There was a phase in my life when I stepped away from my career. For almost ten years, I chose to stay home while my children were little.
Now, whenever people hear that, they imagine a wonderfully relaxed life.
“Oh… so you had lots of free time?”
Free time?
That’s adorable.
My days began in the kitchen and ended with bedtime stories. I cooked, managed the house, played badminton every morning, and spent my afternoons building puzzles, answering endless “why” questions, reading stories, teaching little life lessons, and watching two tiny humans slowly discover the world.
Looking back, those years were anything but empty. In fact, they were probably the busiest years of my life. Yet I carried a quiet, persistent feeling that I wasn’t doing enough. So I studied. I completed my MBA, then my MA, followed by a couple of diploma courses and then a PhD. Not because anyone expected me to, but because somewhere inside me was a voice whispering,
“You should be doing something more.”
Apparently, according to society, none of this counted as being “busy.”
The irony is that my days were already overflowing. I wasn’t trying to fill my time. I was trying to justify my worth.
Many of my friends were climbing the corporate ladder, collecting promotions, travelling for work, and every few months LinkedIn would happily announce,
“Congratulations on your promotion!”
I was genuinely happy for them. But somewhere inside my brain lived a tiny, irritating manager who kept whispering,
“This is nice… but what are you actually doing?”
It’s remarkable how easily we compare completely different lives.
The Productivity Trap
Psychologists have a name for this: productivity guilt.
But I think it goes even deeper. Many of us don’t just associate productivity with achievement. We associate paid work with real work.
Somewhere along the way, our brains quietly begin making an unfair equation.
Salary = Contribution
Promotion = Success
Caregiving = Just life
It’s a terrible equation. But many of us believe it without ever questioning it.
Our brains don’t simply enjoy being productive — they often begin to equate productivity with self-worth. If we’re constantly achieving, we’re successful. If we’re constantly busy, we’re valuable. And if what we’re doing doesn’t earn a salary or a title, perhaps it doesn’t really count. The problem is that our definition of productivity is surprisingly narrow.
Some of the most meaningful work in life doesn’t come with a salary, a title, or an annual appraisal. Yet it is often the work that shapes lives the most.
The Impact of the Work We Don’t Count
When we fail to recognise caregiving and homemaking as real work, something else happens.
We don’t feel we’ve earned rest either.
Have you ever noticed how difficult it is for parents, caregivers, or homemakers to simply sit down?
Not because there isn’t a chair. Because there’s always one more thing waiting. Fold the laundry. Pack tomorrow’s lunch. Reply to that message. Organise the cupboard. Pay the electricity bill. Find that missing school notebook that mysteriously vanished five minutes before bedtime.
The body finally sits. The mind doesn’t. The strange part is that after twelve exhausting hours, many still say, “I haven’t really done much today.”
Rest Isn’t a Reward
Maybe we’ve misunderstood rest altogether. We often treat rest as something that has to be earned.
But what if the problem isn’t that we don’t value rest? What if the problem is that we fail to recognise the work that deserves it?
Every athlete knows muscles grow during recovery. Every musician knows silence gives meaning to music. Every farmer knows fields sometimes need to lie fallow before producing another harvest. Nature understands the value of rest. The irony is that humans often don’t.
Especially when the work they’ve been doing doesn’t appear on a résumé or a performance review.
What Really Matters
We often think the most important work is the work the world applauds. Perhaps it’s the work that nobody notices.
The meals that appear on the table.
The child who grows up feeling safe.
The ageing parent who isn’t left alone.
The friend who was listened to.
The home that quietly functions every single day.
Maybe the greatest mistake isn’t that we forget to rest. Maybe it’s that we forget to count some of life’s most important work as work at all.
Those ten years taught me many things. They taught me patience, perspective, resilience, and the immeasurable value of being present.
Raising my children wasn’t time taken away from life.
It was life.
If I have one regret, it isn’t that I stepped away from my career for a while.
It’s that I spent so much of that time feeling guilty
for a life that was already full of purpose.