Work life balance

In the words of one entrepreneur:

"Yesterday I was sick as a dog. But my business partner was out of town, so I had to go in to work. I was supposed to have a nice steak dinner with my wife that night. All I really wanted to do was curl up by myself on the couch..."

The above quote comes from Jeff Weinstein in an article in BusinessWeek.  Jeff is trying to solve the problem of the work life balance.  Good luck to him.  My hand is up, this is one problem I can't ever seem to quite crack.

Life can be incredibly rich. I find there isn't enough time to do everything well and make it fit neatly into one box.  Jeff however thinks he has cracked it.

He's tried all the traditional methods such as budgeting time and not bringing work home, but that has not worked.  He is now taking on the 21st century solution of being flexible and realising that work is no longer 9 to 5.  Now Jeff takes some leisure time during the 9 to 5, but works in the evening when required.  The odd email or phone call at 8pm shouldn't be a problem.  He discusses his work much more with his wife in the evening.  By the end of the day he's completed all his tasks.  Eureka! It is early days but Jeff thinks he has cracked the work life problem. The 21st century approach of flexibility works after all?  Not a chance.

The reason it is working for Jeff is that it is early days.  He has not yet established a pattern of working in the evening.  Once he does he will also establish an expectation on the part of the people he is working with.  Soon they will be expecting that Jeff respond in the evening and will be disappointed when he doesn't.  Work can be a bit like traffic sometimes.  It fills up a new motorway or freeway almost instantly.  I hope I'm wrong, but I expect a return visit to Jeff in two years will see him working harder than ever.

I remember watching Tomorrows World in the 1970's and being given the message that we all have more leisure time in the future.  It hasn't really turned out that way and that message has been well and truly trashed.

From the customer point of view this is of course good news.  Why can't the customer have instant response and extended hours.  It is a benefit that Jeff is available from, say, 8 to 8.  Why shouldn't a customer get this service? Like it or not that is the way the world is moving and the work life balance problem is becoming larger.  It is one problem that SME Blog certainly wants to crack.