Success Guide for Working Mothers in Japan – Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Morning routine

5 years of parenting and 10 years of working in both Vietnam and Japan have taught me a truth: “You don’t need more time (you couldn’t find it even if you tried), you need a more effective system“.

This is the core challenge of modern life. Before setting up a system for yourself, you need to ask what your problem is. Sometimes you can’t see it yourself, so try asking a few people around you. My boss, Adam, once told me, “you spread yourself too thin.” Absolutely 1000% accurate. I always open dozens of tabs in my head like a web browser crazily processing many things at once.

3 steps to solve:

💡 Simplify: Eliminate decision fatigue. Automate choices.
💡 Stack: Combine multiple similar tasks into a single action.
💡 Sequence: Order your day in the most logical, energy-efficient way.

Applying this to my morning routine as follows:

1. Simplify: anyone who watches my videos will know, I have a 6-bucket system for my kids’ school clothes, placed on a shelf right in the laundry room. Whenever the laundry is done, I just toss it right into the bucket, no folding, no hanging, super quick and easy. These 6 buckets are spread from Monday to Friday, plus one bucket for spare clothes. Each bucket contains a shirt, pants, socks, undershirt, and underwear for the kids. Every morning when I wake up, I just grab a bucket and take it to the room to change them. No thinking, choosing, wasting time, or draining brain energy.

2. Stack: if you list out everything you want to do in the morning, it’s incredibly long. Brushing teeth, washing face, doing makeup, exercising, cooking, making milk, changing clothes, grabbing phone, lipstick, water bottle into the backpack.
The plus point is these activities all have quiet moments we can use to do other things. While waiting for the cleanser to absorb, I can brush my teeth or do a few exercise moves. While waiting for mouthwash to work in my mouth, I can prepare food and drinks for the kids. While waiting for skincare to dry a bit before makeup, I can pack my backpack.
The way I can combine these activities is they need to happen in the same place to minimize moving around. So I brought my cleanser, cream, and toothbrush near the kitchen sink. For a long time now I’ve switched to brushing teeth and washing face at the kitchen sink area. Super quick and neat. Next to it I put my makeup bag and backpack near the mirror where I usually do makeup. Killing two birds with one stone.

Every morning I wake up at 7 AM (not 5-6 AM as many mistakenly believe), by 7:30 I’m usually done with exercising, makeup, and changing clothes. On the way to the closet, I will wake my husband up to take care of changing clothes and feeding the little ones.

3. Sequence your day to make the morning as smooth as possible

• My family does laundry once a day. Wash in the afternoon and finish in the evening, or wash in the evening and finish tomorrow morning. I don’t impose a too strict schedule on myself. When the laundry is done, I take it out and put it away very quickly, it only takes 5 minutes, almost no folding, just putting it into buckets, or hanging up if the clothes wrinkle easily. This way I can also grab clothes to prepare backpacks for the two kids (because they need a handkerchief and bib sent to school every day).

• My family washes dishes once a day, in the evening, my husband does it. So every morning I have a sparkling clean sink for brushing my teeth, washing my face, and cooking (if any).
• My family boils water once a day. Boil in the evening and let it cool down so tomorrow morning when I wake up, I immediately have drinking water.
• My family cleans up toys for about 5 minutes in the evening so in the morning if the kids happen to wake up earlier than me, they can go find toys themselves without waking me up. If toys are neatly put in buckets, they will like to take them out and play. If toys are already scattered everywhere on the floor, on the table, suddenly they lose interest.

The most important rule is “just make progress, no need to be perfect“. I’ve set up a system of things to do, if I happen to forget, I’m quite relaxed, not torturing myself. The number of times I fell asleep in the evening is uncountable, my husband saw me tired so he often didn’t wake me up. Most of the time I would jolt awake at 4 AM, teeth unbrushed, face unwashed, kids’ clothes unwashed, kids’ backpacks unpacked, toys scattered everywhere. However, I just slowly do as much as I can, not blaming myself for falling asleep.

Another example is occasionally I completely oversleep, the alarm rings and I can’t wake up, then I will simplify the morning. Kids’ clothes must be changed, but hair uncombed, face unwashed, teeth unbrushed are all completely acceptable. Depending on how much time is left, I will let go of the obsessions about how thoughtful a good mother must be in preparing for her children. Same for myself, clothes definitely have to be changed but makeup isn’t necessarily needed right away. I will skip it and just do simple makeup when getting on the train or arriving at the company.

I also always prioritize spending 3-5 minutes hugging my kids, asking what the two of them dreamt about, or chatting about anything under the sun. This is an activity I really enjoy because simply it reinforces my belief that I’m a good mother, and it’s quite funny talking to the kids, so the start of the new day is usually quite fun 🤩

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Please look forward to the next chapter with Action Plans for Better Health, Slimmer Figure, Clearer Mind, Smoother Work, and Peaceful Life for Stressed Working Parents 😘