Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins When Family and Work Collide?

A little bit of really important, helpful content, padded out with a ton of biblical references.

I think my husband received this from a work colleague, and it was floating around our house so I thought I'd check it out. So I grant that this is a book directly intended for heavy-duty conservative Christians and I'm not the target audience.

But even taking that into account, this would be better as a brief blog post than a book. Here's the key content:
1. No one has time to do everything they would like to or that others want them to.
2. You will probably never be “done” at work - there's always some additional task calling for attention.
3. All working people with families decide whom to “cheat” (i.e., draw a line where your commitment and investment stop - on a daily basis or overall).
4. We tend to unthinkingly commit to work while leaning heavily on our families' willingness to be patient, when our priorities really ought to be reversed.
5. Feelings of loyalty and love are meaningless if we don't reflect them in our actions and our schedule.
6. If you want to make changes in this work-family balance, you have to make specific commitments (be home by 5 every day, work no more than x hours per week, etc.) rather than vague efforts to “be home more” or “spend more time with the kids.”
7. It feels scary to draw a line with work, because they don't love and care for you and might not cut you slack the way your family does, but if you have confidence in yourself and have room to be a little daring you can set boundaries and carve out a work life that doesn't cheat your family.
8. When approaching this with your boss, he suggests asking, listening to the boss's concerns, and offering a trial period with the new boundary.

One thing that really bothered me was the repeated statement that if you make the “correct” decisions, Yahweh will reward you with success. The dark side of this sentiment is that someone who tries to dial back work and suffers serious economic problems or any other burden as a result is just doing it wrong and is to blame for their own suffering. The truth is most people may have more flexibility with their work life than they think, but there's no guarantee that you can tell your boss 6 days a week doesn't work, walk out the door, and miraculously build a successful business of your own.