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One of the most common and I think, quite good, pieces of advice I’ve heard about being a working mom is to look at my life in terms of phases or chapters. We all know that it’s almost impossible to “balance” work, family, and personal time/interests at the same time — there just isn’t enough time in each day and not enough mental and physical energy to give each the same level of attention. But if we look at life as a series of chapters — with some more focused on career, some more focused on kids and family, some on ourselves — perhaps the trade-offs we make all the time can be a bit less conflicting.
Like I said, I like this advice. Many times when I feel guilty about not spending enough time with my daughter because of work, I use it to make myself feel less horrible. “This phase of my life is work-heavy,” I think, “but it won’t be like this forever.”
But I’ll be honest with you — I only half buy this argument. Read the rest of this entry »
On a good night I get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. In a great-once-in-a-random-while night I get 7-8 hours of sleep. Most nights, I sleep for about 5 hours.
I know this isn’t enough and I don’t need any experts to tell me that. I am tired, a lot, my eyes burn, often, I need some type of caffeine to get through the day (tea, lately) and my lack of proper sleep combined with lots of other stuff (like, apparently, not breathing enough) is beginning to cause some health issues. On days when my sleep deficit is high I get less done and am less focused.
I have every reason to do it, so why don’t I prioritize getting more sleep? Read the rest of this entry »
I know this is a completely theoretical question for 99.9% of us, but I like to think about it anyway.
I spent the last 10 years of my career, before launching Work It, Mom!, doing work that was interesting, stimulating, often exciting, but work that I was not passionate about. Due to a lot of factors, not the least of which is being an immigrant to this country, I’ve always known that I needed to support myself and in addition, be able to help my parents (and my grandparents), if possible. This meant that I chose my career path with money very much in mind.
I had coffee the other day with a friend of a friend. Since we moved my friends have been really kind introducing me to their friends in the area and I always jump at the opportunity. We had a really nice talk and after I got home there was an email from the friend who introduced us, saying how much this woman liked me and how together she said I seemed.
I literally almost spit up the water I was drinking when I read that because I was having one of those days you really want to forget. My daughter was sick and I’d spent the morning attempting, without much success, to get a bit of work done while taking care of her. I’d forgotten a really important call. My mom and I managed to get in a fight on the phone. I’d spilled the soup I was making all over the stove that was cleaned the day before and I was consuming every bad-for-me sugary carbohydrate I could get my hands on to try and eat some of the stress away. (Verdict — that definitely doesn’t work,) Read the rest of this entry »
I know, you’re thinking “OK, Nataly, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about networking?”
But in all seriousness, I feel that networking is a task that we — and yes, by this huge generalization, I mean we = women — overlook most often and don’t do enough of in our careers, businesses, and life in general. I know this from my personal experiences and from those of my female colleagues and friends. I am sure there are plenty of reasons for it, but this post isn’t about that. It is about what I’ve learned about networking and my desire to encourage you to make it a regular part of our routine, whatever your career or business might be. Believe me when I say it’s really good for you.
My 5 golden rules of networking:
Rule #1: If you want to succeed in your business, your career, or your life, you MUST network.
My first job out of college was for a huge consulting firm famous for the way it invested in training its business analysts. They put us through tons of training — financial analysis, client management, presentation skills, and much more — but we were never taught about networking. My next job was in strategy for a small company, where I had a great boss who taught me about business, running companies, and sales and marketing — but I don’t remember him saying anything about networking. When I took a job in venture capital my boss told me that to find new deals I had to network, but that was it. In my 10+ year career, no-one ever taught me about networking but I so much wish someone had.
I learned the importance of networking only when I decided to start my own company (Work It, Mom!, of course). My partner, Victoria, and I were introduced by someone I worked with and after a year of business lunches we decided to start a company together. When it came time to find our great team of bloggers, I started reaching out to several whose personal blogs I liked and always asked if there were others they’d recommend. I have a great group of extremely sharp and experienced people to whom I go for advice about growing my own company and I’ve met them all through networking. Networking means connecting with people, creating relationships, and expanding the circle of people to whom you can go for advice, support, career direction, job leads, and answers to specific questions. I don’t know a single person successful person who doesn’t make networking part of their daily life.
Rule #2: The best time to network is when you don’t need anything. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, I realize that this is my second hate-your-job post in that many weeks (the first would be here). But I don’t think it’s a topic that one can write too much about so that’s my excuse.
Actually, my excuse is that I came across this article about what contributes to one’s satisfaction with work and thought it was really interesting. According to research conducted at the University of Chicago people whose jobs involve serving and taking care of others are most satisfied with their careers.
Across all occupations, on average, 47 percent of people said they were very satisfied with their jobs and 33 percent said they were very happy. The top three jobs for satisfaction were clergy (87 percent reporting being very satisfied), firefighters (80 percent) and physical therapists (78 percent). Other top jobs, in which more than 60 percent of the respondents said they were very satisfied were education administrators, painters and sculptors, teachers, authors, psychologists, special education teachers, operating engineers, office supervisors and security and financial services salespersons.
As I read this I found myself nodding. Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote here once before about my envy for single moms, who can, from time to time, get a break from being a mom and experience things like a kids-free weekend. That does sound nice but let me tell you this: My husband has been away for 24 hours and I think single working moms are heroes.
Let me start by saying that while I nag endlessly, my husband is probably towards the helpful side of the helpful/unhelpful scale. He drops off our daughter at school a few times a week, cleans up the kitchen after I cook, goes grocery shopping (with a detailed list from me and not always getting the right thing, but he is there, at the store, doing it), take out the garbage, unloads the dishwasher, and does a bunch of other helpful stuff around the house. He is ultra-involved in raising our kiddo and has even been trying to learn how to do her hair in the morning (we let him, and then I re-do it).
It’s now almost 11pm and my day as a mom without a somewhat helpful husband has kicked my butt. Read the rest of this entry »
Most Saturday nights are quiet at our house — a movie and takeout, or perhaps a few friends over for one of my you-won’t-believe-I-made-this-in-my-slow-cooker dinners. But this past Saturday our house got more excitement and energy than it had in a while because a small group of local Work It, Mom! members got together.
Yes, that’s unmistakable women power you’re looking at. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to Marci Alboher, the author of the Shifting Careers blog, for linking to a series of posts about career success written by Marc Andreessen.
Marc Andreessen knows something about career success — he was the founder of Netscape and several other extremely successful companies. Before I even finished reading Marcy’s post, I clicked over to see what Marc had to say about career success (I happen to be a fan of his blog and writing.) Not far into his first post in the series is this paragraph:
These posts are aimed at high-potential people who want to excel throughout their careers and make a significant impact on their fields and the world. These posts are not appropriate for people for whom work/life balance is a high priority or for whom lifestyle is particularly important — if that’s you, there are plenty of existing career planning resources for you already!
Now, let me say first that Marc has some good career advice to offer and I agreed with a lot of it. But I couldn’t shake the assumption in his introduction that in your career and making an impact on your field isn’t something you can do if you care about having some work/life balance.
In fact, I took what he wrote very personally. Read the rest of this entry »
But I do think it’s an important subject for working moms, whether you’re afraid of failure as an entrepreneur (yes, I am standing up right now, raising my hand) or feel like a failure because you can’t be a super-mom and super-career woman all the time.
So I’m always excited to find a different and helpful perspective on our fears of failure and when I do, I like to share it. This one comes from my latest blog-crush, Antonella Paves. (Can I say blog-crush? Is it completely juvenile or since we’re all friends it’s OK to admit that sometimes I find blogs which I can’t stop reading?)
Here’s her take on fear of failure and I promise you, you want to take 2 minutes to go over and read it. Here’s how it starts:
Do you feel discouraged? Do you think that your life is a failure? Are you ready to give up?
Some people buy motivational books and read motivational quotes when they feel demoralized. I’m glad they can find solace in those books and quotes. I can’t. I’ve always found motivational stuff depressing and unhelpful, but I’ve found something that works much better for me: I love reading about famous people’s failures.
Read the full blog post now. Yes, right now.