Work Life Integration
Live life on the weekdays too.
When I lived in South America last year I couldn’t believe how many people were out on the streets during the “work week.”
I’d just spent the last five years in NYC where most people are up in their office buildings all day, every day, during the week. The only people you’d see on the streets during work-days were tourists and business people sprinting from one meeting to the next.
My whole life revolved around my work schedule. Honestly, I thought that was THE human schedule.
So when I saw Latin Americans commiserating outside during the day, shopping at markets, hanging with friends, working at their shops with their kids, I was confused.
Shouldn’t people be... working? Why are there so many people out and about?! Talking to each other? Enjoying life?!
To them, there is no separation between work and life.
Many of them work in shops and markets, where they’re visited by familiar faces and hang out with the shop owners next to them. Many stores in Peru have a little corner for the shopkeepers’ kids to play.
Their work and life flowed together into one, and as a result, life seemed to move at a slower pace. People had the freedom to walk around, do what they needed to do during the day. They could even pick up spontaneous conversations with someone on the street, something you would never see in NYC when people are bolting past each other!
Their time wasn’t in the number of productive minutes, like I was used to in NYC. I couldn’t believe how much time they had to live during the week.
It rocked my world.
It reminded me of the early days of when I was building my first company. I worked from home and was on my own schedule, so sometimes I’d go to a workout class in the middle of the day. Who ARE these people!? I would wonder about the other people in the class.
I felt like we were in on some secret: you can actually DO stuff and live life during the day?!
It almost felt dirty, like I was doing something wrong, but it was so damn liberating.
Not so long after I started working, the American work culture began to seep in, and I started to feel guilty for enjoying myself during the “work-day.” So soon my days of creative scheduling turned into an endless stream bleary-eyed days staring at my computer screen, working, working, working.
Perhaps the US has more business success and innovation than Latin American countries because of this always-on work culture, but at what cost? Is it worth it on an individual level, to sacrifice so much of life to progress in a career? When happens when we wake up at 60 with money in the bank but a sickening realization that we haven’t fully lived?
What I take away from my time in Latin America is that there’s so much more potential for us to create work/life integration in America. And I think we must, if we want to enjoy our lives to the fullest.
You could start by working backwards: If you could create the ideal schedule for yourself, what would it look like?
Do you like having one hour when you wake up for morning rituals? Do you do your best work in the evenings? Do you like exercising at noon when the sun is at its peak? How would you design your life, if you could build it from scratch? Seriously, take all the limitations off and dream big. Make it as pleasurable and unrealistic as possible.
I believe that once we understand our ideal work/life integration, we can start to go for it. You can start with baby steps.
Maybe you block off a section of your day for creative time, with no meetings, so you can come up with your best ideas.
Maybe you start that company you’ve been thinking about for a while so you can be on your own schedule.
Maybe you set up wifi outside so you can take calls from your backyard.
Maybe you realize you hate working on a screen all day and that you need to switch jobs altogether.
Maybe you don’t have control over your schedule at all, but you can start to foster friendships with your coworkers so you enjoy your time at work and feel supported by a community.
Keep this in mind: this is your life. Your life. If you have the privilege of choice, you get to decide how you want to design it. If your current schedule isn’t serving you, invent one that does. Get creative. Because only when you know what kind of days would bring you the most joy, you can start to build your life that way.
Work/life integration is a major focus of the Groundwork course, which will be launching soon. If you could use more balance between the way you live and work, sign up for the waitlist below to get more info when the course launches.
