SMNTY Classics: Unbalancing Work-Life Balance

In the third installment of a special "Lean In" series, Cristen and Caroline discuss why "work-life balance" and the idea of "having it all" is a myth in this classic episode. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and don't come to
stuff I've never told you production of I Heart Radio.
And as we record this, we just had labor Day
here in the United States, and that made me start
to ponder about, um, some stuff around work and unions

(00:28):
and labor and our job is not, by any means
the only one. But our job is when it's hard
to turn off that back of the brain because you're
always kind of like, yeah, oh, here's a new story,
we should talk about our here's it's just always back
there working. I know I've talked about this before. I
do use work to distract myself from stress, which is

(00:50):
not necessarily the best thing. Um. So it's one of
those things I've I've struggled with where I'm like just
always working, but it's because I'm stressed, but because I
also love fan fiction so much, I can distract myself
with that instead of working. But it is hard for
me and especially like I get all caught up in uh.

(01:12):
I feel good when I'm productive, and for me, productive
is tied to work. So there's just not like a
lot of things that it's hard to unravel. And the
pandemic has shown a lot of light on some of
them for me, and I know for a lot of people.
So I also I have that app where I try
to keep track of like how much I'm working. I'll
just like kind of especially on the weekends or something like, oh,

(01:36):
you're working right now, let me log in, and so
I can get a better view of how much time
I'm spending. But I know it is a big point
of conversation right now. So we want to bring back
this classic episode on work life balance. Uh So, please
enjoy Stuff Mom Never Told You From Hello, and welcome

(02:04):
to the podcast. I'm Kristin and I'm Caroline and this
is part three of our Stuff Mom Never Told You
plus lean In series, and today we are kind of
stepping outside of the workplace to look at life surrounding
and intertwining work and debunking this idea of work life balance. Yeah,

(02:31):
Sandbird focuses a lot in her book on just the
fact that there really is no such thing you. There
really is in in this day and age, with our
smartphones and whatnot, there really is kind of a blurred
line now between our personal lives and our work lives,
and we kind of shouldn't be expected and maybe can't

(02:52):
be expected to be too completely separate people. Yeah, and
there's this idea that I hadn't thought about before of
where I read lean in that really framing it as
a work life balance and trying to achieve some perfect
balance between the two often is an exercise and futility

(03:13):
that we may be wasting a lot of energy on
instead of just embracing the fact that the two collide
and they're going to collide and intersect all of the time.
And the chapters that were focusing on for this discussion
come from chapter eight, making your partner a real partner
in chapter nine, which is the myth of doing it all. Um, So,

(03:35):
just to kick things off, we are working a bunch,
especially if you are married with kids. For instance, in
two thousand nine, married middle income parents worked eight and
a half more hours per week compared to parents in
nineteen seventy nine. But you're still expected to go home

(03:55):
and do all of the things that parents did in
nineteen seventy nine, on top of probably more work from home. Right. Yeah,
survey found that of working adults work after leaving the office.
I mean, how many times do you get emails after hours? Like?
I mean, it happens all the time because people are
still plugged in, and they're expected to be plugged in exactly,

(04:17):
and especially for moms out there, this is something that
we've talked about a lot and stuff mom never told you,
motherhood and career and work and how all of those
things tied together. Um. And the fact of the matter is,
it's so much work out there for moms because one
analysis found that among working parents, moms do forty more

(04:40):
childcare and thirty percent more housework compared to working dad's
and that leads to a lot of unequal leisure time.
I mean, I I know I would be resentful. Um.
So a two thousand nine survey found that only nine
percent of people in dual earner marriages say they share housework,
child care, and breadwinning evenly. But this isn't to place

(05:03):
blame immediately on husband's and dad's shoulders, saying, you know what,
if you would just do the dishes more than everything
would be fine. No, there might be first a need
for us to look at ourselves. What are we doing.
Are we maybe kind of claiming that housework in childcare
as our own rather than taking a more collaborative approach, because,

(05:27):
for instance, wives to engage in gate keeping behaviors do
five more hours of family work per week than wives
who take a more collaborative approach. If you're sitting there
like looking over your husband's shoulders when he's loading the
dishwasher and saying, actually, that's not gonna fit there now.
And I'm saying this as a very anal retentive dishwasher loader.

(05:50):
For sure, me too. You gotta you gotta let go sometimes,
or you know, do what you're good at. Kristen is
good at letting the dishwasher. I, for one rear, I
go behind my my dude roommate and rearrange the dishwasher
completely because I'm like, why why would you just put
a glass in the middle like that? Exactly, You've got
to line it up on the sides. That's my strength. Vacuuming,

(06:12):
Oh god, just can someone else do the vacuuming? Like
I don't mind doing it, but I don't want to
do it all the time, and I don't our apartment
living room it's so big, So it would probably save
you and dude roommate time if you just do the dishes.
Do that dishwasher to your heart's content. He does the floors. Right, Yeah,
he is much better and and actually chooses to pick

(06:35):
up things off the floor. You know, he might throw
my shoes in my room. That's fine. I don't take
that as passive aggressive or anything. But that's his strength.
So it's it's better to work to your strength and
allow your partner, spouse, roommate, whoever, to do what they're
good at, to allow them to take some of that
responsibility off your shoulders instead of being like, well, no,

(06:58):
but I want to change all the diapers, and I'm
better at putting the trash bag in the trash can,
and well know, but I vacuum better, like instead of
cleaning all of that, give some of it up, exactly,
and also find a partner who is cool with accepting
the stuff that you want to give up. This was
something that I really appreciated Sandberg bringing up in the book,

(07:20):
which is the importance of choosing a partner Wisely, she writes,
I truly believe that the single most important career decision
that a woman makes is whether she will have a
life partner and who that partner is right, And she
even urges people to date all of the wrong people.

(07:41):
I mean, she says that her advice is to date
the bad boys, the cool boys, the condeven phobic boys,
the crazy boys, but don't marry them. The things that
make the bad boys sexy don't make them good husbands.
And I can totally see what she's saying, because it's
not so much Okay, well, you can't marry somebody who's
cool or whatever, but like, you just want somebody who

(08:02):
will support you in your decisions, whether that's to work
seventy hours a week or whether that's to work from home. Yeah,
and that's such a crucial starting point because I feel
like a lot of the research focuses on where women
are by middle age. They're probably married, they probably have kids,
and talking about the whole juggling act of all of

(08:25):
those things. But it's so important and worthwhile to take
it a few steps back and say, Okay, why don't
we start from square one, which is all right, if
we want to partner up with somebody, let's think more
about who we partner up with. Is that some someone
going to be able to support our ambition in our career? Right?

(08:47):
And then once you've gotten to that point, she stresses
how important communication is. Yeah, actively communicating with your partner
about going fifty fifty is obviously a really good thing
to do of saying, you know what, you do this,
I'll do that. Let's play to our strengths. And that's
one way that you can practice the consciousness that Glorious

(09:09):
Sinum talks about when she says it's not about biology
but about consciousness. Right, going ahead, like I was saying earlier,

(09:31):
like establishing what your strengths are and what your partner
strengths are and working from there, instead of going ahead
and establishing early in the relationship or early in the
marriage that you are gonna be the one shouldering both
work and all of the home life. Yeah, because if
you adopt the roles of say cook and caregiver first thing,

(09:52):
whether you have you know, a prince or a toad,
he's probably just gonna be okay with it, you know,
and by no fault of his own and be like, oh, okay, well,
sure you can cook dinner. That's totally fine. And when
I was reading this, it totally resonated with me because

(10:13):
I have had to take a step back from cooking
all of the time, doing grocery shopping all the time,
doing Although my boyfriend is very adamant that he does
his own laundry, which I'm fine about. But but I realized,
and it wasn't before I read this, to be honest,
I realized that I had just taken on all of

(10:38):
these roles. I was doing everything, and it wasn't that
he didn't want to, it was that I wasn't giving
him a chance to. Yeah. I mean, it was the
same thing with dude roommate, Like I was feeling so
resentful because I was doing everything to clean up this
freaking apartment. And finally I just told him. I was like,
you're driving. You're driving me crazy, Like I'm gonna end up,

(10:59):
like I don't know, setting all your shoes on fire
or something. And he finally was like Okay. He finally
chipped in and started doing some of the counter wiping
down and some of the vacuuming. Yeah. And and that's
why Sandburgy talks about how if you want fifty, you
gotta ask for it first of all, and then crucially

(11:21):
step back enough to let it actually happen. And I
still have to stop myself, and it especially comes up
with the dishwashing things, which makes me once I realized
that I'm doing it I feel a little bit crazy
because you know, like thinking about like, oh, I'm not
one of those women who stands over boyfriend's shoulder tissing

(11:43):
while he incorrectly you know, washes the tupper where but
I totally do it. I totally do it. So I
just have to step back, just like no, actually, you're
I'm going to go in the other room and I'm
gonna read and relax. And it's totally fine. But it's
all about just raising some awareness with yourself to begin with,

(12:05):
but also recognizing like what your psychosis are. For instance,
like my my roommate, and I've mentioned this before on
the podcast, like he is super psychotic about stuff. He
isn't so much like a clean freak as he is
a neat freak. I'm the other way around. I don't
care if stuff is spread out all over the apartment
as long as it's not grimy, and so, like, you know,

(12:28):
I will come out of my room or you know,
come home and he will have cleaned and like things
are stacked in like a really weird place and he's
like moved all of my personal belongings in front of
my door. And it's like, okay, let go. You wouldn't
clean like this, but this is how he cleans. And
he just sees these things as like interlopers in the
living room space and they need to be removed. So

(12:49):
that's how he does it. I've got to let it go. Yeah, yeah,
I've had to relinquish some of my neat freakness as well.
I'm just saying, okay, cleanliness often resides on a spectrum.
I'm more of the high end of the spectrum, and
my boyfriend is more middling. He's not low, but middling,
and he can at least It's not that he wants

(13:12):
to live in a pig sty, but it's that dishes
can sit in the sink for a while or the
floor can look a little bit dirty for a while,
and it's not going to be the end of the world.
I want to clean when I come home. Well, you
have a lot of floor space in your apartment. I
do have a lot of floor space, so hashtag bless Well, No,
I'm just talking about the amount of sweeping. Yeah, it's

(13:35):
a lot of sweeping. And I know that these kinds
of things, talking about dishes and cleaning, et cetera, seems
so negligible and maybe seem like minor points if we're
talking about career in capital C career, but it's time,
and it's time that either takes away from our work
or contributes to stress all around. And I do think

(13:55):
that it makes a major difference for sure. I mean, yeah,
if you feel like you have to work eight, nine,
ten hours a day and then come home and continue working,
but that work is sweeping and doing dishes like it's
crazy making, Yeah, and it just gives you. It gives
you no extra time. And the benefits of fifty fifty partnerships,

(14:16):
not just at home but also in the workplace, have
very real results. There was a finding that Sandberg talks
about in the book, which is that the risk of
divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half
the income and a husband does half the housework. Yeah,
that would be that would be nice to I know

(14:39):
my mother, Well, I just like, look at my parents,
you know, they've been married for so long, and my
mother's like, I would just really love it if he
would chip in. I'm like, how long have you been married?
You know? And my dad does he If you look
at it more objectively, my dad does do a lot.
He does everything outside. He does all the bill, paying
all the financial stuff. My mom is the one who
does more of the like cooking and cleaning and laundry

(15:01):
and that kind of stuff. So it's like, as an
outsider who lives thirty minutes away from them. Thankfully, UM,
I can I can see that they do a lot
of equal work. It's just that when you feel like
you're the one who's putting in all of the time
doing something, you know that can put a strain on
things absolutely, um And. One thing that we might want

(15:23):
to liberate ourselves from two that can put a strain
on us mentally and make those differences feel even bigger
than they are, is just abandoning this notion of having
it all. This is a phrase I feel like it's
been coming up ad nauseam in magazine articles focused on women.

(15:46):
It's always focused on women. It's blog posts, it's tweets,
it's everything talking about can we have it all? Oh,
we can't have it all? No, maybe we should. You
know what I'm gonna say, Let's just forget about those words. Yeah,
pere you yeah, forget about them. I mean. Samberg calls
it the trap, the biggest trap ever set for women.

(16:06):
Um and I would. I mean, I would kind of agree.
I think it's more important to this is gonna sound
totally hippy dippy. I think it's more important to find
your happiness and your happy spot in your sweet spot
in life in general, more than it is to try
to have some like magazine created ideal of having it all. Yeah,
because then the question is, well, what is all that's
going to be different to everybody? Right? When I when

(16:28):
I hear the phrase having it all, I picture a
stock shot online of a woman in a business suit
with a briefcase and a baby and a cell phone,
and she's very slim. I guess she's very slim and
has impeccable hair somehow. Yeah, I would love impeccable hair,
but I can't have it all, that's right. Uh Yeah.

(16:50):
There was a quote from the book. He says long
term success at work often depends on not trying to
meet every demand placed on us. The best way and
I highlighted those million times. The best way to make
room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately,
to set limits and stick to them, which sounds radically

(17:10):
different and also radically more manageable than some idea of
having it all. Well, not only the idea of having
it all, but the idea of I'm going to feel
guilty if I don't take it all on, you know,
that idea of relinquishing that guilt of like, now, I'm
human and I need to set these boundaries for myself
and for you, as the person who's depending on me.

(17:30):
If I tell you I can deliver X y Z,
whether you're my partner or my co worker, you know,
if I tell you that I can do all of
this stuff and then I have a nervous breakdown, You're
gonna be like, where's that TPS report? And I'm like,
I couldn't do it right. And and that this resonates
not just with our TPS reports metaphorically speaking, but also

(17:52):
with those things at home, of the cooking, including and
all of the unpaid work of maybe relinquishing some of
the uh, letting it get a little messy every now
and then, and not worrying about it, because the idea
of striving for having it all is just chasing some

(18:13):
made up construct exactly, and a lot of other women
have realized these kinds of things. Um Tina Fey, one
of our favorites in her book Bossy Pants, she talks
about this idea of having it all and the fact
that you are as a woman so judged for whether
you have it all and how you got there. She says,

(18:34):
what is the rudest question you can ask a woman
is how do you juggle it all? People constantly ask
me with an accusatory look in their eye. And again
that image that you talked about of the well dressed,
pants suited woman with the briefcase and the baby looking
harried but also put together at the same time, I

(18:54):
feel like sums all of that up. But yeah, that
idea of having it all unless we get like twelve
more hours in each day somehow, I you know, I mean,
but then I would just use it to sleep. Let's
be honest. Um. Samberg also cided Dr Lorie glimpse Er,
who's the dean of the wheel Cornell Medical College, who
was talking more about balancing career and child care. But

(19:18):
I feel like her advice really resonated to women like
us who might not be married with children. She said,
I had to decide what mattered and what didn't, and
I learned to be a perfectionist only in the things
that mattered. Oh, This is something I struggle with all
the time because I want I want to do my best.
And this goes back to our whole self doubting issue

(19:40):
that we talked about before, Our whole like feeling like
a fraud and I'm not good enough and I have
to put in a thousand percent or people are going
to think I'm, like, you know, terrible at my job
or or my life or whatever. Um I mean. I
I also struggle with Noe. Pick the things that matter,
like the things that are really important at work, but
also the things in life that really make you happy.
Pick those things, put your energies into him. Don't try

(20:01):
to be everything to everybody. That is a recipe for
anxiety city, for sure. No trust me, it is um.

(20:22):
There's also the great Nora Ephron, who in her Wellesley
commencement speech said, it will be a little messy, but
embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in
the complications. It will not be anything like what you
think it will be like, but surprises are good for you,
and don't be frightened. You can always change your mind.

(20:42):
I know, I've had four careers and three husbands. I
think she's totally right. You're looking at a girl who
went to three colleges and four years like I don't.
I try to pursue the things that make me the happiest.
And if that means getting a little messy and transferring
a lot of times, uh, then you've got to do
what you've got to do exactly. And Sandberg herself says,

(21:05):
if I had to embrace a definition of success, it
would be that success is making the best choices we
can and accepting and to me, part of that is unbalancing.
This whole work life balance notion that we hear over
and over and over again. And I understand why because
thinking about it, yeah, like it makes sense, but sort

(21:29):
of in the same way that having it all. Maybe
he's leading us astray. Focusing on work life balance makes
it sound like we can neatly discriminate between Oh, well
this is this is my work self, now this is
my life self. Well, I have a great real life example.
This is not my example, but my friend Brandon Um

(21:51):
does Humans of New York on Facebook. Maybe you've seen it.
He post a lot of pictures from New York, obviously,
and he took this picture of this older gentleman in
a part and he starts talking to him and they
have this conversation that Brandon writes about where he's like,
you know, what is your greatest achievement or what advice
would you give to a large group of people, And
the man starts talking about how, you know, he's proud

(22:13):
that his children grew up to be the great people
that they are, the successful people that they are, but
how filled with regret he is that he was so focused,
laser focused on, you know, climbing the ladder in his career,
that that was his focus. He was glad he could
provide for his children, and he was glad they turned
out okay. So when Brandon said, you know, would you

(22:33):
regret it if you had given up a few rungs
on the ladder to have been home more often? And
the man said, no, you know, like that's that's a person,
that's a real life person who didn't have whatever balance
we are seeking, whatever your version of balance is. He
and he regretted it. But you know, so I I

(22:54):
take that that man that Brandon spoke with as a
great example of like, find what makes you happy and
hind it before it's too late. Yeah, And I think
one of the first steps along the way to doing
that is dismissing this idea that it's even possible to
have it all, that that even that that even makes
sense in any way whatsoever, and that it's not going

(23:16):
to get a little messy sometimes along the way. Now,
that's totally fine, and I feel like, you know, the
more we can kind of accept that, then that can
possibly lead into i don't know, opening up some breathing
room in the workplace day to day as well. So
I'm sure that listeners have lots of experience with this

(23:38):
as well. So I'm curious to hear from folks about
what they think about that idea of work life balance.
Do we need to unbalance the work life balance? Do
we need better language or just get rid of it
and start fresh. I don't know what what do we
do about this? I want to I do want to
hear how people do achieve any out of balance or

(24:01):
you know, are you in a super corporate environment and
you're working with maybe your superiors to help achieve some
sort of flexibility, or you know, do you feel like
you're slaving away in a in a little box all
the time. Let us know your thoughts. Mom stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can email us. We
also highly encourage you to check out what is going
on with lean In. It's not just a book, it

(24:22):
is also a movement, so head over to lean in
dot org. They also have a great Facebook network, not
surprisingly since CEO of Facebook Cheryl Sandberg is at the
helm of this. There at Facebook dot com slash lean in,
and there you can find a lot of women who
are sharing their experiences and you can share there as well.

(24:45):
And next week we're gonna tie up our series. It's
gonna be over Caroline. What are we gonna talk about? Uh,
We're going to talk about the word bossy and why
that is a quarrel lot of word. So this series
we will have started one with negotiation. We're gonna end
things at the top of the ladder when we're hopefully

(25:05):
the boss Caroline. That's right. So tune in next Friday
for the conclusion of our four part series and partnership
with Maine end for more onness and thousands of other topics.
What does it housetop works dot com