Julia's blog: Appraisal season

A slightly painful task looms ahead of me next week. It’s time to critically evaluate my performance over the past few months and set some meaningful and (hopefully) achievable objectives for the year ahead. Easier said than done. There’s a lot to consider, especially around my current Monday to Wednesday working week arrangement, and despite my generally positive outlook on life, I find it awkward to sing my own praises.

I received my most recent feedback from my biggest critic (who is, conversely, also my biggest fan). My three-year-old daughter said earnestly “Mummy, it would be much better if you would just listen to me”. Fair point, but slightly hypocritical given that she had seemingly not heard my previous three requests for her to put her trousers on. (Following the excellent Positive Parenting Seminar run by WorkLife Central last week, I realise I shouldn’t have asked more than twice – there’s something to work on!)

It’s becoming a cliché but I do often feel that, as a working parent, I’m judged on two polar opposite aspects of my life and it’s not easy to achieve everything I want to do in each role. I’m one of the lucky ones: I’ve got an amazing support network at work and at home. I genuinely enjoy my job and the partners and other colleagues I work with have embraced my part-time arrangement. The head of my team is very progressive and we have regular chats about how things are going (meaning I’m not as nervous about my appraisal as I might otherwise be – I’m confident that if any of my colleagues had any serious concerns about my performance, I’d already know about it). At home, my husband does more than his fair share, my mum and in-laws frequently drop everything to help out and we have an excellent part-time nanny. Even with all this help, I have come to the realisation that I can’t quite ‘have it all’.

For now, I need to stop procrastinating and just fill out my appraisal form, and thank my lucky stars that I’m not subject to a formal appraisal at home (I suspect my scores there would be significantly reduced following my recent refusal to “put chocolate sprinkles on my cereal like Nanna does!”). Still, time for reflection can be helpful in setting fresh goals and putting the chaos of family life into perspective. The fact that this is occasionally obligatory may not be such a bad thing.

Julia is a senior associate in the tax team at law firm Nabarro. She works three days a week and spends the rest of her time looking after her three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son.