Try a split shift

Protect family time and get your work done with this one tweak to your schedule.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tid is to work what I call a split shift.
So my kids have never been huge fans of sleep,
even when they were babies. They seem to need a
lot less sleep than other kids. But many babies and
toddlers do go to bed relatively early, and this causes

(00:24):
one of the first dilemmas that many new working parents face.
You need to put in a good chunk of ours
to do your job, but your kids go to bed
by seven thirty pm. If you work until six thirty
pm and then have a half hour commute, you barely
have time to run in and kiss them good night.
This evening dilemma can be a challenge for people without
kids too. I mean, maybe you'd like to volunteer one

(00:45):
night a week, or join a softball league that practices
on Tuesdays and Thursdays at six pm. Then you talk
yourself out of it because you need to work fifty
hours or more per week. But before we start worrying
that no one can have it all, I think that
in many jobs this isn't the right way to view
this choice. You can definitely work fifty hours a week

(01:06):
and still have a good personal life. The key is
realizing that you really have two choices. One is the
most obvious one. You just keep working until all the
work is done. Then you go home too late to
do anything except watch TV, and then you can feel sad.
But if you have a little bit of flexibility in
your work, you could instead work what I call a

(01:28):
split shift. Here's how this works. Rather than leave the
office at six thirty, you leave much earlier, let's say
five pm. You get home five thirty. Now, instead of
thirty minutes with your kids, you have two hours before
they go to bed. This is a much more substantial
chunk of time. Of course, the work did not magically disappear.

(01:52):
But here's what happens. After the kids go to bed
at seven thirty, you hop back on your laptop or
phone and do whatever you didn't do from five to
six thirty PM. You return those emails, You plan tomorrow's meetings,
You finish that report. You stop at nine pm and
still have some time to relax before bed. By splitting
your shift, you are trading off work time for TV

(02:13):
time instead of work time for family time. If kids
aren't the issue for you, you can substitute whatever it
is that you'd like to do in the evenings, leave
the office at five pm, go practice with your softball team,
then hop back on the email after you've shown everyone
how well you can pitch. It turns out this is
a choice a lot more people are willing to make.

(02:35):
A few years ago from my book, I know how
she does it. I collected time logs from women who
had big, demanding jobs and who also had kids at home.
I found out that about half these women work to
split shift at least once during the week. They tracked.
This is how they were able to work jobs that
required long hours while still spending quite a bit of
time with their families. Since I wrote that book, I've

(02:57):
done some additional research, finding that many men do the
exact same thing. Now. I know this sounds like working
a split shift means you could never relax. But no
one worked a split shift seven nights a week. No
one even worked at five. But by opening up the
evenings after their kids went to bed two to three
nights per week, these parents were able to advance at
their jobs and enjoy family life too. It really is

(03:20):
the best of both worlds. Now, not all jobs can
do this, and maybe you work in an office where
you can't choose when you leave. But I found that
a lot of people have more flexibility than they might think.
So if you do have some flexibility in your job,
figure out if a split shift might work for you.
Maybe you're not sure, but you know what, I bet
you some people in your office are already doing this.

(03:43):
Anytime you get an email from someone at nine pm,
there is a good chance they're working that split shift.
You just don't see the two hours they spent with
their families before they sent those emails. They probably aren't
going to tell you about it either. I wish they would,
but that's a more complicated subject for a different time.

(04:06):
I do know that putting in a split shift means
I can work long hours and still have dinner with
my kids and put them to bed too. It's a
key part about how I have it all, and maybe
it can be for you as well. In the meantime,
This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to

(04:28):
hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
and Instagram. At Before Breakfast pod that's B the number four,
then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
an email at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeart media dot

(04:49):
com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.