“Think about when you feel most energetic”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

“I’m a content creator and mum of a two-and-a-half year old. I took a break for two years, and now I’m trying to restart work.I work best in the morning. Now that my child has started going to school I'm trying to reestablish my morning routine.

But my sleep is so disturbed during the night that it’s very difficult to wake up early. How do I navigate this? ”

Shanice Mears, co-founder and head of culture & communities at The Elephant Room:

I’m a mum of one and I have a sleep disorder called narcolepsy so reading this I feel like I can understand exactly where you are coming from. Although my child isn’t as old as yours, I get the idea of wanting to get back into routine and feel like yourself again. The truth is that it will look different for every mum, but I want to start by saying you’re doing great mama.

I would start by thinking about taking scheduled naps and where possible. Also, if you can get a lot of your stuff done whilst your child is at school or nursery that will help, but make sure to use that time to rest if you can too. Try to work in bursts and think about when you feel most energetic. Don’t apply too much pressure but I would also try and plan content in advance when you have these bursts of energy.

I think when it comes to sleep try and get yourself and your child into a routine that allows you to get to bed a bit earlier, or see if there’s a way to divide the support if you have a community around you.

It could potentially help if you used some of the tools and resources that we have online like AI. Not everybody wants to use them, but I’ve found for optimisation you could really get a lot done, so have a think about how you might be able to save time. This could be used to sort and schedule your content and even help support ideas and build out what the content should be. I think just give yourself grace and time, and use the tools you have to help you grow.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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