Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 2: tip is to try a split shift. If you need
Speaker 2: to commute and need to be at your workplace five
Speaker 2: days a week. It can be hard to find weekday
Speaker 2: family time, particularly with young kids who go to bed early,
Speaker 2: but it is not impossible. You just need to rework
Speaker 2: your schedule a little bit. Today's tip, like some others
Speaker 2: this week, comes from my book One hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: eight Hours. That book was first published in late May
Speaker 2: of twenty ten, which means that it is fifteen.
Speaker 1: Years old this month. A lot has changed in the
Speaker 1: world since then, but we do, in fact still have
Speaker 1: one hundred sixty eight hours and a week, and so
Speaker 1: I am revisiting some of the tips in that book
Speaker 1: that I think can still be helpful. One is to
Speaker 1: try a split shift. So when one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: eight Hours came out, remote work was still relatively rare.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people could work from home on Fridays if they
Speaker 1: had been with a company for years and had proven themselves,
Speaker 1: but most of the time working meant commuting and going
Speaker 1: to an office. Some jobs also have a reputation for
Speaker 1: requiring longer hours. This is a problem if you have
Speaker 1: young kids who go to bed relatively early, because getting
Speaker 1: home at let's say seven pm on a weekday means
Speaker 1: you will have very little time with a child who
Speaker 1: goes to bed at seven thirty pm. Indeed, this scenario
Speaker 1: has been mentioned as a reason why women will never
Speaker 1: ascend to the upper ranks of our organizations, or so
Speaker 1: the story goes, because they will want to see their kids. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have been listening to me for a while,
Speaker 1: you'll know that I find some holes in that story.
Speaker 1: For starters, not all kids go to bed early. There
Speaker 1: were times in my children's babyhoods when I would have
Speaker 1: paid good money for them to go to bed at
Speaker 1: seven thirty pm, let alone the six thirty pm that
Speaker 1: some people seem to experience. I could have worked until
Speaker 1: eight pm every night and still have seen my kids
Speaker 1: for a reasonable chunk of time. But let's say you
Speaker 1: don't have night owl children, or children like mine who
Speaker 1: don't actually seem to require sleep. Just because you need
Speaker 1: to work fifty hours a week and have a commute
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the extra hours all need to be
Speaker 1: logged at your office into the evenings. Another approach is
Speaker 1: to work a split shift. Here's what this means. A
Speaker 1: few days each week, you leave work on the early side,
Speaker 1: even if all the work isn't done. Let's say you
Speaker 1: get out of there at five pm and have a
Speaker 1: thirty minute commute. You are home at five thirty pm.
Speaker 1: If your kid goes to bed at seven thirty pm,
Speaker 1: you now have two hours together versus thirty minutes. If
Speaker 1: you left at six thirty and got home at seven,
Speaker 1: but then after your child goes to bed at seven thirty,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Rather than watch TV, which is
Speaker 1: what a lot of people do. You go back to
Speaker 1: work remotely, log the ninety minutes you didn't do earlier.
Speaker 1: Starting at seven thirty pm. You will be done at nine,
Speaker 1: which gives you time to watch TV for an hour
Speaker 1: or so. If you'd like, you trade off work time
Speaker 1: for TV time rather than work time for kid time,
Speaker 1: and that is a trade off a lot of people
Speaker 1: are more willing to make.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, in the intervening years since one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty eight hours came out, a lot more people started
Speaker 1: working remotely with the pandemic, so I sort of shelved
Speaker 1: this advice for a while, but now as more places
Speaker 1: have returned to office policies, I think it's becoming relevant again.
Speaker 1: You can do the required nine to five in the
Speaker 1: office and then do any extra work outside that time
Speaker 1: in a window that works for you. If you have
Speaker 1: young kids, it is almost always better to do this
Speaker 1: second shift later at night, after they go to bed,
Speaker 1: versus during time you could be with them in the evening.
Speaker 1: So I have seen this strategy on tons of professional
Speaker 1: women's logs over the years, but there is zero reason
Speaker 1: men can't do it too. I know many do. I
Speaker 1: would also encourage more men to try it out, even
Speaker 1: if your partner is largely responsible for childcare, because that
Speaker 1: is your arrangement. I am guessing that you do, in
Speaker 1: fact want to see your kids at least I hope
Speaker 1: you do, and if you do, working a split shift
Speaker 1: is a way to both put in the hours and
Speaker 1: make that happen. So why not give it a whirl.
Speaker 1: Maybe not every night a week, but a few could
Speaker 1: make it possible to have the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: I am all about remembering that everything does fit into
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty eight hours. We just have to
Speaker 1: be smart about our time, and then the trade offs
Speaker 1: start to disappear. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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