My child turned THREE today! I cannot believe that we have survived each other for three whole years. Lately, my work life has crept ever more into my 2 hours of mom-time and I desperately want it to stop. I find myself cooking dinner with my laptop in the kitchen so I can respond to the urgent requests - and even so I can respond to the not urgent requests just to keep up with all of the emails in general.
But my amusing 2-hour-mom story from last night was that my parents bought my son a Black and Decker toddler workbench with light up and noisemaking power tools. I had conference calls with Asia last night from 9 to 10:30, so I spent my evening with my trusty headset putting together my child's birthday present while conversing about metrics and post-mortem reports.
On the birthday morning, I had a 7:30am conference call and the birthday boy was just eating breakfast when the call started. Ever-disrespectful of my morning conference calls, he continued to beg me to play with him and talk to him throughout my call. Luckily the conference call participants were friendly and tolerant of my situation, but it was still not ideal.
To the folks who advocate that the World is Flat and globalization is upon us, I ask: at what cost?
Early morning and late night conference calls with large groups are generally ineffective. We are forced to multitask to keep up with the pace of our lives. But are global corporations too far gone to break the cycle? How can we adapt our lives so we actually see our families while maintaining the speed (and time zones) of business?
