Ready to Learn Mom

At this time of year I often find myself thinking that I didn’t spend as much time with my family and friends as I would have liked. It’s just so easy to get caught up in the day to day hustle of things that need to be done. You may be feeling the same way: you were so busy with meetings, email, voice mail, and reports that some of the more important things in life got put on the back burner – often with a promise that you would get to it tomorrow, or next week.

Well now is your chance, as you’re setting your goals for the upcoming year, to bring focus to developing greater balance in your life. Smart Phones, laptops, and PDAs are getting more affordable; Fast internet access is pervasive, along with great tools and online services that make it easier then ever to work productively from anywhere.

Avoiding a daily commute and gaining more control over your work schedule can not only make you more productive, it can help you achieve the balance you have been longing for in your life.

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Remember those blissful days back in grammar school, when the holiday spirit began to creep in? The majority of academics were replaced by creating wintery crafts and learning Christmas carols for the December concert, or rehearsing parts for the seasonal play. Now that we have full time careers (or part time jobs and grad school), the holidays have become synonymous with stress, but it doesn’t have to be. With simple time management and work prioritization, November-January can once again be merry and bright.

Make a to-do list

Good. Now, make that to-do list realistic. Cross off everything that doesn’t need to be completed until after New Year’s. You don’t really need to re-brand your company or invent something new this instant. Instead, focus on short-term goals that will keep your momentum, and prepare you for your exciting new endeavors come January.

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With the holidays fast approaching, thoughts turn to work-life balance more so than any other time of year. If you are like many of us, you must keep up with your work responsibilities while fitting much more into your personal life. This can get crazy stressful if you let it. Whether you are a work at home mom, business owner, or employee, here are some tips for avoiding or reducing stress this holiday season.

1. Accept that life is an eternal work in progress.
It is not supposed to be all done. This goes for life in general, but especially around the holidays. Let go of perfectionism and the need to do everything on your lists. Each day, take a breather to reflect on your accomplishments and feel proud.

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I just read a review of a new book coming out, Hard Times & Nursery Rhymes by a working mother (a lawyer with a lawyer husband – power jobs for sure)

In the Post-Gazette interview, she found, as most mothers do, that the best time to get her own work done was after the children were in bed.

Early on in her role as a mom, she was run-down and convinced she must be sick. She went to the doctor, described her life, and his diagnosis was that she was tired.

The cure?

“Get used to it,” the doctor said, “because that’s what your life is going to be.”

And she has gotten used to it, through three children, diaper bags, school conferences and court dates.

Reading that made me think about my own work-life balance. I struggle a lot with this, as I’m sure any other working mom does. I have two jobs…and neither of those two can usually be “left at the office”. I carry my iPhone with me everywhere and answer emails from students, write blog posts for PittsburghMom and catch up on my own research.  The Internet is not a 9-5 job.  It never stops.

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MRS. OBAMA:  Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Thank you, Donna, and thanks to all of you who are part of the Corporate Voices for Working Families.  I’m happy to join you today as you begin this annual meeting.  This is a very good thing, and I am so glad I could be here.

Many of the issues that you’ll be discussing are issues that, as you know, are near and dear to my heart.  I personally, as Donna described, know the challenges of leading a busy life at work and at home, trying to do a good job at both — and always feeling like you’re not quite living up to either — and trying not to pit one against the other, really trying to balance it so that — if people here are like me — I call myself a 120-percenter.  If I’m not doing any job at 120 percent, I think I’m failing.  So if you’re trying to do that at home and at work, you find it very difficult and stressful and frustrating.

And even though my current life, trust me, is very different than it was and for most people — and I do know that; I know that right now I am living, as challenging as it may seem, in a very blessed situation, because I have what most families don’t have, is tons of support all around, not just my mother but staff and administration.  I have a Chief of Staff and a personal assistant, and everyone needs that; that’s what we need.  (Laughter.)  Everyone should have a Chief of Staff and a set of personal assistants. 

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WebMD guides you through 5 practical steps toward better work-life balance.

1. Figure Out What Really Matters to You in Life
Personal coach Laura Berman Fortgang, author of NOW WHAT? 90 Days to a New Life Direction, says getting your priorities clear is the first and most essential step toward achieving a well-balanced life. The important point here is to figure out what you want your priorities to be, not what you think they should be.

“I use an exercise for figuring out what matters most,” Fortgang tells WebMD. She has her clients take a couple days off from work to contemplate the following series of questions:

1. If my life could focus on one thing and one thing only, what would that be?
2. If I could add a second thing, what would that be?
3. A third?
4. A fourth?
5. A fifth?

If you answer thoughtfully and honestly, the result will be a list of your top five priorities. Fortgang says a typical top-five list might include some of the following:

• Children
• Spouse
• Satisfying career
• Community service
• Religion/spirituality
• Health
• Sports
• Art
• Hobbies, such as gardening
• Adventure/travel

Ismael Al-Ramahi, a graduate student at Baylor College of Medicine, says his current priorities are his wife, his 4-month-old son, and his research. He tells WebMD the key is not only knowing your priorities, but devoting your full attention to just one priority at a time. “Split your time and your mind so that you’re thinking about work when you’re at work and you’re paying attention to the baby when you’re with him.”

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• If you’re always searching for a pen, stock one in every pocketbook, and put one in your checkbook.
• Store buttons in clear pill dispensers so you can easily spot the one you need.
• Schedule your next haircut before you leave the salon.
• Keep scissors in every room—that way, you won’t waste time trying to find them if you have to open a package, cut a tag, or quickly wrap a gift.
• Buy stamps, print labels, and arrange package pickups at usps.com.
• When you find a useful number in the phone book, highlight it so it’ll pop out the next time.
• Skip the photo store. Order prints from an online service such as snapfish.com, the top scorer in GH Institute tests.

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Did you know the following?

• Health Care expenses are almost 50% higher for Workers who report high levels of stress
• People who experience work/life imbalance are three times more likely to suffer from heart problems, infections, injuries, mental health problems and back pain, and five times more likely to suffer from certain cancers
• Workers who have to take time off work because of stress, anxiety or a related disorder will be off the job for about 20 days

As these statistics show, work/life balance is still an important (and costly) issue both for individuals and organizations.

The Three Pillars of Work/Life Balance in Organizations

To achieve work/life balance in any organization or institution, a work/life balance initiative must be supported at three levels: the programmatic level, the cultural level, and the individual level.

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Many work-life coaches glibly assert that administrative professionals must be responsible for achieving their own balance in the face of ever-increasing demands — from 9 to 5 and beyond. But given their spot in the org chart, admins often feel compelled to sacrifice too much for their jobs.

“It’s a partnership, but management has the bigger responsibility for admins’ work-life balance, because how work is structured affects the ability of admins to have balance,” says Ellen Kossek, a coauthor of CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Job Age and a professor of human resource management and organizational behavior at Michigan State University. Backup arrangements and rules about work schedules are examples of management and HR policies that can constrain an admin’s ability to maintain balance.

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The oft-used term “work/life balance” can mean different things to different people — and different things to the same person at various points in her career, according to a panel of Wall Street executives at the recent Wharton Women in Business Conference.

The five women on the panel — which was titled, “For the Long Haul: Wall Street Women on Balancing Life and Work after VP” — all acknowledged that striking a perfect balance between work and personal life is rarely possible for a first-year associate on Wall Street, but they also agreed that balance is possible with time.

“It’s very hard coming right out of business school to achieve work/life balance,” said Carol A. Schafer, a managing director in Wachovia Securities’ Equity Capital Markets group who also spent 17 years at JP Morgan. “You want to be able to work for an organization that sets you up for work/life balance in the future, one that respects personal life, personal time, has a good mentoring organization — a good women’s organization.” A first-year associate can’t tell an employer, “Here I am. I’m great. I’m smart, and I demand work/life balance,” Schafer noted, but “it’s pretty achievable over time.”

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