The Work/Life Balancing Act

Sleep texting?

The other evening, my son was watching television, dosing off and I saw his fingers start clacking away on his Android cell phone. He was sleep texting. I tried to stop him but it was too late -- teens are so fast when they text that it takes only a split second to send a full paragraph and hit send. 

Apparently what his did isn't unusual.

Fox news reports that the stress of daily life has sparked a new phenomenon -- sleep texting.

People send incoherent text messages while asleep to their friends and family, and are completely unaware they are doing it.

There are no studies into sleep texting, but a similar phenomenon, sleep emailing, was studied in 2008.

Researchers at the University of Toledo in Ohio reported the case of a woman, 44, who would compose emails while sound asleep. She had no recollection of sending the emails when awake.

 "Emails can be sent to work colleagues and have much more serious consequences, whereas text messages are more likely to be accidentally sent to a friend or family member, so people aren't as likely to complain of a problem,"  said sleep specialist Dr. David Cunnington, of the Melbourne Sleep Disorder Centre.

Cunnington described sleep texting as the result of people having too much to do during waking life.

 "People are doing so much during a normal day that it can mean that they feel like they're 'on call' even at night," he said. "Because it's so easy to receive emails constantly, and get notifications from smartphones, it becomes more difficult for us to separate our waking and sleeping lives."

 Read more

Readers, do you think you are capable of sleep texting? Do you sleep with your smartphone nearby?

Why Millennial Women Are Burning Out At Work By 30

I just hung up with my 26-year-old friend, Lisa, and let out a big sigh. She's sounds headed for burnout. She can't foresee having kids anytime soon because her boss is so demanding. She feels like she's in constant overdrive and she's barely spending any time with her husband. I could hear the frustration and unhappiness over the fact that her life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

Larissa Faw at Forbes.com has intrigued me with her take on why the Millennial generation of women who seem to “have it all” are burning out at work before they reach 30. She writes: one reason that women are burning out early in their careers is that they have simply reached their breaking point after spending their childhoods developing well-rounded resumes. They work like crazy in school and enter the workforce exhausted. Faw points out: No other generation was reared to excel at the same level as Millennials.

Faw also notes another reason for their frustration: Many also didn’t think of their lives beyond landing the initial first job. “They need to learn life is a marathon, not a sprint,” says Kelly Cutrone, president of People’s Revolution PR and author of Go Outside If You Need To Cry.

 Even those who did plot out their lives past the initial first career have unrealistic expectations about full-time employment -- underestimating the actual day-to-day drudgery.

Then they encounter what my friend is experiencing. They struggle over their next move. "Simply quitting or changing careers isn’t an option because the education for their professional jobs has burdened them with substantial student debt. Also, while earlier generations may have opted out of the workforce through marriage or motherhood, these paths aren’t viable for these self-sufficient women, who either are still single or unwilling to be fully supported by men," Faw points out.

Faw includes some findings: Millennials are less likely than Gen Xers, Boomers, and Seniors to say they are doing a good job managing their stress. Some 53 percent of entry-level jobs are held by women, but that drops to 37 percent for mid-management roles and 26 percent for vice presidents and senior managers. And,  men are more likely than women to do things that help their personal well being at work such as going to lunch or taking breaks, thus negating burnout

As a first step, these women are requesting more flexible schedules or seeking different work responsibilities. Some employers are compliant. I just attended the Work-Life Focus: 2020 and Beyond Conference by SHRM and FWI, where we heard lots of speakers talk about big changes in workplaces where Millennials dominate.

The flip side of this trend toward burnout is that Millennial women are highly educated  and they've been trained to lead from a young age. They may have debt but they are more nimble than other generations and determined. They know how to negotiate to get their needs met. I think they're the ones who are going to convince businesses to operate differently -- maybe even get them to rethink how and where work gets done.

Readers, what do you think? Do you think Millennial women are burning out faster than previous generations? Do you think Millennial women have the ability and desire to change workplace attitudes and reverse the trend toward fewer women in the higher ranks?  

Denise Richards: When your personal life hurts your work life

We all know people who do something in their personal lives that they aren't proud of -- post something embarassing on Facebook, kiss a stranger, maybe even have an affair. Should that hurt them in their professional life? 

Denise Richards, ex-wife of Charlie Sheen, says the sordid and very public happenings in her personal life kept her from getting work in Hollywood. She says she survived and eventually got work by persevering. 

I like what Denise has to say in an AOL video on the topic and wanted to share it with you. Even if you aren't a fan of hers, I think you can gain insight from what she says:

 

(Something is wrong with the embed code, so here's the link.)

7 Tips for Stress-Free Vacations

I love family vacations. They are a must for work life balance. But I dislike the preparation and the return. I'm usually so crazed trying to get ready for take off that by the time my family gets on the plane, I'm exhausted. Then on the return, I pout wishing my vacation could last forever.

With the right preparation though, you can maximize the benefits of your time off before, during and after your vacation. Recently, More Magazine included some of my suggestions for a stress-free vacation in an article. 

I thought I would share some tips from the article along with a few more I came up with to help you make the most of your vacation.

1. Take your vacation. Your work life and home life will improve it you get away for a little bit.

2. Limit work time. If you feel use must check in, limit it to once a day. That may require adjustments on your smartphone to prevent email alerts all day long.

3. Sign up for international service. If you're going abroad, look into global data plans ahead of time along with prepaid international phone cards.

4. Prepare for emergencies. Instead of telling people to call you on your cell, give out your hotel information to one person in your office or your most important customers. Have them call you only in case of emergencies.

5. Give yourself time to ease back in. You might want to return a day or two before you have to go to work to take care of personal stuff before the chaos of work resumes.

6. Avoid overload. Try not to schedule meetings for your first three days back.

7. Check your attitude. Have something to look forward to when you return -- it may be a new project or a co-worker who makes you laugh.

Readers, if you have any tips, please share. We all want our get-aways to be a stress-free as possible.

Want better work life balance? How to take a task off your plate

Recently, I was in the audience at a Women's Summit listening to business coach Jodi Johnson answer questions when Maria Guadamuz asked one that intrigued me. Maria, owner of a locksmith company, wanted to know how to take something off her plate. She wants to improve her work life balance but feels like every task needs to be done by her for her company to prosper.

Johnson urged her to let go -- to turn payroll over to a firm that specializes in that area.

It wasn't the first time I've heard a business owner verbalize the struggle with knowing when and how to outsource a function or hire someone to do it. I decided to explore the topic further in a column. Experts like Nell Merlino of Count Me In regularly coach business owners on how to get low priority tasks off their plates. An owner needs to focus on growing the company. Below is my column with some suggestions from experts.

 

Posted on Tue, Jul. 05, 2011 Learning when to call for help By Cindy Krischer Goodman balancegal@gmail.com MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF Maria Guadamuz, left, her husband Diego Castro, right, with their son Sebastian Castro, 2, own a locksmith compan in Miami. Maria is about to have a second child. The couple want to grow the business but Maria needs more work/life balance. Each Friday when Maria Guadamuz prepares the payroll at her small business, she goes through an internal struggle. With her second child on the way, she knows she can’t do all the tasks she does now, particularly payroll, and raise her family. Yet, she frets over the idea of hiring someone else to take over the job. “I want to be able to oversee everything and do everything,” says Guadamuz, co-owner of AAA Miami Locksmith. “Because it is my business, it’s hard to let go.” Many people leave big companies to start their own businesses because they want more flexibility or more of a personal life. But where do you draw the line on guarding those perks when your business starts to grow? The decision to hire or outsource a function often is a necessary step for any maxed-out entrepreneur or business owner seeking to expand, but it’s a scary move fraught with a variety of concerns. “A lot of business owners are afraid, “ says Jerry Selevan, a counselor with SCORE Miami-Dade. “They don’t know if they can afford help, they don’t know if someone can do the job as well as they do or if that person will learn too much and come back and compete.” Click here to read more.

Why Women Don't Want a Boss

Behold the power of being your own boss: You don’t’ have to explain why you want to work certain hours. You don’t have to your motives for choices you make. You get to decide who is on your team.

Does this sound good to you? Do you hate having a boss? 

There’s a new movement by women to own their own business and be their own boss. Margo Wolfe, only 24, caught a glimpse of what it was like to have a boss during a college internship. She decided she it wasn't for her. After graduating, she opened a gift basket business. Earlier this month, she opened a yogurt store and has about a dozen employees working for her.

 

 

“I think entrepreneurship is the next professional frontier for women,”  says Julie Weeks, American Express OPEN Research Advisor and author of its State of Women-Owned Busiensses Report. In my Miami Herald column today I write about how men and women have completely different reasons for choosing the riskier path of starting a business over joining the corporate world. Read the full article by clicking here.

 

Of course, there’s downside in being your own boss. Jaime Bruce, mother of three, thought owning a toy shop would be fun. She is closing her shop and shared some lessons she learned during her 3 ½ years in business:

• When staff calls in sick, you’re the one who has to run to the shop and cover the shift.
• When your child is sick, you may need to bring them to work with you.
• When the economy falters, you may need to cut staff and put in longer days.
• Owning your own business may provide some flexibility but you will put in many, many hours.
• You can’t always trust your employees
• Advertising trends are evolving. It will take time and effort to keep up.
• Even when you are not at your workplace, you will be thinking about your business.

What are your thoughts about being your own boss? Is it worth the huge responsibility and time demands that come with the title, business owner?

 

 

Surviving Manic Monday

You are having your Sunday night dinner when thoughts start to creep in your mind about the work week ahead. Your heart starts to beat a little faster as you think about the dreaded beast known as Monday.

This Sunday night creep sparked by the dread of Mondays hits more people than you realize. It apparently has worsened with the uncertain economic times and weak job security. Some people even have physical symptoms such as headaches and stomachaches and  experience the blues. A co-worker of mine, a single mom, told me her whole body starts to feel numb on Sunday night as she gets overwhelmed by all she has to do in the week ahead.

Mary Ann O'Neil, principal of One to One Leadership, a leadership and management consultancy in New York, told CareerBuilder.com:" The real world is about making decisions and managing others. When Sunday night approaches, the fun and relaxed atmosphere of the weekend becomes a faint memory."

When you work from home as I do, I dread Mondays because the house is a mess and I'm left to put it back in order and get back to business. Can any of you work-from-homers relate?

Here are some tips from a variety of experts for avoiding a Manic Monday:

* Plan some weekday relaxation. A mere 15 minutes of "me time" can give you something to look forward to on Sunday night.

* Organize on Friday. Review what you accomplished and what needs to be done the next week. This saves time on Monday morning and might alleviate some of the dread.

* Minimize Mondays. Start of the week in a fun way such as stopping at Starbucks or reading your favorite blog.

* Resist checking e-mail on Sunday nights. 

* Focus on the positives about work. Instead of thinking about deadlines and meetings, think about co-workers you want to talk to or a customer you enjoy being around.

Have you ever experienced anxiety leading up to a Manic Monday?

Arianna Huffington on sleep deprivation and breakfast meetings

Arianna Huffington says she recently tried to arrange a breakfast meeting with an executive. She suggested 8 a.m. He agreed calling it "late" but saying at least it would give him a chance to play a few rounds of tennis and make a call to London.

Arianna says busy professionals today are engaging in sleep deprivation one-upmanship. I have to agree. I talked to two men last week who told me they regularly get by on 4 hours of sleep. It's almost as if sleep deprivation is a badge of honor. What these professionals might not realize is "getting by" is different from thriving and making great decisions.

In the quest for work life balance, sleep has become expendable. Arianna says she was at dinner with a man who bragged that he had just jetted into town and only slept a few hours. After a jam packed day, he was planning to jet off again. "He told me he only had 4 hours sleep. What I wanted to tell him was that our dinner would have been more interesting if he had gotten five."

Below is Arianna speaking out on sleep deprivation from a video clip on AOL.com. Next time you think about setting an early morning meeting, remember that sleep deprivation one-upmanship isn't a game everyone wants to play.

Long work hours, a status symbol?

Yesterday, I was watching a clip of an upcoming web series. One of the characters is a high powered executive who actaully slept at her desk one night to make everyone aware of the long hours she is putting in.

It used to be a status symbol to brag about how much we were working. In First Things First, Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill, and Rebecca Merrill write, "People expect us to be busy, overworked. It's become a status symbol in our society — if we're busy, we're important; if we're not busy, we're almost embarrassed to admit it."

Is that still the case? 

Lately, all I hear is groaning about long hours and overwork. But why then, do we feel we need to claim to work more hours than we actually do? 

Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think  had me totally entertained when she wrote a blog post called  “Stop Lying About How Much You Work,” It deals with our tendency to tell tall tales and talk about 80-hour weeks, as if we were actually working 80 hours. As she notes, in the vast majority of cases, we aren’t.

University of Maryland sociologist John Robinson has conducted several studies comparing people’s estimated workweeks to time logs. It turns out that the average person claiming to work 70, 80, or more hours per week is actually working less than 60

So are we overinflating our workweek to brag, or to gripe?

Laura also points out that when people talk about 80-hour weeks, it encourages people to stay late, wandering around, ordering delivery, surfing the web at their desk. Even if all this hanging around only adds up to 60 hours, it’s still inefficient. And more importantly, complaints about 80-hour weeks scare off people who are willing to work hard but not stupidly, she notes.

Dr. Stephanie Smith adds to the conversation on the Your Mind Your Body blog by noting how along with long work hours, stress is the new status symbol. She says many of us have gotten caught up in bragging about the amount of stress we are under as a way to impress people.  We count the number of hours we spend in the car, on the laundry, at our kids’ schools, at our desk, and paying our bills.

When was the last time someone you spoke to went through the laundry list of reasons they are stressed out? Five minutes ago?

Dr. Smith provides some great solutions to stopping the cycle and I added some of my own:

Keep your mouth shut.  If you find yourself with a group of people who seem to do nothing but compare notes on their stressful days, or the long hours they are putting in, try staying out of the conversation.  If you just cannot keep your mouth shut, try changing the subject.  “Hey, I hear the Rockies are doing great in spring training this year.”  Sometimes it is good to have a few of these alternate conversation topics on hand just in case.

Go home. If you aren't being “productive,” or getting things checked off your to-do list, you may as well leave the office and think more about the benefits and importance of relaxation. 

Check your priorities.  We all know that our families and friends should be more important than our jobs, but when was the last time you really took stock of your priorities and what makes you happy? Do you need to win the prize or the status for working long hours or being stressed?

Keep tabs.  Log your time for a few weeks. See what you average. Then make it clear that hanging around to order take-out every night does little except drive up your food bill — and make your 
organization a less attractive place to work.

 

Urban Meyer resignation: citing family as an explanation? Get real!

 
As a Gators alum, I'm sad that Urban Meyer has resigned as University of Florida football coach. But more than being sad, I'm mad at him for his explanation.

Meyer,46, squirmed his way out of the job with time left on his contract by using the "family" excuse, that fallback explanation men use when they want their resignation to appear more palatable. "At the end of the day I'm convinced you'll be judged on how you are as a husband and father and not on how many bowls you win," Meyer said at a Gainesville news conference, explaining that he had not seen his volley-ball-playing daughters play in high school. The truth is Meyer was just plain exhausted and burned out. He has grown tired of 18-hour work days, recruiting road trips and the relentless pressure to be No. 1. It had led to health problems for the coach. And worse, his team was performing poorly this year.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't blame Meyer or any top executive for stepping down when they are burned out. And, I'm sure Meyer does want to spend time with his kids. But that rarely is a top motivator for a man at the prime of his career.

I remember in 2005 when Stan Van Gundy resigned as coach for the Miami Heat. His explanation was the same: he wanted to spend more time with his family. He said that because of travel, games and practices, he would have seen his children at home only 49 days out of 170 during the basketball season. "That's just not enough any more for me," he said at a press conference. (It just so happened, the team had come off of a horrible playoff loss) Shortly after, he took a job with the Orlando Magic.

What happens when a women cites "family reasons" for leaving a top job? Just ask Brenda Barnes. When she stepped down as head of PepsiCo’s Pepsi Cola North American unit in 1997 to spend more time with her children, people accused her of setting the women's movement way back. Double standard? You bet.

Frankly, I tired of men hiding behind the "family" excuse for leaving a job under pressure. If men really want to spend more time with their family, they will advocate for change. They will make workplaces more family friendly so the workload is spread and people at the top can balance their job and see their kids every once in a while. The goal is not to make it either/or. The goal is to make it both.

As Herald columnist Linda Robertson writes today: "Meyer will soon be tempted to win more titles. Can he balance family and football? Or does it have to be family or football?"

I'd bet the farm we'll see Meyer back at work soon, just like we did Van Gundy. I'd like to think in his next job, he'll advocate for balance.