It's Monday. You've come off a great weekend. Maybe you gathered with your family for a seder or had a fabulous Easter brunch and egg hunt. Now, you walk into work jazzed confronting the week with enthusiasm. But your good mood quickly erodes as the day drags, the work piles up, and the reality hits that you may miss dinner with the kids. Again.
What do you do? Are you comfortable leaving your office at a reasonable hour and resigning to get the unfinished work done tomorrow? Do you worry about what others will think if you leave at 6 p.m.?
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is familiar with the funny, uncertain feeling that comes with checking out soon after 5:00 to be with family. Although she used to worry about what others thought of her departure time, she has finally reached a point where she can take off at 5:30 p.m. without the lingering concern of how others are perceiving her, according to The Jane Dough, aMashable publishing partner.
“I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for dinner with my kids at 6:00, and interestingly, I’ve been doing that since I had kids,” Sandberg said in a new video for Makers.com. ”I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it’s not until the last year, two years that I’m brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now, I certainly wouldn’t lie, but I wasn’t running around giving speeches on it.”
To make up for ducking out at 5:30 p.m., Sandberg said, she would send emails to colleagues late at night and early in the morning as proof that she was still giving her all to work.
I admit, I've done this -- sent emails after hours to come off as committed and hard working. Have you? What other things have you done to appear hard working while trying to maintain work life balance?
Do you think bosses still care about how much you work or are they looking more at what you do while you're at work?
