Back to work.... paid work that is.

Today I was very fortunate that my work ran a seminar about managing the transition back to work. It included some great advice about managing flexible working arrangements as well as some tips from a Mum who is juggling it all with seven year old twins.

On working flexible hours:

• Plan hours that work for both you and your colleagues. If you are hard to work with because you are not available, people will not want to work with you. If this means taking on different jobs to do the hours you want, do that. You don't want to work in a job where deals are regularly done on a Friday afternoon and then not work Fridays!
• If you work in project work try and keep your days consecutive
• If you don't work projects try to either Monday and Friday and whatever other days in the middle but start and finish the week at work or, if you only do three days try and spread them over four making your contact with the office during the week longer. 
• Understand that you will spend an hour in the morning after a day away catching up on emails and work (eg. if you work Mondays, Tuesday and Thursday both Monday and Thursday will have catchup time). Try and have one day with no catchup.
• Arrange one day you work that you do not have to rush home to relieve the nanny or collect the baby from child care. That way, if you have to, you can stay late one day to get the work done. Make sure that your family (including your children) understand this and understand your routine. It is more settling for children to know that Mummy might be home late on a Wednesday than you working late ad hoc.
• Doing both drop off and pickup from childcare is not sustainable and will cause stress. Try and arrange that one of you drops off and the other picks up for at least some of the days or see if there are other mums that can take your children to school. 
• If you have to pick up your child by 6pm anything that comes across your desk from 4.30 is just pressure to you leaving on time, making it through traffic and picking up the child. If you can, start early and get your partner to do drop off then you can leave a little early without the pressure of the childcare 'overtime'.

On working outside work hours:

• If you have to work, schedule it. Pick a time you know that the baby is in bed and start then. Then only work your scheduled time eg. 8pm until 9.30pm. If this time is up turn off the computer. If your work isn't done, schedule more - 9.30 until 10.30. Don't just keep working into the night.
• Only do work after hours if there is work that NEEDS to be done. Don't just log on to check emails and potter about. Your life outside work is important. Talk to your significant other!
• During after hours work be as efficient as possible. That means only working on your scheduled jobs. Don't get lost in your inbox. Turn off email if you are able to.
• Put your phone somewhere you can hear it if it rings but it is not distracting. Don't check your emails outside of work time. Let colleagues know that if something requires your urgent attention they will need to call you.
• You are not a slave. If you answer someones email 6 minutes after they send it they will expect an answer from you 6 minutes after every email they send. People who want slaves don't care who their slaves are - don't let it be you.

On handling the Mummy guilt:

• Be present when you are with your children. That means putting the phone away.
• If you really hate going to watch your kids do a certain activity, find another way to manage that. Don't run yourself ragged because you 'think you should do x.."
• Find a great Mums group and 'share the pain' both with understanding and running around.
• It will not always be fun and it will not always be fair. Understand this and take the wins.
• Let your partner parent. Each parent needs to spend one on one time with children. They will not do things the way you do them and that is OK. (A good example of this is the infamous incident in the Wald household when Alice got sent to kinder with last nights cold chips for lunch while Mum was in hospital having baby number 3 - haha, my Dad has NEVER lived it down).
• You will sometimes need to do inconvenient favours for people in your life. Think of these as credits and don't feel bad asking for inconvenient favours in return.

We then watched a great clip from Sheryl Sandberg - COO of Facebook and were given her book Lean In. I'm happy to lend it out once I've finished. Looks like and interesting and inspiring read so I might save it for the few days before I head back to work.

I loved the bit about not leaving until you leave - I am really guilty of this.

I think this is most of it. I didn't take notes and was Frankie-wrangling so I might have missed some. I was so lucky my work runs these, not only does it take the pressure off returning to work and trying to 'do it all' but it really let me know how many other people in the firm are doing the same juggle - there were over 40 people there including my boss.