Are You Trying to Make Your Job Bigger...or Smaller?

I am an unabashed Seth Godin fan.  He has the ability to play it straight, think ahead and really offer great, and even profound, insights about work, career and anything that remotely touches it.  Plus, he keeps moving forward (apologies to "Meet the Robinsons") - not waiting to see what the next big thing is or isn't.

In one of his recent blog posts, a characteristically short one, he notes that some people are working overtime to make their jobs smaller.  Sure, there are all kinds of reasons to do this and some of them go beyond the two that he lists.  For professional and executive women, there is a pull in both directions.

A pull to make your job smaller - or at least small enough to do it well and still be able to manage all your other priorities.  This is countered by the pull to keep or make your job big enough that it gives you the projects, recognition and personal fulfillment that you want in your career.  This is almost the defining career conundrum that has followed professional women for years.

Then, Seth adds a new spin to it.  Specifically, he notes that keeping your job small is a shame - "...exchanging your upside, energy, opportunity, growth and excitement for the freedom from thinking and a decrease in self-induced anxiety."

Is this you?  Are you caught up in the cycle of big vs. small when it comes to your career as you try to balance it with your other priorities that you've been caught in a cycle that just doesn't serve you?  Are you trying to balance an equation that is just outdated all the way around?

Are You Feeling Guilty Because of Technology?

As if they uncovered some great fact, a recent survey that was published in The Journal of Health and Social Behavior suggests that women "...feel 40% more distress than men when family life is frequently interrupted..." by cell phones, Blackberries and laptops. Yes, those very things that give us flexibility and make it possible to manage all of the priorities we have in our lives.


Blackberry Guilt?



To which I say...No Kidding!

Here's the thing or things.

Managing multiple priorities has been something that busy women professionals and executives have figured out how to do with or without the electronics age helping us along. Each new tool seems like a gift to help us with work-life balance...until it becomes an intrusion.

So, yes, five or ten years ago, cell phones were a gift. You could take that last office call in the car as you drove frantically to beat the closing of the daycare doors. You could answer your boss' or staff's questions while you were on your way to the volunteer board meeting. Work-life balance at its finest.

Then suddenly, you could also answer emails, review spreadsheets and proposals and get caught in the microwave society behavior that wants it all. Now. Right now. And, generally speaking, we all get caught up in the same mentality. We want responses immediately - as if we are having a 24/7 conversation. That means we are more likely to want and need to respond. The definition of urgency has changed to the point that nearly everything is urgent. There are few distinctions between what is truly in need of attention and what just happened to be the next topic in line.

It's this sense of urgency that has really made the evolution of technology harder to manage. Whether it's the technology that has prompted us to become hyper-responsive or whether we've needed that in business and technology is just now catchin up can be debated.

Regardless, the end result is that all of these devices started to become more attractive for business and less attractive for a balanced home life. How can you give your attention to one priority in your life when the other is buzzing in the background? How different is it really than having your toddler at work pulling on your hemline all day?

It's the boundaries that get murkier and fuzzier. The lines continue to blur - but are they blurring anyway except to create more work at home? Are you losing the lines you've tried so hard to draw as a professional woman who also has life outside of her career?

Are You The COO of Your Family?

Chief Operating Officer...that is totally my title at the the Peek family business. No, we don't really have a business. It just feels like it.

The day-to-day operations at Chalet Peek will keep any well-qualified COO on their toes. Is there an early morning school club today? Who is going and what time do they need to be there? Taking or buying lunch? Is there a breakfast meeting or early conference call? Holy c*** is the furnace guy coming today?!

And all before 8 a.m.

I am here to say that it is a good thing that the female mind was created or has evolved to be able to handle this. Otherwise, we'd be in a world of hurt on a daily basis...all before 8 a.m.

And, yet, that COO role leaves out key pieces. Pieces that are essential to us being able to keep that ball in play, to make sure that all those pieces of the COO role keep moving along. (I'm thinking that the CEO has it pretty good right now...)

What about those crazed schedules? What about feeling like you can spend time with your family where you don't feel like an air traffic controller? What about that precious self-care that has to be done (or the COO collapses)?

Ummm...yeah.

I am tired just writing this...and thinking about the list for tomorrow as Christmas and a 2-week family trip looms before me. Seriously. How can planning a 2-week trip be exhilirating? I'm even wondering how taking one can be...but I bought books to read just in case I get a break :-)

Being the COO of your family and also trying to be that great professional and executive is exhausting. But it doesn't have to be. I can show you how to make the change you want, that you desire, that you need. 2011 is the year to do it. Take your life back. Really. Money, time, relationships. It is sooooo possible.

Tell me what you want and let's make it happen: Jennifer@PeekCoaching.com

I'll be toasting you to a great 2011!

Peace & Prosperity,
~Jennifer

The End of an Era...

I'd like to say that this was going to be some very meaningful, deep blog post.

It's not.

It's simply to say that my daughter finally copped to not believing in Santa Claus. A mere two weeks ago she said she did. Getting that admission wasn't hard - the hard part was getting her to say why she had changed her answer.

After much interrogation (very light-hearted of course), she admitted it was for the presents. I'm pretty sure that is the answer that every child - when pushed - gives. That they want you to believe that they believe so they don't miss out on the goodies.

I'm not so sure adults are much different.

Saving face, saving feelings, making do with the expected norms. Usually, we do it so we don't upset the status quo. But that could be the equivalent of adult presents - it can be so much easier to follow the path and keep getting the goods than to try something new.

To tell the kids or the boss or your spouse "No" and actually mean it - in the context of you coming first.

To feel that connection with your friends and family as you really turn off the work thoughts and demands at the end of the day or the week.

To truly feel a joy and a balance in your life instead of cramming it all in - and then having it jump out at you like a trick can of worms.

Having all that may indeed feel like Santa is here after all.

What you are doing this holiday season to make yourself happier, more joyful, more at peace?

Work-Life (Un)Balance

The idea of work-life balance is so appealing. This is especially true when you are feeling out of balance - when you feel like you are just barely keeping your head above water. Yet the idea of work-life balance can also be stressful itself...especially as we approach the sometimes already-stressful holiday season.

So many work-life balance guides and articles promote the idea that each day should be balanced on its own. Somehow, you should be able to devote time to family, work, relaxation and taking care of yourself within each 24-hour time period. In some cases, it's almost a math equation: 8 hours work + 4 hours family time + 4 hours fun/exercise/eating = Balance. Uh-huh. That is just not realistic for most of us, nor does it fit our unique lives.

What is realistic is the idea of an integrated life that is defined by the components that are important to you and give you the balance that you want. This isn't the work-life balance from the '90's. This is a holistic approach to looking at your life over weeks and months and even years. This is acknowledging that some days and weeks will be heavy with work and others with time devoted to family.

The key is to think of how each piece works with the others - how they integrate to round out the life and lifestyle YOU want. It is usually not the lifestyle that a mathematic work-life balance equation wants to give you. Here are 3 tips to get you started on that integrated approach:

• List the things that really matter to you over the next 3 to 6 months. Is it spending time with your kids? Getting a promotion at work?
• Honestly evaluate how much time - as percentages of a whole - you want to spend on these areas. If you want to spend 50% of your time on work and career, write that down. If it's 75% or 25%, that's OK too.
• Put your pieces together to form a wheel. Having one piece be large does not mean that your wheel won't turn smoothly or that it's lopsided. That's only true if it's not YOUR wheel and you are trying to make it work anyway.

Figuring out what your integrated life looks like is a big part of letting go of stress. It helps you let go of the ideals that society and the media propose are solutions to us doing too much in one are and not enough in another. It helps you stop being a math equation and start being a human one.