Battling a ‘Bounce-Head’ Week

Yet another... 'can women have it all?' discussion

This week I’ve been overwhelmed by ‘bounce head’.  My term for something every working mother will understand:  the feeling of holding more to-dos and conflicting emotions in your head at any one time than it’s possible to get down on a list; that sees your focus bounce back and forth constantly, within seconds from the most mundane lifemin to the most important family, friend or working-life priorities.

Source

Sometimes known as ‘the mother’s mental load’, here’s mine this week in no particular order but as they bounce around my bounce head:

A CEO Linkedin strategy; de-flea-ing an unhappy cat; 2 x two-page-long packing lists for school residential trips; replacing a rotten window frame that has just fallen off its hinges; inviting 20 Health-tech leaders to an event in Amsterdam; messaging eight mums re. dates for a birthday sleepover;  two more chapters of the book draft I’ve promised a publisher by end of June; booking a summer holiday; (damn it, and camp bookings between those dates); a 5-page business award nomination; puppy training for a dog that won’t stop rolling in sh1t; getting the final slides in for a main-stage talk at London Tech Week; replacing cricket whites that now flap around the calves; refunding unhappy guests in a tired, requiring-update Airbnb; 378 pages of board-paper reading (and more importantly, thinking);  four waiting loads of washing; trying to find a pitch template I saved 2 years ago to share with an impressive social entrepreneur I’ve just met;  buying four birthday party gifts;  follow ups to four exciting meetings;  a marketing strategy for the local town market; walk the new puppy; and all this around the existential emotional worries: an act of utter carelessness that has hurt a much-loved friend; that one child has received next to no 1:1 attention of late or that another’s academic confidence is in decline -  oh, and a blog to write.  And it’s only Tuesday.  Aaaaaaaand breathe. 

Bounce head is not actually about the sheer volume of the to-do-list but the head f*ck that comes from moving from one highly emotive or important issue to five other mundane, urgent actions in the space of a single minute.  And I bet many mums could meet or raise me on that list in any given week.  Our heads are a constant melee of emotion, guilt, frustration, irritation, deadline pressure and exhaustion - we’re Neo in the Matrix, dodging bullets that just won’t stop coming.

We’re left with an inability to prioritise the deep work that is really important until we’ve cleared some of the mental load of the urgent - with much of the latter triggered by immediacy - a call from the school nurse; a customer complaint or the sports kit left in the footwell of the car that is required prior to the away-coach leaving at 1pm. 

This is the reason that I lose patience with the ‘productivity’ industry (primarily promoted by childless men).  Yes, it would be lovely to eat the frog, time-box, read more self-help books or just do the three important things that day.  To choose not to worry about the washing piles or the kitchen table covered in a detritus of scrunched-up uniform in bags, dropped flower heads and sticky stains - but for most mums, the urgent can’t wait for the important.  The sh1t hits the fan when it choses and it’s impossible to push the little irritations into the back brain to enable deep focus elsewhere.  Decks must be cleared. 

And much of this is female.  It plays out along gendered-lines in so many family homes around me and all over the internet with men stepping over the optimistic pile on the bottom step or able to focus perfectly well on their laptop amidst the scrunched up uniform and on top of the sticky stain.  (Here’s Sally from Home & Away crying as she has this phenomenon explained to her by a psychologist, quoting how much more biologically wired women are to this, than men).   Those women blessed with partners, could, and should delegate more. We know this… and here’s one doing so, refusing to do her grown ass man’s laundry or book his hospital appointments, but I personally think she misses the point.  We’re not trying to be martyrs.  Many of us need to have a finger on the pulse of all the minutiae of detail within the walls of the family sanctuary.  Indeed, we are the pulse of the family home and calendar.  Many of us want to be. 

Feminism has risen all our expectations and flung open doors of opportunity - especially for the professional class - but it hasn’t fundamentally rewired us.  Is this just the price we pay for wanting it all, or am I just personally an idiot for taking on too much, being unable to delegate and martyring myself in the process?  All I can think is that maybe it’s no wonder increasing numbers of GenZ women don’t want to follow in their professional mother’s footsteps… 

You’ll miss these days, they say.  Those were the happiest years of my life, my mother tells me.  And I know I will.  There’s so much love amidst the chaos.  

And there are solutions beyond just taking less on and learning the power of no. Family management apps, shared calendars or software project management tools; even virtual lifemin concierge services like BlckBx (which I use and am a big fan of - currently on the task of ranking local secondary schools for me -  but which sadly can’t measure a rotten window, read a physical gas meter, or take the sports kit back in).  As a company perk, it’s positioned at fast-paced companies who employ busy professionals, run by entrepreneurial women who know these challenges well.  (Indeed, its annual cost paid for itself in just one insurance policy renegotiation this year).  

Workplaces generally are waking up to this challenge, allowing women greater flexibility or part-time hours and (albeit with less speed and uptake) rolling out similar incentives for men to try and address the imbalance.  These work and do help the many women who use them, but we should be under no illusion that their disproportionate take-up does have an impact on the pace of female career-progression - and ultimately the gender-pay gap.  What proportion of this gap might be influenced by choice is a question I’ve wrestled with for many years, especially when it’s a choice made by some of the highest female earners in society who are often also the loudest critics of ‘the patriarchy’. 

For my part, of course there’s also the therapy that is this blog-theme and the time required to write it (in a week I can’t afford to). It forces me to stop, breathe and consider the antidotes to this conundrum - and there are many to remind myself of that slow my pounding heart.   The new puppy and the requirement to get her out on walks - come rain or shine - has provided another. 

Walks that remind me to feel grateful that I have people in my life who I love so much to want to ‘win’ this admin for;  work that I’m motivated and energised by and want to do well; opportunities that i’ve created that excite me; and most of all a husband who (post cowering at my initial outburst) understands that, to use Brene Brown’s analogy on the ‘crock of shit’ that is the concept of a 50:50 marriage, when I’m at 20, he needs to find 80:

We have to sit down at a table anytime we have less than 100 combined and figure out a plan of kindness to each other. The thing is… marriage is not something that’s 50:50.  A partnership works when you can carry their 20 or they can carry your 20 and that when you both have 20, you have a plan where you don’t hurt each other. 

As ever, I’m in awe of anyone that has to manage this solo.  Heroes.  This week, maybe have a think about anyone you know who’s either struggling to be the 100 by themselves, or who’s on a 10 or 20.  Can you give them 10 of yours?  Or maybe just be a walking companion?  It’s not just partners that make a difference, but good friends. 

Now the pressures of the start of this week have abated and I’m back to 50, I’ve resolved to do better.  

Further reading

• Update: Great minds: Here’s Mary Harrington today much more eloquently tackling the same subject matter and identifying the difference between the ‘CEO of Earning’ and the ‘CEO of the home’ and the division of labour that fluxes according to each individual’s circumstances.