Kids can be a motivator or a demotivator: you choose

I'm soon to be a father for the second time and I'm very excited. Looking at this from a career perspective is a little less exciting.

As this will be my second I'm well aware of the lack of sleep that is soon to start, this will obviously have a knock on effect on my time at work. I will be less awake during the day and probably more irritable (recently giving up coffee won't help either!), not that this is anything unusual for me.

I'll also be having 2 weeks of leave when the baby's born. This will be significant for two reasons.

1. Financially I'll be losing my normal pay and having it replaced with paternity pay. This is a very useful service the government provides however the payment made will be £139 per week for me. This is the equivalent of around £7 grand a year. A pretty paltry sum. This won't be a large hardship for us as we've been saving hard all year. This will simply put us in the position of having to dip into these savings rather than being able to increase them further. Remember folks SAVE ALL THE TIME.

2. The 2 weeks off will be significant for me in my career as well. As I work in finance 2 weeks out, especially near the end of the month is the busiest time. Not working during this time will not only put my colleagues under significant pressure to not only do their own jobs but also cover mine, but may turn some of my hard work putting people on my side around. Especially if they don't know the reason for my absence.

So what can I do about these two things.

1. As I mentioned we've been saving hard for this, an occasion like this doesn't quite come around every year, but it is also not unexpected. Having a cash buffer put aside for these things can help put your mind at ease just when you need it most. Struggling for cash at times like this would be something I would not be looking forward to.

2. To mitigate any loss in standing at work I have been trying to build up a plan of action with my manager, distributing the different tasks to those most proficient and training them where necessary. Unfortunately my absence may coincide with a couple of other people leaving the company  for new jobs. This isn't the best timing as it will disrupt the norm even further. I've also not so subtly dropped into conversations with my key stakeholders that at some point in the near future I'll be off work due to a fantastic new addition to the family.

Hopefully these actions will help mitigate the large part of any disruption. Of course once I've returned to work I'll have to try hard to catch up. I simply hope they won't push too hard too soon, otherwise I may snap at a few of them. I'm not good when I'm tired.