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: Today's tip is to stop thinking of work and life
Speaker 1: as being in opposition. There is enough space in the
Speaker 1: eight hours we all have each week to devote plenty
Speaker 1: of time to anything that matters. By telling ourselves a
Speaker 1: story of time abundance, it becomes far more possible to
Speaker 1: make work in life fit together. Because I write about
Speaker 1: issues of careers and families, I often use the phrase
Speaker 1: work life balance. That's the term that people search for,
Speaker 1: so it makes sense to use it, but I've really
Speaker 1: never liked the phrase. The implication is that work and
Speaker 1: life are on opposite sides of the scale, hence the
Speaker 1: balance metaphor, for one to go up, the other must
Speaker 1: go down out. It seems like a zero sum game,
Speaker 1: but it really isn't, or at least not within the
Speaker 1: categories that people usually care about. Here's the statistic to
Speaker 1: ponder as we celebrate International Women's Day this weekend. Time
Speaker 1: Diary studies find that women spend more hours working for
Speaker 1: pay now than they did in nineteen This makes sense.
Speaker 1: The entrance of women into the paid labor force is
Speaker 1: one of the major social changes of the last fifty years.
Speaker 1: But time diary studies find that women are also spending
Speaker 1: more hours interacting with their children than they did in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. How is this possible? How can women spend
Speaker 1: more hours working for pay and more hours with their kids. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that work and childcare are not the
Speaker 1: only thing that women do. In the nineteen sixties, women
Speaker 1: spent quite a bit of time on housework, and this
Speaker 1: number has fallen as hours devoted to child care and
Speaker 1: work have risen. You can even see this changing emphasis
Speaker 1: reflected in the language. In the nineteen sixties, people talked
Speaker 1: about housewives with the emphasis on the house. Now we
Speaker 1: talk about stay at home moms. Even the trade offs
Speaker 1: involved with big, demanding careers are often different than the assumption.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I wrote a book called I
Speaker 1: Know How She Does It that looked at how successful
Speaker 1: women spent their time. I collected time diaries from women
Speaker 1: earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year who are
Speaker 1: also raising children. I found these women worked, on average
Speaker 1: about forty four hours a week. The average woman with
Speaker 1: a full time job who earns about forty dollars a
Speaker 1: year works somewhere around thirty seven hours a week, and
Speaker 1: there turned out to be huge financial payoffs to considering
Speaker 1: careers that require a few extra hours per week on
Speaker 1: the margins. So this seven or so our gap isn't
Speaker 1: nothing between about forty four hours and thirty seven hours,
Speaker 1: but it didn't require sacrificing much time with kids. In general.
Speaker 1: It came out of leisure time. The people in my
Speaker 1: study watched four point four hours of TV a week,
Speaker 1: which is about eight hours less than the average woman
Speaker 1: with kids in a job. And yes, it turns out
Speaker 1: these hours could be substituted. I found about half the
Speaker 1: women I studied worked sometimes after their kids went to
Speaker 1: bed that time frame when a lot of people watch TV.
Speaker 1: In other words, work and family weren't on opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the scale. Work and Netflix were on opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the scale, and that's a trade off that a
Speaker 1: lot of people thought was worth making. Now, none of
Speaker 1: this is to say that there won't be day to
Speaker 1: day choices or that nobody faces work life conflict. Clearly
Speaker 1: people do, people do all the time. But the bigger
Speaker 1: issue is that when we tell ourselves stories that work
Speaker 1: and life are naturally, in opposition, we start to believe it.
Speaker 1: We lament the volleyball game missed because of a meeting,
Speaker 1: but not the volleyball game missed because another child has
Speaker 1: a swim meet at the exact same time. People look
Speaker 1: at the first scenario and decide they must dial down
Speaker 1: or scale back or opt out, But no one looks
Speaker 1: at the second hard choice moment and says, you need
Speaker 1: to get rid of the other kid. That's the result
Speaker 1: of our stories. So today, think about the work in
Speaker 1: life stories you're telling yourself and figure out how you
Speaker 1: can reframe them. So you worked late and missed bedtime
Speaker 1: on Monday and TUSSI this week? Well, is that horrible?
Speaker 1: Is something amiss? Perhaps? Or you could tell yourself that
Speaker 1: there are seven days in a week and you were
Speaker 1: home for five. That sounds fairly balanced, like you're rocking
Speaker 1: it at work and at home. When we reframe our stories,
Speaker 1: we see that not only can people have it all,
Speaker 1: often we already do. In the meantime. This is Laura,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. M Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions or anything else.
Speaker 1: Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast pod. That's b E the number four, then
Speaker 1: Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me an
Speaker 1: email at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart 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.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio. For
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