On one recent morning, I was meeting with some friends. At one point, I heard one of the many children in the home crying. I was in a room close by, and thought the child might be alone, and so I walked around the corner to see what was wrong. It turned out that this little child was struggling to get dressed and had got stuck in her clothes. It could have been an easy fix, but one thing made everything complicated: her mother was standing there, tapping into an iPhone, not reacting. It takes a village, so I decided to just help the child out to give her mom a break from the crying. The mother looked up with a shameful expression, mixed with exhaustion, that I think every parent knows. She sighed. “Thanks. I know I need to help her, but I just need to finish this email.”  

In telling you this story, I don’t want to seem judgemental of this friend. I have seen almost every one of my loved ones do this, and I am most certainly guilty of “just having to answer an email” myself. But what I realized was that as we discuss tech use, we are so focused on protecting our kids that we might not be offering enough training and support for parents in the community. Our kids are watching us. They–rightly– scream “hypocrite!” when they see this behavior. Further, the shame that this mother felt at her own tech use and inability to balance work and home is not abnormal. But this shame is negatively affecting our performance as workers, and the pressure that brings to “up” our performance at work is making us less present parents. Let's look at the research.

The facts

Rescuetime writes, “Keeping up with communication has become a full-time job, leaving us with little time to do the work we were hired to do (and that our performance is judged on). Yet the problem isn’t just that we’re receiving more emails than ever (even though we are). It’s that we feed the beast by answering every email, checking our inboxes at all hours, and not setting expectations and boundaries around our email time.” It seems like we’re communicating more than ever, but are we really? Rescuetime’s survey of knowledge workers found that over half of them had an expectation of very rapid responses to emails, but only a quarter of those people had ever discussed that expectation with their coworkers! (Rescuetime). The Harvard Business Review lays it out in this helpful hypothetical: 

“Take this example: A manager does not expect employees to return her emails during off-hours or while they’re on vacation, but she never explicitly says this. Instead, she assumes they “just know,” and therefore thinks there is no harm in sending messages during these times, because she figures they’ll just be waiting for the employee when he returns. But in fact, the employee doesn’t know, and logs into his email while he’s out of the office (perhaps because he knows others do it). And when he sees an email from his boss, he interprets this to mean that she expects him to respond. This feeds the expectation to check email while he’s away, and the belief is reinforced by the fact that the manager seems to be working at all hours herself. A lack of intention and differing assumptions cause an unhealthy culture to take root.”

This culture manifests itself at work and at home. I want to tell you that if you’re feeling shame about your habits, you are not alone. A study of working families in the UK found that “technological innovations are making it harder for working parents to maintain boundaries between work and the home.” Many parents feel that they have to work overtime once they go home to keep up with their workload. This culture has direct effects on parents’ relationship with their family: "parents in ‘work mode’ outside of their contracted hours are more likely to report they feel stressed (72%) and that work impacts negatively on their relationships with partners and children. Some 54% of parents staying in ‘work mode’ said work led to arguments with their children, and 57% said it contributed to arguments with partners” (Working Families). 

The blurred boundaries between work and home make us feel ashamed in both environments: it’s much easier to remain connected to both home at work, and work at home. We have caring responsibilities that aren’t compatible with an intensive hustle culture, and working responsibilities that aren’t easy to “switch off.” 

The truth is, the “ideal” worker isn’t a parent. The development of things like email for businesses resulted from workers in Silicon Valley imposing their standards of work onto the culture at large. “This childless archetype codes all night, drinks Soylent at his desk, and beats impossible deadlines. This person doesn’t exist, for the most part. Instead, workers vary widely and have complicated lives that don’t necessarily revolve around work. Nor should they. A happy, well-adjusted worker is less likely to burn out and leave. The quality of their work is also better” (Vox).

As a worker, these are the conversations we have to start having. We need to create workplaces that are compatible with our lives outside of them. We can start putting tech to good use instead of letting it break down the healthy boundaries in our lives. And we can start with the overwhelming emails!

Fixing the problem 

HR consultant Christy Pruitt-Haynes says, “we tend to feel shame when we think that we have done something wrong. If a company acknowledges that it is normal to feel pulled in two directions, then an employee won’t feel so bad. They will simply feel normal” (BBC Worklife). We have to advocate for ourselves in the workplace–as parents. We need to talk about clear guidelines around email, and ask coworkers about their expectations. If you don’t feel you’re in a position to make these requests, you can also start within the body of your emails. Here’s a tip:

Use tech for good: Email has settings for out-of-office messages, and email signatures. It might seem simple, but this outlines that you’re still working, but that you are devoting specific times to communication as a part of your working life. It shows that you care about your job enough to devote specific time and thought to your email communication. I’ve linked some helpful templates below to get you started.

• Canned email response templates

• Changing your email signature

The next step is working on our relationship with work at home. Most people complain about their tech use, but don’t take the time to think about which specific aspects of their phone they love, and which need to go (check out Catherin Price’s book, How to Breakup with Your Phone). 

Let me illustrate this through telling you about a friend of mine. He knew, as a father, that he wanted to avoid his phone, and his wife and kids had been complaining about his distraction. He even went to a movie with them and sat down and started reading the news! When he was called out, he knew he needed to change. I told him his first step was to decide what could go and which items had to remain. By doing this analysis, he realized that work emails were not his problem. He honed in on his weakness and optimized his phone for his personal use. This is what he decided to delete:

• His news apps: he could get news on his iPad and computer, and realized he was spending too much time scrolling the news mindlessly 

• A Wood-block puzzle game that he would play when he was bored waiting in line at airports

• Twitter and LinkedIn

I asked him what was the hardest to delete. Hands down, it was the news apps. It was hard to feel so unplugged, like he might be missing something. But next time he felt uncomfortably bored at the airport, he found himself walking over to a bookstore. When we met at a dinner party some time later, he beamed. “I am reading more books, and my wife and kids are so pleased.” While it may not be easy to start, there are real benefits to removing distractions from your home life. Here are some tips that you can use to further address your problem areas:

Separate work and private life: Don’t use your work email for private reasons, and try not to sign up for websites that clutter your inbox. (I try to send one email a month or less, so I hope you’ll stay on my list!)

Turn off notifications. Turning off notifications and closing your email tab while at home is a must for managing this distraction. 

Set a bedtime for your devices. Stop looking at emails after a certain time of night, and most certainly don’t read your emails in bed. 

Start your day without your phone. Set a time in the morning when you check your emails to see if anything urgent happened, and plan a time to answer the most important emails.

Here are three other steps that will help you decide what you might want to change.

1. Be mindful of how you are using your technology.  Let me explain what I mean: try to be in the moment when you use your tech. For me, this means not scrolling through my phone–even while watching a silly princess movie I don’t want to watch! When you do want to scroll, scroll with purpose and enjoy the scroll - just remember to set a time limit.

2. Ask yourself what is bothering you about your use. What did you want to change? Why do you want this change, and how important is this change to you? You can think about how this change might make your life easier, better, and give yourself the time for the things you want to be doing. 

3. Find a way to make the changes happen. This is the hardest bit. You might have some stumbles and hesitations, and you might realize some things need to stay while others need to go. Deleting apps is a concrete start. I know many people who delete email from their phones so that they don’t check emails unless they are at their computer. I know others who delete all social media from their phones. I myself can’t have any little games on my phone, or I will waste time. My friend needed to delete the news. It’s okay to admit this and set a boundary with yourself!

If we want to help our children manage this, we need to first be honest with ourselves, vulnerable, and tackle the issues we face head-on. Your kids will love hearing what you are working on and share more about their own struggles if they hear that you too, are working on reducing your time online.

Reflecting

A few months later I bumped into my friend and asked them how things were going. If you are going to create change and solve a problem you need to circle back and re-evaluate if your changes are having the desired impact.

My friend told me that they were actually in the process of making even more changes. They had seen how such a minor tweak had made a positive impact, and were hungry to take back more of their time. They were even considering buying a Light Phone, but realized it wouldn’t work for some of their work needs. This is the tricky part. We all have different jobs and requirements of the tech in our lives so, you will need to figure out what works best for you. I wish it were easier but…such is life. With thought and intention, however, we can reclaim our personal lives and find both meaningful purposes for tech and meaningful time outside of it. 

–Allison Ochs, social pedagogue/worker, author, mother of three, wife

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