Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: This week, we're talking about broad issues related to work
Speaker 1: and how we feel about it. Today's tip is to
Speaker 1: be where the part time solution to work life balance issues.
Speaker 1: Sometimes working part time can be a great choice, but
Speaker 1: it's not the perfect option many people seem to think
Speaker 1: it is. Since I've written extensively about work in life,
Speaker 1: including a book called I Know How She Does It,
Speaker 1: which is about how women succeed in big careers while
Speaker 1: raising families, I've long pondered the question of part time work.
Speaker 1: I know it remains an attractive idea. Indeed, various surveys
Speaker 1: have found that, depending on how you ask the question,
Speaker 1: a majority of women with children would prefer to work
Speaker 1: part time. I imagine that these days, a reasonable number
Speaker 1: of fathers might feel the same way. I think out
Speaker 1: of the appeal lies in the semantics. The phrase part
Speaker 1: time makes it seem like the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: People don't want to imply that work consumes the full
Speaker 1: amount of their time, so they don't want to work
Speaker 1: full time. By working part time, we can show that
Speaker 1: work only gets part of Us and Family gets Part two.
Speaker 1: But anyone who listens to this podcast knows the problem
Speaker 1: with this mindset. Full time work consumes nowhere near the
Speaker 1: full amount of people's time. At this point. I suspect
Speaker 1: many listeners can recite after me, there are a hundred
Speaker 1: sixty eight hours in a week. If you work forty hours,
Speaker 1: so a standard full time amount, and sleep eight hours
Speaker 1: per night, so fifty six hours per week, that leaves
Speaker 1: seventy two hours for other things. It's hard to see
Speaker 1: what's more balanced about working twenty hours and leaving nine
Speaker 1: two hours for other things. But the bigger issue I've
Speaker 1: found is that in many organizations with salaried positions, there's
Speaker 1: no accountability for hours. People working part time schedules can
Speaker 1: wind up working fairly similar hours to their colleagues with
Speaker 1: full time schedules. They're just getting paid a lot less.
Speaker 1: This isn't a hypothetical possibility, for I know how she
Speaker 1: does it. I collected time logs representing one thousand and
Speaker 1: one days. In some cases, I collected logs from more
Speaker 1: than one person who at the same company, and at
Speaker 1: least one case I found a woman on a part
Speaker 1: time schedule working more hours than a colleague on a
Speaker 1: full time schedule. Broadening this up to look at the
Speaker 1: same industries, this happened more times than I care to count.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know what's going on in any given situation,
Speaker 1: but I think that what happens broadly is that people
Speaker 1: in competitive industries like to talk about their eight or
Speaker 1: work weeks, but they generally aren't logging hours that long,
Speaker 1: or at least not consistently. One study comparing people's estimated
Speaker 1: work weeks with time diaries found that people claiming seventy
Speaker 1: five plus hour work weeks were off by about twenty
Speaker 1: five hours. People in these industries sometimes decide to go
Speaker 1: part time in order to exert some control over their schedules.
Speaker 1: People in these industries sometimes decide to go part time
Speaker 1: in order to exert some control over their schedules, and
Speaker 1: to go part time down from this theoretical number of
Speaker 1: eighty hours a week to say, fifty hours per week.
Speaker 1: But if people working full time in these fields are
Speaker 1: actually working fifty five to sixty hours a week, taking
Speaker 1: a fifty percent pay cut and then working fifty hours
Speaker 1: a week is not a great financial move, In particular,
Speaker 1: if there's no accountability for hours then taking a twenty
Speaker 1: percent pay cut and working an eight percent schedule is
Speaker 1: a questionable tactic. In many fields, It's quite possible to
Speaker 1: get the same during the week time off that an
Speaker 1: eight percent schedule would enable without actually going to this
Speaker 1: official schedule, or, to be more blunt, lots of people
Speaker 1: waste of their work hours and still get paid for
Speaker 1: this time. I really don't like the idea of only
Speaker 1: some people playing by the rules and bearing the full
Speaker 1: fine financial and career cost. In general, I think that
Speaker 1: people are better off seeking out or negotiating for flexibility
Speaker 1: in full time jobs. If you can work at home
Speaker 1: occasionally and make up hours at night or on the
Speaker 1: weekend if you need to, then it's quite possible to
Speaker 1: work long hours without having any sort of work family conflict.
Speaker 1: This is what I try to do. I work about
Speaker 1: forty hours a week, but because I control these hours,
Speaker 1: if I see I have a complicated week of kid
Speaker 1: related stuff coming up, I'll find other spots to work
Speaker 1: those hours. Yes, I work for myself, but I saw
Speaker 1: a lot of similar strategizing on the time logs I
Speaker 1: collected for I know how she does it, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. I saw one person working sixty hours during
Speaker 1: her logged week who was still there for dinner and
Speaker 1: her kids sports practices every day. She just worked a
Speaker 1: few hours every night after they went to bed, and
Speaker 1: did some Saturday work while her partner was in charge. Now,
Speaker 1: there are definitely some jobs where part time truly means
Speaker 1: part time. If you get paid by the hour, then
Speaker 1: a work week means a twenty hour work week. Likewise,
Speaker 1: some careers, such as doing medical procedures, are pretty clearly
Speaker 1: on or off. Electing to do a three day work
Speaker 1: week will in fact mean you work two days less.
Speaker 1: If you'd prefer to do other things on those days
Speaker 1: and you can afford the pay cut, then this is
Speaker 1: really just a question of how you choose to spend
Speaker 1: your time. But I do think there's something to be
Speaker 1: said for choosing work that's exciting enough that you want
Speaker 1: to work full time. Yes, the financial payoffs are good,
Speaker 1: but even more so, challenging meaningful work can be a
Speaker 1: source of great joy. If that work is flexible enough
Speaker 1: to allow for a full family life too, then that
Speaker 1: really is the best of both worlds. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's B the number four,
Speaker 1: then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
Speaker 1: an email at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeart media dot
Speaker 1: com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.
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