To ask if anyone has quit their good, highly paid stressful job for a smaller one?

[joanneg36]

I am seriously struggling with the 'having it all' at the moment and interested in others' experiences. Has anyone ever quit their 'brilliant' (on paper) job for work/life balance reasons and how did you manage/what did you do next?

I work four days a week in a senior-ish job. London and well paid but not law/city type money. Husband works too and earns similar. My 'four days', like many people, is in reality 7 days work squeezed into 4 and I am on email all hours. Kids are 5 and 1 and I just feel exhausted and as though I can't go on like this.

We could cope financially with me earning less, we'd have to cut back but it would be sacrifices of the meals out/foreign holidays type rather than not being able to pay bills etc. My bigger fear is about risk to my future earning potential and just general fear of unknown. I don't know how easy it would be to find a 'smaller' more part-time job in my industry but I feel I could at least try....

Interested in all thoughts - feel free to tell me to stop moaning and get on with it!

I think you are just going through a tough time - and need to REALLY enforce work boundaries (especially email! Easier said than done I know! I am trying to only check 2-3x / day). I would not quit or change, until you had really tried your all to make this work.. I am a great beleiver in being able to finically support yourself and also follow your work passions.. Even small changes like taking 1-2 days holiday / month so you can do things with the kids might be enough to make you feel happier / more balanced.
Most jobs (ESP own business) are tough, so change would not necessarily be easier.. I would really put some boundaries in place and wait for boss to speak to you.. You may be surprised at what others do and what is actually acceptable.

Reading this book made me think about how I spend my time and choices, so I recommend looking at it:

www.amazon.com/Know-How-She-Does-Successful/dp/159184732X

I have a 2.5yr old and am about to have another - back at work FT when she was 5.5 months BUT I negotiated working from home one day, as did my husband for 6 months or so and have an flexible job (so focus on outputs and can usually work from home 2-3 days/week.. So get day to day stuff done easily).

DH did it. Our ds4 has complex health needs and his old work used to discipline him for taking unpaid parental leave when DS needed operations in a hospital 90 mins drive away (I can't drive so couldn't get there without him). He asked them for a days unpaid leave when ds needed an op and I'd had a crash c-sec 3 weeks before with DS5. They said no so I was stuck in a hospital with 2 children under 14 months, 3 weeks post major surgery myself, hormonal and with fil to help. My FIL who doesn't think it's necessary for mums to rest after having a baby. That was a fun day, not.

Anyway DH now works as a freelance journalist. A lot less money but there is no problem when he needs to be there for DS4, as long as he gets the work done (usually works in the evening a few times if we've had a day at the hospital.)

Ok choughed and Sadie, couldn't give a shit if my comments made you nauseous. I'm speaking from experience, having gone back to full time work when both babies were only 4 months and stopping breastfeeding early for that. And did I get any thanks from work? Definitely not. And do I regret it? You bet. And do men get this grief /guilt. No coz they can't effing breastfeed. Men and women have. Different feelings. Get over it. Those were mine. Wish I could go back in time and do it all again but differently. Yes I was always knackered, but still a beautiful time in you life. Now go and be sick again.

Very few British women are still breastfeeding by the time they finish ML clee. So that's not it, not for the vast majority of women. I'm sorry to hear about your regrets, but you need to not not assume other people feel the same way.

With that said, I sympathise OP. DH and I work part time too, not as many hours as you, but it's still bloody knackering. And we commute as well. But I think in your shoes I'd try very hard to make our current setups work better before making a more radical decision. Maybe give it six months, and if you're not able to be less 'switched on' out of hours etc and both still feel wrecked, then you take steps. Meanwhile you could use the time to investigate what might be out there, as you sound like you have no idea at the moment.

I agree with the comments saying you need to look at ways to make your existing job properly 4 days. Your dc have parental care 4 days per week (assuming you and your dh have different days off in the week), so that's 3 days where they are fully cared for by a parent - that's a good balance for your dc already. Perhaps you need a holiday and a plan for bringing your workload under control.

Yet another ex-City lawyer here. When dd was born, I took up a pt business support role in the same Magic Circle firm - it was dull but I needed the headspace. Geared up again to a ft but different business support role when my youngest was 3.

I have slowly worked my way up in seniority and experience and moved firms three times. I am now almost back where I was earning as a fee earner working ft flexibly one day from home. The difference with fee-earning is that although my hours can be long (and sometimes longer than the lawyers on my floor), it is totally my choice. I can drop anything any time and go home or work from home or have long lunches or pop out as I please.

I can do all the school plays, sports days, parent-teacher meetings, children's dental or doctors' appts etc but in practice I split those with dh. It is great. I am not sure why not more City lawyers do what I do if they cannot hack the hours.

I do look with admiration at my contemporaries who have stayed in fee-earning who are earning pots but nah, I have a great work-life balance and fairly stress-free but stimulating and fulfilling role. City law firm partners are under so much pressure these days the job is not secure and there is a lot of international travel. I will never earn as much as a law firm partner but then again, I can safely say I can continue to work in a job I love until a ripe old age.

One thing I am sure about is I could not stay at home with my dcs full time. Hence, I am glad I kept going on the work front and got the privilege of a nice balance between family and work and financial security with a comfortable lifestyle.

The grass is never greener, whatever you decide there will always be a degree of compromise, you and your family just have to decide what you can live with. For me I couldn't continue knowing I was missing out on so much of my child's life. It was a tough decision because I didn't have much growing up and all I have ever wanted for my DD was to give her more than I had. However when she took her first steps to the CM instead of me I knew I had to make a change. However this means fewer luxuries, no car, one holiday a year, and much smaller savings. I do sometimes worry about the long term, what happens when children are grown up, will I regret my decision when my career comes to a stand still?...I don't know, but for now we are happy!

Sort of - I applied for a part time promoted post which took me from 4 days to job share and then registered as a childminder which I do on my days off from my main job. We needed for me to work full time and this way I get to do the job I trained for and love and be at home with my young dd's 4 days out of 7.

Career is insanely overrated, as is the idea that you must always be ready for you partner to run out the door. Yes, s/he could and many do but very few educated professional women with even a modicum of family support or flicker of a pilot light remaining on the career side won't find a way to cope. Choosing your life's course based on potential future risk is not always the best. You could slog it out at work and have a breakdown or die young or your kids could get terribly ill or encounter difficulty in some way and you might (equally unfruitfully) spend your life ruminating about what might have been.

Life is now. You just don't know how it will go either way and you never really have control. So the best you can do is try and live life in a way that seems important and reflects your own values and needs in the current context of your life, being somewhat mindful not to do anything jackshit crazy but incorporating some flexibility.

That might mean working less. It might mean working the same amount and accepting the current situation. It might mean any number of things. Whatever you choose is unlikely to be totally irreversible, either way.

Is it possible to job share? I've heard it works best when there's a cross over day, so you work 3 days a week but have half the weeks work. The rest is picked up by your job share partner so there isn't as much pressure to cram 7 days worth of work into 4 days. You'll be cramming a maximum of 3.5 days into 3, but if it works properly, you've got 2.5 days of work spread over 3 days.

You'll be able to keep the same position, less overload of work and an extra day with your kid.

OP, I sympathise. I have a good job in a reputable firm in a competitive industry. Am higher earner than DH by almost 50%. I have just quit and we have decided to move abroad for a year (DD is pre-school).

I am completely knackered and feel unhealthy and tense. It's not doing me or my marriage any good. It's actually not 'for' DD in that sense as she loves her nursery and is doing brilliantly, but for us as a family, we need a change from London and are fortunate enough to have this option. There are lots of jobs at my level in the UK and if I feel ready to plunge back in in a year then I should be able to freelance easily, if nothing else.

It IS a tough choice, and does need carefully researching, but I have found that the best decisions I have made in my life have always been the ones that involved a bit of a leap of faith. Good luck, whatever you decide.

joan - you have fallen into the trap many women do. I have a few female friends who do this and they all say the same You are being paid for 4 days, presumably getting paid 20% less salary as a result and being treated by your managers and colleagues as if you work 5 days.

Stop this. You need to go and work 5 full days and get paid 5 full days. You have outsourced the home stuff already. There will be no change to your life.

You need to stop with the compulsive checking of email at night as well.

All that 4 day a week working does is legalise what your employer would have done any way which is pay you 20% less basic salary than what a man is earning and if you get a bonus it will be a lot less than what the full time men are getting. Any woman who works 4 days just labels themselves as willing to work for a lot less per hour than a full time male employee in return for aa meagre amount of 'flexibility' of being allowed to work from home for one day. You are being exploited..

If it has reached the stage where you are thinking of quitting you might as well go in and negotiate the full package and hgher pay and bonus you deserve. You need to say how many hours you are actually working and in effect you are doing far more than 5 full days anyway and the '4 day working' arrangement clearly isn't being respected by the employer and you need to be paid as a full time employee.

I like your post fusion. You have said much better than I have about the fear factor.

Life is for now. I totally agree.

I'm almost 64. I keep singing that silly Paul McCartney song in my head. I'm lucky to have lived this long with reasonable health. Many don't. Four friends and family members didn't make that far last year.

I was talking to my daughter and sil last night and was saying how quickly it all goes. . Already they are 40. They've been twenty years together. His career is going in a different direction. From stay at home dad, working five days from home to about to start working away from home four nights a week .I was saying at 40 you should be winding down , putting something in your bank( I didn't mean monetary bank either) not speeding up .

Companies seem to want the very bones of you these days.

How much does ' the fear of what might happen ' prevent us from making better decisions.

I hope those of you who feel you are constantly dipping into 'your life savings' and again I'm not talking financially manage to get a better life/ work balance and get FUN back into your lives again.

Basically,I think I'm saying....don't let anyone or anything work you into the ground.

I like where you are coming from beta dad . I like the clarity of thought behind your post,however op is feeling exhausted and doesn't seem Tobe too concerned about the money factor.

Rather than putting herself through the mill for one extra day....just to have a bit more money which I can't see her being guaranteed 2 days off anyway I think she needs to go in and let the bosses know that her four days are not four days but more like seven. Four days needs to be just that four days. I think she needs to inform them that four days means start workon mon morning to Thursday evening and then you stop. No emails, no phone calls, no nothing till 9 am Monday morning or shes going to go under..

Op...there's a lot of fear in your post. You mention the word fear twice. Can you see a reputable life coach on your day off and work out the best way forward for you.

Whatever you decide, the situation needs to change as you sound ready to snap. You know what will happen. Your body will force you to a decision . Youre exhausted and it's trying to tell you so. If you don't listen...it will turn up the volume.

you have fallen into the trap many women do

Just an observation. I interact with a huge number of professional and business people because of what I do. It's becoming increasingly common to work 3 or 4 days per week - men and women.

I sometimes remember that x doesn't work a Monday, Y doesn't work Thursday or Friday. I'll email them because what I'm doing that day concerns their project.

It's very rare a man will answer on a non working day, very unusual for a woman not to. Sometimes it's not about what employers expect, it's the expectations and demands people place on themselves.

Olly - interesting what you say about men not replying and what Dowser said about 'fear'.

Linking those two thoughts together I wonder if joan might want to try the following experiment.

Refuse to do any work or look at or reply to any email outside her strict working hours and see what happens.

If her boss and colleagues raise an issue then that mean he needs t talk to them about whether it is '4 days' they want or whether it is '5 days'.

It seems to me that as long as she works all the hours without complaint then people will just expect her to keep doing it and assume she is 'happy' being paid less and working more. She only has herself to blame. However, if her colleagues and bosses find her so irreplaceable she needs to be paid for the value of the work se is doing.

I think the 'fear' here is that of saying 'no' and being badly thought of. Just do it.

Some really great and spot-on posts here, thank you. Very observant whoever the poster is who pointed out my use of the word 'fear' - so true. I have worked literally every day since I graduated aged 21 until now, never had so much as a day of not being employed. So a lot of it is fear. But equally I do fear all the converse stuff, missing out on kids lives etc. I'm quite a worrier!
And betadad, a lot of what you say here is spot on and very true. Others have recommended the same - i.e. just go full-time, but I absolutely don't want that. However, your other suggestion about imposing strict limits and waiting to see if anyone complains and then confronting the 4/5 day issue head on, is exactly what I am going to try to do. If it's unfeasible, then I will need to look elsewhere. It's difficult to explain why the imposing of limits is quite so hard without explaining exactly what my job is, and risk outing myself, which I'm not keen to do. It's quite a specialist thing.
I also agree with what fusionconfusion said upthread about the 'what if your partner leaves you?' consideration not being the main one. Yes of course, financial independence is very important but my marriage is rock solid at the moment, I have savings and our mortgage is small, in an emergency situation I have family who could help. My kids wouldn't be hungry. And as fusionconfusion says, the fear argument works both ways, presumably if I get knocked down by a bus in five years' time, I'll wish I'd spent more time with my family/not working insanely?

I think the fear is taking a leap Into the unknown and she is fearful of the consequences.

I think fear is driving her far more than the exhaustion at the moment. She needs to listen to her body and say stop! Before her body stops which is why I suggested a life coach or a counsellor who can help her teasel the problem out out until the right decision becomes more evident.

There's a dreadful story in the dm . I won't post a link as its just dreadful ( and I think a lot more to it than we are being told) but the person involved was up and on the train at 5-30 am every day and often not getting home till 7pm or later. It's just ridiculous. People cannot sustain this level of sleep deprivation/ stress indefinitely. Something will snap.

You might as well go and work in the middle east for a couple of years. Make some real money. And then come back and get a better job with a more reasonable work / life balance with some savings in the bank.

Yes I had a very stressful job - I worked full time but the hours were regular 9-5 so it didn't encroach into the weekends etc. However, I had to commute to London and had the boss from hell. After four years of that I left and took a poorly paid part-time role close to home for about 1/10th of the money. I earned a bit extra doing freelance work.

I was much happier although money was difficult but as you say we had enough to pay the bills etc, it just meant that we had nothing left over for treats. However, after about six months, the freelance work turned into a well paid part-time role working from home and after a year I gave up the local badly paid part-time role as I was able to increase my hours with the better paid role. I still earn less than I did 4 years ago, but I have a lovely boss and only have to go into London once a fortnight. Although I work just under 4 days a week spread over 5, I do work over my hours, but the point is if I decide to switch my computer off at my official finishing time I can. I have resisted having a work mobile so I don't see my emails when my computer is off.

So for a short time, my husband was the main breadwinner but now I am again. Although I was financially dependent on him for a while, I could have gone back to my original industry if I had had to.

Being at home as my son has moved onto secondary school has been invaluable.

So even if you take a massive pay cut you may find that things change again. And you can live off less money than you think. My pension contributions have taken a hit - that's a bad thing. But I am back in a company scheme and there has to be a degree of living for now and not worrying about what may or may not be the case in 20-30 years time.

I think working 4 days is the worst of all worlds - you take a 20% pay-cut, but are still expected to carry a 100% workload.

^^ This. I don't know anyone on a 4 day a week that doesn't gradually come to this realisation. Then they either go back FT or cut right back. The problem is that it doesn't sound like you work in an industry that is easily transferable to Greater London.

I also think that ABetaDad1's post should be your next tactic. Be religious about your working hours and actually observe it even if you have to leave your blackberry locked in your desk from Thursday night to Monday morning!

Options:
a) ask to work 1 day from home, 3 in the office. Gives you more time to mop up and clear the decks if you gain an extra two hours on a Monday.
b) go back FT but work from home on a Monday and a Friday. Pick one of your office nights for client events/travel. Use your 20% to buy more holiday if that's an option :) More time off during school holidays is going to be a godsend
c) find a job share partner and approach your management with a fait accompli.
d) find a job closer to home.

Kids are 5 and 1 and I just feel exhausted and as though I can't go on like this.
Mine are 5.5 and 3 and I work FT. I regularly have to do early morning or late calls but very little travel and no client stuff so work related social stuff is no more than 4-6 nights a year. It is exhausting at this stage in their lives - so much to be crammed into the window between 6-8 every evening. I am fairly strict about not checking my BB in the evenings though and mornings are too hectic until I am on the train. I find my stress levels rising and it's what I am thinking about going to bed, and I am short and distracted with the kids. Do yourself a favour and stop doing it. Try to make some small changes and see if there is an improvement by Easter.

Great observation only.

I hope all the women are reading this.

It's very rare a man will answer on a non working day, very unusual for a woman not to. Sometimes it's not about what employers expect, it's the expectations and demands people place on themselves.

Please take note ladies. No one is irreplaceable. No one. We've actually had a rl situation where a CEO died and did they get replaced....yes of course. Sad though it was.

Yet another ex-lawyer here. Left a six-figure job at a "big swinging dick" that's the technical term US law firm to start my own small business outside of law but using my skills.

I could not stop checking my BlackBerry, even after a 14-hour day and a long-ish commute. I know that sounds insane. I'm a people pleaser. The idea that a client might email me and (gasp) wait for a reply made my teeth itch. As a result I ran myself into the ground.

I now earn £30k a year or so. I'm waaay happier. No DC yet, but part of my reason for leaving what that I don't want to engage in all the juggling and horse-trading that work-life balance in the City requires, especially for a fairy replaceable junior. I don't want to take a pay cut to cram all my work into four days. I don't want to (as I saw plenty of other, usually female lawyers do), be constantly frazzled and overrun trying to balance work and life demands. I don't want to go to an employer Oliver Twist-style to eke out flexibility. The only way I could my boss being sympathetic, is to be my own boss. I miss the security of work - we want to buy a bigger house and I know that would be easier with payslips and a larger salary - but overall it's been worth it.

We also spend much less on food, and I have fewer commuting and other expenses. My longer term aim is to find a very part-time / one day a week pro bono role at a legal advice clinic, to keep my hand in and allow me to use that part of my brain.

I did this and am so much happier for it. I agonised for months over the decision at the time but we are all so much happier for it. I love your post fusion confusion and completely agree with you.

joan - it seems from the vague description of your job that it may not be technically feasible to actually do it in 4 days. It may be a 5 day a week job and that is that. I don't mean the quantity of work but the fact you have to be available 24/7 regardless.

You may need to change job entirely or give it up entirely or go full time entirely. There is no inbetween.

I used to be in a job like that. I was in charge of a fleet of ships and cargo round the world. I was sometimes woken in the night to give instructions to load/unload, change direction to a different destination. That is an example of a 24/7 job that cant be done 4 days a week. If that is the sort of thing you are doing then you just cant do that job anymore? I don't.

I tried out full-time teaching, having been working 8 hours a week previously.

The extra money was great but most of,it has all gone now!

I'm back to my original hours, earning one third of what I was but I get to take the DCs to school and pick them up 3 times a week.

Everyone is so much happier.

Having said that I will probably have to go back to full time once the younger ones are at University!

My tuppence FWIW...

I earn a good salary in the City in a non law/banking role.

I used to work horrendous hours. 'Luckily' I had a breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I realised I couldn't, and didn't want to, continue to work long hours. So I stopped.

Now I work 9-5/6pm. I don't give a fig what people think when I go home. Of course there's the occasionally day or two in a month where I need to do more but I don't do it as a rule.

In order to do this I had to get my head around no longer achieving a top performance score and instead aim for the middle of the road 'satisfactory' (I.e. I've done my job well but no more than that).

I ruthlessly went through what I spend my work time on and stepped back from anything that was 'above and beyond' my role. And I stopped volunteering to take on extra things or stepping in when things were going wrong that weren't strictly my area.

I'm so much happier now and really see my breakdown as giving me the space I needed to review how I was actually living my life and what my priorities are.

I still earn the same money. My earning potential is still the same.

Will they consider agile working requests like working from home as that makes a big difference too?