You Need To Keep Your Mind In One Place At A Time
Stop thinking about home when you are at work, and work when you are at home
When I went back to work after my second maternity leave, I was a mess.
I worked at a giant company. The kind that has meetings all day, every day. Which means, all the actual work that you need to do gets pushed into the cracks of your day. Or, after your work day is supposed to end.
I had two very young kids at home. I have always loved the intellectual stimulation of work, so I was happy to be back. But I also wanted to be with my kids. As I sat in meetings all day, I thought about them. I wondered what they were doing. I thought about the time I should spend with them. And then I went home. But when I was with my kids, I thought about all the work I wasn’t doing. How was I ever going to get it all done?
Like I said, I was a mess. I felt like I was failing at everything.
That phase of life is very specific. It’s tough to find your footing and get the rhythm of life when you have a new baby. But I found that as my kids got older, my mind kept doing the same thing, like a habit that I couldn’t break. Think about kids at work, think about work at home. I felt guilty and distracted all the time. Which made me even less productive at…
