As a new dad with a busy job I've found the pain point balancing work/family to be crises that occur semi regularly like kid sick an...

As a new dad with a busy job I've found the pain point balancing work/family to be crises that occur semi regularly like kid sick and can't go to childcare, major bug discovered prior to launch, etc. As Tad notes the planned obligations can be managed to balance your personal choice of importance between family and career, but for me in practice it is the unexpected or urgent that can upset that balance. Balancing things that are urgent now vs things that are important is very difficult in practice. Long term having a good relationship with your spouse and kids is much more important than fixing that bug for customer, but that bug may be very urgent so you stay later to fix it tonight. Trying to keep the urgent from trumping the important in the priority queue is a constant challenge in my life as I now have more important things. I completely agree with Tad on the over communicating. The only other things I have found helpful are to: 1) Set expectations realistically - people can be ecstatic or completely disappointed with the same result depending on what you tell them to expect. 2) I don't scale very well, focus on measuring metrics rather than micromanaging and then delegate to others.

Posted by chuckcode on Oct 23, 2014, 8:48 PM

Tags

• ux (Other)

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