Your Job is Not Your Life

A few summers ago, I found myself questioning my life-work balance pretty hard. As all working moms and wives, I felt pulled a million different directions and CONSTANTLY exhausted. Not much has really changed since last summer, but considering that it's a new year, I feel compelled to share a little exercise that provided me a little perspective on my own time balance. Not saying it was entirely helpful. But it's definitely a different perspective.

It was a July lunchtime at work after a very difficult morning. A statement on a note card I had pinned on my bulletin board caught my eye, so I typed it.

Your job is not your life. It enables your life.

I had to ask myself: "How?" How does my job enable my life? So, naturally, I started trying to answer that by quantifying my work-life vs. home-life hourly allotment.

(Doesn't everyone do this?)

I mean obviously, my salary enables me to pay bills that then enables my ability to eat and live in a home, which then clearly enables my subsistence aka, my life. But, I'm more concerned with my life. (In this exercise I'm also not exploring the fact that my job is also a very important and often a very fulfilling part of my life as well OR that the skills I develop in my job AND at home are equally enabling across my home/life roles...but I digress.)

Here's what I came up with.

Each Sunday through Saturday provides 24 X 7 hours or 168 hours of life. In that week I (officially) spend 36 hours at my non-profit museum job, leaving 132 hours for home. I sleep about 7-8 hours a night which takes up about 53 hours. That leaves 79 hours outside of work for home life which is a pretty sweet balance. I use up at least an 2 hours/day X 4 work days on my commute, leaving 71 hours, or almost exactly twice as many hours at home than at work.

Looking pretty ideal! I mean, wow! Way more than I thought.

Let’s break it down a bit from there:

I use about 1.5 hours a day showering, getting ready for work, making & eating breakfast and making breakfast/lunches for the kids = 10.5 out of 71 leaving 60.5 hours.

Average of 1 hour/day preparing/eating dinner = 7 hours out of 60.5, leaving 53.5 hours

1.5 hours/day of bedtime (reading books/brushing teeth/pjs & calming down) = another 10.5 hours out of 53.5, leaving 43 hours left for home sweet home time.

Tues-Friday I probably spend a total of about 30 minutes a day picking things up, whether that be dishes, laundry, beds clothes etc…just keeping the house generally neat and manageable. So, a total of 2 hours during the week and probably another 4 hours on my days off doing deeper cleaning so we can say a total of about 6 hours/week cleaning, bringing us to 37 hours. Almost an even split now.

I usually try to get most of my groceries for the week in one fell swoop, but that’s not always the case and I have to do smaller trips here and there. I can safely say that I probably spend about 1.5 - 2 hours grocery shopping/week and at least 1 hour planning the meals and grocery lists, so with a combined 3 hours of grocery shopping and planning that brings the total down to 34 hours.

KIDS ACTIVITIES! This is the major variable depending on the season and age, but currently (updated for the January through May, 2019 baseball season) we’re dealing with one 30 minute piano lesson + 10 min/day practicing - 2 days off (he's 8! I'm happy he practices at all!) + about 1 hour/week + 1, hour-long baseball practice/week + 1, "hour long" baseball game/week. Now we’re at 33 hours. Oh, wait...I forgot Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts! Cub Scouts Den meets 2X/month for an hour and Daisy Scouts meets 1X/month for an hour so total, subdivided weekly we can say about 45 min/week, adding in dressing and driving we can take another hour/week (and there's always some extra G.S./B.S. event happening that I forget about... like cookie sales). So, weekly me-time count down to 32 hours.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road when it comes to quantity vs. quality. My work hours are mostly packed into 4, 9 hour days, Tuesday-Friday, with some 2-3 hour stints on the weekends. So, the 32 hours is spread out as such:

24 hours of any given Tuesday:

7.5 hours sleeping + 1.5 hours getting ready + 2 hours driving + 1 hour dinner + 1.5 hours bedtime + 9 hours work + = 22.5 hours of dedicated time with 1.5 hours undefined time/day that is usually taken up with homework help/enforcing-overseeing piano practice, dishes, light cleaning/picking up, checking in with the hubby, brushing my own teeth and getting ready for bed and maybe some TV/phone/book time. This is on average of course. It might be a quick meal with a shorter bed time, and no dishes, but this is a pretty average work night. So, of the 32 hours, 6 hours are available Tuesdays-Fridays. Often those are taken up with museum events, networking meet-ups, holiday parties in December, school functions etc.

Now where did I MAKE TIME to work out? When and if that falls in, is when my wonderful husband steps in and picks up the kids and takes over the dinner hour so that I can go to the gym after work. (This, of course, also requires that I remember to bring my gym clothes with me in the morning…)

Okay, then. The final 26 hours:

24 hours of any given Saturday/Sunday:

7.5 hours sleeping + 2 hours cleaning + the inevitable 3 hours of work/drive for a program (only usually once/weekend so I'm only allotting 1.5 hours/day) + 1 hour prepping/serving dinner +1 hour bedtime = 13 hours or 11 hours of me/family-time/weekend day!

Leaving 11 hours/day or 22 total weekend hours with the FAMILY and... my greatest work perk: MONDAYS OFF, where I use the remaining 4 hours to catch up on finances, cleaning, dentist, grocery shopping, hair, eye, doctor appointments, working out and bingeing Stranger Things.

Essentially, this exercise helped me see that I’ve got it pretty good. Better than many.

But, does my job enable my life? I don't know. I guess it enables part the life I'm living with this job. Another job would be an enabling part of the life that I live with that job. (My job does enable me to spend lunch writing articles, which is pretty cool.)