Try finishing these sentences: “Because I’m working, I can…,” and, “Ten years from now, the reasons I’ll be glad I worked when the kids were young are….” Maybe you love collaborating with particular clients, or your career allows you to earn the money you need to pay the mortgage or take the family on annual trips. Perhaps work makes you feel fulfilled and more like yourself. Whatever the case, when—alongside the deadlines and diapers—you have the specific, personal benefits and upsides of working parenthood in sight, you’re going to feel more intentional and more motivated on those days when juggling both is a full-on circus.

If your own mom worked full time but always got home at 5:30pm and was able to cook dinner for your family each evening, you may have internalized the idea that you should be able to draw firm lines between work and parenting, or that good working moms always eat dinner with their kids. Your mom’s example—as well as other experiences you’ve had and observations you’ve made about working parenthood—can be wonderful guideposts, but they can also affect your own choices and emotions in not-so-relevant or positive ways. Do you feel a bit guilty each time you email in front of the kids or order takeout? Perhaps you worry about going for that big new role while also asking for more flexibility.

To get yourself out of that self-doubt and shame cycle, take a blank sheet of paper and jot down any working-parent impressions you’ve absorbed from your family, friends, mentors, managers, co-workers, movies, television, and social media. Then, notes in hand, look at how that overall picture maps to your real, lived working-parent experience today. Maybe given your career, hours, family, and budget, you’ll see that it makes complete sense to get meals delivered, or that you really should take that big new job even though you’re just returning from parental leave. When you understand your “shoulds,” you can intentionally shift away from them and start walking in a direction that works best for you. 

Pre-children or even pre-Covid, you may have prided yourself on being the most responsive, committed, always-on-it, hardest working person around. That brand fueled your success, and how you showed up as a professional became a deep part of your identity. But now, as you try to add family time into your already jam-packed schedule, it’s important to think about how that identity is serving you. Do your colleagues continue to hand you work without even thinking about it? During dinner, bath, and bedtime, do you worry about not returning messages as quickly as you used to?  

If so, it might be time for a branding reset. Try making a list of the five to seven adjectives that historically captured “Professional You,” and think about how you might very gently—and without tarnishing your capabilities—tweak that list. Instead of “hardworking,” maybe now you want to be known as “efficient.” Or instead of “responsive,” you might be better off being known as “thoughtful.” Instead of being “thorough,” why not be “succinct”? Instead of working according to your old playbook for success at work, you can rewrite your identity in a way that’s compatible with the kind of mom you want to be—and the employee you’re capable of being at this moment.

Do you want to work from home three days a week, or would you prefer to be in the office every day? Would you like a compressed workweek or a job-share? Or perhaps you’d prefer a temporary phase-in schedule when you first return from parental leave. The broader your thinking about flexibility (it’s not just about remote and in-office), the more likely you are to find a potential solution that could relieve your toughest work/life pain points. And, the more specific you make the ask to your employer, the more possible it is for your boss and organization to grant it. “I need more time with the baby” isn’t something your manager can take action on, but an extra work-from-home day is. 

Looking at a packed calendar and an endless to-do list is a recipe for overwhelm, and to take charge of working parenthood, you’ll need all the mental energy you can muster. So, in addition to tracking all of your uncompleted tasks, start tracking your finished ones, too. Write down your completed to-do’s, the projects you finished, and all of your wins—large and small. Some examples include: We beat our quarterly targets; I helped Sasha with her spelling words; I threw in a load of laundry; I had a good conversation with my boss’s boss—and so on. Then, on a regular basis, pull that list out and look it over. Remind yourself of the incredible things you’re accomplishing—at work and at home—each and every day. Take a deep breath, and push away some of that to-do noise with an already-done sense of achievement.