Second Cup: Substance first, balance after that

Seek out work you love, then negotiate the rest

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that as you are considering a new job
or any sort of career move, consider the substance of

(00:24):
the work first. Then you can address questions like work
life balance. Balance is not a good in its own right,
and if you seek out work for the schedule first,
you can wind up board or unhappy, which won't help
with your work life balance at all. Because I write

(00:47):
about issues of work and family, I sometimes hear from
people who are trying to find jobs that allow for
what we often call work life balance. People want to
be able to spend time in the evenings with their families,
or to be able to drop kids off at school,
or deal with the occasional during the work day personal
event without it being a crisis. I totally understand this.

(01:12):
Flexibility is a definite upside for me of running my
own business, but I didn't set out to have a
flexible business. I wanted to write about what I wanted
to write about, and I know there have never been
a lot of traditional, well paying jobs that would allow
me to do that. The most profitable way to build

(01:32):
my career was to go out on my own. Flexibility
turns out to be a perk of my version of
self employment, but it is not the reason for my
job choice. Unfortunately, I hear from people who have gotten
burned out in stressful jobs and they start hunting for
anything that will provide more balance. And for a while,

(01:55):
this can feel great. If you used to travel every
week and have people call you at nine pm every
night with stuff that has to be done before eight
am in the morning, it is exhilarating to leave the
office at four point thirty knowing that no one is
going to bother you. You will glow with gratitude going to

(02:16):
a school play at eleven am knowing that no one
is going to give you grief about it, but and
you knew there was a butt coming here. Often, that
glow fades in time. You can't live on balance alone.
Many of the people who started out in those more

(02:37):
stressful jobs did so because they are ambitious people who
like to be challenged. They also like to be paid
a lot. Jobs taken primarily because they offer balance don't
always meet those needs. People wind up unhappy because they
are bored. They start feeling underpaid, then perhaps it's off

(03:02):
to find a new job. But again, if it needs
to have a strict definition of balance, this can cut
off a lot of options. If you declare that you
will never travel for work, that is going to limit
you more than if you are open to traveling two
to three days a month. If you declare that you
will never take work home, that is going to limit

(03:24):
you more then if you find a fascinating organization, or
you can build a team that gets good work done
unreasonable timeframes. So here is my take. I think it
is best to focus on substance first and balance after that.
Figure out what kind of work you'd like to do,

(03:45):
or look for a job where the core of your
work is something that excites you. Find colleagues who you
find interesting and fun to work with, then negotiate the
balance you want, or simply bold and seize it. I
have seen this be possible for all sorts of jobs

(04:05):
as people gain seniority, and they might work in fields
like law or medicine or consulting or tech that aren't
exactly known for work life balance. But these jobs do
tend to be interesting and highly paid, So folks who
want to have a personal life figure out ways to

(04:27):
keep working and advancing while doing what they need to
or want to outside of work. You take an hour
off in the middle of the day to go to
a kid's class, but do a phone call at nine
pm after your kid is in bed, and you just
don't make a big deal about it. As you get
more senior, you can do more and more of what
you want, leaving in the middle of the day to

(04:49):
meet a kid's bus and continuing to work remotely after that.
For instance, if you are the top person on a team,
people do often figure out where to accommodate you beyond
that reality. I think the phrase work life balance is
problematic for all sorts of reasons. First, people tend to

(05:10):
use it to mean working less, but very few people
spend most of their hours working. There are one hundred
and sixty eight hours in a week. If you sleep
eight hours a night, so that's fifty six hours per
week and work forty hours per week, that leaves seventy

(05:30):
two hours for other things, that's almost twice as much
time as you are working. It's hard to see what's
particularly balanced about working thirty hours and having eighty two
hours for other things, or working twenty hours and having
ninety two hours for other things. Those may be perfectly
fine setups for life, but they aren't exactly balanced. The

(05:53):
phrase work life balance also implies that work and life
are at odds, with the two on opposite side sides
of the scale. I am not sure that is the case.
I know that when I am working on something really
exciting and I feel like I'm winning at work, I
have more energy for everything. There's also nothing particularly balanced

(06:16):
about tolerating your work and even counting the hours until
you get to life, even if there aren't as many
hours to count. I suspect that a lot of people
would be happier working forty to forty five hours a
week in work they love than thirty five hours a
week in work where they'd feel bored and underpaid. Now,

(06:37):
of course, if the forty hour work week was also
boring and underpaid, that would be even worse. But when
you like the substance of your job, that is probably
not going to be the case. Substance first, balance, after that,
that's the recipe for a happier life and career than
seeking out balance above everything else. In the meantime, this

(07:01):
is Laura, Thanks for listening and here's to making the
most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear
from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook

(07:22):
and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod. That's b E the
number four then Breakfast pod. You can also shoot me
an email at Before Breakfast Podcasts at iHeartMedia dot com
that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Thanks so much. Should I look forward to staying in touch.

(07:47):
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