Still Slicing the Pie? Notes on Work/Life Balance.

Strategy

Writers have long been pondering the idea of work/life balance, which was first proposed 150 years ago, but gained popularity in the 1970s and 80s. Simply put, the theory is that you should strike an intelligent balance between the time you devote to your work, and the time you devote to leisure or play.  There was even a recent report on the best and worst cities to live relating to work/life balance, as if the mere fact of location had some eerie impact on choices people make about how they spend their time. (For the curious, Bloomington IN had the best score, and there was a preponderance of towns in California on the “worst of” end of this list).

Some illustrations of the concept liken it to slicing up a pie. You can cut a piece that represents work, another that demonstrates your commitment to your family, yet another that illustrates the time you spend with friend, or hobbies. Then there’s one for sleeping, another for worship or contemplation and so on. Of course, if any of the pie slices is larger than average, others will have to be smaller, there’s only one pie!

Among other factors, the revolution in technology of the past couple of decades has created significant challenges to measuring or modifying work/life balance. We are given smartphones by employers so that we can be reached around the clock if necessary. It is expected that email will be checked during off work hours, such as evenings or weekends. Work files are posted in the cloud so we can access them from any device, even when we are on vacation. The new workplace model does not sustain the traditional boundaries of physical location or scheduled work days that our parents were used to.

There are more philosophical questions to be asked on this topic as well. If I listen to the baseball game, or the symphony on my commute home from work, but I’m also thinking over a problem I encountered at work that day, am I engaging in leisure or in my job?

All of these things are combining to cast discredit on the whole concept of work/life balance. As Stewart Friedman asserts in an article in the September 2014 Harvard Business Review, “balance is bunk”. Stop committing to balancing things, Friedman argues, and instead work toward better integration of the main aspects of your life. These he describes as work or school, home/family, community (including friends, neighbors, religious and social groups), and self (your mind, body and soul).

Friedman thinks that pursuing what he calls four way wins, or improving performance in all of the four life dimensions at the same time, is a realistic goal, and one that will pay you big dividends. He goes on to posit that there are three principles which should be followed in order to achieve this goal: Be Real, Be Real, Be Whole, Be Innovative.

Being real relates to acting authentically by developing clarity about what is important to you, and to act thus no matter where you are or what you are doing. The requirements for being real are:

Know what matters.

Embody values consistently.

Align actions with values.

Convey values with stories.

Envision your legacy.

Hold yourself accountable.

Being whole relates to integrity, to being a person who recognizes that all of the roles you play – employee or employer, spouse or father, friend, mentor, group member – make up one whole person. Integrity also means that you strive to help others see the “whole you” as well and not just the part that they interact with in their universe. You see yourself as a whole, and encourage others to see that entirety as well. To be whole, one must:

Clarify expectations.

Help others.

Build supportive networks.

Apply all your resources.

Manage boundaries intelligently.

Weave disparate strands.

Being innovative is a generative step, applying creativity to identifying and pursuing additional four way wins. This requires that you:

Focus on results.

Resolve conflicts among domains.

Challenge the status quo.

See new ways of doing things.

Embrace change courageously.

Create cultures of innovation around you.

Throughout the HBR article, and in his recently published book Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life, Friedman provides a number of exercises you can use to help you understand and implement his ideas in your own life. One example is the “Conversation Starter” which supports the idea of Embody Values Consistently. The exercise suggests that you bring a meaningful item from your non-work life to work with you. Perhaps it’s a family photo, or a community award plaque, or a souvenir of a treasured vacation. Display it where others can see it, and if anyone mentions it to you, take the opportunity to not only talk about what part of you that object represents, but also how that other part of your life integrates with and potentiates what you do in the workplace. You might even think about asking that other person to bring something similar to work which could serve as their own conversation starter! The exercises are varied, easy to follow and accomplish, and they are all quite interesting.

I heartily recommend this article to readers, particularly if the whole idea of work/life balance hasn’t seemed to make real sense to you in your complex, busy life. You can also read more about Friedman’s ideas on his website, and follow him on Twitter @StewFriedman.

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