Accidentally in Code

Tag: balance

What is Work-Life Balance, Anyway?
Credit: flickr / terriseesthings

Women, especially, seem to talk about work-life-balance – and it’s synonym, work-life-integration (a la IBM) a lot. But what does it mean?

The cop out, d’uh, answer is, different things to everyone.

I’ve come to think that what it means is that the pieces that make up your life (work, family, friends, exercise, hobbies, etc etc) have an arrangement, and a quantity, such that if this is how your life is going to look like for the next 3 months – 6 months – a year – that would be okay. You wouldn’t feel that something large was missing, nor would you feel like curling up into a ball and crying at the prospect.

Of course, it isn’t static. Life changes, and there will be spikes – good and bad – any change is a spike. At some point, you’d seek out new challenge, and that would be a spike. A change in circumstances would be a spike. A holiday would be a spike, or three spikes, as you try to get stuff finished up before leaving, take a break, and come back to a pile of work. Hopefully the spike in the middle would be a pleasurable one.

But my point is, balance is not happening when you’re at capacity and you think, yes, I can do the next three months as long as nothing goes wrong. When has that ever happened? Mostly you make it work, but at what cost? You look back and think “I missed out on X” – and that’s a loss. Even if X is just spending an afternoon in a coffee shop with a book, or a couple of movie nights with your partner or best friend – because living like this long-term leads to greater losses, of creativity, of peace of mind, of relationships. Spikes are okay, expected – but they should be spikes, not normal.

I’m currently reading The Power of Now – rather fuzzy and spiritual for my taste, however the focus on being present is making me think. In a balanced life, by which I mean, a sustainable life, we are not thinking “I just need to survive X and things will be OK, I’ll be calmer and happier and have more time for Y then”.

It’s a conclusion that screams out to me, because I’m pretty sure I’ve been thinking “I just need to survive this month” since at least July. I feel like I missed out so much in grad school – because of time, money, commitments, that I created a project (Post Grad Rehab) to help redress that. January is, thankfully, the last month I need to “survive”. Hopefully in February I will go back to living. But, without spending some time thinking how I’ve spent 6 months straight feeling like I’m on the edge of what I can cope with, will I just end up repeating this again and again?

It’s been helpful to make three lists. The first – what needs to change? Second, what’s working? Third, what do I need to figure out?

The first list comprises the things that I just feel I cannot carry on with. I think this is the most important, because these are the big huge spikes that are just derailing and draining me completely. The second list is about taking stock of what is helping – it’s a reminder to keep at these things, and maybe I can find patterns and discover more ways to live more sustainably. The third list are things that may be drowned out by the big things in the first list, but may become big things themselves if left unchecked.

Credit: flickr / Rohan Reid

What Needs To Change?
1. Travel. I have been jittering about like Tigger on speed. Since April, I’ve made 5 trips to the US, 3 to Kitchener (from Ottawa), one to Winnipeg, and I’ll make my third trip to Europe at the end of this week. And I moved! First, I’m fed up of living out of suitcases. Second, it’s made it difficult to have a routine. Third, I’m an ambivert and travel uses up my extraversion and leaves me unsociable – not great when I’ve just moved to a new place and need to meet people! I just can’t continue living like this, it’s not fun anymore. It’s not – “ooh, new place”. It’s “another plane and another timezone change? Shoot me now”.
2. Rehab. This is actually my focus for February, fittingly as it will be a year since I injured my shoulder. I have been dosed up on codeine and/or in pain for a year because of lack of health-care, not taking time to heal, and taking (did I mention?) too many planes.
What’s Working?
1. Work Stays at Work. At the end of the day, I close my laptop and leave it at the office. I have my work calendar – (my only calendar, now) but not work-email on my iPhone. I love my job, but this distinction – shut the laptop, leave it there, is helpful for drawing a line and doing other things.
2. Gym in the Morning. When I don’t work out in the morning, I seem to have better hair, but my mood is not better, and I have less energy. 6am is a bit early for spinning (7am would be ideal) but going in the evening when I’m tired and hungry and have experienced the cold is actually much harder! I need to keep working at this – hopefully once I’m done travelling for a bit I will be able to get up at 530am for spinning – and not go to bed at 8pm.
What Do I Need to Figure Out?
1. Email. Don’t laugh – I’m actually working on mobile gMail. Between that and managing my work email, my personal email is a desolate wasteland of dashed expectations. I have emails starred as important from more than 6 months ago that I haven’t got to. I have emails deemed important by priority inbox from over a month ago that I haven’t even read. This is not okay, especially since I’m getting almost no emails from annoying people lately and so these are all from people that I like and think deserve a prompt response. So first – I’m sorry, email me again if it’s important until I respond, (perhaps with a subject line like “CATE YOU ARE A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING”). I think if I could get on top of it it would be OK, but I’ve thought that before. Mind you, that was some time ago…
2. Food. Because it’s a smaller office we don’t get dinner here. Yes, I realize, there are #firstworldproblems and there are #googlersproblems. But it is hard to get up and work out at 6am when I didn’t have dinner because there was nothing in the fridge and I decided it was too cold to pick up food. Maybe I could make some soup.
3. Social Life. This is really “hang out with people outside of work and make more friends”.
4. Projects. I’m transitioning out of my role with Awesome Ottawa because it’s hard to do remotely and it’s not as much fun when you’re not part of the debate over what to fund. I’ll miss it, but everything says – time to move on and the group is working out ways to organize so I’m optimistic about that. We’ve been lacking submissions on CompSci Woman and I think it’s because Maggie and I are not very good at chasing people to write for us (or getting hold of each other to talk about a new theme!) I need to talk to her to work out what to do about that. Then there are projects in KW that I want to take on, but it is a question of what I have capacity for. What do I spend time on? What do I opt out of?
5. Creating. I’m really lucky in that I get to work on software that people use every day and even with my dysfunctional relationship with email I do think it is genuinely something that is helpful to people (who haven’t discovered Twitter – I’m kidding. Mostly). That’s awesome. Create something useful, absolutely what I want to do. But I don’t want to stop creating things just because they are interesting, or fun, and I don’t want to stop writing here, either.
January 21, 2011
Finding Balance and Doing Less

Back in March, I had a really terrible week. My paper got rejected and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish this semester, and the following day, my boyfriend and I broke up.

It’s not uncommon for a paper to be rejected, however, frustratingly, the comments I got were mostly aspects of it that I had been unhappy with, that I had asked for help with, but, perhaps given the short time frame had not got the feedback I needed to fix. Finishing this semester was always tight, and this was really the final straw – my internship this summer is probably better for my employment prospects than a masters degree, and I was risking going in there burnt out and distracted, which I can’t afford to do.

My boyfriend and I had been together for over a year and a half, in fact, he was one of the first people I’d met when I got to Ottawa. I always found this rather romantic, but I had been aware for a while that this meant my identity here was somewhat tied up in being his girlfriend, and most of the friends I have here are mutual. We had been living together, so this was a further complication. Fortunately, he had somewhere to go so I didn’t have to deal with a post-breakup cohabitation nightmare as well.

I don’t fail often, but here were two – huge – failures in one week. I crashed. I’ve been pushing myself so hard and all of a sudden I didn’t have as many pressing deadlines. I also didn’t have anyone to notice if I stayed in my pajamas all day watching My Family. I was physically ill from – I don’t know – exhaustion? Stress? Misery? I pushed myself so hard, for so long, that when it all came crashing down, I did too.

Credit: flickr / James Jordan

This is normal. But yes, this is when my posting schedule went to hell. It’s been on my mind – failure – so it was hard to write about other things. I didn’t have the perspective that I needed to write clearly, and without blame. Initially, my explanation was that we were married to grad school – and cheating on it, with each other. Because honestly? That’s what I had been feeling like, for months. Then I got angry – at the two 30-somethings who had spent most of last winter in our apartment to the point where one day we looked at each other and asked, “how did we end up parenting two 30-somethings?” – that should have been our honeymoon period. They ruined it.

And, of course, he blamed me too – for working too much, and for taking that job in Shanghai last summer.

I am 24 years old, and I am having trouble balancing my ambition with my personal life. I don’t have children. I don’t want children. Partly because I think all this talk of “having it all” and “balance” is a load of crap. We make choices. We prioritize our careers. If we date someone as focused, we might never get to see them. If we date someone less focused, they don’t understand our choices. If we prioritize our personal life, we risk giving things up, making compromises for something that ultimately may not work out. This cuts both ways, of course, but somehow – call me a cynic, sure – a career seems a more certain and reliable thing than our relationship. I know we’re not supposed to say it and there are women that manage but… I can’t see how having children can not affect your career. And what if they grow up to be traffic wardens? Or politicians? Then what? I hear you love them no matter what but I have a hard time believing that is true of traffic wardens. (Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Amazon), by the way, is a fascinating exploration of women and marriage – and the compromises women make for family.)

I know very few grad students in relationships. Graduate school is not conducive to a balanced life, and as a result is often not conducive to relationships, other than those with anti-depressants, alcohol, and electronic devices.

Credit: flickr / squarewithin

So, in all, I’ve been knocked for six. And so, I’ve been doing less, whilst I try and regain my balance. It’s amazing; I’m properly living alone, for the first time in my life, and I have all this space – in my apartment, in my head, in my schedule, to just be. And of course I’ve used some of that in mindless TV watching – My Family, Lipstick Jungle, Brothers and Sisters and Big Bang Theory – but what’s been amazing is that when I’ve had to focus, I’ve created some of my best stuff. The other day, I woke up with the math clear in my head for a fractal. My workshop the other day was really successful, and I’m really proud of the content. I’ve read several books – including Women Don’t Ask (which merits it’s own blog post, and will get one). And I’ve been exercising more, and having the time to actual consider what I’m eating and when – rather than just refueling so I can continue to run about.

My life is changing, and that is really scary because it’s like starting over. But I think this pause is helpful – to take stock, to reevaluate. And I’m not going to change completely, but maybe I am going to do a little less, because when you’re constantly moving, you can’t see the view, and because doing less could mean doing fewer things better.

Credit: flickr / theDQT

April 29, 2010
Role Models

Credit: flickr / TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Several months ago, I met someone who had been reading my blog. We had a chat, but from some things that she said I got the impression that my blog made me seem a bit too much like super-woman. I’m not, as you may have noticed, because since then I’ve tried to temper my writing with stories of failure, or general inadequacy.

Why? Because I aspire to be a role model. We don’t have enough of them, as female programmers. The high profile ones are out of reach – I’m not ever going to be like Marissa Myer, for example. So I think what we need are the women in who are happy, successful, and in a place that we can realistically aim for.

In the midst of some recent angst-ing, I was on chat with one of my role models and mentors. She was super helpful – acknowledged what I was getting worked up about, but then gave me some advice. Not on the basis that I should do better, but on the basis that I am better than the person who I had allowed to bother me. I can choose my reaction. I’m trying to choose a better one.

I’m always striving to do better, and beating myself up because I don’t live up to my unrealistic expectations. And then I’m making myself feel worse by comparing myself to other people, when the situation is completely different – a factor of age, or profession, or focus, or timing. The dot-com bubble occurred when I was between 10 and 15. For much of that my family didn’t even have a computer. Of course, my career will be different from someone who was in the industry then.

It’s easy to look for role models and think – I want X’s personal life, but Y’s career. But are we being realistic? X may have compromised on career for that great personal life, and Y may have compromised their personal life for that career. We don’t know. Ultimately, we will have to make our own choices and our own compromises and hope to be happy with the final result.

Anyway, as I try – frantically – to graduate, I’m thinking about what I want my future to look like, and I’m looking for role models.

March 18, 2010
Rediscovering Balance

Credit: flickr / Pink Sherbet Photography

My life has been out of balance for as long as I can clearly remember. And I know, the most successful women embrace that imbalance but my feeling is that mine has been too far out of balance, or perhaps just too imbalanced in the wrong way.

Last semester, I was in so much pain from dislocating my kneecap a lot of activities were off the table. I worked a lot. My TA frankly sucked. I achieved some things that made me really happy, but the pressure that I felt because what I was working on was always defined took it out of me. I had too much structure, and not enough freedom and creativity.

This semester, I’m trying to re-equilibriate. That means working hard, but carving out time to be inspired and un-pressured. I bunked off today, and as a result finished something that I’ve been working on for weeks. The time I needed was there in my schedule, but what wasn’t was the freedom I need to be inspired.

Teaching skiing on Sundays is so far amazing for my balance. I spend the day without my phone (or computer!), outside, doing something physical. And I return too exhausted to do anything other than watch movies and go to bed. Then, I sleep for 12 hours. I’m not sure how much I enjoy being a ski instructor, but I do enjoy skiing, and the feeling of achievement when after an hour I see an improvement in a student’s skiing. I think, though, what I really enjoy is not being a grad student. It’s like a break from my life.

I want a life that I’m sufficiently happy with that I don’t need to take breaks from it. But I don’t think I will have that whilst I’m at graduate school.

With WISE, lately, I’ve been delegating as much as I can. There have been some teething problems, but what I notice is that I’m doing more but it’s easier – I’ve tipped the balance from a list of obligations to inspirations. I need to do that more in my life, generally. So tonight, even though I know what I should do is go ski training, what I’m going to do is go to Body Pump followed by Body Balance. Because, honestly, I know what I need to do to improve my skiing. It’s 1) buy new ski boots and 2) go and work on being able to ski on one leg (dislocating my kneecap didn’t just imbalance my life) and do consistent short radius turns down a black run until my thighs burn. And what I need to do to improve my feeling of imbalance is to make a shift from “what I should do” to “what I want to do”.

There are three ways to do this, I think. One is to rejig things, which is what I’ve done with WISE and my schedule by bunking off.

Option two is to ignite my passion again, so something goes from “should” to “want to”. Going back to kickboxing in January, it was a bit of a should. But I’ve upped my fitness to the point where I can go to the non-beginner classes and it’s starting to become a “want to”, instead. For school, on Saturday I was working but came across something that was really inspiring and as a result was able to clarify some things I’d been thinking, then I had a brief chat with my co-supervisor which was so helpful after the other day (he seems to have read what I’ve worked on, and see things more in line with how I’m seeing them).

Third, and finally, I think leverage is important. Leverage is buying new ski boots (my current ones are so beat up they don’t fit right anymore and keep coming undone when I ski hard). Leverage was getting a trainer when I started going back to the gym because it was helpful for using my time there best, and motivation. Leverage has been getting someone else to write my CV – I’ve found that the amount of time I’ve put in has been about the same as it would take me to write a (mediocre) resume, but hopefully as a result I’ll get a much better one. I also feel more prepared for interviews. Leverage, is delegating stuff to other people for WISE, we had a big event on Saturday, and are introducing monthly “workshops” – so we’re achieving more as a group now I’m not a bottleneck. It can scary to give up control, but it can also be empowering.

I guess for everything that gives me this feeling of “don’t want to”, I need to consider whether I can rejig, ignite, or leverage to make the situation better. Because ultimately, I don’t want to rediscover balance, I want an imbalance – I just want a better one.

February 3, 2010
Finding Balance and Motivation

Credit: flickr / h.koppdelaney

On Wednesday, uOttawa WISE had the latest talks in our Inspiring Women series. As has happened every time so far, I think this is the best yet. How do we top it in February? (OK I have a sneak preview of what will be happening in February, and that’s going to be awesome too).

Our speakers were: Dr. Jennifer Decker, Team Leader, Metrology for Nanotechnology, Institute for National Measurement Standards, National Research Council Canada; and Mrs. Stephanie De Silva, Head, Monograph Management Unit, Natural Health Products Directorate, Health Canada.

(Announcement on uOttawa WISE’s blog)

I didn’t make notes about specifics, so I’m just going to write a little about the different themes it pulls out for me.

First up, I was struck by the similarities in what these two women spoke about, despite the disparity in their career paths and ages. We think we’re unique, that our problems are special in some way, but they’re not. We all have similar things that arise, we just deal with them differently. We all struggle to find balance, but being imbalanced is okay – if we manage our imbalances. I.e. unbalanced weeks are okay, but we can aim for our overall life to be in balance.

Second, I was reminded of Clay Shirky’s “A Rant About Women”, which I blogged about the other day. Both of them had been persistent in getting the job they wanted – without being pushy. If you want to work in the government, calling regularly to say, “so, how’s my application going?” is likely a good idea.

This is something I struggle with, and it was a reality check for me. I released on Monday but I’m not sure some people who I wanted to notice had (it’s hard to pick out one tweet in a stream if you follow a lot of people). And I knew I should message them and say, “hey, thought you’d like to know I released this” but I was prevaricating because maybe they noticed and weren’t that interested.

Seriously, I was holding off letting people know who had already expressed an interest in my work, that I had released something new. OK, I don’t want to be a jerk but this is likely going to far the other way! And isn’t it more arrogant to think they would just notice? People are busy, I’m just one person in a stream of information. Saying, hi and letting them know is not such a big deal! So I pulled myself together and put it out there. I’ll probably do it a couple of people at a time.

(As I write this, I’ve contacted two people. One of them replied within an hour suggesting we connect via phone next week. Seriously – why was I prevaricating?)

Third was asking for help. Stephanie has a young family, and wasn’t ashamed to say that being a working mom was made possible by the help of her friends and family and the support of her husband. This was echoed by Dr. Decker. I think we can be reluctant to ask for help because we think we should know, but none of us is superwoman! The most effective people I know don’t mind asking for help, and do it with regularity. There’s nothing less effective than spending hours struggling with something that someone else could take 5 minutes to set you on the right track with, really, is there?

So Thursday morning I took the thing I’d been struggling to write for nearly a week now and emailed the guy who asked me to do it. Because I’m angsting that I’m on the wrong track. And he can just tell me, and probably make some really helpful suggestions. Of course he was nice about it, and arranged to meet me later the same day.

The fourth, and final aspect, was failure. Some people get seized up by failure, and waste their time berating themselves about it. But if you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself. So fail, dust yourself off, and try again.

January 24, 2010