Take Action
There are many options for bringing more equilibrium to your situation. Some will work for you; others will not. Even a decision that's right for you now may not work six months from now. Studies show that most employees don't even take advantage of the flexibility benefits their employers do offer. Don't assume the answer is “no” if you don't even bother to ask. Investigate and initiate. All you have to gain is a life.
Customize Your Career
This is a growing trend that combines life planning and job flexibility, allowing you to examine and prioritize career/life tradeoffs. Take a tip from business schools, including Wharton, Harvard, and Stanford, all of which offer courses on integrating work and home life: Inventory the most important things in your work and family life; solicit support from employer and family; and try solutions until you find the best way to accomplish your goals.
Take Advantage of Employer Programs or Benefits
While surveys have found that some organizations offer only the bare minimum, nearly 60 percent of companies offer flextime programs, and many offer company-sponsored education, flexible career paths, maternity and paternity leave, or the opportunity to work from home.
Redefine Success
The tests in this book can help you. Then let your employer know what you need. Most employers will appreciate your candor and initiative. Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy encourages her best employees to come forward with ideas on how to make things work. “Innovative job design is the way to keep great people,” she says.
Work Smarter, Not Longer
A 2003 study by Marakon Associates and the Economist Intelligence Unit found that as much as 80 percent of top management time is taken up by issues that account for less than 20 percent of the company's long-term value. In 2002, the United States was less productive per hour worked than France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands, where workers spent fewer hours working per week.
Find out if you can work for six months and take off one. Take on fewer clients. Work nine to four, five days per week, but longer hours at crunch times.
Share the Job
Work three days per week instead of seven, twenty to twenty-five hours instead of fifty to sixty. Many people in this arrangement find that they're better able to focus at work, since work is no longer encroaching on their home lives.
In 1997, both Gary Newman and Dana Walden were appointed president of 20th Century Fox Television — not to share one job but to both manage all aspects of a highly complex job. The arrangement has improved productivity at work and quality family time at home. The Los Angeles Times accomplished the same thing when the managing editor's position was split. On the surface, these solutions look expensive, but the improvement in productivity has far outweighed the cost.
Take a Sabbatical
Some companies give employees paid sabbaticals, saying it reduces turnover and retains talent otherwise lost to burnout. In 2005, the Journal of Education for Business published a study that found that the use of sabbaticals is growing rapidly outside academia and has positive effects on both employers and employees. The Society for Human Resource Management finds that 5 percent of corporate respondents to their annual survey offer paid sabbaticals, and another 18 percent offer unpaid ones.
Use Teamwork
Teams in some other countries and cultures function differently from those in the United States. Leslie Perlow, a Harvard Business School ethnographer, studied teams of software engineers around the world. Only in Hungary did the system allow for a life outside the office. In Hungary, any engineer with a question could go to any available colleague. The team systems in other countries led to burnout or longer hours. Interestingly, none of the teams studied thought there was any other way to do the work.
Other Ideas
Here are some more things you can do to find balance in your life. Remember, if you can't achieve or maintain balance in your current position, you might have to find a workplace that better suits your priorities. Look at lists of the best companies to work for, such as the Fortune 100 and the Working Mother lists.
Go on a “technology fast.” Turn off all machines — fax, phone, computer, television, radio, e-mail, cell phone, and pager. Whether for thirty minutes, an hour, or a day, it can be re-energizing to give all of your attention to your family or yourself.
Negotiate a more flexible schedule. For example, no work on most weekends, a workweek of four ten-hour days, or starting work earlier so you can pick the kids up in the afternoon. Explain how the change will benefit the company.
Negotiate your own rate of promotion. Rather than put in the bone-crushing hours necessary to move up through the ranks in three years, choose a longer period of time to accomplish the same goal.
Sign up for a life planning course. There are many courses that integrate long-term planning for career, home, finances, and even spirituality.
Keep your sense of humor. Surely your boss can't be as bad as that pointy-haired guy in the “Dilbert” cartoons or Dagwood Bumstead's boss, Mr. Dithers.
Keep it all in perspective. Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, tells the story of being in New York and watching the ticker as her company went public. She called her neurosurgeon husband in the operating room to share the news. “That's nice,” he said, “But Meg, remember, it's not brain surgery.”
Add Exercise to Your Day
You don't have to train for the Iron Man. One-half hour of cardio exercise three or four times per week provides health benefits. Stretches and breathing exercises can help alleviate stress. Get up a little earlier for some yoga, take the stairs instead of the elevator, take a walk at lunchtime, park your car at the far end of the lot, or join a gym (if your company has an on-site fitness facility, so much the better). If you enlist a workout buddy or spend money to take classes, you'll be less inclined to blow it off.
