A few months ago I was sat in my office one evening beavering away like Barry the Bustling Beaver when my wife walked into the room. She stood at the door without saying anything and I glanced up to see her giving me one of her ‘special looks’
“What’s up?” I asked rather suspiciously.
She looked at the clock above my head and then back at me. Then at the clock again and then back at me. Then once more the clock and me. Then with a tilt of the head and raised eye brows she asked:
“I thought you were a Life Coach. How is this any different to when you were working all hours of the night and day when you were in sales?”
I glanced sheepishly at the clock and realized it was past 9.00pm and I was still ‘working’ I gulped inwardly for a moment, struggling to come up with a legitimate answer. I stammered “It just is” in a pathetically unconvincing way.
With that she played her coup de gras by simply turning and leaving without saying another word. I was left to ponder my sins in silence.
As I sat there staring at my monitor it dawned on me there were two huge differences between what I was doing now and in my previous sales life.
- I love what I do now
- I am doing it because I want to and not because I have to
I think it’s fair to say they’re pretty significant differences
One of the main problems I have with my work is knowing when I’m having fun and when I’m working because the two are inexorably intertwined in what I do.
- Life Coaching is fun and work
- Writing is fun and work
- Promoting my blog is fun and work
- Dicking about on Twitter is fun and work
I don’t say this to say “Look How Brilliant I Am!” because that will come in my next post entitled “Look How Brilliant I Am!”, I say it to demonstrate that I am in no way exceptional and it’s really possible for you to do this too.
I swear I’d never heard the phrase work/life balance until I went to work for Yellow Pages in the UK. It would have been easier to have dodged a bank of fog than miss it working there because it was all management ever seemed to talk about.
Firstly, take a look at the expression:
‘Work/Life Balance’
Does anything strike you as strange about it?
Think of it this way. Do you ever consider if you have your “Play/life balance” in order or maybe even your “Pray/life balance” if you’re a religious type?
Of course not, you just get on with it. The fact is, play isn’t separate from life any more than work is, they are both integral for the vast majority of people.
If your employer is talking to you about work/life balance, 9 times out of 10 it’s because they don’t want you to have any.
If you’re talking to yourself about adjusting your work/life balance, similarly it’s because it’s already way out of kilter. It’s like feeling thirsty. If you’re really thirsty it’s because you’re already dehydrated to a reasonably serious level and you should have drunk hours ago.
People who have great work/life balances don’t spend half their time worrying about their work/life balance, why would they? It would make about as much sense as my dogs worrying about developing insomnia.
I must stress at this point that I’m not one of the growing band of people that look down their noses at people who work for others and think they’re idiots.
I like a world where my doctor isn’t self-employed, my Police Force doesn’t consists of 100,000 people running around doling out justice as they personally see fit and I can buy a car without having to assemble it myself.
Some people like working for others and they’re deserving of as much respect as those that don’t. I was once one of them for a long time and if I had worked for more scrupulous companies may still be so.
However, I definitely am one of the merry band of people that doesn’t understand why people will effectively throw away half their waking life when they’re aware they feel crap all the time they’re at work.
“If you really hate your job don’t tell people you do it to earn a living. Tell them the truth, that you do it to earn an existence and see how that feels”
I have been finishing up reading the awesomely, amazingly, brilliant and inspiring book ‘The Element’ by Sir Ken Robinson this week. I have to be honest and say it was that that inspired this post, a post that had been forlornly sat around half written for a few weeks now.
Every now and then I forget how resourceful people are when they want to be. I also forget that 95% of the population can do pretty much anything they want to (physical restrictions notwithstanding) if only they BELIEVE they can.
That’s really the core of this post and probably the core of self development. Having the belief that there really is no need to do something you don’t want to do. In fact i’d even go so far as to say it’s not a belief, it’s a fact because it has been proven millions of times.
I took a huge drop in wages to become a life coach, but so what? Seriously I don’t give a damn as I said in this post. Thinking you NEED the money is just a belief it’s hardly ever a fact.
Of course in the short-term it may be necessary to retain your income and I’m not saying you should default on your mortgage whilst you pursue your passion for training squirrels to perform ballet.
However, I am suggesting you start to work out a plan that helps you extract the most enjoyment you can out of your time on this planet and do so as soon as you feasibly can.
Look for reasons how you can make it happen not excuses why you can’t because my guess is if your life was a project at work that you simply had to re-engineer to keep your job, you could do it.
This is waaaaay more important than that.
Tim Brownson is a Certified Life Coach and has been unsticking people and helping them reach their true potential since 2005. If you would like to know how he can help you
I’ve always believed I have a life – a holistic one that encompasses all. When you separate your work life from whatever other life you have, I think you’re not living it as you describe the way you feel about your life now.
“I love what I do now.
I am doing it because I want to and not because I have to’”
When you’re doing what you want then you are truly living one life, IMHO.
Thanks for the great post and reminder!
No Such Thing as Life Balance.
At least that is what I believe and what I wrote on my blog. Its a bunch of hooey invented by the Self Help Industry. It makes us life coaches in the coaching industry look….silly (not my first choice of words)
You are on the right path Bob and so is Tim
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Hey Tim.
That was hilarious about how your next post would be titled “Look How Brilliant I Am!”.
I like what you present here. It is key for people to see the difference between what you were doing before, as opposed to the work you are doing now. That minor point about it being what you want to do is worth volumes to those who know what that means.
Also, because so many are in jobs they don’t enjoy, there is almost a societal feeling that a person who answers the question “What do you do?” with something that isn’t unappealing is not doing a real job.
Glad to read.
What companies really mean is how to keep your life from getting in the way of working 24/7.
I don’t always love what I do but it makes me feel a little sad when people mention how much they hate their job or how they are counting down until Friday. Life should be about more that wishing time away …
I would pay good money to see a squirrel ballet. We could start by training the one who keeps getting into my attic – that one only seems to know Stomp and Riverdance.
@ Bob – Thanks my man and I know you have a very similar philosophy to me and love what you do. Aint it grand? ;-)
@ Maureen – You can always use your first choice of words round here. You’ll have to work really hard to offend me!
@ Armen – Agreed and thanks for taking the trouble to comment!
@ Kim – It makes me sad too, it seems such a waste and I bet in old age they have some severe regrets. I’ll put you down for 2 tix when I get the squirrel ballet up and running. The first performance is planned to be “The NutEater Suite”
“work/Life Balance” is a phrase that means nothing, it’s become a corporate catchphrase that gets bandied around to sound like action is being taken. Yes, I’m cynical about the whole work/life balance stuff. Too many years working in the public service.
It comes down to priorities, what is important now, and how much you enjoy what you do. If you love what you do then you’re likely to have a good ‘balance’. Assuming that you’re not a workaholic anyway.
The stress caused by the lack of ‘balance’ is caused from crappy work environments, bad bosses, disliking your work,
too much work, insecurity of tenure….
Ok, getting off my soapbox now.
Oh, and I’d like tickets to The Nutcracker Suite too please!
My new alternative phrase to work/life balance – want to/have to balance.
It is probably one of the things that bothers me most that of when people treat their job as the bane of their existence.
Regardless of whether their time is balanced between at job/not at job the main problem is that they see their job as the source of their unhappiness. This is a fatal mistake.
Hi Tim,
In the company I work for Work/Life balance is quite a big topic, and I also realized couple months ago after receiving yet-another spam email about it, that the whole concept is bullshit. I’ve also meant to do a blog post about the topic so damn you for beating me to it! :)
For me the whole idea of work and life being somehow two separate things is simply ridiculous. How is work NOT a part of life? How are those two things actually on the opposite sides of a scale? Life is all there is, and life includes work too, they are not separate entities.
//sami
i appreciate the fact that you do respect both groups, the self employed and the ones who work for others, quite fair :)
Having a purpose in life is essential for being happy I think.
If you haven’t read about Flow states by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi you are missing out.
One of the Components of flow Is that your goal is intrinsically rewarding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29#Components_of_flow
The reward for doing work has to be doing it not what you get out of it. Makes sense to me.
@ Melinda – Sorry we’re doing the NutEATER Suite. The squirrels can be trained to do ballet but they refuse to stop eating the nuts.
And you’re always welcome to hop on your soap box round here.
@ Charley – That’ll do it!
@ Jarrod – I agree and you may not be stretching the point when you talk about ‘fatal mistakes’ either. Some people literally chop years off their own lives through sheer misery.
@ Sami – Agreed mate, I hope you pointed it out to senior management ;-)
@ Farouk – That was born out of some well known bloggers (2 in particular) that think working for somebody else makes you an idiot. Presumably they will only ever employ idiots to work for them.
@ Brian – I certainly have read Flow and you’re absolutely right!
I think most folks need or want to hear about work/life balance because they are indeed in jobs that they do not like. So they must balance what they don’t like (work) with what they do like (life). The goal I think is to get to where you are in that work is something you love and there is not a need for the balance separation – “it just is”
Hem Hem.
If you are doing what you love, it is not called working. End of story. :)
In the book “Crush It”, Gary V. goes on and on how to do what he did and the one thing that he emphasize, that the hard work will be fun because you are going to do the thing you love. If not, then you are right, you will hate it.
In his book “Tribes”, Seth Godin tells a story of how he was at a hotel during vacation checking his email at 3 in the morning. He overheard someone say how sad it was to see someone who couldn’t get away from work.
He said (to himself) that he love what he does and does not consider it work. In conclusion he writes that if you need to escape for 2 weeks a year from work, then that means you are not living to your dream.
HOWEVER, if you are attached to people, like your wife in this case, you do need to think about the others. We may love what we do, but they don’t appreciate that there is another lover in their lovers’ life.
Sami Paju: Actually I beat Tim. I wrote my article September 2006
Brian Lagoni: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is so totally awesome. I have read his book so many times its dog-earred. The guy is brilliant. I like that he quantified it so no on could say he was crazy.
Tim: I was going to write f–king lemmings. I wasn’t worried about offending you. Just being polite and thoughtful LOL
Yeah, boy!!!
Spot on. Since I started to work for myself, I’m working longer and harder and earning much less… But friggin’ loving it. Not really caring about a W/L balance – just loving every minute.
Good post Timothy, you is very wise (although credit to Mrs Brownson for the initial insight)
Hey there, Tim.
Yup… it’s total bullshit. I’m one of those currently “earning an existence”, and I used to think of it as “OK, I just have to sacrifice 50 hours of my life a week so that I can enjoy the rest.”
That’s bullshit too.
Now, my day job is financing my dreams, feeding my wife and myself, and I’m using it to learn about people and myself.
My part time work (blogging, publishing) is starting to earn some real money… so I *guess* I could start calling it work – but there sure ain’t no balance to it.
Thanks for another awesome article. Sorry I missed the call last night – I was busy being out of balance.
@Maureen, very good! :D
@Ed Gaile, I like what you say about balancing the likes and don’t-likes. If that’s the case, though, the assumption is that work is automatically something you don’t like about, and I think in most cases work is not something you actively dislike, but more of a necessary evil. And of course there are the few who actually like what they’re doing.
I used to actually like my job, although the work didn’t really help me move towards my own goals, and it definitely wasn’t what I wanted to keep doing in long-term. However, I felt I learned a lot every day , met some amazing people – many of whom have become good friends – and gained great experiences. All of them important things that weigh on the positive side of the scale.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is, that work/life balance is bullshit, and a new better measure or term should be coined to actually address the real issues that made it necessary to invent this concept in the first place.
//sami
[...] Brownson wrote a post about Work/Life Balance except he called it something else. Something rude that I couldn’t possibly repeat on this [...]
I get what you’re saying — and I’m very fortunate to be among those who have a wage-job I love and independent contract work I love, and a home and family and all that. My wage job allows for lots of flexibility, and the folks I work with are super-reasonable and non-hierarchical and accessible. We’re not so busy that we can’t find time now and then to have fun, or to stand back and look at what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
BUT I know I’m lucky. I know others who love their work, and even their jobs, but who are so busy and stressed that it takes conscious effort on the part of employee and employer to keep the work from taking over their lives. The Work/Life Balance concept is meaningful and valuable to those folks and those organizations.
This is my first time on your site reading one of your blog postings. I thought it was very interesting. I see your point about work/life bullshit. All that really matters is that you, I and everyone else have their say on how their life goes and how their living should be made. I look forward to your next post
I’d like to go back to the top of the post. The part where your wife shakes her head in disgust. Although I don’t think you misunderstood her complaint, I’m not sure this post really gets at her point. What do you think?
@ Maureen – I don’t get offended by Lemmings ;-)
@ Carl – Thanks and credit has been passed on.
@ Lyman – No worries mate and I agree with what you say. Do you intend one day to gain all your income from online work?
@ Tegan – Thanks a lot for offering your thoughts although I do disagree. I don’t think you can truly LOVE a job that stresses you senseless.
@ Obi – Thanks a lot!
@ Kerry – That wasn’t really the point of the post to be honest. Having said that, you make a salient point and we did put some parameters in place that means I’m usually done with work by 7.00/7.30pm now.
@ Tim – I sure do. And I intend to use the exercises in HTBRAH to help me get there… otherwise I’m getting my money back!
I guess that’s why people say do what you love to do. This eliminates the need to balancing work and life because there isn’t a great divide between the two. Thanks for sharing this inspiring post.
I agree withe everything you’ve said, I’m doing what I “semi” love, if that makes sense. I work for myself, but I still do some stuff I don’t want to but have to do, that’s business IMHO.
Sometimes the struggle comes like you’ve described though, when we might not be delivering on our daily requirement as a husband, wife, daughter, son or parent.
This is where I struggle to keep up the balance in all things.