Are you suffering from work-life balance issues? Has your job overtaken your life? Do you find yourself working evenings, perhaps even weekends, to keep your head above the water at work? Are you struggling to find quality time with your family and friends?
If so, the challenge may not be the job or balance as much as knowing what quality really means to you: what matters, why it matters, and what your role is in producing what you truly seek.
As someone who consults regularly to organizations large and small, I can readily see the challenges you may be facing as you try to keep the job going while still maintaining a healthy personal or family life. However, the work-life balance question is one that has at least two faces to it, one obvious, the other not so obvious.
The obvious part is that those who still have jobs are pretty much buried these days. It's as though the economic meltdown created its own workload tsunami. While we wound up losing millions of jobs, we didn't lose any of the work itself -- just the resources to get it all done. People these days are routinely tasked with doing the work of two or three people. Sound familiar?
The impact has been that you may be working later in the evening, taking work home on the weekends, and basically having the job eat into "quality time" with your family and friends.
The less obvious face to the work-life balance question is that exploding workloads may serve as convenient excuses for the erosion of quality time that may not have been there in the first place.
The issue masked by the apparent logic of overwhelming workloads is that people rarely take the time to clarify what really matters to them in life. If you haven't clarified what really matters to you, then it will be difficult, if not impossible, to navigate the twists and turns in the road that will get you there.
Allow me to take an oblique run at this: When people ask me what I do for a living, I often like to say that I help people get what they think they want as fast as possible so that I can then ask, "Was that it?"
I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. Have you ever worked hard to produce something, to achieve a goal, to acquire that car/house/job, and then once you succeeded in getting the object of your desire, you noticed that it wasn't all that satisfying after all? "Why did I want that in the first place?" you may have asked yourself.
The fundamental challenge lies in the fact that most people do not spend much, if any, time exploring the question of what experience they want out of life. Rather, most focus on what things they want to accumulate, what goals they want to achieve, what mountains they want to conquer. The story is oft told of someone who keeps sacrificing the "quality of life" today in favor of achieving the next goal. The problem, of course, is that rarely does "he-wins-who-dies-with-the-most-toys" turn out to be true.
If you have been one of those running the "rat race," then you may not have taken sufficient time to inventory your life from the perspective of what really matters to you at the deepest levels of meaning. And, again, if you aren't clear where you are going, "any road will do."
Quality time is actually a pretty good goal, if you can define what you mean by quality. Most people seem to think quality equates to quantity. Having Dad hang around the house while engrossed in a basketball game on TV may seem like he's "home with the family," when, in fact, he's lost in his own world watching TV. Not much quality there.
When things fall apart on the personal fulfillment scene these days, it's convenient to charge down the work-life balance storyline, and get caught up in blaming the job, the boss, the company: "They just don't allow a good work-life balance."
In last week's column on generalization, deletion and distortion, I quoted Kaarina Dillabough, a former Olympic-level coach in Canada. Kaarina was enthusiastically supportive of the notion that positive thinking without corresponding positive action is fruitless. As she wrote to me, "I know the power of thought, visualization and affirmation. But no amount of that wins the gold medal. Action is what's needed."
In her email to me, she also raised the question of balance, writing:
I'll admit it: I've been a chicken to openly and publicly take on the "experts", both on the issue of action and of balance. (My thoughts on balance: balance is a crock. Embrace imbalance. Even when we're "balanced", there are small micro-adjustments being made all the time in teeter-totter fashion that require us to be ebbing and flowing, bobbing and weaving through life. I say the only time we're balanced is when we're dead.)
Doing a bit of Googling, I found out that she has been a top-level rhythmic gymnastics coach in Canada. Gymnastics of any kind is living proof that balance is a dynamic process, not a static one. Indeed, playing just about any sport will give you a glimpse into Kaarina's perspective here. As she notes, remaining in balance is a constant state of movement, correcting for the flow of imbalances. If a gymnast, skier, golfer or just about any other performer were to strive for the kind of balance most people seek, they would become rigid and pretty much guarantee a poor outcome.
On the one hand, work-life balance is important, and quite a bit can be done to improve the ever-encroaching demands of the workplace. If nothing else, you can probably do something yourself that will help by simply reading David Allen's breakthrough book, "Getting Things Done." There you are likely to learn a few skills and thought processes that can help you get more things done, more quickly. In turn, you may wind up recapturing a few more hours each week. My new book has a few tips that you may find interesting as well -- and "Getting Things Done" is the gold standard.
However, even if you do get a better handle on your workload, the bigger question is what you will you do with the time you save. How will you translate that time saved into "quality time" and improved work-life balance? Again, if you have not yet defined what experiences you are seeking, you may settle for the symbols of fulfillment and wind up just as frustrated.
Life has a way of coming at you in unpredictable ways. Change keeps happening. Your challenge is to keep making those micro-adjustments that Kaarina hinted at that will keep you in a dynamic state of balancing as you go. The paradox is that you may never wind up in balance -- some kind of fixed, stable place that doesn't change -- but you may find that you can maintain a constant state of balancing.
We'll pick up on this next week with a few more thoughts about how to make choices that both produce that state of balancing while also allowing you to experience the "quality time" you seek.
Please do leave a comment here or drop me an email at Russell@russellbishop.com.
If you want more information on how you can apply this kind of reframing to your life, or how you can take a few simple steps that may wind up transforming your life, download a free chapter from Russell's new book, "Workarounds That Work."
You can buy "Workarounds That Work" here.
Russell Bishop is an educational psychologist, author, executive coach and management consultant based in Santa Barbara, Calif. You can learn more about his work by visiting his website at www.RussellBishop.com. You can contact him by email at Russell@russellbishop.com.
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There isn't an exact formula that we can apply.
At time it seems that work can takes up to 80% of my time leaving me only 20% for my personal life. Then there a month or two when I can split my time 50/50. I think as long as you don't let work to consume 100% of your time you will be fine; would you want to be extremely successful but alone?
Since personal time is in short supply we must enjoy it to the max. So do something fun soon!
I like this quote, yet I enjoy my work so I do it all the time and don't feel the need for balance. I love being obsessed with my job, which is writing: on Huff Po, www.confessionsofaworrywart.com and on everything from timesaving tips to Interfaith seders on Home Goes Strong http://bit.ly/hGzkxK
The luxury of a balanced life does not seem even remotely possible for the rest of my life. I am 61. If there really are past lives I must have been a really evil white male republican with money and am now reaping my just rewards.
That's what's wrong with this article. It's telling you could be taking care of yourself, too, if you really worked at it. The problem is whoever you work will most likely not feel that same way. And the suggestion that you can just go somewhere else and they'll be different is unlikely to be true.
But that does not mean you cannot enjoy what you do and make the best of what you have. Einstein said, "By the mere existence of our stomachs everyone is condemned to participate in the chase."
F&F'd.
Aside from money worries and political pissed-offedness, life really is quite a lovely thing, most of the time.
where is the job............then i can walk the tightrope!
i read so many posts about people who have no job, no full time job, desperate for a job and this article is saying we should work less.
i think canvas those other posters what they think about this.
Been happening all my working life and, I'm sure, long before.
This difference has only intensified in the last 150 years or so since Mark Twain marveled at how obsessed Americans are with work at the exclusion of everything else.
"The Europeans," he said, "know how to live. Americans carry their work to bed with them."
http://graciouslivingdaybyday.com/
This article and a lot of the comments below are focusing on balance versus imbalance. How about considering “it is what it is”. Let’s not categorise how we perceive our lives to be.
The one thing we do need to focus on is that it is ourselves that have created the life we are currently living. What I mean is that the job we are working, have just landed or have just lost, was (more often than not) our choice to work. That choice was based on the goals we have created. As Russell said “people rarely take the time to clarify what really matters to them in life”. These things that matter are what drives us and creates the choices we make.
Those goals also drive us when we are in work. Yes, whilst the economic climate has not helped the work/life balance but it is more our goals that continually drive us to work longer and harder.
I know and recognise that there are employers who don’t “show” they care about their employees but as an employee, you have the choice whether to stay or find another job.
Be aware of the interconnectedness of your goals and the “opportunity cost” of achieving them. Take responsibility for your choices because of those goals.
Craig Ing
www.craiging.com
www.blog.craiging.com
True and I've heard this stated many times before. But I would like add a reality check to this point as it often implies more credit than we probably deserve. We choose what is made available to us. So, we don't create our lives as so much as pick from a very small list of available possibilities created by circumstances beyond our control. And when it comes to the list of possible jobs, the list becomes a subset of the small one that the target economy offers to the the ones of that list that I am qualified to do and finally down to the ones that are financially viable. The point is a reminder that it is no where near a limitless list, that we are not that much in control, and just "finding another job" is saying to many, "if you're unhappy you could have just chosen better all along."
So, from a shear mathematics perspective, circumstances control a larger percentage of one's possible job selections than one's choice.
Should we recognize and exercise our choices? Of course. Should just blame our predicament on circumstances? No, absolutely not. But it is also somewhat disingenuous to suggest to people in difficult circumstances that they simply could have chosen better.
Time to spend a few months in Haiti.
As you know from previous discussions, I agree with you regarding the “adding realism” element. Whenever I am responding to these comments I do so with the perspective of the article and the people being in a Developed country providing the (perceived) security and freedoms that brings. If we are to include the global perspective of, as you cite, being born into poverty then I do agree that circumstances play a significant role.
However, even under these involuntary circumstances people still have choices on how to live. Culture, social and political pressures can reduce the choices but there are still choices nonetheless. We are fortunate enough to live where we have considerably more freedom of choice than most of the world’s population hence why illegal immigration is such a problem – people want in, to live this life of choice.
However, what rings very true with me and most forget is the element of perspective that you mention. “Time to spend a few months in Haiti” - a lot of people need to recognise that their life is much easier than most in this world and they should be grateful of the freedom of choice they have.
Craig
Why meditation is a Balancing act of reality itself
Now does that keep me from living 2 mile form my nearest neighbor, yet working 250 miles away. Not hardly. I never mind working as long as I can play at least 2 days a week. There was a time when I could easily work Monday - Thursday with 3 day off a week. Life was great
Then the rich Stock Traders decided they needed 90% for trading Stock as their contribution to Mainstreet business operation. Taking 60% of AFTER tax corporate profit in dividends
While I still contribute the same expertise, just not $100 per hour, what ever I can get.
Amazing we have Infrastructure and Energy massive problems and we cannot lay working from home for 90% on the table. Screw the stupid
I thought they were just done reporting about having the biggest financial gains in years. Huh...