At the start of the pandemic, when my husband and I were shifting to working from home while caring for our preschooler and toddler and procuring enough milk, eggs, and disinfecting wipes to keep everyone fed and safe, I began using an automatic email reply to alert my contacts that I might not be as immediately available as I was before.
Robert Ball
Your Questions About Work, Caregiving, and Covid-19, Answered
Advice from experts on taking care of yourself, dealing with uncertainty and guilt, and more.
November 11, 2020
· Long read
Summary.
How do you find time to take care of yourself as a parent when you’re trying to work full time during a pandemic? How can you launch a job search when your kids are home for virtual learning? With so much to do every day, is it possible to not feel as though you’re coming up short? To not feel guilt about everything that is — or isn’t — happening? It’s clear that Covid-19 has thrown work-life balance into the spin cycle. To help make sense of the dilemmas HBR readers are facing, we collected their questions about how to make it through the pandemic and posed them to a panel of work and parenting experts. Their advice: Dole out regular doses of compassion, to yourself and others. Ask for compassion when you need it. And remember that while the days and weeks may feel endless, the pandemic will only represent a small percentage of a very long career and family time line.