pc: maria lloyd photography.
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want to know how i find work-life balance? i don’t. there’s no such thing, in my opinion. but you know what i do try to achieve? work-life integration. which, again, is slightly misleading. it’s not like work isn’t my life, and my life isn’t part of my work. it’s all one in the same. but for today’s purposes, let’s look at how i actively try to juggle both my career and my life as a wife + mom.
1. i make sure i keep track of my calendar. this goes for at work and home. i’ve never worked somewhere that required everyone to keep their calendars as up to date as target does, and i’m SO thankful for it. i block everyday when i leave so that i don’t get meeting scheduled over and i can get out of the office at a good time and home to see my fam.
2. i make my work a priority when it needs to be. it’s inevitable that i have to bring my work home with me due to peaks in workload. i’m totally fine with working at night if it means i’m not at the office until all hours of the night. i get to see my kid + husband and when logan goes to bed, i’m able to hop online for a while. i am also up early, which means i get to check my email for any fires [this is a habit i want to get out of in the near future, but for now, i’m going to keep checking as i get ready for my workouts. ya win some, ya lose some. i’m losing the ‘no screen time when you wake up’ battle]
3. i talk about my family at work, and i talk about my work at home. the more the two are integrated and both sides know the other side of me, the easier i find it is for them to understand when one takes precedence over the other. that integration point is something incredibly important; work-life integration is key for being successful in whatever you do.
4. i treat my work as equal to my husbands. being married to a full time teacher and coach means that my husband works more than 40 hours a week. like, way more. and i have a job that often requires me to put in what would be considered “overtime.” in both cases, we treat each other as equals, and when both careers take priority, we work to come up with a solution for childcare. take last week, for example. our kids were home sick four of the five days of the week. we quickly figured out who needed to go in which day, and were able to divide and conquer. now, i’m making it seem much easier than it really was, but we make it work. just because i’m the mom, it doesn’t mean i always stay home. and just because he’s a teacher and we live close to his job, doesn’t mean he stays home. we make it work, with the help of our extended families.
5. i play with my kids. sounds easy, but how often do you find yourself telling your child you’ll play with them later, after xyz is done? i make a point to visibly shut my computer, put it out of sight, and just play. it’s been game-changing. physically and emotionally, i want my kids to know they are always the most important.
at the end of the day, our family is the number one priority, and that shows up in a variety of forms: time with our children, putting effort in at work to advance our careers for the good of our family, or setting an example for our child that she always comes first, but mom and dad have goals in their professional and personal live and showing the steps we take to achieve them. it’s super important to me that my child knows that there is real value in having and being proud of a career, but it’s possible to also raise a happy, healthy, engaged family. you really can have it all, just with the knowledge that there will be sacrifices.
in my opinion, there really is no such thing as work-life balance. for me, it’s all about work-life integration. both elements of my life complete me, and i am eternally grateful for both.
any logistical tips to share? i’m always looking for a good #lifehack to help me create an even better and more seamless integration! comment here or you can comment on my latest instagram. thanks for reading — have a great start to the week!
