Future Work/Life is a weekly newsletter that casts a positive eye to the future. I bring you interesting stories and articles, analyse industry trends and offer tips on designing a better work/life. If you enjoy reading it, please share it!
I've always found language fascinating.
Mastering foreign languages grants you very particular privileges, for example. Namely, engaging with a whole group of people with whom you would, otherwise, only be able to communicate via gesticulation and that strange slowed-down version of English that many of us are prone to adopt when we arrive in foreign lands. Yes, increasingly, English is becoming the second language to many of the world's population, but the ability to share ideas, thoughts, or even to just ask for directions in someone else's native tongue, remains a satisfying feeling.
I'm equally interested in the English language. Particularly in those who appear to effortlessly craft sentences that perfectly articulate an opinion or know exactly which words to use when explaining something complex, to make it accessible and easily understood.
None of which is to say that words matter more than actions – we all know that phrase, after all. Only to highlight that semantics – the meaning of those words – are important and can influence how we feel about a subject or person.
So, with that in mind, F*ck Work/Life Balance.
That's a bit strong, you might say. What's wrong with aspiring for balance in your life? Surely you're not advocating work take priority over your personal life? Or, for that matter, arguing that work doesn't matter?
Of course not.
I'm simply suggesting that balance is the wrong metaphor. To perfectly balance work and life is impossible. For a start, how do you even measure it? Maybe when you're feeling unquestionably happy and fulfilled in both? Fair enough, but let's be honest, those moments can feel fleeting for many of us. Plus, it can be challenging to pinpoint precisely what changes from one day to the next, as your perception of achieving 'balance' shifts.
If not balance, then what?
I posed this question in the very first edition of this newsletter, and since then, it's been a regular topic of conversation with many clients, colleagues, contributors, and podcast guests. You can conclude from this that people aren't comfortable with the phrase. Perhaps it might, therefore, be helpful to find something more reflective of and compassionate towards the "messiness of life", as Robbie Stamp, CEO of Bioss International, put it on Take My Advice (I'm Not Using It) this week.
Rewind to FWL#1, and you'll see that I mentioned Stew Friedman's Work/Life Integration Project at Wharton School of Business, which for the past 30 years has studied how people's work and private lives intersect. Friedman's work has consistently shown that as people pursue this unachievable notion of balance, they're often left overwhelmed and unfulfilled.
In Parents Who Lead, he and Alyssa Westring wrote about how parents could take a more realistic approach to designing their work/lives, taking into account four common areas of life – work, home/family, community, self.
When Alyssa and I explored these ideas together, she explained how, through their research and work with parents and business leaders, they've found that recognising the connection between the four areas is critical to success and wellbeing. Embracing how they integrate with one another can empower you to feel greater purpose and harmony across all parts of your life – a 'four-way win'.
Is harmony really possible?
As someone interested in both semantics and helping others find flow across all areas of their lives, Robbie Stamp agrees with the choice of words, drawing on Chinese for inspiration. As he pointed out, harmony is a dynamic concept in Chinese culture, a constant balance of competing forces. It considers not just our own personal and work-lives, but to use Bioss's language, the journeys each individual in our lives is on.
Whatever your personal circumstances, life consistently throws up new challenges – whether it's a sick relative, unexpected demands on your time from work, or what Bruce Feiler refers to as 'collective lifequakes', such as Covid-19. In this context, how we think and talk about the interrelationship between work and self matters greatly and can shape our general mindset.
As Stew Friedman wrote in Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life:
"You can't have it all – complete success in all the corners of your life, all at the same time. No one can. But even though it can seem impossible to bring these four domains into greater alignment, it doesn't have to be impossible. Conflict and stress aren't inevitable. Harmony is possible."
Integration. Alignment. Harmony. All a far better metaphor for the relationship between every aspect of our lives than balance. Yet, while accepting life's ebbs and flows is a healthy and necessary step, improving the likelihood of a harmonious life is still within your hands.
As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, my new book, Work/Life Flywheel, will be released in Autumn 2022, and it provides a model for exactly that. Recognising that no habit is singularly responsible for success, the framework is an incremental approach to designing your work/life that builds on six complementary components - mindset, creativity, experimentation, connections, learning, and breakthroughs.
I'm looking forward to sharing more of the ideas from the book in future newsletters, and, as ever, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Why learning for fun creates benefits for your work/life
Naturally, when considering the impact of A.I. on relationality - how multiple people or things are connected - my mind immediately jumps to Native American language structures. Ok, I'll admit, I've neither thought deeply about either of those things before last week. However, after Robbie Stamp explained how we can learn from ancient languages to influence technology and policy design, the link made complete sense.
What really hooked my attention, in this case, was the passion with which Robbie spoke. His interest in what I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying is an obscure topic is not contrived or influenced by an external need to brush up on a subject - it is driven by curiosity and enjoyment.
As author Dorie Clark says in the context of making decisions about your career, "When you're still figuring out what feels meaningful, or if you're a Renaissance person drawn to many different things, I've found it's helpful to optimize for interesting."
You're far more likely to stick with a task, whether reading, working with young children, or tending to a garden, if you find it interesting and rewarding.
The added benefit of niche interests, in particular, is that it gives you a wider lens through which to view problem-solving and critical thinking, since you can draw on a different set of interests when making new connections between ideas - the definition of creativity.
In Robbie's case, learning about the Native American language, Blackfoot, provided an insight into how we perceive the value of A.I. for our futures.:
"If you take a language like Blackfoot, they have an astonishing verbal richness of imagining relationships in time and space; relational possibility in time and space.
Can A.I. help us see some of those beauties of connection that large numbers of indigenous people around the world have never lost sight of? It's there in their languages. Could A.I. start to help us to see how beautiful the web of relationships in which we subsist actually are, in practical ways, which allow us - politicians, democracies - to change the context in which we deal with each other?"
So, as you select the next book to read or podcast to listen to, don’t just think about what you should learn. Do yourself a favour and optimise for interesting.
Have a great week,
Ollie
The first episode of the new series of Take My Advice (I’m Not Using It) with Robbie Stamp is now available to listen to, HERE.
Any Other Business:
Continuing the language theme on, The Great Resignation has now entered its way into common parlance, along with other post-Covid phrases like ‘hybrid working’, ‘the new normal’, or if you’re in Germany, ‘coronaspeck’, which literally translates as ‘corona bacon’, and refers to, you’ve guessed it, lockdown weight gain.
In this piece from McKinsey, they throw a couple more phrases into the mix, arguing that instead of the Great Attrition, companies should be encouraged to create the Great Attraction. Confused? Me too, so I’d encourage you to read the article and work it out for yourself.
We’ve all done it. When introduced to someone for the first time, we say something excruciatingly embarrassing in the excitement and then spend the rest of the conversation worrying about what an idiot we are. Well don’t worry, about that old cliche about first impressions isn’t as true as we’ve been led to believe. Or at least that’s what this article from BBC WORKLIFE suggests:
“In most situations, we are often much more pleasant company than we imagine, yet we forget all the cues of friendliness towards us, and think we were irritating or dull. It is as if we are remembering a completely different conversation from the one that actually happened.”
Corporate wellbeing programmes certainly seem like a good idea, but despite 46% of organisations increasing their budgets in the area during 2020, and 64% introducing new offerings, only 23% of employees use them. In this HBR article, Gartner’s Carolina Valencia explains how to increase that number.
More on behaviour change: you’ve heard of nudges, but what about boosts? In this article from Behavioral Scientist, the authors explain what the difference is and introduce how to start building a ‘behavior change toolkit using both.
There’s an excellent article in the New York Times emphasising the importance of gender equality in the workplace, and demonstrating what happens if you don’t achieve it. You do need a subscription to read it, though, so here’s a visualisation showing how, “even a tiny increase in the amount of gender bias could lead to dramatic underrepresentation of women in leadership roles over time.”
And finally, the search engine has fundamentally changed how children learn, forcing teachers to change the way they teach, as this article from The Verge explains.