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Balance, Fixed · Humanity Working

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Today's quick fix is balance.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by that?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: We think of it as the ability to manage your energy across the different parts of your life as they blend together so that you're staying effective without training yourself.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: And when I say different parts of your life, I mean there's your work stuff and your non-work stuff.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: And your non-work stuff is sort of further subdivided, right?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Into the stuff that you're doing with your family and your friends and on your own and your, you know, your personal interests and how you develop as a as a human.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's managing and balancing your energy across all of those different things so that you've got enough energy to apply to all of them.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So isn't that just like work-life balance?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds very similar.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, it's interesting.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's the whole work-life balance thing is a re is is very interesting.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you you hear conversations about work-life balance all the time, and you hear a lot of people talking about the fact that, you know, or what they say is like work-life balance isn't a thing anymore, and there is work-life uh integration, and that's what we should be thinking about, or it's impractical.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the real reason for that is because historically, we've actually defined work-life balance in a quite different way, even though it sounds similar on the surface.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: The way in which we've traditionally defined work-life balance is the idea that um there is this sort of balance with two things on the on on each side of it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um for those of you that are not watching the video version of this podcast, I'm gesticulating wildly here to show both sides of the uh both both sides of the uh of the balance.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, like that, the the Libra scales, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then on one side of it is work, and on the other side of it is life, and somehow you're supposed to keep those two things in balance.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the sort of first visual metaphor that people have for this thing.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: But also they will the the old school version of this was it was all related to time.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you let's say, for example, you were a 1950s executive and you were coming back from work at seven o'clock each day, that would mean that your work and life were out of balance, and you would fix it by coming home from work at 6 p.m.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: every day, right?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it was very, very much uh traditionally related to time.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: This new thing, which is actually still balance, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and balance is probably the best word to describe it, um, as I say, is not really about, right?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's and and nor is the is the backdrop under which it happens the same.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because the backdrop in this situation is a world in which work and life, work and the rest of our life do constantly bleed into each other, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: People are coming if they're able to, you know, they're coming away from work to go to their pick their kid up from school early or something along those lines, or or you know, attending the the baseball game or whatever it happens to be.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, on a Friday night, watching when they're watching their kids' football game, they're on their phone dealing with work emergencies, right?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: So so it the concept of balance we believe is still valid.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what it represents, namely this idea of uh balancing energy and balancing energy across a whole bunch of different domains is different.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, what specifically is making this so hard right now?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we talked about it a little bit when describing it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, one is just it's just work is very different, right?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Work is happening.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a headwind?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there is.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So so work is work and life are are intertwining with each other, not just in the same place.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're not they're not just balancing intercepting each other in time, they're intercepting each other in space because we can work from anywhere, so we do work from anywhere.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and also because in many cases we've got ourselves into a world where hyper is a uh is just an expectation.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so it's like like you need to hear back from if I don't hear back from you in in the next you know half hour, then I must be slacking off or something along those lines.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost like it's it's well it strikes me that we almost got sold a bill of goods that it's supposed to be balanced.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: It should be it should be way tipped the other way, but you know, uh balance is like way more.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's more about like Yeah, so if you don't really pay attention to your energy uh in that and where you're spending time and energy, it's not just time, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's the energy component that really changes it, because we can't do anything about those new the new world that we're occupied.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's genies out of the bottle.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And to a certain extent, yeah.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and it's interesting.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the things when we first work with people on this, um we start with with one thing, which is right, there's 168 hours in a week.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not going anywhere for a long, long, long time.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think in a I think us um cosmologists say that in about a million years we'll have 169 hours, but you know, we ain't got a million years to figure out to what to wait for.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: So so basically we've got 168 hours in a week.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's not going anywhere.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: The you can dip into this thing called sleep, but that doesn't really help, right?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so, and actually it will reduce your energy and make you so that the pool you're pulling from is is is less in the first place if you're dipping into sleep.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the reality is that all you got left is how you go about manipulating and prioritizing the various things that you do.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And the hard thing, the truly hard thing, is that before that amount of time that we spent on those different things was chosen for us, right?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was chosen by the the length of the workday and the length of the breaks and all that kind of stuff.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: And now we have to make our own decisions and we have this big cognitive load that we face on us as we're as we're trying to do it.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, there's a bunch of emotions uh in this as well.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um we when when I first started interviewing people on this, I found an enormous amount of guilt among among people as they were trying to accomplish this thing called balance.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because what happened is that you would have people who would prioritize work more and then feel super guilty about the fact that they were not being there in terms of their presence for their friends and their family and all of that kind of stuff.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: So then they'd look to rebalance.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: But then as they looked to rebalance, they're now paying less attention to work.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're having like managers talking to them about the fact they seem to be less committed.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And now all of a sudden they're afraid they're gonna lose their job, and so they swing back in the other direction.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so there is this constant sort of like feelings of guilt that tend to push us in in one direction or another.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you can like could someone be too balanced, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think yeah, it's a good question.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I I don't think really you can too balanced, because balance is the right, it's never steady.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost kind of like Yeah, yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: But but I do think it is possible to overprotect the non-work stuff, right?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you do overprotect in that way, you can end up protecting yourself so much that you're never gonna have any meaningful work that, you know, because you're not you're not gonna have that opportunity.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna say no to that stretch project project, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're not you're gonna say no to that thing that allows you to that allows you to grow.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: So because this is a a sort of uh a thing which is is constantly moving, it's really about having the right balance for the moment in time that you're um that you're in.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you wanna you remember the the interview we did with Michaeli Volpe, for example.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: He talks about this this concept of you know how much focused energy can you bring to your work at any particular point in time.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no right or wrong answer associated with that, but it will be different.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: It'll be different depending on where you are in your career and what your other things are.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: So so it's I I think it is you you need to constantly look at it and see, ask yourself the question, is it right for me in terms of where I am in the moment?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: And if it is, then you'll do really good work.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's life balance.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's not work-life balance, it's just life balance.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's just balance, actually.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the point, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we call it balance, not work-life balance.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is just simply balance.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So let's give one simple thing someone could do this week to improve their balance.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I've been thinking about this.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think, you know, we've talked a lot about audits over the uh over the course of the last um few episodes.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I think uh I think an audit can be helpful, but what I also think is that um starting starting from a point of view of understanding where you feel you are out of balance across the various different aspects of your life, and then checking that against the people, the relationships that you have that are most important to you.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: So your perception of how in or out of balance you are is likely to be different to the perception of the of the people that that care about you.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that discussion, even though it can be awkward, even though it can be difficult, can be a really, really great starting point for then figuring out how you want to adjust and adapt things.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's that.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's like it's like, yes, do this sort of internal audit, but get that external perspective on how in or out of balance you are at any particular moment.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh balance fixed.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: We did it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: See you on the next one.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: See you next week.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 11:22
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• 11:28
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• 11:31
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• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.