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Work-Life Balance#
Hello and welcome to Graduate Theory in today’s episode it’s just you and me we’re doing a deep dive into Work-Life Balance now Work-Life Balance in 2021 April 2021 Google tweeted that Work-Life Balance um hit its peak in terms of search in terms of the trend so Google Trends Work-Life Balance hit a peak 2021 at in.
April of 2021 the it had never been searched more than it had been at that time it is a topical problem people are struggling to find the balance between work and life how do I manage these things and then uh and how do I live in harmony perhaps in both my work and my.
Life um Work-Life Balance I guess is this dichotomy between how much how much time do we spend at work and how much time do we spend uh in our life or not doing work and what is the kind of split that we choose for this so if you were sort of 100 on work imagine you know you.
Worked you literally worked all the time there was no life then things would get probably it wouldn’t be the happiest the balance isn’t quite there but and so maybe you want to have dinner with your family some nights of the week maybe it’s maybe it’s a one night a week you know uh and we spend less time at work.
Two nights a week even less work three four five six seven uh seven nights a week less work so and then you can even dial this further and say maybe I should spend 50 50 work and non-work you know and this question of Work-Life Balance really is what is the optimal split between work and life and.
How can you divide these two areas up in a way that means that you are like it makes you the happiest that you can be right because I guess that is the underlying assumption is if you if your Work-Life Balance is off then you will be unhappy uh unfulfilled uh all of these kinds of.
Things uh I’ve even seen through my research for this episode that Work-Life Balance can be something that you actually achieve so people will ask on forums you know how like how do I achieve Work-Life Balance or ask a particular person how did you achieve Work-Life Balance and this is interesting to me.
Because can you actually achieve Work-Life Balance probably not I would say it’s more of a thing that’s in flux all the time it’s it’s this delicate dance right between work and life and as you’ll see later perhaps these things are actually more related back perhaps there’s actually not much of a divide between.
These two things at all anyway in today’s episode we’re going to take a look at this stuff in more detail and I’m going to start with a personal story something that I think is irrelevant to this topic and from there we’ll kind of dive in to the details and hear from different people hear what they’ve got.
To say uh today’s episode we’re going to hear from someone like uh Jeff Bezos we’re going to hear from Brian Tracy TED Talks a previous podcast guest Simon Sinek all these people are going to be featured in this episode so super exciting um yeah I think this is an interesting topic it’s something that I think we uh.
There are some parts of this that we need to talk about more so let’s do it I want to start off with a personal story about Work-Life Balance and it’s something that happened to me a few months ago and something that I think is a good starting point for this kind of Work-Life Balance conversation so it was.
A few months ago at work and I was just doing my thing got um how to chat with my manager and he assigned me to do this piece of work that I was quite excited by I was like this is really cool I’m super excited to tape on this thing and see what I can do.
With it so the day I got given this piece of work I was really excited I went I went and did heaps of work on it and then the end of the work day came and I was at the office and then I went home uh and you know had some dinner and.
Whatever and then after dinner I was like you know I’m still thinking about this problem why don’t I just keep working on it and so that’s what I did I got my laptop back out and you know it was like seven o’clock at night or whatever it started doing more work uh and you know worked.
Until 9 30 or whatever and then it was time for bed and then I went to bed and uh you know then then on the weekend I did even more so then I was like well I’m still thinking about this problem I’m really enjoying it’s really sort of stretching me I feel like I’m getting a.
Lot of a lot out of this uh yeah let’s just keep going so I added even more um and you know that was it was really fun I really enjoyed it the project like it went really well and I learned heaps from doing it um but the problems for me came from.
When I went to tell other people about this and I went and said to them um you know firstly I told my my manager was like how did you do all this work over when I only gave you this big task on Friday uh and I was like well yeah I did do some work over the weekend and he.
Said well this is good but you know probably best to not get in the habit of doing this because you know like you need some you need some life right we need to keep the Work-Life Balance split here make sure that you know work doesn’t take over too much of things because otherwise we’ll.
We’ll burn out perhaps um but on the other hand it’s it’s exciting that you uh wanted to do this and it wasn’t something that was expected and just making he made sure that this wasn’t so the expectation that I go and do extra stuff on the weekend which I absolutely uh new um so that was a good interesting.
Conversation and then another separate conversation came when I was telling friends about what I did on the weekend and I’d say to them this is what I did on the weekend I actually had this really fun project at work and I just decided to work on that on the weekend and everyone there is like what like why.
Are you working on like on this piece of work you know on the weekend you shouldn’t be doing that uh you know what about your Work-Life Balance you know things like this uh in my head I’m like yeah I sort of see what you mean like I probably could have done other things.
But like there was nothing really that I preferred would prefer to do at that time other than work on this thing like this thing was genuinely exciting me uh and it was super cool and so I’m glad I did it but there was kind of this weird I don’t know people thought it was very strange.
That someone could enjoy work that much that they would choose to do it outside of work hours which I thought was interesting and so that’s the end of the story and it’s an interesting story it’s something I think about reasonably often but today’s episode is a good chance to dive into a lot of this content in more.
Detail and so I’ve got two different uh things that I think we can split this story and Work-Life Balance generally into two sort of sub problems I would call them but Work-Life Balance and one of these is a Work-Life Balance problem where work is interrupting important things basically when you’re forced to work.
More than you would like and then the second problem is people who work lots are sort of seem to be a bit strange because they don’t have Work-Life Balance and this is a Work-Life Balance problem and so this would be Work-Life Balance when you’re not forced to work and so when you’re actually choosing to do it and then.
There’s there’s this more more of a cultural uh a problem perhaps that you have to face right and so I want to split it into these two and we’ll dive into these in more detail.
Part 1#
So the first one is when work is interrupting important things and an example I guess a classic example of this would be the case where the husband is at the hospital and his wife is giving birth to a truck to their child and he’s there it’s all going really well and then he gets a phone.
Call from a client and goes and has to take a call and he can’t be there with his kid and it can’t be there for this incredible moment where you know his wife is needs him there and the nope I have to sort of skip this because the client is calling me uh you know so that.
Would perhaps be an example where the expectation of working is it clearly subtracting from your experience of life uh and when work is interrupting important things and so there’s Maybe and so there is versions of this that are more tame that’s an extreme example but things where you’re trying to have dinner with.
Your family and the client calls and you’re expected to go and respond or you’re expected to go do this and that outside of work hours to the point where it’s interrupting the things you’d want to do uh you know to the point where it’s frustrating you and so today I’m not going to be the one giving advice.
For this because I’ve found people who are more smarter than me and better than me at explaining different things and so these people are going to give you some advice so we’ve got firstly a TED Talk uh where we’re going to hear three rules to create a better Work-Life Balance and secondly we’re going to hear from Brian.
Tracy Brian Tracy is very famous self-development coach figure and he has some really good advice for creating uh you know for turning your office life optimizing it so that you can have better Work-Life Balance but here’s those tips now.
TED Talk#
For so many of us myself included our days feel filled with a million small interruptions and this is true even of our days off maybe you’ve taken a call at the beach texted your boss from the grocery store or emailed a colleague while on a picnic with your family we’ve convinced ourselves that these behaviors.
Are no big deal it’s just one email but there’s a real cost to these interruptions and there are smart strategies we can all take to better protect our time these moments seem so small at the time and yet research suggests they add up to a tremendous loss the constant creep of work into our personal lives can.
Increase our stress and undermine our happiness so just what is the cost in one study researchers recruited parents who are visiting a science museum with their kids some parents were told to check their phone as much as possible others were told to check their phone as little as possible after the visit parents who.
Used their phones reported that the experience was significantly less meaningful they also felt much lonelier in another study tourists who were asked to have their phones out while visiting an iconic Church remembered fewer details a week later and in my research employees who were paid for their performance spent increasingly less time interacting with friends and family and.
More and more time interacting with colleagues and clients these constant interruptions come at a cost to organizations too companies lose 32 days of productivity each year to employee depression which is often caused by the stress and burnout of our always-on culture despite knowing better I too have found myself focusing on urgent work distractions over important life.
Moments most recently I found myself texting a client while in the middle of my first child’s first ultrasound happy client guilty mom to be when you add up all of these moments the sum total is a life shortchanged on meeting Joy connection and even memory as we remake our models of work in the wake of.
The pandemic now is our opportunity to create a new culture that respects time and the way to make this really big change is through small steps that we can take right now the first step that we need to take is to reframe rest reflect for a moment about what you think about when you hear the word rest.
Sounds amazing right but in my mind I immediately worry about not being productive enough or letting down my colleagues when we do have time off we need to find ways in which we can enjoy the present moment and Savor the leisure time that we have available as opposed to seeing it as an unproductive barrier.
To our work one specific strategy we can take is to treat our upcoming weekend like a vacation on Friday afternoon jot down how you would act and behave as if you were on a holiday maybe you and your partner will buy a bottle of wine and watch online clips of the Eiffel Tower.
Maybe you’ll visit a local cafe and listen to some live music or maybe you’ll go for a long walk in the middle of the day with no phone and No Agenda the plan doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant another strategy you can take is to create clear boundaries for your time off instead of saying I’m out of the.
Office feel free to slack me whenever say I’ll be offline call me only if it’s urgent to uphold these personal goals work together as a team set team goals for personal time do it publicly collect data and hold each other accountable these goals could sound like I will not check email between 6 and 8 PM I will.
Have dinner with my family four nights a week or I will go for a jog midday check in on your team’s progress and see how everyone’s doing if you or your teammates are unsuccessful work together to help accomplish personal goals lastly you can negotiate for more time to prevent work from creeping into your.
Personal life in business school I teach students to negotiate for salary But realize I spoke almost nothing about negotiating for more time what does this look like in practice you can ask for more time on adjustable deadlines at work if your client asks for a deliverable Monday morning ask for an extension until Tuesday afternoon so.
You don’t find yourself working on your well-deserved weekend and don’t worry too much about reputation quality truly is the metric that matters most in my data employees who proactively asked for more time reported lower levels of stress and burnout and were seen as more committed and professional by their colleagues these are small but powerful changes to.
Not only reframe rest but to reclaim it once you discover the profound impact that these changes can have you’ll feel empowered to demand that others respect and accommodate your approach to time maybe they’ll even feel inspired to piece together the fractured moments of their lives too hello I’m Brian Tracy.
Brian Tracy#
And today we’re going to talk about a big subject one that everyone seems to struggle with and it’s called Work-Life Balance the first thing to understand about Work-Life Balance is that most people have the wrong idea of what that actually means they think that their whole life should be balanced they think.
They should have a little bit of work and a little bit of play and a little bit of time on the weekends in order to improve the quality of their lives when thinking about your quality of life you have to ask yourself what do you really want to do with your life it’s a great question.
So here are four tips for time management that will help you to achieve a Work-Life Balance and improve your quality of life number one use the power of positive affirmations the positive affirmations are what they call positive self-talk are commands that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind that you.
Either say out loud or say to yourself with emotion and enthusiasm to drive the words into your subconscious mind sort of like a pile driver it’s sort of like instructing yourself to follow new operating instructions Begin by repeating positive affirmations over and over to yourself such as I am excellent at time management I am.
Excellent at time management or I already have a balanced work and life my favorite time management affirmation is I use my time well I use my time well I use my time well just say that over and over when you repeat positive affirmations over and over they are eventually accepted by your subconscious.
Mind as commands just like you’ve programmed it and then you’ll find that your external behaviors on the outside will start to reflect your new internal programming we say as within so without now tip number two in managing your time and achieving Work-Life Balance if there is such a thing is to visualize your.
Time management skills mental pictures almost immediately influence your subconscious mind so begin to see yourself as well organized and efficient and effective in time management we say mentally fake it before you make it so recall and recreate memories and pictures of yourself when you were performing at your best and getting through enormous amounts of work through.
Positive affirmations you can create a picture of the upcoming event and see it unfolding perfectly in every respect see yourself as calm positive happy and in complete control see the other people doing and saying exactly what you would want them to do if the situation was perfect play this picture of yourself over and.
Over again on the screen of your mind tip number three is take action based on your visualizations now that you have concentrated on and visualized what your day and your future will look like with proper time management it’s time for you to put it into action you do this by working the entire time.
You’re at work when you walk into the office you should work the entire time you’re there be pleasant and friendly to your co-workers but get to work right away and work until you’re finished Peter Drucker says that if you spend more than 10 percent of your time socializing your time is out of control.
Now by doing this going straight to work you’ll get on top of your work and we’ll walk away feeling accomplished at the end of your day when you don’t have lingering tasks to worry about since you’ll have worked as hard as you could have during your time in the office you’ll be left with plenty.
Of quality time to spend with your friends and family super interesting.
James#
Hearing those tips today I think one thing for me in facing this problem is like is having the boundaries there right we need to develop boundaries around when is West harm and when is not work time and I think if you if you say okay my work hours in nine to five and.
Then if I can’t achieve the things that I’m being expected to achieve in that time then I say to them hey I’m currently occupied or my plate is currently full if you’d like me to take on this additional thing then I’ll need to subtract from the things that are already unmarked and so that way you can.
Keep the nine to five or whatever your work hours are you can keep your work hours where they need to be and so let’s say you’re really busy you’ve got a few things on um and then someone comes to you and is like James you know I really want you to work on this project as well uh and you.
Say and when you’re thinking in your head okay if I take this on I don’t really have enough time and so like that’s gonna make me very stressed and if I take this on I’m probably gonna have to work more I don’t really want to do that how do I say no to this person I.
Can’t just be like no I don’t want to I can’t I don’t have time to work on your thing um so they’re perhaps a better way of going about this is saying hey thanks so much for thinking of me uh with this piece of work looks super exciting um I’d love to work on it but at the.
Moment my flight is currently full I’ve got this this and this that I’m currently working on at the moment I don’t have I won’t be able to get the project that you’re saying done uh in in the in the right time frame or with the suitable quality so is it if I’m going to take this on is.
There anything that you think I should I can take off my plate you know to be able to take this on and do it well instead so some type of conversation like that to be had around like like that when it comes to boundaries I think that is going to uh you know that’s quite important in.
Protecting yourself from this kind of seat that can happen where work just kind of the hours extend 10 minutes and then 10 10 10 it just kind of keeps on going and then before you know it you’re working sort of seven to seven perhaps and you know things and that’s not where you want to be here and.
So it’s different like we’re going to talk about next if that is something you actually want to do is work a 727 or whatever the hours that you want to work on you know it’s different if that’s not what you want to do but if it is what you want to do then we Face a different.
Problem which brings us.
Part 2#
To part two so part two as I mentioned right at the start was we kind of have this split between when Work-Life Balance when you’re forced to work outside and then when you’re not forced to work and so now we’re going to talk about when you’re not forced to work and this interesting idea uh that we as a.
Society where’s a culture have that work life and balance is uh means that you know people that work a long time have kind of got it wrong uh you know they’re there their Work-Life Balance is taking a hit that you know they might be working lots but oh their Work-Life Balance must suck.
And it’s almost like this uh people who work while to seen as uh you know bad in some ways right because they’re working they’re working so much and it’s like well you know how can why would you choose to work that’s kind of weird uh I try and work as most people work as.
Little as possible choosing to work more is kind of strange so this one is more for those people that choose to work more and here’s some interesting thoughts perhaps about how Work-Life Balance isn’t perhaps what it sounds like right that working life are perhaps the same thing you know working life are perhaps in in.
Harmony together and we’ll get to in a sec so now we’re going to hear from Jeff Bezos and we’re going to hear from some other people about Work-Life Balance here we go.
Jeff Bezos#
How do you go about establishing that Work-Life Balance that everybody you know talks about and thinks about you’ve got I mean you live a big life right and how do you how do you I get this question a lot I get it I teach um senior executive uh kind of leadership classes at Amazon for our most senior uh.
Execs and I also teach or not teach but I also speak to um interns so kind of all across the Spectrum and I get this question about Work-Life Balance all the time from from both ends of the spectrum and the my view is I don’t even like the phrase Work-Life Balance I think it’s.
Misleading I like the phrase work-life Harmony because I know that if I am energized at work happy at work feeling like I’m adding value um part of a team whatever energizes you that makes me better at home it makes me a better husband a better father and likewise if I’m happy at home.
It makes me a better employee a better boss all the things it’s not about it’s not primarily about there may be crunch periods where it’s about the number of hours in the week but that’s not the that’s not the real thing usually it’s about do you have energy and is the is your work depriving you of energy or.
Is your work generating energy for you and you know there are people everybody in this room knows people you who fall into these two camps you’re in a meeting and the person comes in the room some people come into the meeting and they add energy to the meeting other people come into the meeting and the.
Whole meeting just deflates and those people just they they drain energy from the meeting and you have to decide which of those kinds of people you’re going to be are you going to add energy um the same thing at home and the same thing at home and it’s so it’s a wheel it’s a psych it’s a flywheel it’s a.
Circle it’s not a balance because a balance that’s why that metaphor is so dangerous because it implies there’s a strict trade-off and you could be out of work have all the time for your family in the world but really depressed and demoralized about your work situation and your family wouldn’t want to be.
Anywhere near you they would wish you would take a vacation from them and so it’s not about the number of hours not primarily I suppose if you went crazy with you know 100 hours a week or something yeah that made right maybe there are limits and probably I’ve never had a problem and I think it’s because.
Both sides of my life give me energy and that’s what I would recommend that’s what I do recommend to interns and execs.
Michael Gill#
So James when you say do something for your employer can you think of examples where you do something which is only or you’re in oil in other words you have personally nothing invested at all you did well yeah I’d say yeah it’s a good point and I think even if it’s I’m just thinking of like a basic task.
Like sending some emails or things like that you’re still it’s still a mutually beneficial relationship in that like they’re paying you to do that so that there’s something in it for you in that sense but even in terms of the career progression the way of looking at it I guess there’s always in the things that.
You do it’s still driving your career forward and maybe make you more a would be employed or I do other things for other people so I guess there’s growing a skill set is also something that is beneficial to yourself as well yeah that was one of the words I was hoping you would get to.
Just to get the money for a while but yeah even things like a simple email has the potential to develop you all around knowledge skills and value every interaction if you think of it that way to my response to you in a funny sort of way I don’t see any more Work-Life Balance.
Because as I’ve had more time to read and think since I’ve retired from the partnership in 2008. I now see work very much as what you do whilst you waiting for the real joys in your life and once you are in that space I promise you will never think of it as work again when you largely I’ll.
Answer 100 I don’t want to go overboard but when you are largely of the thought that I really love doing this love yeah this is me love people that I’m with yeah I love the opportunities that it’s giving me to develop as a human being yeah it makes me return to my family.
Every day I really decent human being I no longer have any Notions of leaving the work at the front door that makes sense yeah yeah something to drive for everybody and it’s not easy it’s bloody uh because there’s so much in light that competes with our attainment of that space and if I could start to talk about.
Some of the awful challenges that your generation has about lifestyle and you know getting the sort of money that enables you to live in a particular way and then being locked in yourselves that those closest to you about yeah whatever else I do in life I need a job that returns me a minimum of X dollars.
Every month and when yups when young lawyers picks up your point Peter which has got to look honesty to it when young lawyers from Big Law Firm come to me and stay almost as admission of failure this isn’t really falling and I don’t know how to tell Mike Aaron I got it I’ve got.
A job in the M&A department at Three Hills or daylight Bible or something I hate it I absolutely hate it yeah and I say to them how important is money too because if money is not terribly important to you it was a lawyer the world’s your oyster yeah but if the first thing you have to do is get a tick.
On not less than a hundred thousand dollars a year or two hundred thousand dollars a year or being on that slippery ladder for partnership all that stuff if all of that’s there then there’s a all you’ve got is closed off a ditch number of options maybe everyone include your authentic stuff yep.
Sinek#
So I am uncomfortable with this concept of Work-Life Balance um because balance is achieved with two opposing forces and why should work and life be an opposition right and uh I don’t think there’s if you don’t have Work-Life Balance if you’re struggling to find Work-Life Balance no amount of yoga will fix that right.
Um taking off an extra week of vacation and by the way vacation means you’re not working on the beach that’s just telecommuting from a beach um um but I believe in in uh that the that you’re able to build a life where work and personal life become uh not only you say interchangeable but.
Smooth and what I mean by that is they’re not necessarily confined by hours in a day but rather where I choose to give effort so for example if it’s four o’clock in the afternoon technically part of the work day and you’re hankering for a run because it’s a day like this you can go for a run like that’s you.
Know and one of the things one of the mistakes that I’ve made was treating things that are important to my mind my body my spirit as stumped something that I’m supposed only supposed to do off hours or on weekends but just like I can’t decide when I have an idea sometimes it’s on Saturday and.
Sometimes it’s in the evening I also can’t decide when I need a break sometimes it’s something I feel that’s something I plan for and so we’ve gotten really good it’s imperfect you know sometimes responsibility takes precedence but we have gotten really good in our little company that if somebody wants to take an afternoon to be with their kids they.
Put in their calendar with my kids a long time ago I used to have when I when I had um a different form of business before all of this stuff we used to have things called duvet days which I get I can’t remember we had like five duvet days a year or something and a duvet day.
Was you wake up in the morning you just don’t want to come to work you’re totally healthy or it’s a beautiful day and I would rather go to the beach so you’d call up and leave a message at eight o’clock in the morning or seven o’clock in the morning like hey I’m taking a duvet day I’ll see you tomorrow.
And no one would bother you right and people like that’s amazing that you do that sign I’m like people are doing that anyway it’s called hey I think I have a 24-hour bug I’m not gonna be at work today and they go to the beach so just call it out um you know schedule.
Time at the gym in the middle of the day if that’s when you like working out and I just found the more seamless that we can make work in life um the more we start to enjoy both more because they’re not they’re not opposing.
James#
Some great insights there and I love the Bezos piece about work life Harmony and about how you know working can make you feel better which makes you a better person at home which makes you better at work and it’s kind of this flywheel where all these things are benefiting the other uh I found a.
Great tweet Alex hamozi who’s a business Mogul uh offers a lot of great advice online and here’s his tweet he said Work-Life Balance assumes you’re not living when you work in my experience it’s been the opposite when I work I Loop and I think that’s a super uh fantastic tweet and something that.
You know that we that I guess those of us that want to want to work more and pursue things and work harder and Achieve Etc you know these things are not things to be ashamed of like choosing to work extra on the weekend is not something to be you know you don’t have something wrong with you.
If that’s something you want to do right if it’s something that you want to do then you should do it okay and don’t let the chains of your friendship groups Society Etc hold you back from the things that you want to do the things that you want to achieve.
Conclusion#
Um kill well that brings us to the end of the episode today this one was an interesting episode I think we covered some good ground when it comes to Work-Life Balance it’s an interesting conundrum is this idea of how much time should we spend on work and life but I think what I’ve learned is that work and.
Life are not distinct things they are related they have they have Harmony between between them and that working better and doing work that gives you energy will make you better at your life will make you feel better at life which will make you yeah and once you enjoy that life side of things that will.
Make you better make you enjoy your work more which will make you enjoy your life more Etc and I think I think these are some great points so yeah hopefully this episode was useful for you the listener if you did enjoy this episode please consider subscribing to The Graduate Theory newsletter it comes out every single.
Week we’ve got many episodes lined up for you so please do that and yeah thanks again for joining us in this episode looking forward to seeing you next week.