Modeling Healthy Work-Life Integration
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” If you’re working from home, do those words of Charles Dickens ring true? For many of us, the ability to work from home is both a luxury and a burden, all at the same time.
Parents have been working from home for much of human history, and the work of the house (cleaning, laundry, cooking, tidying) goes together with parenting fairly naturally. When you are sorting laundry, peeling carrots or going grocery shopping, you can also keep one eyeball on your child, No one has to be particularly quiet, and there are no firm deadlines or deep thinking-work needed. With most chores, you can stop and start without losing much time trying to get back on track. Your mind can wander, your kids’ voices can carry and you can be your own boss deciding what level of cleanliness meets the needs of the situation on any given day.
But combining deep thinking-work and parenting – well, that’s another kettle of fish altogether. Thinking-work usually means you need time to focus your thoughts – more than the 10 consecutive minutes that kids can reliably offer without wanting or needing to interrupt us. You need time to have meetings in a quiet, disruption-free zone where clients or colleagues can’t overhear sibling fighting, a resistant napper or even the dog yapping away at the delivery truck. For many of us, our work hours are 24/7 and the job is never done. The connectivity that makes working from home possible also virtually chains you to the pings, dings and alerts reminding you of undone business.
How can you get the focused time you need to work? When your office is also your home, how do you model a healthy work-life integration?
Be Realistic
As a Certified Parent Coach and Professional Organizer, I have come to understand that reality is an excellent partner, helpmate and guide if you make friends with it. Simply put, the time you have is the time you have, the job you have is the job you have and the children you have are the children you have. So, be realistic. If you have an important presentation and your 2-year-old needs to nap and might wake up unpredictably, plan for childcare backup. If your child was up all the night before and is now home with strep throat for the day, consider if you can reschedule that important brainstorming meeting.
This leads me to the next tip . . .
Embrace the Dial
Consider shifting your mindset from all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of viewing life as a series of “on” and “off” switches, adopt the belief that life is filled with shades of gray. The magic is in the idea that instead of choosing between all or nothing, we can make decisions with more nuance. Take that important brainstorming meeting.
Instead of being victimized by either canceling the meeting or attending tired and distracted, get your dials out and fine-tune some options. Could you postpone it to later in the day when your older child will be home to play video games with the sick child and you might be able to squeeze in a quick nap, or rest so you can go into the meeting refreshed? Would it be possible to make the meeting shorter, or divided into two parts? Perhaps you could brainstorm for 45 minutes today and schedule the discussion for the following morning.
I get it. This is not always possible. But I’ve noticed that even though parents have less control than they want, they often have more control than they give themselves credit for.
Tame Your Technology
I love this quote from William Stixrud and Ned Johnson’s book The Self-Driven Child: “Technology is a beast that when tamed, can bring joy and possibility into your child’s life. But you must teach them to stay in charge.” And let’s face it, we adults need to tame the Tech Beast just as much. The thought that, “It’s for work” seems to absolve parents of any responsibility to put their phone or device down. And while there are certainly times, seasons and deadlines that call for 24/7 connectivity, that is not true 100% of the time.
Here’s another instance in which shifting the dial can be more helpful than adopting an all-or-nothing choice. Run some experiments and put your phone on airplane mode for a reasonable amount of time while you are with your family. You can start slow. Try 30 or even 60 minutes. Tell the people you work with to call you if there is an emergency. The antsy feeling you have while disconnected usually dissipates into full presence with your family, and with practice that gradually becomes a self-reinforcing habit. It’s also much easier to hold up their screen limits if you are setting a good example of resisting the siren call of your own phone.
Claim Your Environment
We can work anywhere now, but we can also procrastinate anywhere. Our brains and our bodies are stuck together, so one often overlooked, yet highly effective tip is to put your body in the same place to work every day. Associate working in your home office, or the nice niche in your bedroom –
- wherever it happens to be. Try not to scroll any nonwork social media or entertainment in that spot. If you absolutely must check your feed for the news, physically stand up and move. This will train your brain to focus where your body is. Let your environment do some of the heavy lifting of keeping you focused.
- Next, declutter your work area and declutter regularly. It’s amazing, but decluttering actually gives you energy and inspiration. To set yourself up for decluttering success, invest in a larger than you think trash/recycling bin. There is efficiency and energy saved when you don’t have to get up, scoot or swivel to pitch and recycle papers.
- Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of lighting and how it can help you stay motivated and focused. Think natural light first – is it possible to get access to it? If not, invest in a good task light for your desk. These might feel like small and insignificant things, but you’d be surprised how small tweaks, done regularly, can add up to a big difference.
Speak Well
The kids are listening! And your own subconscious is listening to how you speak about our work. If you speak disparagingly and express only overwhelm, frustration and resentment, these are the feelings that will grow. Time to Parent, a wonderfully useful and insightful book written by professional organizer and time management expert Julie Morgenstern did the research. Your kids don’t necessarily want you to work less, they just want you to be less stressed and tired from work.
Remember, work provides a lot of positive things to our lives; money, structure and the ability to contribute and be creative. To model that healthy work life integration, be sure that talk about stress is balanced by mention of the positive events that happen in your day, “I learned so much working with our new tech consultant, they really helped me streamline my email inbox.” Or, “A longtime client let my boss know they renewed their contract in part because of the excellent customer service I provided; that felt encouraging and empowering.” Words matter and speaking in an empowering way is another tool to model and practice a healthy work-life integration.
Imagine starting and ending your workday at home thinking and feeling, “I got this.” With reality on your side, tech tamed and your environment claimed, you can balance the very real demands of working from home with raising your kids. I love the idea that “tiny hinges swing big doors.” The tiny tweaks that you make daily (even hourly) have the potential to create more calm, control and productivity when your office is at home.
Paige Trevor is a certified parent educator with the Parent Encouragement Program (PEP) and a professional organizer and time management coach (paigetrevor.com). For information about PEP’s online programs for parents and organizations, see pepparent.org.
