The Working Dad's Survival Guide: How to Succeed at Work and at Home by Behson Scott

Author:Behson, Scott [Behson, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Motivational Press
Published: 2015-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

Have You Bought Into the “Culture of Overwork?”

Here’s a quick checklist from my friend, Greg Marcus’ book, Busting Your Corporate Idol that can tell you if you are exhibiting signs of chronic overwork and have internalized corporate “work before all” priorities.

1. You find yourself doing “what is best for the company” instead of “what is best”

2. You joke that you are ‘married to the company”

3. You are getting persistent feedback from a loved one that you are working too many hours

4. You are experiencing health-related illnesses, such as insomnia, headaches, high blood pressure, weight gain

5. You work more than 60 hours a week

6. You don’t care how you treat others at work as long as the work gets done

7. You are considered successful in your career, yet unfulfilled in ways you cannot define

8. Someone has stated that “you are drinking the Kool-Aid”

9. You feel indispensable to the company and fear that if you work less or say “no”, the company will suffer

If you said yes to more than one or two of these items, it may be time to consider whether work is getting in the way of a full life.

How do we fight back?

Scheduling in Unstructured Time - Imagine a glass that is filled to the brim. Now, you need to add in an ice cube. But, if you do, what happens? The water spills over because the glass has no more capacity. Similarly, if we are always booked solid and working 60 hour weeks, we have no bandwidth for a last-minute client demand, a family emergency, or an opportunity to attend a useful training seminar. We are at capacity and the only way to do it all is to work longer and longer high-pressure hours.

Once we get a handle on our schedules, we need to allocate chunks of unstructured time into our workweeks. If our glass isn’t filled to the brim, we can handle that unexpected ice cube. We have capacity for a last-minute client demand, an “all-hands” meeting, or an unplanned networking opportunity. If no emergencies pop up, this time can be used for the other non-performance work goals – development, advancement, networking, flexibility – that we identified in Chapter 3.

Detach from Technology - As stated earlier, technology is a double-edged sword in that it can blur the lines between work and family and between the workplace and the rest of the world. We’ll discuss this further in Chapter 9, but there are several things we can do to ensure that our non-work time does not needlessly get interrupted by work. For example, a dad I know lets his coworkers know that he will only check work email once, at 9:30pm every evening after work. Employers are even starting to catch on. For instance, a few years ago, Volkswagen decided to shut down its email servers after hours to force their managerial employees to stay unplugged.

Use Time Off Wisely - Perhaps the best way to combat chronic overwork is to take breaks every now and then.

In many companies, vacation days are “use it or lose it.

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