Is your mental load stopping you from progressing?

How is mental load stopping your career progression? What are some ways you could share that load? What I would give for someone to invent a mental load off switch. Going back to work after maternity leave is daunting. After 12 wonderful months with my first born (grateful I got that time), my first day was plagued with an overdrive of thoughts, and a rollercoaster of emotions.

Unfortunately this first day experience isn’t limited to just the first day, as accurately depicted by the Peruvian political cartoonist Carlin, the thoughts and mental load often can hinder a woman’s career.

When a woman goes back to work after maternity leave, and decides to focus on her career, quite often there is the focus on how she will get back. How will she make up for lost time during her maternity leave?

However, a successful return back to work is one that also incorporates a strategy to sort out home life and to share her mental load. Put simply, if your home life is a mess, it makes your work life that much harder to transition and the mum guilt will kick into overdrive. Apart from taking up brain capacity, there is increased stress levels associated with mental load, which in turn limits productivity and long term career success. Simplistically, if your head space is taken up by trying to resolve these undone tasks and remember all of the things on your mental to do list, there is only so much space left to take on more. Whether we like it or not, something has to give, otherwise we will find ourselves overwhelmed, overworked and burnt out.

So what can we actually do?

Here are some of the ways I hacked my mental load

Communicate with your partner – firstly this helps make the invisible load of mental load visible. It ensures that any potential disconnect and underlying feelings aren’t bottled up. Secondly by listing out all the tasks on the to do list, it will help with the assessment on how to tackle them together. By writing down all the to do list, you are clearing some of the mental capacity and not having to remember these.

The Calendar – a shared calendar with schedules can help in the planning of events. For example knowing when there are things to help forward planning of ensuring swimming gear is washed and packed, when bills need to be paid, birthday presents are purchased etc.

The To-Do-List – by listing out the to do list together with your partner, you can review them to see which ones can be delegated or outsourced. By strategically splitting the chores to each others strengths, this helps with hopefully enjoying the tasks at hand – for example: if you hate the cleaning but your partner doesn’t mind it. Splitting the cooking and cleaning.

Outsourcing of tasks – where resources allow it, consider if it would be beneficial if cleaning, or cooking was outsourced. I, for one, hate cleaning and so does my husband. This was one we outsourced even pre kids.

There is a wide choice from cleaners, meal planning companies, laundry services, virtual assistants or if lucky in Asia helpers.

If you need some more ideas or ways to reduce your mental load, feel free to get in touch to book a free strategy session.