WORK-LIFE BALANCE IS BS!

HOW TO KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE FOR YOU

Hopefully, you all know me well enough by now and know that I tend to speak my mind and not hold back when I feel strongly about something. There are a few things in this world and life that I feel strongly about with the rest of the stuff taking something of a backseat in the caring department. If I care about it, it gets a little extra attention, energy, effort, and focus. If I don’t care all that much about it, it gets pushed to the side or back, or it gets delegated to somebody else to give it attention. I’m not saying this is always the best way to deal with everything in life, but I am sharing with you how I see and deal with things in the world. 

Let me also say that nothing in this episode should be construed, at any level, as advice. There are some episodes where I give very clear and strong advice on how I think something should be done, but that’s not this episode. This episode is my take on the concept and over used idea of work-life balance and how I see things. Take from it what you will, be offended by anything in this episode if you so choose and live your life. This is simply my view of this topic at my age based on my own life and business experience. I fully expect some of you are going to be offended and unsubscribing at certain points throughout this episode, and I’m ok with that. I would, of course, encourage you to not do that and to remain open about some of the things I’ll talk about in this episode, but I also know that some of the views we’ll talk about regarding this topic are sensitive and off-limits for some of you. 

Be that as it may, let’s lay out my premise and belief on this, which is that there simply is no thing as work-life balance. I’m almost embarrassed to talk about this using the words work-life balance because I’ve used those words hundreds of times myself, probably as recently as yesterday. I talk about in coaching calls, in culture building calls at True Footage, and in a variety of other discussions. The problem with the phrase, work-life balance, is two-fold: it’s misleading grammatically, and it’s misleading in practice, and I’ll share with you exactly why. 

As you know, words matter. Words have specific meanings, and they also take on additional meaning when paired with other words. Oftentimes, words and phrases will take on an almost meme like quality as they get used and over-used. Work-life balance is one of those phrases that has become something of a meme in my mind and here’s why: the phrase implies the absence of balance and that there needs to be. Balance connotes two opposing forces working against each other and seeking parity. There’s work and then there’s life, they’re opposites, they’re somehow in opposition, and now we need to worry about how to bring those two things into a state of equality or balance. Not only do I not agree with the grammar of the phrase, I vehemently disagree with the idea that work and life are, in some way, separate and in need of correction. 

Humans are not machines that are tasked with one task and one task only. We are complex beings with a mind, a body, emotions, drive, and purpose. Because we are not machines, perfect balance can never exist. For almost all human beings, work and life are integrated very tightly. When most of us are not working, we’re spending some mental calories thinking about work, and when we’re working, we’re likely spending some mental calories contemplating life outside of work. The two blend together in a multitude of ways and there is simply no denying that fact. 

If you were to look back to work and life in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’ and 70’s, you’d likely see some differences between then and now, just as we will between work today and work 30 years from now. There was more separation between work and life because the work week was 40 hours, for the most part, it was far more industrial or administrative; meaning most people had either a factory type job or an office job. There were no cell phones, laptops, and no gig economy options like being an Uber driver or an Instagram model. You went to work, put in your time, came home, and 40 years later retired with a pension, a gold pen or watch, and 10 or 20 years to enjoy not working. More women stayed home with the kids and took care of the household, and the societal expectations were just that, for the most part the man went to work to provide for his family, and the woman took care of the house and the kids. Dad came home, sat in his favorite chair, read the paper, smoked his pipe, ate dinner, went to bed to do it all again the next day. 

Take it easy, I’m not qualifying that way of things as better or worse than today, I’m not stating my opinion on gender roles in any way, I’m just bringing us up to life in 2022. Back then, there wasn’t lots of talk of work life balance primarily because there was a lot more separation between work and life. You went out of the house for work and then came home. Not only was there physical separation, there was digital separation, and there were much clearer expectations and roles than in 2022. In 2022, work and life are blended and integrated in a much messier way. 

Today we have cell phones, texting, social media, laptops, and 16 different ways somebody can get ahold of us at any hour of the day or night. The work week expectation is now 50-55 hours. There is, in many instances, no physical separation between work and life. Your home is your work and your work is in your home. I run 4 businesses and run all of them from my home. It wasn’t always this way, but it’s been this way now for at least the last 2 years, due to the pandemic, but heading in that direction for the last 10 years or so. 

We can now make a living using only our computers and cell phones. We can make a living as an Uber or Lyft driver. We can start a business in the dining room and have a fully functioning website built in a matter of hours. We can be in business with Amazon and drop ship products around the world and make a living from the bedroom. And with all of the technology and advancements we all use every day, the world has gotten much smaller. Many of us work remotely and work with people in 7 different time zones. We may not be able to sign off at 5pm and leave work life behind. We might have to take a call or meeting at 10pm our time because it’s 6pm their time. What’s my point? Work and life are very much intertwined and integrated into our lives, so the belief that there has to be balance is the first fallacy that needs to be ended if you’re ever hoping to have some kind of peace. The phrase, work-life balance, leads people to believe there is something out there that they don’t have, and it leads to suffering, anxiety, and a lack of peace. 

When you accept first that there is no such thing as a perfect balance between work and life, you give up the desire to try and achieve something that is unachievable, or at last unachievable based on somebody else’s standard. Which leads us to the next point about the elusive work-life balance, you get to define what that means for you at any given point in life. 

This is the part of the show that may be triggering or offensive to some because we’re going to talk about our relationships and how they relate to work-life balance. I’ll state again, do not take anything I say, especially about relationships, as advice. If something I say resonates with you, great, but then you still have all the work to do to make it work for you and your relationships. By the way, when I use the word relationships, I’m not just talking about personal relationships, I’m talking about how you relate to any and all other sentient beings in your sphere, which also includes your relationship with yourself. We’re talking about your homies, your girls, your colleagues, the acquaintances that move in and out of our lives, the people you hobby and sport with, your intimate relationships, and the world around you. 

How and why do relationships play a role in this discussion? Because almost nobody else ever mentions them in the discussion of work-life blending and integration. When therapists, coaches, and speakers talk about work-life balance, they’re typically just spewing what I call ‘no-shit’ advice. It’s stuff like taking time off, taking time away, spending more time with your wife, husband, or kids, and so on. You hear it and go, ‘no shit’ dude, if I did all that stuff, I’d definitely have more balance in my life. 

The problem is not necessarily the advice, since we can all probably benefit from another vacation, a little more time off and away, and maybe some more time spent with our loved ones. No, the problem is with the insinuation that everyone is driven the same way, wired the same way, and needs the same things. The other problem is that, when we use the word ‘balance’, we are implying that all hours are created equal and that an hour’s worth of work is the same as an hour playing catch with my boys. They’re not the same and implying that they are is often what creates the sense of imbalance. This is where some understanding of quality over quantity comes into play. Depending on the how you view the world and the value of time, a quality hour spent with your significant other, your kids, or a good friend, might be the equivalent of 40 hours spent on work stuff. It’s the quality of time spent that matters, not necessarily the quantity. You might have to spend 40 or 50 hours on work stuff to keep your job and get paid. 40 to 50 hours spent with your spouse, or your kids could drive you insane! They’re not equal, friends, so let’s stop pretending that work and life can, or even should be balanced. 

You’ve probably had the same experience as I have where you meet up with a friend for 20 minutes and have amazing conversation. You feel refreshed and renewed with that person and can go 2 months without talking with them again. Conversely, you spend an hour or two on a zoom call with work colleagues and feel completely drained and depleted. They’re not equal friends, so stop telling yourself they should be. Quality over quantity is what matters in most cases, and you may have to start teaching those around you how and why that matters. Time matters, but the quality of that time is what matters more than the quantity, and if that is the case, how could you ever possibly hope to achieve some kind of equality or balance between the two? Not only is it not possible, it shouldn’t be the goal, balance is bullshit. 

Alright, let’s go deeper on relationships since this is where most of the work-life balance talk is directed. The implication, in most of the discussions, is that you’re not spending enough quality time with your people because you spend so much of it at work. By the way, you’re hearing this from a man, so take that for what it is. I can only speak from my position in this universe as a male. I have my own biases as a male in this world, and I have my own views that may not mesh with yours. I have never been, nor ever will be a female and so I will not claim to know what you, as a female, go through, what you believe, or what life is like for you. What I will share with you a bit, and this might be where I lose some folks, is some of the stats on the expectations on men and the expectations on women, and how that plays a role in the discussion of work-life balance. 

Let’s just land a kick square to the groin area and say that work-life balance looks different for men than it does for women in general. Please hear the last two words I just said, ‘in general’. I’m not speaking about every situation, yours might be different, just as your views might be different. There are some very real facts and stats, however, that I’ll debate anybody on any day of the week. These stats and facts speak to how and why work life balance is BS, and why the idea is different depending on your gender, your role, your title, and where you are in the world, as well as in life. 

Let’s start with the male female stuff first. I don’t care how much hate mail you send me or how much you want to argue with me on this point, the fact is that there are different expectations on men in the world than there are on women. Some of those expectations can and have changed over the years, but there is still a societal expectation for men regarding work and life that is vastly different than it is for women. Going back as far as recorded history gives us insight on this topic, men have always been valued for their utility, their production, their protection, and their sacrifice on the battlefield. This is not in dispute, so don’t get upset just yet, I’ll get more offensive as we go. Since the dawn of time, men have always been the disposable protectors of a society, right or wrong, where women have been the ones raising the family, taking care of the home, and fighting with each other to select the best man for survival, provision, production, and protection. 

Again, not a fact in dispute. It’s been documented exhaustively how warring armies over the last 30,000 years or more have always been filled almost 100% with males. When one army overtakes the other, all men of fighting age are either killed or kept as slaves. The women are taken as the prize and kept as war brides and valued for helping to build that community bigger and stronger. Not saying it’s right, just telling you what history tells us. The burden of performance in society has always been on the shoulders of a male, while nowhere near the same burden has ever been on the shoulders of females. Females are valued in society for being females, while men are valued for what they can produce, create, and how well they can protect a society. 

Just to add some more stats to this, men and women have similar mortality rates when it comes to prostate cancer and breast cancer, yet 6-7 times more money is spent on researching and trying to end breast cancer. 85% of the homeless population in the US are males. In divorce, men are way more often to be left financially ruined and with little to no access to their children, and more than twice as likely to pay financial support, even when the female makes the same amount of money. Men fill the ranks of the most dangerous professions around the world, and they do so by an extremely wide margin. Soldier, firefighter, police officer, roofer, coal miner, crab fisherman, oil rig worker, and so on. 94% of all workplace injuries are to men. Almost 3 times more men are victims of violent crimes and 3 times more likely to be murdered. 

The point, Blaine? There are different expectations on men than on women, so naturally, work life balance would look and feel vastly different depending on your gender, your role in society, and your role within a family. If you’re the primary bread winner, doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, you will likely always spend more time working than not. It just happens that if you’re a male, and also the primary bread winner, not only are you expected to perform and support the family financially, you’re also expected, in many cases demanded, to be equally as available for your wife, your kids, taking the trash out, cooking dinner, taking your S.O. out on dates, fixing stuff around the house, and also upgrading the lifestyle of the family over time. 

Again, I’m speaking in general, and this may not be your situation. However, to address this issue properly, we have to understand how the idea and practice might look different for different people, and it likely also depends on whether or not you are a man or a woman, a factory worker or CEO, a homemaker or auto maker. If the expectations are different for different people, than there will be a natural difference in what work life balance looks and feels like. 

There is another aspect to the relationship stuff as it relates to work life balance, and that’s the personality, life experience, and expectations of your partner when it comes to what balance looks like. I can give you my personal experience and wisdom gained on this point, as well as my experience coaching men and woman for the past 25 years and dealing with this topic. My own experience entails pairing with partners, which includes and 18-year relationship and marriage, who have never done, nor had the aspirations to do what I do. That doesn’t mean they didn’t want to do martial arts or be an appraiser, no, it means that there can sometimes be a vast chasm in understanding when two people are wired differently when it comes to work and family. 

Again, as a man, I have always had a strong sense of this burden of performance based on my parent’s relationship, the work ethic that was expected of us, and simply what my dad did every single day, which was work, perform, produce, and grind. If that is the way you’re wired, which I am (for good or bad), and your partner is not, there will likely be differing expectations on how work life balance are defined. Until meeting Jolene, all of my past significant relationships had expectations of me in the life balance area that I simply failed at time and time again. Not only did I feel like a failure, I always felt misunderstood, I felt like I was doing something wrong, and that I just didn’t know how to get it right. Why? Because I have been grinding and building businesses since I was 18 years old. I don’t say that as a boast, I say it as a way to distinguish between a builder/creator personality type and somebody with a 9-5 mentality. I don’t blame them, by the way, I take full responsibility for my failings in those relationships because I didn’t understand what the issue was, until I did!

Here it is, friends: there is a certain amount of shared respect that you’ll never get from somebody who doesn’t understand or recognize somebody working on their purpose, or from somebody who has never been in the arena, so to speak, or on the battlefield. It speaks to the difference between a 9-5 paradigm and a make it happen at all costs paradigm. Whether the burden of performance is on you or not, when you are working on your purpose and grinding in the proverbial arena to be somebody and build something, you need a very special person alongside you who gets it. I see time and time again relationships where one of the two is grinding, building, creating, evolving, growing, and trying to have a better life, while the other is complaining because the grinder and hustler isn’t taking out the trash or is on a business call while the family is having dinner. Am I saying that nothing should ever be said regarding that kind of behavior? Not at all, but instead of complaining about mommy or daddy doing what they do best, sometimes work life balance looks like daddy or mommy lifting up the other to the children and explaining to them how lucky they are to have somebody who works hard so they can all have a better life. 

I know, I know, there are legitimate workaholics out there. I’ve been accused of this many times myself, and I know a bunch of them, men and women for whom I have a lot of respect for.  What I have realized over the years, however, and again I am speaking only from my experience as a man, is that I get much of my sense of self and self-worth from what I produce, what I create, how many I help, and the impact I can have in the lives of other people. When you figure that out, you will never apologize for working long hours or for being who you are ever again! I’ve realized the importance and value of going to breakfast or lunch with my boys and spending two very high-quality hours with them. 

That’s what work life balance looks like for me. I’m working on projects, businesses, podcasts, and growth 80 hours a week and spending two hours with my kids, five hours on a motorcycle, five hours working out, and a slew of hours doing nonsense stuff. Jolene and I don’t live together so we talk via phone and text throughout the week. We see each other on the weekends and try to spend quality time together, which often looks like going to Costco or doing some yard work. Am I taking work calls during that time? You bet! Am I working on work stuff on Saturday and Sunday? You bet! Because I love it and it’s what I feel I’m on this earth to do. Is it balanced? It sure feels like balance to me even though the numbers are way off! The beauty is that Jolene is in that arena as well and completely understands. She runs her own businesses and knows what it looks like to grind, hustle, and build something. When the calls come in, she says, ‘do your thing babe!’, as opposed to, ‘why are you always on your phone or computer? You need to do more of this, or that…’ She gets it and that makes a huge difference when it comes to our work life balance. It’s not balanced or equal at all! We spend exponentially more time apart than together, but that makes the time together very valuable and appreciated. And since we both understand business building and working on your purpose, I don’t get upset when she has to work on business on a Saturday or Sunday while we’re together, I encourage it! That’s what work life balance looks like for us. We both play the cheerleader role for the other, as well as the ‘we’re in this game together’ role. 

Not telling you how to be in your relationship. However, I can tell you with no apologies whatsoever that I could never have built what I’ve built, become who I’ve become, or be doing what I am doing with my previous partners. They were 9-5 people for whom work life balance with me would always be a failure and not fair to them. They had expectations that I would never be capable of fulfilling. And I had expectations of support and understanding that they were simply uncapable of providing to me. Work like balance had a different meaning for them and the sacrifice I would have had to make to keep them happy would have been at the expense of working on my own purpose. That, my friends, is a huge price to pay and to ask of somebody. 

Work life balance looks and feels different depending on who you are, where you are, who you’re with, who you’re trying to please, and who you’re becoming. I’ve talked in prior episodes enough about health and wellness, health span over life span, taking time to refresh and rejuvenate, taking free time and recovery time that I will not waste your time with even one minute of me telling you how to live a balanced life. You know what balance feels like and looks like for you. Whether you are a man or a woman, if you’re living and working on your purpose, don’t ever apologize to anybody for it. Societies are built and maintained by people driven to create something and be more tomorrow than they are today. Quality of time matters more than quantity when it comes to the work life blend that we’re all living in. 

What I will say is, if you’re a man, keep working on your purpose and never stop developing yourself. It sucks to hear, but whether we like it or not, men have the burden of performance in society, and that will not change in our lifetimes. We are valued primarily for what we do, not who we are. Take care of your family and all of your tribe, but never apologize for trying to perform better and better each day even when it appears that things are out of balance. There is no such thing as work life balance, so stop trying to achieve the unachievable. Know your purpose, work on your purpose, lift up others, take care of your tribe, quality over quantity, and unapologetically. 

Until next week, I’m out…