Open Loops 10/20/2009: Articles I Think Worth Passing Along
Posted on October 20, 2009 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Open Loops
Tuesdays are open loop at SimpleProductivity blog.
A recent British study really came down hard on working moms. Apparently, if a woman chooses to work, their children have worse diets and exercise habits. This really burns me up. Any mother does the best she can for her children. And for those who don’t have the luxury of staying home, now there’s another layer of guilt added on by attention-grabbing nonsensical study. A great response to the article can be found at “Working Moms are Bad Moms”. Hmph. Maybe someone should fund a study about how having a frivolous researcher for a parent causes problems!
Zen Habits touches on the subject of quality over quantity in “8 Ways Doing Less Can Transform Your Work & Life”. I do see the point he is making with the ways to do less, but I’m not sure it follows that quality work will result. Comments?
My parents had a different take on money than I do. Wise Bread’s article “10 Life and Money Lessons Learned from Immigrant Parents” does a good job of summarizing the things my parents also do (or used to do). It’s worth thinking about. Two points that stuck out for me: Always have other sources of income, and Do it yourself.
Smashing Magazine doesn’t often deviate from design and creativity issues, so I was surprised to see “How To Find Time For… Everything!” come through their feed. In the world of productivity, there is little new being generated, but something popped out at me in this list: Maintenance. Most people searching for the “best” solution give up on their methods before it gets to maintenance. I personally believe that it doesn’t matter how you manage your time, as long as you do what works for you, and do it consistently.
Lifehacker has an article, “Close Open Loops to Relax Guilt Free”, which is a summary of another article, “Relax Without Feeling Lazy: Kill Open Loops”. I’ll admit, the pic on Lifehacker is what drew me in. I can’t resist the crazy chicken. It’s a good point, though: for those things that are never “done” (think laundry, housework, blog tasks), it is important to set intermediate “dones” so that you can close the loop and move on.
Photo by Megyarsh
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Comments (3)
Absolutely adore your blog but I have to take issue with the line “luxury of staying home” in the intro to the “working moms are bad” article. I am a working mom now, but working outside the home was not even an option when my 4 children were younger. Daycare costs were more than my paycheck and the logistics were impossible. We made the decision for me to “stay home”. Let me tell ya…there was not one thing luxurious about it. In fact, to save $, we even sold my car. I was a stay at home mom in every sense of the word! We didn’t go on vacations and birthdays and holidays were nothing to write home about. Staying at home for most (not all) is a sacrifice. Now that my children are in school, I am a working mom and so I also relate to the guilt. Love your blog but I just had to comment
Your point is well taken. You show that there are people out there who do the cost-benefit analysis and do what is right financially. Most people with 4 young children would go to work, not realizing that they were spending more than they were bringing in! And with four young children, you were a working mom!
When I wrote the intro, I was looking around my neighborhood, where most moms are stay-at-home, and it is not a sacrifice for them or their families. I live on the edge of a wealthy new neighborhood and most of the women are in situations where the only reason for them to work is that they “feel like it”. (That’s a direct quote – one woman was toying with going back to work after her kids were in school but she didn’t “feel like it”.) That’s the luxury I was talking about.
For those of us who make the choice on real life issues, it is a careful balance of working/not working, financial calculation and how to put food on the table. We don’t need the added guilt of “poor nutrition and exercise habits” added into the mix.
So thank you for calling me on that! You make excellent points and remind me that the majority of working/non-working women make serious choices. Mea culpa!
Thank you for an interesting collection of articles, and for the link love!