Leave Your Work (Mostly) at Work
As technology brings us closer, it also makes it tough to maintain healthy boundaries with our time. For many of us, this is especially true when it comes to our work/family balance and our time spent online.
Forty years ago, most careers allowed you to simply punch out on the time-clock, put your hard hat away or push your rotary phone to the back of your desk, and head home to your family. There was little expectation that you spend much time thinking about your job after you left the doors of your factory or corporate office building.
Today, we live in an age of constant information and global connectivity. This is great when it allows us to read Simple Marriage from our iPhone, and it means that I can write a blog post about having fantastic sex while enjoying a bagel at my favorite coffee shop. There is no doubt that technology gives us the tools to be more connected than ever before.
It’s Hard to Cut a Wireless “Cord”
There is a dark side to all of this technological goodness. The vast majority of Americans have a cell phone, and many of us have a “smart” phone and/or laptop computer that gives us ready access to email and the Internet. While this has the power for good, the constant connectedness is making it increasingly difficult to just “leave work at work” and spend undistracted time enjoying our spouse and children.
How bad is it getting? Well, a recent Gadgetology Study by Retrevo revealed that 7% of those polled check electronic messages on their phone during sex!
While I have never taken it that far, I am certainly guilty of letting work matters interrupt the family time in our household. Even though I spend a lot of my “spare” time helping others have a happier married life over at Engaged Marriage, I also have a full-time professional career as a consulting engineer.
It is so easy to make my family wait to start dinner while I answer “just one more” client email or let playtime with the kids turn into “TV babysitting hour” while I put the finishing touches on an important project report. Even when I’m not actively working on my laptop or smart phone, it can be really tough to shut work out of my mind when I know there are likely emails and voice-mails awaiting my attention. And, of course, non-work social media is an entirely different time-sucking curse!
Sound familiar?
3 Tips to Help Maintain a Healthy Online Work/Offline Life Balance
Whether you work for a corporation, run a business from home, make your living online or simply enjoy socializing on the Internet away from your job, it’s easy to let your internet time impact your family life. We all know this is not what we want, but what can we do to be proactive and make sure it doesn’t become (or remain) a problem?
Here are some tips that should help keep your spouse happy and keep your family ahead of your work, where they belong:
1. Set Healthy Boundaries
The best way to stay true to your priorities is to create some boundaries with your time. For example, I have established a “no computer time” rule for myself where I don’t use the laptop (or my smart phone) between the time I get home from work and when we get the kids to bed. By setting up this boundary, I free my time and my mind to enjoy my children, play outside or help my wife out with dinner each evening.
Tell your spouse about your boundaries and encourage them to let you know if they see you slipping and not holding true to your commitments. Your family should be your best accountability partner, and they’ll know better than anyone when they feel like you’re not keeping them your top priority.
2. Sacrifice Personal Time, Not Family Time
It’s important that you don’t let your family time suffer as a result of the time you spend online attending to work (or non-work) matters. The best way to handle this and keep a proper balance is to limit your internet use to your own personal time. Maybe you respond to client email or write a blog post instead of watching T.V. or taking a nap, but you shouldn’t be missing your date night with your spouse or your daughter’s dance performance to review your department’s timesheets.
3. Set Aside Time to Really Talk
Aside from our “no computer time” each day, my wife and I have found that setting aside a little time to just talk to each other without distractions has been a tremendous benefit to our relationship. Honestly, if you simply commit to spending 15 minutes per day engaged as a couple, it can have a seriously meaningful impact on your life together.
I just released an e-course around this idea called Marriage Mojo: 7 Steps to Romance for Insanely Busy Couples, and it’s totally free if you want to learn more about this idea and how to put it into practice in your marriage.
When Work Should Come Home
We have spent a lot of time emphasizing how to keep work from interfering with your family time by limiting our online activities. However, this is not to say that your job should not be part of your married life.
Our careers are an integral part of our lives and where we spend a lot of our time. We need to be able to openly communicate with our spouse about what’s going on at work and support each other at the end of a long day. To help make those days a bit less long, we also need to have some frank discussions about the lifestyle and married life that we really desire, and our work is a major part of those plans.
I’d love to get your thoughts on this important issue.
Do you struggle with keeping your career from interfering with your family time? What tips can you share for finding the right balance?
(photo source)
Dustin Riechmann created Engaged Marriage as a source of advice for a happy marriage for those willing to do something about it.
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This is probably the main source of marital strife, at least for me. Since my husband got a smartphone, he is on it nonstop. I tease him that he’s like Gollum with his “Precious.”
But I know that I can also get sucked in to technology. As a homeschooling mom, it would be easy to spend a day on the computer. Instead, I’ve made it a rule that no one gets screen time until school and chores are done. Sometimes the kids will be in bed and I’ll be checking email for the first time. I’m really not missing as much as I thought I would be.
Did my wife ask you to post this comment, Amy?
I can absolutely relate to the smart phone obsession, and it’s an issue that we’ve had to battle in our marriage as well. My phone usage and my wife’s love of Facebook were the driving forces behind our “no computer time” rule in the evenings. We hold each other accountable, and that has been a real blessing.
We still have our lapses, but now our kids will actually bust us and tell us to get off the computer and play with them! That’s a very humbling experience, but it keeps us on track to spend our family time the right way. It’s all about being proactive and putting those boundaries in place to encourage us to do the right thing.
My husband and I struggle with being completely unplugged. We tried earlier this year to go without the computer from noon on Saturday until after dinner on Sunday to make more time for each other and our kids. Let’s just say that was more of a commitment than either of us could live up to.
Now we’re trying to dedicate the hours from when we get home from church on Sunday until after dinner that same night as family time (that means no computers or iphones). So far so good. My daughter so looks forward to these dedicated hours that she’s penciled them in on the calendar, and my son starts asking almost as soon as he wakes up on Sunday morns, “What are we going to do for family fun today?”
Their reaction is probably the best indication that this is truly needed in our household. We love each other and our three kids, but the demands on our time are real – and growing.
I hear you, Kay! Isn’t it telling that our kids can pick up on our “unplugged” time so easily? Our children are only 5 and 3 (and one on the way), and they clearly appreciate when we are really “present” and giving them our full attention.
And my wife (and I) like that undivided attention to each other as well!
My husband and I are in a unique position, because we work together. So it is even more difficult to turn off the work when we get home because both of us are thinking about our business and our entire dinnertime could turn into a business meeting if we let it.
I think your first tip of setting boundaries is the most important. It would be impossible for us to never talk about work when we are at home. And generally I think it is ok for our kids to overhear us talking about some of what we deal with at work because it shows that that we care about each other and are working together to support our family. However, we have developed some boundaries around those discussions.
* We try not to talk about business anymore than we would if we worked at separate business.
* The time between dinnertime and when the kids go to bed is our time to do things as a family. Usually we eat dinner and then go for a family walk (we call it a “dessert walk”).
* We have an online project management system that allows us to communicate with each other about business issues. That way if one of us has a thought about the business, we go type it up there and it can sit there until the other one is ready to read it and comment on it.
Whenever I wonder if I might be spending too much time with technology I try to think of the example I am setting for my children. If I flash-forward 10 years and think I would be annoyed if they were doing to me what I am doing to them, then I put the computer or smartphone away and wait until later to pick it up again.
Thanks for the awesome insights, Julie. I’m sure the fact that you and your husband work together creates some real challenges when you try to leave work *at work.* And I love your approach to deciding if it’s too much…I’ve never taken that perspective but I will now.
I know that I have a tendency to spend more time on my computer than I should. My wife gets annoyed about it.
We’ve worked out rather obvious signals to combat this. “You’re not paying attention to me” is my sign to just shut the lid and come back to the computer later. Hearing that is quite a wake-up call, I can assure you.
Perfect, Matthew. I really advocate those “clear signals” especially for us guys since we don’t always take hints so well. My wife just gives me “the look” and says “it’s no computer time.” I then realize I’m busted, and I get off the computer and get back to the important things in life.
Hi Dustin,
Great post. I know for me and my husband, it’s a huge issue – especially as, like you, I have a ‘day job’ and a blog to run at night. So my mind is on work almost 24/7. We always make sure we have ‘date night’ once a week, the computer gets switched off at 10pm every night, and one day of the weekend, we stay off the computer to make sure we’re making time together.
I guess that’s the point – if you don’t ‘make’ the time, it won’t happen, and if it doesn’t happen, all too soon, your marriage can suffer. Scheduling time with your partner may not be the most romantic concept, but it works!
Jo
I can totally relate, Jo! It definitely makes it tough when your “side job” is running a blog since that requires so much time online. I have taken steps to move more of my blog time to the morning (when my wife is sleeping) and do less in the evenings so we can preserve our time together after the kids are in bed.
I make it a point to banish my iPhone from the dinner table (or any table when I am at home or out at a restaurant). I believe that conversation with the people at hand is far more entertaining than checking e-mail and messages on a mobile device.
Aside from that, I would like your thoughts on on-call duties for work. Every 7 weeks, I am on-call for my team. This requires that I have my phone on me 24/7 for pages alerting to critical server issues that may need attention. When I am on-call, I try to stay close to home as I often need my laptop to address problems, but sometimes my wife and I will go out to eat (with or without a few friends).
When we arrive at the restaurant and are seated, I always make a point of asking if anyone minds that I leave my phone on the table so I don’t miss any alerts. Nobody has ever complained, but it feels intrusive to me. However, if I were to leave it in my pocket, I might not hear an alert or even feel a buzz if I try silent mode.
If the problem is extremely critical and I miss a page, they will call me about it, but I don’t like to let things get to that point since these are business critical services we provide. I have noticed that when I leave my phone on the table, friends are more likely to keep theirs out as well and even text and check e-mail while we converse and eat. In the era of smart phones, I don’t know that I could ever reasonably banish the phones from social situations because often they are used to share a photo with friends, or show a new web site, or look up movie times, etc.
But that was a major digression. As with anything, I think healthy moderation is the most important. As you stated in the article, boundaries are important. I think I do an excellent job of leaving work at work with the exception of being on-call, and even then, time with my wife takes precedence to everything else, especially if it’s date night.
Love the site, Dustin. Thanks for making such a readable ‘blog.
Ian,
I wonder if you might be able to compromise with your cell phone during dinner. Maybe you just need to switch pockets so that you can’t miss it buzzing? Or keep it out, but place it in your lap? Then you could feel it vibrate and politely excuse yourself to take care of business. You might tell your friends that you may be receiving work calls so they don’t think you’re sick or something.
Just a thought.
Matthew
I think Matthew’s suggestions are great, Ian. I would just be up-front with your friends to say you have to *reluctantly* keep an eye out on your phone during dinner because you are on-call. You could add that you won’t be using your phone for anything else during dinner because you think that’s rude (to send them the message that it’s not an invitation for them to text while you try to have a conversation).
Thanks for the kind words!
I’m not too bad about the work, but the extended family is another issue. I’m always connected to my Mommy
I know my husband doesn’t mind it, but I think I need to give him his time, and not be texting my Mom when he and I are having dinner/etc
Thanks, lenciB! I totally agree that you need to carve out some “sacred” time where it’s all about your husband and not your Mommy.
I would personally be very frustrated if my wife was texting her Mom while we were talking or having dinner. There’s plenty of time to keep touch with family at other times.
Dustin,
Great topic in your blog. Technology seems to be running rampant, affecting all ages from grownups to children who are easily distracted.
As an example, my husband & I took our daughter and her family out for dinner around Christmas. The adults sat at one end of the table and the 3 grandkids (ages 18, 14 & 10) at the other. Part way thru dinner, all 3 kids started laughing at the same time & I realized they were texting each other while seated together.
I asked them to hold off texting until after dinner, but they obviously didn’t appreciate my interference. Do you have any ideas on how I could handle it better next time? By the way, the 10-year-old granddaughter says she sends literally hundreds of texts each day.
Thanks, Beth! I have to say that the texting obsession seems to be especially prevalent to those in their teens right now. I’ve witnessed similar experiences as you shared about your grandkids.
The first suggestion that comes to my mind is to use some “tough grandma love” and simply require the grandchildren to leave their phones elsewhere when they’re at the table (or ask their parents to require this when they are at their home or out at a restaurant like your Christmastime experience).
That sends the clear message that texting during dinner is not acceptable in your house (or elsewhere), and it may actually get them to talk to each other…in person!
Hey Dustin – thanks for taking on an important issue. I sympathize with beth on the texting etiquette treaty with teens. The fact that I remember when mobile phones came with a shoulder strap makes me feel pretty old among those guys.
Every so often I hear of these folks that do away with cell phones and only use computers at the library. I wonder, “how do they do it?” And then I wonder, “have they figured something out that the rest of us haven’t?”
My fear is that we’re slowly unlearning how to effectively communicate with others in a real, physical way. We’re reducing emotions to acronyms (LOL) and can’t muster up the time to write “talk to you later” (TTYL). While I’ll admit that the technology at our disposal offers the ability to connect with people in a real way, no amount of technology will substitute for “doing life” with our spouse and family in person, in real time, in the highest definition.
I love your 15 Minutes initiative. 15 minutes is a long time to spend engaged with your spouse, when you actually do it. It definitely allows me to climb down from cyberspace and get back to earth.
Amen, Derek! I completely agree with your assessment of the current direction of communication and pseudo “connectedness.”
While I think it’s okay to have those casual relationships online in the world of Facebook and Twitter (I enjoy them myself), it’s vital that we keep them in their proper place. Our true living occurs in the real world, and we have to protect our “real” relationships and hold them sacred.
Obviously, that includes our spouse and children, but I think it also includes golf with buddies and sharing a beer and a joke over a BBQ grill at the in-laws house. You just can’t have that connection over Skype.
Thanks for your compliments on the 15 Minutes “initiative” that I’m sharing through the Marriage Time newsletter. I’m looking forward to talking more about that and much more on Past Due Radio with you tomorrow!