Why is it difficult to balance work & life?

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This is my work desk.

Psych.

My real desk is very messy.  Right now, it's covered with: 2 breakfast plates, a bit of propaganda that says "love it. live it. own it," coconut water, a giant mason jar, a scattering of papers and two coffee mugs.

I'm not here to talk about the feng shui of my desk (it's only negative), but instead, I'd like to discuss a few studies I discovered this morning on work/life balance.

As you may have read, I'm not convinced we should be working so much (see here).  It's fine to think this, but it's not great for job preservation (I've recently "come out" to a few friends at work that I could do all my tasks in 25 hours, which most secretly agree with, but would never tell their manager).

Last week, I read this article on bullshit jobs (note: It's now censored in Singapore).  Here's an excerpt quoted in the Economist:

"In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it." - David Graeber

So, why haven't we gotten there? 

Graeber lists several reasons in his article -- largely around maintaining power and hierarchy.  I agree, but also have a few reasons of my own.

1."Facetime" matters more than we think.

"According to a 2010 study published in Human Relations. In the study, a group of researchers led by business professor Kimberly Elsbach conducted extensive interviews of 39 corporate managers. They found that these managers generally considered their employees who spent more time in the office to be more dedicated, more hardworking, and more responsible." - HRB

We have a conscious (or unconscious) bias to believe that the longer a person has their butt in a chair, the more productive they are (and therefore, a better employee).  It's an interesting switch from school where "finishing your assignments or tests quickly" served as an outward symbol of your intelligence or grasp of the subject.

2. Not all managers actually want to improve the "well being" of their team

If managers really wanted to improve the work/life balance of their teams, they'd make conscious efforts (i.e., stop emailing after work hours, set a good example of "getting shit done" quickly, eliminated unnecessary tasks, etc).  Not many do though.

My first Google manager, Johan, was excellent at this.  He worked "his tits off" (this was actually his saying, which I found very odd -- maybe French?) from 8 AM to 5 PM, but completely shut-off afterwards.  

No email checking.  

No working at home.  

No working on the weekends. 

Instead, he had his new wife, cooking and weekend hikes to attend to.  He was both excellent at his work (a "machine") and excellent at his home life.

I can't say this is the norm, though.  

Often the professional world functions a bit like a sorority or fraternity -- i.e., I worked X hours a week to get here; you should to.  In addition to this, there is also a moralization of work -- i.e., I am important and good if I work X hours per week.  These attitudes prevent managers from taking work/life balance all too seriously.

3. We may work a lot of hours, but it doesn't mean they are productive

Partially due to the two items mentioned above "value of facetime and manager expectations," we work way more than the 15 hours Keynes predicted long ago.

For example, this Microsoft Office study showed:

• People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive (U.S.: 45 hours a week; 16 hours are considered unproductive)

• People spend 5.6 hours each week in meetings; 69 percent feel meetings aren't productive (U.S.: 5.5 hours; 71 percent feel meetings aren't productive).

What if those unproductive hours didn't exist -- those spent on "facetime," unnecessary meetings and side-projects, excessive emails, unnecessary revisions of presentations and analysis, unwieldy processes, posturing for promotions, surfing the internet at large in-between tasks and being a "bottleneck" to maintain authority?  

We could essentially work 3.5 days a week instead of 5.

By performing some "kaizen" on our work lives, we'd have way more time to engage in the beautiful things in life -- time with friends/family, laughing, playing, learning, etc.

But, unfortunately, it's so deeply embedded in our culture that it's unlikely to change anytime soon.  Instead, we are left to fight our own "work / life balance" issues inside the parameters of the traditional work place.

But, one day things will change (maybe)...