I’m tired of being busy, and being busy makes me tired. Consequently I am constantly looking for ways to create better life-work balance. A recent article by Brigid Schulte in HBR Online (read it here) reports on some exciting work that is trying to change the whole mindset regarding being busy.
The problem Schulte highlights is that workers wear their busyness and overwork as a badge of honor. This is more the case in mission driven not-for-profits, where workers think their work is so important that is matters more than their health and life-work balance. People are fearful of having normal lives because they appear to be out of step with the culture and expectations of the rest of the team.
To change this thinking, Schulte’s team have developed a number of strategies for organisations to construct new mental models of what the ideal worker is. In Schulte’s words, “Right now, the model is someone who comes in early, eats lunch at their desk, stays late, emails at all hours, is always busy and always available to put work first.” The alternative that Schulte is proposing is “someone who does great work, is well rested and healthy, and has a great life outside of work.” To get to this Schulte suggests three strategies:
- Recognize the power of social signals. Instead of when we are at work just seeing other people working, make non-work time visible too. In particular, ask managers to be more open about: taking lunch breaks, leaving the office on time, working flexibly, going on vacation, talking about life outside of work or care responsibilities, and more demonstrably encouraging others to do the same.
- Build in slack for important work. The planning fallacy is that we tend to underestimate and over promise. Rather, intentionally create slack time into calendars every week that gives a buffer to finish up any work that got delayed for one reason or another. And also, create “transition days” at work before and after annual leave so that the only expectation for workers is to wrap up work before leaving and catch up on what they missed while they were away.
- Increase transparency into everyone’s workload. This involves scheduling in time to individual calendars to work on the week’s priorities, and making these visible to everyone in the organisation, which creates some positive friction every time someone wants to call a meeting or impose on your time. Is it really worth more than that priority project?
The whole article is well worth reading, as it expands on these ideas and provides some excellent examples. This could be one of the most important uses of your time this week!
The Avondale Business School (ABS) can help you develop your leadership. Contact Dr Warrick Long [email protected] to find out how.