The New Work Life Balance
Dr. Paul Lanthois
July 22, 2008
On Saturday morning I took my children with me to visit a friend of mine who was turning 40 only to find that he wasn´t home. He was at his son´s athletics carnival. Since I hadn´t seen him for a couple of months we decided to catch up with him there.
But who I met at the carnival there wasn´t the person I knew. He was red-faced, bloated and frazzled. The extra 15 pounds that he had put on over the last couple of months seemed to make him look 15 years older.
I have seen many patients come to me looking like this before and my health training had taught me the potential alarming consequences. To see these disturbing signs in my friend caused me to break short on my birthday greetings.
"Happy Birth… . What´s up? You look like a heart attack waiting to happen."
"Mate, I can´t talk now. I´m up to my eyeballs with the kids sports and rehearsals and my work is piling up so much I´ll have to spend half of tomorrow at work to catch up. Thanks for catching up. I´ll get in touch when things calm down."
Why is it that so many people in there thirties and forties are so stretched to the limit that their bodies and minds are stretched close to breaking point? It just seems that we have got the whole work life balance out of sync. For some reason we have designed it so that your career obligations (and time required at work) peak during the most important time of your young families life. Then when your children are grown up and have left the house you are then encouraged to reduce your workload and retire.
A true work life balance means that you have the time and energy for work and the time and energy for work or a career. With the developments of laptops, Blackberrys and Iphones technology has given us additional options to be able to do a bit of work while enjoying time with your family or while on vacation. It´s more of a work while doing life approach rather than making your work and personal life mutually exclusive.
With the development of the Internet, it is possible to save a lot of commuting time and provide additional flexibility in your lives by being able to complete a lot of work from home. Not only should couples with young families be using such advantages of technology to improve your work life balance but also you can amplify the benefits by outsourcing.
What do I mean by outsourcing? I mean that you start paying others to do the jobs that you don´t like as much so that you can spend more time with your partner and family doing things that you enjoy. This frees up your time for your personal and family life. Start paying a local kid in your neighborhood to mow your lawns and weed your garden. There will always be some teenagers who wish to earn some extra money by house cleaning, washing and ironing clothes and baby-sitting.
Many of you will say, "I don´t have the money to hire these people."
If you don´t currently have the money, create the money. Spend a few hours a week on a part-time home-based business opportunity. There are numerous opportunities where you can earn an extra few hundred dollars a month to supplement your income from home. It doesn´t take much outsourcing to make a big difference to your work life balance. You could even suggest a baby-sitting or housekeeping voucher for your birthdays or Christmas.
For all you Generation Yers out there, you can avoid a lot of the current work life balance challenges. I recommend that you adopt the new work life balance: work your butts off now and balance your life later.
Why do I say this?
In your twenties, outside of your work, your life is generally parties, bars, hanging-out with friends doing not much, and boyfriends and girlfriends. Compared this to the life of a parent in their thirties and forties that involves pick ups and drop offs from school, children´s doctors appointments, caring and raising children, soccer practice, ballet recitals and nurturing a relationship with a spouse and/or shipping the children back and forth between separated parents.
It doesn´t take a Rhodes scholar to work out that the life of someone in their twenties is a lot simpler, less demanding and requires a lot less time to maintain. So, in your twenties, when your life can take a back seat to work, I say work your tails off right now.
The time to get ahead is now, and you shouldn´t make any apologies for doing whatever you can do to make it happen. Whether that means starting a blog or a web-based business, side stepping the typical corporate ladder by job hopping, or starting your own company or becoming an investor, now´s the time to do it.
Get yourself into a position where you can afford to begin cutting back on your work time commitments as your life away from work grows. Several years back, upon the birth of our second child I made the decision to stop working six days a week and to reduce my work to four days a week. A colleague asked me, "Won´t that cost your business a lot of money."
I replied, "We´ve done the figures and worked out that it resulted in a 20% reduction in my business profit. And is that a price I am prepared to pay for my family to know me in the future? Absolutely." Although our present income is reduced, because of many years of working hard and investing we don´t require as much income to maintain our lifestyle.
And to the companies of the future:
Do you want to have a top executive or vice presented that is stressed to his eyeballs, unhealthy with a separated spouse and children that never knew them? You can´t expect sound judgement and decision making from someone in this position.
How much will their errors in judgement cost your business?
Do you want to be footing the bill for the exponential growth in cost of healthcare for your stressed out and overwhelmed workers.
Well a fundamental shift in how you employ and assign roles and responsibilities in your organization will be required.
Here is how a progressive company could instil the New Work Life Balance in their organization:
Fast Track Your Young Movers And Shakers.
Identify the talented workers in their twenties. Give the more demanding, time consuming and higher paid positions to the younger generation while they have the energy of youth to handle it. Let these younger executives be the ones who have to travel interstate and overseas for meetings and presentations and stay back late to complete deadlines.
Provide Options For Your Young Parents To Reduce Their Time At Work
Encourage young parents from their mid to late thirties to reduce their hours so that they can have more of a life at home and have the time to develop a strong family unit and a healthy lifestyle. Provide training in wellness lifestyle programs to improve vitality and energy in your employees and reduce healthcare costs.
Provide Options For More Senior Staff To Expand Their Roles
When children have moved out of home to start their career or to go to college the parents have a lot more time on their hands. Take advantage of their experience by putting them in roles of high responsibility and strategic planning. Before expanding their roles and time requirements at work, ensure that they are following a wellness program that can support their health through these increased work demands. With generation Yers, work life balance is of increasing importance in selection of jobs. An appropriate work life balance within any organization would improve productivity, attract talented employees, lower healthcare costs and save money on training from improved staff retention.
Is it time for you to develop an appropriate work life balance in your life or in your company?
But who I met at the carnival there wasn´t the person I knew. He was red-faced, bloated and frazzled. The extra 15 pounds that he had put on over the last couple of months seemed to make him look 15 years older.
I have seen many patients come to me looking like this before and my health training had taught me the potential alarming consequences. To see these disturbing signs in my friend caused me to break short on my birthday greetings.
"Happy Birth… . What´s up? You look like a heart attack waiting to happen."
"Mate, I can´t talk now. I´m up to my eyeballs with the kids sports and rehearsals and my work is piling up so much I´ll have to spend half of tomorrow at work to catch up. Thanks for catching up. I´ll get in touch when things calm down."
Why is it that so many people in there thirties and forties are so stretched to the limit that their bodies and minds are stretched close to breaking point? It just seems that we have got the whole work life balance out of sync. For some reason we have designed it so that your career obligations (and time required at work) peak during the most important time of your young families life. Then when your children are grown up and have left the house you are then encouraged to reduce your workload and retire.
A true work life balance means that you have the time and energy for work and the time and energy for work or a career. With the developments of laptops, Blackberrys and Iphones technology has given us additional options to be able to do a bit of work while enjoying time with your family or while on vacation. It´s more of a work while doing life approach rather than making your work and personal life mutually exclusive.
With the development of the Internet, it is possible to save a lot of commuting time and provide additional flexibility in your lives by being able to complete a lot of work from home. Not only should couples with young families be using such advantages of technology to improve your work life balance but also you can amplify the benefits by outsourcing.
What do I mean by outsourcing? I mean that you start paying others to do the jobs that you don´t like as much so that you can spend more time with your partner and family doing things that you enjoy. This frees up your time for your personal and family life. Start paying a local kid in your neighborhood to mow your lawns and weed your garden. There will always be some teenagers who wish to earn some extra money by house cleaning, washing and ironing clothes and baby-sitting.
Many of you will say, "I don´t have the money to hire these people."
If you don´t currently have the money, create the money. Spend a few hours a week on a part-time home-based business opportunity. There are numerous opportunities where you can earn an extra few hundred dollars a month to supplement your income from home. It doesn´t take much outsourcing to make a big difference to your work life balance. You could even suggest a baby-sitting or housekeeping voucher for your birthdays or Christmas.
For all you Generation Yers out there, you can avoid a lot of the current work life balance challenges. I recommend that you adopt the new work life balance: work your butts off now and balance your life later.
Why do I say this?
In your twenties, outside of your work, your life is generally parties, bars, hanging-out with friends doing not much, and boyfriends and girlfriends. Compared this to the life of a parent in their thirties and forties that involves pick ups and drop offs from school, children´s doctors appointments, caring and raising children, soccer practice, ballet recitals and nurturing a relationship with a spouse and/or shipping the children back and forth between separated parents.
It doesn´t take a Rhodes scholar to work out that the life of someone in their twenties is a lot simpler, less demanding and requires a lot less time to maintain. So, in your twenties, when your life can take a back seat to work, I say work your tails off right now.
The time to get ahead is now, and you shouldn´t make any apologies for doing whatever you can do to make it happen. Whether that means starting a blog or a web-based business, side stepping the typical corporate ladder by job hopping, or starting your own company or becoming an investor, now´s the time to do it.
Get yourself into a position where you can afford to begin cutting back on your work time commitments as your life away from work grows. Several years back, upon the birth of our second child I made the decision to stop working six days a week and to reduce my work to four days a week. A colleague asked me, "Won´t that cost your business a lot of money."
I replied, "We´ve done the figures and worked out that it resulted in a 20% reduction in my business profit. And is that a price I am prepared to pay for my family to know me in the future? Absolutely." Although our present income is reduced, because of many years of working hard and investing we don´t require as much income to maintain our lifestyle.
And to the companies of the future:
Do you want to have a top executive or vice presented that is stressed to his eyeballs, unhealthy with a separated spouse and children that never knew them? You can´t expect sound judgement and decision making from someone in this position.
How much will their errors in judgement cost your business?
Do you want to be footing the bill for the exponential growth in cost of healthcare for your stressed out and overwhelmed workers.
Well a fundamental shift in how you employ and assign roles and responsibilities in your organization will be required.
Here is how a progressive company could instil the New Work Life Balance in their organization:
Fast Track Your Young Movers And Shakers.
Identify the talented workers in their twenties. Give the more demanding, time consuming and higher paid positions to the younger generation while they have the energy of youth to handle it. Let these younger executives be the ones who have to travel interstate and overseas for meetings and presentations and stay back late to complete deadlines.
Provide Options For Your Young Parents To Reduce Their Time At Work
Encourage young parents from their mid to late thirties to reduce their hours so that they can have more of a life at home and have the time to develop a strong family unit and a healthy lifestyle. Provide training in wellness lifestyle programs to improve vitality and energy in your employees and reduce healthcare costs.
Provide Options For More Senior Staff To Expand Their Roles
When children have moved out of home to start their career or to go to college the parents have a lot more time on their hands. Take advantage of their experience by putting them in roles of high responsibility and strategic planning. Before expanding their roles and time requirements at work, ensure that they are following a wellness program that can support their health through these increased work demands. With generation Yers, work life balance is of increasing importance in selection of jobs. An appropriate work life balance within any organization would improve productivity, attract talented employees, lower healthcare costs and save money on training from improved staff retention.
Is it time for you to develop an appropriate work life balance in your life or in your company?
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