Two-time world champion bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor trains for four hours every morning. Once she\u2019s finished in the weight room, she spends her afternoons in recovery \u2014 usually with a massage therapist or sports trainer. In the evenings, she meets with a team of specialists \u2014 including her psychologist and nutritionist \u2014 before settling in for the evening with her husband. Her diet is measured to optimize for energy, protein, and fueling her grueling physical routine.<\/p>\n
Taylor is a career athlete at her physical peak. She optimizes many aspects of her life<\/a> in service of her physical performance, which means that other areas \u2014 hobbies, social life, and family, for instance \u2014 might take a back seat. She is exceptional in a single endeavor toward which she chooses to direct the bulk of her energy.<\/p>\n Imagine if someone tried to attain the level of performance that Taylor has in her sport in all areas of their life. It seems impossible, doesn\u2019t it? In their book Dreams of the Overworked: Living, Working, and Parenting in the Digital Age, authors Christine M. Beckman and Melissa Mazmanian explore what it would take for most people \u2014 in this case, working parents \u2014 to be at once a model employee, a perfect parent, and have the \u201cperfect\u201d body. It would amount, Beckman and Mazmanian conclude, to someone being an Olympic champion in all aspects of their lives. This is the myth of exceptionalism. \u201cAchieving even one of these myths would be impossible, but achieving all three is ludicrous,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n It becomes even harder to imagine when you apply this idea to women, who bear the brunt of childcare responsibilities and housework. It\u2019s harder still when you consider how women\u2019s work and home lives changed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020. Suddenly, working women became work-from-home women who had to care for children who were no longer able to attend school. Family life collided with work-life like never before.<\/p>\n But now that we find ourselves working from home, women are more empowered than ever. Working from home during the pandemic has not only helped lessen the burden women simultaneously feel at home and work, but it\u2019s also allowed us to admit we don\u2019t have to be perfect in all areas of our lives. By stripping away the veneer of professional and personal expectations of perfection, women have become more present, more focused, and more successful.<\/p>\n \u201cEach part of our lives could take up all of our time, but instead, we’re expected to make all of them equal and knock every one of them out of the park,\u201d says Melanie King, the PR Director at Lendio.<\/p>\n King\u2019s experience is in line with what Beckman and Mazmanian found in their research: She, like many others, has been led to believe that she must be a perfect parent, employee, manager, and so on. But striving for perfection can instill a sense that we\u2019re always falling short.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are legitimate reasons working parents strive for perfection,\u201d author and clinical psychologist Alice Boyes wrote in a Harvard Business Review<\/a> essay. \u201cWhen it comes to raising kids, the stakes feel very high, and perfection is culturally expected of parents. In the workplace, parents often feel pressure to demonstrate that they\u2019re just as career-driven as they were before they had kids. Those who\u2019ve used perfectionism as a strategy for high performance and to feel in control can start to feel like their standards are impossible to maintain once they become parents, and this can cause tremendous anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n To compensate, many working parents \u2014 and especially women \u2014 feel the need to show just how career-driven they are. Not only are they trying to meet impossible standards and exceed expectations in all areas of their lives, but the burden of doing so often falls more heavily on women in the home. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development<\/a>, women spend about four hours a day on unpaid labor, whereas men only clock two and a half.<\/p>\n So women take on more responsibilities at home and are expected to achieve perfect results in all areas of their lives. That\u2019s a tall order \u2014 even without a global pandemic underway. But it turns out, shifting to remote work has made women less overworked and more empowered.<\/p>\n For King, the transition to remote work leveled the playing field in a way that has made it easier for her to manage the expectation of perfection in all aspects of her life.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore working from home, the idea of doing it all perfectly was a real challenge,\u201d she explains. \u201cNow that we\u2019re entirely remote, we’re seeing each other in our homes, tending to our personal responsibilities and our family lives. It\u2019s opened up a conversation \u2014 and many people’s eyes \u2014 to the reality working parents face.\u201d<\/p>\n Working from home has also shed light on the fact that the many roles working parents play don\u2019t fit neatly into specific categories<\/a>, further blurring the lines between work and home. With digital communication replacing in-office conversations, how we live and work has changed drastically in a matter of months.<\/p>\n \u201cPrior to all this, these communication tools allowed us to keep these worlds separate,\u201d Mazmanian observes<\/a>. Someone could slyly, under the table during a meeting, text their husband or their babysitter about needing to stay at work late.\u201d But now, we see each other\u2019s children running around on video calls<\/a>, meet our coworkers\u2019 kids as they come into the frame to ask when snacktime is, and there\u2019s no table for us to slyly text anyone under. With this view into each other\u2019s realities, employees and managers alike are seeing that our roles are overlapping \u2014 and our previous expectations have to change.<\/p>\n King tries to break up her day to focus on one thing at a given time. \u201cWith a full-time job and four kids and other responsibilities, I try to prioritize exercise and my mental health in the mornings, and lunchtime is for family time \u2014 lunch with my kids or taking them to appointments,\u201d says King.<\/p>\n By prioritizing areas of her life like family time and physical health, she\u2019s noticed that she\u2019s more focused. \u201cIt’s always been a challenge to compartmentalize all aspects of my life,\u201d she adds. \u201cBut working from home has empowered me to give attention to the things that need it and do a better job at the task I\u2019m working on. That helps erase some of the guilt of feeling like I\u2019m not devoting enough time or energy to something, which has been a tremendous benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n And it\u2019s humanizing to see coworkers and managers interacting with their children, pets, and other bits of everyday life in the background. It dispels the fear many of us have that everyone else is the \u201cideal worker.\u201d<\/p>\n To excel at anything, experts recommend<\/a> letting go of the idea of perfection. When we recognize how parenting makes us better at our job, and vice versa, we do better at both. And by understanding our capabilities in each area of our lives and how they contribute to our success in other areas, we feel less of a need to divide everything. Instead, we can see how being a great parent makes us a good manager or how being part of a team can help us manage our household.<\/p>\n Embracing the human side of our overlapping responsibilities is crucial, but outlining those responsibilities matters, too. If we don\u2019t lay out our goals or track our workloads, how will we ever feel like we\u2019re achieving anything?<\/p>\n Many women now define their workloads at home, not unlike they might at work, to achieve better work-life harmony. Renee Fry, founder and CEO of Gentreo, says she uses calendars to set boundaries for her day and help family members keep track of their responsibilities. \u201cWe\u2019ve identified our family responsibilities, which is something we\u2019d never formally done before,\u201d she says. \u201cTreating our chores and family tasks as part of our workload has helped us juggle all aspects of our life and feel like we\u2019re sharing the load \u2014 we just can\u2019t play the game of responsibility tag anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Families are also using work software to manage these duties \u2014 a great example of bringing skills from work into the home. In fact, working parents have become more proactive by seeing the overlap between work and home and applying work skills in their personal lives.<\/p>\n And according to Alyssa Westring<\/a>, author of Parents Who Lead: The Leadership Approach You Need to Parent with Purpose, Fuel Your Career, and Create a Richer Life, \u201cFeeling proactive is another way of feeling powerful [instead of just responding] to whichever person, work, boss, spouse, child, puts the most pressure on you.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, we no longer need to strive to meet unrealistic standards. We are finally free from the expectations that we can do it all (and have dinner on the table by 7 pm).<\/p>\n Instead, working women are taking control, embracing their strengths in all areas of their lives, and rewriting the script of working, parenting, and spending more time at home. Ultimately, it\u2019s the freedom from the myths that Beckman and Mazmanian explore in their book that will set us up to succeed.<\/p>\n Read more on how women are thriving in their at-home work environments:<\/p>\n Chapter 8: The pandemic is making it easier for the “first” woman<\/a><\/p>\nBusting the myth of perfection<\/h2>\n
A wake-up call<\/h2>\n
Excelling in \u2014 not overworking \u2014 different facets of our lives<\/h2>\n
Formalizing personal and professional workloads<\/h2>\n
A new reality \u2014 and freedom from the myth<\/h2>\n
\n