How do you achieve work-life balance? Companies and employees have been trying to solve this problem for centuries. But what if this is the wrong problem to solve? If we forgo the pursuit of balance and instead strive to give undivided attention to the things that matter most, work-life harmony may fall into place.
The work-life balance dilemma isn’t new. The term was coined in the 1980s by the women’s liberation movement who used it to describe the challenges faced by working women with families. Today, work-life balance has expanded to include all genders and it’s much broader than just families — including effective time management, overall well-being, stress management, and burnout prevention.
In spite of the decades-long conversation around work-life balance, it has hit a fever pitch in corporate America. Just look at the burnout numbers today. Or have a conversation with any leader, in any company, in any city. As our hours have grown and the volume of communication has grown, so naturally has burnout.
So, how do we shift the equation? If for no other reason than entirely capitalistic, selfish motives, burnt-out employees don’t produce the quality and amount of work that others do. But of course, more importantly, is the human side: burn-out leads to friends becoming shells of their former selves. Unhappy, unhealthy, and unmotivated to do anything.
Two Traditional Approaches
So, what arrangement of work and life will lead to our thriving? People end up on two ends of the spectrum: 1. set strict boundaries or 2. carve out personal time.
Neither solution actually works. The first failed solution is to work 9 to 5, then leave and try not touch work again until the morning. At dinner, you check the emails and slack messages, but you don’t answer them. What ends up happening is an emotional game of chess: you feel guilty for not answering that email. You constantly think someone, somewhere is disappointed in you. You’re going to have so much work to sort through when you get in the office in the morning. If this solution is correct, why is the emotional turmoil so great?
The other solution (touted by hypocrites everywhere) is to carve out time for yourself. During a recent speaking engagement, I found myself in the audience, listening to the session that preceded mine as I waited for my turn to speak. This particular session featured a panel of senior leaders from a large corporation. As they imparted advice to younger leaders, urging them not to feel guilty about taking vacations and personal time, it struck me that none of those leaders got to that stage by taking their own advice. I personally knew them to be workaholics who occasionally golfed.
They were subconsciously implying that work-life balance is for the weak, and for those who don’t want to move up the corporate ladder. They, on the other hand, were the strong ones who had endless capacity to work and work and work.
Benefits Of Being Present
Before taking advice from any business leader, look to see if the rest of their life is something you want to emulate as well. Sure, they have achieved great success, but do they have meaningful friendships and a close family?
My friend, Guy Fruda, is the Chief Technology Support Leader at Deloitte. He is a healthy model of how to integrate work and life, and I’ve respected his counsel on this topic for years. When asked how he does it, he replied, “I love work, and I love being home.”
What you love, you will pay attention to. When Guy is at work, or when we’re in a conversation about work, he’s fully-present there. And the same at home. His affections set his intention.
On the other hand, if you loathe your job, you are going to long to be somewhere else. And if you’re frustrated with other parts of your life, you are going to run to work. Ask yourself if the reason you are over-indexing in one sphere of life is because the other sphere doesn’t feel enjoyable or worth it.
Few things are more disconcerting than being physically present in one sphere while your mind is preoccupied in another. When we do this, we find ourselves operating at less than 50% capacity in both realms.
The type of attention we pay to what matters will shape how much we enjoy it. This is the root of actually solving the work-life balance. It’s not about the amount of time you devote to each sphere, it’s the amount of attention you give to it when you are there.
Attention Training
One main attention problem stems from the interruptions and frequent context switching encouraged within most work environments. Our brains ping-pong between tasks all day long, creating attention habits that not only impede our ability to concentrate at work, but also spill over into our personal lives — making it challenging to focus at work and at home. We half-work in the office, and then half-work all the other hours. And the combo is what makes us overwhelmed and leads to more burnout. We can’t solve the work-life balance without changing the work norms.
The rationale behind promoting a complete disconnect from work is to foster the kind of attention skills that lead to heightened focus and productivity in the workplace. The objective isn’t to reduce one’s output but rather to nurture healthy mental habits that ultimately enhance one’s performance at work.
However it won’t help to spend time with your family and replace checking work email with checking twitter/social media/texting. You must train your attention to be fully present with whatever sphere you are in.
If you must engage with work after business hours, (and you likely will), make sure it is a purposeful shift to which you give your full attention, and then return your full attention to your home sphere.
Long Hours At Work Are Not The Problem
Working long days and more hours is not the problem. We still aren’t working more hours than farmers in a field hundreds of years ago. The issue is that at every moment we’re reminded of an entire world demanding our attention. And we have lost the ability to give our attention to the moments we know matter most.
Give up the constant anxiety of pursuing unattainable work-life balance, and trade it with the permission to be present. You can’t achieve balance, but you can achieve undivided attention around the particular things that deserve it.
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