Sprint to the Finish Line

Two things happened in the first six weeks of the new year. I started teaching my two MBA courses . I also finished the first draft of my book. I had originally hoped to finish it in December, but that was before I agreed to take a two week break around Christmas. Between teaching preps, being in class, my admin role, and about seven research projects, there really wasn’t a lot of time to write up the final two interviews.

Each week, I felt more frustrated by the work tasks that kept me from what I really wanted to do. I was getting grumpier by the day. This had to change. But how? Then, my husband went away on a work trip. You’d think this would make my life busier, but he usually aligns work travel with a period in which only our daughter is home. Her bedtime is early. Against my own policy, I started working a few nights from 7:30 - 9pm. It worked. I saw progress in my book again. Now, I had it all written up, but I just needed a thorough read-through.

Two weeks later, I got my opportunity. My husband went on a multi-day backcountry ski trip, and then took one of the boys skiing for the weekend. The other boy was at his dad’s. For six days, I could plan the day however I wanted (aside from my lecture hours). I wrote every evening, and in the weekend also during nap time. And sure enough, I got it done. What a milestone. I was looking at a first draft of a complete book.

Ironically, the day after I finished my book, I taught an MBA class on stress management. I heard myself say that working hard for a while is no problem, as long as you take a break on time. You can push yourself in a busy period, but at some point you need to give your body the opportunity go back to its baseline stress levels. I guess I was overdue to follow lessons from my own research and take a proper break. I had been “go go go” for the last four weeks. Doing regular work during the day, writing and editing in the evening and whenever possible during the weekend, and keeping a family alive and a household running.

I decided to take Wednesday afternoon off. This was perfect, because on Wednesdays my son’s school ends at 2pm. I hadn’t seen him for a week, and it would be great to spend some quality time together. When we got home, however, he went straight to his room to read for 30 minutes. That was the routine - every school day he needs to read for 30 minutes. It had taken a while to get into this routine so telling him now that those rules don’t apply whenever it suits me wasn’t going to work. What was I going to do in those 30 minutes? Of course, I checked my email. One of the messages led me to checking something in my data. Which led to me being fully engrossed in fixing a problem. Once the half hour was over, my boy sneaked out of the room to play on his Nintendo. I didn’t even notice. He didn’t have a problem with me working. But I did. How can it be so difficult to not work? I just need to solve this issue, I told myself. Numbers not lining up is not something I cannot live with, so I can’t take a break until it is solved.

Fortunately, I found the correct numbers within five minutes, and was able to unlatch myself from my computer. My son, however, was now fully engrossed in his game. “Let’s play the recorder together”, I proposed. “Just finishing up this battle”, he said. “Fine. Then I’ll start”. He joined me shortly after and we played for a while. It was so cool to see him picking it up quickly. We even played a few bars from a simple duet. But at some point he was done, and asked if he could go back to his game. “No!” I shouted. “We are supposed to have quality time”. “How do we do that?” he asked. “Let’s build your Legos”, I answered. So I unpacked the massive Lego box he had gotten for Christmas. As we sat at the kitchen table, I started building. “See, this is not so hard”, I sighed.

But when I looked over to my right, I saw that my kid had picked up his Nintendo again. I was now finally detached from work. But he wasn’t detached from his screen. “This is crazy”, I told him. He looked up, and was quiet for a while. “I think I just have to delete this game”, he finally said. “It is very addictive”. For a 9-year-old, I thought that was a very astute observation. I just didn’t know if deleting the game was the right solution.

“Well”, I said. “Games are designed to make kids addicted. It is similar to how social media is designed to get people hooked. So what if you delete your game, and I delete Facebook? We do that for four weeks, and see how it makes us feel”. He instantly deleted his game. The lego truck isn’t finished yet. But we are building again.