Work & Life, Combined?

I think it was college - when this all started. When I started to realize that there was not enough of me to get good grades in school, work a part time job, spend time with my friends, keep in touch with my family, attend terpAMA meetings, participate in my sorority’s philanthropy… When I started to feel the pressure of time, and the fear of not having enough of it.

The quest for work-life balance has become an ever-increasing hardship for me. Maybe it’s a part of growing up. Maybe it’s what helps us mature.

I don't know. But I do know that this semester has shone a light on the issue for me. Devoting four months to the study of work-life balance has provoked new ways of looking at it; and to be honest, I don’t know if it’s gotten easier, or if it’s gotten even harder.

After an entire semester of researching “work-life-balance” concepts and ideas, I continue to ask myself how it can really be achieved.

Yes, everything I’ve written and everything I’ve felt and believed work-life balance should be sounds nice in theory. But what happens when my kids need money for college, when my mortgage bills ring the doorbell at the end of the month, when the car breaks down and needs to be replaced? How do you focus so passionately on the things you want to do in life, when there are so many things that you need to do? And how do you differentiate between a want and a need?

Well, I’m still trying to figure that out for myself. But I’m not the only one. In fact, the issue has become so prevalent in America that President Obama and First Lady Michelle spoke passionately about their own struggles with work-life balance just a few months ago. They discussed a need for “action on the issue of workplace flexibility.”

So what is the future for work-life balance in America?

Large corporations are beginning to answer this question.

SAS, a business analytics and software company, is proclaimed one of the top ten “Best Companies to Work For” by CNN Money. The reason for this being the company’s amazing job benefits and perks. As an SAS employee, there’s no more need to worry about child day care – just bring your kid to work! The company offers high-quality, low cost child care, on top of a free medical center if you ever get sick, a free fitness and massage center if you’re feeling stressed, and of course, a country club complete with golf courses, tennis courts, and swimming pools, just in case you simply need a break at work.

Or how about S.C. Johnson? Working at this cleaning product giant comes with discounted services that include, but are not limited to, mailing packages, sending flowers, picking up or delivering groceries, researching car insurance deals, changing the oil in your car, and even standing in line for concert tickets.  

If that isn’t enough, you could give Google a try. As number one best company to work for, Google offers its employees the opportunity to bring their dogs to work, do their laundry at the free laundry machines, use one of the four gyms, get an unsubsidized massage, eat at one of the sixteen gourmet cafes for free, and the list goes on and on.

These are just three examples of companies that have begun to pioneer the movement of workplace flexibility. However, for these firms, the solution to helping employees overcome the struggle of balancing their work lives with their home lives, has simply been to offer services that bring some of the tasks typically done at home, right into the workplace itself.

I am not by any means saying that walking my dog beside my co-workers through the halls at Google is a hard life.

But I can’t help but wonder what is next. If we are now able to bring our pets and our children to work, when will it be our mattresses and our pillows…?

An Image of Work-Life Balance

Wikipedia defines “work” as one’s career or profession. It defines “lifestyle” as one’s social life, intellect, psychological well-being, spiritual beliefs, health, and recreation.

Let’s paint a mental image of Work-Life Balance. To start, let’s draw one of those plastic scales - the kind we used back in elementary science class to measure different gram weights. Now let’s add in 24 grams (or 24 hours) of life activities.

We can start with the “Work” side: A 12g metal weight labeled, “Career.” Place that weight into the left tray. That side will now likely slam down to the counter.

Okay, on to the “Life” side: Six, 2g metal weights labeled, “Social Life,” “Intellect,” “Psychology,” “Spirituality,” “Health,” and “Recreation.” Slowly, as they are added to the right tray, the scale should see-saw into equilibrium. The one big 12-gram “Work” weight should balance out the six mini 2-gram “Life” weights. And our image of Work-Life Balance is complete.

There we go! Work-Life Balance perfectly defined!

…Right?

Actually, I’m sure that most of you are reading and thinking, wrong. And you are right about that. The first way that WorkLifeBalance.com introduces the topic is by stating, “Work Life Balance does not mean an equal balance.”

What this means is that the ideal image of what work-life balance looks like depends on who it is that’s imagining it.

For this blog, I want to share my personal idea of work-life balance, and invite others to recognize their own opinions.

So often we wonder where the time goes. What if we first decide where we want it to go, and then direct it to go there?

When I look into my future, it’s very blurry. I don’t know who my husband will be. I don’t know what my job will be. I don’t know where I’m going to live.

But I do know how I want to feel. I want to feel successful. And, to me, success means growing to become the best version of yourself in all aspects of your life. To me, success is finding a career that you are passionate about, without forgetting the importance of downtime. It means loving and caring for your family, without taking time away from personal hobbies. It means having faith in a higher power, without ceasing to remain physically fit.

To me success has no measurements. To me, success is happiness.

I want to be happy at my job. I want to be excited to wake up on Monday mornings. I want to be challenged to improve my skillset, and rewarded with personal growth. I want to be proud of what I do each day, and know that I have a purpose in my career. 

I want to be happy with my family. I want to love and trust and support my husband. I want to care for and nurture my children. I want to go on family vacations, cook family dinners, coach my kids' soccer teams. I want to see my family members smile, and know that I am a part of their joy.

I want to be happy with my health. I want to eat right and exercise regularly. I want to stay physically fit, as well as spiritually connected. I want to believe in miracles, so that I never lose faith, so that I keep an open mind, so that I remind myself that anything’s possible. 

I don’t know how to paint this image. I don’t know where I’d start, what kind of scale I’d use, or how many gram weights to take into account.

But I do know that this is how I want to spend my time. And if strive for this image of balance, I know I will be successful in my own, personal way.

9:15AM - Web 2.0

What is the first thing you do when you wake up? 

Every day. 

The very first thing… 

In posing that question, I considered the answer myself. At first I thought: go to the bathroom... then probably eat breakfast, get ready for class… But it didn't take long before I realized that I'd be lying if I said those are the very first things I do. The real first thing I do with my day, before I even leave my bed, is reach onto my night stand and check my cell phone.

9:15AM – 2 text messages, 1 voicemail.

I listen to the voicemail. It’s mom asking me what day I’m coming home for Thanksgiving. I check my texts – one from a friend I was studying with the night before, another from my roommate telling me to look at the article she posted on my wall.

9:18AM - I click on Facebook - 4 notifications.

Sarah has posted on your timeline.

Melissa mentioned you in a comment.

Conor invited you to his event.

Brian and Carmen like a link on your timeline. 

Before looking for the article, I notice a friend’s picture from last night on my news feed. I click on the album and scroll through a couple photos.

After a few clicks, I get back to my wall. I see the link. It’s an article about University of Maryland college students. I read through some of the article until I’m interrupted by an email notification.

9:29AM - I click on Gmail - 5 unread messages.

One is from work. An employee is requesting that someone cover her shift this weekend. I reply to the email volunteering to take her hours. Another is from management prep. It’s the schedule for the upcoming conference.

9:37AM – I click on my iCal to add the events.

Suddenly I notice that its 9:37AM.

I was supposed to be out of bed 25 minutes ago. I jump out of bed (now its time for the bathroom) and run to the bathroom. I quickly brush my teeth, wash my face, and put on my clothes for class. I run downstairs to grab a bagel. Three of my friends are sitting in the kitchen eating cereal. One asks me a question, but I don’t pay attention because I’m too busy thinking about the quickest route to class.

I run out the door and begin my trek to campus. On the way to the business school, I pass my old roommate from freshman year. She’s so excited to see me. I stop to give her a hug, but unfortunately I don’t have time to catch up. I notice the disappointment in her eyes as I sever our conversation…

When I finally made it to class, I thought about that look in her eyes. I realized that I had missed an opportunity to reconnect with an old friend, solely due to my lack of time management. I realized that that instant had an effect on both her life and my own, and even though it was something small, it made me see a big picture.

One exercise in time management is to write down each activity you do throughout the day. Even the small stuff, like getting ready for class or checking emails. Lay it all out on paper so you can clearly see a mapped out image of your day. Have you ever heard of calorie counting for people who feel they have too much weight? Well this is the minute-counting version for people who feel they have too little time.

So I tried out this exercise. I wrote down each step of my day. And what I found was that the reason I “don’t have time” for certain things I’d like to do in life, is because I have too much time for things that really don’t matter to my overall happiness… 

Introducing Web 2.0.

Let me tell you what I mean by "too" much. I mean 4 whole hours of Facebooking (mostly looking through pictures of close friends, who are also available through the magical portal called reality, and looking through news feed of people I probably haven’t or will ever speak to), checking e-mails, checking the weather, online shopping, watching videos, reading articles…

And I am not alone.

The global online population is 2,095,006,005.

The global time spent online a month is 35 billion hours, which is equivalent to 3,995,444 years.

The global internet user spends 16 hours a month online, while the average American internet user spends 32!

People spend 22% of their online time social networking, 20% reading content, 21% doing searches, and 19% checking emails.

More than 56% of social networking users have used social networking sites for spying on their partners.

More than 1 billion search queries are made on Google per day.

There are 4 billion views per day on YouTube, and over 60 hours of content uploaded every minute.

More thatn 250 million tweets are made per day, and more than 800 million updates are made on Facebook per day.

Now I have figured out where a huge chunk of my time has gone. Perhaps the influence of Web 2.0 and digital media has added to the challenge of work-life balance...

I don’t expect this to change. I don’t expect people to stop using the internet. After all, you are reading this blog through Web 2.0…

However, it may be time to become conscious of how many hours we are spending in front of our computers, our smart phones, our ipads, and take a look at whether that time is taking away from things we'd like to be doing…

So I have one more question:

How would you choose to map out your day if all of the time spent on the internet was 

e r a s e d...?

How to Make a Sale

This summer I worked as a sales representative for Cutco Cutlery. If you’re wondering what I sold, you’re probably wondering right – Yes, I sold knives. Not the typical summer job, but it was a learning experience I’ll never forget.

Throughout the summer, I worked by appointment and was introduced to hundreds of different customers through personal referrals. Though I had my target market, or “target audience,” in rhetoric terms, each and every appointment was unique. Every person I sat down with had a different initial view on the product, and I was the medium of influence that stood between a sale or a no sale.

It’s interesting how sales occur so often without us even knowing it. They say two people can look at the same thing and see it completely differently. That’s because we all perceive life in different ways. It is utterly impossible to control anyone else’s way of thinking besides our own. We have no control over that, but we do have influence. 

We can say and do certain things to change the mind of another. We can choose certain words, certain gestures, a smile :), to influence people into thinking the way we do. And in the end, they will either change their thoughts, or hold to their original opinion.

Every conversation is a sale or a no sale.

Articles are conversations on paper. They use certain ‘word’s and certain gestures to influence how we perceive the information. Writers use different tools of rhetoric to sell their argument to the readers.

We know from the title of my blog that I view from a perspective that life should have a balance between work and leisure. So when I came across this article, I was curious about what the author had to say.

“Resume Required: Business Majors Get a Wake-Up Call.” The article discusses a new policy at University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, which requires applicants to submit a resume in order to even be considered for admission.

My initial viewpoint: This is a lot of pressure for young students.

In order for her readers to even be open to changing their opinions, the author, Alison Damast, used her first tool of rhetoric by deciding how to give her article credibility. So the article was published in “Bloomberg BusinessWeek,” a notable weekly business magazine with over 4.8 million weekly readers in over 140 different countries.

Ethos – check.

The author then takes out her second tool of rhetoric and drives it into her introduction. She uses a quote from Tippie’s assistant dean regarding the change in application process: “Certainly for the person who only has had babysitting as a job, this will clue them in to the idea that this is the time they need to start changing that.”

This quote brings about a feeling of importance, urgency, and as for those getting the “wake-up call,” probably some pressure and anxiety as well. Suddenly the text has generated specific emotions in its readers.

Pathos – check.

In the paragraph that follows, Damast begins to explain the logic of the new policy. She frames the requirement as one that is parallel to several other credible Universities' policies, including University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.

New thought: If those schools are also requiring a resume for their applicants, maybe this is a policy that all schools should require in order to stay up to par. Or is the author just using this technique to influence my point-of-view… ?

Damast continues by explaining the value that the new resume requirement brings to students. “The push comes as schools are trying to help students become more attractive to employers in what is becoming an increasingly competitive job market for college students” (Damast). In other words, when these students apply for jobs, they will have their resume ready. But in the author’s words, it will “help students,” and they will “become more attractive,” especially in the “increasingly competitive job market.” These are simple phrases that influence the way we interpret the text. Her argument is now both important, and logical.

Logs – check.

After reading the article, I can’t say that my opinion changed. I can’t say that I now justify forcing high-school students to compete for jobs and look good on paper in order to even be admitted to a college. However, I do see the value that the new requirement could add for those students who do have better prepared resumes than the rest.

The author’s article may not have been intended to persuade by any means. It may have been simply to inform readers of a new policy, one that the author perceived as both useful and important. Her use of ethos, pathos, and logos in the text influenced the thought process of a conflicting audience member – me. 

Sale - check!