Working from home has its perks. But for parents, it's nearly impossible to put in actual work while supervising kids' distance learning and making sure there's food on the table. It's a miracle we get some job done while being constantly interrupted.
Setting boundaries is vital, but it's still exhausting for a work-from-home parent—or anyone actually—who is in meetings all day when a simple email can get the job done.
Why some meetings are a waste of parents' precious time
Taylor Offer, a Texas-based founder of an apparel company, took to LinkedIn to illustrate why parents hate meetings. He "worked from home" with a friend employed by a large company. His friend had a total of eight meetings for one day, and he listened in.
He described how each of his friend's meetings went: The first five to 10 minutes of each meeting was waiting for everyone to join and awkward small talk. It takes the host another five to 10 minutes to talk about what the conference will be about.
The next 20 to 40 mins of each meeting were reading through a presentation word for word. The last 10 minutes are just people talking about things they were going to do before they hopped to another meeting.
Only after his friend's meetings, which could have been faster if all of it were done via email, were done could he do some actual work.
"If only he didn't have meetings all day, he could have done his work in a few hours and been done by noon, with no stress," Offer stressed.
Working hours have been longer, chores doubled since the pandemic
Even with several vaccines seeking approval, the quarantine restrictions still seems to have no end in sight. Working from home has been the norm, and it's been too much work for parents.
According to a survey of 3.1 million remote workers, meetings are up 13%, and workdays are 48.5 minutes longer during the pandemic. Moms only get a total of 2.6 uninterrupted work hours per day, while dads get 5.1 hours. On top of that, chores have doubled, too, with the kids also learning from home.
Streamlining meetings give working parents more time to keep the household functional, if not clean and organized (that's okay!). If so, they will have more energy and time to focus on their work and get more tasks off their to-do list faster.
