Babies are masters at causing chaos — and there's not a thing I can do about it

To help pay my way through graduate school, I worked in a women's clothing shop. During my sales training, the boutique owner pointed her finger at my chest. “Julia, you have to hustle!” she insisted. “And to hustle, you have to focus.”

Her message — that to succeed I must stay sharp and on task — has stayed with me. Her voice resonates with me this month as I find myself haemorrhaging work hours thanks to childcare responsibilities.

The twice-daily day-care commute eats up precious work time and shortens my workday. My son's regular mingling with other children has also exposed him to a host of germs and necessitated my taking time off work for doctor's visits and at-home nursing care. I've been prey to some of these day-care 'superbugs', too. All of this has wiped out my productivity.

So where is my focus, other than on how inefficient I feel at work these days? Without a doubt, my attention and energy centre on my son's proper care and development. But the rest of my focus is splattered like baby food on the ceiling.

With a multitude of ongoing lab projects and papers that, to my impatient self, advance as if through thickest jelly, I need to regroup, buckle down and hustle. Otherwise, my focus will be on what I want to do rather than on my actual successes and what I can reasonably achieve.