24 hours in a day

How many times have you wished you could magic extra hours in the day? When I look back the past two weeks and rate everything on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = least/ poor, 10 = most/ great) this is how my life looks:

SlimmingWorld: 6.5
Me time: 1 (I watched ‘Remember Me’ with Robert Pattison 1.5/10 - rubbish)
Domestic goddess ability: 5
Family time: 6
Work time: 10
Social media: 10 (work related)
Stress: 10 (I’m back on the vino)
Juggling, balls kept in air: 10 (nothing dropped, but 2 close calls)
Time spent with husband 0.5 (I discussed how bad Remember Me was)

Summary work-life balance: Drastically, out of balance

OK, so some commentary with regards to my scoring. Week commencing 21 March started well. I maintained my SlimmingWorld programme, exercised on my day off, cooked low fat, healthy supper, helped my daughter with her homework and fell into bed exhausted, but, rather happy having enjoyed a productive day around the house. From Tuesday life started to take a rather manic turn. Work turned up the volume, both in terms of activities required and deadlines to complete, I decided at work we needed to launch our social media presence and we were operationally in the last 2 weeks of the fiscal year.

11 days after such a good day, I am so exhausted I can hardly type and tonight will definitely be a take-out dinner night. As a working mum, I have to be supremely organised. You drop one ball and you end up sending a child to school in uniform, on a dress up day for the Christmas school disco (since this bad mother moment, school does not rely on paper notices going home in book bags – they are on email), you try and drop off when you are on after Brownie collection run. You almost miss a meeting – well it wasn’t in Outlook, so how can I know? Again – what is it with paper? I quote, I put the invite on your desk. Paper doesn’t get into your PDA diary, it gets lost amidst the clutter on your desk.

I have completed 8 quarter end personnel reviews. I've completed our activity workflow for the next 3 months. I’ve issued 8 sets of goals and objectives, which included major change to the job performance expectations for 5 of my team. I have completed Lync (UC solution) training and GPS (a new way of logging goals, performance and appraisals) training. I’ve participated in an all-day management team meeting, which needed preparation. Had an away day in London, well not quite, I attended a sales training day with my team, and I had a trip to the beach. Again, not quite. Although you can see the sea from the 8th floor window, this was actually a full day team review and planning session with my outsourced agency.

I have ended up working until 11 am at night for 7 working days in a row, with my daily break being the 1 ½ hour cooking supper, ensuring the girls get into the bath and get washed and then get into bed. No wonder why I then, at 7.45pm, reach for the Pino Grigio.

Although, I work for a company who offer flexible working arrangements, provide the tools for me to work in the most ‘appropriate’ place or space and I do not have ‘presenteeism’ pressure. There are times that you simply do not have enough hours in the day.

Tonight I am going home on time. PDA will stay in the car, my PC will not be switched back on. I will have a curry and movie night with my husband and I will get my balance back. Oh and it’s only 1 more day to the weekend. Cheers!