Your onward journey as a working farther

How central are work and family to your identity? Imagine a scale of 0-10 for both work and family: where would you put yourself? A high score on one doesn’t preclude a high score on the other, although it could present a significant challenge in how you organise your time. Ideally the scores are reflected in the time and effort you plough into each. There are 119 waking hours in a week (with seven hours a night for sleep). How many of those will you give to work? Remember also that this will change: you might have great visions of not reducing workload but when you are the only one who can get your baby to sleep and that takes two hours in the middle of the night, you might end up changing that!

What gives you purpose and worth? What activities give you a sense of accomplishment? What will give you recognition and make a difference to how quickly you progress (if that is important to you)? It's possible to be a high performer who is progressing professionally and still have time to be an active, present father. The key is to know in your own mind what specific activities/deliverables you want your name against and which you are prepared to ditch, delegate or do less of. You might want to think about whether your career could move more slowly for a time whilst you and your partner adjust to being parents and also go through her return to work transition.

Flexible working may be useful or necessary depending on your childcare arrangements. If your partner/spouse also works, you will probably need to agree a shared schedule of childcare drop-offs and pick-ups. For example, it might be ideal for you to have one day a week where you come in later and finish later and another in reverse. This gives you the opportunity to enjoy one-to-one time with your son or daughter at breakfast or bedtime. This altered pattern of work has the benefit of you being able to focus and get more done at either end of the day when the office is quieter and/or be available to clients outside usual hours. Flexible working could also include working from home which could cut out a lengthy commute and mean more time for sleep or the opportunity to get to the gym, play team sports or continue with another interest after work.

Since 30 June 2014, all employees who have worked for the same employer for 26 weeks have had the right to request flexible working (previously just parents and carers). The right to request does not mean the right to have requests granted, it means that your employer must handle requests in a 'reasonable manner'. A reasonable manner includes assessing the advantages and disadvantages of granting your request. You might judge that a less formal agreement can be reached with your line manager, particularly if you hold a senior role and/or have a trusting, output-focused culture. Whichever route you take, do think about how you can demonstrate how flexible arrangements can be beneficial for you/the team/clients/wider business and at the very least how it won't be detrimental to any of those groups.

Knowing what your professional priorities are makes it is easier to have a fantastic focus on what needs done by you and what can be delegated, ignored or put to one side. Get into the habit of drawing up a list of key actions for each priority case/project for the week ahead and stick to it. Match the tasks that require complete focus and concentration to the times of day you are most alert. Leave emails and low effort tasks to other times and do any personal admin at lunchtime.

Consistently putting in appearances at work socials helps you keep up to date with what’s happening beyond your immediate priorities. If it's an after work drink session and you want to get home to the family, decide on the one or two people you'd really like to have a catch-up with, make a beeline for them and once you've had the conversations, leave. Consider online CPD or CPD that coincides with your preferred way of working.

A US study of nearly 50 dual-earning, middle class families who were successfully managing work and home found ten common themes, one of which was maintaining work boundaries (Haddock et al, 2001). These families were clear on the time they were setting aside for family and excluded work-related activities at that time - and when at work they were completely immersed in work to the exclusion of all else.  There will always be more you can, want or perceive you need to do, especially if you are a partner or are on that track. However, without downtime you risk ill-health, crumbling relationships and poorer professional performance. Many professionals report the quality of the time spent with their family - and everyone being clear on when this time will be, and sticking to it - being more important than the quantity.

Relationships are nourished and good feeling created when we give our children our full attention. Dilution of attention (for instance, by checking emails whilst playing Duplo with a toddler) means that neither activity is done to the best of our ability and each one takes longer because of our brains' need to refocus each time we switch between tasks.

Research shows that even where a man and woman both work full-time, women pick up significantly more domestic and child-related tasks than men. It's worth taking a team approach to family life and suggesting you co-create a plan of who will do what and when. This gives everyone clarity, lessens any potential resentment and makes family life flow more easily by saving time and energy that would otherwise be spent on daily negotiations.

Download an example of a jointly agreed family plan. Kim (K) works three days a week and Paul (P) five. They have a cleaner (C). Taken with permission from Mothers Work! by Jessica Chivers.

Good health is the foundation of you being able to deliver at work and enjoy family life. Interrupted sleep and insufficient sleep in the early days of being a parent are likely to impair your judgment and performance so it's worth prioritising sleep above other 'me time' activities until you get back to have seven hours solid sleep.

The following prompts are designed to help you consider how you can make a positive start to combining fatherhood and career.

1. How much leave will you take and when?
2. How much time will you strive to give to work and family each week?
3. What are your top professional priorities and how will you fit them into the time you have allocated to work?
4. What points do you need to discuss with your line manager?
5. What one thing can you start to do differently for the good of family life?

• Statutory Paternity Pay and Leave
• Statutory Adoption Pay and Leave
• Shared Parental Pay and Leave
• Families Need Fathers Scotland - help and support for fathers who have separated and having problems seeing their children 
• Haddock, S.A., Ziemba, S.J. Zimmerman, T.S. and Current, L.R. (2001). Ten adaptive Strategies for family and work balance: advice from successful families, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27, 445-58
• The Working Dad's Survival Guide: How to Succeed at Work and at Home by Scott Behson (Motivational Press, 2015)