Killing flexible working?

Swipe back or get fired

The fight has become real and it’s definitely not a stress free one. These are the news we have seen over the last few months

So it seems we have to surrender to the wishes of the big companies and all return to pre-pandemic and be back in the office.

But why are companies demanding employees to be back?

They mostly cite that in-person collaboration is invaluable and it fosters innovation. The reality is, there is probably a political aspect of local governments pushing bigger companies to bring their employees back as it hurts the economic centers and the businesses around them if people work from home.

In my mind there is an aspect of trust too. Let’s face it, for a lot of people they don’t trust what they don’t see and they believe if employees are home they are slacking and not being as productive, even though again and again there are studies that comfirm otherwise.

The impact for the employees

While there are indeed very good reasons to be in the office as a team, to brainstorm together and foster more personal relationships or welcome new joiners into the team, companies have failed to really articulate where it really improves performance.

Working from home ended up blurring the lines between rest and work with many employees struggling to switch off and working much longer hours. Yet it is interesting that despite all of this, the reality is they still prefer to maintain such arrangements. After all flexibility is the key. Being able to make a choice and adapt to the circumstances can be quite invaluable.

However, what they are being told is that if they don’t swipe your card they could be fired (said no motivational speed ever). This adds a lot of unwanted stress, unless you a) prefer to be in the office and b) you actually believe the reasons the company is sharing with you to return.

Sourced from: https://www.usemultiplier.com/blog/empower-employees-to-fight-return-to-office-stresses

The fight back

The reality if employees are not convinced of the ask so they are fighting back. A good summary can be found in this BBC article here

Not even the looming recession or mass layoffs which have been seen in the news the last few months are stopping “the fight”. If you know something works why would you give up on it?

The fight is not new, has just escalated since covid. For years many working parents have tried to get some flexibility to be able to support their families, but it was a long lost battle in which one of the couple (mostly the mum) would give up working to be able to support the kids while the other half would put on all the long hours in the office.

Will be interesting to see how the fight continues and to which extend employees will get united (beyond specific areas where union exists – anyone living in the UK will know of all the strikes we’ve had for more than 1 year). Will they go to the office as asked but then stop adding all those extra hours in the evenings and consequently reducing productivity? Or will they quit and search for places where the flexibility is being offered?

After all, right now we have globalization and the world can be your oyster.

Be careful with what you wish for

As we have seen in several studies, productivity had increased with flexible working and remote working. On average, companies have benefited from increased performance and productivity as the days have become a lot longer even if employees need to do breaks middle of the day (go to the doctor, get the kids from school).

If employees are doing something to tick a box, it won’t certainly make them any more collaborative or innovative, on the contrary. Instead, they will use their commute to search for companies which still offer the flexibility they value. And they will jump out when the opportunity comes.

The companies that will succeed long term, are those that are willing to embrace new ways of working, thinking and collaborating together and are not bound by the rules of the past. Adapt or die.

Further reading

• Time here
• Forbes here
• Multiplier here

Other articles I wrote on the topic

• Leaders of tomorrow
• The great resignation
• Return to the office
• You can’t have it both ways
• I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you
• The future of the office

The Great Resignation

Historians will be pretty busy trying to understand what exactly happened in 2020 and 2021. 2020 was THE year the whole world stopped thanks to the pandemic, and then 2021 continued with lockdowns. When people spend more time at home and not being able to hide behind their all mighty business, they had time to do something they weren’t doing much: to think. (We are all guilty here)

To think about the priorities, to think about what they really wanted to do in life in general, especially as everything could just vanish pretty quickly. Who are the friends you would see yourself going in lockdown with? Whom did you contact? And on the professional side: Am I doing the job I enjoy doing?

For many the answer was NO! And enter the great resignation. And no, this is not just something that happened in the states, where everything is big and GREAT. No, really, it was all over the world.

Disclaimer: To be able to resign without thinking of the financial implications is quite a privilege. Still some people concluded they would rather downsize their lives and enjoy more what they had.

Anyway, back to the great resignation (and by the way I do believe this is a trend that will continue throughout 2022), the same way Londoners realized they wanted more space rather than being in the city center in a shoe box, there was also a big rethink about what people really wanted to be doing.

Flexibility

Throughout lockdown – where possible – everyone had to work from home. Companies had to make a huge shift to web based technologies to ensure everyone was online and getting the job done. Meeting room meetings moved to video calls. The office suit was replaced by a presentable shirt and comfy trousers (and slippers). And then as the world started to open up, companies started to ask everyone to be back in the office. A good example of that was JP Morgan (Forbes article here). Then you had companies like Deloitte that said employees didn’t had to work from the office (CityAM article here) – as if consultants worked from the official office anyway…. so I actually took this one with a pinch of salt.

Anyway, people realized they could work from home and enjoying flexibility such as having time to exercise, take the kids to school, sort out the laundry, while at the same time maintaining the productivity (or increasing it) and loosing that didn’t felt right.

If you have 2 good equal companies and one of them allows you flexibility and the other doesn’t, which one would you choose? It’s a no brainer really.

Flexibility is a sword that cuts both ways. If you want flexibility from your employees you have to give flexibility back. If you want to retain your key people, well I would suggest burying old fashion ways of “controlling” employees by seeing them (I wrote about it here). Also, some empathy would be good. Just because you enjoy being in the office, being in your suit doesn’t mean everyone enjoys the same, or even if some enjoy, maybe they can’t afford it (enter the world of childcare or carers in general).

There’s a life outside

For a lot of people it was also about: do I even enjoy my job at all? A lot of people developed hobbies – or enhanced them – and realized they could try to make a living out of it. Even if that meant less money, it meant being in control of when to work and where to work from. (And here’s me wishing I had hobbies that made any money!)

Then for sure, the family side. For a lot of people I know, it was really important to finally be able to take the kids to school / or collect them. To have lunch at the table in your kitchen. To be able to stop working and enjoy family time or even to have time to finally exercise on a daily basis (which for me was only achieved during Lockdown 1.0). Before Covid, I rarely managed to take my daughter to / from the nursery, but now I am doing it on a daily basis. It means the world to me and her. Without working from home and with the long commute would be next to impossible to do the same.

Whatever rocks your boat, I’m pretty sure you’ve found something you enjoy that you could do more of.

So what does it mean for companies?

For companies in the long term, will be quite binary: do they offer flexible working? Yes or No:

• If you want to retain your employees as opposed to having to hire more expensive ones without the same knowledge, offer flexibility (in its true form)
• If you want to attract the highest talent (e.g. new grads or experience hires alike), you have to office flexibility. If you don’t, I’m pretty sure your competitors will. There’s more to life than just the income.

What does flexible working even mean?

• Flexibility of hours – In its highest form it means employees should be working towards goals they need to meet. It’s up to them how they meet them. In a lighter version just means there’s some flexibility of when to start the work, when to stop and which breaks can be done in between.
• Flexibility of location – (this discounts any tax implications of working outside of the country). If there are critical meetings which demand an in person meeting, by all means get together in the office, but for everything else it’s up to the employee of where he’ll get the job done. From the comfort of his bed, to a hipster coffee shop, take your pick (note, certain roles might now allow for coffee shop meetings due to the confidentiality of the information being shared in conference calls). It still looks nice to work from a coffee shop though, although expensive in the long run.
• Flexibility of roles – here I should say, embracing a skill based approach – in essence it means allowing employees to move horizontally and take on completely different roles where they could still use the same core skillset. (I wrote about the importance of skills from an employee point of view here). How is this even related to the mass resignation? Well it is. Many employees might feel they are not developing or are not given opportunities for development. Allowing (and even encouraging) changing roles would benefit one’s development as well as the company itself by utilizing diversity across departments (even if they seem unrelated). An HR guy, an IT guy and a procurement guy walk into a bar…. this could be a good conversation by the way.

What are the benefits for the company to embrace flexibility

As we have seen with the pandemic, people are working more from home, not less. If you give flexibility, you get flexibility back.

One thing that always puzzled me, was why companies never consider existing clients? Yap, I mean clients, like they always have massive discounts for new clients and totally forget the existing clients? This encourages clients to shift to also benefit from a new client discount. Same is valid regarding employees. Companies don’t always make the effort to keep the best people. They think just some random salary increases will do the trick and given the employees are there they will always stay or if they leave it’s because they are not worthy. No joke, I felt this in the past myself and this was also the view of the CEO of a company I worked for many moons ago.

What is the cost of recruiting? I have also been in companies that would give me a fee for bringing candidates from my network of contacts (as it’s cheaper than paying a recruiting agency). So how about companies make the effort of keeping what they already have?

And the cost of training someone new? I don’t enjoy spending time doing KT. Nop, not a bit. The existing team rarely has the time to properly train new hires, which means eventually some of the valuable information just vanishes. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to allow people to move roles within the existing organization or allow them some flexibility? You might not even have to spend a penny on it!

I went back to the office and here’s what I found

Yap, after 19 months I went back to the office. Luckily for me it was my choice to actually return as opposed of being imposed to be back 2 or 3 days a week (or even the full week!).

Here’s what I found:

1 – I did enjoy my morning commute despite an uber early start. I left the house at 06h15 and walked the 20m to the station and even managed to arrive 10m before the train. It was busier than I was expecting for a 06h40 train, but still quite manageable. I didn’t read much like I used to as I just wanted to watch through the windows.

2 – The best part of the day was actually the experience of being in the office (despite me battling the whole day to try to connect to the headset as no one could hear me in the meetings – seems sound quality is better at home). In my “section” I was the only one, the only people passing by was the cleaning staff or the coffee staff. I managed to get a desk with window view and could watch people passing by downstairs as if it was a normal day. I even had my first face to face meeting! I think quite a lot of people are really missing those face to face interactions, even the introvers like myself. I almost went lunch outside with another colleague but given the business of meetings just managed a panini at my desk. (Did anyone notice the prices going up by quite a lot or was I the only one???)

3 – On the way back home though was a different story. It really felt almost proper rush hour. The trains were quite busy, you had people running to the door and that’s when I’ve realized that actually I’m not ready to be back on a regular basis. Yes I’m craving after work pub as much as everyone else, but am I really ready? Don’t think I am. If I bring the virus home and my daughter is off-school I would really struggle to work big time. If I will be back? Probably, but not regularly – not while I can avoid it.

Which now brings me to the point of: why are people being forced to be back?

And I’m referring to groups of people that can do their work remotely (and are not mandated by any regulator to physically be in the office) – for a lot of people work from home is definitely not a choice. But for those that is….

Why?

Why can’t leaders recognize that if you want flexibility you have to give flexibility back. The employees with a good transfereable (and sellable) skillset will jump to whichever company allows them flexibility. Do you really want to loose your best resources because you can’t trust them to work from home? Were they actually rolling their fingers for the last 18 months or were people in general working a lot more? (I wrote about it here on “I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you“)

Is it because leaders tend to be extroverts and therefore do not recognize there are a lot of introverts out there that feel a lot better and more productive being at home without all the social exposure in the office? (good article about it here)

Seriously it should be a choice and leaders should have try to find the best solution for their team, not just what’s better for them as individuals!

I find that it’s up to us the younger generations to show there are so many other alternatives that work for the company. Going to the office should be an experience by itself, for team bonding and for specific reasons like a dynamic workshop and removing people from the day to day activities and discuss specific topics together (my views on the new office here).

Just because it’s the way things were done before it doesn’t mean they need to go back exactly as they were!

I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you

Seriously, how can there still be managers out there that do not trust their employees if they can’t micromanage them? Who has even time to micro-manage?

Once upon a time prior to covid, it was quite common for people to believe that if a resource was working from home it’s because he / she was slacking and not being nowhere productive as in the office. It always comes down to trust and what you fear.

As if it wasn’t obvious, every single word here is based on my own opinion.

Anyway, I have indeed work with people that would slack from home and do very little, but let me tell you a secret – in case you didn’t know – you can be in the office pretend you are busy and in fact deliver close to very little! If you don’t believe your team is delivering, you should have a serious conversation with them to see why is that, and last comes to worst fire them (or get them moved to another team). I’m nowhere near an advocate of the american style of just firing people without having proper conversations and explore different alternatives. But like any marriage, if the relationship doesn’t work someone needs to move on.

If this isn’t clear already: I HATE MICRO-MANAGING

I hate being micromanaged, and fortunately throughout my career (mostly), I always had a great degree of freedom. I have no problem being sent somewhere else if people don’t trust me. But I can’t stand micromanagement. So I hate applying it too. I like to be able to trust my team and them coming to me for escalation when they need help. If the work is not being done on time, then we sit down and have a conversation about what’s going wrong and what can be done instead.

And why is that micromanagement is so relevant for the story of working from home versus forcing people into the office?

Well, you have seen some statements of some companies that really want everyone in the office. And this to be sits behind old school thought that employees that are not seen by their “boss” are simply not doing.

Good article on what happens to companies that force employees to return (when they could be flexible) here

Seriously, why on earth would you force your team to come to the office right now? First of all, we are not out of the woods yet (I don’t care about the 19th of July rule, precaution people, precaution!).

Many studies have been published that not only people get the work done, they are even more productive. Most people I have talked to are in fact working longer hours. They get some flexibility to deal with things like the kids are on quarentine (again!) and they end up blurring the lines between online and offline working. There’s always the last email to be sent.

A few articles here:

• Forbes
• Harvard business review
• Nice infographics from Deloitte (if you don’t know that already, I’m like the kids, pictures first, text after)

Seriously, why? I would say managers who feel the need to micromanage should go on coaching courses to address their own insicurities and what’s driving them to micromanage. Good article here.

If you want to retain the best talent, you have to offer flexibility to get flexibility back. As binary as that.

Would love to hear your own stories or views on the topic.

How to stay sane while WFH

Welcome to the world of working from home. We should all be experts by now given it’s been more than 1 year right? Some people are looking forward to be back in the office and have human interactions again while others are more than happy to continue like this.

From my side, I had already worked from home quite a lot in the past prior to becoming the new normal, especially as I used to travel weekly so the Friday was from home and sometimes I would try to squeeze in a whole week of working from home. After having my daughter I felt the need even more but I was in a project where I had to come up with a million reasons why that day I needed to work from home and let me say that was extremely frustrating. I see the world more goal oriented, either you deliver or you don’t. For all I care people could be working from the beach as long as the goals are met. I know a lot of people will totally disagree with me on this.

Ok, I really want to eleborate a bit more here. I do believe if companies give you flexibility – e.g. if you need to work from home providing your goals and those of your team are not impacted, then you can – then you will also end up giving flexibility back to the company – e.g. cram in weekend work due to a very important deadline. They can’t be one sided only otherwise you’ll just end up with frustration. If you don’t trust the people on your team to be working while at home, then they shouldn’t be in the team, should they? (scrap this point if the employement laws make it next to impossible to get rid of someone even with valid reasons).

Anyway, no matter if you had experience working from home, if you prefer to be in the office or at home, when suddendly all of us were home it impacted us all big time (and for those with kids at home: you guys are superheroes).

Before I carry on and because I love memes, here’s another one

For more memes check here

So how do you keep sane if you’re working from home?

Idea 1 – Maintain a routine. You would have one if you were going to the office right? You would live the house give or take at the same time, and return back home at the same time. So the same rules are valid at home as well. Decide what you want to do with your commute time in the morning, e.g. you might want to sleep all of it like I do now, you could do half / half and wake up earlier to have time to enjoy a morning walk so you are by your desk when you would normally be in the office. You should reverse the slot to have your food – you would eat in the office wouldn’t you? So ensure you block your calendar for eating – refer to my show to your calendar who’s the boss for more tips on this – and also define when you will stop your working day.

I think it’s the stopping most people struggle because they don’t have to commute back home and then home and work just blend in as one and the same where you are still constantly checking emails. Well, don’t. Just define a time when you will be stopping – except emergencies – and stop it.

Idea 2 – Find ways to make a clear cut between when you’re in working mode vs at home – It’s so easy to just roll from bed and start working immediately but this means your brain doesn’t have the time to shift from resting time into completely work mode.

You can always do like this guy here (now a meme)

Note: I’ve googled this one, but don’t know who owns the original picture and it’s so good!

Ok, maybe not like this one, but the idea if you do something that allows your brain to move between states (the state where you were sleeping so well and now you have to face work). If you could get dressed and go for a quick walk around the block before turning on the pc that would be great, but it can be as simple as having a quick shower and getting dressed, then stopping by your local coffee machine (in your kitchen) and make your favourite coffee and then turn on the pc. On Lockdown 1.0 I was doing morning yoga before starting my working day, by lockdown 2.0 (given it was winter) I had given up all my energy so just do the coffee bit. Before I start working I also open all the curtains and windows to let the light in before turning on the pc. I check a few emails and then will have breakfast before coming back to meetings as this is something I did a few times in the office – arrive at 07, check emails, and get breakfast at 07h30 downstairs.

Once you stop working the same is necessary. I stop far too late so I can no longer go for a walk outside (I do the walk to take my daughter to school in the morning), but I just shut the lid of the pc and go to the kitchen. The moment I live my desk I know I’m done and I won’t be coming back to this desk until next day. On the weekend I put my personal laptop on top of the work one so I know even if I’m sitting on the same desk, I’m doing non work stuff (like writing this post).

Idea 3 – Do breaks! You would do breaks to speak with your colleagues or to get another coffee, so why not do the same at home? I do reserve slots on my day to chit chat with my colleagues, sometimes we even do camera content. The current favourite is to show who has the funniest background. I can’t recommend this enough, but try to connect to people and reach out to them to ensure they are ok.

Idea 4 – Find “a space” that will be your working area – When lockdown started, I didn’t had a desk. My husband already worked from home for a few years so he had the office and no space for me so sit and place my pc. So my office for a good 4 months was my daughters IKEA chair and I would have the laptop on my legs.

Eventually I ended up buying a small desk and moving some furniture around so it would fit in the living room. I know the concept of having an office in your home it’s something which most of us can’t really accomodate, so just find a corner in the house where you can fit a small desk and a comfy chair so you can work. If it’s the kitchen table (because no space for even the tiniest desk) then ensure you get a comfortable chair for your back. I currently have a corner of the living room which has my desk and a frame on top of the desk and I have a plant too. But if you’re spending so many hours, make it comfortable and accessorize it to your taste. You can even put some shoes around like you would in the office (or not).

Idea 5 – Make the most of it! – If you are not in meetings you can have your favourite songs playing in the background and you won’t be disturbing your colleagues and no need for headsets, you might even squeeze in a quick dance! Do you need to make the laundry? Then just go for it. Comfy clothing? Yes bring it on.

Idea 6 – Let go of any perfectionist idea – There’s no time for it and you’ll have to compromise somewhere, so just accept what is key and what needs to stay behind and not be done, because no one can have it all, no matter how many books say “here’s 5 leaders that have it all”, they don’t.

Finally I would take the time to think about what you believe the new normal will be and what you would like to maintain even when we return to normal life. For me it was already clear I wanted to work regularly from home a few days (prior to know this was going to be happening) and now I’m convinced this is what I would like to do so I can take my little one to school and can help out with dinner (which I never did in the past during the week).

Also, I used to use my commutes to read books, so I’ve decided to shift that to the evenings before falling asleep and quite happy to have done 17 books already from January to now.

So what’s your new normal? Whatever it is, stay sane.

Finishing with some home office ideas

Sourced from https://kaylasimonehome.com/blog/tiny-home-offices-that-rock-and-my-own-home-office-space

Sourced from: https://www.digsdigs.com/33-cool-small-home-office-ideas/

Sourced from: https://www.digsdigs.com/33-cool-small-home-office-ideas/

Below the stairs office, Idea by Grillo Designs

Blurred lines

Whoever is working from home and having to deal with the kids at the same time please raise your hands up in the air, that is, if you still have the energy to raise them.

I think every single parent out there trying to make it work at work with kids at home, be it with homeschooling or not, younger or olders, hats off. What a time! You go through a 360 round of emotions on a single day from: “I can nail this” to “I have no idea what I’m doing, is 10a.m too early to start drinking?”. The truth is we live in blurred lines.

Sourced from: Huffpost Canada

Pre-covid, most of us would commute to the office and have a clear physical separation between home and work, between which role in your life you were taking. In the office it was the professional you, then you had your commute back home where you could “enjoy” some me time, which for a lot of parents was the only me time they had, and then switching roles to the parent until eventually you would crash in bed after a long day. That physical separation helped us to switch between roles and help the brain cope with it. Yes, some of us would end up once in a while having to work at home, and yes if the kids would get sick or the school closed we would have to work from home with them around.

Right now however it feels like a constant battle where you don’t have a clue if your wining or losing it. I’m a firm believer multitasking is a lie, but now it’s a necessity. In the ideal world there would be 2 parents at home where 1 would dedicate a few slots in the working diary to support the kids and compensate at a later stage but it doesn’t work like that. You might be in the middle of a really important meeting when your precious little one remembers you are a snack provider, or that the tablet stopped working and it’s really important for it to be fixed right now. I’ve lost the count on how many times I ended blurbing in a middle because I lost my full train of thought.

But here’s some good news: every parent out there working from home is in the same boat! We all feel guilty we are not doing enough in both the homeschooling or work or both at the same time. We are trying out best in these unprecedented times. We are not super human, we are not an octopus either. Our brains are not geared to a gazillion things and more (while flipping pancakes at the same time).

So here’s my thoughts on this parenting jungle:

• Let’s be grateful first and foremost we are juggling work and parenting as it means we still have a job and we can work from home (I have found than in the middle of this madness practicising daily gratitute and recognizing all the good things I have helped me to keep sane);
• Our kids do not see our failures the same way we do (well unless they are teenagers, then they see failure in everything we do), they see the love we have for them and they feel happy for having us home next to them. I know they don’t say thank you when we are getting the 100th snack in the morning, but they feel a lot of happiness;
• We are spending more time with them, haven’t so many of us done the yearly resolution of spending quality time with the kids prior to all of this? I had. I know most of the time it feels too much, but I know she’s happy to see so much of me. Also she’s seeing how hard both mummy & daddy work (or try to make it work). That’s important too.
• Whenever your day allows try to divide your day in blocks:
  • Consider if you can wake up before the kids to get some work done before they wake up (this works for me because my daughter sleeps until 07h40 – 08h00, would never work if she was waking up at 06a.m!)
  • I find straight after breakfast my daughter is more focused (either playing or in the case of homeschooling), so you can use this slot for your focus time. In my case I happen to always have meetings in this slot, so works for me.
  • Block a mid morning slot where you can spend a few minutes with the kids, either help them with school work or even just sit next to them and paint, or do some maths together or even play some lego. We all need a break right?
  • Plan your snacks. Yes I mean it. Plan what you are comfortable with them eating and leave them in places where they can easily reach it (e.g. fresh fruits, cereal bars, bread). My daughter is even able to do her breakfast by herself as I ensure I have most of the stuff within her reach (she will use the chair to be able to remove the bread from the toaster and she can open the fridge to get her milk). On the other hand, hide all the stuff they are not meant to eat without supervision (chocolate, cookies, you name it). I have to ask my husband to hide it really high so there’s no chance she can reach anything (after we found her eat a whole package of cookies in one go that I had hidden and still she manage to find). This means they don’t need to disturb you all the time for snacking. Also they love being independent.
  • Reserve a slot in your calendar for lunch together at the table. I do meal planning on the weekend and mostly dinner meals will include leftover for lunch next day so I don’t need to stress over making food and finding a slot for lunch. It’s just warm up and sit together at the table.
  • If you have a critical meeting and your other half can support you and ensure the kids are monitored, great. If you have a part of the house / flat you can hide, then hide. You could also try to talk to the kids and tell them not to disturb you for whatever it takes. Bribary is totally allowed here. As said, we are not super heroes. Whatever works!
  • If you have something critical to finish but didn’t manage to finish during the day then try to finish after kids go to bed. I have to ask my husband if this happens given that my daughter is really hard to put in bed and she will not fall asleep before 20h20 or 21h no matter how early I start the routines.
• You know all the rules about how much tablet and tv was allowed? Forget it! Bin them if you need to. As I said, sanity is more important than anything else.
• Give them a role in the household, e.g. I’ve asked my daughter to ensure the cat has food in his bowl also to tell daddy if he popped so he can clean it (I said give a role, not necessarily a fair one!). They need to understand they need to help based on what they can do for their age. The house doesn’t get sorted by magic. I ask my daughter to put the table while I warm up the food or clean the dishes and she quite enjoys it as a 4 year old (well, most of the time).
• Celebrate the weekends by planning something special (if you’re running our of ideas use the existing holidays, especial days, I never celebrated valentines day until this year for example). Here’s a few things we’ve done recently: Movie night with popcorn, playstation game night, pijama party with pillow fight, board game night, making clay hearts and then paiting them another weekend. I’m sure some of you out there have even better ideas than mine.
• Give yourself a big hug, because this is hard! Remember there is no point in a burn out: Nobody will thank you for it. You can’t have it all perfect, so just decide what’s really important and what can be left behind (valid both for work items as well as stuff around the house). No matter how hard we try we can’t ace it everywhere just remember what’s really really important and you are important too!
• It’s ok to celebrate when the kids go back to school again, I will be celebrating that’s for sure (she has been home since 11th December, almost 3 months now!)

The lines are blurred so it’s up to you to find how to give some kind of order to your day and find what works for all of you. There is no right or wrong answers here, just keeping sane.