Small wins for working mums: why school pick-up saved my week?

Fifteen minutes before I was due to switch off for the weekend, my boss’s request landed in my inbox. Review the major planning document. Deadline: 11.30am on Monday, well before the meeting. I did the sums in my head and they didn’t add up. It was never going to fit into three hours, let alone fifteen minutes.

I did what I always do, which is feel responsible. After putting the kids to bed on Friday night, I opened my laptop and carried on. I worked past midnight and still didn’t finish. I worked on my commute on Monday too, and in the end I delivered a half-cooked job. Not because I hadn’t tried, but because a fully cooked one depended on information from other teams that simply wasn’t there. My boss called it “the black box“, full of blanks to fill.

Then came the meeting. This was the same boss whose request had arrived with no reasonable timeline, and who now criticised my work in the meeting without any self-awareness at all. I felt embarrassed and, honestly, awful. When you have given up a Friday night for something, criticism lands harder. It stings more because you paid for the work with your own time.

Looking back, the weekend in between was a strange blessing. The one thing I would normally have done, which is keep working, was quietly taken out of my hands. Running the kids’ errands left me no room to open the laptop, and thank goodness. Splitting my attention would have meant messing up big time on both sides, and sacrificing family time only to be criticised in return would have been a much tougher bullet to swallow. Even if I had worked, who was going to thank me? A couple of “good jobs”? No, thank you.

On the bright side, we took the kids to see The Dinosaur That Pooped, and they absolutely loved it. My husband, who cooks for us by choice, took a break from the kitchen that weekend, and we treated ourselves to a proper Sichuan meal we hadn’t had for the longest time. Nobody had to cook, not even the chef. Nobody there cared about my deadline, which I was grateful for.

The black box discussion rumbled on for a couple more days with no clear resolution. Eventually I realised I wasn’t the only one. Nobody had been given enough time to deliver a satisfactory outcome, and the brief had been unclear from the start.

So I took a step back.

That piece of work was not the only thing on my plate. I attended meetings where my input was appreciated and several problems got solved, and I helped a colleague. I also joined an external leadership webinar that I had signed up for ages ago and fully expected to skip. I’m glad I didn’t. The guest speaker ignited my thinking bulb, and I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.

I had assumed a bad start to the week was an omen for the rest of it. What actually helped was the least impressive thing in my diary: school pick-up. It got me out of my chair and into a breezy walk, which is exactly what I need when I’m overwhelmed. Then there are the stories. My little girl gives me every dramatic detail of her day, and somehow they take my mind somewhere else. This week it was: “Mummy, today Mr Ted gave me a purple band because I was very good in tidying up. I was the only one who received it.” I pictured her day at school, her simple and honest friendships, and how much the small things I barely notice mean to her.

Then she said something else: “Mummy, sometimes I wish you come earlier so I can show my friends who my mummy is.” I’ll admit that one stung a little, and warmed me a lot. Picking her up means the world to her, and I was even more surprised to realise that it is the smallest win that nobody saw.

Reflecting on my week, I had spent days craving recognition for a piece of work that was never set up properly for anyone to succeed at. Meanwhile, my daughter was proud of a purple band for tidying up, and the thing that earned her wholehearted appreciation was me turning up. Neither would ever make it into a performance review.

What I’m taking from this week:

1. Check the timeline before you say yes. Ask yourself honestly whether the request can be done well in the time given. Look at what it depends on, such as information from other teams. If it isn’t feasible, push back with a timeline that is reasonable, for example: “I can give you an early version by Monday and the full piece by Wednesday, once the other teams come back to me.” A good piece delivered a little later beats a half-cooked one delivered on time.
2. Draw your weekend line before someone else does. Decide in advance what you are willing to give up family time for, so you are not negotiating with yourself late on a Friday. Mine was drawn by weekend kids’ errands this time, and I was glad of it.
3. Zoom out before you spiral. When one meeting goes badly, write down what else went right that week. Mine was meetings where my input was appreciated, a colleague I helped and a webinar I almost skipped.
4. Protect the small ritual that clears your head. Mine is the walk to school pick-up, and I now treat it as non-negotiable.

Fifteen minutes before the weekend, a request tried to take my Friday night, and it did. It didn’t get the rest of my week, though. The smallest win was waiting at school pick-up, and nobody will ever put it in a report. I’m perfectly happy with that.

What was the smallest win nobody saw in your week?