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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

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Speaker 1: Today's tip is to stop thinking of work and life

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Speaker 1: as being in opposition. There is enough space in the

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Speaker 1: eight hours we all have each week to devote plenty

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Speaker 1: of time to anything that matters. By telling ourselves a

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Speaker 1: story of time abundance, it becomes far more possible to

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Speaker 1: make work in life fit together. Because I write about

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Speaker 1: issues of careers and families, I often use the phrase

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Speaker 1: work life balance. That's the term that people search for,

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Speaker 1: so it makes sense to use it, but I've really

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Speaker 1: never liked the phrase. The implication is that work and

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Speaker 1: life are on opposite sides of the scale, hence the

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Speaker 1: balance metaphor, for one to go up, the other must

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Speaker 1: go down out. It seems like a zero sum game,

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Speaker 1: but it really isn't, or at least not within the

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Speaker 1: categories that people usually care about. Here's the statistic to

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Speaker 1: ponder as we celebrate International Women's Day this weekend. Time

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Speaker 1: Diary studies find that women spend more hours working for

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Speaker 1: pay now than they did in nineteen This makes sense.

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Speaker 1: The entrance of women into the paid labor force is

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Speaker 1: one of the major social changes of the last fifty years.

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Speaker 1: But time diary studies find that women are also spending

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Speaker 1: more hours interacting with their children than they did in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. How is this possible? How can women spend

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Speaker 1: more hours working for pay and more hours with their kids. Well,

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Speaker 1: it turns out that work and childcare are not the

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Speaker 1: only thing that women do. In the nineteen sixties, women

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Speaker 1: spent quite a bit of time on housework, and this

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Speaker 1: number has fallen as hours devoted to child care and

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Speaker 1: work have risen. You can even see this changing emphasis

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Speaker 1: reflected in the language. In the nineteen sixties, people talked

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Speaker 1: about housewives with the emphasis on the house. Now we

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Speaker 1: talk about stay at home moms. Even the trade offs

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Speaker 1: involved with big, demanding careers are often different than the assumption.

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Speaker 1: A few years ago, I wrote a book called I

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Speaker 1: Know How She Does It that looked at how successful

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Speaker 1: women spent their time. I collected time diaries from women

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Speaker 1: earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year who are

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Speaker 1: also raising children. I found these women worked, on average

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Speaker 1: about forty four hours a week. The average woman with

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Speaker 1: a full time job who earns about forty dollars a

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Speaker 1: year works somewhere around thirty seven hours a week, and

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Speaker 1: there turned out to be huge financial payoffs to considering

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Speaker 1: careers that require a few extra hours per week on

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Speaker 1: the margins. So this seven or so our gap isn't

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Speaker 1: nothing between about forty four hours and thirty seven hours,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't require sacrificing much time with kids. In general.

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Speaker 1: It came out of leisure time. The people in my

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Speaker 1: study watched four point four hours of TV a week,

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Speaker 1: which is about eight hours less than the average woman

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Speaker 1: with kids in a job. And yes, it turns out

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Speaker 1: these hours could be substituted. I found about half the

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Speaker 1: women I studied worked sometimes after their kids went to

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Speaker 1: bed that time frame when a lot of people watch TV.

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Speaker 1: In other words, work and family weren't on opposite sides

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Speaker 1: of the scale. Work and Netflix were on opposite sides

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Speaker 1: of the scale, and that's a trade off that a

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Speaker 1: lot of people thought was worth making. Now, none of

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Speaker 1: this is to say that there won't be day to

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Speaker 1: day choices or that nobody faces work life conflict. Clearly

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Speaker 1: people do, people do all the time. But the bigger

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Speaker 1: issue is that when we tell ourselves stories that work

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Speaker 1: and life are naturally, in opposition, we start to believe it.

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Speaker 1: We lament the volleyball game missed because of a meeting,

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Speaker 1: but not the volleyball game missed because another child has

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Speaker 1: a swim meet at the exact same time. People look

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Speaker 1: at the first scenario and decide they must dial down

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Speaker 1: or scale back or opt out, But no one looks

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Speaker 1: at the second hard choice moment and says, you need

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Speaker 1: to get rid of the other kid. That's the result

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Speaker 1: of our stories. So today, think about the work in

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Speaker 1: life stories you're telling yourself and figure out how you

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Speaker 1: can reframe them. So you worked late and missed bedtime

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Speaker 1: on Monday and TUSSI this week? Well, is that horrible?

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Speaker 1: Is something amiss? Perhaps? Or you could tell yourself that

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Speaker 1: there are seven days in a week and you were

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Speaker 1: home for five. That sounds fairly balanced, like you're rocking

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Speaker 1: it at work and at home. When we reframe our stories,

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Speaker 1: we see that not only can people have it all,

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Speaker 1: often we already do. In the meantime. This is Laura,

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of

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Speaker 1: our time. M Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.

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Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions or anything else.

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Speaker 1: Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at

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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast pod. That's b E the number four, then

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Speaker 1: Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me an

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Speaker 1: email at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot

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Speaker 1: com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.

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Speaker 1: Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.

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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.