Split your shifts

How to spend time with your family, even if you're working long hours

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to try a split shift. If you need
to commute and need to be at your workplace five
days a week. It can be hard to find weekday
family time, particularly with young kids who go to bed early,

(00:33):
but it is not impossible. You just need to rework
your schedule a little bit. Today's tip, like some others
this week, comes from my book One hundred and sixty
eight Hours. That book was first published in late May
of twenty ten, which means that it is fifteen.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Years old this month. A lot has changed in the
world since then, but we do, in fact still have
one hundred sixty eight hours and a week, and so
I am revisiting some of the tips in that book
that I think can still be helpful. One is to
try a split shift. So when one hundred and sixty

(01:13):
eight Hours came out, remote work was still relatively rare.
Sometimes people could work from home on Fridays if they
had been with a company for years and had proven themselves,
but most of the time working meant commuting and going
to an office. Some jobs also have a reputation for

(01:36):
requiring longer hours. This is a problem if you have
young kids who go to bed relatively early, because getting
home at let's say seven pm on a weekday means
you will have very little time with a child who
goes to bed at seven thirty pm. Indeed, this scenario
has been mentioned as a reason why women will never

(01:58):
ascend to the upper ranks of our organizations, or so
the story goes, because they will want to see their kids. Now,
if you have been listening to me for a while,
you'll know that I find some holes in that story.
For starters, not all kids go to bed early. There
were times in my children's babyhoods when I would have
paid good money for them to go to bed at

(02:19):
seven thirty pm, let alone the six thirty pm that
some people seem to experience. I could have worked until
eight pm every night and still have seen my kids
for a reasonable chunk of time. But let's say you
don't have night owl children, or children like mine who
don't actually seem to require sleep. Just because you need

(02:42):
to work fifty hours a week and have a commute
doesn't mean that the extra hours all need to be
logged at your office into the evenings. Another approach is
to work a split shift. Here's what this means. A
few days each week, you leave work on the early side,

(03:03):
even if all the work isn't done. Let's say you
get out of there at five pm and have a
thirty minute commute. You are home at five thirty pm.
If your kid goes to bed at seven thirty pm,
you now have two hours together versus thirty minutes. If
you left at six thirty and got home at seven,
but then after your child goes to bed at seven thirty,

(03:26):
what do you do? Rather than watch TV, which is
what a lot of people do. You go back to
work remotely, log the ninety minutes you didn't do earlier.
Starting at seven thirty pm. You will be done at nine,
which gives you time to watch TV for an hour
or so. If you'd like, you trade off work time

(03:50):
for TV time rather than work time for kid time,
and that is a trade off a lot of people
are more willing to make.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Now.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Of course, in the intervening years since one hundred and
sixty eight hours came out, a lot more people started
working remotely with the pandemic, so I sort of shelved
this advice for a while, but now as more places
have returned to office policies, I think it's becoming relevant again.
You can do the required nine to five in the

(04:23):
office and then do any extra work outside that time
in a window that works for you. If you have
young kids, it is almost always better to do this
second shift later at night, after they go to bed,
versus during time you could be with them in the evening.

(04:45):
So I have seen this strategy on tons of professional
women's logs over the years, but there is zero reason
men can't do it too. I know many do. I
would also encourage more men to try it out, even
if your partner is largely responsible for childcare, because that
is your arrangement. I am guessing that you do, in

(05:07):
fact want to see your kids at least I hope
you do, and if you do, working a split shift
is a way to both put in the hours and
make that happen. So why not give it a whirl.
Maybe not every night a week, but a few could

(05:27):
make it possible to have the best of both worlds.
I am all about remembering that everything does fit into
one hundred and sixty eight hours. We just have to
be smart about our time, and then the trade offs
start to disappear. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks

(05:49):
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.

(06:18):
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