Society talks a lot about this idea of work-life balance. To me, there is no such thing as balance, but there is integration. Integration of your deepest priorities in this season of your life. Ensuring you have vision, clarity, and focus on these priorities, and take the steps necessary each day to fulfill them.
In both our workplace training, and 1-1 coaching we teach this and it’s a game-changer for so many individuals and teams.
Two specific results we’ve seen are:
- Dreaming a new dream that’s not limited to what everyone around you is doing and then going all in. Renting out their home and traveling the world doing work they love as a family. Learning, growing, and exploring together.
- Developing team communication “agreements” that greatly reduced distractions, misunderstandings, and misguided urgency that is not an urgent matter. Leaving the team feeling less overwhelmed, feeling more supported, and doubling their productivity.
One great example of work-life integration comes from Netflix co-founder Mark Randolph, and he writes:
I’ve worked hard, for my entire career, to keep my life balanced with my job. In my book, I write about my Tuesday date nights with my wife. For over thirty years, I had a hard cut-off on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 pm and spent the evening with my best friend. We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together.
Nothing got in the way of that. No meeting, no conference call, no last-minute question or request. If you had something to say to me on Tuesday afternoon at 4:55, you had better say it on the way to the parking lot. If there is a crisis, we are going to wrap it up by 5:00.
Those Tuesday nights kept me sane. And they put the rest of my work in perspective.
I resolved a long time ago to not be one of those entrepreneurs on their 7th startup and their 7th wife. In fact, the thing I’m most proud of in my life is not the companies I started, it’s the fact that I was able to start them while staying married to the same woman; having my kids grow up knowing me and (best as I can tell) liking me, and being able to spend time pursuing the other passions in my life.
That’s my definition of success.
It seems to me that Mark is clear on his priorities: self, wife, family, work – in that order. I am sure that the integration of these 4 things ebb and flow over the years but I am 100% obsessed with the fact that the Tuesday nights with his wife never wavered, nor did the time with his kids, or the time he takes for himself.
What is your work-life integration like? Email me at carmen@carmenohling.com and let me know!
Here’s to designing and living lives we love,
Carmen
