Ruminations-Work-Life Balance

This took a remarkably long time for me to think through. I had thought that I knew how I felt about th topic but I had to really think it out to figure out what I thought.

A good friend and I were catching up the other day. He is still running in the rat race — working towards the day when he can enjoy the fruits of his labor — but he has sacrificed his quality of life for the company. He had suffered health setbacks, much of it due to work related stress; while I know he does not regret the choices that he had made for his family, I felt a tinge of melancholy over what he had to give up in exchange for maintaining stability for his and his family’s quality of life. It made me wonder how he will — as many of my friends who are nearing retirement had done — look back on his working career in hindsight. Even though none of my friends regret their choices made throughout their working lives, I do sense a lingering string of what-if questions. What if I didn’t voluntarily give up the better part of me? What if I made the decision early in my career to choose myself and my family over the work? What if I knew the price that work would extract from me before I committed to paying that price, would I make the same decisions? It is not an easy perspective because most of us made that decision naturally to exchange the best of ourselves for stability and success as ordained by our society; it seemed like a prudent decision because we didn’t know any better at the time, it was what was expected of us, and our crystal balls were cloudy from our lack of perspective. If we were given the choice after we learned what the deal was, how many would buck the expectations? Only the most daring, confident, and obstinate would gamble their long-term welfare without knowing the probable outcome.

The term work-life balance has become a ubiquitous buzzword amongst those who are working in the modern work culture. It is a relatively new term that seems to get thrown around ubiquitously whenever conversations turn to work related stress. It is the term that many workers use to explain the reason for their malaise as well as blame for all that ails their life. It is a versatile phrase; and in my estimation, it is a misapplied phrase.

The governing underlying assumption is that work and life can be defined as being uncoupled from one another. Another tacit assumption is that work and life have opposing purposes and are not compatible existentially, which is typical of our world view and habits — we have placed our means of existence as being opposite in purpose to our existence. This is a curious development from our cognitive perspective; it could be interpreted as a declaration of war against ourselves.

Is this dichotomy a natural and necessary result of our societal and cultural evolution in response to the call our survival instincts? Or did we artificially create this dichotomy as a reaction to the antagonistic relationship between employers and employees, management and labor, the haves and the have-nots in the present ethos which characterizes our society and culture?

What made this dichotomous work-life definition for our state of existence an accepted norm in our present society?

Life is lived subconsciously; it is our human nature doing human things — breath. live, eat, sleep without giving the living a thought; it is what we make of the elements of living: family, friendship, curiosity, passion, pleasures, pains, as well as all the other requisite things that we need to do to survive another day. Work is also inextricably intertwined with our lives, because to live is to work, and to work is to live.

What is work? How do we define it? How do we perceive it? Is work only the part of life that we are obligated to do to feed ourselves?

What is life? Is life what is left after work has been extracted from the best of us? Is life our reward for working? Or is it something else altogether?

At the beginning of human existence, life is work and work is life. There wasn’t any separation between life and work because time was measured relative to the sun’s cycles and humans worked until work was finished or when the sun set.

Hunter-gatherers had to work to eat, no work and you starve to death, pretty simple. They worked as long as necessary to hunt and gather enough food for themselves, their families, and for their tribes. When humans evolved into an agrarian society, work and life were still inextricably intertwined; the fields needed to be worked to prepare for the planting, crops needed to be planted and cared for. Farmers started work when the sun rose and worked for as long as necessary, or until the sun sets. They did not keep a schedule that was neatly divided into work and life compartments.

It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that work, and life were cleaved into two separate entities. Factories needed to produce on a schedule to meet the commercial market demands, the demands dictated that factory schedules had to be set in stone, the factory schedule determined the workers’ schedule. The fuzzy line between work and life in the factory worker’s schedules became un-fuzzy and clearly defined. In time, work dominated life as the industrial economy boomed and the factory schedule dominated life in our society. Every bit of work was squeezed out of the factories, which translates to the workers having just enough time to eat, sleep, and recover enough to start all over again; this is not to say that the workers were disagreeable with this bargain with the devil, they were making more than what they would have if they had stayed on the farm. The unintended consequence of this agreement is the havoc wreaked upon the worker’s work and life.

Fast forward to the present day, work and life are separated, everyone is accustomed to having the two entities artificially separated so that everyone forgets that work and life were once connected in the past.

Which brings us back to the fundamental questions: what IS it about work in the modern era that creates such a debilitating burden on workers that it necessitates workers to mentally separate work from life so that the workers can maintain balance in their mental and emotional life?

How did we get here?

The present work environment is so integrated with the work and life dichotomy that it feels like a natural part of our existence. A greater reason for this tacit acceptance comes from the purely transactional relationship that we have accepted as a part of work. The workers receive financial stability and safety in exchange for work, but that financial stability and safety is very much subject to the zero-sum relationship between management and labor. In exchange, management get the best effort of the labor — the best of their physical, mental, and intellectual selves — in exchange for a part of the profits.

This relationship between the management and labor is necessarily hierarchical, effectively diminishing any possible collaborative possibilities within the enterprise.

There are components essential to the complex process of conducting business that need to be accommodated. These components are not pleasant to navigate, but they are the price that needs to be paid to successfully conduct business. Both management and labor grudgingly accept them; it is the necessary price to pay for getting the work done.

Unfortunately, there are also other, extraneous, components of the complex process of conducting business that have been added, which are extraneous but are assumed to be essential to conducting business. These extraneous components are — in the final assessment — not only not value added, but present major obstacles.

One major extraneous component can be traced to the former GE CEO Jack Welch. His infamous rank-and-yank performance assessment program is ubiquitous in almost all commercial enterprises and in almost all industries. Indeed, General Electric had abandoned this system in its original form many years ago, but the rank-and-yank system still exists in uncountable permutations throughout the business world. Rather than encouraging collaboration, this rank-and-yank system spurs antagonism between the rank-and-file and the management. It is equivalent to the Hunger Game for everyone within the business structure.

Another extraneous component is the regimented and hierarchical management structure. By itself, the hierarchical structure is accepted as a necessary evil to smooth the operation of conducting business; the defining difference between the companies is how the hierarchical management structure manifests itself in each company. The companies that I have worked for have — consciously and subconsciously — pitted senior management, middle management, and workers against one another. Once again, antagonism is dominant ethos when collaboration should be encouraged. A major part of this prevailing mindset is the idea that steady downward pressure — the belief that excrement flows downwards — is the sole form of psychological “motivation.” This hierarchical management structure naturally motivates upper management to micromanage middle management, while middle management is naturally motivated to micromanage workers. There is also an upward pressure from the rank-and-file workers to push back on the micromanaging from the middle management, which is condoned if not encouraged by upper management. The middle management is pressured in both directions, this is so that senior management is insulated from the rank-and-file employees; senior management treats the middle management as a buffer from upward demands of the rank-and-file employees, senior management is able to distract the rank-and-file employees by pointing the finger at middle management.

The hierarchical management structure also creates the antagonistic meeting culture through micromanagement, a culture that consumes time while also failing meet purposes. This meeting culture in any company — no matter the size — hold no one accountable and injects obfuscation and finger pointing. The meeting culture serves to stroke the egos of the person who organizes the meeting — usually the most senior manager attending the meeting. It is a physical manifestation of middle management ego and hubris. Any meetings with benevolent intentions are torpedoed before the meeting has begun because of: groupthink, acquiescence to the ranking manager or brown nosing; and recognition that very few of the people in any management tiers understand the business.

These extraneous components are unnecessary, they extract a pound of flesh on the workers’ psyche, they are the root cause for the invention of the concept of the work-life balance. These extraneous components are way for management to justify their existence, disguise their purpose, exercise their egos and hubris, and to pretend that they have the answers to life, the Universe, and everything.

There is a Chinese fable of a locally famous painter whose specialty was painting snakes. One day a master painter of renown asked to watch him paint snakes. The locally famous painter was excited to show his abilities in front of an acknowledged master; in fact, he was so excited that he started to paint legs and feet on his immaculately painted snakes, adding extraneous legs and feet to what was already perfect. (畫蛇添足) It is one view of the extraneous components.

Insidiously, the extraneous components are disguised as necessary for the business process; indeed, this is part of the obfuscation plan: convince workers that the extraneous are inevitable and convince them to accept the extraneous components.

Why does this obfuscation work? Are the workers so gullible as to believe in the obfuscation? Do the workers not know that they are being taken advantage of?

The answer lie in our optimism and our core belief in caring about being quality humans doing quality work, and embodying the idea of Quality as explored by the author Robert Pirsig in the Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (Pirsig, 1975).

The intrinsic belief in doing quality work manifests itself in persistence and obstinacy that drives people, this determination gives us purpose. Some have called this pride of workmanship while others call it being a professional. This characteristic has existed throughout history in all human endeavors, regardless of the historical eras. We have inherited this legacy and carried it to modern society. This is the reason that people dedicate their lives to mastering the specific art that they practice — regardless of what that art is. They are committed to being the best, to embody Quality.

It is this intrinsic characteristic that many times evokes a passion and curiosity that transcends the human’s extrinsic need for economic sustenance, status, glory, or fame. While extrinsic motivation are important and ever present, this intrinsic characteristic is much more meaningful to most people. This is not to say that humans aren’t occasionally tempted by the extrinsic, but the intrinsic passion and curiosity is the greater part of their motivation, work is more than just a means to put bread on the table.

This intrinsic characteristic is why people are willing to partake in the miasma that is the modern work environment. This is why people willingly put the blinders on when they grudgingly deal with the extraneous detritus of modern management practices. Pride in the work is an instinct for all humans; it is how we are wired. This pride in performing with Quality always has the advantage over the equally natural disgust over the soul sucking effects of being in the extraneous muck of modern management.

The denizens at the top of the hierarchical management structure knows that they can manipulate the worker’s instinct to work with Quality. This is how they get people to consistently push beyond their limits: they appeal to people’s instinct to care and to do Quality work.

In short, the top of the hierarchical management structure takes advantage of the worker’s instincts towards performing with pride to entice them to accept the extraneous management detritus. The management weaves a phantasmagorical myth that extraneous components of the modern work culture is necessary and normal, while continuously increasing the psychic and emotional pressure on the workers, which necessitates the invention of the concept of work-life balance.

Once the concept of work-life balance has been invented, the root cause of the problem has never been identified. HR and management pretend to be at a loss and implement superficial solutions that treat only the symptoms because they know they own and created this monster, they don’t want to identify themselves as the root cause, and they don’t want to lose the advantage over the workers.

Even more perversely, when the consequences of their tactic boomerangs back in the form of increased health cost, low morale, potential mental illness, reduced productivity, and deteriorating performances; they place the responsibility for resolving the problems on the victims of their malevolence, completely ignoring their own Machiavellian machinations. They proudly fly the banner of work-life balance high on their flagpole, with the motivation not intended to ameliorate the problem because the results of the work-life balance crisis is exactly what they want: getting more performance out of less investing in the human capital. The preferred result for flying the flag is cosmetic, for showing a kind worker-centered public face, controlling the wellness cost of their health insurance, and extending the phantasmagorical myth that they have perpetrated, a myth that has worked quite well. The mental health of the workers are not the center of focus; cost cutting is.

The frustrating part is that this work-life balance paradigm is deeply anchored in the modern work environment. Even the best-intentioned management proposed solutions are suspect because they will not resolve the root-cause issue, they will only address the superficial symptoms.

In my cynical mind, the only thing my friend can do is to survive by doing what he needs to do to preserve his well-being, the corporate overlords be damned. Do what needs to be done to look out for yourself and while awaiting retirement because as our PhD advisor once told us: no matter what you do, no one is going to put a statue of you in front of the corporate headquarters. In other words, don’t think the company will do you any favors, no matter how productive and loyal you are.

The work-life fissure in individual lives will only disappear when the worker bees takes care of themselves first.

Sorry, this is not meant to be a happy ending.

References

Pirsig, R. (1975). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. NYC: Bantam Books.