Work-life balance has become such a buzzword, there is now a host of companies offering training in how to achieve it. While perhaps it is complicated enough that training is needed, why not try some of these top five approaches first. We begin with changes you can make within the context of your job today and end with, well, leaving the 9 t0 5 (and still paying the bills)!
1. Outsource the crap.
What a place to start. Much of the time I could just slap Tim Ferriss. The guy makes me tired. Honestly. I’m not even going to attempt to paraphrase his approach although to say “just outsource the crap” is not entirely doing him justice. I’ll just say this: read the 4-Hour Work Week.
2. Enrol yourself in extra-curricular classes or activities
While at first this might seem a bit counter-intuitive - “What? You want me to have work-life balance by doing more? How does that work??!” - enrolling in other things can do two key things. Firstly, you’ll need to leave the office. And for those people for whom the job is never done, this can be a critical step. It will stop 5pm sliding into 6pm which before you know it is 7pm. (That’s about when your partner calls you to find out where you are.) Second, you’ll be focussing on an interest that’s more about other aspects of you than it is about work. Go on, do French lessons, go to the gym, learn how to meditate. At your funeral it’ll be sad if all they’re saying is what a great employee you were.
3. Persuade your employer to help you
On Entrepreneur.com Sarah Pierce reports that a study done by Employee Hold’em says a whopping 92 percent of employees will stay at their job for less money if they can achieve such things as work-life balance and recognition. Even if those results don’t hold true across the board, work-life balance for employees can also be good for employers.
The Queensland Government’s Department of Employment and Industrial Relations identifies a number of positive outcomes from reduced staff turnover rates and absenteeism and sick leave to increased return on investment in training as employees stay longer and improved productivity. Not only that, it helps employers become an employer of choice - important always but particularly in a tight job market.
They offer a Better Work-Life Balance survey to help your organisation improve and promote work-life balance in the workplace.
4. Talk your boss into letting you telecommute - almost full-time
Author and commentator Rich Karlgaard said in his book, Life 2.0, that the answer was “take this job and … move it. That was my message. To the farm, the mountains, the beach - yes, even the beach”. He writes that one of his favourite stories in the book was of a couple who moved their high-tech public relations business from San Francisco to the Turks and Caicos Islands. “In shorts and flip-flops, they service semiconductor clients from California, Taiwan and Singapore. Their business is booming,” he says.
Recently Karlgaard updated that advice and offered the two-hour away, two-day-a-week solution. Because cities will only get more expensive and crowded, the internet connections will only get faster and bosses should become more enlightened about telecommuting, Karlgaard says it’s time to have an honest chat with your boss. The point to make is that office face-time is overrated and today you can work and produce from anywhere.
While an entire five-day week of two-hour commutes would be living hell, he acknowledges, two days of it might be tolerable. It could even be one day if you come in Tuesday morning, stay in town Tuesday night and depart for home Wednesday evening, he suggests.
5. Don’t let technology boss you around
Canadian Business Online give us the example of Elana Rosenfeld and her husband Leo, the CEO and President respectively of Kicking Horse Coffee Co. Ltd., a Canadian firm that roasts and distributes organic “fair trade” coffee. Founded in 1996, the firm posted sales of $7.8 million in 2006.
The couple has instituted several strategies to achieve balance. Aside from limiting work hours to 9 to 3, taking six to eight weeks holiday a year, and choosing to live in a small town of less than 3,000 people - “We don’t live in a community of work, work, work,” Elana says - Elana and Leo have kicked technology aside.
“We have an unlisted home phone number, we don’t have cell phones and we don’t have Internet access at home. When we’re at home, we’re home together or with our kids. And when we’re at work, we’re at work,” she says.
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