work-life balance, self-improvement

As another cycle of recession is upon us, everyone, from mega-corporations to individuals have to find ways to save and have cash on hand. Telecommuting is a good way to save time and money, while also providing a host of benefits.

However, the % of people telecommuting is not very significant, except in a few countries. While technology may be part of the reason, a major barrier for organizations is that managers feel that “office-time” is important. The common complaints against telecommuting are around “productivity is lowered, people don’t have the same sense of urgency, people are not disciplined to work at home” etc.

Before I start, however, I must emphasize that working from home is not for everybody. The nature of work dictates whether your job can be done from home effectively or not.

Photo: Courtesy Lynac

1. Identify activities that can be done from home

[I am going to assume that at least some part of your job can be done outside the office]

Before you can even talk to your manager about it, you must convince yourself that:

• Work can be done at home
• You can do that work from home
• You can do that work as you would have done at office

To take this test, identify the activities that can be done without being in office. Paperwork (like reading or writing contracts, software requirements), Planning, Design, and even software coding can be done outside the office.

2. Allocate time at home

Initially, you can start working on afternoon in the weekends, when things are a little quiet. Once you can concentrate and finish work, you can bring more work home. Remember, the weekends are a bonus and not a substitute for regular office hours at this stage.

Set aside the time you have planned and tell family members not to disturb you unless there is an emergency. You may have to be firm when starting, as folks at home need to realize that your work place is off-limits for them when you are “working”

3. Plan and setup work environment at home

Setting up a home office may seem a daunting and expensive proposition, but it need not be so. Eschew any notions of a grand desk – that old computer desk will do for now. There are a few things, however, that you need to keep in mind.

• The environment must insulate you as much as possible from distractions, such as the telly, neighbours and even the kitchen. This might be difficult for those of us, who live in cramped apartments, but if you have a spare bedroom, that should do
• While home equals comfort, the home office must not offer you any comfort – it is there as an alternative to your work place, so no sofa to nap. A comfortable chair, good lighting, filing system, stationery and a book case may be sufficient to get started. You may also want to invest in a Thermos flask for coffee and some jars for some snacks, so that you are not tempted to go to the kitchen
• Set up needed infrastructure such as an exclusive telephone line, Internet, Webcams for video-conferencing etc. You may want to get some redundancy in your network, like an additional Internet connection in case your job needs you to be connected at all times

The idea is to simulate the office environment as much as possible – lounging by the fireplace and listening to music while working might seem attractive,  but it only lowers productivity and may even send you off to sleep.

4. Log all such activities

A very important point that people who telecommute forget to do – maintain a list of deliverables/activities that you completed away from office. This is the evidence that you can present to your boss and show him/her that you can still deliver when working from home. This is especially true, when you have not told your boss about working from home.

Saying “Boss, I can definitely work from home without loss of quality/time. For example, I finished this report at home, without staying late” is a good way to demonstrate your capacity to work effectively. Be warned though – your manager may see this in a negative way – that you are showing off or worse, ready to work from home too!

In any case, having a list of things you have accomplished gives you the satisfaction of being disciplined enough to work from anywhere.

5. Discuss with your manager

Once you have a few weeks of experience working from home, you might want to broach this topic of telecommuting with your manager. It is better to be honest and explain why you want to telecommute. You can then lay out what is the benefit for him in this – by allowing you to work from home twice a week, the company is saving on running costs while making you more productive (since there is no travel involved). You also must demonstrate that you have the resources to make this work.

The best way to convince the organization is to propose a pilot (officially, that is). For 3 months, you will telecommute twice a week and be in office the rest of the time. Meetings can be scheduled during those days and you will definitely be available for emergencies.

If you have made the preparation and proposition correctly, you should gain approval at least for the pilot. After all, the organization would like you to succeed when it can also win!

What do you do when you have permission to telecommute? The basic strategies above work, but there are a few things you need to sort out, which I will discuss in the next post. Before bidding you adieu, a couple of important things – firstly, this will work only if you have some credibility in the organization and a genuine reason why both you and the organization will win and secondly, you need to balance your home life with your work. Your family definitely does not need your home to become an extension of your office.

The point about working on weekends is for the initial period only – when you have official sanction, you don’t work weekends!

(For more tips on Work-Life Balance, see my 3-part series here – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

Nuclear families and 2-person careers are the norm today. Gender equality in education and employment, rising costs and new generation values are the usually quoted reasons for this change.

The sailing is smooth while you are still in your twenties. Once you have a few years of experience under your belt and start raising a family, "work-life" balance becomes a nagging thought. This generation is caught between new-age ambitions and old-style values. We want to pass on our culture, tradition and values to our children, but also want more money for the fashionable house, latest car etc. More money means more office time. More office time means less time at home. Your work-life balance is severely tilted towards work.

Some people with courage (and money!) choose to drop out of the race. They either take up slow-paced jobs (with lower salaries) or follow their dream of making a profession of what they really want to do.

What about the rest of us? We need to work out strategies to improve this "balance". Of course, if you have made a conscious career choice, so be it. For others who want to run the race, but not at the highest speed, developing some strategies is important.

Here are some I have read, heard, seen or developed myself.

• Set Boundaries
• Learn to say No and feel comfortable
• Earn credits
• Establish a support system
• Schedule vacations
• Identify and manage Peak times
• Become single

Set Boundaries

The most important principle in the game. Establish clear boundaries between work and personal life and let the people around you know it.

Set apart a day off, say Sunday, when you are not reachable except for real emergencies. REAL Emergencies. Learn to distinguish what is a real emergency and communicate it to the office. Once you stick to it to the point of being stubborn, the office will quickly understand when NOT to contact you.

On this day off, do not go near anything that is remotely official, except if you use the same cell for office and personal calls. No laptop, no email and no official calls. Better yet, go out with your family leaving everything behind so as not to be tempted!

Similarly, when in office, ensure you are completely involved in work. No booking tickets or balancing your accounts. Let me tell you a secret: Long chats near the watercooler or coffee is the hallmark of a loser. if you overhear most of these conversations, its not about something about work, but whining about management. Don’t get into that trap, you are too smart for that. Build healthy relationships at work, be busy and you will never have to be that whiner. This is a subject that deserves more attention, but take it from someone who has been there.

Learn to say NO and be comfortable

Learn to say no to tasks which demand too much of you. In addition, learn to say no to yourself when you are tempted to check your email ‘just one more time.’ A recent article in the local newspaper referred to this as (adapted):

"With more and more things craving for our attention, we have stopped paying that very thing! When we check email while vacationing, we are doing justice to neither!"

Once you have the discipline to say no, let go of all your fears. You are important to your company, but you are not as indispensable as you would like to think. Fear of missing something important, a sense of exaggerated ownership, peer pressure and games of ‘one-upmanship’ stop us from feeling a sense of comfort when not in touch with the office.

Recently, I and my wife had a one-sided argument about 1 principle of "Getting things done" – checking email at scheduled times. She said that she has to constantly monitor the status from multiple computer systems and people and she cannot afford to close her mailbox while at office. Her vehemence shocked me (for the millionth time, of course). Are we in so much slavery to the interrupt-work model? Let me know your comments, while I go for a well-deserved break. Till next time, ponder.

This article was featured in The  Twenty Second Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life.

Part 1 and Part 2 looked at how you can balance life and work. In this post, I will focus on some more things you can do.

Schedule vacations

At first glance, this does seem a bit strange. This may also not work for some of us. But it has worked for others in the past and so deserves mention.

Everyone agrees that we need to temporarily break away from routine and take some time off. “Relax”, “recreate”, “recharge” etc have been used to describe such periods of rest. They are, in some ways, what they describe. But I want to offer a different perspective. A vacation can not only help you to pause in the game, but also give you ideas on how to play the game differently!

Let me give a real life example. One of my workaholic friends happened to be vacationing in the Andamans, when the great Tsunami struck. He was one of those fortunate not to have been severely affected, but he had to join the rescue operations till official help came. What he saw and experienced in those few days has changed him. He no longer is the boss, who “fires” people for their mistakes. He has become more adept in doing his best with the available people and tools and does not moan about his situation anymore. He spends more time with his family and contribute hours every week to social work.

He has improved his Quality of Life.

While all vacations may not result in such life-changing experiences, they do offer a chance to step back and introspect about where were are going and how fast we are going. Sometimes, going slow is for the best.

Identify and manage Peak times

I call it the single most effective tactic to work life balance. Most careers have times when you have peak load and times when you swat flies. I am not talking here about days, but about a scale of years. When you are really fresh, you take time to understand professional life and adjust to it. Then as you start moving up the ladder, the pace quickens. Lean months, typically November-December and July-August (depending on where you live), are less stressful. Certain roles may not have so much stress, like moving from customer facing delivery roles to R&D.

Take advantage of these lean periods to get some serious work done on the personal front. Learn a hobby, take the kids out, do some cooking or gardening, take time out for long lost friends etc. If your spouse is also working, then you could provide such support for which he/she will be truly grateful.

Become single

This is the ultimate way to be free from work-life balance worries! Alas, this is not for those “committed” individuals like me. Hey, don’t blame me if your spouse reads this and tries it out.

But if you think for a moment, the times when you were single were probably happier times, but the kind of happiness is different.

Wrapping it up

Work-life balance is exactly what it says – keeping work and life in balance. It does not mean you will clock watch at the office or refrain from checking office emails at home. Don’t go overboard with this thing, although you should keep work and home compartmentalized. It all boils down to what is the higher priority for you, and to make things difficult, it is not easy to assign priorities correctly always – a child’s football match vs a presentation to the Big Boss. I hope you are smart enough to ensure you don’t have to make that choice, but life has a way of defeating the best-laid plans.

Don’t listen to your heart – you might make the wrong choices based on what you value most.

If you have had any events in your life where you faced such problems, let us know. Your experiences in keeping work and life in harmony will go a long way in helping us.

Part 1 listed the variables of work-life balance in my years of work and reading and took a closer look at the first two.

• Set Boundaries
• Learn to say No and feel comfortable
• Earn credits
• Establish a support system
• Schedule vacations
• Identify and manage Peak times
• Become single

This post continues discussion on the things you can do balance work and life a wee bit more.

Earn credits

I learned this tactic or rather recognized it from Jack and Suzy Welch’s landmark book, Winning. Jack uses the term “chit system” to describe building credit with your boss and the organization. Other people use other terms (goodwill account etc).

When you stay late to ensure a project is completed on time, when you take on the work of a colleague who is sick, when you go beyond your job or task description, you earn credits. These credits can be used when you need them – to be with your children when they need you most or to be with your spouse when he/she is not well/pursuing her interests etc.

Jack goes on to give examples from GE when really good people who were in the system used this credit system to take themselves away from the race without being affected later.

Of course, this works only if you continue in the same organization. I, however, have a few points to add based on my experience.

• Do not volunteer for everything to build credit. Identify really critical times when the impact is hardest.
• The system will create peak cycles when you may not be with your family for an extended period of time. Choose these cycles carefully.
• Ensure people who matter know about your work. This does not mean you tom-tom it about every time you talk
• Be clear that what you think is credit is really that. You don’t want to end up using your goodwill or even worse, your boss’ goodwill
• Remember this works only if you genuinely accumulate credit and use it responsibly. All said and done, people want to be fair to you and the organization.

Establish a support system

This is especially important if your partner too is working outside home. When I talk to the high-achievers in my organization, I find that most have set up a system to ensure the house runs smoothly without too much involvement from them. Cooking, housecleaning, bringing kids from school, paying the bills etc are important considerations.

If you have to start early in the day to beat the traffic, while packing lunches for you and your children, you would have to make clones of yourself to do this. Getting up very early is not the answer – you need your sleep and you need some physical exercise. There is simply no time for it all!

Jack Welch also comments about this in his book and also makes an interesting statement – those who establish such a support system earn more (obviously), leaving them to do more in the day and grow in their work, allowing them to earn even more! People who don’t earn so much cannot afford such support and hence cannot commit much at the office. A vicious cycle that needs to be broken with better financial planning; otherwise, some become bigger while others remain where they are, leading to frustration and anger.

At the minimum, get someone to cook. This could be your parents/in-laws or some close relative who needs a place to stay for a while. It could free you to do things which improve the quality of life.

Do you have any tips to share or do you have problems in balancing work and life? Share it with us.