You Can't Have It All (At the Same Time)

It was the epitome of modern motherhood. Snow delayed my flight to New York and I was scrambling to find out whether I would be able to catch another. With the cordless phone pressed to one ear, my cell phone on the other, I struggled to figure out my arrangements while my daughter clamored for another blueberry waffle and my son tugged at my bathrobe. As a mom in pursuit of wellness, I have written about the goal of “being present” in each distinct realm of my life. I have written about the goal of “being present” in each distinct realm of my life. But at this particular moment, all I could do was laugh. Sometimes it’s just not possible.

The morning got me thinking about how, despite our best intentions, it’s really tough to keep parts of our lives from colliding once in a while.

I recently had the privilege of chatting with Laura Stack, otherwise known as, “The Productivity Pro.” The mom of three is a time management guru who counsels companies including Microsoft, IBM, KPMG, Cisco, Sunoco, Nationwide, and Nestle. Even the woman who coaches others on organization admits she had trouble balancing everything once she hit motherhood.

But the realization didn’t hit her until she missed a major milestone in her fourteen-month-old daughter’s life.

“I was out of town on a business trip ... and found out from our nanny that my daughter had walked [for the first time],” she recalls of the pivotal moment that forced her to switch gears.

By the time Stack realized she needed to focus more on the home front, she says it was too late to save her marriage.

Suddenly, she found herself a single mother to a toddler and looking for work that didn’t require any travel. But, instead of giving up her dreams of speaking to audiences worldwide, she altered her short-term goals to fit her new situation. Stack honed a “laser beam” focus on drumming up business within driving distance of her home in Denver, Colorado. It was a counterintuitive decision for someone with aspirations to go global. But she decided she was going through a certain season of life and that, eventually, she would be in a position to expand.