Many are the professional goals set at the beginning of each new year, both at the individual and at the company level. However, little attention is often paid to diversity and inclusion goals as part of these. Yet, diversity and inclusion are an important part of each and every one of our careers, as they also benefit us all, including the companies and organizations we work in. This is especially important for working women and mothers, who are among the minorities suffering from the very lack or application of diversity and inclusion efforts.
As much as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts have been on the rise lately, what with the COVID pandemic and the recent social justice tragedies, including Georges Floyd’s murder, much work still has to be done in this realm. Moving from an obscure, often misunderstood concept adorned with endless speeches, statistics and numbers, to an actual impactful movement is still very much a work in progress. The reality is, the work of Diversity, Equity and Inclusionis a never ending one. Hence the need for us all to continuously recommit ourselves to it…
Here are 10 DEI goals to consider in our own careers, departments, and or/or organizations:
What does this look like for you? It looks like challenging oneself and others to learn about other cultures around, as well as take action towards being and encouraging others to be more inclusive and equitable.
For me, it looks like teaching and writing with a conscious awareness of my audience, and a commitment to take action to develop more equitable and inclusive content. What does it look like for you and your department or organization?
Support diversity and inclusion in your teams
Another important DEI goal is the support of diversity and inclusion initiatives in the environments that we’re part of. This can take many forms, from becoming an ally to an under-represented minority, to advocating in favor of increased diversity and inclusion. Your support can make a world of difference to one person, and by extension to an entire team or organization.
What is your support of DEI be this year?
Support the hiring AND retention of more diverse employees
Research shows increased diversity, especially gender diversity, contributes to greater innovation and better business results overall. However, this is mainly achieved through diverse and equitable representation, which involves hiring and retaining diverse employees. Unfortunately, hiring and retention of under-represented minorities is often lagging, and not a priority for many. Even when diverse hiring is encouraged and implemented, the lack of a diverse and equitable culture prevents the retention of under-represented minorities, which perpetuates and even compounds the problem.
If, in your individual, departmental and/or organizational capacity, you are able to support and implement the hiring and retention of more diverse employees, you’d be breaking one of the most powerful barriers to effective DEI. It may be recommending a qualified colleague for a position, expanding the pool of candidates considered for open positions, or serve as an ally to a peer. Some tech tools that can also help with this include Applied, a platform aimed at removing bias from the hiring process, as well as diversity-focused online job boards.
How can you support the hiring and retention of more diverse employees this year?
Focus on the impact rather than DEI numbers
The hype around DEI in recent years is undeniable. As a result of it, many organizations have focused more on inflated DEI numbers in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, than on the real impact of their DEI efforts. Increasing diverse employees’ numbers, or the number of DEI initiatives and trainings is a good start. However, ensuring a true culture of diversity, equity and inclusion, having diverse representation at the highest levels of management, and fostering a genuine sense of belonging for all, are way more impactful measures.
This impact can be achieved both at the individual and organizational level. Being willing and able to nurture an atmosphere of belonging, to engage in constructive dialogue around DEI, and strive for effective representation, are ways that we can all contribute to creating more DEI impact.
How can you create more DEI impact beyond the numbers this year?
Help someone through mentorship, sponsorship and allyship
One of the biggest obstacles to increased diversity, equity and inclusion, is the lack of support for under-represented minorities. In Lean In’s 2022 Women in the Workplace report, many women, especially Black and Latina women, report not being supported by their managers. This is where diverse forms of support can help.
Some of the most common forms of support include being a mentor, sponsor or ally. A mentor is someone providing guidance and knowledge to someone else. A sponsor goes a bit further by becoming an advocate for their proteges. An ally, on the other hand, is someone who strives to better understand others’, especially those from marginalized groups, circumstances.
In your capacity, whether or not as a manager, how could you support another employee through mentorship, sponsorship or allyship?
Participate in or create employee resource groups
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) aim to connect employees sharing one or many affinities within an organization. This way, they support employees and their development, and help to build more inclusive cultures. Some common ERGs bring together people of color, women, LGBTQ+ employees, single moms, caregivers, as well as employees with disabilities, to cite a few.
Participating in or even creating an ERG is an effective way to advance DEI goals in your organization.
Will you be participating or creating and ERG this year?
Create a sense of community
Creating a sense of community can be as simple as showing interest in another’s culture or background, welcoming newcomers, showing care, or recognizing individuals for their contributions. This is something that can be done at the individual and organizational level, and doesn’t cost much. As a leader, teaching others in your team, department or organization to be more inclusive can also go a long way.
How can you create more of a sense of community this year?
Listen!
On underrated aspect of DEI is the willingness and ability to listen to, and hear, others’ voices. Too often, employees’ concerns about DEI are quick to be dismissed, or buried under layers of unnecessary bureaucracy. Change happens when each and every one of us is willing to listen to others, especially others from marginalized groups whose experiences and circumstances we may be unfamiliar with. Therein lies the not-so-secret secret of deciphering and advancing the monumental cause of DEI.
To help in this, Allie, a chatbot integrated with Slack, helps in sending out Diversity and Inclusionn surveys, welcoming employee feedback, and even posting educational articles.
How will you manage to listen more to others in and outside of the workplace?
Link compensation to diversity metrics
Compensation deeply affects people, not just for obvious socio-economic reasons, but also at a much deeper level that can be tied to self-esteem and self-worth. This is where much can be taught and achieved in terms of DEI advancement by tying diversity metrics to performance and compensation. Making DEI an integral part of performance and compensation emphasizes its importance, and has the potential of creating more of an impact.
In your own capacity, how can you integrate DEI metrics into your own performance? As a leader, how can you encourage and implement the use of DEI metrics as part of compensation and performance?
Be consistent!
Last but not least, committing to more consistent DEI efforts, albeit in a sustainable and effective manner, is a major goal to strive towards. Having a plan, whether personal or at the department/organizational, can help in this regard.
How will you manage to be more consistent with your DEI efforts?
Overall, setting diversity, equity and inclusion goals for the New Year, whether at the individual or departmental/organizational level, is a process each and every one of us can undertake. In the long term, these should be goals that ought to be incorporated in everyone’s professional goals.
If you’re like me, you know how difficult it can be to be consistent, whether at work or in life. For many, if not most of us, it can be so easy to set new goals and objectives in our minds, whether it’s being more productive at work or setting a regular gym routine.
As a working woman and mom juggling many balls in the air, I know I’ve certainly struggled with being and staying consistent with my goals and habits. As women set goals differently than men, favoring more private, less competitive goals encompassing both their personal and professional lives, one can argue that women tend to also approach being consistent in a different manner than their male counterparts. What if, as often busy and overburdened working women and moms, we could devise our own approach to being more consistent in our work and lives in general? This is certainly a question I’ve asked myself year after year, as I kept experiencing the same challenges with establishing long-term consistency in my work and life…
What I have discovered in my own journey with consistency, is that as working women and moms, we’re already dealing with inconsistency on a day-to-day basis. After all, the very nature of our lives as women and mothers can be rather unpredictable. From facing the unpredictable threat of gender stereotypes, to withstanding the various seasons of our lives from marriage to motherhood to menopause just to cite a few, as women we deal with constantly having to adapt, stretch, reach, and overcome the numerous obstacles on our way. It then becomes extremely challenging to establish constant consistency in our work and lives. How do we consistently hit the gym at the same time every day when the needs of our kids may change from day to day, especially given that moms usually carry the brunt of caregiving at home? How can we consistently maintain the same rhythm at work with minimal, sometimes even non-existent, childcare and household support at home and in society?
Despite the numerous books and articles written on the topic of consistency, especially as related to goal-setting, not enough is being said about what it would mean for women. After all, most of the advice out there is geared at men, who most often benefit from societal support as well as that of the women who make up the backbone of families and communities. What this means for us as women and mothers, is that we must learn to redefine what consistency means to us, and how to best apply it in the context of our lives and work.
From mine and that of many other women and mothers, here are some tips that may begin this process:
Look within first:
Research has shown women tend to favor more private, as opposed to public, goals and intentions. The same can be said of choosing to become more consistent in our goals and habits. Being self-aware in the process of deciding to be more consistent is the first step. This entails having a clear vision of who we are, what lights us up, what truly matters to us first. Without this vision, without this sense of who we are in whatever season of our lives we’re in, it can be daunting to set the priorities that would require us to be more consistent in the first place.
Who are you in this season of your life? What matters to you? What no longer does?
Start with what fulfills you
Studies have shown women are more attracted to life goals that promote self-fulfillment, than plain work goals. This is why we often tend to tie our professional goals with our life goals. Besides, given the many facets of our lives and the many hats we wear, compartmentalizing the various areas of our lives is next to impossible. The reality is, at any point in time, we are all of our identities at once, the woman, the mother, the sister, the friend, etc, even to the point of commingling our different identities.
As self-fulfillment is then so much more important to us as women, starting with what fills us up makes sense. Whenever I try to be more consistent in one area or another in my life, beginning with what matters to me is crucial. It’s this fulfillment that can keep me going when the going gets rough and time seems to dwindle to nothing.
What fulfills you? What are the habits and goals that would bring you the most joy? Start with those to build consistency.
Now create your own version of consistency
As you become clearer about the vision for your life, and you can more clearly identify those areas of your life that truly bring fulfillment to you, then you can start building your own version of consistency. This version will look different from that of another woman, who may be in a different phase or season of life, and who may have a different vision than yours. This version may certainly not be perfect, or tied to a rigid schedule. Yet, it may just be the version that works best for you.
For me, it’s been a matter of honoring my capacity, and building the consistent habits that fit in my own life. It’s been about integrating the various areas of my schedule, work and life, to make it all work as best as possible. That means going to the gym after dropping off the kids to school because I’m already out and I can carve some extra time in the gap. It also means waking earlier to meditate, read and write, so I can be available when the rest of the family is up. It means focusing on my teaching when it’s time to do so and not try to fit in anything else.
Some of the tools I’ve been using in the process include life planners, to help me plan my goals according to my particular schedule.
Last but not least, it means giving myself grace when my best efforts don’t work, when I can’t make it to the gym or be fully present, knowing that tomorrow is another day and I’ll give it another short…
What does consistency look like for you? How can you make it fit and work in your own life and career?
With Gratitude,
The Corporate Sis.
Disclaimer: Please note some of the links in this article are affiliate links.
As layoffs have been sweeping the business and corporate landscape recently in areas such as tech for instance, many have been directly or indirectly impacted by it. Many working women and/or their partners are currently dealing with layoffs, and having to adjust to an uncertain economic outlook. For many, it’s also been an unplanned crisis they were not prepared for.
Even when women are not directly impacted, their partners may be, this disrupting the balance of the household from various perspectives, including an economic one.
So how does one deal with layoffs, whether directly or indirectly? Here are a few tips that may help:
Processing emotions is important
Being let go is emotionally painful. From feeling devalued to a sense of guilt and worthlessness, one can experience many negative emotions from the experience. However, too often, in attempts to show strength or simply because we’re too overwhelmed, many don’t take time to acknowledge theirs or others’ emotions when faced with layoffs. Yet, this is an important part of the process.
Processing emotions related to layoffs includes addressing the negative internal backlash fueled by anger, guilt, and other self-deprecating feelings. It’s a matter of acknowledging where we are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, in order to move forward in the most effective manner.
Apart from addressing the emotional impact that comes with layoffs, dealing with the financial consequences is also key. Losing part or the entirety of one’s household income, especially in times of general economic hardship, can have monumental effects.
This is where making a financial plan, including reducing expenses, finding ways to create supplemental income, and re-evaluating one’s money mindset, comes into play.
Last but not least, layoffs, as painful and destabilizing as they may be, are also opportunities to revisit and re-evaluate one’s career plans. For many, it has meant going back to achieving old objectives and goals, such as going back to school, starting a business, or even taking some time off to regroup and start again. For others, it’s meant considering a drastic change in careers and long-term plans.
The reality is, disruption is more often than not a chance to begin again, however traumatic and unplanned they may be. Layoffs are certainly no exception…
All in all, dealing with layoffs, whether directly or indirectly, is far from easy. However, with trust in the process, a solid financial plan and the courage to re-evaluate prior career plans, they can also be the gateway to new opportunities and fresh beginnings.
How many times have you wondered why there are not more hours in a day? How many times have you been so frazzled, stressed, and paralyzed at the thought that you don’t have enough time to do everything that’s on your plate? And how often do you find yourself at the end of the day dissatisfied, disappointed and disheartened at how little you accomplished during the day? If you have, and are nodding out reading this, you certainly are not alone. I know I have, and still do feel like this way more often than I would like to.
As a working woman, and especially after becoming a working mom, these questions have haunted me over and over again. And it’s certainly not for lack of resources around it…After reading countless articles and books on time management, I’ve realized many of those are not exactly built for us working women and mothers. Like much of the advice given out there, it’s mainly tailored for our male counterparts who do not have the same pressures and demands on their time as we do. This in turn has prompted me to consider the ways in which I could build a schedule that really works for me. I was tired of feeling like I couldn’t accomplish my goals and objectives. Like so many, I felt frustrated not being able to move forward, and experiencing a sense of failure as a result of it.
What dawned on me afterwards was that maybe the lack of time wasn’t the main issue. Maybe the issue after all, was a lack of alignment between the schedule I tried so desperately to make work and myself as an individual. Research shows making a plan and establishing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals increase the chances of accomplishing our objective. However, what I didn’t find much talked about in the research is how goals really tie in to who we are and not just what we do. Too often, we focus on the tasks on our to do list. We define ourselves by what we do and most importantly what we achieve and accomplish. At the end of the day, for many of us, we perceive, and so do others that it is what makes a successful. As a result, we often end up getting sucked into a tsunami of to-do’s, without clearly relating what we do to who we are. In turn, this creates goals and objectives that do not fit us as individuals, and as such are so much harder to reach, making us feel powerless and disempowered in the process.
This is especially relevant for us as working women and moms, as our nurturing nature often puts us in positions where we tend to consider others’ goals and objectives before our own. In addition, the pressure to conform to society’s expectations and demands often leads us to take on these expectations and demands as our own. Hence why so many of us find ourselves powerless in our careers, and by extension in our lives. The same goes for our schedules.
After years of fighting against the clock, and not feeling accomplished at the end of the day, I started asking myself if the goals and objectives I was pursuing were really the right ones. This prompted me to get more attuned to my inner voice and what brings me joy, what makes me feel fulfilled, what gives me a sense of accomplishment as opposed to what the world considers “accomplished”. And little by little, I started building my schedule around these. What I noticed as a result was not only an increase in productivity, but also in the sense of empowerment, joy and fulfillment as I started turning my schedule into something that was more reflective of myself.
As a result and after talking to many other working women and moms around me, I started building my schedule around three main principles:
The Dream time
Carving out time to pursue dream ambitions and life goals is essential to our happiness. As a working woman and mom, this was time that often eluded me. As a result, I often felt frustrated because I didn’t have time to write, and go towards the things that really brought joy to me and nurtured my soul. Whenever I try to create more of that time, it almost seemed like I was taking it away from my family, my social relationships and other commitments already lined up. A strong sense of guilt would ensue which would leave me even more depleted and dissatisfied. This is where I made a conscious decision to intentionally carve out what I call my “dream time”. For me, it meant waking up a bit earlier to have some me-time, and tackle personal and professional projects. Despite having to be more disciplined and organized, I could feel my enthusiasm, motivation and joy increase. Paradoxically, the more disciplined I became in intentionally building my “dream time”, the better I was with myself and others.
Carving out your dream time is going to require discipline, organization, and is definitely not easy. However the more you build the habit, the easier it becomes, and the more joy you’re bound to experience.
The Sacred Time
Building a schedule that reflects more of who I am is also making time for the non-negotiables in my life. Those are the sacred areas of life that we can’t reclaim back. For me, it’s time for faith, time for self, and time for family, friends and important relationships. Often, time spent at work or running around from commitment to duty to obligation can take us away from our “sacred time” time, resulting in disconnection, loss of relationships and even decreases in mental health.
What I learned from trial and error is to make sure my sacred time is always indeed treated as such. What this means is also striving to block my calendar, and build serious boundaries around my time. As a working woman and mom, I found that it allowed me to lessen the sense of guilt that I would get when working or engaging in other activities because I would know that I had respected my sacred time before hand. This also allowed me to build deeper, more intentional relationships with the people near and dear to me.
Carving out sacred time in an intentional and organized manner also requires much discipline, organization and boundaries. However, doing so can lead to much more satisfaction and much less guilt as working women and moms.
The Impactful Work time
As a working woman and mother whose time is certainly not infinite, doing work in an effective and impactful manner is crucial. Yet I was finding that many times, I was spending time on work that didn’t reap the desired results. It almost felt like wasting time, which ended up being costly in the long run because each hour wasted would have repercussions on my personal and private life, as well as on my sense of fulfillment and worth.
This is where I started paying attention to the concept of impactful work. It is the idea that one should focus on work that creates a true, long lasting and effective impact. Was the work I was doing really creating this type of impact, or was I just doing busywork much of the time? This was a tough question to ask myself, as it also forced me to put my work habits, discipline, and work ethics into a question. Yet this also provided the opportunity to really define what impactful work was for me, and how to best achieve it.
Defining impactful work for yourself as a working woman and mother, and as an individual in general, will help you streamline the many tasks and to-do’s on your list. It will help you focus on what truly matters, what will matter tomorrow, next year, and in the next 5 to 10 years. With this type of focus, irrelevant tasks are eliminated, delegated, or postponed. Instead, relevant and impactful work is prioritized, put to the forefront, and dedicated a greater and more acute level of attention and focus. And ultimately, this is how impactful, deep work gets done.
For us as working women and mothers, it allows us to not have to give up on our careers, and our work in general because of lack of time or availability, but instead multiply our productivity and impact in less time.
Overall, carving out your dream time, your sacred time, and your impactful work time allows us as working women and mothers, and as individuals in general, to build schedules that truly work for us and reflect who we are. How we define our dream time, sacred and impactful work time will certainly differ for each and every one of us. Ultimately, it will help us create the life and work that are truly aligned with our purpose and with ourselves.
Now let me ask you, how do you define your own dream time, sacred time, and impactful work time? If you had to build you a schedule based on these three principles, what would fit in there?
Do you have a vision for your life? Do you sense a higher purpose for yourself? Yet, are you finding that the various parts of your life, including your family, career, passions and interests pull you into too many directions to allow you to bring this vision to life? Maybe you always dreamt of opening your own gym, yet life seems to have taken you in a different direction, and now you feel stuck splitting your time between your job and family, even as you hustle to hold on to your dream. Or maybe you were aspiring to advance to the C-suite, yet your career progress so far and the limitations of your schedule as a working mom have you settling for way less than you deserve. If so, you certainly are not alone.
Pulled between the demands of motherhood, caregiving, and work, many, if not most working women and moms have a hard time even having a vision and focus for their lives, let alone nurture it and bring it to fruition. Many end up even giving up on their dreams and long-term vision, instead living with a sense of failure and regret. As time goes on, many wonder if they truly can achieve their dreams , or if they have to give up on them in part or completely to put food on the table, be good mothers, or fit into their communities and families. Despite the common refrains in the media touting the misleading message that we can do and have it all (certainly not at the same time), there are still too many of us left in the trenches of working womanhood and motherhood.
One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that your day job is incompatible with your day dream. Unless your dream is aligned with your career, and is to climb the elusive corporate ladder, break the proverbial “glass ceiling”, or shatter the “brick wall” for women of color, that is…
Yet, this could not be further from the truth. Research shows that even when it comes to jobs, women hold an average of 12.1 jobs in their lifetime (compared to 12.5 jobs for men), which suggests a myriad of changes and transitions professionally. Throughout these changes, as well as all the other transitions working women and moms go through, from getting married to giving birth and caring for older parents among others, many lose sight of the vision for their lives, the dreams and ambitions they had in their hearts when they first started out. Yet, what if it were possible to navigate these life transitions, and still hold on to our day dreams?
While it’s certainly far from being easy, it is possible, and here are a few ways to do it:
Clarify your vision and purpose
What did you want to be when you were younger? What was the dream in your heart back then? What is it now? How can you translate this dream into a vision for your life?
If you’ve lost sight of your dream and vision because you had to “grow up”, make money and become a responsible adult, it’s not too late to remember it and bring it back to life. Neither is it an exercise in futility or an indulgence. To the very contrary, it is oftentimes the motivation, drive and inspiration you need to keep being your best self and doing your best work.
Channel your dreams into action
Bringing your vision into life requires some action on your part. It doesn’t mean you necessarily have to overhaul your entire life and start from scratch. Most often, it simply means looking at what you already have going on, especially in your career, and look for ways to integrate your dream into the structure you already have in place. For some, it’s adding a dimension of service into their careers, or volunteering for a cause at work, or even making a lateral move or change companies or industries. I know a woman who is a survivor of breast cancer, whose dream is to spread the message of wellness and healing to as many women as possible, who brings her vision to life by volunteering through her company for instance.
Use your career to fuel your dream purpose and vice-versa
Last but not least, you can also use your actual day job and career as support for your dream and life vision. Financially, your career can help support your side hustle, or any other activities you may engage in to achieve your dreams. Having the peace of mind provided by a regular paycheck and health benefits can relieve a lot of the pressure associated with starting your own business, while giving you the opportunity to work on your dream during off-hours. What you learn in your career also can provide you with the skills you need to do so, from management skills to organizational and technical knowledge, within ethical limits of course. Lastly, the network you build in your career also comes in handy when it comes to promoting your business, book, venture or activities as well.
In the reverse, your side hustle and other activities you engage in to pursue the vision or purpose for your life, can bring added benefits to your career. Among these, are the invaluable leadership, management, and even technical skills you develop in the process. All in all, it’s a win-win situation, in addition to being a great way to add to your personal growth and fulfillment.
So no, you don’t have to give up on the vision and purpose for your life on account of being a mom, having a job, or being pulled in too many directions. To the contrary, you can combine what you have and what you aspire to, into the highest, most fulfilling expression of your potential for your benefit and that of those around you.
Want to know more about starting and growing your own side hustle? Check out my e-book and accompanying workbook: Girl, Get Your Side Hustle On!
What do the most successful businesses have in common? They’re run efficiently like well-oiled machines. Most importantly, they use systems and processes to create efficiencies and minimize time waste. As busy working women and moms, whose most precious commodity is time, that sounds pretty appealing.
At some point in your career as a working woman and/or mom, you may start asking yourself what the most efficient ways of running your career and life are. You also may begin to wonder how to get the most return out of the time, energy and resources you invest in your work. You’re not alone, I certainly did and still do every day to keep my various life and work ducks in a row. As an accountant by trade, I’ve had the opportunity to study and see what differentiates successful businesses from unsuccessful ones, and have thought of the many ways the same principles can be applied to our careers as business working women and moms.
After all, running our careers in the midst of all our other commitments and duties, from motherhood, marriage or partnership, to household management and relationships, is no easy feat. As work is an important part of our life, it becomes so important to set the appropriate foundation and systems to be successful on our own terms, without jeopardizing or sacrificing the rest of our lives.
In my experience, and from the strong tenets of managerial accounting (who knew you could mention accounting in your day-to-day life), here are three principles that may help:
Plan: Have a vision for your career
Successful businesses have one thing in common. They plan, and they plan well! This means having a solid, effective and feasible vision for the future. The same can be done in our work. How many of us begin careers without a solid plan, out of a vague belief that we may be successful at it, or at least make enough money to pay the bills? Without vision, our careers are doomed to fail, or at the very least fall short of our expectations.
What is the vision for your career for the next month, quarter, year or even a decade? Where do you see yourself in five years? How can you align this vision with your life?
Another thing effective businesses have in common, is the ability to monitor their progress and adjust as needed over time. Too often unfortunately, especially as busy working women and moms, we allow our careers to passively drift along, as we desperately try to pull the various pieces of our lives together. Ultimately, this makes up for growing dissatisfaction and even resentment in our work. Having checkpoints that go beyond performance reviews, such as personal self-evaluations, for instance, can help.
Do you monitor your career progress every so often? What are the career checkpoints you keep an eye for? What are your non-negotiables and other parameters you measure your career progress against?
Make the optimal decisions for your career
Last but not least, running your career effectively also requires you to make the optimal decisions for it. This means switching from a passive professional stance to a more active one, where you take control of your work and decide what is best for you. Too many working women and moms allow society, organizations, institutions or self-deprecating beliefs to take this power from them and make decisions on their behalf. These decisions can range from where to work, to the amount of flexibility you need, to even whether or not it’s time to change the course of your career.
Are you empowered to make the optimal decisions for your career? What are the best choices you can make for yourself when it comes to your work?
Overall, for working women and moms, running our careers as efficiently and effectively as possible is not an indulgence, but a necessity. To this end, having a solid career vision, monitoring your progress (or lack thereof), and being empowered enough to make the best decisions for yourself, are essential.
Are you running your career like a successful business?
Have you ever hit a wall in your career where you were just too exhausted to keep going?
Have you ever wondered how to create more hours in the day to get all your work done?
Have you tried many different ways to get more done and have come up with abysmal results?
I remember staring at my to-do list, and feeling a sense of mixed dread and anticipated disappointment at the thought of not even being able to get through the first half of it. As the archetypal overachiever, of course I wanted to do it all, and… of course, I’d come up short every time! As the accountant I was trained to be, my math was definitely not working…Too much to do, too few hours in the day…
Talking to fellow working women and moms, I quickly realized I was far from being the only one in this predicament. Combining motherhood, household duties, work, social relationships, and everything in between, has been mission impossible for most women for the longest time. Despite the many attempts at increasing gender equity in and outside of the household, as well as in the workplace, the reality is change, real change, is going to take some time…In the meantime, most of us still don’t have a choice in the matter. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do, which means creating and implementing solutions to the problems we face day in and day out, including facing our to-do list every day…
This is nothing new…Women have for the longest time pondered the question, as to how to do more with less. More with less time. More with less money. More with less resources. And they certainly have managed to do so, often at their own purpose’s, sanity’s and fulfillment’s expense.
However, for me, as for most working women and moms, the COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point. All around the world, working women and mothers hit a wall, as their already meager resources and insufficient time were drastically depleted to make up for a dire lack of parental, economic, political and social support. And again, as always, women turned a disastrous situation into opportunities for change, rethinking the way they work, mother, lead and care for themselves and others into a not-so-quiet feminine revolution of our modern times…
Part of this revolution has been around re-conceptualizing what work means to us, and how we can better do it for the good of all. In the advent of remote work and digital nomadism, many women are reinventing the meaning and context of work. At the heart of this re-invention, is the vibrant heart cry to reclaim women’s time, so precious a commodity that’s been taken for granted, interrupted, used and mis-used with too little care and too much abuse.
As I’ve been reflecting on this in my own work, I have resorted back to my business training to find solutions to this age-old, yet currently so urgent problem. After staring at death in the face for over two years of pandemic, doing the impossible as mothers, wives and women in general, how can we manage to create the systems and processes that will help us work less, yet achieve more in our careers, and by extension in our lives? When I say “working less”, I’m certainly not appealing to the lazy, comfort-seeking side in all of us, but rather to the self-preserving, wiser side that cautions us against expanding too much of our precious resources without regard for ourselves, others and our future.
To me, it means starting to look at our careers as businesses, and ourselves as entrepreneurs in our work. Most importantly, it means looking at our time as our most precious commodity, and always keeping in mind ways to spend it in the most impactful manner. Here are a few ways to do this:
The Impact Principle: Make a mental shift from doing to impacting
One of the first changes I’ve had to do was to consider how I was thinking about work. Rather than seeing it as a series of to-do’s, work became about impact. Who could I impact the most through my work? How could my work, even in the most mundane of its aspects, impact my department, division, company? Most importantly, how could it impact my purpose, my sense of fulfillment, my growth and evolution?
Shifting from a to-do perspective, to an impact perspective, helped me regain a sense of purpose and engagement in my work. I was no longer just there to do a job, I was there to make an impact. This thinking expanded to how I tackled my daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly planning. I switched from pretty planners to intentional ones, which allow me to think in terms of impact and structure my to-do list accordingly.
The System Principle : Create and document your own system
It took me a long time to learn the power of having your own work system. Like many other working women, I wanted to do it all, perfectly, all the time. Except I did not have a system of my own…
Each one of us has our own way of processing and managing our work. As women, we process information and approach tasks in a different manner than our male counterparts. As such, having a system of our own allows us to apply our own, optimal way of working to our career, while setting up and improving over time a process that is uniquely ours.
I’m a writer, teacher and researcher, who works best in outlines and themes. This is also how I structure my system and processes, from my career to my family and home life. What is your system?
The Repurposing Principle : Harnessing the power of templates
There is nothing new under the sun. Pretty much everything is an iteration or improvement from a prior version. Hence, the power of repurposing. I went from trying to do everything from scratch, to purposely finding or creating templates. This also meant spending more time upfront setting up and updating these templates, from emails to meeting agendas and calendars.
As an educator, I use and re-use templates, which also allows me to improve them over time, saving me significant time and effort in the process so I can focus on more impactful tasks. I also bring this approach to my family and home life with planning, calendar and other administrative templates.
Thinking in terms of impact, leveraging the power of systems, and repurposing through templates, have helped me achieve more in less time and with less resources, from going back to school as a working mom to making a career change a few years back . Most importantly, it’s helped me put my own stamp on the work I do, while being more intentional about the impact and the purpose I desire to achieve.
Can you change your mindset from doing to impacting?
Can you create your own system?
Lastly, how can you repurpose all the hard work you already do through templates?
