Homeward Bound
We are in a period of great prosperity, record
spendable income, jobs galore, and yet we seem obsessed
with how long it takes to get to work, how many hours we
spend there, how to make more money and manage it better.
Plus we work at home too much and what about the
radiation danger of a cell phone permanently affixed to
our ear?
No wonder we are worried about being off
balance.
So, here are practical recommendations about how
to create balance and harmony in your life. These
recommendations are guaranteed to work or your time back.
If you follow this advice your life will be in balance
and what I want as payment in return is an agreement that
the next time we meet, we will talk about something other
than work hours, travel time and the stock market.
Recommendation #1-Stop planning your exit
strategy.
People at the beginning of their careers now talk
about getting a job that pays enough money so they can
quit in five years; people at the end of their careers
now talk about 55 and out, off to the golf course and
waterfront living. The focus on exiting is really a way
of postponing our life. Believing that we will find love,
God, peace of mind, meaningful work later. It means we
want to get out of doing what we are now doing, but we
haven't been shown the money. Exit strategies rationalize
our caution. Accept the fact that the next job is not
going to be any better than the one we have now, so this
is it. There is no exit, no change in place that will
make any real difference, the future will still have you
in it, so find a job you want now, or find meaning in the
work you are now doing.
Recommendation #2-Stop thinking of yourself as a
brand.
The work-life stranglehold on us is caused by our
belief that our personal value is determined by our
market value. This is the cultural message, transforming
us into a consumer, as a substitute for being a citizen
and a human being. After a while, we begin to think of
ourselves as a brand, a free agent on the open market,
and our life work is to build the brand. Becoming a
global "I Inc.". We think our job is to market our self,
build our portable skills, mold us into an attractive
package and then leverage the product into wealth and
happiness. The moment we are branded, we live with a
permanent mark burned onto our skin that indicates
someone else owns us. There are worse things than going
to a high school reunion and appearing somewhat
unmarketable.
Recommendation #3-You are never going to be
CEO.
Your boss will never really appreciate all you do,
if they do decide to promote you, the business will get
sold one day before you are annointed and all promotions
will be frozen. Live with this reality. We think in order
to be fulfilled we must advance, take on positions of
greater responsibility and ultimately be wealthy. Our
freedom is something we claim in the face of our
circumstances, not because of our circumstances. Until we
understand that, we will always give away a part of
ourselves for a more successful tomorrow. Fire your
mentor, your personal trainer, your financial advisor,
your children's SAT coaches, and the next time they
schedule your performance review, tell them you are not
interested.
Recommendation #4-Be satisfied with average
customer service.
We have become spoiled by the promise of
24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week service. We are told that
we can get what we want any time, anywhere, any way. What
began as a service guarantee to us as a customer has come
full circle to become a requirement on us as a supplier.
Customer expectations have become narcissistically high
and the world is organizing itself to meet them. Whatever
service we receive, we ultimately have to supply. Now our
customers want to reach us anytime, anywhere, so we are
now on call and reachable around the clock.
As an aside, the net effect of the royal customer
promise is to reduce the quality of customer service. A
friend of mine, Meg, said she knew a poet who committed
to write poems for publication on a regular, short cycle
time schedule. When asked how he was able to do that, he
said, "Its easy. I just lowered my standards." Companies
have done the same, externalizing time onto the customer
by substituting Web sites and automated phone trails for
human beings.
Let's just make it all explicit and agree to lower
our standards on customer service, fit the service
guarantee to the actual urgency of the transaction, and
then we can leave the cell phone at the office. For most
of us, there is nothing we are doing that is so important
that it cannot wait until tomorrow. The instantaneous,
just-in-time response is a form of self-importance,
falsely generated by the manufactured scarcity of
time.
It needs to start with us. We will control the
24/7 life only when we lower our expectations of those
who serve and supply us. This will start a chain reaction
that eventually will shrink our work demands back to
manageable levels.
Recommendation #5-Reclaim your home as a place to
eat, sleep and be part of a family, regardless of its
dysfunction.
Working at home has its advantages, but you can
also look at it as a way the workplace has invaded our
private living space. Once workplace technology has a
foothold in the house, it will expand to fill the vacuum.
The technology has a little publicized, but powerful
gravitational field. It consumes our time before we know
it. It may expand your world to search the web and put
you in touch with far flung interest groups, but it eats
time. Minutes turn into hours, the day loses the sun as
its measure and we live with the anxiety that there is a
message waiting for us that we have not read. At a recent
conference on the New Economy, Valorie Beer articulated a
growing question by asking who is it that we are not
really with when, we are locked onto the screen or on our
cell phone? The answer is, our family and close friends
and, most of all, ourselves.
Recommendation #6-Stop expecting your
organization to solve the problem of imbalance in your
life.
Finally, we need to grow up. Stop hoping for
management approval or policy to contract the work day to
eight hours and empty our plate so we can reclaim our
nights and weekends. It may be easier if the boss locks
the doors at 5:00pm, or if daycare is onsite, or if we
can do all our shopping and exercising where we work, but
all those conveniences make the problem of consumptive
work even worse. We begin to feel more at home at the
workplace than where we reside.
Even if we follow these recommendations, however,
we will still have to face the reality that feeling
balance in our lives is more an emotional state than an
external reality. The real goal is to be in balance and
feel at home where ever we are and what ever we are
doing. In the middle of a crisis, on the highway, raising
unrelenting kids, or building a business, we have the
potential to stay detached and grounded. This is not easy
for the western mind that loves the action.
It is not easy to constantly remember that there
is a long run, that anxiety is a constant companion, even
on vacation. My concern about balance in my life is
really the external expression of my internal addiction
to activity. The cell phone, pager, fax and my personal
abs trainer yelling in my ear at this moment have become
a drug and I am lost in them. Our task is to drain the
energy out of these defenses and find our home
again.
August 2000 NFC
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Homeward Bound
