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Strategies for Balancing Home Issues with Work | |
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SoHo NEWS & TIPS
Helping You Make the Most of Your Small Office/Home Office
SoHoTIPS.com
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Greetings,
It is quite a challenge to balance home issues with work
responsibilities. Today's article offers some advice to help
you learn how to balance home and work without feeling over-
whelmed.
Best,
Mandi
P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the
new SoHo News & Tips forum. Check it out here...
SoHo News & Tips Forum
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NEWS & TIDBITS
- Intel announced implementation of restructuring
plans that would result in saving in costs and
operating expenses...
- General Motors Corp. has increased the power
train warranty on all of its 2007 passenger
vehicles to five years and 100,000 miles...
- Sybase is grabbing messaging service provider
Mobile 365 for about $425 million in cash...
- Federated Department Stores Inc. will promote
the conversion of 400 stores into Macy's with its
biggest-ever advertising campaign beginning this
week...
- Gradison and its parent company will be sold to
UBS Financial Services Inc...
- Tom Freston is ousted as chief executive of
Viacom Inc...
- Hewlett-Packard under scrutiny over its handling
of a dispute that has led to accusations of illicit
leaks to the press and illegal access by the
company to its own directors' personal phone
records...
- Ford Motor Co. appoints a new chief executive
this week...
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Iraq indicates fascism and appeasement?
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Strategies for Balancing Home Issues With Work
By ERIN WHITE
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.
Since Hurricane Katrina all but destroyed his
parents' New Orleans home last year, Atlanta
financial adviser Mike Davila has spent countless
hours helping them relocate to his home city. But
he holds a very demanding full-time job, and needs
to stay focused on that too.
It is a huge challenge to focus on work when some-
thing major happens in your personal life. Even
under normal circumstances, employees struggle to
balance personal and work responsibilities. When
personal demands skyrocket, that delicate balance
can collapse, whether the cause is happy -- such
as planning a wedding or preparing for the birth
of a child -- or not, such as a family illness.
At times, focusing on work can feel nearly
impossible. Some strategies can help. Three of the
most important: Planning, organizing and compart-
mentalizing, say career advisers. The more you
plan and organize your daily tasks, the more
quickly you will be able to accomplish them. You
may be more efficient if you segment your day into
times when you are solely focused on work and
solely focused on the personal issue. Letting one
intrude on the other can slow you down and muddle
your head.
In addition to being organized and scheduled, it
is important to find a way to release your emotions
so they don't distract you all day at work, says
Barbara LaRock, a career coach in Reston, Va.
Writing regularly in a journal is one strategy.
Another is finding a support group outside of work,
whether a formal one, or friends and family members.
She suggests having one trusted colleague on the
job who you can talk to when the personal crisis
flares up during work. But, Ms. LaRock stresses,
this is only a good idea if you can trust the work
colleague not to gossip about you.
If you think the personal issue may affect your
job, or require time to take care of things, talk
with your boss so he knows what is going on, Ms.
LaRock advises. Make sure to develop a plan for
how you will handle your job duties without let-
ting the personal issue interfere, and share that
with your boss to reassure him.
Mr. Davila had to ratchet up his organizational
skills. In the past year, he has spent about 25%
of his typical work day helping his elderly
parents. They evacuated to Texas right before the
storm hit. The ensuing flood destroyed about 70%
of their home, Mr. Davila estimates. His sister
also lives in New Orleans, and had to deal with
rebuilding her own heavily damaged home after the
flood. Responsibility for their parents fell
primarily to Mr. Davila.
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His tasks included helping them sell what remained
of their home, finding them new housing in Atlanta,
and helping them secure a loan for the new home.
On top of that, they aren't familiar with Atlanta,
so they called him often for help with basic
living questions, such as driving directions.
At the same time, his clients depend on him and he
didn't want to let them down. His solution: Hyper-
organization. At the end of each day, he wrote
down a detailed plan for what he needed to get
done at work the next day. At home at night, he
mapped out the telephone calls he needed to make
for his parents. He created a spreadsheet of all
the people he contacted for his parents, including
their names, phone numbers, and status reports.
He also carved out more time at night for work he
couldn't get done during the day because he was
dealing with his parents' issues.
"My production didn't fall off but the stress was
incredibly high," he says. "You've got to be super
organized." Today, his parents' relocation is
nearly finalized; with his help, they are about to
close on a home in Atlanta, Mr. Davila says.
Beth Woodworth, a counselor at a small nonprofit
that provides outplacement counseling and human-
resource services in northern California, found
that designating times as work-only and personal-
only helped her stay focused on the job while
planning her wedding nine years ago. Since the
wedding took place in New Jersey and she lived in
California, her mom on the East Coast did a lot
of the legwork. The two needed to consult often
about plans.
For about a month and a half at the beginning of
the planning process, Ms. Woodworth got calls from
her mom throughout the workday. Not only was it
distracting, but it would prompt co-workers to stop
by for wedding chit-chat afterwards. Ms. Woodworth
didn't want to be rude and not talk with them, but
it took even more time out of her workday.
So she arranged with her mom to talk only at a
preset time during Ms. Woodworth's lunch break,
usually about three days a week. They set an
agenda for each conversation to keep the discuss-
ions focused and efficient. Ms. Woodworth also
conducted the phone calls in her car, so that
co-workers wouldn't overhear her. "I really need
to focus on my job while I'm at my job," she says.
DID YOU KNOW?
You should be able to state in just a few sentences how your
business plans to make a substantial profit. For starters,
you need to know your costs: how much you'll spend purchasing
inventory, paying the rent, compensating any employees, and
covering what is likely to be a surprisingly long list of
other costs. Then you can figure out exactly how much you
need to sell each month, for how many dollars, to cover
those expenses and have an adequate profit besides. These
numbers are all you need to create a "break-even analysis."
So what did you think about this issue? Drop me a line and let
me know at mailto:mandi@gophercentral.com
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