Being a working mom is hard. Being a working mom during and in the slow aftermath of a global health crisis and pandemic is beyond hard. Things were already challenging before the pandemic, from working in and outside of the home, wearing too many hats to remember, and dealing with pressure both at work and at home. After over 18 months of remote working and homeschooling children, managing the home and career front, and struggling to keep their sanity intact in the face of school and daycare closings along with a pressing lack of childcare, working mothers are tapped out. About two million women have left the workforce entirely already as a result of the pandemic.
However, most working moms do not recognize or acknowledge burnout until it reaches a critical point. Yet, it is a valid and recognized health condition, which has actually been added as a syndrome to the International Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO defines it as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. Dr. Sheryl Ziegler, author of “Mommy Burnout”, adds: “The pandemic has revealed how closely tied mental health and stress are and I think a lot of people have hit their breaking point and they just can’t get by anymore.”, on a CNBC interview.
Burnout manifests itself as a host of signs, including:
Feelings of exhaustion
Feeling unproductive
Depersonalization (feeling cynical, disconnected and unmotivated)
Insufficient or poor self-care
Poor sleep
Concentration problems
Mood instability
Feeling isolated
Physical symptoms such as headaches, chest tightness, and stomachaches
If you recognize any of these signs in yourself or someone you know, here are a few tips to cope:
Acknowledge the problem
Be honest with yourself and others. When burnout occurs, the temptation may be to isolate and disconnect from others. Instead, consider reaching out to friends, family and using therapy as a way to cope.
Seek help
Burnout is a clear indication that you need help. Whether it’s asking your partner to pitch in more with household chores and parenting responsibilities, hiring a housekeeper, or requesting a more flexible schedule at work, tap into your network to get some help.
Set boundaries
Learn the art of saying no, or at least taking the time to consider requests coming your way. You don’t have to do it all or say yes to every demand on your time, space or energy.
Create some boundaries between your various tasks, as well as between your personal and professional spheres.
Schedule some time for yourself
This may be easier said than done, but it’s absolutely crucial to set some time for yourself to tend to your own self-care. Whether it’s waking up a bit earlier to read and journal, or saving some time for yourself in the middle or at the end of the day, carving some time out of your busy schedule can help relieve a lot of stress.
Create a routine
A lot of stress is created by blurring the lines between work and life, as well as parenting and other areas of our lives. Instead, consider setting up a flexible, predictable routine that separates your work and personal lives.
Stop multitasking
Research has extensively proven that multitasking is not effective, and can actually be counter-productive. Instead, consider switching your approach to focus on one task at a time.
Lower the bar on expectations
Last but not least, consider lowering the bar on your high personal and professional expectations. Instead, focus on building simpler habits such as meditating and getting adequate rest.
How have you been coping with burnout as a working mom?
For most working women and moms, having a flexible schedule is a blessing. It can also quickly turn into a curse if, and when, not managed well. Trying to fit in everything that could possibly fit into your schedule, or on the other hand, underestimating what needs to be done and wasting precious time, can both wreak havoc on your time, energy and self-esteem. As a result, flexibility can be a trap for so many working women and moms, who can end up overworked, frustrated and exhausted from it.
As much emphasis is being put on affording working mothers a more flexible schedule, what is not talked about as much is what it can cost the latter. On one hand, due to subjective work and gender-related negative perceptions about remote work and flexible schedules, the lessened face-to-face time has been shown to hurt working women’s advancement and promotion prospects in the workplace. On the other hand, while a more flexible schedule allows working moms the latitude to handle their various responsibilities, it also requires them to carefully plan ahead and manage their newfound flexibility. The latter is a significant challenge for many working moms who often feel a need to overcompensate for it, and don’t always have the tools to efficiently use it.
Managing the blessed trap of flexibility is an exercise in discipline, focus, but also self-awareness. Here are three tips that can help:
Set “sacred” areas for work, life and relationships
Flexibility can give us the impression that we have all the time in the world to get everything done. This is when the various areas, priorities and demands of our life and work can get mixed up in a feverish mishmash of to-do’s. As a result, while we may end up genuinely doing a lot, we may also miss out on the most important tasks and priorities, and work ourselves right past what truly matters, both personally and professionally.
This is why it is so important to set “sacred” areas and times for work, life and relationships. Professionally, it may be a matter of defining what our most important work is, and dedicate the best and most time to it. Personally, it’s a matter of also understanding what our non-negotiables are, including family time, rest and entertainment too.
Define flexible yet clear boundaries
The advantage of having a flexible schedule is that we get to organize it ourselves without too many outside impositions. The drawback of a flexible schedule is also that we get to organize it ourselves, and as such may overlook the crucial boundaries needed to maintain our sanity, productivity and efficiency. We’ve all seen examples of overworked mothers during the pandemic go from one personal to professional task without missing a beat until all hours of day and night, yet while totally dismissing the all-too necessary boundaries between work and life.
Establishing clear yet flexible boundaries adapted to our sometimes unpredictable schedules as working moms is not just a life-saver. It’s also a precious opportunity to understand, delineate and continually work on the time, energy and productivity that go into both our personal and professional lives.
Resist the temptation to over-commit
One of the constant temptations brought on by a flexible schedule is that to overcommit. As we have flexibility to structure our schedules ourselves, we also often fall prey to the “yes” syndrome, acquiescing to every and all demand and request on our time.
This is where learning and practicing the art of saying “no” comes in handy. While it is a challenge for many working moms accustomed to serving as sources of support and help in so many personal and professional capacities, it’s also absolutely necessary to distinguish between what we have the bandwidth to do and what we cannot fit in to our schedule. This avoids many a frustration, disagreement, or mismanaged task due to lack of time, energy or sheer capacity. To alleviate the discomfort that can be created by the prospect of declining a request or demand, asking for some time to think about it can help.
How are you managing the traps of flexibility as a working mom?
Welcome to our #AskACPA feature where we answer financial, accounting and business questions.
Question: I’m a side hustler and small business owner? How can I keep track of the expenses in my business?
One of the most frequently asked questions by small business owners is how to keep track of expenses, so as keep them from getting out of hand and better control them. If you’re a small business owner, whether you are side hustling or working on your business full-time, you know how important this can be. Not only is it crucial for you to account for what you’re actually spending, but having an accurate record of your expenses also comes in handy at tax time when you’re reporting these and potentially getting some related deductions.
Here are a few ways that can help:
Open a business bank account
Having a separate business account dedicated exclusively to business transactions makes it easier to track your business expenses and record them accurately. While you may use your personal account in some (rare) instances, you will eventually need a business bank account.
Set up your accounting system: Cash or accrual accounting?
Cash or accrual accounting?
Cash accounting consists of recording transactions when cash is exchanged. As such, you would only record your expenses when you pay for them in cash, and would record revenue only when received. Cash accounting is often used by very small businesses, as well as freelancers and sole proprietors, because of its simplicity and ease of use. However, this simplistic accounting method quickly becomes inadequate as the business grows, uses other forms of payment than cash, or needs more detailed bookkeeping.
Accrual accounting, on the other hand, requires that revenue or expenses be recorded when the transactions generating either actually happen, not when cash is paid or received. As such, you would record revenue when selling a product or service, not just when you’re paid for it. Similarly, you would record an expense when incurred, not just when you pay for it. This system of accounting is more accurate, and more suited to growing businesses.
It’s essential that you set up your accounting system properly based on your business goals and outlook.
Manage your records accurately
Last but not least, manage your receipts properly so you have accurate records for your expenses. While this can be done using a manual system such as folders and envelopes, it is more practical to do so using an application you can easily access through your phone or compute. Quickbooks offers a convenient way to scan in your receipts or download them as part of their bookkeeping suite.
In addition, make sure to promptly record your expenses in the system of your choice. While you may also use more of a manual system such as Excel spreadsheets for instance, using an accounting software that allows you to electronically record and keep track of your expenses can be more beneficial. Quickbooks not only allows you the convenience of scanning in your receipts, but also helps you record these expenses as part of your bookkeeping.
All in all, tracking your business expenses is central to your business. Without properly recording and managing your expenses, you put your business at risk and endanger your hard-earned revenues.
If you ask most working women and moms, time is not only a hard commodity to come by, especially in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also a fluid concept that doesn’t necessarily abide by all, or most of the official time management techniques…Not when interruptions are par for the course, and last-minute crisis management becomes a given on any day…
Managing time for working women and moms is far from being an organized, disciplined, scheduled day-to-day sequence of events and choices. Rather, it’s a spontaneous, change-laden, transition-filled and evolving process on the best of days. On the worst of days, it’s managed chaos under somewhat of a sense of serendipitous control.
The reason behind this is the long-lost realization that for working women and moms, time management is less of a choice than it is a constant, regular trade-off between what’s most important and what’s less important, what has to be addressed now versus what can wait another minute, what cannot be planned yet still happens and what happened without ever being planned…The COVID-19 pandemic was a harsh reminder of this fact, exposing the whole world to the fragile subjectivity and utter subordination of women’s time, energy and devotion to unending, unpaid and often un-rewarded, endless caregiving…
In her book “Year of Yes: How to Dance is Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person”, Shonda Rhimes says it well: “That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing. And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want that example set for them”. Yet, it’s this constant, often heart-wrenching trade-off, that also teaches our daughters and sons about not giving up on who they are while still giving of themselves. It’s this trade-off that has allowed the world to benefit from the indispensable contributions of women to all fields of work and life. Most importantly, it’s on the harsh yet generous foundational shoulders of this trade-off that so many of us stand today, to accomplish the work of our lives and leave the legacy of our existences.
Don’t get me wrong, time management is crucial. However, the traditional idea of time management, the one constructed around the history, traditions and schedules of a patriarchal system, are no longer reflecting the realities of a working population made up by half of working women and mothers. We must re-think antiquated concepts of time and ways to manage it, as part of the now accelerated process of change and renewal our society is finding itself in the midst of. Part of this, maybe the most important part of this, is the realization that for working women and mothers, time is but a trade-off.
Do you agree that time management is a matter of a trade -off for working women and moms?
We’ve all heard about the conventional time management advice out there. From breaking down your tasks into manageable bits, to creating new habits in 21 days, most of us have, at some point or another, thought about and even implemented ways to be more strategic with our time. Yet, as working women and moms, time management tends to take a life of its own complexity and nature. From attending to caregiving tasks, to last-minute parenting events, not to mention facing social and professional stigma and lack of gender equity, managing one’s time in a career context is a beast of its own. That’s where the IDEAS framework, anchored in the “Pay Yourself First” principle, comes in…
For working women and moms, managing time strategically and efficiently does not stop at allocating tasks to blocks of time, or creating a well-organized schedule and calendar. Time does not exactly flow on a continuum when one carries the mental load of managing a household, nurturing relationships, parenting or caregiving. Instead, time tends to be a fluid construct integrating the need for flexibility, adaptability and replenishment while allowing for self-compassion and grace, all the while getting things done as efficiently as possible. Talk about a conundrum….
After decades of applying traditional principles of time management, what I, and other women I’ve talked to have found, is that strategic time management for working women and moms is all but traditional or conventional for that matter. What it is, is an ever-changing, fluid construct that can adapt to each working woman and mom’s situation, context and environment. To help in the building of this construct, I’ve outlined what I call the IDEAS framework for strategic time management for working women and moms. This framework is based on the principle of “paying yourself first”, or investing in our most important, career and life-defining long-term goals first and foremost. For example, if your long-term, most important goals include writing a book, paying yourself first would mean investing your time strategically and consistently towards achieving this goal.
The IDEAS framework is as follows:
Identify your most important professional goals:
What are your most important, lifelong professional goals and aspirations? These may even be dreams you’ve had since you were a child, like starting your own business, ascending to the top of the corporate ladder, or research an important cause or topic to you?
Define the tasks to reach these goals
What tasks are needed to reach your goals. In order to write a book for instance, you may have to begin with defining a specific idea, mapping the content of the book, vetting your ideas with trusted advisors or friends.
Establish a time map of your process
Once you delineate the various tasks involved in accomplishing each goal, estimate how long each task is going to require. As a general rule of thumb, double up or multiply your time estimate by 2.5 to get as close as possible to the actual time it will take you, especially as a busy working woman and/or mom. Place these time estimates on your calendar to visualize how and where these would fit along with your everyday other tasks.
Act on it!
Placing your tasks on your calendar in the allotted time slots you’ve defined in the prior step will also allow you to treat these as full-blown appointments with yourself. Treat each task as an appointment for which you have to show up on time, and deliver the expected results. For instance, if you’ve allotted yourself one hour each day to write, make sure to actually show up and execute on a daily basis!
Support yourself and be accountable!
One thing that is often overlooked as related to strategic time management is the amount of support and accountability required. This is especially relevant for working women and moms who have a lot on their plates day in and day out. Finding like-minded women and moms on the same or a similar path can help provide the support needed, and keep you honest throughout this process, as you can also do for others as well!
Would you be interested in applying the IDEAS framework of strategic time management as a working woman and mom? Email us at corporate@thecorporatesister.com for more information.
