Squeezed for Time? Manage Energy Instead

Photo by Leo Reynolds

Who is most squeezed for time these days? I can make a pretty good argument that today’s mothers and fathers are more squeezed than just about anyone else. In fact my book, This is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today has a whole chapter on time titled Pits and Privates: Or Why Am I Obsessed with Saving Time? You’ll have to pick up the book to get the scoop on the “pits and privates reference, but here are a few bullets on families and time.

• Families with two parents employed today are working 500 more hours per year than families with two parents employed put in in the late 1970’s.
• Employed mothers today spend just as much time with their kids as non-employed mothers did in the late 70’s, and non-employed mothers today spend even more.
• Fathers have doubled their childcare time and tripled their housework time since the late 70’s.

In this scenario, managing minutes becomes futile. That’s why I was so glad to see this post today on the Harvard Business Review‘s blog,  Six Ways to Supercharge Your Productivity from Tony Schwartz, author and leader of The Energy Project. I know it’s designed for a business audience, yet I get so much more value from Tony’s advice for managing family life than from any of my women’s magazines. My magazines try to help me manage TIME – tips for exercising in ten minutes, dinners in twenty, cleaning the bathroom while I use it. Tony’s advice contains research backed strategies for managing ENERGY. I quote his book The Power of Full Engagement in my chapter on time  and this post is such a great summary of the key strategies.

• Make sufficient sleep a top priority.
• Create one to-do list.
• Do the most important thing first.
• Live like a sprinter, not a marathoner.
• Monitor your mood.

I find I can apply these strategies to both my home life and my employed life. I chunk my paid work into 90 minute blocks (sprinter) and am so much more productive than if I try to go for longer. I chunk my time with my daughter too – trying to fully engage with her and then let us both recharge and refuel in other ways.

How about you? Do you have strategies for managing energy at home and on the job? Does your workplace support these strategies for managing energy?

On Carpool and “A Market Punishing to Mothers”

I was about to go to sleep tonight when I thought I’d just quick check my New York Times app on my iPhone. There in the Latest News list was a piece by David Leonhardt – A Market Punishing to Mothers. My exhaustion from a day of trying to juggle caring for our 9 year old, helping out my in-laws, oh and yes, doing my job disappeared for a moment – replaced by giddiness that someone was calling attention to the economic challenges uniquely faced by mothers.

It’s a great piece. As Leonhardt says,

…our economy exacts a terribly steep price for any time away from work — in both pay and promotions. People often cannot just pick up where they have left off. Entire career paths are closed off. The hit to earnings is permanent.

The fact that the job market has evolved in this way is no accident. It’s a result of policy choices. As Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, says, “American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.”

“Family responsibilities.”  Hmmm, I believe that term covers things like driving carpool to summer camp, taking three cell phone calls from the 9 year old at camp, calling to arrange overnight care to help my mother in law care for my recovering father in law, scheduling someone to come repair our washer that keeps staining our clothes, and then picking up carpool crew from camp. All while fitting in my job early in the morning, in between carpools, and late at night.

“Women do almost as well as men today,” Ms. Waldfogel said, “as long as they don’t have children.”

Yes, I’m with Mr. Leonhardt. It’s time to take the next step and stop just talking about policies that would address the family responsibilities both men and women have for both children and their aging parents. It’s time to DO something.

(Also see my April post on The Wage Gap Between Mothers and Everyone Else)

This “Toolkit for Women Seeking a Raise” Helps Remodel Motherhood

The New York Times recently published a great article called A Toolkit for Women Seeking a Raise. The article combines the explanation of the challenges women face in negotiating raises:

“We have found that if a man and a woman both attempt to negotiate for higher pay, people find a women who does this, compared to one who does not, significantly less attractive,” said Hannah Riley Bowles, an associate professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who has conducted numerous studies on gender, negotiation and leadership. “Whereas with the guy, it doesn’t seem to matter.”

WITH what to do about it:

“So what’s a woman to do if she feels her work merits a raise? A new study concludes that women need to take a different approach than men. Women, it suggests, should frame their requests in more nuanced ways to avoid undermining their relationship with their boss.”

The article’s approach mirrors my own advice on this topic and others at the heart of my book, This is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood To Get the Lives We Want Today. If mothers become consciously aware of the outdated stereotypes about mothers, fathers, money and work still running amuck, they have a better chance of navigating situations effectively.

My Mother’s Day Resolutions

My book, This is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today, tells the story of my journey navigating the changes in every aspect of my life after we had our daughter nine years ago.

I have recently admitted to myself that I am in the midst of a set of changes  that are likely to be as difficult and challenging as those I went through nine years ago.

An Email Management System that Works!

Fast Company's Weekly Work Smart Column

In February a tweet from Fast Company magazine linking to one of their articles caught my eye, Work Smart: Conquering Your Email Inbox by Gina Trapani. Anything that promises to help me conquer the barrage of email is worth a moment to read I figured. The system seemed simple too, create three folders in your email inbox: “To-do, Reference, and Wait.” Clear your email box EVERY time you go into it by putting everything you can’t delete into one of those three folders.

Okay, this new system is working like a charm.

Cali Yost’s Remodeling Tools for Work+Life Fit™

Cali Yost

Since my book, This is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today, was released, Twitter has connected me with a host of people I wouldn’t have connected with otherwise, or I wouldn’t have found them for months. Cali Yost at Work+Life Fit is one of them. Twitter even gave us the opportunity to meet in person – briefly – while I was swinging through the East Coast this past fall. (Sick kid at home, Cali came out to a book signing to introduce herself.)

I just wish I had stumbled across Cali’s book, Work+Life Fit: Finding the Fit That’s Right For You, and her blog before I finished my own because I would have included both in my book. (I’ve added them to my Remodeling Tools web page now!). In my book I talk about the importance of shifting our language away from terms and phrases that have come to embody outdated assumptions about mothers, fathers, money, marriage and work. To that end I suggest replacing “work-family balance” – which tends to reinforce the separation between work and family- with options like “work-life integration” or “career-family fit.” But frankly, I’ve found that Cali’s term, “work+life fit,” is the one that now rolls off my tongue most easily and busts all the cultural assumptions I’m interested in busting up. Her book is a great tool for challenging our own assumptions about “work” that can keep us from envisioning and then taking responsibility for crafting our own “work+life fit” plan.

Cali recently published on her blog

Can you have a flexible schedule in a recession?

By LA Telecommuting ExaminerKristen Todd

Flexible work schedules are easier with computer-based work

Whatever your reason for wanting a flexible schedule, whether it be family, continuing education or it’s just the way you are wired, convincing your employer that you can manage one is difficult. Furthermore, a rising unemployment rate and a dire outlook for the creation of new jobs makes your 9-5, punch-in-and-out, cubicle jockey job seems just fine. But it is not! Flexible schedules can work for many employees and can even produce a more efficient workplace for an employer.

How can that be? Flexibility allows for employees to work at their optimal times throughout the day and is an incentive that costs employers nothing. When raises and bonuses are meager or non-existent, flexible schedules can reward employees and in many cases produce better output.

The issue with a flexible work schedule is convincing your manager that you should be considered for one. Before requesting a flexible schedule, you should honestly answer the following:

1. Are you the face of the office or do you manage a reception or intake area?
2. Have you worked for your current supervisor for less than a year?
3. In previous performance evaluations, has it been suggested that you work on time management skills, meeting deadlines or productivity?

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Poll Reveals Trauma of Joblessness in U.S.

Feeling anxiety in our house & all around even with jobs. How about you? A New York Times Poll Reveals Trauma of Joblessness in U.S.:

By MICHAEL LUO and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN

More than half of the nation’s unemployed workers have borrowed money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. An equal number have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments because they are out of work.

Almost half have suffered from depression or anxiety. About 4 in 10 parents have noticed behavioral changes in their children that they attribute to their difficulties in finding work.

Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults, causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities.

The results of the poll, which surveyed 708 unemployed adults from Dec. 5 to Dec. 10 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points, help to lay bare the depth of the trauma experienced by millions across the country who are out of work as the jobless rate hovers at 10 percent and, in particular, as the ranks of the long-term unemployed soar.

Roughly half of the respondents described the recession as a hardship that had caused fundamental changes in their lives. Generally, those who have been out of work longer reported experiencing more acute financial and emotional effects.

“I lost my job in March, and from there on, everything went downhill,” said Vicky Newton, 38, of Mount Pleasant, Mich., a single mother who had been a customer-service representative in an insurance agency.

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What is ‘woman’s work’ really worth?

This is a great article on that invisible piece of the economy, the work of caring for others.

Ruth Mantell of MarketWatch.com writes:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Workers who have lost their jobs and stay home to raise the kids have no value, according to government economists.

Our hulking gross domestic product excludes family caregivers across the nation. So are the leagues of recently unemployed workers who are now helping out at home worthless?

“They believe they are making a contribution, and in fact they are because that’s work that would have had to be done by somebody else,” Kim Gandy, a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and past president of the National Organization for Women, told me last week. “Work is work, and it’s a contribution to the economy of the country. Homemaking and care giving of children and elders contributes dramatically to the nation.”

Although many economists recognize the importance of nonmarket household production, the value of the undeniably worthy work of family caregivers is excluded from GDP. Care giving of family members is excluded, in part, because the work tends to be self-contained and has “limited impact on the rest of the economy,” according to the Department of Commerce. There are also “practical considerations” about accurately measuring such productivity, according to the government.

This isn’t just an economic debate, though, as any stay-at-home parent can attest. But it’s precisely all the intangibles that make it such a sticky issue. It can be tough to estimate the value of looking after our loved ones given that such work is about more than compensation, said Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard University.

“Much of what we do with our children is not work — it’s love, education and the instilling of values. It is often not something you could ever farm out to anybody,” Goldin said.

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Flexible Alternatives to Layoffs

Jobless Claims Rise to Record Levels, 20 Reasons to Promote Flexible Alternatives to Layoffs

This recent article published by Fast Company expert blogger, Cali Yost, has me wondering if school districts can use same strategy.

Cali writes:

Today, the Department of Labor reported that first time jobless claims not only rose faster than expected but they were 72% higher than this time last year and reached levels not seen since October, 1982.  With this news as a backdrop, it’s fortuitous that Marci Alboher, one of my favorite career experts, interviewed me in her new Working the New Economy blog on Yahoo! Shine for a post entitled “Negotiating an Alternative to a Layoff: 5 Questions for Cali Yost.”

Unfortunately, some layoffs are unavoidable.  But if leaders considered flexible alternatives as part of downsizing, they would lower costs while retaining as much valuable talent as possible to work through this great recession.

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