Making Work-Life Integration Work— Part 1
The first time I heard about Work-Life Integration, I felt relieved. I had tried ‘Work-Life Balance’ and found that it is a never-ending balancing act. When I tried to visualize Work-Life Balance, I ended up visualizing a trapeze artist!
But Work-Life Integration, I felt is more of an abstract term — similar to the integration concept in calculus — the limits sounded infinite!
Moving from Work Life Balance to Work Life Integration
Technology has opened up endless possibilities including the freedom to do work when and where we want. But along with it comes some of the unwanted consequences. The expectation is that we are always connected — not to mention even on holidays. With the evolution of Smart devices and high-speed internet connection from anywhere, it is probably a logical transition to the era of integration of work into our lives. It is no longer possible for most of us to start the day only at 9 AM and end it promptly at 6 PM. Working with teams across countries and time zones, we don’t want to be left out of what is happening after hours!
Limitless Integration
If I start counting the activities that I tackle in my daily life, I quickly realize the list is endless, especially for families with kids. Wake up to early morning work meetings, eat a healthy breakfast, exercise, drop-off kids to school,numerous firefights during the day, pick up kids from school, dinner, spend time with family, get more work done, work on personal growth, connect with friends, drop off kids for activities, plan career growth, plan get-togethers with friends, parties, charity events… the list is endless and so is the possibilities for integration.
Drawing Parallels
Spending years in corporate life, one thing I started realizing is that the strategies and tools we use at work are more or less an extension of those we use at home. While the business processes and tools are more organized and documented, at home we are using similar approaches in a less formal way.
As this article series evolves, we will explore the possibilities of a limitless integrated life free from the worrying thoughts of balancing acts.
Strategy 1: Mitigating Inefficiencies with Right Incentives
A classic example of prioritization seen often is that of the speed at which someone completes his or her tasks at work before going on vacation. The task that would have taken weeks gets completed in a day or two. When I observe my kids I realize that this a behavior we had from childhood. As a child, the priority and passion are to spend as much of time as they can play. When I give my children some chores to finish before they can start playing, I am amazed at the speed at which the chores get completed. No inefficiencies there!
This is the same strategy we can use to get through the mundane tasks at work and life every day. Have something that you really love to do at the end of the day and don’t restrict that to a time slot. When we have the incentive that we can spend all your remaining time in the things that we love to do at the end of the day, it automatically drives efficiencies in all our tasks during the day.
