Struggling with boundaries and routine doing 5 days compressed

[Fortyin24]

Hoping for some advice or experiences

I am in well paid corporate position and agreed informally with my manager about a year ago that I’d do 5 days in 4. I actually requested to do 80% FTE, my manager advised against it as she said I’d likely end up doing the same workload. I have 2 young DC, one in reception and one in nursery.

I seem to be increasingly stressed and struggling with my working pattern, or lack of it! I end up on my laptop all evening after the kids have gone to bed, then go to bed too late or don’t sleep well, struggle to get up the next day, neglect exercise…vicious cycle ensues. In a senior role like this I’ve never given much consideration to ‘working hours’, this change seems to have made me very conscious of them and not in a good way. My performance review is very good and my boss seems to have no issues, I end up feeling guilty though if I’m not permanently’on’ or being seen to work late on my 4 days.

Any advice would be appreciated, as I very highly value my day off and want to make it work in a way that is sustainable for my family and mental health.

Work out what hours you’re actually supposed to be doing and stick to them. I do 90% FTE and have to be careful to make sure I’m not accidentally working extra hours as I may as well be 100% FTE if I do the extra few hours during the week. If there are days you work extra, take it back another day.

Okay you probably need to break this down I to more manageable chunks. And perhaps work backwards from where you want to be ideally to identify what changes to make.

Some coaching might be useful to you too a) to address any beliefs that are leading to these behaviours (eg whatever is feeding the "guilt" or this presenteeist idea that you have to work silly hours) and b) to learn skills for boundary setting (and if that's something work would pay for as professional development then access it that way).

Saying "no" and establishing boundaries about how much you can take on and deadlines is important for your professional development and performance.

If you just take on everything, you will be taken for granted and given more and more and more. You'll also burn out. Both of those things will reduce the quality of your work and performance. So it's in your interest to learn more effective ways to deal with that - whether it's negotiating on priorities and deadlines, delegating, enabling other people to realise for themselves that they should do it themselves...

Picking up on the impact on your sleep. Work out what time you need to be in bed to get good rest. Then work back from there to ensure that you have logged off and had some kind of "close down" ritual to disconnect from work 2 hours before the time you want to sleep.

Then plot how you'll spend the time before bed and what routines will help you wind down. You can't just work up until bedtime because as you've discovered you'll go to bed with your brain buzzing, sleep badly, get more stressed, perform worse the next day, get more stressed, work later trying to compensate, sleep even worse, etc.

If you're getting absorbed and losing track of time, once you've decided your finishing time set an alarm to force you. You have to be strict with yourself.

Close down ritual could include writing a list of what's in your mind to pick up the next day so you've recorded them somewhere for safekeeping and don't have to worry about remembering them. Simply writing stuff down can be very effective at stopping it spinning endlessly round your head because your brain doesn't want to risk forgetting it!

I end up feeling guilty though if I’m not permanently’on’ or being seen to work late on my 4 days

These are really unhelpful thoughts and beliefs. You may have others driving your behaviour. What are the thoughts that prompt the guilty feelings? Are they rational and evidence based?

You'll need to unpick them as well as learning better skills for managing your time and boundaries, otherwise they will continue to disrupt your ability to use your time management or boundary-setting skills.

Also, actually writing an hourly timetable for your ideal week on paper - with everything including rest time, relaxation, cooking, bathing, sleeping, working for Monday to Sunday midnight to midnight.

If you can see it on paper it can be easier to see the mistakes you're making and how to set them right.

Guilty to who?

I’m no help here as I am like this. I was better in an office as I had to leave. At home it’s too easy to keep going. I think it’s down to my people pleasing tendencies.

What hours do your colleagues tend to work? If they are already doing more than 9-5 as it's an area where "overtime" is part and parcel of the job, it's really difficult to demonstrate that you are doing an extra two hours a day (which is pretty much what you need to do if you are doing compressed hours) and juggle collecting the DC from childcare, bedtime & bathtime.

I think the problem would resolve itself if you actually went down to 80% hours like you originally requested. Taking a pay-cut focuses the mind about what is and isn't expected and could give you a bit more mental self permission to switch off.

@thehousewiththesagegreensofa I all honesty I don’t know - I don’t know anyone closely not doing usual full time 5 days and there are time zone differences and travel, so hard to say

@rookiemere you may well be right there, although my boss is experienced in the company so I trust her advice, and working the same for less pay isn’t obviously attractive

@Fortyin24 it's what I did and I know that the 20% drop in salary - less if you are higher rate tax for that bit - was well worth it for my peace of mind. Just make sure you top up your pension.

@rookiemere appreciate you sharing your experience. I’m in high 100k so I could probably use the cut plus pension adjustment to bring me under 100k, then be eligible for 30 hours and tax free childcare 🤔 but - probably very much would affect career prospects I feel

I do 10 days in 9. That's only 45 mins a day. Would that suit you better?

Are you 4 x 10 hour days instead of 5 x 8?

@KnickerlessParsons I really need one clear day a week , I don’t think every other would be worth bothering TBH

@HAF1119 yes - that’s the idea anyway

@rookiemere sorry a quick question - when you say ‘if you are higher rate tax payer for that bit’ and it not being a full 20% pay cut, how did you calculate the ‘real’ net pay reduction please?

What you need to remember it is the quality of work that matters most not always being on or presenteeism for the sake of it. Also would you even be concerned about this if you were a man in a similar position

I used to do 9 days in 8 which worked quite well.

This might sound like it's not a life improver but, for me, using a time sheet is really helpful.

I can see that I did X hours on a Monday and started at Y Time Tues and yes I knocked off early Wednesday but that's more than made up for by the time I did Thursday evening. Or whatever.

Mine lives somewhere my boss can access it. They've never asked me to do it but I prefer to.

So what she'll mean here is that e.g. if your pay cut takes you from £124,999 to £99,999 you'll lose £25k of gross salary, but you'd also pay £10k less tax, get back £12.5k of personal allowance (which at 40% is equivalent to another £5k less tax), plus potentially be paying less on your student loans by another £2.5k if you haven't paid those off.

So the "cost" to you is £10k not £25k. Potentially only £7.5k.

And if you then get tax free child care back on top that's potentially another £££ cutting the net cost to you of going part time even further.

@SilverGlitterBaubles interestingly, I was talking about this with DH last night, his response was ‘but you’ve outperformed in your annual review and your boss is very happy with you, why do you even care’

@Ineffable23 thanks this is really helpful. I could get the 30 hours and tax free childcare too if I put the right amount in pension

I’ve worked 80% FTE and your boss is right. I was really strict about only working my hours and not logging in on my day off, but the reality is that you work ‘harder and faster’ in your 4 days and so they are getting a full time job’s worth of effort from you, but you’re only getting paid 80%. I work in a job where I’m assigned to clients at percentage FTE’s and I decided that once I got to the point of being assigned out at 150% FTE, whilst being paid 80%, that enough was enough. I went back to full time, but have recently moved to compressed, at the suggestion of my manager. I am not working evenings. Because the kids have too many clubs early evening, and I know that I would feel like you- always on my laptop in the evenings until the point when I actually went to sleep, with no defined boundaries. I start earlier in the mornings and finish my day at the same time as usual. It wouldn’t work for everyone, but perhaps that is something you could consider?

Keep a timesheet for a while to monitor what you are doing?

If you are being paid full time then you probably do need to do some work in the evenings. But make it a fixed amount eg. 90 minutes, or end by 9.30pm, whatever suits.

It is much easier to have something defined and logged, so that if it is ever queried then you can point to it. Put it in your signature perhaps?

I did raise an internal eyebrow once when a colleague told me that she was on a full time contract. I had always assumed that she was part-time as she led a service that ended before 3pm and always left the building promptly afterwards to collect her young child from school (she lived close by). She told me that she made up the hours in the evening, which is fine of course, but I had been working alongside her for over a year and never been particularly aware that she sent emails in the evening or worked after hours! But she was very good at her role and that's what matters.

In the same conversation she told me that she found it very easy to be a mum and work full time! 😁

Also, I realise that there is a contradiction in my previous post above- that it’s possible to do a full time job in 4 days, but in moving to do that ‘officially’ I have altered my hours and start earlier so I can get more hours. The thing is that, like you, I think I worry about ‘the look of the thing’. (And whether a man would worry about the same thing is debatable). Starting earlier means I don’t have that guilt, but I’m also not being dragged into delivering 120%, because it’s quieter in the mornings. I can work at a more ‘normal’ pace in the early mornings, checking email etc (whilst not having to do three other things at the same time!), before picking it up during core working hours to my usual 100 miles an hour working pace 😆