Miscellaneous

I've been asked to participate in a Work/Life Balance panel put on by the Women's Law Caucus at my law school.  While flattered to have been asked (my mentee from last year, now a pregnant 2L herself, nominated me), I am at quite a loss for what to say.  My first reaction to the email was to laugh, because I am the last person to think of myself as balancing work and life with any degree of grace.  (I said something like, "If balancing means frantically rushing to get it all done, sure, I'll be there.")  And since not having all the answers has never stopped me from giving opinions before, I accepted.

These are the points I'm thinking about making, some of which were gleaned from the Nice Girls book read we did a while back.  Any thoughts or suggestions are very much welcomed!

1. Put yourself in the top two of your priority list.  If you can't manage number 1 (which, for women, tends to be family or work), then put yourself at number 2 - but no lower than that.   I am truly awful here, and I feel that if I could just push myself up into number 2 -- or heck, even just past "housekeeping," I'd be a lot happier.  Everything tends to fall ahead of myself.  Here's an example -- trite, sure, but a common one for me:
   

   Every other Thursday afternoon, T comes to do the major housekeeping -- the bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming, all the floors.  Every Wednesday night (and Thursday morning), I spend a good 2-3 hours getting everything put up, the trashes out, the dishes done, and the clutter stashed, all so that she can clean.  I do this no matter how tired I am, no matter how busy I am, and no matter what I have on my plate for Thursday.  I do this because I don't want T to quit and because she can clean a lot more effectively (and deeply) if our crap isn't in her way.

   Matthew, on the other hand, goes to sleep at his usual time.  I stay up a couple of extra hours and am extremely cranky and resentful by the end of it.

   What SHOULD happen?  I should go to bed on time and skip out on the resentment and annoyance factor.   The consequences?  The house wouldn't get as clean, maybe.  Worth it?   I'll give it a go this week and see what happens. 

   What do I want to be doing with free time?  Reading, or playing the cello, or running.  Not laundry, not trash, and not housekeeping.

2. Just say no in your personal life. This is a lesson I learned from my friend Robyn.  Every time I would complain to her about something I 'just had' to do, she would ask, "So what would happen if you said no?"  Slowly (over the course of years), it dawned on me that you know what?  Not only does nothing bad generally happen if you don't go to the game, or don't stay late, or don't visit family when you're supposed to -- but often it reinforces your own boundaries.  You can say "No, thanks" and you're not obliged to tell anyone why.

   Robyn should be proud of me, because I've caught myself giving this advice to other members of my family recently!

   Say I've asked two people out for a drink after work and those two people say:
   

   Person 1: "Thanks, but I'm just not feeling like it today." 
   Person 2: "Oh, I'd love to!  But my husband is working late tonight, and I have to pick up the kids at day care, and then little Johnny has violin lessons, and..."

   I don't know about you, but not only do I not have any drinking buddies, I've lost a small amount of respect for Person 2.  Do I really care why someone can't make it?  Does a list of excuses soften the blow?  No, it just makes Person 2 seem kinda whiny. 

   The take home lesson, though, is that Person 1 can go home and do whatever it was they were going to do without guilt -- and without rushing to catch up with the rest of their life just to oblige someone on a non-critical invite. 

3. Just day no in your work life. It's neither good nor bad, but people at work will pile as much on you as you're willing to take, unless you set boundaries.  They may pile the work on you because you're very good at it, or they may pile the work on you because it's boring for them to do, or they may pile the work on you because they're lazy.  The reason doesn't matter.  What matters is that you set boundaries. 

   You don't (and shouldn't) have to be a bitch here,  particularly because being female in a corporate world is already a balancing act.  (The unfortunate definition of a bitch at work = acting like a man)  What you can say is, "Oh, that does sound like an interesting project.  I'm working on this project right now, and I could get to it [tomorrow, next week -- whatever is realistic]. Let me know then if you'd like me to work on it."  And then get back to what it was you were doing.  If you feel strongly about it (or suspect this could be used against you in the future), follow up with an email you keep for your records.  But do get this point across, because this accomplishes four things:
   

   a) Shows the other person that you're busy.
   b) Shows the other person you're not a dormat.
   c) Reinforces to the other person that you're helpful and considerate.
   d) Puts the ball back in their court to get back to you. 

4. Make time to have fun. This is related to putting yourself at the top of your priority list, but isn't the same thing.  Schedule -- if you have to -- time during the week as well as on the weekend to have fun. At least two fun things!  This could be whatever -- bubblebath and a book, a lunch with friends, a day hike -- anything that you find fun.  And keep these dates the same way you'd keep a business lunch and with the same urgency. 
   
5. Take walks during your day.  This is one of those things that I've always been good about, no matter what job I was doing (from answering phones to writing a romance novel to law school).  The fact is, I work very well in short bursts.  I'm efficient and very fast. I naturally speed read.  However, I have to break at least once an hour to do something -- get up and get a drink, chat on the phone -- something.  Otherwise, the quality of my work starts to degrade and my mind wanders.  If I force myself to sit in one place and keep plugging away, I end up wasting huge amounts of time as I struggle to concentrate.  Is this ADHD?  I dunno - it just is the way I am.

   But the good news: I have found that if I get up and take a walk in the morning and a walk in the afternoon during an average work day, I get much, much more accomplished.  They don't have to be long walks -- say 10 minutes each -- but just getting out of the building and getting away from the work means I can dive back into it.  My best walks were at a jobsite not far from my house in Orenco (when we lived there), where I would often see lots and lots of red-winged blackbirds, ducks, and geese in a small wetland.

   I have taken a lot of crap for these breaks, by the way, over the course of my working life, and have given the crap right back.  It makes me work better, and if you want me to work better?  Let me take my walks.
   

6. Know your limitations.  Mostly I mean time limitations.  Take a week and keep track of everything you do in a day (and I mean everything).  The point isn't to judge yourself, but just to see where the time is going, and to find out if there are some things you can pass off to others to make time for yourself.  Put everything -- and I mean EVERYTHING -- on your online or paper schedule, from picking up the kids at daycare to lunch, to dinner, to grocery shopping.  Be realistic about where your time is going.  Then...don't take anything new on for a whole month. Do what you absolutely have to (kids, dishes, laundry, eating) and what you want to (hobbies, games, exercise).

   The world won't end - really.  I'm guessing that without the influx of new stuff to accomplish, you'll find you have more and more time for what you really want to do, and less for the "have to."  At the end of the month, you'll have a much better sense of your time and what it can and can't fit into it.  And when you start considering accepting new tasks onto your schedule, you'll find you have a better idea of how limited your time is -- and how jealously you guard your personal free time.