Everywhere I look I see work/life balance is shot

These days we're supposed to be more about work/life balance.

This century is supposed to be about the environment, about health and enjoyment, about social enterprise and other good stuff. Combatting obesity, smoking, AIDs, Cancer, blindness.

And within business the promise is more women higher up, more corporate social responsibility, a laptop for every child, more democratic principles and sharing of rewards, better corporate governance and coaching and mentoring.

Yet it seems that wherever I look I see hardcore old fashioned macho business working...

I have two emails in my inbox today (Saturday) from a fellow owner of a successful fast-growing business in the same market as us - one sent at 11 pm last night, the other at 01.58 am this morning. Business emails. Work. [Note: I opened my email today to get a specific email that I was interested to read - some psychometric tests that Tom and I did a while back. Not working per se.]

Then I'm reading my stuff, this is interest stuff for me, blogs that I learn from - enjoyment, while my boy sleeps, and I read this article about how Marissa Meyer, a VP in Google, runs her days.

Snippets include:

I do marathon e-mail catch-up sessions, sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday. I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight.

My day starts around 9 A.M. and meetings finish up around 8 P.M. After that I stay in the office to do action items and e-mail. I can get by on four to six hours of sleep. I pace myself by taking a week-long vacation every four months.

In an average week I'm getting scheduled into about 70 meetings, probably ten or 11 hours a day. On Friday, Patty lets me out early -- around 6.

From 4 to 5:30 every day that I can, I'll sit at my desk to answer any question that shows up on my doorstep. We have a big sign-up sheet outside. We joke that we should get one of those deli number tickers -- "Now serving No. 68!" The average seems to be around 13 people per day.

I know (or have read) that Marrissa is an extraordinary woman, working for an extraordinary company, and does represent the .01% of business elite but even so - SHEESH. Sorry, all due respect and other cop-out caveats, but that is just insane.

My average going to bed time, no EXAGGERATION, is 9.30 pm.
It seems my competitors are still working at this time!

There are two things to say on this topic, I feel.

One is powerful and counter-intuitive: that is, if you do what you love, if you passionately deeply enjoy your 'work', then filling your time with that is not a chore but a delight. This I agree with completely, but it doesn't sit well with the 'all things in moderation' / balanced life viewpoint. But it is true that if we fill our lives with what we enjoy then we will be extremely successful in our 'work' - whatever that is.

The second is that there are increasing signs of the impact that all of this hard work is having on us. I was talking yesterday to a lovely woman about how wonderful her holiday was, and how creative she became in her time off, 'away from the damned screen'. I'm sure if she was more creative in her work then her employer will benefit, yet this is not possible. More and more people hate email, declare email bankruptcy, or tell me of the cultural requirement in their company to respond rapidly to email 'to be seen to be busy and involved'. Email is very broken now and is damaging people's emotional wellbeing- that's what I hear, talking to our many clients.

These signs are not just anecdotal.
Witness the 'lifehacking' blogs that provide tips and 'hacks' on personal productivity. Witness the incredible success of the four hour week (its on my to-buy list!).

If you read, as I have, about productivity - particularly of creatives like designers and software programmers, you learn about the principle of 'flow' and how long it takes to get into flow (>15 minutes) and how long it takes to get out of flow (just one 'quick question' from your colleague - another 15 minutes plus to get back where you were). And you realise how uncomfortably these needs sit with the current business communications balance. (Books: Peopleware; Mythical Man Month)

(Joel Spolsky understands these intimately and makes them work for his business and his team. So does Ryan Carson. So too do 37Signals with their collaborative tools which allow asynchronous communications and team working.)

I think we all thought things were going to change, and they have.
But not necessarily for the better.

Business cultural norms around the choices of communications tools and expectations around response times are deeply flawed. The pinnacle for me is a phone call asking me if I'd received an email (which I usually have) on the same day. Aarrrgggh!!!

Something is broken within our business culture right now, and we need to work together to fix it.

Rather than leave it on that dour note, here's an attempt at the world we need to move towards:

1. Everyone has a responsibility to triage their outgoing communication - who do I absolutely need to include on this message and who can I actually leave out; how quickly do I want a response and therefore which mechanism shall I use?; what will happen if I don't ask this question or raise this issue?
2. Email is not designed for rapid response - if you REALLY need a fast answer, use the telephone (which has an massively reduced risk of being misunderstood, too). No thanks to blackberry on this one, which has transformed corporate expectations - you get a blackberry, you might as well get a corporate tattoo on your neck, such is the sense of ownership of your time now.
3. Everyone has the right and indeed responsibility to triage their incoming communication - how often do I want to check my email, in order to be effective in my role?; which hours do I want to work in order to maximise my effectiveness and productivity?

Do you agree, or better disagree? Do you have examples of this too, or extras to add to this list?

Comments

[Matthew Hill]

Having now spent 7 weeks in the jungle that is corporate banking, your blog entry comes at a very appropriate time, Will!

I have so much to say on this subject, but due to my new corporate tattoo, I really can't right now.

I will definitely pick up on this when I have my home PC set up (yes, I have now moved to London). Here's a preview summary:

Corporate life sucks. :-)