Are you sleeping with your title on?

Jason is 28 and is a successful product leader in Palo Alto. He was just informed about his second promotion within a year and is ecstatic on this news. He is itching to get back home today and share this awesome news with his wife.

As he gets home at 6 pm, he makes the announcement even before entering the house, which is a 3 BHK condo that they moved in last year. Joanna, his wife is elated and celebrates the milestone dancing with their 2 months old daughter in her hands. Life is going great and things are happening just the perfect way!

It’s 2 am in the same night and the daughter starts whimpering loudly. It’s Jason’s turn tonight to change the nappies as per the calendar that both the parents came up with. Jason has been a diligent father throughout these 2 months and has never faltered on a single occasion. But this night is different. He is busy dreaming about the kick-ass products he’ll build in the next 1 year and how he’ll handpick the members of his team to beat the competitors while maximizing the market share of the organization.

Meanwhile, their daughter has been crying from last 5 minutes and fortunately enough, has woken up the mother. Joanna, while changing the nappies screams at Jason which finally breaks his dream. He wakes up, only to realize that the professional paradise in his sleep will be followed by an hour-long argument about his responsibilities as a father.

Jason couldn’t sleep that night over his guilt and kept regretting the event the following day.

What happened there?

Well, we all play different roles in life, don’t we?

You might be a Vice president at a large organization with 15 years of experience in the industry who closes all big-ass deals for the organization. A VP who is respected dearly by all the employees and they all look up to you for all the motivation and guidance they need throughout their career.

But when you reach home, your wife doesn’t need to know how many meetings you were part of today or how many deals you have to close next month. She needs to know if you ate your lunch on time or not? Or did you made appointment to the doctor that you both must visit this weekend for regular checkup. This is your role as a HUSBAND, and it doesn’t have to collide with the VP that is making strides towards an AOP.

Also, your 7-year-old daughter doesn’t care about how many people report into you or what is the number of employees you had to fire today due to their misconduct at work. She only needs to know if you are going to attend her dance competition that is taking place next week where she is enacting as a unicorn or not. She cares about the fact that you’re going to buy her the doll house this year that you promised her for the birthday. This is your role as a FATHER, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whatever happens in your office premises.

“We make living out of our work, but we actually stop living out of it.”

How do we manage these roles at hand without having to feel exhausted?

We need to define clear boundaries for different roles you play in life. The kind of boundaries that help to avoid constant wrack-ups on a day to day basis. There are ways to define and practice this lifestyle to shun a particular role completely at your own will. Sharing 3 ways that may help you to manage these roles effectively: -

1) Set your triggers

“The mind takes shortcuts informed by our surroundings to make quick and sometimes erroneous judgments.” — Nir Eyal

Mind is a crazy machine that is always looking for hints to go on an automated mode for performing an action. You wake up and check your phone before going to the bathroom. That’s a trigger. You need to set your triggers to manage your role in life.

I remember, one of my managers who I called for a doubt on a presentation after he left from work. He said — “Shubhit, the moment I reach home and press the doorbell, I shut off my work and I remove my manager hat so either you handle it yourself or wait till tomorrow morning 9 am. I said thank you and hung up.

2) Think long term

While you try to manage different roles at a given point in life, it sometimes becomes overwhelming to make justice to each role you take up. You may f*ck up as a good colleague sometimes or your efforts might have gone in vain when you were trying to put all your energies in impressing your boss. As you try to manage and justify these roles, always ask yourself what will happen to this role in the long run?

For example, you were suddenly required for an urgent meeting at your office on a weekend. A weekend that you and your wife decided to utilize for taking a peaceful stroll in a park together after a long time. Sounds like an easy bargain, isn’t it? You can take a stroll probably next weekend and the meeting is indeed urgent. But that is where you weigh the longevity of your role as a husband with the length of your role as an employee for an organization that is struggling to keep up the promises to their shareholders.

3) Make time nuggets

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

17 hours full of action in a day if you make it a point to have a 7 hours of sound sleep like me.

While we all fret about how little time we have as we scroll through the Instagram feed, we may just be fine if we utilize it well. I happen to have a friend who follows a practice of dividing time into small nuggets and deciding for important and non-negotiable tasks for those nuggets. He’s employed full-time at his day job while he tries to manage two but not one venture as a sidekick. He has 2 15-minute slots at work where he keeps a status check of the things happening in both the businesses. He also lives alone in a metro city and makes a daily 10-minute call to his single mother living back in hometown. After work, he also has a 10–30–10 minute nugget to reach the park, play football with his pals and come back home. He’s crushing it and that too in style.

So next time you go to sleep, you are not a VP, you are not a father or a son. You are just another tired human trying to have a good night sleep:)