When I talk to women about returning to work I find they base their plans on what they used to do. This makes sense – it’s what they know. What this approach fails to acknowledge is that so much has changed.

Why being able to leave my marriage makes me happy to stay? I didn’t realise this until I had my first child. I found being on maternity leave a real struggle. Being reliant on my husband for so much really didn’t sit well with me. I know that we’re a team, and he never made me feel anything other than loved and appreciated, but I felt a loss.

This week I met with a woman who’s looking to return to work. She’s been out of the workforce for ten years, and she’s keen to get back in. Yet when I met with her, the main thing I heard from her was doubt. She’d lost confidence in herself. She knew logically she could do it, but deep down she didn’t believe she could.

During four short weeks in March 2020, most traditional office jobs adapted so they could be done from home. Five years on the benefits of working from home remain strong.

If I continue to keep tight control over every aspect of every project, then I need to accept my business will only be able to achieve a finite level of growth. There are only so many hours in my day, and I’ve made a commitment to spend a reasonable number of them with my family, friends and sleeping.

I’ve finally made it to work. I’m not late I don’t have fixed hours, but I’m later than I intended to be. I‘m calm, and in a reasonable frame of mind. My pre-schooler took two hours to get himself ready for kindy today, and everyone got to where they needed to be without tears.

Financial advice is like diet advice. There are some basic tenets that hold true: for diet it’s things like ‘Don’t eat more than you need’, and ‘Eat loads of green vegetables’.

There’s a world of difference between the kind of busy that you’ve chosen and the kind that’s thrust upon you. Essentially, ‘busy’ that’s beyond your control is simply stressful.

When you’re up to your third baby, the gifts are a bit thinner. Those first babies really get all the glory. I feel like the third time around people are a bit wary of encouraging you to continue breeding. If anyone did ask this time my request was for problems or challenges they were facing.

Somehow we’ve ended up with a narrative where women are excellent at investing, which I think is often intended as a way of encouraging more women to invest. Great goal. Yet is this narrative accurate? I suspect not.

It’s a funny feeling leaving your baby to go to work for the first time. I’ve left him before, but that felt different. I was going to a meeting, getting a haircut, buying groceries, or heading out to dinner. This is different. This morning felt like a new phase and new beginning, but also a goodbye.

Sometimes my brain is more valuable than other times. But there’s an easy way to manage this. I have half-a-brain jobs. These are jobs that require only 50% of my cognitive function.

In the UK, one organisation is aiming to stop companies from overcharging loyal customers. The situation is exactly the same in New Zealand, where companies lower their prices and offer incentives that are only available to new customers.

Women returning to work after maternity leave are driven to output – and not only the women who return to traditional work structures, but also those who move into part time or voluntary work situations.

About four years ago, when I was 41 weeks pregnant with my second child, my phone rang. I sent it to voicemail because I didn’t recognise the number. A woman I'd worked with before, Fiona McBeath, had left me a message saying she'd changed jobs and was wondering if I was available to do some work for them.

FIRE stands for financial independence, retire early. It’s a way of making frugal living and sensible investing sound sexy, like a marketing exercise for personal restraint and minimalism.

Catching up for coffee is business code for a short informal meeting. It’s a modern minefield of unspoken etiquette. Catching up for coffee in a social setting is easy. You make a time, chose a location, and catch up for a chat. The business world is different. There are unspoken rules and I’m only just starting to get my head around it.

As mothers and business women we put so much pressure on ourselves to get it right all the time, to be Little Miss Perfect. It feels like if we fail at anything, we are letting down all the other women who are trying to appear as if they have it all under control. When, in reality, we are all balancing everything in a fragile equilibrium.

I find it ridiculously hard to say no in work situations. I’m fine in the rest of my life which I find even stranger. The issue is clearly linked to work situations. So what’s going on?

When asked where I want to be in the future or what I want to achieve, I freeze. The answer is too hard. I can only imagine what I know. That makes me sound really dull, but it’s true. Right now my life is so full of kids, family and work that imagining bigger things just feels too hard, and quite tiring. But at some point in the not-so-distant future the kids will need me a little less, and I’ll have a little bit more time for me. I will want a plan.

Being told to follow your passion is not particularly helpful in my view, for so many reasons.

Perfection is an interesting concept. When I was at school phrases like ‘practice makes perfect’ were bandied about. A perfect score was what you aimed for. Perfection was the ultimate sign of success. My understanding of perfection has changed over the years.

Limits are not something I really subscribe to. This is not a good way to live. In the past, this approach has caused my life to become pretty messy.

There’s one thing I do brag about, though, and that’s my special gift. Here it is: I can sit in my house, surrounded by dirty dishes, piles of unfolded washing, stuff all over the floor, and I can concentrate on work.

I’m pregnant. I’m about six weeks behind the Prime Minister and in sync with the Minister for Women. This closeness has come with its challenges. My mum likes to remind me when I say I’m tired “Well Jacinda is running a country, and she seems to be doing fine.”

Working from home and raising kids is all good while each element stays in its box. And then something shifts. It’s not even usually a big thing. In fact, it’s usually the little things that mess up your finely-balanced work/home ecosystem. Yesterday, that thing was a client coming back to me at 3.15 rather than 2.30.

Last week one of our Part Time Professionals was in hospital, with her laptop, trying to finish jobs. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t encouraging her. We told her to relax and recover. She kept working. This is the double-edged sword of being self-employed – you get to be your own boss, but sometimes your boss is a bitch.

My ten-year-old son asked me yesterday “why is Dad working so much more than you when you both have jobs? It doesn’t seem fair.” I told him that’s just the way it is at the moment. And this is true, but the fire of resentment is building in me, as I suspect it is in households all around the country and the world. 

Yesterday at 1.45pm will become one of those times that everyone in the country remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing for years to come. The next few weeks are shaping up to be a rollercoaster. Work lives and home lives will be combined in the most extreme way.