Hi all. Today, I’ll be talking about work/life balance and how my attitude towards this has shifted as I’ve gotten older. Here’s hoping that prospective future employers won’t read this too closely… Let’s begin.
I suppose the concept of a work/life balance has always existed (from as long as there have been jobs anyway). In very simple terms, it is how many hours/days a week you spend working, versus how much ‘free’ time you get. But then, on top of that, it’s how much of your ‘free’ time is spent on work as well.
The term “work/life balance” seems to be more of a modern phenomenon. In my opinion, this has a lot to do with advancing technology. In decades gone by, the sorts of things that tilted the scales more towards work would have been: paid – or unpaid – overtime, taking after-hours phone calls, or perhaps taking paperwork home with you.
In the last 10-15 years, it’s become a whole new ballgame. Most office workers have a work laptop that they are expected to take home with them each night. This leads to pressure (either from the company or from the individual themselves) to stay up to date with emails that come in during the evening or weekend.
Hell, most people don’t even need the laptop; so many people have their work email accounts set up on their mobile phone, so emails can be monitored around the clock. Throw in the myriad instant messenger tools your company may use, and you start to get the feeling that you’re never not working.
The Covid pandemic threw a further spanner in the works, too. When the majority of people had to work from home full-time, the bulk of people’s workflows had to be modified so they could be done remotely. It’s great that we have the ability to work from home now, but it does make it more difficult to get out of extra work in the evenings. You used to be able to avoid certain tasks if you were already home for the evening; you’d say something like, “I’ll look at it first thing tomorrow in the office, I don’t have access to the server here.” Now, not so much.
Saying that, I rarely even attempted to get out of extra work when I was first starting out. I was basically the model employee. I was fresh out of university, and I was keen to impress.
There are three reasons companies like hiring people who have recently left uni:
1. The aforementioned keenness; young adults in their first proper jobs are usually so eager to make an impression that they’ll work extremely hard, often going above and beyond what is actually asked of them.
2. They’re cheap; companies can point to the candidate’s inexperience as a way to justify not paying them very much.
3. They’re single. This one isn’t universal, of course. Perhaps I should say that they don’t have their own family yet. Most young people coming out of university aren’t married. Most don’t have children. This means they’re more likely to be amenable to working longer hours.
All three of the above certainly applied to me when I joined the workforce as a young man.
Being single at the time, work took on huge importance to me. Work almost became my entire life. I was working for a startup, and although everyone had their own lane to work in, there was a culture of everyone pitching in to help the company grow. I did this gladly.
Whatever was required of me, I was there. Staying late to get things done, check. Coming into the office on the occasional weekend or bank holiday, check. I even came into the office on one of my holiday days once. Though, to be fair, no one asked me to; I simply forgot that I’d booked the day off and turned up like an idiot. It wasn’t until one of my colleagues mentioned it at about 9.30 am that I remembered. I then promptly left the office with my tail between my legs.
The thing is, I was happy to do all these things. More than happy, I’d say it was pride that I felt the most. I was proud of how hard I worked and proud of how much I was seemingly needed. It’s only when I look back now that I feel some things weren’t quite right.
The most ignominious incident happened on a night out. A night out with work colleagues, but a night out nonetheless. I was actually checking my emails on my phone while at the bar and responded to one that had come in from our US office. I think it was about 10 pm our time.
The strangest thing about this incident is that I didn’t find it weird at the time. I didn’t find any of it to be out of the ordinary back then. It’s only been when I’ve looked back on my behaviour recently that I’ve found it at complete odds with how I live my life now.
I guess things started to change when I first started seeing my now-wife. You know what it’s like when you’re embarking on a new relationship; it’s fun and exciting, and you want to spend as much time with that person as possible. In short, my priorities shifted.
If I was asked to work late around this time, it was no longer an automatic yes. If I was free, sure, why not? But if I had plans, such as a date, I’d have to politely decline doing extra hours. It was the same for the occasional weekend work, too.
As I pulled back on the amount of extra hours I was doing at work, I guess I began to look at the whole situation differently. Whereas I used to very much be a take-my-work-home-with-me type of guy, I started to develop what I now consider to be a great knack: I stopped caring so much.
I know that probably sounds quite bad. Actually, typing it out gave me pause for thought, but I think it’s accurate. For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t mean that I stopped caring about work altogether; I just didn’t have it on my mind 24/7 like I used to.
I used to think about work all the time. I would think about it while getting dressed in the morning. I’d think about it during my morning commute. Of course, it would be front and centre of my mind during the working day. I’d then be thinking about it on the way home and at home in the evening. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
Ultimately, was all that stress worth it? I don’t think so. Of course, if I had a big meeting or something coming up, it probably helped that I thought about it a bit rather than just turning up cold. But during a standard work week, the amount of stress I put myself through was definitely a misallocation of my thoughts and feelings.
Now, though, everything has changed. I walk out of work (or out of my home office, on my working from home days), and I forget about my job. I completely shut it out. At the risk of sounding like a knob, I compare it to being like a superhero. I spend the day fighting crime as Work Rob before returning to my mild-mannered existence as Family Rob. They’re practically two separate identities.
The thing is, I still work hard whilst I’m at work. I’m good at my job, and all my work gets completed in a timely fashion and to a high standard. And, I guess I just got to a stage where I thought that that was enough.
Because, believe me, it’s amazing how many times that extra work goes completely unrewarded. If you’re lucky, you might get a pat on the back and a bit of recognition from a superior. But if you’re expecting all that extra work to automatically lead to a promotion or pay rise, you might find yourself bitterly disappointed.
I’m not suggesting that you slack off at work. I’m not even suggesting that my way of doing things is right. It’s just right for me. I’ve found a good balance that works for me and my family. It also apparently works for my employer, which is a handy bonus.
I could carry on writing about this subject, but in keeping with the themes of this blog, I think I’ll clock off now. That’s enough heroics for one day. Peace.
Thanks for reading. Until next time, take care and don’t work too hard. Byeeeee!
Rob Recommends
A slightly different flavour to this for this edition, mostly because I haven’t really watched anything new recently. A good friend of mine got married a couple of weeks ago, and it reminded me of something that I really enjoy, so I thought I’d recommend it.
Firstly, I do love a wedding. I’m not someone who has to wear a suit to work, so a wedding is one of the few occasions where I get to wear something smart. So there’s that. Throw in the free food and drink, plus spending time with family and/or friends, and you have the perfect recipe for a great day. Oh, and I suppose seeing someone you care about getting married is an ok part of the day, too.
But before all that, you have the great tradition of the stag night/weekend. I’ve been on a few now, all unique experiences. My own one was a weekend in Brighton, but I’ve also been on an Amsterdam trip, plus some mad days and/or nights in London. The most recent one was a glamping weekend on the south coast.
I say that they’re all unique, and they are, but they do all involve more or less the same sort of thing: a group of lads drinking a lot of alcohol and finding some interesting ways to embarrass the groom.
It’s great to get away with the lads that you’re close with, but another brilliant aspect of a stag is spending time with guys you perhaps haven’t met before or others who you know, but not well. There’s some top-quality bonding that occurs on trips such as these, and you often come away feeling like you’ve gained a few extra friends.
Then the wedding day rolls around, and it’s like a stag reunion! You get to see all the lads again and reminisce about the good old days (even though it was only a few weeks prior).
So, in a nutshell, my recommendation is to have good enough friends that you get invited to both a wedding and the stag, and then have a wonderful time. Simple, right?
A Rob Blog 