Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that as you are considering a new job
Speaker 1: or any sort of career move, consider the substance of
Speaker 1: the work first. Then you can address questions like work
Speaker 1: life balance. Balance is not a good in its own right,
Speaker 1: and if you seek out work for the schedule first,
Speaker 1: you can wind up board or unhappy, which won't help
Speaker 1: with your work life balance at all. Because I write
Speaker 1: about issues of work and family, I sometimes hear from
Speaker 1: people who are trying to find jobs that allow for
Speaker 1: what we often call work life balance. People want to
Speaker 1: be able to spend time in the evenings with their families,
Speaker 1: or to be able to drop kids off at school,
Speaker 1: or deal with the occasional during the work day personal
Speaker 1: event without it being a crisis. I totally understand this.
Speaker 1: Flexibility is a definite upside for me of running my
Speaker 1: own business, but I didn't set out to have a
Speaker 1: flexible business. I wanted to write about what I wanted
Speaker 1: to write about, and I know there have never been
Speaker 1: a lot of traditional, well paying jobs that would allow
Speaker 1: me to do that. The most profitable way to build
Speaker 1: my career was to go out on my own. Flexibility
Speaker 1: turns out to be a perk of my version of
Speaker 1: self employment, but it is not the reason for my
Speaker 1: job choice. Unfortunately, I hear from people who have gotten
Speaker 1: burned out in stressful jobs and they start hunting for
Speaker 1: anything that will provide more balance. And for a while,
Speaker 1: this can feel great. If you used to travel every
Speaker 1: week and have people call you at nine pm every
Speaker 1: night with stuff that has to be done before eight
Speaker 1: am in the morning, it is exhilarating to leave the
Speaker 1: office at four point thirty knowing that no one is
Speaker 1: going to bother you. You will glow with gratitude going to
Speaker 1: a school play at eleven am knowing that no one
Speaker 1: is going to give you grief about it, but and
Speaker 1: you knew there was a butt coming here. Often, that
Speaker 1: glow fades in time. You can't live on balance alone.
Speaker 1: Many of the people who started out in those more
Speaker 1: stressful jobs did so because they are ambitious people who
Speaker 1: like to be challenged. They also like to be paid
Speaker 1: a lot. Jobs taken primarily because they offer balance don't
Speaker 1: always meet those needs. People wind up unhappy because they
Speaker 1: are bored. They start feeling underpaid, then perhaps it's off
Speaker 1: to find a new job. But again, if it needs
Speaker 1: to have a strict definition of balance, this can cut
Speaker 1: off a lot of options. If you declare that you
Speaker 1: will never travel for work, that is going to limit
Speaker 1: you more than if you are open to traveling two
Speaker 1: to three days a month. If you declare that you
Speaker 1: will never take work home, that is going to limit
Speaker 1: you more then if you find a fascinating organization, or
Speaker 1: you can build a team that gets good work done
Speaker 1: unreasonable timeframes. So here is my take. I think it
Speaker 1: is best to focus on substance first and balance after that.
Speaker 1: Figure out what kind of work you'd like to do,
Speaker 1: or look for a job where the core of your
Speaker 1: work is something that excites you. Find colleagues who you
Speaker 1: find interesting and fun to work with, then negotiate the
Speaker 1: balance you want, or simply bold and seize it. I
Speaker 1: have seen this be possible for all sorts of jobs
Speaker 1: as people gain seniority, and they might work in fields
Speaker 1: like law or medicine or consulting or tech that aren't
Speaker 1: exactly known for work life balance. But these jobs do
Speaker 1: tend to be interesting and highly paid, So folks who
Speaker 1: want to have a personal life figure out ways to
Speaker 1: keep working and advancing while doing what they need to
Speaker 1: or want to outside of work. You take an hour
Speaker 1: off in the middle of the day to go to
Speaker 1: a kid's class, but do a phone call at nine
Speaker 1: pm after your kid is in bed, and you just
Speaker 1: don't make a big deal about it. As you get
Speaker 1: more senior, you can do more and more of what
Speaker 1: you want, leaving in the middle of the day to
Speaker 1: meet a kid's bus and continuing to work remotely after that.
Speaker 1: For instance, if you are the top person on a team,
Speaker 1: people do often figure out where to accommodate you beyond
Speaker 1: that reality. I think the phrase work life balance is
Speaker 1: problematic for all sorts of reasons. First, people tend to
Speaker 1: use it to mean working less, but very few people
Speaker 1: spend most of their hours working. There are one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight hours in a week. If you sleep
Speaker 1: eight hours a night, so that's fifty six hours per
Speaker 1: week and work forty hours per week, that leaves seventy
Speaker 1: two hours for other things, that's almost twice as much
Speaker 1: time as you are working. It's hard to see what's
Speaker 1: particularly balanced about working thirty hours and having eighty two
Speaker 1: hours for other things, or working twenty hours and having
Speaker 1: ninety two hours for other things. Those may be perfectly
Speaker 1: fine setups for life, but they aren't exactly balanced. The
Speaker 1: phrase work life balance also implies that work and life
Speaker 1: are at odds, with the two on opposite side sides
Speaker 1: of the scale. I am not sure that is the case.
Speaker 1: I know that when I am working on something really
Speaker 1: exciting and I feel like I'm winning at work, I
Speaker 1: have more energy for everything. There's also nothing particularly balanced
Speaker 1: about tolerating your work and even counting the hours until
Speaker 1: you get to life, even if there aren't as many
Speaker 1: hours to count. I suspect that a lot of people
Speaker 1: would be happier working forty to forty five hours a
Speaker 1: week in work they love than thirty five hours a
Speaker 1: week in work where they'd feel bored and underpaid. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, if the forty hour work week was also
Speaker 1: boring and underpaid, that would be even worse. But when
Speaker 1: you like the substance of your job, that is probably
Speaker 1: not going to be the case. Substance first, balance, after that,
Speaker 1: that's the recipe for a happier life and career than
Speaker 1: seeking out balance above everything else. In the meantime, this
Speaker 1: is Laura, Thanks for listening and here's to making the
Speaker 1: most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod. That's b E the
Speaker 1: number four then Breakfast pod. You can also shoot me
Speaker 1: an email at Before Breakfast Podcasts at iHeartMedia dot com
Speaker 1: that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Should I look forward to staying in touch.
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