One of the best ways to make life easier at work is to find a teaching schedule that works well with your own home life. Many couples who have the option try to coordinate schedules to minimize daycare or missed work due to illness (for example, one person teaching MWF and another teaching T/Th, or one going to work very early and then finishing early and the other starting and staying later). Even if such coordination is difficult, it may help to schedule your own teaching in blocks. This year I've tried teaching three classes back-to-back, from 8:10 to 11:20am MWF (three different preps, but all in the same room). My reasoning was that I had two children in daycare, and if the daycare called for me to pick them up I would be done with most of my teaching. This is working exactly as hoped; despite two times when I've had to leave school because my youngest appeared to have an ear infection, I've yet to cancel a class. An added benefit is that I only "decompressed" from teaching over lunch, instead of between all my classes, and so I am more productive in the stretch of free time in the afternoon. The downside is that I have to be really prepared before the day starts, because there isn't time to do more than a quick scan of notes between classes.

Another schedule one of my colleagues recently tried was to schedule three T/Th classes instead of three MWF classes. Her mid-week is very busy, but her weekends with her daughter are more relaxed. Other faculty have taught night-classes or Saturday classes (when their partners can watch the children) and had a lighter mid-week. One caveat as you look at different possibilities is to remain aware of the culture of your institution. At our school, it is important to be available almost every day and the students prefer it when faculty are available in the later afternoon rather than the early morning. Some or all of this can be overcome by giving out your home phone number (perhaps with "Call anytime before 9pm.") or encouraging students to email you and then checking from home.

Many jobs require the occasional night or weekend activities. If children are inappropriate to bring, you can hire one or two sitters to watch everyone's children, or even take turns yourself (some departments may count the "babysitting" faculty as putting in their time the same as the person participating in the activity).

A final note about work schedules: sometimes people without children feel like they have to make all the work sacrifices for people with children. In many cases, the needs of parents and non-parents can be met in the same ways. This can mean everyone working around each other's top scheduling preferences, taking turns doing the least-preferred jobs, or, in situations where people share offices, putting aside a private room that people can reserve for any reason, whether it's to pump breast milk or to make a private phone call.

Another way to make life easier at work is to use office assistants, student workers, and tutors in the math center who aren't busy. Find out if it's appropriate in your department to ask someone else to scan papers, grade, photocopy, run review sessions, or proctor exams. A good office manager can also do a tremendous amount of organizing for events such as award ceremonies or luncheons. One school I know of lets each faculty member have a student worker for 6 hours a week for grading, proctoring, or other work-related tasks at the faculty member's discretion. In schools with a high workload and limited funds, the administration may be willing to provide graders or student assistants to the faculty or secretary as a relatively cheap way to decrease faculty workload.

Finally, you may be able to request a laptop instead of a desktop computer so that you can work from home if you have sick children or work at night.

Making Life Easier at Home

My own priorities for an easy life at home are to spend enjoyable time together as a family, to somehow have dinner together every night, and to not cry at the state of the house.

In academic and some industry jobs, a certain amount of work can be done at home. Some of this work can be easily interrupted; the rest needs undivided concentration. One option is to come home early, and then do the difficult work (or even go back to the office to do it) after the kids go to bed. Another option is to come home early, go to bed at the same time as your kids, and then get up at 3 a.m. to do this work. With school-age kids, you can sit down with them and do your grading (or other easily interrupted work) while they do their homework. You can stay later at the office and not bring anything home. You can save special videos for kids to watch while you do work at home. Or you can get rid of your TV altogether, which doesn't actually buy you any more work time but might maximize limited family interaction.

Also with regard to home life, a popular piece of advice is to have a "date-night" with your partner every week. This is not often practical. But even if you have kids who don't want to go to bed without you there, it may work out to occasionally trade babysitting with other friends with kids and to go out one a month or so to an early dinner.

Having dinner together is also an important thing for many families. Sometimes, especially in families with older kids, the "together" is the challenging part, but in my own family it's the fact that the dinner has to get made that provides the stress. We try to have a lot of healthy staples around (cheese, applesauce, fruits, good bread, yogurt) that can and do turn into quick meals for all of us. It also works well when we can cook an extra-large meal on the weekend and then later in the week eat leftovers or quick meals based on the weekend meal (there are several books that discussing how to do this efficiently, such as Cooking for the Week by Diane Morgan, Dan Taggart, and Kathleen Taggart). Making extra meals on the weekend (e.g. two lasagnas) and then freezing them can also help. One family I know makes this work by making the shopping list Friday, doing the shopping Saturday, and then leaving Sunday for the cooking.

And now, cleaning. Cleaning people cost a lot of money but are wonderful. They don't necessarily save time (this depends on how much time you spent cleaning before, and how much you have to straighten so they can find the floor to mop) but they can bring a peacefulness from the chaos of life. In addition to or instead of a paid professional, some ways to straighten when you don't want to are to set a timer for 15 minutes and just do that (longer if you want, but feel no guilt if you don't). Or just clean one room and feel satisfied (try to vary the room, though). Or, my own favorite for home and office, say that you'll do 20 little things or 5 big ones and then keep track of your progress and extend it if the mood strikes.