Do you find yourself mentally computing your next grocery bill while catching a couple of words out of your conversation with the kids? Are you having a hard time being present because there are so many things competing for your mental space all at once? Are you able to both yell at the kids from the other end of the playgroundwhile holding a strained conversation with your girlfriend ?As a working mom, you may be all too familiar with thinking about a gazillion things at once, while feeling like your head may be on the brink of extra-terrestrial explosion.
Last summer, my sister told me something that has been sticking with me ever since. As I was huffing and puffing over two loads of laundry and a sink full of dishes, she calmly said: “You know, it’s not so much the physical work, but the mental load we carry that’s exhausting us as working moms…”I’ve had the opportunity to think about since then, so much so that I have taken as a habit to ask myself how much of a mental load I’m really carrying day in and day out. I used to think that it all boiled down to a productive schedule, with a detailed to-do list to boot and some productivity quotes here and there. What I realized is that it’s the mental load made up of the heavy compounding of our personal and professional lives that ends up getting to us working moms most of the time…
Having to carry so many thoughts and plans in our minds, from the kids’ matching socks to cross-country practice, not to mention the research project due at work, can be borderline debilitating. Yet, once you realize that it’s the mental aspect of it all that is really costing you more than anything else, it becomes easier to target the problem. So does realizing that doing more doesn’t exactly solve the problem. Rather it perpetuates it…
For me, it’s become a matter of taking the counter-intuitive approach of slowing down instead of speeding up, and eliminating rather than adding. I’m taking Coco Chanel’s mantra to take at least one thing off before leaving the house to a whole other mental level. It also means:
Having a strict mental hygiene
A while back, I started meditating to see if I could put my mind on pause for a few minutes. Fast-forward a couple of years, it’s become an inherent part of my mental hygiene as a working mom. These are the far and few in between minutes that I get early in the morning or late at night, when I’m not interrupted and can literally breathe for a bit. More than a calming exercise, it’s an entire re-wiring of our brains to support increased mental and physical capacity.
As essential as meditation, therapy, both formal and informal, has also become a cornerstone of my mental hygiene. If you take care of your body, why wouldn’t you care for your mind as well? While there are still a lot of unfounded cultural taboos around therapy, it certainly is a necessity for busy, sometimes over-stretched working moms.
Avoiding multi-tasking
It’s been said that women are good at multi-tasking. What has not been talked about so much are the negative side-effects of this damaging practice. As a recovering multi-tasker, I know all too well the lack of focus, the difficulty of not being fully present, along with the accompanying exhaustion, that are the hallmarks of multi-tasking.
It’s been a process to re-program myself not to multi-task, and I still struggle with it. However, even a little bit of progress in the opposite direction helps. Focusing on one task at a time offers you the gift of focus, clarity, and presence, while being able to enjoy what you’re actually doing. In terms of productivity, you actually get more done, a bit at a time, than altogether.
Clearing out ALL the clutter
Nature abhors a vacuum, and many times as working moms, we strive to fill every bit of our mental space with responsibilities, activities and relationships. We may also fill our physical space with LOTS of things, creating a sense of clutter that leaves us at times powerless and frustrated.
Part of releasing some of our mental load is also letting go of clutter. Whether it’s getting your Marie Kondo on, cutting off toxic relationships, mindsets and behaviors, or just re-framing your schedule and hiring some help, releasing the clutter will leave you freer, happier and all around better.
How can you choose to lessen your mental load as a working mom?
For working women and working moms, flexibility can be both a gift and a curse. Being able to actually have a choice in how you schedule your work can allow you to fit in other competing priorities. You may be able to take the kids to the doctor in the middle of the day, while completing your work on the go for instance. You may be able to work later in the day while you run important errands in the earlier part of the day. Yet, what we often don’t see is that there are traps to having a flexible schedule.
While switching careers from the corporate world to academia afforded me more flexibility in the beginning, it also exposed me to the need to better manage my schedule. It was tempting to do more in the same time space, instead of intentionally scheduling my time in an effective way. There are certainly multiple upsides to having a flexible schedule. However, there are also traps that as working women and moms, we should be aware of:
Thinking you have more time than you actually do
It’s tempting to add the grocery run, the kids’ appointments and a last-minute errand to your schedule when you can manage it at your discretion. Yet, what it often leads to is overestimating your availability and inflating your schedule unnecessarily.
If you’re like myself and you tend to have a love-hate relationship with procrastination, this can spell doom over your time management. Flexibility or not, you still have the same 24 hours to accomplish your goals and objectives.
Adding too much to your to-do list
When I realized added flexibility was actually not increasing my effectiveness, I started taking another look at my schedule. That’s when it occurred to me that I had been gradually adding an overwhelming amount of tasks to my to-do lists, thus stretching myself way too thin.
While added flexibility should help you fit in a few more important tasks to your schedule, it shouldn’t take you to the brink of exhaustion. If you notice yourself packing more into your day and being exhausted or resentful, maybe you should re-visit how you’re using your flexibility.
Not prioritizing self-care
For many working moms,self-care tends to come last. The upside of a flexible schedule is the ability to add in more “me time”. If your flexible schedule is not allowing you to have a healthy amount of self-care, then something is fundamentally wrong.
Increased flexibility should allow you to have a more integrated work-life relationship. An important part of it is to care for yourself.
All in all, flexibility is a big advantage for working women and working moms. However, learning to avoid the pitfalls of a flexible schedule is key to better time management.
Welcome to the Let It Be Friday!, where I say hello (and TGIF), and round up the lifestyle, career and business news that inspired, excited, made me smile (or laugh out loud).
Happy Labor Day weekend! Food52 is listing 10 Labor Day deals that may actually be well worth you time (and hard-earned dollars);
In “Let’s do better” news this week, Forbes reports that only one woman of color (Colombian-American actress Sofia Vergara) made the 2019 highest-paid actresses list, and we need to do better;
In other “let’s do better” news, the Amazon is on fire, and we should all understand why and how to help;
CNN reports there have never been as many single working women in history than now, and it’s changing the face of the economy;
On a different note, the New York Times answers the question as to why there aren’t more women working. The answer is that they’re caring for parents;
In more comforting news, Business Insider reports that women are actually getting ahead at work. The caveat is that the workplace culture has to be built for it;
Got a new job offer? The Muse tips you off on how to negotiate paid parental leave (even if you’re not expecting);
Don’t want to go to college? Inc. lists 3 things you can do instead;
This is a question that is so often asked of kids that it has almost become routine. As adults, we may barely listen to our own kids’ heartfelt answers, attributing some of their most random answers to their (cute) lack of maturity. Eventually, they’ll know better, get a good job and become productive members of society, at least we hope so….
I remember being one such kid, beaming every time someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“A writer, I want to be a writer”, I would timidly blurt out, chewing on the last syllables because it all sounded so big, so…unrealistic. When you were born and raised in West Africa in my days, writing didn’t exactly make it to the list of the most attractive careers. Now if your answer to this fateful question was “engineer”, “doctor”, or something along the lines of scientific genius, you’d be set to receive a vibrant nod of approval, more directed at your parents for their extraordinary feat at raising such an ambitious child. Although I was but a child, I could already notice the difference. It was this difference in treatment, among other factors, that I was reminded of when picking my college major and later my first career. It was as if I still needed the approving nods, decades later, until I didn’t…
When I had my own kids and the same question invariably made it to my lips, I was reminded of my own experience. While I’ve had the opportunity to turn this experience into the most exciting of journeys, many have not. This is why this time around, decades later, I stopped and actually listened to the small voices telling me of their dreams and aspirations, and saved my approving nods for the next Target sale. Right then and there, I realized that these moments when my children would look into my eyes for that glance of approval or that spark of joy, could define their entire lives, in a good or in a terribly negative way.
What I also realized through my own journey into purpose is that we do our best work answering the call placed in us since the beginning of times. Which also means that our children already know, even in their own imperfect terms and ways, what they are meant to be and do. It manifests in the most basic of their interests, tastes and preferences. It’s in the way they choose certain games over others, in the spark in their eyes as they assemble Legos or kick a soccer ball, in their pristine laughter as they create things from nothing. I was writing and telling stories before I knew what stories were. I was excelling at learning and teaching my dolls complex topics before I realized what I was doing. I always knew, even when I didn’t know I did.
As a working mom, one of my most important missions is to usher my children into their own purpose, and in the process, get out of the way. If you’re a parent and you’ve struggled at finding your own purpose, are still looking for it, or are blissfully living in it, it’s also yours. As I’ve found out through the innocent yet powerful lessons from my own children, is that it’s not quite as complex as we may think. As a matter of fact, it may just be a matter of doing these simple yet defining things, over and over again:
Listen and observe
I often tell my students in college that I learn more from them than they will ever learn from me. I feel the same about my children, although it’s taken me a while to realize it. Raised in a tradition where kids are seen and not heard, it’s been a process for me to deprogram my mind as a parent. Learning to listen and observe my kids instead of telling them what to do is still a process, yet one that I strongly believe in and apply to the best of my ability.
If you allow them, your children will show you who they are, and what they came forth to do on this Earth. It takes listening to their innocent words, and watching them as they evolve and choose their paths. The end result, however, is amazing as you learn to simply let them be who they are, which is the best gift you could ever give them.
Offer possibilities
Through my own personal and professional journey across industries and careers, from the office to academia, I’ve come to learn that everything is Possibility. This is also what I strive to convey to my children, students and anyone willing to receive it.
As a working mom, it’s important for me to offer the gift of Possibility to my children. For me, it means allowing them to experiment, try and fail. Whether it’s a new activity, musical instrument, sports, or simply visiting a new place or doing something different, possibilities are endless.
Create space
One thing I realized as a working mom is that I needed to create space for my kids to be themselves. This may be physical space for them to breathe and evolve as independent individuals, or mental and intellectual space to see, explain and understand things differently.
Raising my children in America as an African and now American woman is at times challenging. Many of the core beliefs I came up with are being challenged, sometimes quite irreversably. My own children have a totally different reality than the one I grew up in. However, although I don’t have all the answers, I’m willing to create the space for them to create their own.
Time is a precious commodity, especially as a working mom. You can make more money, meet more people, buy more shoes…Yet, one thing you cannot buy more of, is time. One of the biggest complaints and regrets I hear from fellow working moms is around lack of time. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all, from caring for our families to handling our work responsibilities.
I felt this tightness in the time we’re allotted as working moms from the moment I gave birth. With the joy of motherhood, comes this guilt-filled sense that time is no longer ours. It’s the beginning of a seemingly unending power struggle with to-do lists, deadlines, appointments and other commitments, often culminating with various levels of chocolate-fueled frustration. When the pressure to excel in our careers adds its heavy weight to our already full calendars, it can wreak havoc with our entire sense of self. After all, women still handle the lion share of household chores, while graduating in record number from college and breaking all kinds of glass ceilings and concrete walls.
“I feel like all I I do is work, work, work (hellow Rihanna). I work at home and work at work!”
“I don’t even know what I look like anymore. I’m so tired all the time.”
“Where did the time go?”
The above are just a few of the reflections, at times wine-fueled, I’ve heard from fellow working moms, myself included. While Auntie Maxine is busy reclaiming her time, many, if not most of us, are still looking for where our own went.
After years of simmering frustration and self-blame at what I thought was my own lack of planning, I decided to reclaim myself. And the only place I found to fit this campaign back to my own sanity and fulfillment was early mornings, before anyone could lay claim to this precious time of mine. While I understand that not all of us are morning people, I also believe that in the game of give-and-take of working motherhood, some things have to give so we can take others back. For me, it meant letting go of my favorite late-night Netflix binges and investing in the luxury of extra time in the morning. In the perfect imperfection of my everyday life, it looked something like this:
Changing my mindset from sacrificial exhaustion to personal self-care
The cult of sacrificial exhaustion, exemplified by maternal gigantic under-eye circles and perennial coffee runs, never quite did it for me. While I still have ways to go to curb my caffeine addiction, I’ve long switched my working mom tune to the soothing sounds of personal self-care. After realizing on the way to the pediatrician that I forgot my child (also said patient at said appointment), I relinquished all claims to the title of “Most Exhausted Mother”. While this may cut some of my mommy groups’ conversations, it may contribute to lowering both my cholesterol and insurance premiums.
What this also translated into for me was to release my need to do (and prove) so much, and instead make healthier (read: more boring) decisions. Which involved adopting my mother’s ultra-early bed-time, at the very real risk of looking (and sounding) ultra un-cool. The upside? A full night’s sleep, less under-eye circles, and at least an hour to freely roam alone in the corners of my own home…Priceless!
Choosing quiet time over busy time
When I started reclaiming my early mornings, the first, very real, temptation was to use this time to add more to-do’s to my already crowded list. Maybe I could fit in an additional load of laundry, wash the dishes, or fold the clothes that have been adorning the guest room for weeks…The result? More work , less play…
Instead, I chose to follow the advice of a very astute working friend of mine: choosing quiet time over busy time. For me, it is meditation and prayer, or simply enjoying my cup of coffee while silencing the loud voices in my head reminding me that the electric bill is due. For you, it may be sitting on the porch, talking a walk, or journaling. Whatever it is, I believe it’s worth offering ourselves the gift of self every day.
Doing more of what I love
Last but not least, reclaiming my mornings is also about making sacred space for doing more of what I love. It means sitting at my old and faithful laptop and cracking out a blog post, or writing a book chapter. It’s also reading even for ten minutes, or going to the gym and buying myself an hour of thought-free, sweat-filled grace.
For a dear friend of mine, mornings are her space to dive into her artistic hobbies. Whatever it may be for you, it’s a sacred space to return to yourself before the world starts asking more of you, again.
Are you reclaiming your mornings as sacred as a working mom?
