MELISSA intro

MELISSA NICHOLSON: You truly just bring out the best in each other and you start practicing that in your home too. Just thinking about how intense parenting is at every step of the way, right? That you just naturally start job sharing at home. 

Introduction

INTRO: Welcome to Job Share Revolution. The show about job sharing—a partnership between two people to bring two minds and skill sets to one full-time position. I’m Melissa Nicholson, former job sharer turned founder of the first U.S. job share company. But it wasn’t long ago that I felt like an utter failure at work and as a new parent. Job sharing was my game-changer. I reclaimed four days a week to fully engage in my life while my capable partner handled everything. Together, we achieved more than I ever could solo. Fast forward to many lessons learned to bring you the training and support I wish I’d had to change lives and the modern-day workplace. Let’s live life and slay work.

Melissa NICHOLSON

MELISSA NICHOLSON: Have you ever had one plan ready and then you were ready to execute that plan? But you got a fit of inspiration and you thought, what the hell, let’s throw it out on its ear.

This is that episode, friend. I am so inspired by, honestly, I’m just inspired by being a mom. And I’m sitting here thinking, Mother’s Day is this weekend and I don’t think I have ever, ever mothered so hard as I have in the past few weeks with my daughter. She is graduating in a matter of weeks from high school. I can’t flippin’ believe it.

If you’ve been here with me for a while, you know that my daughter Iris was my WHY for job sharing—the inspiration. I really just wanted to spend every moment I could, soaking in all of her “firsts”, enjoying uninterrupted, unplugged, focused, and present time with my baby. But I didn’t want to give up my career.

A career I had put so much into. And you might be a little bit like me. A bit of a go-getter and a high achiever. Somebody who is just really driven to do a great job. And so many of us struggle with what that looks like when we do become parents. And you may not be a parent, but if you are a parent, this probably resonates for you.

So when you have these little babies, these precious babies, God, you are in the thick of it, right? It’s just all-encompassing. They need so much from you and it’s time (and) attention. They literally need you to eat. And then as they get older and they go through their toddler years, there are needs there. But then they hit elementary and you think, “Oh, it’s going to let up. It’s it’s gonna let up, right?” But the needs just shift. They change. 

All of a sudden you find yourself being a soccer parent, and kind of like skipping out down the back staircase, trying to sneak out of work and hit a 4 O’clock soccer game, which is just impossible, right? Especially probably through downtown traffic. So you’re sitting there thinking, “Okay, it’s gonna let up. It’s going to let up. We’re going to hit middle school,  right?” 

Oh middle school. That hits also because the emotional needs change. And you think, “Okay, high school…High school is it.” Well, let me tell you, friend, I’m sitting here squarely a couple of weeks away from graduation. And truly, I don’t think that I’ve ever had more interaction with my daughter or that she’s ever needed me more. Me and her dad, quite frankly.

And thank God that job sharing set up our household to be a very equal co-parenting household from the very start. In fact, if you know us personally, I will tell you that in many instances I would say that Mike is the Lead Parent, that he takes the lead on a lot of things. And that’s the mental load too. He really does put time and emotional effort into helping our kids with things that they struggle with.

Now, of course, that mental load changes as the kids get older. When they’re young, you’re thinking about all the presents you have to buy, and this and that. The same thing can be said for this senior year of high school. It is so intense. Not only have they been thinking about and working through their college search, you know, thinking about where they want to go to college, meeting with college reps, and preparing for college applications, all the way from junior year. Right? It starts with the S.A.T., but they really ramp into that senior year. And for our daughter, she was in an early decider.

She was looking at her college choice the same way that I would advise someone to approach their job search. She was looking at it like a negotiation. She went in thinking, “I’m a catch. Like I’m a great student. I’ve worked really hard. I am well-rounded, I volunteer, I’m on sports teams, and I’m on mock trial. I do all these different things. I’m a great catch.”

So she truly was taking her college search very seriously. A lot like a job search. She was looking at every opportunity she could. Thinking about merit, scholarships, aid, and also what was the right fit for her interests. And she took this whole thing very seriously. So she was also looking at scholarship opportunities.

Our decision—because I do think it is a family decision. It is your student’s decision, of course, it’s their college career. But let’s be honest, it’s a joint decision because the cost of college tuition is so insanely expensive now, especially if you’re going for an out-of-state school that’s not public. So an in-state public school that’s got a huge difference in price tag than an out-of-state school.

So it really was the three of us together—her dad, myself, and my daughter, working through this decision assessing where she had been accepted, what the offers were, and how that kind of played into what she ultimately wanted to study and what was the best fit for her.

We truly felt that she was going to go to the University of Texas, UT, which is in our backyard, almost literally in our backyard. So we thought, well, this would be perfect. It’s an excellent university, public, and in-state. Her dad went to this university. I am an Aggie, so there’s a rivalry there. If you know, if you know. But she has identified with my husband’s family. Both his brothers were longhorns and went to UT. She’s volunteered on their campus, so she’s very comfortable with the campus. And a lot of her friends were also going to UT. So we kind of thought that was it.

But during spring break week, she got accepted to three colleges all in Boston. We felt like we owed it to her to explore whether one of these Boston colleges, one of these three, might be the school for her. So we took a trip. We set aside one school visit per day. The experience was so positive. You know, sometimes you just know. It’s like finding your spouse and you just have this feeling like, it just feels right. It’s a lot like that with your job, your partner too. Part of it is a gut check. It’s that chemistry. Like you know, you’ve got a feeling deep down inside you’re like, “This is it.”

When we got to our third school visit, Boston University, it’s an urban school. But the school of Education that she’s interested in, is very small and was founded by the mother of modern-day kindergarten. And it just it just felt right. They knew her at the school. It just reminded me and surprised me how much I have been parenting my tush off the last couple of weeks, and how much I’ve gotten on the same page with my husband, where we’ve sat here as a team, doing it together.

It’s such an incredible thing when you job share because that is the way you work with your job share partner. But that is what comes back to your co-parenting partner, your life partner. Because when you start job sharing at work, you trust the other person. You give up control. You lean into your strengths, your individual strengths, and you allow your partner to lean into theirs.

You truly just bring out the best in each other, and you start practicing that in your home too. Because you are so tuned in to work those three days a week that you are in your job share working, you just naturally start job sharing at home as well. I guess my main point of this episode is just thinking about how intense parenting is at every step of the way, right?

And I even hear from people who are a little bit ahead of me that in that first year of college, your kids still need you. They’re learning how to live on their own and they still need a little support. And of course, like, I know this is about to be such a big transition. I mean, my son will still be home. It’s going to be a big transition, a big life transition for our entire family.

As I’m thinking through Mother’s Day and this time of year and just how crazy it is at every stage when kids are in elementary school. You are just slammed those last couple of weeks of school. I mean, you’ve got teacher gifts, end-of-school awards, you’ve got talent shows. They put every single thing they smash into those last couple of weeks on top of all that, you have that added stress of thinking about what is your summer camp situation. Are they in day camps? Are they in the rec center? Are their grandparents helping out? And if not, what are you going to do with your kids? We all know that this is an issue for working parents.

The same thing is true in middle school and high school. And honestly, in middle school, the summer can even be much, much harder. Your kids are phasing out of day camps and rec center programs. Even if they are able to get a job, they’re dependent on your flexibility to drive them to and from. I mean, I’m going to be doing that this summer for my son because he doesn’t have his license yet. And I just think this is like, “Mayday, mayday. Help me! Help me!” That’s what parents are saying, right?

As you are slammed with all of this stuff in May, as your kids are getting out of school and transitioning to summer. What I want to suggest is that during this crazy time of year. Mayday, mayday, help me, help me. I’m a parent and I’m freaking sinking. I want you to take a job-sharing note. I want you to lean into your parenting partner as co-parents during this period. I want you to look at what needs to happen during May and how can you share the load together. How can you lean into your individual strengths, the things that you both like doing, and do really well, and share the load?

Take things off your plate that aren’t necessary, and make sure that if you happen to be the female in the relationship—gender can play a role here—make sure that you are not doing all of the mental load planning yourself, and that you are both doing that work. So if there are graduation parties to plan, if there are middle school talent show preparations to be had, or teachers’ gifts to be bought, make sure that you sit down and have a check-in with your parenting partner and divide that labor. It’s really going to make everything go so much smoother this last month for you when you are probably burnt out.

So I want you to think about it in terms of the Fair Play method, Eve Rodsky’s method. So you’re going to have:

1. Conception
2. Planning is managing the assignment, managing all those things coming up, keeping track of all the deadlines during May, and prepping your major projects.
3. Execution so that you are making sure that they are prepped for their exams. You have whatever is needed to navigate the final school push. Y

You don’t have to do it alone. I’m just encouraging you to take this job sharing note. Support one another through this final stretch of the school year. Because it’s hard. It’s hard and it’s real. Okay, friend, thank you for indulging me, and this mammoth on honestly, like this is all part of it. Like, job sharing is not just about your career, it is about your life.

Job sharing is for so many people, but moms have a particular need. And so I just think it’s really important to talk about moms and how we can help Mom out and support her during Mother’s Day, especially when I have been mothering so hard lately myself.

I wanted to share this very last thing as we’re thinking about Mother’s Day this Sunday and what mom needs.

Katherine Goldstein, co-host of the Double Shift podcast, and she has a Substack of the same name. She’s a huge care advocate and I just adore her. Katherine shared some statistics that I thought were amazing and I just thought, here’s my message to your family this Mother’s Day: Help Mom out. Do all that emotional and unpaid labor that she’s used to doing this Mother’s Day, and let Mom do this instead:

• Okay, 28% of moms want the day off from parenting. A third of moms just want a day off. They don’t want to be in charge. They don’t want to parent
• 20% of moms. They want to hit that snooze button and sleep and let Mom sleep in this Sunday. Do not wake her up early.
• 12% of moms want delicious food. And here is the kicker prepared by somebody else. So if you are not prepared to make Mom breakfast in bed and let her sleep until at least 10:00, then I don’t even want to talk to you. I don’t even know what you’re doing here.
• 11% of moms want several hours alone to binge Netflix.

So you might think that your mom wants, like, you know, beautiful flowers. Our moms just really want a day off from parenting. They want to sleep in. They want someone else to cook for them for once, and they just want to, like, binge their favorite show.

Mine right now—and I’m going to say it, and I’m going to be a little embarrassed. Mine is Dying for Sex with Michelle Williams. I think she is a freaking genius. And I will be honest, I made a bit of a mistake, Mike. So rarely gets into like, watching a series with me and he was like, let’s watch this series. We started watching it together and I was like, this is like completely one of those that I should be watching on my own or watching with a girlfriend.

But I am so tickled pink that he actually wants to watch this series with me. We’ve gotten out of doing that together as the kids have gotten older and their bedtimes, obviously. Bedtimes, Teenagers? I mean, they put us to bed. So I’m just so thrilled he wants to watch anything with me. Anyway, that is what I’m leaving you with for Mother’s Day weekend.

Let’s do Mom a total solid. And if you’re a mom, I hope that you share some of these tidbits with your family and it’s giving you something to think about. I’m always going to bring it back to job sharing because it’s sharing the load. It’s sharing the load at work, it’s sharing the load at home. And you can apply those principles in your home, which is exactly what I am recommending for Mother’s Day weekend.

Happy, happy Mother’s Day to all you mom figures. All of you folks who are mothering and nurturing people. You do not have to be a mother-to-mother. I also want to say that I understand that this holiday can be really rough. It can be hard for people. There are a lot of people who have lost their mom, or they have a really complex and distant relationship with their mom. I had that before my mom came into my care with Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago, and it’s complex for me in many ways. I’m the mom now, so the roles have definitely reversed.

I just wanted to let you know that I’m sending you a lot of love, and I hope you have a beautiful Mother’s Day. I’ll see you next week.

Same time, same place. Bye for now.