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Video: Michelle Obama on Work-Life Balance
Apparently Michelle Obama brought a four-month-old Sasha with her to an interview for the Vice President of Community and External Affairs at University of Chicago Hospitals, and she was only willing to take the job if it came with tons of workplace flexibility.
I'm working from home today with my own four-month-old (who is thankfully going on 90 minutes in what is usually a 60-minute nap), so this video struck home for me.
http://youtu.be/9XGNDfm4gQM?t=4m44s
I'm very lucky that TriplePundit is a sustainable business and a very flexible place to work, but I have to admit that the addition of an infant to my life has created a ton of extra (miraculous, mostly enjoyable) work. Baby Frances is delightful, but my life was already pretty busy before she arrived. I can't shake the feeling that I'm not quite working up to my former potential, just because there are only so many hours in the day. Sheryl Sandberg argues in "Lean In" that it's possible to have a demanding executive-level job and leave at 6 p.m. if you just really focus while you're at work (and catch up on email after the kids go to sleep). The trouble is, my mind is now also full of issues like managing daycare schedules (How do they just close for two weeks in July but charge you for the full month?), when to start solids and how to do it, and the pros and cons of sleep training.
The brain of a sleep-deprived woman only has so much room for problem solving, and most of my job is problems solving of one sort or another -- truthfully, something must give and the infant is pretty effective at insisting that her needs get met first. Yes, she's still pretty young, but let's be honest, I wasn't really at peak performance for most of the pregnancy, so we're going on over a year now.
So what say you, working parents of the world? I'm all for flexible workplaces, especially now that I absolutely need one, but is the dark secret of all the work/life balance advocates out there that you don't actually accomplish quiiiite as much as you did before you became a parent? Or am I just in a rough spot? Inquiring minds want to know!
Jen Boynton is the former Editor-in-Chief of TriplePundit. She has an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School and has helped organizations including SAP, PwC and Fair Trade USA with their sustainability communications messaging. She is based in San Diego, California. When she's not at work, she volunteers as a CASA (court appointed special advocate) for children in the foster care system. She enjoys losing fights with toddlers and eating toast scraps. She lives with her family in sunny San Diego.
