Balancing Modern Work-Life Challenges: From Workaholism to Personal Fulfillment

Five of us are in the house . That's been a while since we've all been on board . We're all deeply interested in having a chat today , especially Chris . He's riveted to what we'll be covering .

I didn't even know there's a workout , a piece of equipment called a Smith machine . Is that right , it's called the Smith machine , but anyhow , I took it as thus . Smith is a machine and I'm like thank you for the compliment I see your PT's reached out to me , chris .

Um , but anyhow , I'm excited that we're all together and , uh , I suppose I'm more excited because for me this these type of sessions always morning sessions , and for my friends here they're all evening sessions , so they're all pretty much , you know , uh , tapped out for the day , but they are eager to share their ideas and thoughts .

So , anna , I'm gonna throw to you what's top of mind for you right now . Hi , hi everyone .

I would say that 80% of our arguments are about how stressed out he can be because of work and how much that affects us in our day-to-day life . So what do you guys think ?

matter as well always jet-setting somewhere . But I know that you're in this very senior role inside the organization you work for . You have a lot of folks that depend on your talent and how do you ?

Well , ever since I started my professional career , I've been quite relentlessly pursuing the next thing , the next thing , and studying and studying , and I think Chris and I always used to joke and say insecure overachievers , like we never felt good enough .

So you're always in more and more and more and more hours , and that's affected me quite a lot in relationships , in social time with friends , in time with family members that have passed away , and I've always really , quite deeply regretted that .

And so I said about six months ago , I'm going to start saying yes to more things socially , but I'm also going to try and say yes to more things at work that have a good outcome , that have an epic meaning behind them , either mentorship or working more with larger groups of people . So with that , I have gone to more festivals .

I've never been to a festival before in my life before , and in this year I went to some of the biggest ones in the world and I absolutely loved it .

I'm glad I started saying yes and then , you know , making more time to hang with friends and family have actually gone downhill because I started hanging out with the girlfriend more and not balancing the the friends and family side . So now that slips and then you start focusing too much on work and the rest slips out .

So it's a really hard balance and I think this is a really interesting topic that I get asked on a lot . I will give some more sort of tips as we go on , but I think you know to sort of revert back to your original statement there . Yes , I've been a busy boy does it does ?

I actually make my calendar open to every single person that I work with , across every organization , and I block it and I actually tell them this is when I sleep , this is when I go to gym , this is when I feed my children and I've had people do this to me before with their scheduled time and when I'm eating dinner .

I'm like , absolutely , I'll take the call , let me show you what it feels like . And I take the call and they're dealing with kids and food and shit everywhere , and I'm like you know what ? This is your own fucking fault , yo . So it's the truth , right ?

I'm like , if this is what you want to do , if you can't respect my time , then let me show you exactly how being disrespectful feels .

It started off as a way for me to be able to hop across the sea pretty regularly and not have to rebook every all of my standing meetings . But I did have an experience a while back that I worked at a you know I'm sure many of us have had this experience .

I worked at a company I'm not going to say who it is , you can look at my LinkedIn profile and guess , but it's anyone's guess , right ?

I worked at a company that just had a horrendous culture of respect for other people's schedule and calendars and in fact , this company had they actually had a policy that everyone's calendar was supposed to be open so that anyone else could read it , and I turned it off . And I was spoken to about this , despite being in a senior role .

I actually you know it's like someone spoke to me about this . I said you have two choices you can fire me or you can let me have a closed calendar .

And the reason was because this particular organization there was just this sort of culture of other people thinking that they were the arbiters of what was most important on your schedule , right , of what was most important on your schedule , right , so so-and-so .

If he wanted to book over something that he thought , because he thought his thing was more important than the thing that you had booked , and my reasoning on this is that you don't have that right . It needs to be enough for you to know that I am busy at this time , end of story .

And that was where I think my boundary setting around calendars actually , um , actually came in , despite the fact that Anna doesn't think that I have any , but , um , I , I do , in fact . I do , in fact , work hard at this .

So I do find that people are much more respectful to my calendar than I think they would be to Andrew's calendar and I assume Chris's calendars and yours , mark , and yours will , just because they assume that you can just take a call in between , like two sessions of Peloton and like writing a proposal and whatever .

So I do feel that the boundary setting of three hours per day is sleeping because there's just so much demand . So I would be super curious . I also think that you don't sleep , mark , because I see Mark is insane . Emails from you , you know , morning , noon and night .

And yeah , I would hate for you guys to get seriously ill or , you know , to not be able to focus or burn out . I think it is easier for me to establish a work-life balance .

Yeah , I never get it and then .

Will will always be like I'm really worried about you , I think you're doing too much and that's like that's and that's you know really nice , and I still burn out sometimes . But I'm wondering how many times do men in our industry get given the same courtesy ?

But I remember and you get this a lot where , especially , and once again , only towards women , most of the time , which is once you have a family and they see your work and their career , they go , oh , you're having it all . And I remember I once said that to you and I have you to me . I went , annie , you're having it all .

And you said , well , no , I'm not , it's impossible to have it all , but I'm trying to get as much of it as I can . And I really liked that , such a nice way of looking at it .

But I've observed at several points throughout my career the hostility maybe not always hostility , but sort of the least supportive people of parents , particularly of mothers with young children . Have been several , and I can think of specific examples , several female colleagues that I've had who did not have children or families .

And , you know , in several cases several actually confided in me and said you know , it really frustrates me that so-and-so gets to come into the office later , all because they have kids , as if the rest of us don't have things to be doing .

And I think at the time these conversations were happening , before I had , you know , before I had a child , I just sort of didn't care , right , it was sort of like you know , girl , there are way bigger things to worry about than resenting your colleagues who are mothers .

But now , as I think back on it , I'm actually enraged , I feel sort of this fury at these , you know , at folks who basically I've seen take the position . Oh , everyone is so nice to so and so because she's a mom and she can get away with anything , and like thinking back on that now I haven't thought about this in years .

It really sort of infuriates me .

And , as we are talking about work life balance in a group that clearly I mean I don't know , maybe I should just speak to myself in a group that I believe doesn't have any work life balance right now , because things are moving , are just moving too fast and you need to like hustle , want to associate yourself with parents and and vice versa .

Thinking that , uh , people who , who don't have kids , are not married , don't have a family , whatever , um can work more would annihilate those folks from your organization as well . Right , because they're gonna be like what the hell ?

One of the measures for me is when I look at my career and I can look at years that I can't find any distinctly thing that pops out of those years . In other words , one year blended into the next , one project blended into the next , and it was just the same thing different year , nothing that kind of stands out .

And some people they don't want to spend time by themselves or don't have a life outside of their work If they don't have children , family , other things that are coming at them , and so therefore it is easy to get caught into that and then wonder why other people do have these other things . You know , going on that's .

I mean , how many people like I saw a stat come out of the uk recently around retirement and how in the 70s the average retirement or pull on the pension in the uk was something like either 25 or 35 years , so in other words , from somebody starting to collect their pension , they collected it for all those years before they left this earth .

But then you get incremental life absorption , so a bit like saying I'm gonna stay out for another drink one more hour won't hurt , that's one more hour of happiness you borrowed from tomorrow . We call it a hangover .

Now the difference there is you get incremental life absorption as well , where you'll say , okay , I'm gonna work a little bit harder and then you start eating into your hobby time , but that's okay , because you're going to give me a head on your project and that becomes a pattern .

Then you drop the hobby , you drop the family dinner , you and you suddenly you're , you accidentally come into a workaholic . I would like to move on to a topic about . You know we're seeing this a lot in the community , but I'll come back to that . So tell'm going to tell Andrew's poise to say something .

So one of the things that the topics that I've been interested in through the years has been this idea that over the course of history , and in actually very recent times it's a very recent historical development that wealthier , better off people work .

These outrageous excuse me , these outrageously long days , these outrageously long weeks , right For most of human history , affluence produced leisure time , and if you don't believe me , go watch Downton Abbey , anna , and I have just finished rewatching it all . Right , like you wonder what were those people doing all day right ?

I've wondered if part of that phenomenon isn't something to do with the convergence of tools , right , in that work , so much of work and so much of leisure now happens using the same set of devices , right ? So ?

Which then sort of raises another question , and that's the difference between work and what I will call because for lack of a better word industriousness . And here's what I mean by that .

For a very long time in my life I just referred to the long blocks of time sometimes 16 hours a day , right , that , especially when I was writing books , that that I would spend with a laptop or with an iPad , I preferred to write books on my iPad , right , and I just sort of called all of it work , right , but for me , writing fiction was , was very .

Not that work wasn't enjoyable , but writing fiction was . I guess it wasn't work , but it looked a lot like work and that's why I'm calling it industriousness , because I was still sitting at the same device doing something that looked a lot like work , even though for me , I , I , you know writing fiction , writing novels , was you know is is extraordinarily .

It's good for my soul , I enjoy it , I love doing it .

Can I just go and have an overpriced curry and a cocktail , Like , can this just be like a nice dinner ? And so , yeah , you're right . I feel like , even if we're setting up , like you know , a very pleasurable thing , meeting up with your friends If your friends are entrepreneurs or from your industry or you end up still doing work .

So again , disrupting that work-life balance and is that healthy I'm just wondering Is work-life balance a myth ?

And if you look at any big companies that have grinded at the start they did crazy , ridiculous hours . They didn't have work-life balance .

The richest man in the world I would have probably a lot of people agree with me probably doesn't have a work-life balance , right , yeah , and you know my wife doesn't like him because she was like and you know my wife doesn't like him because she was like imagine his kids how they must have to live with the leftovers of his work .

You know time-wise and but I'm like , is work-life balance just a modern concept ? Because if you go back 150 years , when the sun came up , you worked . When the sun went down you stopped working and you were in bed pretty soon after that , but you would be out physically working .

We just have an electronic world that we work with a lot more and , as Andrew said , the device blend of work and activity has kind of overlapped so much .

Look at where we went as this discussion , as this topic , began to unfold . But one of the ways I think that we would be well served to realize that work-life balance is going to play out in different ways for different people .

And one of the ways that I think that it plays out , which I thought , I thought that we were over this as a society , at least in occupations that don't require physical , that don't always require physical presence . So clearly , you know , for a lot of teachers and physicians and you know , et cetera , et cetera .

There there's there's delivery , amazon delivery , drivers , right , there's a lot . You know there's a need for to be in a specific physical place , and I thought we were over this .

But what I've seen over the last year is this idea of you know this , this return to office nonsense and the , the , you know , employers again starting to be being more and more assertive about caring where , where people are physically , and and I , like I said , I thought we were over this and it drives me crazy .

And you know , listen , some of the some of the world's most successful companies , across multiple industries , are now increasing these return to office mandates . I think they're nuts , but I do think . I do think that work life balance can play out in different ways for different people , play out in different ways for different people .

It's not always about the calendar . Part of it is about one allowing people to be in places and with people that they care about , but also , frankly , allowing people to be in places where they are able to do their best work , and for some people that's an office and for some people it isn't .

The name itself , the title work-life balance guides us in the wrong direction , that it's not a fixed state and it does mean something different to to everybody , and I prefer I always use the word , you know , use the phrase work-life integration , because that's what it really is . Right , it's not a balance , you're integrating it in how it fits for you .

So if you , you know , our roles are all different , our day-to-day is all different , our family makeups are different , our hobbies are all different and you just find the ebbs and flows of life and work and the best way to integrate that now where I see this happening a lot and it's advice I give out is when people first start getting involved in the community

. They get so addicted to it . You get all this and you suddenly , you know , and the biggest piece of advice I give is because they said oh , I didn't get to go to nordic summit . Oh , I didn't get to go to dynamics . Oh , yeah , they've got color cloud , we've got . We've got scottish summit , we've got something . You get the point right . It gets intense .

And then I've got four talks down . I'm doing three talks a month as a badge of honor and you're like , and then they're absolutely exhausted , their family's crumbling or whatever , and at the moment it starts feeling like a chore , it starts exhausting you , it starts feeling like work . Just stop it , you know .

And and it's that addiction , it's that drive , it's that that incremental absorption thing again that really gets you . So go back to that . What's my work-life integration because this integration isn't is failing this is through the integration neighborhood .

Like I love doing it . I've never , I've never , I've never , not liked doing it . I like going to conferences , I like traveling , I like seeing people , I like getting on stage . I would happily get on stage 10 times in a row at an event . No problem For me , I don't . And I like your talk , your discussion there Will , because work-life integration is key .

What I do is I work on integrating things together . Like , as an example , the last event , I managed to go to gym four times out of the five days like hardcore gym , not like one hour , I'm talking like two hours out of the event . I've learned how to bake in things for work and , like you know , I have call times with the family .

Like that's important , right , and I think it is work-life integration . But at the same time , I know millions of people .

I can tell you millions of people , and Stuart , cassie and I had this talk and I was slightly touchy and he's like , oh , what they'll do is , he told me , like him and Tori would go to work and then they'd come back and then sit on the lounge with their laptops on their lap , absolutely , and think about it Like I mean , that's just what it is right , like

it is work-life integration . If that's what you're comfortable doing , just do it right . I do think we have family days in my house . What we'll do is we will go out and make a quest somewhere , like every kind of second weekend , and then I have date days with the kids every month .

So I have one day Adam , one day Lexi , one day Luna every weekend for the entire month . But it's funny because I'll tell you something interesting . My mom messaged me and she's like oh , you're not spending enough time at home . I'm like okay , just tell me how much time do you think I spend away from home ?

And I said let me give you a piece of information here , because I don't think a lot of people understand this . When I was working at Hitachi , I was traveling to the office , leaving at 6 am in the morning and I was getting back at 10 at night , every single day of my life . I have train tickets to prove .

I have a stack of them like that and I said to my mom I said you need to think about this . Do you think ? Yeah , do you think I spend less time at home now or more time at home now ? She said no , you spend less time at home . I'm like you're actually incorrect . But the problem is is that people don't see it .

They choose to see what they want to see . Yeah , and that's the point . I've actually counted the amount of days I spend away from home that's it .

But Chris said something to me , I think about a week , two weeks ago , and it resonated so well , which is people go well , and it resonated so well , which is people go well , you need to get your balance right , etc . I was like , well , no , I don't , because it works for me . And chris said this and he went and I chose this life .

This is what I like doing . I chose this life . I like the intensity , I find the balance , I find the integration let's throw bounce out the window I find a work-life integration and this is what I chose . It works for me .

So you might not think it's appropriate for and it probably isn't , because your parameters are completely different to mine but I do like Chris's quote on that , which is I chose this life .

I like going up and speaking at six sessions of event , I like going on stage 10 times , I like taking out , you know , days out and making strong barriers , it's whatever works for you , just make it work .

I have gotten to do some quite interesting things outside of this world , like drive boats in an official capacity but , excuse me , in one form or another I have been in this world of Microsoft or other partner space , working at a consultancy or a similar type organization , working in that environment . I've been in that world since 2001, .

Right , so I've been in that world for 23 years and what I've seen , a lot of it feels very normal to me , right , it feels very normative to me .

But I've seen a lot of people who have left , say , you know , the classic example is people who have been successful in IT or in app development or whatever at a customer right and they leave that world of a customer and they go to a partner , they go to a consultancy where suddenly they they're , they're expected to be utilized or to bill a certain number of

hours For those . For those who are wondering , I think that this is more extreme in the United States , where the billing requirement is often 40 hours a week . And then you will support sales and learn things on top of the 40 hours per week .

Right In the UK they're a little bit more forgiving , but not very much more forgiving , and I've seen people just go from customer land to partner land and get fried very , very quickly and I think that that is a transition that you know often can be seen like I'm going to go , you know I might make more money in in partner land , but there are trade offs ,

right , you are . It is a life that you are . You are choosing and you need to . It's very hard to jump in right , especially if you're not acclimatized to it .

I love this podcast . I think we could probably talk about it for hours on end because it is such a personal topic that we have our own personal points on and I honestly it's been so enjoyable and with that we will wrap .

Stay connected with us for more innovative ideas and strategies to enhance your software estate . Until next time , keep pushing the boundaries and creating value . See you on the next episode .