Welcome to Episode 16 of The Tortoise, the podcast (plodcast!) that digs deep into the possibilities of slow.
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The Topic: Balance
A more accurate title for this episode might have been: The Myth of Work-Life Balance, because both Ben and I think it’s fundamentally BS, but that was too long a title, so Balance it is.
I’ve talked about and written about balance a lot over the years, both here on The Tortoise and in my books, as well as on The Slow Home Podcast (RIP), and I think we keep coming back to it because it continues to be something most people grapple with.
What does it even mean, to have balance in life? What does it look like? How can we achieve it? And is it all it’s cracked up to be?
In today’s episode we take a post-lockdown, kinda-new-workplace view of work/life balance, in an effort to make sense of why it feels even harder to achieve now, and what we might be able to do to afford ourselves a little bit more peace.
We each give our definitions of work/life balance, and talk a little about how we visualise balance in general, which helps to highlight how unrealistic the idea and act of maintaining any kind of balance really is.
We talk a lot about anti-balance, or tilting hard into different parts of life as needed, which ironically seems to help us achieve longer-term balance more effectively than trying to balance every day, and Ben talks about his own reflections on seasons of life and the ebbs and flows of energy they bring.
We also dig into:
our own definitions of balance, and the feelings we get when we manage to strike some semblance of it occasionally
how the whole work-from-home conversation has created more tension in workplaces, as employers and employees discover they want very different things
the impact that the soon-to-be-enacted “right to disconnect” legislation will have on people’s work routines (good and bad)
the attractive myth of working ahead
how to separate work from home when you do work from home
how to approach changes in your own workplace when you’re not self-employed, and why it’s important to start small, specific and slow
some practical ways to reduce the pressure we feel to do, be, achieve as much as possible in our efforts to find balance
why it’s important we do an honest evaluation of where our time goes each day and where we might be able to change our habits and create more space
the importance of right-sizing the different pillars of life, while understanding we won’t be able to give them all the correct amount of attention every day.
It’s a juicy topic, not least because it applies to everyone differently, and there is no doubt in my mind that we are in a period of transition in the ways we work. Throw in some truly enormous shifts in terms of generational attitudes, tech “advances”, division and misinformation, distrust and changing priorities, and it’s a fascinating and difficult-to-navigate time.
As always, I’m super curious about your take on all of this. Is balance something you’re aiming for? If so, what does it feel like when you get there? Have your attitudes towards work changed? Have you managed to enact change in your own workplace? If so, how did you do it?
The Links
Below is a list of links discussed in today’s episode. If I’ve forgotten any, please let me know in the comments:
Right to disconnect: Will it work? University of NSW
Is Atlassian’s year-long experiment the future of work? The Sydney Morning Herald
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Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already, so you don’t miss an episode.
Just a quick reminder too that our next Rituals Mini-Workshop (all about unplugging) will be hitting inboxes on Sunday for all paying supporters of The Tortoise. If you’d like to upgrade, you can hit the button below, and if you’d like to know more about the workshops, you can get a sneak peek of the first one here.
Until next time, take care of your wonderful self.
Brooke 💚💚
Balance: Episode 16