Balancing Work and Family
by Elena T
I am glad to take any suggestions on this one, wise classmates, since I am absolutely horrible at balancing work and family. Even as I write this, it is Saturday night and my boyfriend is sitting on the couch next to me watching a movie. Oh, and this post isn’t due for weeks. My life is all work, minimal shirk. Help!
I wouldn’t say that my difficulty is in balancing work and family, but rather work with everything else (fun, relaxation, reading, enjoyment, etc.). During the school year and the academic year, it feels that my life stops to a certain degree. I feel that my days are micromanaged and covered in neatly-written post-it notes that remind me of alllll the tasks that I am to complete in one day. I make lists of books to read during the summer. I bookmark restaurants I would like to eat at on my next free weekend. I work 7 to 3 at work and then 3:30 to 10:30 at my other job and school work, most days. I am so close to burn out!
What frustrates me the most about this situation, though, is that the busier that I get, the more work I take on. I feel that I might get too busy to finish an assignment, so I like to “stockpile” my work and get ahead on tasks when I get a chance. This sounds pretty logical (I think), but the reality is that it becomes a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle that gives me the sense that I always have something else that I could be doing. Lately, I’ve found it helpful to make a checklist of goals that I would like to complete in a particular day. I have made every effort to STOP when I reach this target, but breaking the habit completely is still a work in progress.
I work the way I do because I want to enjoy the rewards of success and achievement later. But the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time, not hurrying and working it away until the next vacation or summer comes along. Well, you know what they say, acknowledging the problem is the first step…
Any advice?
Hi, Elena,
Balancing work and family is that that easy we all have to experience it to understand. The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
Yvette
We seem to have similar interests and struggles. My suggestion for balance is to create a 48 hour day, as I am not able to accomplish enough in 24 hours it seems. As for advice, what I really do is I try to work smarter, not harder. I really focus on keeping my spaces working for me, and make plans of action for even small things. For example, to save time, I will make a list of groceries I need, and then try to think about the order in which I shop for them so that I spend as little time in the store as possible.
Things like that help. Oh, and I also hired a house cleaner. She comes twice a month and its the best money I have ever spent!
Elena,
I think as a teacher in her first few years, managing work and all the other things is almost impossible. As a teacher who is now in her tenure year, I can say that I do not miss the days I would run on less than 4 hours of sleep daily just to balance all the things I had to do and wanted to do. However, have hope! It DOES get better. You learn to ropes, you realize your lessons are now stabilized and ready to use with minimal tweaks here and there, and you learn how to allot time for various things at different points of your week. I still have a minimal “social life” to enjoy, but I DID get better at feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work that keeps piling on over my head cause I now realize that I did it over and over for 3 years, its just remembering to do that all over again. At least there are no surprises, and we just need to refine ourselves from here on. They weren’t lying when they said it gets easier as the years go by!