, and fruits which he sells in our store.

• My shift ends at 01:00 PM during Monday while 3:00 PM during Tuesday to Friday, so I usually do the cleaning and laundry (twice a week) after shift.

Household members

I have three kids, 11, 7 and 3-year-old child. They are my company the entire day. It is very undeniably that if you have kids at home, it's not impossible for them to impose a fight. You'll just suddenly hear them arguing, crying and screaming.

Furthermore, sometimes at the middle of your meeting, you'll just suddenly hear them laughing out loud, talking at a very loud noise, or throwing their toys and food everywhere (too stressful isn't it?).

How about when your husband told you great news about your neighborhood that tested positive in COVID-19? This can trigger a long conversation that you'll not even notice the time that passes by and your shift is about to end already, yet you still have work that needs to accomplish for that day.

Also, there are times that my toddler will approach me and ask a non-ending questions. After you answered his first question, there will be follow-up question and another follow-up question until you don't even know how to answer his future questions.
Those distractions are actually impacting my productivity at work. I loose my focus to whatever I am doing, I lose my focus to the topic, I lose my focus and sometimes having hard time to grasps with the topic whenever I am having an ongoing call or ongoing conversation with my colleagues or Boss.

Noisy Environment

Aside from the noise of my kids, I also have to deal with the outside noises during my working hours.

This happens often. Our neighbor has 3 dogs and whenever there are people at their front yard, the dogs (all of them) will bark simultaneously until that person leaves. I am so annoyed by this to be honest. Those are big distractions for me because you cannot even hear your own mind because of those loud barks.

Another example based on my experience is the rooster's crowing sound. It happened during my meeting (a 4:00 AM meeting) and then all of a sudden my husband rooster's (three of them) crows loudly.

I don't know what to do that time, I felt so embarrassed cause one of the person in the meeting asked me right away "Are you in the farm?". Of course, I have to explain that those are my husband's rooster and jokingly said, "they are our alarm clocks". They laughed after I said that.

Mobile Phones

It's already been the habit of most of us (including I myself) to constantly check my mobile phone for any text messages or chats. But there are times that we used to hook on using our mobile phones during our working hours till we didn't even notice how long we've been scrolling on our phones already.

This significantly reduce our productivity. While it is important that we should keep our phones close to us specially in case of emergency, it's very tempting to keep on browsing it.

If you're going to ask me how did I survive my more one year work from home without a helper? I don't know as well.

I cannot give you some tips on how to survive on that set-up because I barely survived as well. Likewise, I am so stressed during that time.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to be with my kids at all times. So if I will have to choose between working in the office or working from home? I will choose for sure the latter.

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