IS WORK/LIFE BALANCE REALLY AN OXYMORON?

Today I read another article about Work/Life Balance entitled How to Set Boundaries at Work wherein there is listed six questions you should ask yourself, etc. etc. etc. 

There is a whole industry which has spawned from peoples seeming inability to create this illusive balance. If you google (limiting the search to only the phrase "work/life balance") you get 30,400,000 hits. On Amazon there are over 13K books on the topic.

And I really have to question, why is this so hard? I know some people will look at this and go "man, you just don't understand!" But you know what, I do. I just clearly understand that all life is about choices and I have always chosen to have balance.

And guess what? My career had done very well, regardless.

I learned when I was in my late teens that being the "company man" and putting in inordinate amount of hours doesn't matter when a company decides your superfluous. I clearly remember when my father , an engineer, came home one Friday in April and informed us that his job had been outsourced (not a common thing in that era), and that after thirteen years of loyalty, of extra unpaid hours, he was without a job. I think that event defined me in many ways and I learned a valuable lesson. I would always do the best I could for any firm I worked for and at points in time, when a situation demanded it, put in the extra hours, but I would never let anyone for whom I worked own my soul. 

I remember years ago, when one of my team came to me and he was so overwhelmed with his work, that he wanted to just go back and work as a picker in the warehouse. He was a great employee, but him being so frazzled with a job that shouldn't have taken as much time as he was allowing it to take, surprised me. So we sat down and chatted and finally I asked him to keep a minute by minute log of everything he did. Every time he moved from one activity to another -- everything from a phone call to someone just stopping by his cube with a question etc...-- everything he would record.  I told him that we would review it after two weeks and then see where he was spending his time and was there something we could do about it. 

When I looked at his sheets after this time period it was clear that a)he was doing a lot of things that were not part of his core responsibility and b) he was constantly shifting from one thing to the other without completing tasks -- a last in, first out kind of approach. Together we categorized all his activities and then scheduled his week, in blocks of time, for all his primary and secondary activities. I also told him, it was OK to let calls go to voice mail, and to deal with these issues at the end of the day, as well as it was OK to say no.

After two weeks of following this approach, he came to me and told me that he actually had extra time now and was there something else I could have him do.

Let me give you a time stamp on the above scenario. It was the late 80's.

Fast forward 20 some years and we have chosen to lose our control over our time as a result of  technology which we allow to controls us every minute of every day.

Technology is great! It alters reality and allows the impossible to become possible! Which is also its inherent danger. Because of its benefits we are driven to overlook its liabilities.

And the reason it is easy to overlook, is because the liability is not in the technology, it is in our use of the technology.

So, the adage of “what binds you, also sets you free” is terribly relevant as we try to determine how we can get technology to assist and not detract from work-life balance.

In essence, we’ve become a society of juveniles. Partly, because we have slipped into the “I want it, I want it now and I want it all the time” mentality…because we can “get it, get it now and get it all the time.” 

In today's society patience makes you look like you’ve just stepped off the mother-ship from another planet….

The first time I remember the term instant, was when it was instant pudding in a package, where in 15 minutes you could cook and present what used to take hours and hours before consumption. Now you can go into a store and buy the pudding already finished….so we’ve moved from a definition of instant being  “soon” to “before we even know we need it."

To quote Dr. Phil…. “How’s that workin’ for ya?” 

Urgent….now there is word that is being misused…In the dictionary urgent is defined as “Compelling immediate action or attention…pressing”.

But what is not urgent these days?

People send you “urgent” emails…expecting answers within a few minutes! If it’s that urgent why not call, and actually find out whether you are in or not and deal with it!

But you know…we’ve trained others to expect immediate responses, right? We sit there and we have our computers set up so that each time a message arrives,  it signals to us…and lord, we are curious creatures and we can’t resist can we…we are in the middle of preparing or reading something of prime importance and we just have to look don’t we? And if you have a meeting in your office and the computer beeps or your wireless device vibrates…you just start sweating because you NEED TO KNOW!

What you have to ask yourself is this… “would you tolerate someone barging into your office, home, or car, every few minutes demanding immediate action or response…?”

Of course we wouldn’t! In fact, we’d probably have a few choice words, none of them particularly flattering to say about the individual….So why do we allow this to happen electronically? Makes you wonder!

I could go on about the topic of work/life balance, but at the end of the day, it is about choice, no matter what. You can change the situation, either by talking to your boss, finding a new job, or prioritizing. Try the keeping track of your time over a two week period as I did with my team member and see how much you are allowing yourself to be drawn and quartered by others, by technology etc.

I never wanted a tombstone that said "she was a helluva good worker." My legacy is my family, my friends and yes, co-workers who I hope I have had a positive influence on through the years. 

I'd like my tombstone to say "She made a positive difference to many people's lives. (and she allowed herself the time to do it.)

(note: since i wrote this 3 days ago the number of articles on a google search of work/life balance has gone up by nearly 5 million hits!)