10 UXDERS, 10 QUESTIONS, 10 WEEKS

Week 5, Work-life balance: 10 UXDers, 10 questions, 10 weeks

Sometimes our personal and professional lives compete with one another. Learn how our experts strike a balance.

PatternFly Team

Published in

PatternFly

13 min readNov 3, 2021

The title card for this week’s question, “How do you juggle work-life balance?” featuring headshots of all 10 contributors.

Work-life balance has been the talk of the town, especially over the past two years. With work-from-home arrangements on the rise, many people have seen the lines between their personal and professional lives blur.

When Red Hat transitioned to a fully remote work model in Spring 2020, our experts were some of the many individuals forced to navigate new work patterns. Let’s learn how the team manages their work lives, personal lives, and the relationship between them.

How do you juggle work-life balance?

Wes: Research Operations Coordinator

I have a joke answer and then I have a real answer. The joke one: Have a kid! Because that will stick you into a schedule and there are certain things you can’t compromise. For me, I try to set realistic expectations, meaning I don’t write a giant list of what I’m going to do that day.

The real one: I wasn’t working from home 100% before the whole pandemic; I was in the office four days a week. I do think the ability to kind of compartmentalize work from everything else was a little bit easier because of the change of space. I’m home, then I’m at work. Just having that physical space is easy. Being 100% remote, I was worried about having really long work hours just because maybe I would enforce that on myself. I never had pressure on that from anyone else. It took me a while to understand what I could do every day and when I could do it. When you’re just producing, you can be flexible. When you have meetings and you’re interacting with your teammates, that’s a little more restrictive.

I do have a cutoff everyday to go pick up my son, at 4PM my time. So that’s a natural checkpoint where I ask myself, “Are there still things I have to accomplish? Okay, I’ll do that tonight.” I talked with my wife about it and sometimes she asks why I have to work a little bit at night. Maybe it’s that I took the dogs for a long walk because I can’t do that easily at night, but I can work at night. I can finish writing this survey in the evening and it’s still done by the next day, so I’m working some in the evening, but for me, it’s valuable to move my work around a bit. I tend to log in a little earlier than the standard 9-to-5 and log out a little earlier just because of daycare pickup.

It’s not perfect for me, but it works. I think of it almost like Legos. You can move things; they’re adjustable. You always have things that are unexpected to happen. Plus one to Red Hat for being very understanding and flexible for that. For me, work-life balance is about having these interchangeable chunks of time where I can move things around if needed, and Red Hat has been really receptive to that.

Beau: Principal UX Designer

This one can make me cry because it’s been so hard. When I first had kids years ago, I sat down and thought, “When am I at my best?” And it was when I was giving my time to my kids. So back then, I was at my best at 6AM. When they were very little, I would start work around 10AM, so I would work from then to about 6PM or 7PM. I would give my workplace 6AM to 9AM, then drop my kids off at daycare. I was 90% at work, but that was life.

I know there are some folks on our team who are athletes or artists, and if you can find a way to give that the attention that it deserves, the work will always be there. And I like to think my 90% is my 100%. That’s one thing, it’s hard. Sometimes you just have to say, the work gets done or someone else will get it done. If not, it didn’t need to get done. That’s when there is so much going on and you’re thinking, “Do I end my day? Do I work an extra hour, or do I go do my work-life balance activity?”

Now, I work pretty normal hours. Now that my kids are older, they don’t wake up really early, so I work when they’re asleep. When they wake up, I take a break. That’s a way to do it.

In terms of work life balance advice, I would pinpoint the most important thing to you. There’s a time in your career where work is number one, in the sense that you’re trying to get established. When I was in my twenties, I would do overnight shifts. I would pull all-nighters at work. And then I like to think that isn’t set in stone, and priorities shift. When you have someone sick in your family, for example, everything else needs to get threaded back. In general, get into the habit of setting aside time for your activities, and set it in your calendar so it’s untouchable. Use that time for what’s important to you, whether it’s running, gardening — whatever brings you joy.

Roxanne: Associate Manager, User Experience Design

I think work-life balance means something very different for everyone. Having three children, the reality is I don’t mind if I have to answer an email at 9PM. To me, balance isn’t all or nothing all the time. It’s give and take, it’s short moments collectively throughout a day and feeling that threshold of stress and responsibility, where or how it counterbalances with your ability to decompress and be productive in your own personal life. I see life as something that’s ever changing and dynamic. It has its ups, it has downs, and we adjust accordingly every minute of every day.

I always want to be and am usually available 7AM to 4PM, especially having a global team and wanting to be there for them. I like to work out to de-stress sometimes, and working from home means I can work out at 1:30PM or 2:30PM. I’ll do that and then come back online. Alternatively, it means that I’m answering emails at 7PM, 8PM, 9PM, or having customer calls at 2AM. That’s okay. It doesn’t really bother me.

I was on vacation the last few days. I certainly wasn’t firing up my laptop and doing a whole bunch of stuff. But there were emails coming through that I was reading and answering. There were Slack messages coming through from people that I wanted to get back to, so I made sure to do that. I know that some people are a little more strict with that; I’m not. Again, because I see it as something that changes on a dime. I enjoy my job, so work isn’t a burden to me.

Alan: Senior Director, User Experience Design

I think we all have to look at our own situations for this question. Some people live alone, so their variables are different. Some people live alone with pets; some people have young children. My children are grown up and aren’t living at home, but every so often they might be visiting. So my work-life balance is trying to maintain a regular schedule.

I start, on average, closer to 8AM. It’s awesome not having to commute. I feel like that’s a big difference because in Westford, I have a minimum 45-minute drive to get to the office; here I just walk to a private room where I can work. The biggest difference I’ve noticed since working from home is that I spend much less time eating lunch. If we went out to lunch in Westford, I’d be gone for at least an hour to an hour and a half because you’d have to travel, or you’d be in the cafeteria talking with others. Here at home, I might eat in 15 minutes.

The biggest challenge, at times over the last year and a half, are things related to our new puppy, Huey. I had forgotten how much work puppies can be! Huey has been challenging at times, but I’ve watched him mature and grow so now he’s a very low level of distraction compared to when he was young.

Also, I don’t like to work at a desk. When I wrote my dissertation back at Boston University, I sat in a Lay-Z Boy chair and had a board with my keyboard sitting on my lap. Now, I’m sitting on a sofa. I feel much more comfortable not sitting at a desk. In the office, I’d always be sitting at a desk. I’ve realized how much I enjoy the flexibility of not having a desk.

Matt: Principal Interaction Designer

Even before the pandemic, I got to a point where I was working from home more than I was going to the office. I’m married but I don’t have any children, so I don’t have to deal with the issues of trying to work and having children at home. My wife is a marketing consultant. She also works from home, and we have our separate offices in the house. I can close the door to my office if I need to, and I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing my time. I know that during the business day, I’m supposed to be working. Obviously, we all have things to do from time to time during the day, but I try to dedicate the time between 9AM and 5PM to my job. After hours or on weekends, I don’t like to look at my Red Hat email and I reserve my time for different activities. I think it’s important to try to have that separation, even if you’re not going to an office.

I’m old enough that when I started working, the internet didn’t exist. You were either at work or you weren’t at work. So if you were working, you needed to go to a different place. Life was a lot more clear cut and simple, because you left office at the end of the day, and it was the end of the work. I think that was healthy. It’s convenient now to be able to be online all the time, but it also starts to intrude on your life, and it becomes harder to separate work from your personal life.

Joe: Principal User Experience Developer

It’s hard with COVID because you get up in the morning, and your computer is right there. And that’s when you start working. And all of a sudden, it’s 6PM, or later, and it’s time to make dinner and then you eat, relax, and then go to bed. Your laptop is constantly there, even on weekends, and you can’t do anything else. So you might as well pick it up and finish something that you started.

Now that everything’s open and we’re getting back to normal, I do have a routine. I try to exercise at 6:15PM or 6:30PM, so that gives me a hard stop at the end of the day. There have been times where I had to circle back and put in an hour or two to finish up, but my workout is generally a good hard stop for the day. I meet a workout partner, so there’s accountability with that deadline.

I went into the office as soon as I could. The gyms were closed due to COVID, but I still exercised at home or in a park down the street. And that just got me out of the house. It sustained me through months when nothing was open..

I also enjoy cooking. Dinner is a fun time for me, so it’s pleasurable for me to stop working and make something to eat. I travel a lot. I just got back from Mexico. I take all my vacation every year, and I’m glad our culture doesn’t make me feel bad about taking off the time that I have accrued. So, all in all, I feel pretty well balanced. I feel that Red Hat does provide a pretty good work-life balance.

Shiri: Senior User Experience Designer

Well, pre-COVID I was also pre-children. I stayed at work late. I didn’t care and I worked right next to my apartment. So I could go take the dog out, go for lunch, and return to the office. I didn’t have a very good balance. Now, it’s different. After I had my daughter, I started working from home. I realized that I’m working crazy hours, I never stop working. So I open my computer late and answer emails and answer questions in Slack. And at some point, like, I started thinking, “Okay, I have to specify when I work today. What do I do today? And when do I stop?” So I set my own daily schedule according to meetings, and I try to have my family quality time in the evening hours, even if it’s just an hour or two. Before I became a mother, my timing was just a mess, thinking about work all the time.

Now, I act like I go into the office: I get up, I organize myself, I get myself dressed. I make myself coffee the same way that I used to do in the office, and go into my home office. Once I’m done for the day, I close the office door when I leave. Working from home has to have structure.

Marie: Interaction Designer

This is a big question. I just don’t know. Sometimes it’s a roller coaster, especially during the pandemic. But I started roller skating and I’m drawing on the iPad. So these things help get me in a better mood, and keep me productive at work.

I like to keep a strict structure. I start at 9AM and, depending on my meetings, end at 5PM. When it’s not work hours, I try to avoid emails and messages. For example, I don’t have Slack on my phone. I try to simulate the office from home, but it’s hard.

Allie: Senior Interaction Designer

I would say I do it poorly. Part of that is that I have ideas at around 11PM then need to write them down or go onto the computer to do something. So I find it very hard to disconnect from work. I really like working from home now that I can do a little work, go take the dogs for a walk, then come back and explore another idea. I can’t think from 9AM to 5PM and leave. Working from home allows me to break up my day — work when I have ideas and take breaks when I need to. I don’t see myself going back to the office that often because of that flexibility.

From 9AM until 12PM, I’m in meetings. Those are helpful to talk with others, but I really need time alone with no distractions to think. A lot of times, I’ll do meetings in the morning, take a longer lunch, then work in the evening when other people aren’t online. That’s when I get my work done. If I were limited to standard hours, I wouldn’t be as productive.

To focus more, I turn off Google chat. One of the downsides is that I still need to be on the computer to do my job. Another really big thing I did was turn off the unread email notification for Gmail. I used to immediately switch to my Gmail tab to check what a new email was. Now, I don’t do that. If I’m really needed, someone can Google Chat me, but if they email me, I get to it when I get to it. Less notifications give me more time to focus.

Margot: Interaction Designer

Finding this balance was hard for me, especially at the beginning of quarantine. I found myself working until around 8:30PM most days. I never stopped working before 6PM or 7PM for so long. This year though, I’ll only work that late if I’m in the zone and want to keep going. Otherwise, I tend to start my day at 8:30AM and I stop myself around 5:30PM because that’s the point where most of the time, nothing pressing will come up that I can’t do tomorrow.

Now, I spend more time before or after work going on a long walk, doing a workout or reading. In my first year of work, I didn’t really work out at all because I would get home from work late and go to work super early. And then I was like, “I’m not gonna do anything except go to work, eat, then go to bed.” So the pandemic honestly helped in the end. I’ve been more conscious about moving more, and I’ve realized, “It’s not the end of the world if I don’t finish something today. I can finish it tomorrow, unless there’s a deadline that means you have to do it now.” At first, I felt guilty, but Red Hat’s culture makes it okay. Everyone wants everyone to have a good work-life balance, and ultimately we become better workers because of it.