6 ways to make your job better next year
By: Samantha Steele
Tags: Motherhood, Workplace, Work From Home, Work Life Balance

THIS HAS BEEN A YEAR.

This was my first year as a working mom.

November 2020 marks the end of the first 12 months since I clocked into the Workin’ Moms Club and WHAT A YEAR it was to join this tribe.

Life became a boundary-less blur of momming and working — a Zoom meeting showing my perfectly made-up face while off-screen, a toddler was yanking on my leg. Working from home was an amorphous blob of I’m not doing enough, and I can’t even count the amount of meetings I had to mute while I breastfed.

They will always find you

With that in mind, I dug out this article I wrote in 2018 on how to both recharge during the holidays and how to make work work for you. As a super nice person and all-round mensch, I wanted to share some tips with you.

6 ways to make your job better next year

1. USE YOUR TECHNOLOGY WISELY

Advises the Washington Post, “Use technology to disconnect. Set auto-responders on your email and voice mail to say you’ll respond to […] messages within 24 business hours. Learn how to use your smartphone’s ‘do not disturb’ setting to mute calls and alerts during your downtime. Finally, accept that work is never ‘finished.’ There will always be one more call, one more email, one more meeting you can schedule — and it will still be there tomorrow.”

2. SET EXPECTATIONS

Clients, and (most) managers don’t expect you to be a work robot, especially over the holidays. It’s only when expectations aren’t met that things get tense. If you work with your clients and managers to know when you’re on leave and when you’re unavailable, and what deadlines you can realistically meet in that time, you’ll have off-time and happy clients and managers.

3. SET WORK-LIFE BOUNDARIES (BUT NOT TOO RIGIDLY)

Setting hard and fast boundaries between your work and the rest of your life is challenging, and might not be the best solution! Rather than setting impermeable walls between work and home, focus on efficiency and adopting an, as Inc. puts it, “100 percent present at work and 100 percent present at home” philosophy.

4. TRAIN YOUR BOSS — DON’T HABITUALLY WORK DURING YOUR BREAK

It’s tempting to want to impress by constantly being “on”, but all you’re doing is saying you’re constantly available! Says The Muse, “While this will most likely make an impression on your boss, chances are it will have unintended consequences. Take me, for example. In my first job out of college, I was really eager to make an impression. So, I stayed late, came in on weekends, and checked my email when I should’ve been in bed. The result? I inadvertently trained my boss to rely on me at all hours of the day, seven days a week. It took me nearly four years and changing jobs before I could break that cycle, and believe me, that was an exhausting lesson.”

5. SET BOUNDARIES BASED ON PRIORITY

Does your kid have a big play, and needs you to be available? Or is there a huge work project coming up that you’re passionate about? Make your boundaries flexible according to what matters to you that week (without reneging on your commitments).

6. TRY YOGA OR MEDITATION

When you’re on break, try to actively reach a calmer state. “We often need to do something practical and physical to move out of a hyperaroused (stressed) state. Mindfulness practices are extremely effective, such as mindful awareness of the breath, senses, emotional or physical state,” says Richard Middleton, Johannesburg based clinical psychologist, “ Yoga and exercise can also calm us, as well as many activities which elicit positive emotions and where we feel immersed in a state of ‘flow’”.

Here’s to hoping 2021 is a heck of a lot better than this train wreck of a year!