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.