Associate Professor Coralie English, who works in physiotherapy at the University of Newcastle knows what it's like to balance a successful work life and a busy little family. Assoc. Professor English explores this important point in career management, and as we come in to the Northern hemisphere summer this is an incredibly timely tip!
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Organizational skills/balancing family and work
Work-life balance for early career
researchers is a constant challenge – as it is indeed for mid-career and senior
researchers. To be successful in research, or your chosen clinical specialty
requires passion and commitment, but so does family! How to manage the two
masters? There is no easy answer, only lots of tips and the need for constant
evaluation and readjustment. The bottom line is that you have to be as
disciplined and committed to doing your best with work/life balance as you are
in your career. If you don’t actively work on carving out time and head space
to properly be with your family, work will always encroach. The ability to work
at home and at night these days is a double-edged sword. It can give the
flexibility to take a couple of hours off for the school assembly, and put in
extra hours to meet a demanding deadline, but you have to set your own
parameters to stop work taking over your life entirely.
Some of my top tips include:
·
Disconnect your emails from
your phone. Not always practical, but most of the time you can live with
waiting until you are next at your lap top to check emails and it stops you
compulsively reading or checking emails while with family. If this terrifies
you, commit to doing it for a week or even 2 days to start with, or at least
turn off the “push” notifications.
·
Turn your email off as much as
you can during the working day so you can focus on specific tasks at hand. Set
an alarm on your phone for the next meeting/appointment so you can immerse
yourself and prevent “clock watching”.
·
Make weekends (or rostered days
off) sacred. Even if you have to work some hours at night during the week,
keeping weekends for family only makes a big difference.
·
Accept that you will never feel
on top of your workload. For a really excellent book about this and other top
tips see “Busy” by Tony Crabbe.
·
Get good at prioritizing – and
recognizing the difference between “urgent” and “important” – see “7-Habits”
book for good tips on this.
·
Set an alarm on your phone for
home time and stick to it!
coralie.english@newcastle.edu.au
