Wednesday 23 March 2011

Benefits of balance

I go through phases of seeking balance, especially when my life feels skewed in one direction or another. Too many commitments, too little socialising, too many hours spent working, too few hours spent training, too many races, too little free time for reading and afternoon naps... Those scales rarely settle in the middle or even slightly to one side - they're too often all the way over to one side.

I'm not much good at full-time employment where I'm tied into an office and sitting at a desk for fixed hours daily. I'm very good at more-than-full-time employment where I'm sitting behind my own desk (for too many hours!) doing many different tasks each day. Although I have my work for clients, the other things like AR.co.za, FEAT, club involvements and other tasks are also important to me. I am community orientated and have a need to build and create within these communities. Some people have a need to eat burgers or watch telly, I need to create.

The only problem is that juggling so much stuff leads to the situation where I'm working all the time. Sure, many things I enjoy doing so it is fun-work, but it is still work. I have made it my focus this year to loosen my grip a little and not to compromise on myself so often. So far, so good. I've probably done more training in the past three months than I did in six months of last year and I'm feeling more centred, content and... balanced.

Sean Verret put me on to this superb talk from TEDxSydney by Nigel Marsh on chosing to have and establishing a work-life balance. There are so many really good things that he says.



Early on he says the following:
"So many people talk so much rubbish about work-life balance. All the discussion about flexitime or dress-down Fridays or paternity leave only serve to mask the core issue which is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged, on a day to day basis, with a young family."
I'd like to substitute 'young family' with any of the following: yourself, your friends, community, partner, family...

He continues with:
"[People are] leading lives of quiet screaming desperation where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like."
I've been here too - not the buying of stuff, which I don't care much for - but the quiet screaming desperation in a job I hated where I would come home shattered and in tears. He adds that going to work in jeans and tees on Fridays doesn't quite get to the bottom of this. He's right. You have to make the change; your company won't.

In order to get more balance, we take more on by squeezing in more training hours or events or social engagements before work, after work and gobbling up weekends instead of making fundamental changes. Adding is not changing.

Nigel gives the example of a friend who read his book and realises that she needs to change her life to what she wants it to be. She spends 10hrs at work each day; she commutes 2hrs. Her relationships have failed and there is nothing except work in her live. So, she decides to get a grip and sort it out. She joins a gym.

Nigel rightly says, "Being a fit 10-hour-a-day office rat isn't more balanced, it's more fit".

As a child, would you have written the lifestyle you currently lead on your 'what I want for my life when I grow up' list? And, would you wish this same lifestyle for your children?

Mmm...

Another superb TED talk I watched over the weekend is one by Hans Rosling. I've watched a number of his talks. This one is about the greatest invention of the industrial revolution - the washing machine. Rosling shows the magic that happens when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.

2 comments:

expressyourself said...

Hi Lisa, thanks for this, and for opening up a debate that has always been a tough one for me. I have no real work life balance and i am like the person who said 'so i went to gym' and yes now i work the rat race but am very fit. what i have decided though is that i work the rat race, get very fit and the spend what i earn on GREAT adventures - so that i can experience what to really live life means. at this stage, this is the only way i know how. getting a social life is tough especially for a divorced, single, independent, chick with a lot of opinions....although i have been told guys like this. i have yet to experience this - although i assume what is being said is, - that if you work 13 hours a day leave home at 4:30am for gym and get home from gym session 2 at 8:30pm then you WON'T find balance silly! shew so some food for thought....Al

adventurelisa said...

I think you need pressure / desire to change lifestyle, like to work less hours. Sometimes you've got to do what you're got to do. And if you don't have a reason (person, activity) to cut down on working hours, then there is really no reason to change. For now you're fitting in what you want to do - ain't nuthin' wrong with that ;)