Duals & Duets on the Subject of Work

Working late? How's Your Sex Life?

Is it dark out?

Are you still in your office or working from a home computer?

Is your honey in bed or in another room steering clear of you? Do you mind?

If you’ve answered yes to the questions above, chances are you’re a workaholic. You can find out by taking this simple test.. (But come back when you’re done because we an insight for you.)

So are you a workaholic? If yes, then the next question is, how’s your sex life?

Reuters reports that in a survey done by researchers at the University of Goettingen in Germany “over 35 percent of those reporting unsatisfying sex lives tended to use hard work as a diversion.”

So, be honest with yourself, have you taken on extra projects to avoid engaging in sex with a partner?

If so, you’re not alone. According to Reuters, “36 percent of men and 35 percent of women surveyed for the "Apotheken Umschau" newsletter said they were likely to put in extra time at the office and volunteer for extra assignments.”

Now that’s a fabulous way to spend your one and only life, isn’t it?

(Answer: NO!)

Go see your honey now!

Work/Life Balance Vs. Integration

Balanced Betty here and, as always, I'm peaceful and in control. I've had my breakfast;, driven my kids to school, shared a hot tub with my hubby, and now I'm in my office putting the finishing touches on a project that's due next week. Smooth Operator, that's what my honey calls me.

This afternoon (I work flex time) I'm planning to make homemade energy bars for my son's soccer game. I'll keep them warm in a thermal bag until half-time. If I find a few spare moments, I'll make some carb-free turkey, romaine, mayo and mustard roll-ups for the adults to munch on as they cheer their kids on from the sidelines.

I know, I sound too good to be true, and the truth is, I'm exaggerating. BUT, if I actually put First Things First that's what I'd be doing.

How about you? Do you do First Things First, or do you let the less important, but seemingly more urgent, or easier to complete, activities drive your schedule?

Me? I keep needing to stop to remind myself that I am the creative (or co-creative) force in my life. That it's up to me to figure out what matters most and to then organize my activities according to those priorities.

Come to think of it, sometimes I even ask other people to interrupt their lives to help me with my non-priorities. Just last week I phoned the overly over-booked Ivory Towers to look into something for me. "I'm swamped, but if it's s really important to you..." she started to say, then I interrupted her.

"Whoa, sorry, stop, forget I even asked," I said. I didn't mean to sound defensive, but I realized that I was asking Ivory to step away from making her proverbial cake in order to make a decoration for mine.

Now that I've shed an embarrassing light on myself, I'm going out for a run. I'm going to run big, steep hills so that I have to really focus on putting one foot in front of the other. I'll have to control my pace or I won't get to the top.

And if I'm tempted to veer off course to avoid the pitch of the hill, I'll have to ask myself if getting to the top in due time is really all that important. If it is, I'll have to use my brains and my will to redirect my feet.

And what does this have to do with work/life balance? Everything. There's less to balance when my priorities are clear.

Wonderfully Wired Woman

Wired-Woman Here, meet me in my comfort zone. I can eat, participate in a conference call, surf the web, and write status reports, all at the same time. And if I were to try to do only two of those at once, or go to the beach without a book, a boy and my Blackberry, I'm lost!

Why am I bringing this up? Because Straight-Shooter pointed me to a post today that suggested that technology has reversed the effects of the Industrial Revolution, that there's no longer a separation of work and life.

I hate to tell Straight she's right, besides, who cares? I don't want to go anywhere if I'm not wired. Messages mean I exist, lack of them is, well, depressing.

Truth be told, I'm exaggerating just a bit, because I want to talk about the pros and cons of work/life integration as described by  Dr. Jakob Nielsen, who USA Today called the "next best thing to a true time machine". Here's what he says:

Work/life integration. Not only will more people work from home, but personal life will also permeate more traditional offices through IM, e-mail, and other communication forms. Conversely, people will never really leave work, because mobile technology will let them take their offices wherever they go.

Some of my cronies would really take issue with the word "let." They're angry that work invades their lives all the time, but I say it's a bit of a buy-in on their part. Does your job description even mention carrying a wireless device? I ask. They fondle the phones or Blackberry's on their waists as I speak. For most the answer is NO! They carry these gadgets because they want to. They volunteer to be ever-present recipients of work-related information.

Much like the pre-Industrial revolution farmer who was ready to tend to his cows and his crops whenever the need arose, today's worker is ready to jump, whether he needs to or not. This past Friday when I told some of my clients I'd talk to them Monday, they said, "I'm around over the weekend, you know."

"But I'm not," I wanted to say. "On weekends I'm around for my own life, not yours! Unless there's something time-sensitive going on, that is." But truth be told, I'm a Golden Rule kind of girl, so I'll shoot them an e-mail assuring them that the ground has not shifted beneath their feet.

This tethering, I think, does have its benefits. You can work from anywhere, any time, and be accountable only for your results. Retailer Best Buy says that it  no longer equates physical presence with productivity. They've introduced ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) and they're so confident in the concept that they've formed a consulting practice to help other organizations implement it. Want to know more? Business Week wrote all about it.

Interestingly enough, Business Week also ran a Jack Welch podcast on the "Importance of Being There" and he DOESN'T MEAN VIRTUALLY. He and his wife are insistent on the fact that if you want to get to get ahead you have to be there, PHYSICALLY.

So do I buy Best Buy's ROWE or Jack Welch's Way? I say you do what you need to do. Show your face and your wired waist.

Right now, I'm going out for a very long run. I'll take my phone, but it won't be turned on. I carry it in case I have an emergency.

When I get back, I'll sit down with my coffee and cake, my lap top and my cell phone, in front of the television and Relax. Having all that isn't necessary, but it is a habit! Still, none of it proves to me that I exist as much as my body does when I hit my 13th mile!

Workplace 2.0-Retool Your Thinking

New Directions for Happiness

Popular blogger, Penelope Trunk, has agreed to let us post an entry from her Brazen Careerist blog here in its entirety. The points she makes are worth pondering.

Sure, the wiring in your brain might have a hissy-fit as you read, but read on...something tells me you won't be sorry. And keep in mind, I'm the idealist!

Make Life More Stable With More Frequent Career Changes

by Penelope Trunk

It used to be that finding a good paying career was the path to adult-life stability. Those days are over. What we think of as stability has to change, and how we get to that stability has to change.

Here’s a summary of the new employee of today’s workplace: Most will change jobs every two years. Most will start their adult life by moving back in with their parents. Most say that money is not their number one concern in evaluating a job.

You think it’s a recipe for instability, right? But what else is there to do? Work at IBM until you get a gold watch? There are no more jobs like that - companies are under too much pressure to be lean and flexible (read: layoffs, downsizing, reorgs), so workers have to be, too (read: constantly on the alert for new job possibilities).

In fact, stability is a big goal for new workers today, precisely because the old paths to stability don’t necessarily work. For example, staying in one job forever is today’s recipe for career suicide. At the beginning of one’s career, it is nearly impossible to find something right without trying a bunch of options. After that, you will experience more personal growth from changing jobs frequently than staying in one job for extended periods of time. And if you change jobs frequently you build an adaptable skill set and a wide network which are the keys to being able to find a job whenever you need to.

Another example of the fact that common paths to stability no longer work: Professional degrees used to be viewed as a safe path, but now they box you into uncomfortable spots. PhD’s are having lots of trouble finding work due to the documented glut of qualified candidates, and the MBA is not a huge help to your career unless you go to a top-ten school. Doctors are having a hard time working a schedule that accommodates kids and pay back school loans, which is creating a surge in interest in the field of opthamology - probably not what your your parents had in mind when they were encouraging medical school.

The lack of stability is affecting people across the board: “All well-educated workers, even those at the top, are at much greater risk of economic reversals than they used to be,” wrote Jacob Hacker, professor of political science at Yale.

Finally, tried-and-true paths to financial stability are no longer reliable either. This is the first generation that will not do better financially than their parents. Anya Kamenetz describes in her book, Generation Debt, that young people today are in a much worse financial situation than their parents were, so the expectations for stability have to change. This financial situation is due to increasing college costs and decreasing parental ability to foot the bill. And real salaries are decreasing for entry level jobs. So new workers start life with more debt and less ability to pay it than their parents’ generation. So it’s not surprising that the new vision of stability is not a house, two kids and pension. Most young people are priced out of housing markets in the cities they want to live in, like Boston. San Francisco and New York are seeing an increase in one-child families because people can’t afford two, and there are no more pensions. Period. The goals are more fluid - and they do not focus on old tropes of financial success like a house and a 401K.

Key values today are time and relationships. Stability means knowing you can get yourself work that is fun and accommodates those values. The stable people are those who can manage to consistently get work they enjoy that pays their bills. It used to be that you worked really hard and paid your dues so you could retire rich and do what you love. But we know now that most people don’t really retire, so paying dues in order to get that is nonsense. Stability is knowing you have a life where you can do what you love, during your whole life, not just at the end.

The new way to find a good job - one that creates this stability — is to change jobs. A lot. And to keep an open mind about what a job really is, because what it is not is a lifelong commitment to one company. Here are ways to use frequent job changes to create stability in your life:

1. Build up a strong skill set quickly. Go to a job to work on a great project, and leave when your learning curve flattens out. The faster you build up your skills to create an expertise, the faster you will be able to set yourself apart from everyone else, and find good jobs quickly.

2. Get good at making transitions. There are moments in a person’s life that typically throw everything out of whack because you can’t continue working in your job. Sickness, relocation, unexpected wrenches in one’s plan. When you are used to changing jobs, and you have taught yourself to deal with work transitions, then when your personal life requires huge transition, your work can accommodate that instead of get in the way. Changing jobs will be easy.

3. Make the most of the in-between-jobs time. You can use job changes to make transition less risky. It’s very hard to know if you’ll like something until you try it. If you have been in corporate marketing for ten years and you want to try entrepreneurship, that feels like a big risk. But if you think you might like to start your own business but you’re not sure, taking a pause in between jobs to try this new business isn’t such a risky move at all.

4. Get out of paying your dues. The idea of paying dues worked fine when there was actually payoff (think: Retirement communities in Florida funded by pensions.) But today paying dues doesn’t have nearly the payoff it used to, and in fact, creates instability by creating unreasonable expectations for a job you become overly invested in. So get out of paying dues by changing jobs frequently. Laura Vanderkam, workplace reporter for USA Today, wrote a book called Grindhopping about how to hop from job to job as a way to avoid paying your dues.

5. Keep your finances in order. As long as you keep your overhead down, so that you don’t need a salary that requires 100-hour work weeks, then job hopping is actually a way to ensure financial stability. You know you are not going to stay at a job forever, and you don’t know when it will end. But you will always able to get work when your needs or your company’s needs change if you are good at changing jobs. This won’t be true, however, if you are a financial mess and have enormous overhead. The best financial security today is to have great job hunting skills that never stop. Go to the best job, do it until you find another best job. This is the kind of person who will always be able to get money when they need it. And don’t let people tell you that job hoppers will get penalized in the marketplace. Generation Y is job hopping every other year, and they are in incredible demand throughout the workplace. Demographics are shifting, and forcing hiring practices to shift as well. Take advantage of this. Create a stable life by getting good at changing jobs.