Tag: balance

Work. Family. Scene. Pick Two.

On November 15, 2021

Work, family, scene. Pick two.

Work—that is your creative output.
Family—that’s a spouse, kids, or any close personal relationships.
Scene—that’s the fun stuff that comes along with success. Parties. Fancy dinners. Important friends. This is the stuff that looks good on Instagram, that you can brag about, that falls into your lap like a wonderful surprise. Offers, invitations, perks.
Work, Family, Scene: You Can Only Pick Two – Ryan Holiday

I love this advice from Austin Klein, via Ryan Holiday. You can’t have it all. You burnout. You’re miserable. You’re robbing someone of time or attention or love or presence.

The two you pick can change as your life does. Your balance may shift from work to family or scene to work. As they all feed each other.

Picking two is important as remembering you can switch the two at any time. It’s not a lifelong choice.

I’ve always found family and work (as its meant here) to be the most rewarding. Sure the scene can be fun. But that’s the part I most readily give up. That’s what works for you. You follow your path and find what works for you.

Longer hours don’t make for better work

By Carl

On August 27, 2015

In Observations

Overwork is hurting us. The longer hours and later days are not increasing productivity. It’s hurting it. Building cultures where an email is sent on Sunday at 7am for a meeting on Monday at 7am is not only accepted but expected is toxic. Working 80 hours in a week is inhuman and ridiculous.

There need to be limits to work. Just because a device can receive email doesn’t mean the owner needs to check it 24 hours a day. Just because someone has your phone number, doesn’t mean you need to be available to that phone at their demand.

This week, I declined to give my personal phone number out to someone I was planning an event with, because I knew the culture of their group meant it would be abused. I already made that mistake once and I continue to pay for it.

I love to work hard when I am at work. But I need just as much time to regain my focus and energy when I’m not at work. I draw a line at where work stops and my life begins. And it’s a hard line to keep from being erased or moved when you’re not looking.

Work Hard, Live Well

Many people believe that weekends and the 40-hour workweek are some sort of great compromise between capitalism and hedonism, but that’s not historically accurate. They are actually the carefully considered outcome of profit-maximizing research by Henry Ford in the early part of the 20th century. He discovered that you could actually get more output out of people by having them work fewer days and fewer hours.

The best work perk I’ve ever had was a scheduled where I worked 9 hour days, but I got a day off every other pay period. This let me schedule appointments during the day, go to movies, sleep in and recharge during the week without having to use precious vacation days / sick leave.

Many times when I get in to work in the morning and open Outlook, I see email sent from all hours of the night and morning. I wonder to myself why these people felt it was important enough for them to send this to me at 11pm. Or 4am. Couldn’t it have waited until work started? I wasn’t going to see or act on it until the next day anyway. If these were from people who worked an alternate schedule I’d understand since email is perfect for its asynchronous nature. But they’re not. They’re at their desk just like I am.

I have a few rules that keep me sane at work and keep life balanced with work.

First, I never respond to email after hours. I may read it to make sure no one in our West Coast offices is having a real emergency. But I don’t respond, because that teaches people that I will respond after hours.

Second, I don’t give out my personal phone number at work. I made that mistake once and I continue to pay for it. When you give out your personal number to one person, assume it’s going to get passed around. Because it will. And then you’ll be receiving calls at all times and hours about work-related things.

Third, keep records in writing. I work almost exclusively in email. It not only buoys my own poor memory, but it allows me to have a record of conversations and agreements. I keep records so I can refute someone trying to lay blame on me for their lack of communication or action. It’s partly a move to cover myself. But it also allows me to keep people honest.

If you send someone an email asking for clarification, and you get a phone call in return. It can mean the person doesn’t want a paper trail of what they’re asking. For instance, I’m a government contractor. My contract has limits on the number of hours and locations where I can work (without prior approval). I am going to hit my hours for the week at noon on Friday so I have the rest of the day off.

You Really Don’t Need To Work So Much

With no limits, work becomes like a football game where the whistle is never blown.

This is a perfect description of work. It’s many starts and stops but there’s no end in sight. Hurry up and Wait may be the motto of the corporate workplace.

In similar situations in the past, I’ve been asked (verbally) to work more hours than I am getting paid for. Because the contract did not allow for overtime nor comp time. But the person asking would never ask in writing, it would always be a phone call. I would ask for clarification in writing and never get it. So I would not work over my time. They know they’re wrong for asking but also smart enough not to commit their request to paper.

The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies

In sum, the story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.

Keeping a balance between work and non-work can be challenging. But it’s always worth it in the end. Rarely has staying late and killing myself at work ever benefited me or the people I work with.

On Ending the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

By Carl

On August 29, 2014

In Observations

End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

Why would less email mean better productivity? Because, as Ms. Deal found in her research, endless email is an enabler. It often masks terrible management practices.

When employees shoot out a fusillade of miniature questions via email, or “cc” every team member about each niggling little decision, it’s because they don’t feel confident to make a decision on their own. Often, Ms. Deal found, they’re worried about getting in trouble or downsized if they mess up.

When I am not at work, I do not check work email. I do not think about work email. I do not consider what could be going on in work email.

If it’s in email, it is inherently unimportant.

If something urgent were happening, I would receive a phone call. No phone call. No urgency.

In contrast, when employees are actually empowered, they make more judgment calls on their own. They also start using phone calls and face-to-face chats to resolve issues quickly, so they don’t metastasize into email threads the length of “War and Peace.”

See? Face-to-face meetings or phone calls are for important things. Email is for ass-covering and uncertainty.

These changes can’t happen through personal behavior: The policy needs to come from the top. (If your boss regularly emails you a high-priority question at 11 p.m., the real message is, “At our company, we do email at midnight.”)

This is another important point. The example is set from the top-down. If your manager and his manager and his manager all email all night long. That’s the message. I keep my work email habits to myself mostly because people are aghast when I tell them I don’t check it outside of work.

But when I ask them how often they’ve had something in email that absolutely could not wait until they were back in the office?

Very rarely do they have any examples. And the ones they do offer were accompanied by a phone call. This Labor Day let’s think about how we labor. We give all of our time to work in exchange for what?

More work. You won’t ever get ahead. The harder you work and the more time you pour into your work and email, the more you’re rewarded with more work to do.

Stand with me. Hold the line. Do not check work email outside of work.

Word Break

By Carl

On February 27, 2012

In Observations

I don’t smoke. I have never smoked and don’t intend to start now. What I do intend to do is take advantage of a previously smoker-only exemption to work. The Smoke Break.

I work with a couple of smokers and have worked with them in the past. They would disappear a couple of times per day for a few precious minutes to feed an addiction outside or in a special room.

I’ve decided to take advantage of this break as long as the weather is nice. When the temperature is above 60 and it’s not raining, I go outside to sit on a bench and enjoy the sun and fresh air for a few minutes.

I work in a basement 9 hours a day, 5 days a week without so much as a window, let alone a breath of fresh air. When the weather permits it, I go and sit on a bench under a tree and enjoy the day.

These brief moments help clear my head. Sometimes a problem I’ve tried to solve all morning will come to me. Sometimes I will get an idea for an other path to take in finding a resolution. Sometimes I write a few words that have bounced around my head.

Other days, I just sit and breathe the air.