Balancing our work and personal lives is one of the biggest challenges we face today. We are fortunate to have this dilemma. I don’t think previous generations struggled with this concept as much as we do today. As American society has grown wealthier since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the nature of our struggles has changed. I don’t think our grandparents, or even parents, considered work-life balance as we do today. I am not sure I could even explain it to my grandfathers if they were around without feeling weak and spoiled.
Work-Life Balance Wasn't a Thing
When I think about work-life balance, I often think of my grandparents and the lives they had. My grandmother was raising twins on a farm in Nebraska and cooking for my grandfather and the men he occasionally hired to help on the farm. Households then were very different: propane was new for gas stoves and heat, there was no electricity, a windmill pump provided water, and an outhouse was their restroom. Cooking breakfast meant getting eggs from the chicken coop and bacon from the icebox, literally a big chunk of ice in a metal box. Then she cooked it all. After that, she boiled water to do the dishes, and they air-dried. What a breeze. This all needed to be ready between 7 and 8 am, after the men had already worked a couple of hours and were hungry.
Back to the twins, diapers were cloth, so cleaning them meant heating water on the stove, pouring it into a washtub, adding some lye soap, and scrubbing them clean with a washboard. Then run them through a hand wringer to squeeze out the water, and hang them on the clothesline to dry. I am not sure what happened when it was raining, snowing, or 20 degrees outside. Did they just mold? Keep in mind that young children are great at getting diapers dirty. This would have generated about 8 to 14 dirty diapers a day to wash for twins.
With the twins in clean diapers and breakfast done, it was time to start on lunch. She made fantastic egg noodles from flour, water, and eggs, or whatever magic she used. I remember her rolling out the dough, rolling it up like a newspaper, and then slicing it into noodles. Back to the chicken coop for a chicken, then prepare it and put it in a pot to boil, creating broth and meat for the noodles. While changing a few diapers, feeding the twins, and cleaning up the house from yesterday's tornado of work. Then deliver the food outside for the men to eat, and then do the dishes again. Once lunch was done, it was time to prepare dinner. She cooked three hot meals a day without a microwave. I am sure she got some help from her mother, who lived close, but wow, what a workday. I don’t think she considered work-life balance an option. I can't imagine how challenging it must have been, and as I age, I respect her more every day. Reflecting on our ancestors and their struggles, by itself, helps improve work-life balance by tempering our expectations.
I quit farming the same family farm after it became clear I couldn’t make a go of it, and I started a small business in that small Nebraska town. This was when I came across a great gift while poring over business books, trying to figure out what I was doing. The gift was a book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey. It has been a guide to me my entire life. It offers some great perspectives and tools I would like to share to help you balance work and life. Here is a reference from the source: https://www.franklincovey.com/courses/the-7-habits/.
7 Habits to Make You More Effective and Improve Balance in Your Life
Covey studied people throughout history and examined what they did to become successful. In the end, he distilled those insights into seven habits that made them effective. What is meant by effective will become clearer as I walk through the habits. For more details on the 7 Habits, check out my resource’s webpage. I have a more detailed summary of Covey’s work.
The framework for the 7 Habits is shown in Figure 1 below. Habits 1, 2, and 3 help move you from Dependence to Independence. Habits 4, 5, and 6 help move you from Independence to Interdependence. Habit 7 is the habit of renewal, so we can keep doing 1 through 6. Doing them all well makes you very effective in life.
Figure 1: The 7 Habits Framework
First, a few concepts before we get to the habits.
Three types of determinism:
Four Human Endowments:
The book discusses Viktor Frankl’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. Even amid extreme suffering, he could choose his response, even though he had no liberty. His captors couldn't take that away from him. If Viktor Frankl could choose dignity in how he faced suffering, it is hard to argue that we can’t do the same in our own situations. Regardless of what determines who we are, we can use our human endowments to choose our response in any situation. We have the power.
Effective people operate within their circle of influence (Figure 2). Operating from our circle of concern can be exhausting and isn’t effective. We can choose to operate either from all our concerns or from all the things we can influence. We should focus on the things we can influence.
Figure 2: Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern
The Time Management Matrix in Figure 3 below helps us consider where we spend our time and how we can be more effective in the long run. Awareness enables effective decision-making. A key lesson here is that urgent things are not always important. A text, an email, a phone call, or your colleague's problem is not always that important to you or to your mission. Effective people operate out of Quadrant 2 as much as possible and limit activities in Quadrants 3 and 4. Quadrant 1 will always be there, creating urgent problems for you to address and pulling you away from Quadrant 2 activities. An example of maximizing Quadrant 2 is working on your development plan as much as possible while still completing all necessary work.
Figure 3: Time Management Matrix
The 7 Habits
The path from dependence to independence in Figure 1.
Our actions for independence: Define your mission or what you want. Proactively choose the actions that get you closer to your mission. Do those things first. These three habits are the most important in our lives and critical to achieving an effective work-life balance.
The path from independence to interdependence in Figure 1.
Our actions for interdependence: Think of mutual benefit for all parties. Listen with empathy to understand others’ perspectives and needs before expressing your own. This may improve or change what you wanted to say right before you started listening. Think beyond conventional solutions and seek synergistic ones. And finally, the last habit.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw: Seek self-improvement and growth
We should take time for ourselves, no matter what burdens or struggles we may face. Meditate, exercise, read, or do whatever recharges you. Be proactive and don’t let urgent matters dominate your life.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
These habits are not necessarily sequential. They are all at play in different areas of our lives simultaneously. The 7 habits can help us achieve the work-life balance we want. It won’t be a straight, linear path; at times, it will zigzag, and we will also find ourselves going in the wrong direction. An effective work-life balance is a personal thing. Some love to work. Some work to live. Keep in mind that this will change as our lives change; we all balance things differently over time. Every so often, take a step back and revisit what matters to you. Every time I reflect, I find that I am doing things that are not aligned with what I really want in life. Sometimes we get lost in the urgent things in life, which beg for our attention. Most importantly, you have the power to choose your own response. So, you have the power to create the work-life balance you want in time. Take that power and make it happen.
Do something today to improve your work-life balance. You won’t regret it. Have a great day, and good luck with your work-life journey.