Every professional woman would want to explore every career growth opportunity that comes her way. Regretfully, most such opportunities have to be postponed or deferred, not because of one’s inability or lack of expertise, but due to lack of time freedom and energy. Nowadays, society is expecting so much more from women than ever before. It is really a challenge to balance work and home at the same time. Some women can take decades before they can strike a balance in their professional and personal lives. So, the question is very simple: how can a woman capitalize and advance in her career development when she has to take care of the home activities, her family activities, her personal activities, and her career simultaneously?
Not only does a woman suffer from lack of energy to do well at her workplace due to household chores, women also lose interest in pursuing high career growth opportunities. In a study carried out by the University of California, “When mom is the CEO at home, workplace ambitions take a back seat”, the research found the negative impact of home chores on working women. UC Berkeley psychologist, Dr. Serena Chen, a co-author of the study said “It appears that being in charge of household decisions may bring a semblance of power to women’s traditional role, to the point where women may have less desire to push against the obstacles to achieving additional power outside the home”. Dr. Melissa Williams, an assistant professor of business at Emory University and lead author of the study said “As a result, women may make decisions such as not going after a high-status promotion at work, or not seeking to work full time, without realizing why”.
It’s very interesting to see that something so small and insignificant as carrying out the home chores would have a multiplied negative impact. Is it because women get so drained of energy, not because of the complexity, but because of the many tiny multiple decisions? It’s like what Tim Ferriss, author of the “4 Hour Workweek”, refers to decisions without relevance. It’s like planning to decide what to have for breakfast. Obviously, the decision should be based on our own dietary meal plan. However, sometimes we tend to focus and spend a great deal of time on deciding on miniscule things that really wastes our energy.
What this suggests, is that instead of wasting time trying to find the perfect answer for all the little things in life. Why don’t we concentrate on really using most of our time on things that will drive the most result on the overall? This is more tied in relationship to the Pareto’s Law: 20% of your activities drive 80% of the results you are after, whereas 80% of the activities drive a mere 20% of our results.
Haven’t you caught yourself doing things just to be busy? Haven’t you caught yourself getting right into the problem without analyzing the overall impact? Or, haven’t you caught yourself spending countless hours trying to solve a problem, and after you got the solution, you noticed it didn’t get you close to your final destination?
I think it’s time to really take a step back and analyze what are the activities that will generate or yield the highest impact in our lives? What are the activities that will drench us out of energy and will not really contribute to the overall objective of what we are really going after? Whether it is career development, personal development, or your business development (in case you are an entrepreneur)?
I really hope this brings a spark in your thinking and makes you see things from a different perspective. That the status quo is no longer the norm, and that things have changed. Although, depending on our cultural backgrounds, there’s a male dominance more prevalent than others, I believe it’s time to see things in a brand new way. It’s time to go ahead, take the first step, and analyze ourselves before reacting to mere action. Yes, action is absolutely phenomenal, but wouldn’t it be smarter if the actions we take are based on the ones that will bring the most return of our time and efforts?
Hope you reflect and think about it, and I hope that this 2013, things run absolutely fabulous in your personal and professional life.