It can be difficult for anyone to balance family and professional life, but those challenges tend to expand as you work to develop your career. You may have to work longer hours, or possibly even go back to school. In these scenarios, stress is both normal and—at least hopefully—acute.
In other words, you may need to accept 12 to 18 months of hustle and hardship in exchange for a lifetime of career opportunities you truly want. This is often a worthwhile transition, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy one.
In this article, we take a look at how you can maintain balance between professional and family life, even during periods of acute career-related stress.
Overview: What Does It Take to Advance Your Career?
Let’s say you’re interested in pivoting into a different career path. For example, you began working as an accountant in your early twenties. While the work was financially rewarding, it was less than personally satisfying.
Now, you want to pursue nursing as a second career. This is actually one of the most common pivots. People looking for second-stage professional opportunities often gravitate toward careers that offer a greater sense of personal fulfillment.
In this case, you won’t just be dealing with the stress that naturally comes with changing careers—you’ll also need to go back to school. The good news is that pivoting into nursing can happen relatively quickly. As long as you already have a bachelor’s degree, accelerated programs make it possible to complete your training in a short time frame.
In as little as 12 months, your life could look completely different. That sounds great—except that those 12 months will likely involve working almost full-time as a student. During that phase, you may also need to continue working at your original job while maintaining boundaries around family life.
These obstacles aren’t easy, but they are manageable with persistence, lifestyle adjustments, and, in many cases, a little help from your tribe. In the next few sections, we’ll look at practical steps you can take to manage professional transitions of all kinds—whether that transition involves additional credentialing, as in the nursing example, or simply requires putting in extra hours at work to qualify for a promotion.
Decide on Your Ideal Pace
Sometimes you won’t be able to control how much time you need to put into the transition you want to make. However, as with the nursing example—or really any credentialing path that involves college or graduate school—you can usually control your course load. You don’t have to take the accelerated route.
You can complete your educational obligations one class at a time. Take some time to review what will be required to get the position you’re aiming for. Then divide that commitment into reasonable, achievable chunks that make sense for your lifestyle.
It’s often a good idea to start with less than you think you can handle and scale up from there, once you’ve fully experienced the lifestyle adjustments required to reach your goal. In the context of furthering your education, that might mean taking two classes when, technically speaking, there’s room in your schedule for three or four.
Why err on the side of moderation? Because what you can do and what you should do aren’t always the same thing. It’s better to do less and keep gas in the tank than it is to max out your time and risk burning out. Once you’ve gotten the hang of things, you can always increase your course load later on and identify—more accurately—the routine that makes the most sense for you and your family.
Budget Your Time Sensibly
Many adults, particularly those with families, feel like they hardly have time to go to the bathroom during the work-and-school week. If you’re going to add a significant amount of responsibility to your life, it’s a good idea to start looking at your time the same way you’d look at your money. Where are you spending it in ways that aren’t strictly necessary?
For most people, the best place to start is screen time. If you own a smartphone—and you do, since you’re probably reading this article on one—you can get a clear breakdown of how you’re using it each day, including how many minutes are spent scrolling social media. That’s an obvious place to begin carving out time for other priorities, like schoolwork and wellness.
You can always return to streaming or social media later. But when you’re feeling overwhelmed and overworked, reducing screen time is one of the easiest ways to reclaim hours in your day.
And while it might sound unappealing at first, it’s often a much easier adjustment than people expect.
Prioritize Good Habits
Self-care is an important, though often misunderstood, aspect of wellness. It doesn’t mean indulging in online shopping or luxuriating in a bubble bath. While both activities can provide a sense of pleasure, they aren’t sustainable lifestyle adjustments that reduce stress in a long-term way.
Instead, it’s better to focus on habits that very literally reduce cortisol in your brain. These include:
- Getting more sleep
- Eating healthy, nutritionally balanced meals
- Exercising for at least 30 minutes a day
- Practicing mindfulness
It can be difficult to find time for these activities, but if you earmark even 40 minutes a day for taking care of yourself, it can make a meaningful difference. That’s about how long it takes to meet your exercise requirements, with time left over for simple breathing exercises or a quiet, contemplative walk through your neighborhood.
While these behaviors do require time, they often improve productivity and clarity of thought while reducing the likelihood of errors. In many cases, it’s not how much time you spend on professional or educational tasks that matters most, but the quality of that time. When you reduce stress and keep both your body and mind refreshed, you’re able to do more with less time.
Lean on Whatever Support System You Have
Support systems look different for everyone. If you have a supportive partner, parents, or family members who are willing to help, lean on them. It’s okay to ask for support. Often, the people in your life are simply waiting for the opportunity to assist you—especially in situations where you’re taking on something challenging to improve your life and the lives of your family.
If you need help, ask for it. And if you don’t have people who are able to step in regularly, consider adjusting your personal standards. Adopt a “good enough” mindset. It’s okay if the dishes sit in the sink for a day or two. Laundry doesn’t have to be as urgent as it sometimes feels.
As long as your family is being fed and cared for, they’ll be fine. It’s reasonable to relax your standards slightly, especially if the time you recover is being used to take care of yourself or to move closer to your goals.
