Wednesday, September 10, 2008
How can we balance our personal obligations and our career?
This is the question of the century. Between raising children, caring for our parents and trying to succeed in our career, when does it all become too much? And which one of these responsibilities are going to suffer? How do we manage to do it all? Can we manage to do it all?
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2 comments:
Good questions.... and I hope your post on the RecruitingBlogs group on LinkedIn will help stimulate some conversation on this topic.
I think this is really a hard question to answer. It reminds me of the service buying triangle- there's three qualities that are important when buying any service- quality, speed, and cost. The best you can hope to get is two of the three. If it's good and fast, it won't be cheap. If it's fast and cheap it won't be good, and if it's cheap and good, it won't be fast.
This same model applies to handling work, family, and social interaction. I truly don't believe you can do all three well.... and I am personally familiar with volunteers of the year, who have great careers and there sons are dropping out of school, great parents with strong careers, who you never see out side the office, or great parents who are well connected to their community that never seem to move up in the career world.
While I was raised to be socially conscious and to want to volunteer and be an active member of society, I often feel that I just can't spare that time. In my business, that can sometimes mean I'm missing out on networking opportunities. I've made the personal decision that it's family first. Career Second, and the rest of the world third. I'm actually embarrassed to admit that in print, but it's true. I do care about my career and put in a great deal of effort to grow and achieve bigger and better things through work. Deep down, I hope someday, I can move career down, and social interaction up... Here's hoping!
Just a quick after thought. Despite my lack of effort or energy to help the greater good, it is still something that is constantly on my mind. After writing my previous comment, I jumped back over to my blog, and saw the post I added recently about how hr pros and recruiters can help during times of crisis...
I hope you'll check that post out, and send your comments!
http://www.recruitingfrontlines.blogspot.com
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