The Busy-ness Whirlpool

How much time do you waste during the day? Yes, I know we are all busy…crazy busy. We brag to each other how busy we are. We even brag about what we don’t have time for. “I’m so busy I haven’t been to the gym in months.” Really? But what are we doing? We are getting sucked into our own busy-ness.

I admit that I also fall into the busy-ness trap. There is always so much to do and there never seems to be enough time. I seem to work at the office, at night sometimes when I get home and in the morning. But what am I really doing?

Very recently two things occurred that kept me very busy and I realized how much of my time was stolen on this busy-ness. First, Microsoft unveiled their new operating system Windows 10. I don’t tend to be much of an early adopter when it comes to technology, but I needed to upgrade the VAIO  in my home office and thought that this new system would do it. Well, the upgrade worked, but I lost two days integrating the system, bringing files over and of course, personalizing the desktop. I rationalized my busy-ness by thinking that I was making myself more efficient.

The second occurrence was the purchase and installation of a new computer for our business office. We were disgusted with our old computers and purchased an “all-in-one” Dell desktop. Again, hours were spent on setting up the system and getting it up to speed. It’s not done yet, I’ve still got more work to do. But I finally realized that a lot of the “set up” was the personalization of the computer and not important for our work.

I offer these two as examples of the “work” that can fill up our day. It is now estimated that most of us spend up to 30% of our work day just scrolling through email and because we are connected at home we continue to work in the evenings and on weekends creating what is approximately a 72 hour work week for ourselves. No wonder we don’t have time for anything. And of course it all seems important.

There is no easy answer. I’m not going to advocate turning everything off, because as a business owner I can’t. But I’m finding that it is important to understand and monitor what keeps me busy. Is it just my own busy work? Am I feeling busy because I’m doing something, anything, even just scrolling through email or Facebook, or am I moving toward accomplishing the things in life that mean so much to me, like writing, speaking and helping others? And of course, I want to spend time with the people in my life I care about. When I put those things in perspective I realize that scrolling through emails, checking news, reading Facebook, posting on Instagram, are jobs I create for myself that keep me busy. I can choose to maximize my time with the work I enjoy and the people I love. Whatever time is left over, I’ll give to my “busy-ness.”

Let's Get Rid of Work/Life Balance

Have you ever tried to balance water in one hand and a fish in the other and make it work? Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? That’s the same craziness as saying we need work/life balance. One really can’t exist without the other and they are intimately connected. I’ve written about work/life balance before, but we need a different way to think about our lives; one that makes sense for an integrated life.

What’s wrong with the whole concept of work/life balance? It is an incorrect dichotomy. Work is an integral part of life and cannot be separated from it. Work, when seen as a vocation, gives purpose to life and provides meaning. We don’t get meaning from lounging in a beach chair sipping a margarita (as nice as that sounds). But we do get meaning from adding to the greater measure of humanity by providing service, information, art or material goods.   

At the same time we also need moments of pleasure, when we revel in the work we’ve done, meet friends, celebrate our accomplishments and free our mind of work. We take time to enjoy physical pursuits, outlets which allow us to stretch our limbs and allow the sweat to cleanse and renew us.

Yet both the work and the play have their limits. If we over indulge in either of them, we know it. If we continue over-indulging too long, we burnout or crash. This is why we need a new concept of balance to understand how we get the most out of life.

The ultimate balance is between intensity and rest. Whether pursuing work or play, we know that balancing the intensity of focused attention to a goal necessitates we provide ourselves with rest to continue later with the same intensity. This is the balance many of us lack.

Our lives are consumed by the siren song of technology that calls us to continuously check our messages long past the time when anyone should be reasonably sending us any. But we create our own vicious circle by replying and causing the other to continue the communication. There is no rest, there is no downtime.

Somehow believing we are getting away by pursuing pleasure or physical activity, we push ourselves at the gym, or meeting others without a moments rest and then we check back in whenever we can. What is wrong with us?

Balancing intensity with rest is of tantamount importance to great individuals from professional athletes to CEOs of major companies, but it also applies to all of us. How long can we pursue this intensity? Our abilities peak for about 90 minutes. Then we need to step away and give ourselves an opportunity to regroup.  Studies show that when individuals or companies create a “90 minute intensity – 10 minute resting activity” throughout a day productivity climbs and more is accomplished in less time. Try it. You will find yourself more productive.

Yet, even without using the 90/10 equation we need to think about our intensity vs rest ratio whether we are working or playing. We will find ourselves focused more when doing whatever task we choose and enjoying the rest more.

So, let’s get the concept of work/life balance out of our heads. That’s over-used, incorrect and even dangerous thinking. We need to balance intensity, whether it’s at work or at play, with time for rest. Disciplining ourselves to focus intently and then step away allows us to both recover and pursue our passions whatever they may be. So, how is your intensity/rest balance?

Work-Life Balance is the Holy Grail of Our Era

There is no such thing as work-life balance. There I said it and I wasn’t struck by lightning nor did the house shake. Though the inspirational-speaker-gods might be angry with me the ground did not swallow me up. The work-life balance misnomer has floated around for quite a while and it has been the cash cow for a lot of speakers, including me. Everybody seems to want to know how to find the magic balance. It is the holy grail of our era. But just like the holy grail of old, it is just a legend, a myth. It doesn’t exist.

Arianna Huffington’s Third Metric Conference recently focused on redefining success. She identifies that there needs to be a third way of defining success. She believes the first two metrics of success are money and power. Then she offers that the third metric needs to be about well-being. Reading about the conference I agreed with her up until this point. There needs to be a redefinition of success and that is great fodder for another blog. But as I read further in the article I believe the conference just made it more difficult for everybody. They said that the way to find success is to balance money, power and well-being. Okay, now they have just guaranteed that those who attended the conference and those reading about it just added tremendously to their stress level.

Work-life balance is not possible. Mathematically it is almost impossible to balance the hours in a day so that there are precisely enough for work and leisure. More importantly to separate work from life is ridiculous. Most of us have to work for a living. (Perhaps unless you are Arianna Huffington.) Work is integral to our lives. So, what do we have to do?

The challenge of work-life imbalance is stress and guilt. We spend more time on one side of the equation at the expense of the other and we feel stressed out and guilty. We believe we should be focused more on one element than the other whether it’s work or leisure. So the answer is choosing our imbalance.

Some of us actually enjoy the work we do. We are passionate about it and we gain joy in our creativity and success. Others love the power or connection their work brings. And it pulls us away from our family and loved ones. But if we choose the “work” side of the equation to focus on, and accept the fact that it will demand our time, perhaps we can relax so that when we spend the time with our loved ones, or in leisure we can savor the moment rather than feel torn about getting back to work. Or conversely, if we identify that we want to spend the majority of our time with our family and loved ones we set that expectation in our mind, work as little as we can and accept the consequences.

The challenge with work-life balance thinking is the fallacy that we can “have it all.” In reality we can’t have it all, but we can have more of what we want if we stop searching for the grail of balance and just accept whatever imbalance we choose.

Comparisons Are Odious

I'm a competitor. There, it's out. Not that this is any surprise for any of my friends and acquaintances. Though I've tried to tame my competitive spirit over the years, I've not succeeded. Essentially I've stopped talking about it and tried to hide my feelings. But seriously, for those of us who are competitive, it's tough to shake. My competitive self comes alive in everything from cards, to sports, writing, speaking, business - you name it, and I'll compete in it. The upside is that competition has made me better in many areas and so it can be a useful tool in striving for personal greatness. The downside is that competition is based on comparisons and as Barry Schwartz puts it so well "comparisons are odious."

Competition drives us to be better in the things we attempt to do. When we examine our role models in the various dimensions where we want to succeed, we raise our sights on what we believe we are capable of doing. We broaden our concepts of how we will attempt to succeed in our endeavors and hopefully learn from our role models what other aspects of our discipline we wish to develop. So competition can have an upside.

Yet the cost of competition, especially the constant comparison to others, comes at a hefty price. If our comparisons always find us lacking in some capacity, eventually that will impact our self-image, our happiness and ultimately our well-being. The poem/prayer Desiderata offered "If you compare yourself to others you may become vain or bitter, for always there are greater and lesser persons than yourself." The phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" encapsulates the idea of comparison with our neighbors, but with TV and the internet we have the opportunity of comparing ourselves constantly against a much higher bar and it can leave us feeling drained and worn out.

Once again, balance is key. Utilizing our skills and abilities to their maximum is shown to increase experiences of "flow" and a growth in self-esteem. When we push ourselves to attain the next level in whatever our discipline, we can enjoy more positive emotions and a higher level of happiness. The discipline is to compete with ourselves after examining what others are doing. We can learn from them what might be the next level in our discipline, but then we have to create our own goals, so that we are not comparing ourselves to them, but to what we believe we can achieve.

Competition can be a tool, if used well, in moving toward our personal greatness. When balanced it will push us toward the best we can be, but in a competition against ourselves.

China: Does Size Really Matter?

Towering, hulking walls welcome and intimidate the visitor to the "Forbidden City" in the heart of Beijing China. Home of Chinese royalty for generations this massive city structure highlights the grandeur of the emperors and stands in sharp contrast from the People's Congress across the 16 lane street in front of the main gate. From the Great Wall, to Tienanmen Square (which holds 1 million people) to the Summer Palace and the massive airport, China builds everything on a huge scale. But does size really matter to greatness? That depends.

Working in Beijing last week (which is why I couldn't blog since this blog is blocked) I took time to visit some of the main tourist sites of the city. Though it was my second time there I am still amazed at the enormity of so many aspects of the city. There are 6 "ring" roads around the city and though they are fairly large highways, the traffic is mostly congested. But Beijing needs these ring roads because the city is 7,000 square miles. Even aside from the traditional tourist attractions, the modern architecture is stunning. One complex of buildings is shaped as a massive dragon boat and another, under construction, looked like an immense whirlpool. But does it matter?

There is a pride the Chinese have for this city of emperors and it is right they have it. Thousands of years of proud history compel and propel these people forward and they still want to make their mark. This is a foundation of greatness - believing you have the history and the ability to impact your world, whether it is your neighborhood, or your country. They still want to be a great nation and they try to inspire their citizens to work toward that goal. That is something we can learn from.

However size always presents the challenge to nimbleness. We live in an age where ideas are being created and  disseminated  rapidly and globally. Technology advances have increased the speed of change. I'm not advocating that speed is always good, but when everything you do is on a large and grand scale, change comes slowly. Having ages of history creates pride, but when time is measured in centuries, decisions can be slow in coming.

The balance for any country, or person, is to have pride in your history, the struggles, the successes and even the failures. That foundation impels us to move forward just as our ancestors did. Yet, we need to find the space to change sometimes in small increments as we move toward personal greatness, or national greatness.

So, size does matter. It just needs to be balanced to achieve greatness.

Continuous Improvement (kaisen)

Are great individuals in a perpetual state of discomfort? Are they always looking for the next level to attain? These questions haunt me as I fly to Tokyo to facilitate a workshop for senior managers. I was reading a briefing sheet on interacting with Japanese in business. In the reading I came across Kaisen which is the Japanese concept of continuous improvement. Though I study and promote personal greatness, I wonder at the psychological toll of always thinking things are never good enough. Can an individual rest and be satisfied with what they have accomplished while pursuing their best? I believe so.

There is a balance that great individuals have, a creative tension that allows them to realize what they’ve accomplished yet simultaneously strive to achieve or be more. They can be comfortable in their own history, knowing that they have done what they needed to do in the past and simultaneously they long for a better future for themselves.

Many of us are too hard on ourselves. I know I am. Longing to achieve something, change our lives, make a breakthrough, or just be a better person, we don’t acknowledge who we are now and what we’ve done. Either we tend to live for the future of who we can or may be, or we give up, not wanting to live in the discomfort of realistically examining our lives. We just don’t look.

There is an old Latin phrase “En media stat virtus” or “virtue is found in the middle.” The balance can be found by loving ourselves for who we are right now with all of our flaws, foibles, folly, and success while gradually moving toward living out our personal greatness. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Yet the balance, once achieved, allows us to acknowledge the goodness of who we are, while still pursuing something more. It is the real continuous improvement and one that leads to personal greatness.