LIFE: Grown-up Internships

Having a bit of a thing for anything Neal's Yard this month's Reg magazine caught my eye in Waitrose with its day moisturiser freebie stuck to the cover. Not expecting there to be much decent stuff in it this month (a journalist once told me when you see a freebie it's because the content is light this month) but deciding the cream was a bargain at £3.10 I bought it. Get home and find under Sam's editorial opener that in fact there's something very worthwhile happening in Red magazine this month: grown up internships. I know from my coaching work that many of us are still grappling with the question of what to do with our lives so in my opinion this is one inspired campaign/idea/project. I admit to getting a little preoccupied myself from time to time with what I want to do for the rest of my life but do we need to know? Does it matter? As Baz Luhrmann famously sang, some of the most interesting people he's ever met still didn't know what they wanted to do when they were forty. Or something like that. I'm all for planning with the caveat of keeping one's mind open to interesting opportunities that might crop up along the way but if the work you're currently doing feels good then why worry about what you'll be doing in ten years time say? I'm not saying don't plan but why get freaked out about it and wind yourself up in knots when that might htaint the journey or hinder the process of discovery anyway.

I've found coaching working mums especially that sometimes it's good enough to keep putting one working foot in front of the other until the kids are all in school then re-evaluate what we want to do for the next 5 years. I don't think I'll ever advocate anyone planning what to do for the rest of their lives, especially with all the advances in medicine and gene therapy. "The rest of my life" could be a very long time.

If you fancy trying out life as an MP or a month at Liberty (or time at Red, Coty or The Royal Opera House) have a look at this.

PSYCHOLOGY: What is good enough?

I'm beavering away on the book I'm writing for working mothers. I'm writing the chapter that's devoted to the idea of ditching or delegating domestic tasks to free us up for more interesting things. I'm inviting working mums to tell me how they go for 'good enough' on the home front via a short survey (please do it anonymously or leave your name to go in the book) and have been reading up on academic studies of housework.

Psychologist Chloe Bird did a study of the amount of domestic labour performed by 1,256 men and women and its impact on depression levels. Men reported doing 42% of the housework and the women 68% (which doesn’t quite add-up of course and according to other researchers who’ve studied housework habits, that’s because men tend to over-report how much they do). Using clever statistical analyses Dr Bird determined the point at which people experience ‘psychological distress’ from inequity in the division of housework and concluded that: “inequity in the division of household labor has a greater impact on distress than does the amount of household labor.. on average women are performing household labor beyond the point of maximum psychological benefit, whereas men are not.”


Help with my survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7SGLSVP

Boll*cks to Perfectionism

I'm mulling over what changes I made to my life when I had kids and noticing that I'm much more comfortable with mess than I was when I first became a parent 4 years ago. Now I'm writing a book for working mothers my message as far as domesticity is to go for ‘good enough’ on the domestic front and bollocks to perfectionism.

Because perfectionism (I speak from experience – I am a woman who used to rewrite to-do lists if my son scribbled on them) is pointless, too much like hard work and annoying for everyone around us. I don’t know about you but I can turn into a demented fishwife when my husband puts his pants in my empty laundry basket or when the kids leave crumbs on my pristine kitchen work surfaces. Because let’s face it a perfect house doesn’t stay perfect for very long when you have small children.

I gave up striving to reach the bottom of the laundry basket a long time ago because the satisfaction doesn’t last long. Like Shirley Conran famously said, “Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom” I say if we’ve got time to watch the laundry basket we haven’t got enough going on in our lives! It’s staggering but true that academic research shows even where both parents work full time mothers still do more of every domestic task and men tend to over report the amount of each domestic activity they do!

I'm asking working mums to tell me about what they've ditched or do less of on the domestic front for my forthcoming book, Mothers Work. I'd love to hear from you - here's the survey.