Slow Down, but Keep on Moving

Image by tomas brechler via Flickr

I've been a stay at home Mom for three years now, but when I worked in financial services, multitasking with a sense of urgency was the golden standard. There weren't enough hours in the day to accomplish what needed to be done, and an ever-present school of wishes nibbled at the rim of my consciousness—things I wished to accomplish to increase my efficiency and put my team in a position to spend their time doing what they did best, selling, instead of floundering in minutiae that could have and should have been delegated to me or another associate, if only we had the time.

Today, while working on a weekly schedule and wondering if it's possible to purchase sanity by the ounce, it hit me. I'd never come down to Earth. I'd packed that very same golden standard on my back, from Wall Street all the way into Motherhood.

"Great!" you might be thinking. If ever a job requires multitasking skills and a sense of urgency, it's Motherhood. It's one half of the most demanding job in the world, if one is lucky enough to go into it as a Partnership rather than Sole Proprietorship; there are no higher stakes, no more important a charge, no "clients" more precious and deserving.

However, while one most certainly should expect to experience concurrences of will and nature where the golden standard is warranted, it should be held in a holster on the hip an arm's reach away unless, of course, one is a workaholic. In that case it should be kept in a locked vault in the basement, under a copy of The Tao of Pooh.

There in that hallway it hit me like a ton of bricks—slow down, but keep on moving. Pace yourself. I thought, this isn't the old pre-parent days when you could slam out a day's work, then go and pass out on the couch for the rest of the day and evening if you needed to recover. You're a parent now. Your job is 24/7.

When you are at home and not in an office, and you can make your own rules, concentrate on one thing at a time, most of the time. Sleep, take a breather, do what you have to do to relax and keep your sanity, but keep moving. Picture cross-country running rather than an elbow-knocking sprint. Think about doing one thing per hour for three hours instead of doing three things at once for two hours. You should be tuning out far less often to recover from the brain drain and mock ADD created by multitasking, and this should make up some time.

If you are a stay at home Mom like me, realize you don't need to justify your existence with a constant stream of busywork. Focus on what truly matters to you. What matters to me the most right now is the well-being of my children, my family as a whole, and nurturing my passion and my creative outlet: writing. The way I spend my time should reflect and support that.

Unfortunately, at the moment, it doesn't. Instead of burying myself with my habit of perpetuating and possibly even creating needless busywork just to feel intellectually and existentially solvent, I should use the situation to and for my advantage, and for the well-being of those for whom I temporarily resonate with God-like power and light.

Somehow I can't get it through this thick skull of mine that it's okay to take the day and do nothing with it but spend time with my children. That feels like cheating. Before becoming a wife and mother late in life, I had always worked and was confident in my ability to support myself. Now I am dependent upon my husband not only for his income, but for his support as a husband and father. This terrifies me. And so, I manufacture work for myself via blogging and social networking and tell myself it will lead to something someday, that I too am contributing to the family.

Until I can hold up a paycheck to my husband procured via my blogging or writing, I will always feel guilty that I get to stay home with our children while he has to spend the day at outside work. This is not his fault; I do it to myself. I've been told countless times that what I do matters, that there's no more important job in the world than to see to one's family. But in a society that turns down the volume on working women who are lucky enough to choose to be stay at home Moms, I found that I want to be heard.

And so I am in constant motion, trying to make something of myself while I spend my days in the comfort of our home. I'm looking at the wrong way, I know that. Every Mother of older children tries to impress on me the inestimable value of these years, when our children need so much from us, and are willing to hug us in public. I need to stop the madness. By slowing down I just might be able to coax time into matching my pace.

Like me, your child will peer in your eyes for signs of attention, to make sure you are dialed in. You know it's impossible to fool her, yet you persist. If you're thinking about a client, or the bills, or how to prioritize to make more time to spend with her, she will know. And it will make her sad. And eventually, if you do it enough, she just might tune you out, or stop believing you when you say, "Just five minutes. I only need to... and then I'll... I promise."

Slow down. But keep on moving. Schedule your time if you have to, at least until you can be trusted to your own devices. Write a list of everything you need to accomplish, followed by things you desperately want to accomplish to meet your personal, family, creative, or professional goals. Fit it in; make it work. This is not a new concept: if something is sucking your time and not fostering your spirit, your family, or your goals, put it in the "when I have extra time" pile. And do make that pile. It's the only way you'll allow yourself to put it aside. And over time if it turns out that you don't have extra time, let it go.

Check things off. With two small children at home, I have to snatch time for my personal and creative goals when I can. Therefore, it makes sense for me to schedule small blocks of daily time, with no set hours, to accomplish my writing and networking goals. Half hour of commenting on blogs, check. Half hour of social networking, check. Half an hour of writing, check. Perhaps I will create recurring tasks on Outlook and check them off after they are accomplished.

If you don't set time limits for yourself and your children are good nappers, most likely each of those half hours will turn into many hours, and you'll still end up feeling as though you accomplished nothing. By physically checking off items on our daily schedules, we build our self-confidence and self-trust. We take back control over our lives.

I'm  hoping that I will be able to render my childrens' time with me more fulfilling, tackle my personal obligations, and still honor my writing goals to my satisfaction. By slowing down and focusing my full attention on my babies or the task at hand to the highest degree possible, I'm hoping I will feel less divided and frazzled, that much closer to my children and to whom I want to become.