published September 21, 2011 03:09:49 EDTHave you ever watched the comedy TV series of Patricia Heaton, The Middle? To those who have not yet watched this show, it is a story of a mother of three who works as a salesperson in a car dealership. It shows here how hard she tries to balance work and family, either she fails as a salesperson because she would often get fired in most episodes or she fails as a mom. This is just one perfect example of how most people act in real life.
The act of balancing work and family is tough, either you ace one and fail the other or you give both a mediocre output as you stretched yourself thin. If you choose career over family, one career advice would be to put in more hours to further advance yourself in the workplace. The harder you work, the faster your contributions will get recognized and the higher up the corporate ladder you go.
However, if you choose family you just report for work and do the usual stuff expected of you. Not that you turn in bad reports or do not do your fair share, you just do not think outside the box. The less responsibility put on you, the lesser the expectations and you get to spend more time being with your family. Any career advice for your advancement will just fall on deaf ears as you limit yourself to just doing the daily grind at work.
But to those who are rather stubborn and have the can-do-this-attitude, they feel in their heart of hearts they can very well juggle work and family perfectly. How? Set expectations. You are no means a super human, you cannot be in two places at the same time. But thing is you have to know what is expected of you and schedule accordingly. If there is going to be a late night of brainstorming at the office, set the expectations at home that this only happens during a big project. Any other day, you will come home on the dot. In the office, declare that the weekends are strictly meant for family. No business calls, no business meetings, no work related concerns at all.
This is actually a sound career advice, learning how to segregate work and family so one need not affect the other. Of course, it takes some getting used to but it is doable.
