How I keep my cool while waiting 15 minutes for my pre-schooler to decide what shoes to wear.

I’ve finally made it to work. I’m not late I don’t have fixed hours, but I’m later than I intended to be. I‘m calm, and in a reasonable frame of mind. My pre-schooler took two hours to get himself ready for kindy today, and everyone got to where they needed to be without tears.

If this had happened seven years ago, the outcome would have been very different. Then, there was yelling, lots of yelling, and tears – so many tears – from the kids and from me. Then followed the snarky phone call to my husband. I would vent at him so I could calm down enough to enter an adult workplace and not bite the head off the first person who crossed me. This would, in turn, leave him distressed, because the only thing that seems to really phase him is my distress.

So, what’s different today? For a start, I’m a little older and a lot more battle-hardened to the frustration that comes with raising a pre-schooler. But more importantly, I changed the way I work.

My work is now based on outputs. I’m paid based on what I deliver, not the hours I work. This has relieved an enormous amount of my stress. You can’t be late if you don’t have hours. Almost all my work and contracts are fixed-price, and based on agreed deliverables.

That means on a day like today, when I was arguing with my pre-schooler about the merits of wearing jandals in wet weather when you want to climb trees all day, I could engage in the debate. Then when he agreed that closed shoes are better, I could patiently wait for him to choose those shoes. Today these things were important to him, and deliberating the merits was not about him being a brat, but about him working through a reasoning process.

So I’m in a better headspace than I used to be. I might be at work later than expected, but I didn’t drive down the motorway in tears beating myself up with parenting guilt. My husband isn’t fretting about me after a hissed phone call. I’m here, and I’m ready to work. I know what I need to achieve today, and I’ll be able to do it in the time I have if I focus and take a shorter lunch break. I won’t end the day owing time.

I find working in this way incredibly freeing. As a working mum, working allocated hours felt like a great ledger that I could never quite keep on top of. Working against outputs gives me control over how I allocate my time. It rewards me if I work harder because I finish faster.

There is risk with this way of working. If I consistently work less, I earn less money. I still prefer the weight of this risk over the weight of owing time to someone else. I can work harder and faster, but I can’t add more hours to the day.