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Category Archive: Work Life Integration

Don't Get Surprised By Burnout

Posted by on June 27, 2016

This is a painful subject if you have ever had to admit you lost your margin and that you did not know it until the crash occurred. I have had to put in place some early warning alarms to try to avoid this happening again and again. This is not inevitable but you must have a plan. Steven D’Souza has a plan and it’s a great one for you to adopt:

“Coming back to the UK after an intensive, three-day consulting trip, I was on the edge of a panic attack. For a few seconds, I had a vivid “day-mare” of myself in the hospital, surrounded by doctors, with no way to cope or communicate coherently. As the vision passed, I became aware, for the first time in a long time, of a great heaviness and tiredness in my body. I realized – with some surprise – that I was burned out.”

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Customer Service At Home

Posted by on June 10, 2016

We all enjoy the experience of some organization or person who goes the extra mile and delivers high quality personal service. In a day when most companies either put you on a phone tree from hell or only allow contact through email it is really nice when another person is simply pleasant and nice.

Mobile Travel Guide declares themselves as the gold standard of travel ratings and reviews. They rate hotels and restaurants on a system of one to five stars based on their performance. When you see their sign and there are at least three to the coveted five stars rating you know that the experience will be a good one.

Every day when we all go out into the public world of work and our daily to do list we interact with lots of other people. Most of the time, we really try very hard to be courteous and polite to others especially if they are customers, suppliers, co workers or friends. We give, give, and give to other people all day until we are emotionally spent by the time we head home.

When I evaluate my customer service rating at home I have to admit many times I would not receive even one star much less three to five. I treat the people I care about the most with the least amount of patience and kindness.

If the Mobile staff were to interview the people who are the closest to you how many stars would you receive? I am going to do whatever it takes to consistently improve my score. How about you?

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How Much Is Enough

Posted by on June 6, 2016

We are challenged at every level to make sure we are not wasting our time so we can get the right things done. What we fail to see is that sometimes we set the bar too high and actually do too much and need to dial back our expectations for success. Michael Hyatt drives home this point:

“It’s easy for me to overdo things. I know, shocker. What can I say? I like getting things done. But the problem is that when I overdo, I underperform. For people driven to achieve, it’s a common trap. Even if we pare things down to the essentials, we can plow so deep into those that we’re just wasting our efforts—even while we think we’re making headway.”

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How To Break Your Addiction To Work

Posted by on May 25, 2016

At some point in time almost everyday we all want to know How am I doing? The search for significance meets a very deep need that we all have to add value to others. The workplace can give you that juice to the degree it becomes like an addiction for meeting our emotional needs. This HBR post is a must read:

“For many of us, working simply feels good. But just because it feeds your ego or makes you feel important, that doesn’t mean it’s actually good for you. How do you break the cycle of working long hours at the office and constantly checking email at home?”

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6 Tips For Better Work Life Balance

Posted by on May 13, 2016

Work life balance is a tough subject for companies and employees. No one wants to reduce productivity and on the other hand staying connected 24/7 is a prescription for disaster. This Forbes post offers several practical tips that will help:

“These days, work-life balance can seem like an impossible feat. Technology makes workers accessible around the clock. Fears of job loss incentivize longer hours. In fact, a whopping 94% of working professionals reported working more than 50 hours per week and nearly half said they worked more than 65 hours per week in a Harvard Business School survey. ”

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The Work Life Balance Fallacy

Posted by on May 4, 2016

Work Life Balance as a concept has one serious inherent flaw. It to some degree assumes that everything has equal value and you end up in a win-lose dynamic when one of your plates stops spinning. I love the concept of integration and Alyssa Oursler does a great job in her post to clarify:

“It doesn’t take much more than a quick scroll through my Twitter feed to see countless mentions, lists and hacks revolving around the ever-elusive goal of “work-life balance.” The phrase itself gets Googled an average of 50,000 times per month, in addition to thousands of searches for “work-life balance tips.”

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A Simple Way To Combat Chronic Stress

Posted by on April 20, 2016

We just finished a three week marathon of moving into a new house and doing most of the packing and moving ourselves. Needless to say the stress levels are still out the roof and I found these simple techniques posted by the HBR to be helpful:

“For most leaders today, frequent stress is inevitable. But with awareness and a little skill, its negative impacts are not.

Intense negative experiences of stress are all too common. Consider Stefano, coauthor of this article. In 1998, Stefano began a career abroad while simultaneously completing an MBA. He worked and studied 14 hours a day, seven days a week, fueled by a constant flow of stress hormones. ”

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Leadership's Responsibility In Life After Work

Posted by on April 1, 2016

I really get amped when the whole conversation of work-life balance is addressed. Many bottom line supervisors really don’t seem to mind if people take too much work home and stay connected 24/7. However, they must realize that everyone brings home to work every day and it definitely impacts performance. This HBR post tackles this difficult subject:

“And yet more often than not, the unspoken rules of “killing it” here in Silicon Valley might prevent people like these from even mentioning their needs to their managers. If you’re not sleeping under your desk, you’re not committed — an attitude we sometimes refer to as “martyr capitalism.”

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Why Busyness Is Not Badge Of Honor

Posted by on March 25, 2016

The harder we work the more we get done right? Wrong!!!! Actually, the reverse may be true because at some point in time we lose our margin and stop being effective at anything. Being over scheduled is definitely not something to brag about and according to Mark Merrill we must do something about it:

“I’m so slammed at the office this week. I’m going to be working late every night to get things done!” “This is a crazy month for me and the kids. Between basketball playoffs, piano recitals, and soccer tournaments, I might as well start a taxi service.”

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Stop Trying To Achieve Work-Life Balance

Posted by on January 29, 2016

I have never like the whole concept of work-life balance. It implies that both areas have equal importance and the honest truth is they don’t. Balance also creates competing priorities instead of integrating your life around core values. Mark Merrill has some compelling thoughts:

“I’m talking about the work-life balance that we are so often told to pursue; the search term brings up almost 200,000 Google results. The idea is that if we try hard enough, we can keep everything in our life in good order and perfect harmony.”

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