[Solved] How to get a work life balance?

Hi ProudDad101,
Firstly - Welcome to DadTalk.

Wow, I have always found the work/life balance thing Soooooooooo difficult to take hold of. Every few months I lost track of the hours I was working and had to mentally put things into my diary to get me to leave early/on time.
The most helpful piece of advice I ever received was the idea of your child being one of the Directors of your company.
It helped me to leave at 4:40 pm sometimes for a board meeting regarding the following topics:

• nappy consultation
• smiling and vomiting proposal
• business process engineering - mixed feeding and who holds the spoon
• team building - including bedtime story.
• Director's party in their bedroom tonight. Bring a bottle [warm] (Arrive at office late tomorrow am)

Now as a SAHD I find my problems with balance are more on the level of being so engrossed in one thing when 'little one' is playing and I just want to finish this one tiny thing - the result 45 minutes later is him blatently climbing the walls for my attention and me getting wound up because of the interruption.

/orange

Hi, thanks for the quick and informative response.

I will take that on board and try and build that in to my day, the other problem (i think this is just typical bloke) is bad organisation.

Going swimming tonight so hopefully that will help me chill out, then i can perhaps organise my thoughts.

Cheers.

aha...
About every 3 months I think about my Time Management problems and then pick a simple useful tool from the list below.
I waste time with procrastinating and not doing work/tasks, also being a perfectionist.
Over some 20 odd years I have come across these:

• Managers could be advised to plan 80% of each and every day (eg 1 hour write report, 15 min phone conference, meeting 40 mins, 30mins emails at end of day, etc).
• Ivy Lee: Plan 10 mins at the end of each day to plan your work in your diary for the next day. Start with the biggest/ orquard/ least attractive piece of work. When that one is done move onto the next largest/unpleasant. After a week or two the sense of procrastination/dogs at your heals will begin to ease.
• Protect the time you book in your diary. Do not allow it to be interrupted. Have a way so others know not to interrupt you (close door, put up postit sign). Make it clear when you can be interrupted, and give that interruption 100% of your attention.
• 80/20. Do a job to 80% of perfection. Good enough is often sufficient. Feedback from others will indicate whether your delivered services/outreach/correspondence/plans are sufficient for them. I like this one the most. I used to joke to my mate that I need to plan today's 20% or human mistakes.
• Prioritise: Absolutely do the task; Better do the task; Could do the task; Delegate it; Eliminate it (to the soak pile).
• Soak pile: have a pile of papers/tasks/letters/etc that arrive at your desk and you think it will not benefit the customer if you did it. Add things you simply eliminate without action. That way if you realise you do need to take action - it will be easy to find. Purge the pile every few months so it is only 3 months deep.
• Spots. If you think you keep pushing a few bits of paper around without actually doing/completing the task - have a week of putting a pen mark on eg the top right corner. If you start finding pieces of paper getting chicken pox then perhaps it is time to action something the first time you pick it up!
• plan 30 minutes in the middle of the day to just do the odds and ends that have to be done and are small enough to be quickly actioned.
• Plan into your diary the Important things which are not urgent (eg training, exercise, health and safety, planning, long term improvement plans). Otherwise the daily firefighting of Urgent things will mean you never make time for those important things. Also, identify and eliminate the things that are Not Urgent and Not Important.
• Objectives/Delegating/Receiving a task: POSEE - make it: Positively worded; Only do what your Own part is; be Specific about what the output/deliverable is; what Evidence will you end up with when done; Ecology, ie. does it fit with your values/life mission/are you being true to yourself.

The critical thing is to only use one or two of the above tools at any time. That way you can find enough energy in yourself to keep on making the difference which helps you and your family.

Thank you - I realise I need to do something to ease my procrastination which I have been suffering from for a couple of months.
I have only sketched the ideas - so do ask if you want more detail and I will see whether I can clarify things.

I am sure others on Dadstalk have other advice around life/work balance...
/J

Hi Proud Dad

Your description of your working week is not uncommon and you shouldnt beat yourself up over it, I was fairly well organized until my twins came along and like you ive worried that im not keeping on top of things. when they were first born I was only seing them in the morning and at weekends but now ive made more time for them. i know my work has suffered but now i dont worry so much. I think its more important that when you spend time with your child your'e in a good mood and the long hours that you work cant be helping. A child takes up a lot of time and energy and its impossible to keep up all the activities you were previosly participating in, something has to give and the more you worry about what you've not done the more pressure you'll put on yourself. You have to accept there are just not enough hours in the day, im not saying give up on your goals, just realialize it will take you longer to achieve them and there's no shame in that. A very basic loose plan helped for me eg some time on Sundays - 2 hour bike ride, Tuesdays - leave work on time, Friday evening - house work, Saturday morning - paper work. You can then build on that.

Hi guys,
thanks for that, all of that really helps, I am going to get my head sorted and am already going to work a little bit later (still on time just not early) that gives me 15 mins in the morning which really helps.

Mr Orange, I have already started using two of the tools, the main one is giving myself 10 mins at the end of each day to document what's in my head. An then giving 80% to jobs which people have noticed an improvement as giving 100% and stressing g when it doesn't go right is counter productive.

Thanks again and I will try and post any improvements

Cool tips - I am awful at getting around to the important non urgents.... ESP when they are bug tasks... When I'm
managing my time well I book time in my diary to do these things.... When I'm not - well I just don't get around to them for days 🙂

my biggest problem is under estimating how long things will take and so over promise what I can achieve...

Always a tricky one. Do you really need to start your own business? Unless you're very disciplined it will take over your life. My Dad ran his own business. There were plenty of days when he worked from when he got up to when he went to bed. Weekends didn't really exist for him. He rarely played with us. I'm not having a go at him: he found himself out of work when we were very young and had little choice. But it sounds like you do.

Do you need the extra money? Your kids may have more PS3 games but they'll see less of you. When they're 16/18/? and about to leave home, what will they look back and wish was different?

Very good tips, have just copied and pasted to my desktop 🙂

Although it will not work for everyone, I do not do many (if any) of the hobbies I used to since the my boy was born. He is now 5.5 my daughter is 2.5. Decided that we would give as much attention to them as we could and build back in our time as we went along.
That is not to say that we do not have any me time. It is just that it is mainly now at home and usually when they are asleep, like now. 😉

What I have now found though is my hobbies are starting to come back. For instance, this year I got my son of the stabilisers on his bike (wooohooo). We went riding every weekend over the summer, even if it was just for 5 mins to get him riding. By the end of summer I was cycling upto the park with him. The best part of it though is that I used to love cycling and now I am cycling again just with my boy and we are both enjoying it. Probably not much of it over the winter period but we will find something else. My daughter I am sure will be the same.

in response to talldad: starting my own business is the only way i can think of to have the ability to manage my own time (after it has settled down), and to get the money that we need, and unfortunately we do need this, we have a lot of debt that needs sorting urgently.

This morning we had a really big argument, i cannot stand it when she says that she has a headache because she is stressed, she is tired of having to do everything 24/7 - even though when i am at home she puts it on me to do the nappy change in the morning and at weekends to feed our daughter and do diy, i know this looks like i am whining at spending time with our child but it is always when i am in the middle of something and if i can just concentrate and get it done then i would do these things happily.
This morning i lost it and shouted infront of my daughter and she burst out crying, this is the second time it has happened and i feel like scum of the earth for upsetting her like that, i don't want her to grow up thinking of me like that, i have no let out at the moment, know one to talk to about, well, anything really, there are a couple of chaps at work that are becoming friends but i am always scared of confiding in people as i feel it would make me look weak or they may tell someone else.
As a kid i had a nervous twitch (i was bullied quite a lot) and now with all the stress at home and work i have it again and colleagues have noticed but i don't know what to tell them.

as for this morning i don't know what to do, how to handle it, if i appologise then i will feel low and hate myself as i always end up apologising when it was her that wound me up.

if you have managed to read all of this then thank you and i would really appreciate some advice.

I would apologise to both your wife and your daughter - if no one apologises, then it festers. You need to sit down and talk, and if you don't feel able to do this easily, then maybe you should suggest to your wife that you should go to Relate - better to do it now that whne things have got worse. I'm not saying it's all your 'fault' because it isn't, but it needs someone to take the first step. 🙂

Thanks for that, i will get home ASAP tonight and will take the bull by the horns, just went to lunch with one of the guys i previously mentioned and he suggested pretty much the same thing.

so we will see what happens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Proud_dad101,

What a lot of things you have on at the moment.

A young child, a very busy job, trying to start your own business and a debt problem as well - no wonder things are falling through the gaps.

The first thing you need to know is - your not on your own.
Confiding in close friends will at least unburden you mind of all the things that must be racing around it at the moment. Also coming to the forum was a good idea as well.
Confiding in people doesn't make you appear weak, if you think about it, admitting that you need to talk about things with someone else is actually quite a strong action to take. Especially if it starts you down the road to sorting your problems out.

First thing you need to do is apologise to your wife and daughter - I think we all agree on that. Next thing is that you and your wife have to talk and try to find a way forward.
She must feel quite isolated at the moment - you two are partners in raising your daughter and she must feel like the burden is all on her - however that said you are trying to juggle a job and starting a new business and don't seem to have much time for little else, not even relaxation.

To be honest I think you are trying to take too much on at the moment. You and your wife really need to talk and come to an agreement about what your family really needs from you both, maybe starting a new business needs to be put on hold for a year or so to allow you to concentrate on other priorities or maybe there is another solution. You both need to understand the pressure the other is under and how you can help each other.

You also mentioned debts - to be honest debt management can be easily sorted - I only know this because a few years ago my family, for various reasons, were saddled with debts we couldn't pay. When it all got too much for us we found The Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) and they were able to help us sort out these problems. You can either talk to them by posting on our ask a CCCS counsellor board or by sending them a PM or by visiting them at Debt Remedy

Whatever your problems - you and your wife need to talk openly and honestly without any accusations or anger - between the two of you you'll come up with a solution and as actd has said, if need be, use relate or another counselling service to help you both to communicate openly.

just and update.

i firstly apologised to my wife and daughter (she is only 9 months but hey ho). I have now agreed to step back a bit from the business and have agreed to let a friend help (one of the colleagues i previously mentioned).

I have also contacted the CCCS and will take steps to sort out the debt situation.

feeling better about things already, just need to keep it up.

thanks for your help and will keep posting.

Hi Proud_dad101

Saw you were online - how you doing today ?

Hi ProudDad,
I am so pleased to hear that you feel uplifted by taking action.
I would really value being able to support you, even though it would be at a distance and through this website...
So, please do post here. My hope is that you would know there are many people 'here for you', and able to understand some of the fatherhood, relationship, marriage and work/life balance difficulties.
I want to stand side-by-side with you as you move onwards.
/MrOrange

Yeah great, having difficulty with banks being banks.

on the whole pretty good feeling about things.

have agreed to take daughter to nursery when she starts at the end of the month which went down well 🙂

Thanks for asking.

Looks like a huge improvement from where you were yesterday. 😀

Recognising the problem (whatever it is) is a big first step, and a sign of strength, not weakness. Only when you have recognised this can you do anything about it, and you clearly are now moving forwards. Keep us posted - good news is always welcome 😀

Mr Orange,

That is fantastic i really appreciate your support and will continue to post updates as things progress.

Look forward to speaking again soon

Great.

Things always seems worse just after a row. The only thing I can suggest is to talk. You can't do that whilst your daughter's around - can you get Grandma or someone else to take her out for a morning - better to have a big discussion when you're fresh than when you're tired.

I know you're not going to want to hear this but, in my opinion, looking after even one child is one of the hardest jobs around. I only do it for two days a week and by the time Satuday comes, I just want to go out and leave my wife to it, so I can understand your wife's frustration.

I'm quite confrontational, so I'm probably not the best at suggesting how to approach the chat - I'm sure some of the others will pitch in. This is the best I can suggest. Try to stay calm. Avoid statements - ask questions - make sure you find out what she thinks about the situation and the business. Don't respond to anything. Don't blame. Don't start responding with a "Yes but that happened because of..." half-way through her first sentence. (Men do it all the time.) Avoid going over what got you to where you are and try to focus on what needs to change. If you like, imagine yourself as a scout on a reconaissance mission - you're there to gather facts. Then take them away and think them over.

Hi guys,

Following on from the fantastic advice things have been better, we are talking about things more, i am spending more time with my daughter, and the business is growing steadily.

only problem at the moment is that my business mentor wants 2010 to be the year my business grows in to a full time thing which will mean a lot of work until things calm down, this would be fantastic but scares the [censored] out of me and i know this will cause stress at home, but on the other hand we could really do with the money, REALLY.

hope you all had a great Christmas and have a fantastic New Year.

Hi prouddad,

Sorry to hear you're having problems, work/life balance can be so hard. I wonder if you've thought about all your flexible working options? This direct gov site outlines all the options/info on flexible working- http://bit.ly/avW3yd and might help- hope so!

That's a great link Dadrights - we featured it on the front page of DadTalk today - we have the DirectGov video on the news item as well.

Well worth a look.

gooner :ugeek:

Afternoon all

I am glad I found this forum and particulaly this subject as I was having the same thoughts myself on how the [censored] I was going to balance my work and home life.
I run a small business which takes up my day from 6am until around 9pm most days and working weekends.
If you are thinking of setting up a business at the moment consider the following:

Will it improve my home/worklife? - Depending on what your business is, I suggest that in the early stages of getting established your business will be all consuming and from experience I can tell you that after 5 long hard years we are just getting there. I often say that my business is my baby that I have nurtured it to where it is. Quite often not attending family and friends weddings due to work leaving my wife to go alone.
Do I have the financial clout? - I started my business from nothing with £450.00 and for the first time in 5 years I have been able to take a salary out only this year. It is only a modest salary that just about pays the bills, it is by no means a kings ransom.
Are my wife and family behind me? - When I started, I didn't even consult my wife or take advice from family, I went home one night from a very well paid job and announced "I resigned and I'm going it alone" - I have been very lucky that my wife has backed me all the way for 5 years and didnt complain when I told her that we could not go on holiday or have children because we cant afford it.
She has even paid all the bills and often given me spending money for the odd night out with the lads.
I am only now lucky enough to be blessed with the chance to be a dad in January and although I am reasonably young at 35, I was starting to think that the chance might be gone and the business would have hindered the chances. I have decided that although my business will take up alot of my time still, I will ensure that I will be around in the morning and in the evening and weekends will only happen if it is a matter of "life or death".

After I have said all of the above, I still wouldn't change a thing and I am a big believer in encouraging people to start their business if they feel that it is the right thing to do for them.

Good luck with everything and feel free to pm me if you would like some help or advice from a bloke that has been through the good and bad.

All the best

The Hot FM.