Lever 1: Getting More Sleep

There’s good reason that sleep deprivation is used as torture. Without enough rest, human beings break down quickly. Your workparenting sleep deficit may be more chronic and cumulative in nature, but it’s still corrosive, and makes it very hard to deliver everything you want to at work and at home.

To start getting more sleep:

• Believe that it’s possible.  That’s not a cosmic statement, but a practical one. If you’re firmly subscribed to the idea that workparenting means being chronically underslept, and you accept that fact, or if you somehow see exhaustion as a badge of honor—well, then that’s what will probably happen. Have faith that you can get more rest, and that you deserve it.
• Practice workparent-style sleep hygiene.  “Sleep hygiene” means all of those small behaviors that help you get a decent night’s shut-eye—limiting caffeine intake, putting your devices away a full hour before bed, keeping your bedroom dark and quiet, and so on. All are important, yet realistically speaking very hard for any parent or busy professional to follow. You can’t tell the baby not to make noise, and if you’re working a Split Day, as we covered in chapter 4, there’s no way you’re going to have the luxury of a full device-free hour each evening. Nevertheless, try to develop your own regimen. Maybe you have a “no screens for the fifteen minutes before bed” rule, or drink plenty of coffee until noon, but none after. The core idea here is to manage toward good-quality sleep throughout the day, not just when your head hits the pillow.

• Wind down.  When you and the kids haven’t seen each other for ten hours, it’s natural to want to pack in some let’s-live-a-little activities: exuberant play, listening to music, doing sports in the backyard, roughhousing, watching an episode of that exciting new series—all the things you’d want to do if you didn’t have to go to work. That’s fine, but it’s difficult for children, and adults, to move from boisterous, higher-charge activities straight into bedtime mode: it’s too abrupt of a switch. Try using and pacing your evenings as an enjoyable preface to bed. Quieter and less physical activities, lower lighting, and reading will help the whole family taper down from wakefulness to rest. Doing those evening activities in a set order, as a routine, will also act as a cue for sleep.
• Create a shut-off switch.  It’s 11:30 p.m., and you still have a gazillion items on your work and family to-do lists. You could easily keep chugging through those to-dos all night or, worse, lie awake mentally reciting, reorganizing, or working them through. That’s crazy-making, and there’s no big red button, like on a treadmill, allowing you to stop and safely get off. So create one, at least in your own mind: have a no “productive” activity after 11:00 p.m. policy, or tell yourself that as soon as I turn off my desk light [or switch off my laptop, or get into my pajamas, etc.], it’s time for me to relax. Each evening, take a moment to push that mental button, giving yourself explicit permission to stop doing, and worrying: What isn’t done isn’t done, and can wait till tomorrow. Now, it’s time for me to rest.
• Be the decider.  What time the kids have to go to sleep, whether or not they’re allowed to come into bed with you during the night, when you serve them breakfast in the morning: those are all choices you should be making. Telling your five-year-old that bedtime is nonnegotiable, or that he needs to stay in his room, or that there won’t be cereal available until 6:00 a.m., doesn’t make you harsh or punitive—you’re merely defending your night’s sleep. If you don’t do it, no one else will.
• Sleep-block.  If the kids aren’t sleeping well because of age, illness, or any other reason, and you have a partner or fellow caregiver, tackle the night(s) in shifts; for example, you rest from 10:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m., and are then “on” from 3:00 until 7:00, while your partner does the reverse. You’ll still be tired, but that four-to-five-hour block of sleep will be just enough to allow you to stay functional tomorrow, and you won’t fall into the 3:00 a.m. whose-turn-is-it arguments or resentment.
• Use 15-3.  If you need to shift the kids’ or your own sleep schedules, tackle the change in “fifteen-minutes, every three days” increments. If you want to start your days earlier, for example, get up at 6:15 instead of your usual 6:30 on Monday, and then on Thursday, hitch it back to 6:00. The small-step changes will be barely perceptible, and more likely to endure.
• Stop negative sleep-talk.  Telling the kids that they “have to go to bed!” or berating yourself that “if I don’t fall asleep right now, I’ll be a basket case in the morning” only ratchets up the anxiety and makes it that much harder to calm down and drift off. A simple, firm “it’s bedtime now,” or telling yourself I’m doing the right thing, being in bed, resting is better. Gentleness works.

Lever 2: Exercise and Movement

Prekids, your exercise habits likely involved some combination of the following: trips to a dedicated gym, hour-long workouts, special clothing, special equipment, scheduled classes or events, objective metrics (the precise number of pounds bench-pressed, your personal best time for the 5K, and the like), a sense of need to or should, time spent in a group/communal activity or connecting with friends, time spent completely alone, and personal goal-setting and scorekeeping—in the form of pounds lost, miles run, number of classes taken, and so forth.

That was exercise then. If you try to graft that approach and those habits onto your life now, you probably won’t find yourself exercising much if at all. Be honest: with a toddler at home, are you really going to drive to the gym at the end of your workday, take an hour-long class, miss mealtime together, feel terrific about it all—and do so regularly? Why beat yourself up about “failing” to do that, or not managing to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to do crunches like you keep vowing you will, when you’re wrangling so much working-parent stress and emotion already? Instead of sticking to the prekids model, change the model—rethink what exercise and fitness mean and how to come at them.

• Set a new purpose.  Maybe you used to want to look good in spandex, or stay at your twenty-five-year-old weight, or complete a triathlon. Those were all fine goals and good reasons to get moving. Now, exercise can serve you in a different way: it will help ensure your health and longevity, it provides the best stress relief going, and it lets you set a self-care example for the kids. To help yourself reset and find new motivation, try filling in the sentence, “movement is important to me at this phase of my life because …” or “as a working parent, exercise lets me …”
• Take it in small bites.  If your schedule permits that hour-long workout, terrific. If it doesn’t, break your movement and exercise up into smaller chunks of time. Check if your gym has any “speed workout” or shorter, high-intensity classes available; do your ten thousand daily steps in five-minute walks spread out throughout the day—on the way to work, during lunch, during a nice relaxing amble around your neighborhood with the stroller in the evening; download a five-minute-workout app onto your phone.
• Be able to access it, and transition into it, quickly.  It may be hard to get to the hiking trails you love that are twenty minutes away, but you can easily put on your running shoes and run around your block. Getting to the gym may be a production, but you can do the stretching routine in your bedroom each morning. In this Golden Age of Streaming Exercise Content, you can work out easily and at any time.
• Find something that feels like a reward.  Maybe you used to be willing to “take the pain,” in terms of exercise, but you’re taking a lot of pain now, as a working parent, and should make exercise a fun, enjoyable diversion. Try out new activities until you find one that feels more like a break than a burden.
• Make it serve a dual purpose.  Have a walking meeting with a coworker and you’ve just checked two daily activities off your list.
• Have location-by-location options.  What exercise can you do, and access, at home, at work, and in any other important “zones” of your life? Perhaps the park across the street from your house is where you usually run on the weekends, but at work, you sneak in more exercise by taking the stairs. Geography shouldn’t hem you in.
• Do it around—or with—the kids.  Of course you want a break from them—you’re an individuated adult, and that long run or your spinning class can be sanity-preserving, invaluable “me time,” but you also have the option of doing a workout video with your kids playing in the same room, or of cuing up one of the many “parent and child” versions. Being on Kid Duty doesn’t have to hold you back from getting in some movement.

Lever 3: Finding Rituals and Activities That Relax and Recharge You

As important as it is to get your heart rate up, you also have to get your stress level down. That means finding, and prioritizing, reliable ways to unplug and decompress. If you’re like many working parents, the idea of spending time on any activity purely for its soothingness or psychic benefits may feel profoundly selfish (Shouldn’t I be doing something more productive?); may seem like a hurdle (Activity? Are you kidding? All I have the energy to do is watch TV); or may become a priority only when you’re completely at the end of your rope.

Pretend, though, that a healthcare provider you trust has just written you a lifesaving prescription, and it’s this: spend at least fifteen minutes per day doing something you perceive as relaxing. In the context of a busy working-parent life, that might mean reading, meditating, knitting, playing Ping-Pong, driving, talking to a friend, taking a bath—anything at all. What characterizes the activity is that it serves no particular purpose. It has no “goal” per se, and it’s usually noncompetitive. You’re not trying to get it done, you’re just enjoying yourself. Make those fifteen minutes an unapologetic part of your daily routine.

On a larger level, you may also choose to stoke up psychologically and mentally by:

• Dedicating time to spiritual practices
• Serving others—whether through volunteering, mentoring, or donation
• Getting social support, whether that’s by joining your organization’s parents network, or just by ensuring you spend adequate time with good friends

Any of these habits may feel “inefficient” or awkward at first, but as you make a regular investment in them, you’ll quickly find a personal energy and bounce-back-ness that you didn’t have before.

Creating Your Energy Action Plan

Now that you’ve read over the various techniques and approaches—and started hatching more of your own—it’s time to move things forward.

In the space provided in table 20-1, record your physical and mental starting place, as you described at the beginning of the chapter. Don’t edit yourself: just jot whatever words came to mind. Then note which specific techniques and overall lever jumped out at you as you read.

Now, look over what you’ve written, and in a sentence or two describe what you’ll try doing differently over the coming two weeks, in the context of your day-to-day life. If you’ve got several techniques you want to try, that’s great, but start with just one or two (remember: incremental changes). Maybe you’ll stop watching streaming shows past 11:00, or take a five-minute walk every day during work, or maybe you’ll smartly combine a few of the new moves here with ones from other chapters—for example, with a few healthier-eating strategies from chapter 18, “Food and Mealtimes.” The point here is to commit to doing—and to make that commitment small and specific enough that you’ll easily be able to follow through. Think of this as the Anti–New Year’s Resolution—something so small and nonrevolutionary that you’ll have no problem sticking with it. Two weeks is just enough runway to try out your new habits, and to determine if they’re giving you the benefits they should.

Fourteen days from now, revisit. Do the check-in exercise again, noting any differences, and then add a few new energy-forward techniques into your repertoire for the next two-week cycle. Keep on in this way, gently layering in new approaches.

Learning to Work Well When Your Battery Is Low

In certain professions—medicine, the military, certain branches of professional services, for example—learning how to work when utterly exhausted is an important and/or explicit part of the training. You don’t have to be in those fields to borrow their particular compensatory techniques, though. When you’ve been up all night with a sick child and have to be “on” and functional the next morning at work:

• Break it down.  That whole day or massive pile of work may feel impossible to tackle, but if you can focus on just a small piece of it, it won’t be so overwhelming. Pick some part of the project or your task list you can make good headway on, or think about tackling just the next thirty minutes. Think near vision, small goals, short sprints.
• Knock out the work with a one-two punch.  The first thing that goes out the window when you’re exhausted is your ability to fully “see” your work—and catch mistakes. If, however, you can allow for some time between producing the work and finalizing it, you’re more likely to bring the critical and accurate eye it needs. Write the memo in the morning and proofread it in the afternoon, or have that supplier call now but put the purchasing orders in tomorrow.
• Save the interpersonal issues and judgment calls for later.  Nuance, emotional equilibrium, the ability to read small personal cues, patience: all go out the window when you’re overwhelmed and underslept. Deliver the goods you need to, but avoid having that difficult feedback conversation or making decisions related to strategy, hiring, or career issues until you’re a little more rested.
• Draw a line.  Is what you’ve done good enough—or good enough for now? Then stop! When you’re feeling more energized, you can go back to being more of a perfectionist.
• Enlist a second.  Ask a colleague or team member to eyeball your work: to read over the message you’ve just drafted and check it for tone, for example, or to play devil’s advocate on the argument you’re about to make to your boss. You can’t lean on your colleagues for backup like this every day, but you can certainly ask a favor occasionally, and their help may allow you to avoid a lot of unforced errors.
• Pretend you’re an actor, playing a role.  You don’t have to be high-energy and full of optimism and vigor in that meeting, or on that call, or in that interview, or when greeting the kids after getting home—you just have to seem like it, temporarily. Think of your professional impact the way a doctor would his or her own bedside manner—as something deliberate, considered, and cultivated. How can you inspire trust and project competence? Take a deep breath, step into character, and “give good professional,” or “parent,” until the next break.

More You

Even on those days when you feel as if you’re running on fumes, you’ll probably still be able to get to workparenting baseline: to muddle through at work, or get the kids fed and off to school. What won’t be so doable is excelling on the job, or truly connecting with your children. When you’re shredded, it’s just plain harder to be creative, or to make the sale, or to come up with new solutions, or to savor family time. It’s also harder to be yourself. When you’re personally depleted, all of your uniqueness—your humor, smarts, creativity—takes a hit.

Don’t let it. Treat your energy for what it is: a resource, and an asset. Spend it, but tend it—for your career, for the kids, and for you.