Getting to “All Done”
by Daisy Dowling
A few years ago, when my daughter was a toddler, she would finish her breakfast with a triumphant ritual. After spooning up the last of her cereal, she’d shout “All done!” and beam with delight, then slam her fist down on the plastic tray table of her high chair with a loud bang for emphasis. Every morning, without fail, it was the same thing: the same sense of joyous competence at being able to handle the task in front of her, that same sense of completion and closure. I loved to watch her, but as embarrassing as this is to admit, I felt a little jealous. As a full-time working parent, I wasn’t in a “competence and completion” state of mind. In fact, it was more the reverse. By the time each morning’s Great Oatmeal Take-Down had concluded, around 6:45 a.m., I was already well underwater and trying desperately to swim up to the surface. Emails had rolled in overnight from colleagues waiting for answers. I had to hustle if I was going to make it to that 8 a.m. meeting. There was the leaky sink I needed to have fixed and tax forms to sign and get to the post office, and my boss was waiting on the draft strategy report, and oh, the laundry pile (which could only be described as Himalayan) and mounting eldercare “issues” to handle, and was I getting to get to the gym once this week? “Getting it all done?” Who are we kidding? I was behind all day and every day—and it felt crummy.
Are you a working parent trapped in that same always-on-but-never-finished scramble? Maybe you’ve tried to cope with your endless to-do list by working later into the night, or breaking it up into multiple lists, or using a new calendar color-coding system or special task-tracking app to help you get more accomplished. Even so, are you still struggling to find the bandwidth for things you know are important—like networking, or really preparing for that big meeting next week, or reading to the kids, or sitting down for a family dinner? Day to day, despite stretching yourself to your personal limits, do you still harbor a hazy but nagging sense that you should be getting more done at work and be there more for your children? Have you ever considered wholesale life changes—like quitting your job or moving to a remote area, off the grid—just to get some relief and to feel on top of things, “together,” and like yourself again?
The vast majority of parents I coach would answer “yes” to one or more of these questions, and if you did also, I actually take that as a fundamentally healthy and positive sign. If work and career obligations are this top-of-mind for you, that’s a strong, objective indicator that you’re a diligent and conscientious professional. If being there for the kids looms large in your daily thoughts, it’s proof-positive you’re a devoted parent. Your intentions are good, and your heart is 100% in the right place. And it’s precisely because they are that it’s so jarring when you can’t deliver on everything you’re supposed to.
Sure, there’s the practical problem of actually cranking through your to-do’s at work and at home. In normal circumstances, that’s already a major challenge—and in the past year or more, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s never been more acute. (How can you do your full-time job, run the household, be a parent, and teach your kids the whole third-grade curriculum at the same time? C’mon—you’d have to be able to bend the laws of time and space to get that all done.) Yet the bigger, more insidious problem here—the one that my clients find even more painful—isn’t the practical one. It’s the feeling of always being behind, of falling short, of being at odds with their own values and aspirations. If I’m such a hard worker, why can’t I finish everything I need to? If I’m such an attentive parent, why can’t I figure out how to cook and eat dinner with the kids each night? That “All done!” feeling seems very far away—if possible to reach at all.
Enter this book: your realistic, 3D road map for getting a whole lot closer. I’ll tell you up front: This collection of articles doesn’t attempt to be the end-all guide to personal productivity, and it won’t engage in any philosophical debate or politics about the feasibility of “having it all.” What it will do for you is something quite different, yet very powerful: Whatever the circumstances of your career or family life, it will meet you where you live, today. It will offer you new skills and tricks for shortening and taming your to-do list and for feeling more in control as you do so. It will teach you how to bring your work skills home and your home skills to work, how to prioritize more thoughtfully and effectively, how to get more done in the time you do have available, and how to diffuse the conflict that can rear up when you’re pulled in two (or more) directions at once. It will show you how to attack the “getting it all done” problem from all sides and, no matter how long your to-do list remains, build your own sense of competence and completion. The ideas in this book worked for me, they’ve worked for my clients—and they’ll work for you, as a working parent also.
I recommend that you read these pieces with an eye on your own needs, trusting your own intuition. Maybe Bruce Feiler’s ideas on effective family meetings will help you tame the weekly chaos, or Rebecca Knight’s advice on saying “no” will help you have less of “it all” to get done in the first place, or Alison Beard’s look at why and how to build your “parenting posse” will help you get the support you need when things get extra busy. Just as this book does, think broadly and work the problem from all different angles. There’s a terrific buffet of ideas here. Grab the tricks and tools that will help you and start using them.
And then, at the end of those days when you’ve tried your level best to do well at work and be a loving parent, give yourself permission to close the laptop, put your to-do list aside—and, putting your hand down firmly on the table for emphasis, tell yourself, All done.