Honey-Do List Strikes Again: So Picture this. You are in your home office at 1:30 PM. You are struggling through a project that you have to have to your boss or your client by 3:30 PM. Your significant other comes barging in to your home office asking you if you can change the kitty litter. Mind you, if you were working away from your home, this person, who you love more than anyone else in the world would never ever dream of asking you to change the kitty litter while you were working at the office, but somehow the fact that you are both working from home makes it ok. In a work from home system, the impingement of the relationship on the job and vice-versa is magnified. The question becomes, how do you handle The Honey-Do List while keeping your employment and relationship intact?
I have encountered this situation as a remote worker myself, and also among employees working from home that I have talked to. There is no getting ’round the Honey-Do-List but in most cases, it does not take a marriage counselor or heaven forbid, a divorce attorney to deal with this.
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Ideas for dealing with the honey-do-list
1) Use a system such as Google Calendar, Share your calendar with your significant other and allow them to put the tasks on your calendar. Your spouse can put the task on your calendar during the allotted time. Then you see that your significant other has put on your calendar to go to Whole Foods and buy some fish for dinner. You can either accept, reject, or propose a new time. Keeping your word and doing what the calendar says is very important for this to work.
2) Set times throughout the day to deal with the honey-dos and other personal activities. Let’s face it, the honey-dos need to be done. Kitty litter needs to be changed, Garbage needs to be taken out, and the chores need to be done. Schedule the time in your calendar to get them done and then do them when they need to be done. Of course, then you need to actually do the honey-dos and not suddenly have some emergency come up and not do them. Your significant other would probably lose trust in you after something like that happens, so to keep your credibility intact, follow the damned calendar.
3) Hire a handy-person to come and do them. I am sure that several people in your neighborhood would love to come and do your chores (for a small fee, of course). It may be worth your while to just pay someone to come and do the darned things! When my wife and I were both working long hours, out of the house, we would pay someone in our neighborhood to come and feed the cats. There is no reason why, while working from home, we cannot have someone continue to do that if needed.
4) You may need to see a relationship coach or counselor to get things all sorted out. Sometimes, a knowledgeable person with no skin in the game is required to help establish the rules and work things out. If this is the case, I strongly advise you to do so. This may sound more expensive, but it is cheap compared to the price of a divorce attorney.
Relationship issues are never good for the job, it is essential to keep both the relationship and the job functional. It is especially true that in a work-from-home paradigm, the impingement of work and the relationship is magnified, and one of the ways this shows itself is via the honey-do list. It, therefore, becomes especially important to manage this with the utmost importance. If you are an entrepreneur, business owner, or executive, please be sure to book your free 1/2 hour huddle appointment with Dr. Jeff.