You are your own greatest asset, so protect yourself
Work is critically important to your life, but it should be complementary and not be to the detriment of it, writes Wavemaker's Tim Grady.
One of my good friends told me to put myself first. So, after spending a week away on a coastal holiday, it would be remiss of me to not to reflect on the past year and what I’ve learnt. I spent a week away with nothing but my own thoughts (and a set of golf clubs) and it was the best thing I’ve ever done – I wish I had it done it earlier.
2018 was an extremely tumultuous year, one which could be defined as bittersweet. From a professional sense, I couldn’t be prouder of what I was able to achieve in conjunction with my colleagues. However, from a personal point-of-view, my time management, prioritisation and decision-making could have been infinitely better.
It’s amazing where clarity can come from and mine came from reading Chris Kyle’s biography. Kyle’s personal priorities were religion, country and then family and upon first reading this, I did view these as warped but then came the realisation that these had quickly become mine over the past twelve months. How could I view these to be wrong when I was following the same values? Kyle had become disconnected from his personal life, as had I. The penny dropped, something had to change and the key to having a successful year in 2019 is to achieve balance in my life.
Balance is an extremely difficult thing to achieve in your life and waiting on others to show you the way or hoping that things will fall into place is a dangerous game to play. This is something that I need to change and I’m the only one who knows what the right fit for me is. I would deflect, shirk, blame or excuse my behaviour last year, I was always able to reason with myself as to why work was more important than anything else. This ultimately resulted in becoming bitter and resenting a workplace, that had been nothing but supportive over the years.
As Australians, we work in some strange working environments. We claim to be time-poor but really we are victims of time-theft, we make fun of government hours and yet we work on average an additional six hours unpaid per week. We make fun of teachers and their abundance of (deserved) holidays and yet we have 134 million days of leave owing. If you leave on time, then you’re not working hard enough, shouldn’t we working be smarter rather than longer. It’s almost like we see working late or not taking holidays, as a badge of honour. Strange creatures, aren’t we?
40% of the Australian workforce struggle with balance, yet we continue to do same thing over and over again. What did Einstein say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Collectively, Australians need to change, but that change must begin at a personal level for each of us.
I can think of numerous times that I put work ahead of personal last year, and whilst I can defend every decision I made, I wish I had known what I know now because my decisions would have been completely different. Well, at least I’ve learned from my mistakes – that’s a positive. I’ve spoken with many people in the industry and many either haven’t learned this lesson yet, or learned it too late, and I’m grateful to have discovered this whilst I’m still in the infancy of my career and have time to change my behaviours.
In 2019, I’m going to recalibrate my lifestyle and focus on what is important to me and whilst it’s all very well for a senior manager to sprout how they are going to achieve balance in their life, I’ll take the greatest satisfaction in being a role model to my colleagues and hopefully they’ll be able to follow my behavioural lead. Don’t get me wrong, work is critically important to your life but it should be complementary and not be to the detriment of it.
Yes, I’ll have goals that are work focused and ones that are personally focused but my only blended goal this year is to achieve balance in my lifestyle and I vow to follow this mantra: work to live, not live to work.
And for those who have read this far, I’m currently listening to Ron Pope’s album “Work” and yes, I realise the irony in the album title.
Tim Grady is digital director at Wavemaker.
Good on you Tim for recognising the problem and committing to improving your balance. To be your best (at work and at home) you need proper separation and time away from the computer, phone, office.
Mumbrella, the ad “go large” on the sides of this article made it almost impossible to read the piece. terrible user experience.
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Well written Tim, and so very true. Taking a step back to have some ‘inner reflection time’ is invaluable. There is a take-away in your article for everyone, from entry level through to senior management – well worth the 2 minutes it took to have a read (in my busy day)!
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100% yes we should all take control of our own lives and responsibility for balance, but it’s important to balance this argument and POV with the that sometimes this industry doesn’t allow us balance, ever when we are stressed, even when we say we need it or ask for help… and there is a real responsibility on management, and leadership to have the courage to say no on your behalf. It’s the same argument we’ve had for years, yet burnout and turnover is still increasing all the time.
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The default position is that many businesses and the leaders within them promote the idea of “you have a choice”. In some instances by all means you do, but the choice should be about where you allocate your time and the achievement of KPI’s.
In reality, the situation of choice is often boiled down either “do the work” or “let your career be impacted, in some cases no job”.
Nobody walks into a role that has work/life balance, it’s a nice dream to do so but our industry in Australia is well down the river now.
Need a good old cleanse
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Great piece, Tim!
Worklife balance is so important, especially when a lot of people are now juggling longer commutes than ever and also additional study to enhance their careers.
I think that rather then us rocking up to work for 9 – 5 hours, we need to be embracing flexible working arrangements better. Some people might be better off starting early, leaving early, then jumping back on later. Or others might benefit from doing a 5 day week in 4 days working 8 am – 6 pm; or instead of offering a pay rise with every promotion we offer a 9 day fortnight.
There are a lot of ways that work-life balance can be achieved outside of running out the door as soon as the clock strikes 5 pm.
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Great article Tim. As leaders we need to model flexibility and healthy attitudes towards work-life blend (as I see it less of a see-saw balancing act and more of an integration!).
I agree with Stephanie that true flexibility is something we need to embrace in order to truly accommodate people’s ability to “work to live”.
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