Work/Life Balance Poll
April 2, 2008
BigCo extolls the value of work/life balance, but most of the time companies simply drain people one-way until their retirement. More recently, Tim Ferriss has proposed his own version of balance in his awesome book, The 4-Hour Work Week.
We Want to Know What You Think About Balance.
1. Which of the two- work or home [...]
Live to work or work to live…. It always seemed obvious to me. But, to specifically answer the questions:
1. Home life, without a doubt, takes precedence over work life for me. I have always figured that work can come and it can go and it can change its many forms, but your life should be who you are and how you define yourself in the “outside of work world”. It’s true your accomplishments definitely lend to that in a large part but what do you do with that once you walk out the door at the end of a day. Hopefully, you go home to the reason you get up in the morning to work in the first place.
2. Not very, actually. I have always made a concerted effort to seperate the two. This is probably due to the fact that I have a family of my own that needs me to “clock out” each evening. So you will rarely find me “working” through the day, evening and night outside of deadline crunches.
3. The perfect balance to me would be work that is synchronous to my life outside of the workplace. This may sound contrary to everything I stated above but I think that if I could manage to successfuly arrange a schedule that allowed “work sessions” throughout the day which coincided with “life sessions”, say 2 hours on 2 hours off, that might be ideal. Although, the needs of clients might not cater to this.
This is great food for thought!
Thanks for the thoughts Kevin, this is awesome!
I ask the questions because they aren’t easy to answer. I too have a family, and it is tough (and a great source of guilt) to take business calls at home right in the middle of children wanting to engage with daddy. On the one hand, the seamless connection between work and life is ideal…but your ‘work sessions’/'life sessions’ suggestion is very interesting and worth pursuing.
Great comments and thanks again!
I couldn’t agree with you more that companies extoll the value of work/life balance and then work their people to the bone. To answer your questions:
1) No question: home life.
2) Probably as integrated as you can get. My kids don’t even know what ‘work’ looks like. They’re not sure if it’s playing Candyland with them, going to Target, or answering e-mail. They just know I’m living life and that’s exactly what I want them to think.
3) I am living my ideal scenario. I am not bound by hours or traditional beliefs about how work needs to happen. I literally do whatever I want, whenever I want - as long as my work gets done. I am a happy wife and mother and a full contributor to society. Life is good.
Cali Ressler
Co-creator of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)
Co-Author of the forthcoming book “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It”
Cali, you’ve made my day!
Thanks for sharing this. I want to buy many copies of your new book, as the world (and me too) needs solutions to the unavoidable fact that work does suck… The question is: What do we do next?
Business Collectives? Coworking companies? I look forward to learning about where this is heading!
Thanks-
I may be the odd one here. I see the distinction as completely artificial. I come from a long line of farmers and shop owners, and for them home was work and work was home. And both were extremely important. Frankly, I like to work. And raising kids is definitely work! But then, I’m also incapable of doing something that I don’t like for any length of time… So it works out…
Cali, I’ve been reading about ROWE and what you all did at Best Buy! I’ve been putting together a story on the history and the program, CultureRX, etc. You and Jody top about 4 or 5 of my lists: active HR, covert innovation, etc. etc.
Drew, don’t discount the employer-centered community.
Cali, Kevin, thank you!
Todd
Andrew - Tim Ferris wrote the endorsement for our book that will be on the cover. We have great respect for his thinking and we’re honored that he sees promise in our ideas as well. And, of course, we would encourage to spread the word about the book and our blog as the more people we can get to fight against the suckiness of work, the faster the revolution will grow and spread!
Todd - so glad to hear that you’re a fan of ROWE. If we can do anything to help with the story you’re putting together, please let us know. And same goes for you - keep spreading the word. It’s time for the people to rise up!
Cali and Jody