Work-Life Sanity Blog

I had a very rich experience recently.  I was visiting my then-8-week-old grandson at his home in Philadelphia.  I had almost two whole weekdays (just the days, not the evenings) as his sole caretaker.   It was a gift to have this much time with him. 

For me, much about this experience was remarkable.  First, I had cleared my plate completely and was able to be undivided in my attention to him.  My clients knew I was checking email and phone only in the evening, and I was otherwise on vacation from my professional life.  I had no meals to prepare, no errands to run, no one really expecting anything from me.  Life was very simple: it was just about the baby.  And there was no rush.

When my own children were little, even when I was working part-time, even when I knew enough with my second baby to take some maternity leave, there were always competing demands for my attention: my work, the house, meals, my husband, the other child, etc.  

Spending this time with my grandbaby, I had no competing demands, and there was no need to be in a hurry.

What a joyful experience — to be fully present, in the present, with this new little guy.   Granted, being with one’s own first grandchild is a very special, off-the-charts experience.

But so was being undivided and in the present.

It reminded me how much there is to be gained by being fully present to whatever I’m doing, whenever possible.  It reminded me how stressful it is to multi-task– even to just mentally multi-task.  And how in contrast, just being here now, wherever and whatever “here” is, is actually a qualitatively different experience.  And a better one. 

Since returning from Philly I’ve been able to bring some of this consciousness with me.  It’s helped me be in less of a hurry all the time.  It’s also helped me be more singleminded about what I’m doing.  When writing this post, for example, I’ve been able to just work on the post, rather than also feeling pulled in other directions.  

Sometime today or this week or this month, I encourage you to give yourself the gift of just doing one thing at a time.  Have a taste of being here now.  Even if you’re just clearing your desk or composing a simple email, I suspect it will feel better than it usually does.  If you try this while being in conversation with someone, I suspect the shift will be even more palpable.   

Moments of being here now and not rushing can serve as little oases where you can refresh.

Andrea L. Volpe teaches writing at Harvard University.  She was recently named managing editor of a new journal, History of the Present (www.historyofthepresent.org). 

Recently, I thought back to what I learned from Sharon’s coaching as I re-committed myself to living what I’d learned.  Several years ago, I worked with her to make more disciplined headway on the progress of a book manuscript during a sabbatical.  Two months in, I was afraid that I was going to re-write the same chapter for a year.  In the years leading up to that moment, I’d plotted a course for myself from widow and expectant mom to a single, working parent with a child in elementary school and a new partner.  Reacting to what was at hand had worked well as a survival strategy, until it didn’t.  As I reframed my life, I’d recommitted myself to the book project, and I knew I needed to get somewhere, but even after all I knew about how to weather sea changes, I wasn’t sure how. 

As simple as it sounds now, I had to learn how to make myself and my project a priority.  I had to make a choice; I had to say yes to some things and learn how to say no to others.  I needed to plot my project, and stay the course, so that logging time over time would shift the project.  And it did.  Part of what I learned that year was that what I wanted to do was going to take (still) more time than I thought it was, but that I wanted to and could do it. I had to treat my work like an endurance sport (the ultra triathalon of parenting, teaching and writing).   Very basic things that had been part of me for a long time—cooking well, exercise, friends—were foundational to that discipline.

Recently, I did a one-month brusher-upper with Sharon to accelerate my progress—while my son was at sleep-away camp, I completed a full draft of the manuscript–the final arc of the project had emerged and only did so with twelve days of uninterrupted writing, thinking (and yoga breaks).  I found that all the work up to that point had been my training–I had gained focus, confidence and stamina.  I loved having Sharon on my team but I also learned that those resources were now part of me.  This year, as I’ve plotted out my final revisions between teaching and nurturing my blended-family-in-the-making, I’ve started to see the ways in which I coach myself:

• I have a master vision of what’s important to me: family, friends, exercise, writing.  Of all those, exercise is probably the wellspring for everything else.  I actually plan most of my work commitments around my schedule at the gym and yoga studio (”I’m sorry, I can’t meet then, have a ‘meeting’ to go to…”).  I know that when I sacrifice what sustains me, I lose what grounds me.

• I am always trying to better at setting limits.  The support of friends has been so essential to me, it’s hard to limit my social calendar.  But I’ve held myself to my tried and true inner circle as other priorities—family and writing—have come into focus.

• I don’t multi-task.  For a long time, I worried that I had ADD—but then I realized it was just single parenting (and one time or another, we are all single parenting.)   Now, as much as can, I do one thing at a time; I write when I have time to write,  I run when I have time to run, I play Parchesi when I play Parchesi.   And more gets done.   I love this!

• I reward myself. These aren’t, in the post-recession world, necessarily large or visible luxuries.  I might just really appreciate getting to spinning, or I might sneak in a manicure while my son is at karate, or I might buy a new cookbook and plan a great dinner.

• I know what energizes me.   I know that cooking good meals for myself and my family is restorative and always worth the time. I stopped drinking coffee and switched to green tea.

• I plan.  I plan menus and shop from them, always on Saturday afternoons; I plan a budget and reassess it every year, me and my partner plan our family’s calendar in (at least) 6 month increments. 

• When things crumble or buckle, I re-evaluate and problem-solve and remind myself of my foundational resources.  Recently, I wanted to get a block of work done but not sacrifice the quality of our meals—I knew I needed something to sustain me at the end of a writing day that wasn’t from Trader Joe’s.  So  I became my own personal chef.  I did a little research, dug into my favorite cook books, bought some Pyrex and started cooking for the freezer.  If you cook three meals at once, you can bank almost a week’s worth of meals.  I wrote the chapter, and we ate well: I took care of myself.

Read more of Andrea L. Volpe’s writing here.   Andrea consults on all aspects of writing, from development to to publication.  You can reach her at  alvolpe@verizon.net. 

Just posted at this link: An interview with me about work-life balance, on Suzanne Blake’s Energy Talk Radio show, Manifesting Money and Career.  Suzanne is a gracious and intuitive host.   Listen in to her interviews with other experts as well.

This week someone told me about a tradition she has created in her family.  They call it Pajama Thanksgiving. 

She and her husband and their two young children get up on Thanksgiving Day when they feel like getting up, and they stay in their pajamas.  She gets a turkey into the oven when she does, and when it’s ready, they sit down and have a meal, the four of them together. 

 It’s the most relaxed and easy day in the entire year for them.

This is otherwise a very, very busy family. Both parents work full time, the kids go to school and extended day programs and do the kinds of activities that many kids do: music lessons, sports, theater, Sunday School, and so on. 

The parents crave time with their children with no agenda, no schedule to adhere to, no competing commitments.  The children crave time with their parents.  So there is no multi-tasking on Pajama Thanksgiving, no Blackberries in use, no company to get ready for, no time that everyone has to be “ready.”  

A Pajama Thanksgiving may not appeal to YOU in the least.  But for this family, this is just heavenly.   They love spending this day together.  The parents read to the kids.  The older daughter reads to her little brother.  They play games.  They make up games.  

When the little guy naps, the parents nap too, and the daughter watches a movie.   There might be a cookie-baking project.  There might be a crafts project.  There might not be.  As a family, they let the day unfold and they are each present to create and experience it with each other.  It is their authentic holiday. 

They have created their TG tradition from the inside out.  It’s not about the appearance of it;  it’s not about the form.   The form is simply the result of the deep inner need that’s getting satisfied:  the need for connected down time together with these particular people.  The need for a safe haven from the loud, incessant demands of daily life.  The need to not have to be “productive” in the task-list sense of things.

Many of us have created holiday traditions that are patterned after our workdays: there’s a schedule, there are people to see or people who come over, there is a timetable, there is pressure, there are people depending on us to deliver in certain ways, there are expectations to live up to.

The Pajama Family draws a strong boundary around this day and creates for themselves the holiday they truly need.

Would you like to take a look at one company’s bold and effective response to employees’ changing needs for flexibility over the course of a working lifetime?  I have a fascinating book to recommend: Mass Career Customization, by Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg. 

Benko and Weisberg write about how their company, Deloitte, has implemented a very new approach to flex.   

Deloitte has long been a standout leader in creating policies and practices that accommodate people’s needs for myriad forms of flexible work.  They started down this path many years ago as a means of stemming their costly turnover rates, particularly for their most talented women.  They were losing highly talented women from the partnership track at an alarming rate, mostly during the years when these women had young children.    Deloitte became the poster child company for family-friendly policies, and they reaped phenomenal savings in dollars and morale by dramatically increasing retention across the board. 

Now they’re taking it to the next level by implementing a broad system of customizing employees’ schedules and workloads a year at a time, based on the employee’s needs.  They call this dynamic “mass career customization” (MCC) , and this is the book that tells the story. 

Deloitte is normalizing the need for flexibility: it’s no longer seen as an accommodation or a one-time need that will evaporate at some point (and the sooner the better!).   Rather, Deloitte is acting as if anyone could need an  unconventional schedule or workload during any or all of their working years, so better to be nimble enough to roll with these needs rather than lose the employee.   The result is a robust and committed workforce with extraordinary capacity.   Because the company benefits, I think we’ll see a lot more of this in the future.

According the Professor Myra Hart of Harvard Business School, ”With an MCC approach, corporations are not saying, ‘I want only your good years or the years in which you can make a maximum contribution.’  Instead, corporations are saying to  employees, ‘We really want a lifetime contract with you.’  This is a very new approach to employee retention.”

Shelly Lazarus, Chairman & CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, writes, “Finally, a book recognizing that the needs of today’s knowledge workers are far from a women-only issue. Mass Career Customization provides an incisive analysis of what’s really happening on the talent front and a comprehensive approach of what to do about it.”

I can’t say it reads as fast as fiction, but it’s a great read.  You may think you’re reading fiction when you see what’s going on at Deloitte.   Check it out.

 What do you call a working mother whose kids have grown up and left home?  She’s no longer a “working mother” as we’ve all come to know and understand the term.  I’ve come up with the term “Working Mom Emeritus.”  What do you think?  Is there a more concise way to express this?  

There are a lot of us out here.  Our kids are now in their 20s and 30s, and some of them are beginning to have children of their own.  Some of us are even involved in the care of those kids, our grandchildren.  (My own daughters (age 27 and 31) have dogs, not kids.)

Here’s what I can tell you about work life balance from the other side of the intensive parenting years.  It gets vastly simpler.  Not necessarily easier, because if you have a tendency to be a workaholic, well, there’s even more opportunity to do so when you’re not committed to getting to the ice hockey game or having a decent dinner on the table by 6:30.  But it does get simpler.

For one thing, there are fewer stakeholders.  After the intensive parenting years, it’s just you and possibly a significant other in your primary circle.  It’s not that your adult children want nothing to do with you.  Hopefully, you play your cards in such a way and are lucky enough that you are still part of their lives and vice versa.  But you’re just not in their lives in the same daily, intensive way.  And it’s really OK.

And then there’s your work, which of course can consume your whole life.  The challenge is to stay conscious and intentional about how you allocate your time and where you draw your boundaries.  

For some of us, it was easier to have firm boundaries around work when our other time went to our very compelling other work: our children.  When there are no children at home, there is a very real risk of giving it all away to work.  Particularly for driven women who have not yet “made their mark” and for women in challenging financial straits.  

But the beautiful little non-intuitive secret is that giving it all away is not sustainable.  Being completely out of balance with overwork is like trying to run a marathon without drinking any water.  You crash and burn.  You can’t finish the event.  The ONLY way to finish an endurance event is to hydrate along the way.  Which translates into doing the things that nourish you for the long haul, whatever they are for you.  For most people that includes having regular time off from task list mindset.