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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is that work is a perfectly good reason to decline to do something, even if you work flexibly.
No one else is going to protect your work hours for you.
If you are serious about doing big things, then you need enough space to work.
So if someone works full-time in an office, most people understand that they will not be readily available for certain things.
When the neighbor's dog walker cancels, they do not ask if you can cover if they know that you are sitting in an office 30 minutes away.
Men who work full-time in particular seem not to attract these sorts of requests.
I know from stories people send me that even if the male half of a two-parent family is listed as the first contact for the school, the school will often still call the woman because it's assumed that the man is working and can't be interrupted.
Mom, on the other hand, is free game.
This is, of course, frustrating in families where mom is working far less flexibly than dad, but cultural assumptions can run pretty deep.
Now I would note that even so-called not flexible work turns out to be more flexible than people often think.
It was once assumed that medicine wasn't flexible at all.
When women became a higher percentage of physicians, all of a sudden people started writing think pieces about medicine being a flexible career.
In a lot of cases, people who work full-time in offices could in fact volunteer somewhere during the day or pick someone up from the airport or run a carpool.
It would just be inconvenient and they might need to explain themselves, and what they're being asked to do is not as high a priority as the inconvenience they would face.
Work provides a ready reason to say no that people don't really question.
Hence, the existence of work often keeps these requests from ever even bubbling to the surface.
Even if you work flexibly, though, this can still be the case.
The inconvenience factor or the opportunity cost feels bigger to you than doing whatever it is that people think you can do.
If morning hours are your most productive hours of the day, then just because you theoretically could drive your kids to school every morning doesn't mean you should.
Just because you theoretically could do a dentist appointment at 10am doesn't mean you should.
The dentist probably offers other appointments that are not during your peak productive times.
So if they call and ask if you can move yours, well, you'll be working.
They need to find a different spot that works for you.
If someone asks you to do something at a time when you would like to be working, you can simply announce that you can't.
Even if you do not have something scheduled at that moment.
This is time that you can use for long-term projects, or to pitch new work, or to reach out to people, or to think.
Those may all be more valuable to you than whatever else you could theoretically be doing.
If you like, you can use the phrase, I wish I could, but I'll be working.
Even if you are not on the clock, even if you don't have a scheduled meeting, even if you don't have a looming deadline, it is absolutely valid to protect your work time.
Frankly, it may be even more important to protect your work time if you work flexibly, because no one else is going to protect it for you.
If the little white lie of claiming you are wishing to do whatever it is doesn't sit well and I'll admit that it doesn't really for me then skip that part of the statement.
You can simply say, I'll be working, or sorry that doesn't work, I'll be working.
Now, of course, there are exceptions, as there are for people in offices too.
If a close family member has an emergency and needs you, you want to be there for them.
But I would use the same standards, if you work flexibly, as if you worked in an office and had to ask your boss's permission to tend to an urgent matter. it would need to be a really good reason.
For other cases, if you were planning to work, you can just decline.
Your work is valid, even if it doesn't look exactly like other people's work.
It still takes time, and your time is valuable.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks 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 LauraVanderkam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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