Ready to Learn Mom

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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Any work-at-home-mom will confess that owing her own business is as challenging as it gets. While the rewards are bountiful, the word easy is not one used to describe small business ownership.

Many moms who work out of their home also have to multitask tending to the needs of their small children. In fact the reason many parents choose to work at home is so they can be available to care for the kids. Keeping up with household maintenance and child rearing is a full time job. So how does one find time for her business?

The answer to that is simple. You don’t find time; you make time. Okay the part about making time may not be that simple, but it is very much doable. The most important factor in making time is your mind set. Remember RYBLAB – Run Your Business Like a Business. Assuming we’re talking about a bona fide business and not just a little something you do periodically to earn a little extra cash, then it’s important to manage your time.

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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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Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, created a stir at the SHRM conference in New Orleans this year by stating: “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

Organizations worry about being perceived as offering a good balance between work and personal time.

Many career sites and recruiters stress the ways the organization addresses this through flexible work policies, family-friendly HR polices, child care, and so on. And, for many job seekers, finding a company that offers this magic blend is the Holy Grail.

While Jack was addressing women specifically and speaking about their opportunities for promotion and growth within traditional corporate America, he was reinforcing this assumption. He was heavily criticized for talking to women in this way, even though it is an accurate reflection of the thinking in most of traditional corporate America.

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