Life in the fast lane #2 – work-life balance?

When I was a 10-year-old  girl playing at being grown up, I may have glorified the idea of being busy… kids to take to school, running errands to the bank and the grocery store, jiggling my pretend keys to an imaginary car (red, of course).  I talked on the phone to my friends and said I’ve got to run… so much to do, you know.  I thought being an adult meant running frantically from task to task, feeling satisfied and glamorous.

I know I wasn’t alone in this belief because I played that with several different girlfriends.

I definitely never imagined I’d feel constantly under pressure in a bad way, like getting through my to-do list was a Sisyphean task, doing so much constantly but not feeling like I am getting anything done.  Comparing myself to an ideal expectation of myself and falling short every time.  When you finally get a chance to slow down and rest, think, take stock… well, you just start crying because it all feels too much to maintain.

As an attempt to help Mr. B when he says he doesn’t have enough time in the day, I picked up Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte.  It’s a book about modern life and time pressure.  Schulte is a reporter for The Washington Post, a mother of two, and definitely pulled in a thousand directions.  She began her book by accident, after a time-use researcher told her that she (and all American women) has 30 hours of leisure time.  She challenged him to find it.  In her excellently-researched book, she asks two main questions: Why are things the way they are? How can they be better?

As I explained in the introductory post, this will be a 5-post series here on the blog.  This post is primarily about work.

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Schulte begins by keeping a time diary in order for John Robinson, an expert in analysing time diaries, to find leisure time in her schedule for her.  But her time didn’t fit into the category choices Robinson gave her – sleep, housework, paid work, etc.  “I’d called Robinson in despair.  I was at work.  I was eating lunch at my desk.  I was talking to him on one line and on hold with the pharmacy on the other line trying to refill my son’s EpiPen prescription  I was working on a story on one computer screen.  And on another, I was surfing the State Department website trying to figure out how to get a death certificatae for my brother-in-law, who’d died in China.  “What the hell kind of time is that?” I’d asked.  “Work? Housework? Child Care? Personal Care? All four?”

Often things go along fine until a couple has a child.  That’s when women (and men) start trying to balance home and work better.  It can lead to one person totally opting out of the workforce, working part-time, or getting fired.  The book is full of stories and court cases.  Of course, it all depends on your employer.

Here’s my own story: I loved my job and looked forward to getting back to it after my maternity leave.  The company trumpets its “Flexibility” policies, with a capital F, and is always listed in the top 5 in Working Mother magazine.  After my daughter was born and I returned to my much-loved job, I found it all but impossible to complete all the necessary tasks for home and work (nursing round the clock) and still get a reasonable amount of sleep.  It was a disaster that got worse and worse.  There was always what Schulte calls “a mental tape-loop phenomenon,” a mental list of to-dos that does not ever shut down and let you rest.  She says time researchers therefore call it “contaminated time,” which is “a product of role overload and task density.”  I wanted both lives and had to choose one, so I chose my daughter.  Part-time work, though we tried, just didn’t work for my company.  And, according to Schulte’s sources, it technically doesn’t work for many.  A partner I worked for also ended up leaving a couple years after me because her travel schedule was grueling, never allowing her much time with her two young children.  The women there who were successful chose not to have kids, had partners at home, or had lives that fell apart.

Technology, which is supposed to save us time, makes it the issue worse.  My daughter and I once made Mr. B a decorated box to hold his phone during dinner time so he wouldn’t check it every time it made a noise.  That worked for a little while, but being under intense pressure all the time led him to pick it back up.  And I know for sure that he can’t focus on that and listen to one of us talking to him at the same time.  “All those stolen glances at the smartphone, the bursts of addictive texting and email checking at all hours… the constant connection… That activity splinters the experience of time into thousands of little pieces.  And living in an always-on technological haze leads to mental exhaustion…  Even though [these small tasks] don’t take up that much actual time, you feel you’ve never quite gotten away from work and had a chance to wind down.” Mr. B fully admits to being exhausted and I’d bet money many of you can identify with the time fragmentation above.

I suspect part of the problem for Mr. B is that he’s admirably very involved in our daughter’s daily life.  If he can attend a school performance, he’s there.  If he has time to read her a bedtime story or watch her do something, he does it.  More men today want to “have it all” – career and family life.  In one study, the biggest change over time has been with fathers of young children.  “Mothers in these intensive years of diaper changing, Cheerio flinging, and loosing bottles under the seats until the car smells like a goat, have always been harried.  When asked if they often had time to spare in 2004, exactly zero percent of mothers with children under six said yes.  But the number of fathers who felt harried nearly doubled from 1982 to 2004, and a negligible 5 percent of fathers felt they often had time for leisure.” See honey? It’s not just you who has no personal time on the weekends!

One part of the book discusses people’s bragging in their annual Christmas letters about being so busy.  “The letters are often single-spaced, multipage laundry lists of lives lived dangerously fast: Activities.  Achievements.  Trips.  Guitar lessons.  Cheerleading camps.  Basketball teams.  Kindergarten flag football… Graduations.  Anniversaries.  Births.  Deaths.  Check.  Check.  Check.”  It’s life in the fast lane as a badge of honor.  That reminds me of those stick figures on the back windows of cars or bumper stickers touting “honor roll” kids, like it’s an accomplishment of the parent.  Of course, these parents’ kids only do good things.

I’ve gotten those holiday letters but hadn’t thought of it as a list to prove being busy! I can understand the desire to portray yourself as busy in order to justify your existence.  I do not work outside the house.  My daughter is in school from 8 to 3.  I have filled the hours with what is meaningful to me – leading a scout troop, joining the PTO board, volunteering at school, joining a few nonprofit boards, studying Mussar, reading, bird watching, making scrapbooks.  Sometimes I overdo it, and that’s when the franticness sets in.  But I don’t strive to be that way and I’m proud that I’ve cut a few things from my list.  Schulte writes that it’s as if “admitting you take time for yourself is tantamount to a show of weakness.  The thought of leisure time makes them feel… guilty.” I guess it’s because of the online groups I’m part of that I aspire to take care of myself.  And I don’t feel I need to justify my time or existence.

Some advice Schulte gets along the way: Just have fun.  Other priorities have to fall away – like cleaning.  Just do it.

In 1970, Pat Buchanan led a veto campaign of a national child-care bill that would have created a high-quality universal child-care system in America.  He succeeded.  That veto set the stage for all U.S. family policy, or lack thereof, since.  “Workers in the United States have no right to flexible or short work hours, unlike in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.  The United States has no system to require benefits, fair pay, and advancement opportunities for part-time work, while the Dutch government is promoting the concept of the “daddy day,” with each parent working overlapping four-day workweeks so that children are in care only three days a week.  The United States has no paid sick leave policy, unlike at least 145 other countries.  No paid vacation policy, while Europeans who get sick during vacation are legally entitled to take another.  And a tax policy that still favors families with one breadwinner and one homemaker.  In other words, U.S. policy not only doesn’t work for more than 3/4 of all U.S. families with children, it makes their lives worse.”  

“Over 40 million Americans do not currently have access to paid sick days, and we need to pass the Healthy Families Act to ensure that more people do not have to make the difficult choice between going to work and caring for themselves or for a sick loved one.”

“This legislation would allow workers in businesses with at least 15 employees to earn up to seven days of job-protected paid sick leave each year. Workers would earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. People working in a business with fewer than 15 employees would be able to earn up to seven job-protected days of unpaid sick leave annually.” (taken from this article)

I don’t necessarily have any solutions, but it’s something interesting to talk about.  I have found that it helps to be confident in your choices, rather than doubting.  There is no ideal situation… each person needs to do what’s best for their family.  As Schulte writes, “Doing good work, having quality time for family and meaningful relationships, and the space to refresh the soul is about having a good life.  It has never been just a ‘mommy issue.’ And it’s about so much more than getting the hang of the latest time management system.  It’s about equity.  It’s about quality of  life.  It’s about state of mind.  It’s about human rights.”

Reimangine career trajectories.  Work smarter, not more.  Take vacations.  Take control as much as you can to reduce “overwhelm.” Set your priorities and schedule what’s important to you first.  All excellent suggestions for creating a better work-life balance, if there is such a thing.  (I subscribe to the theory that you CAN have it all, just not all at once.)

What do you think???