HISMD: Comms at a Cybersecurity Company, Individual Contributor

WFH. Partner (WFH). 1 kid - 1yo. Kansas City, MO. 27.

Each Thursday, the “How I Structure My Day” series features women from different industries, with and without kids, with and without partners, with family living with/near them and not, wfh to 1+ hour commutes, etc. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do!

Before we dig in, have any personal travel coming up?

If you have personal trips coming up (and summer is coming up!), you can grab my checklist of things to calendar for personal travel here. Think: blocking the last work afternoon and the first work morning back from meetings so that you can wrap things up and settle back in, time to pack (and laundry in light of that), reminders to order Instacart on the way home, and more!

The Snapshot

• Profession: Comms at a Cybersecurity Company, Individual Contributor

• WFH

• Partner: Yes (WFH)

• Children: Yes – 1 kid (1yo.)

• Kansas City, MO

• 27

Typical Morning:

• Wake up at 5:45 a.m. to my alarm unless my baby wakes me up earlier. She just turned a year but we were still averaging 1-2 wake ups a night until this week.

• First thing's first, make breakfast for myself and my husband (English muffin for me, oatmeal for him) and brew coffee (for me and probably my favorite part of my morning ha).

• Head to the gym between 6:20-6:30. --> I was exclusively pumping until my baby was around 9 months and now that I am not, I am able to get to the gym sooner.

• Work out for 40-45 minutes. I mix strength training and running, roughly 2 runs a week and 2-3 lifting sessions.

• My husband handles mornings with our daughter because I am the parent that does nights/wakes up with her overnight. He's an accountant at a private firm so he has a lot more flexibility in his day and can workout during his lunch break.

• Get home, log in to work to see if there is anything that came in overnight that I need to address first. I will usually do 1-2 things if there is anything higher priority. I work at a global company so things are happening all hours of the day and I like knowing what my day is about to look like with what has been happening already.

• Shower, light makeup, and some curl cream in my hair and I am good to go. I never wear pajamas while working. In the summer I have a "uniform" of a black t-shirt, cardigan, and shorts. In the winter, I have a few sweaters I may throw on before a call, otherwise, it's a sweatshirt and leggings.

• Sitting down by 8 a.m.

Morning "Make Life Easier" Hacks

• I try to load and run the dishwasher as soon as we finish dinner the night before so that I can try to unload them before bed, too. It's one less thing in the morning.

• I lay out my outfit for the gym & the clothes I am going to wear for work the night before, too.

• I always pack my daughter's lunch box the day before too and I load a dedicated bag in our car that has her blanket, back-up outfits, etc.

Transition Into Work Mode

• Working out is key. When I used to go into an office, I'd always work out before work and then drive into work. Going to the gym and coming back is like my "commute" (albeit, luckily only 5 minutes away). Given that I work for a global company, it can be hard to step away in the middle of the day because that is when most of us have some overlapping hours for collaboration. Getting in a work out ensures I have some "me time" before life happens.

What My Work Day Looks Like

• A lot of my days are spent going between product managers, engineering, product marketing, and customer success. The best way to describe what I do is taking the technical cybersecurity functions/features and translating it into language our customer base will understand.

• Asana and Slack are my best friends. I've built out and maintained a ticketing system for any communications requests other teams have for my team and it's great to see at-a-glance what is going on. Like I've said, being at a global company impacts how we work. A lot of it is asynchronous via Slack.

• I am grateful my days aren't bogged down with meetings and I have time to actually get things done.

• I've also built out templates for tracking my outcomes at work and all meeting agendas. These tools are really helpful so that when I do have meetings, they are productive and stay on track.

Lunch/Snacks

• Okay maybe this is another hack. It started during my maternity leave when one of my cousins brought over homemade frozen burritos. My husband and I were like... this is great, let's continue it. We started meal prepping burritos in bulk on Sundays and it's an absolute game-changer. Each week we make a different kind so we have a rotation of chicken, burger, pork, etc. We will pick out the next day's burritos when we put our "lunch burritos" in the oven for 30 minutes at 385. The thing I love most about WFH is not having a commute, but second is not having to deal with the sad break room kitchen.

• I usually have two snacks a day, a yogurt cup with fruit after the gym and popcorn in the afternoon.

Breaks

• I don't take a proper lunch break because of those overlapping hours during lunch time. I do try to take my dog on a quick walk at some point during the day every day to get some fresh air and get a break from the screens.

Leaving Work

• I log out at 4 p.m. every day. I am not as good as my husband at leaving work at work. I have my boss, skip level, and a close coworker as VIPs on Slack so my only notifications I get are from them. That being said, I am admittedly always thinking about work in some capacity. I think that's the nature of being an anxious person in a big tech company and nothing ever feeling stable. I am much more of a morning person, though, so I'd rather log on before 7 a.m. and get work done if I have to versus working late in the evening. My brain is fried after 4 p.m.

Transition Out of Work Mode

• My husband is great and does daycare drop off and pick up. When they get home, I shut down my computer and spend quality time with my daughter.

After Work/Evening Hours

• We will play for a little bit before she takes her second nap of the day. She is going to be dropping to one nap soon though so that will change things.

• After the nap, we go on a family walk before dinner time.

• I will play with our daughter while my husband cooks dinner. I am responsible for planning the meals, making the grocery list, etc. I also am the one to do the dishes so I will clean up the kitchen and do dishes after dinner.

• After dinner, I play with my daughter in the living room until her bath around 6:30/7.

• After bath time, I will feed her a bottle and she's in bed between 7:30-8. We didn't do proper sleep training, I would feed her a bottle to sleep and transfer her until 9/10 months. She's been able to self-soothe herself to sleep and it's been great.

• After she's asleep, we watch a show or sports, I pick up around the house, and read my Kindle while my husband plays video games. We are all always in the living room together, though. We can do our own things but together!

Dinner Time/Meal Tips

• Typically at 5:00 but it depends on her nap. Up until this month, so roughly 1 year, we had been meal prepping every Sunday and just microwaving the dinners. Now that our daughter is eating with us (she only takes 3-4 bottles a day and more for comfort than anything) we are cooking dinner every night again.

• I keep a running shared note in my Notes app that I add to as soon as I notice we're running low on a snack or meal item. I grew up in a family that didn't go out to eat often and my husband's family was the same so it's just a habit I think to eat dinner at home during the week. That being said, we'll go out for lunch on the weekends--usually to a brewery.

Evening Non-Negotiables

• Run the dishwasher, lay out clothes, ensure the daycare stuff is prepped and in the car (besides the lunch box).

• I love being comfy so I am admittedly in my pajamas as soon as we are back from our evening walk.

• I am also the calendar keeper in our house. We got an off-brand Skylight that I love for putting my to-dos in. It syncs with Google Calendar, too, so we can see our appointments and things all in one place (it's docked in our kitchen). I will update any calendar items and be sure my husband is aware of any of those things too.

Afternoon/Evening “Make Life Smoother” Tips

• I have started doing at least one household chore a day instead of saving them all for the weekend. I use that off-brand Skylight I mentioned to set those chores as recurring. Monday is bathrooms, Tuesday is dog poop pick up and kitchen deep clean, Wednesday is trash, Thursday is bedrooms, and Friday is floors.

• I also do the laundry 2x a week usually Wednesday and Sunday.

• I still end up mopping the floors and wiping down the kitchen more than 1x a week obviously but it's nice to have just one small thing a day.

Sharing the Load with a Partner

• My husband does a lot of the childcare stuff and I am forever grateful. We've definitely learned a lot about each other in the first year of being parents. I think the best advice I can give is never to expect it to be 100% even or fair. Some days he may do more and other days I may do more. If you're fighting to keep your effort even, it ends up being more draining. There's seasons for everything.

Things You Do For Fun/You During the Week

• I am not good at putting my phone down and scroll more than I should, that being said I try to never be on TikTok when my daughter is awake. So once she's in bed, I'll either scroll on TikTok or what I am trying to get better at is reading. I've always been a big reader and I could read even more if I scrolled less. I got a Kindle and I use the Libby app to read there, which has been nice versus trying to fit in time to go to the library.

• My husband and I are really into craft breweries as well so on a weekend you can likely catch us up early at a brewery right when they open for a beer and lunch.

Exercise/Body Movement

• Yes! I usually run 2x a week and will lift 2-3 times a week at the gym depending on what our schedule shakes out to look like.

Outsourcing

• We used to have a cleaner before having a baby and I miss it. We are hoping to bring that back at least 1x a month.

• We also use daycare for our daughter. I really love working and I truly believe I am a better mom because I work outside of the home. Our daycare is really great and is always uploading photos so that we can see what she's up to and how she is doing. That's helped a lot.

Anything Else the Sharer Wants to Share

• I am someone who aspires to "climb the corporate ladder" in terms of marketing/communications management. I was really scared about having a baby, working full time, and still being present in my daughter's life. Even before having a child, I was a strong WFH advocate. I am naturally very introverted and focus better in my own space. Having a child has just reinforced how important access to remote work is. That's not to say I am not working, I am busier now than I ever was in my previous role in an office. I am grateful for the time I save commuting and that it allots myself and my husband to be around for more of our daughter's day-to-day.

• I also strongly believe in childcare if you are WFH. You cannot give work and your child 100%. We make it work on various sick days or school closings, of course, but you can't manage both forever. I wish childcare was more affordable and that they paid childcare workers more of what they're bringing in.

That’s a wrap for this one!

Thank you so much to this woman for generously sharing. These publish every Thursday!

A reminder of the ground rules to ensure women continue wanting to share about their days and feel safe doing so.

• Encouraging comments always welcome!

• If you have questions or even hang-ups about what someone shared, you are welcome to ask a question for the sharer in the same kind, genuinely curious way you would if you were looking at that woman in her eyes. She might respond through me.

• If comments are judge-y or mean-spirited, I reserve the right to delete comments. I can handle being criticized about my own work here (and even still, to a degree – I’m also a person), but I go into full mama bear mode when people come after my people – including women who are being vulnerable and sharing in the first place.

• Thanks to the vast majority of people who are so kind!

New here? Welcome!

I’m Kelly Nolan, an attorney-turned-time management strategist and mom of two. After experiencing overwhelm as a young patent litigator in Boston, I figured out a time management system to help me show up in the ways that I wanted to at work and at home – without requiring my brain to somehow magically remember it all. I now teach other professional working women how to manage their personal, family, and career roles with less stress and more calm clarity using realistic time management strategies.

My system, the Bright Method, has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, and my work has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Business Insider, and more. Learn more on my website, come learn bite-sized strategies with me on Instagram, or jump into my free 5-day program.

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