When The Scales are Tipped Against You
Have you ever met a workaholic? How about a slacker? Or maybe you’ve heard someone brag about their work hard, play hard lifestyle? It seems that everywhere we turn we receive contradictory advice about how to balance our career with our personal life.
While some people prioritize one over the other – it is safe to say that most of us want to strike a healthy balance between our personal relationships and our career. In this article, we’ll use examples from my clients to discuss how to identify an imbalance between the two and we’ll also give some tips on how to fix these problems.
When everything is a “family emergency”
I worked with a client (let’s call him Edward) whose daughter (let’s call her Katie) would call once or twice a day with an urgent need. Katie would threaten to run away, harm herself, or not speak to Edward if her problem didn’t get resolved. Katie had always been this dramatic, ever since she was a child. But like any father, Edward still became extremely distressed after every interaction with his daughter. Preoccupied with his daughter’s issues, Edward found it difficult to focus on his own work with any peace of mind.
In my early sessions with Edward, we worked towards understanding why Katie reacted this way when left alone. Katie’s mother had left when she was a young child, and Edward realized that this may have been contributing to a continued sense of abandonment in adulthood whenever her father could not resolve her issues. He knew Katie needed her concerns recognized and validated, but he didn’t know how to address them without interrupting the working day.
I worked with Edward to a) put a plan in place for when his daughter called and b) identify whether issues were as urgent as Katie made them out to be, and c) minimize guilt he felt from prioritizing work during the weekday.
The next time Katie called, Edward was able to acknowledge and triage her concern, direct her to an appropriate resource that might help her in the meantime (a website, book, therapist, etc.), and communicate to Katie what his boundaries were and that his inability to deal with her issues instantaneously had nothing to do with his love for her.
When the issue is serious
What about when personal life must encroach on work?
I worked with a woman (let’s call her Amanda) whose father was in remission. Thirty days into Amanda’s new job, her father’s cancer came back. Since Amanda was responsible for her father’s care, this meant that she had to schedule and appointments, be in constant communication with oncologists, and spend as much time as she could with her at-risk father. The emotional and physical toll this took made it difficult for Amanda to focus on making a good first impression at work during her first 90 days.
I worked with Amanda to help her communicate the situation to her supervisors and HR department, set boundaries to make sure she was still able to deliver on her work and attend to her father, and find outlets for the anxiety and depression she was feeling from the situation.
Is it happening to me?
These are just two examples of the infinite challenges working people might encounter in their personal lives that compromise their careers. Watch out for these signs in your life that personal issues are infringing on your work life:
Missing deadlines/deliverables at work you normally wouldn’t miss
Feeling distracted or preoccupied during working hours
Checking phone/personal email during work obsessively for potential “emergencies”
Partner/children/parents show up at your place of work unannounced or don’t respect work commitments
Substance use or abuse (yes, coffee counts) to improve performance deficiencies at work from a demanding personal life
If any of this sounds familiar, below are some techniques you can use to try and rectify the situation:
Have an honest conversation with your loved ones
Set boundaries (physical and virtual) and decide in advance what those boundaries look like
Understand why that loved one is encroaching
Talk to someone outside of the situation (coach, therapist, etc.)
What about the opposite, more common issue? 83% of Millennials and Gen Z-ers believe that they do not have work-life balance, and 80% of Baby Boomers report that they are stressed. How do you stop work from encroaching on your personal life?
When you're always reacting
If endless meetings were bad before COVID-19, they’ve only gotten worse, as endless Zooms clutter people’s calendars for most of the day. I worked with a client (let’s call him John), who felt like he was always reacting to everything at work. Deliverables, meetings, and “emergencies” would pop up every Friday, and he found himself missing his son’s football games, date nights with his wife, and drinks with his buddies.
I worked with John to identify when most requests were coming in – it turned out that most requests were magically appearing Friday morning. I had John block out 2 hours each Friday where he couldn’t be scheduled for meetings, and this gave him a buffer for any last-minute requests that came in during those times. I also worked with John to prioritize – What was urgent and what could wait until Monday morning?
These two hours made all the difference – John found himself wrapping up and leaving work when he needed to, and he also found that he now had more time to plan the week. By not saying yes to every request, John found that coworkers also respected his time more, and only came to him with genuine emergencies.
When you like the chaos
I had another client (let’s call him Phil) who came to me because his girlfriend was upset about how much time he was spending at work. After three missed dates in a row, Phil’s girlfriend had communicated that she was reconsidering the relationship.
I talked to Phil about why this was happening – he said he easily got lost in his work because it helped distract him from the craziness of his personal life. After a little more digging, he realized that he was using work to avoid fights with his girlfriend. If they got into a squabble, Phil would pick up his phone and dive into the first after-hours email that came through. Phil cared about the relationship, but he hadn’t realized he was doing this until we talked about the issue in depth!
I first worked with Phil to schedule implement boundaries. He agreed to stop responding to emails that came in after 5, and even made it so that notifications from his work email were snoozed until 9am the next weekday. I also encouraged him to block out “Relationship Time” and “Me Time”, so that he could have dedicated blocks of time for solving issues and spending time with his girlfriend, and for destressing and focusing on his own self-improvement.
Is it happening to me?
Again, these are just two examples of ways that work life may interfere with personal life. Watch out for these signs in your life that work is ruining your personal life:
Your partner is getting mad at you
You’re missing key events with your family, partner, or other loved ones
You cancel or arrive late a lot
You’re picking up your phone after hours and answering texts/emails
You use work as an escape when faced with a difficult conversation or situation
Your physical health and mental health are suffering
If any of this sounds familiar, below are some techniques to make sure that your work stays at work, and your home is a sacred space:
Ask yourself why you are letting work interfere with your personal time – Are you avoiding something
Ask yourself whether the after-hours requests are work are genuine emergencies or someone else’s lack of planning
Schedule Me Time onto your calendar
Set physical and virtual boundaries between yourself and work
Have a conversation about appropriateness – Is it your boss, a subordinate, or a colleague infringing on your personal time? You may need to speak to that person, or if necessary, to your HR department
It's not easy
Advancing a career while maintaining personal relationships seems daunting, especially when our society has normalized working late, multitasking, and being busy. But being honest with yourself when work or personal matters get in the way of that balance is the first step to fixing it. Once you identify the issue, you can work to set boundaries and enforce them, and this will only bring you more satisfaction in the long run.
Warmly,
Anne Stamer
President and CEO
Stamer Coaching & Consulting