Apu’s World

Many professionals today, especially those who work in areas like finance, consulting, sales or marketing - have no concept of work-life balance. At least, not in the sense it was originally meant, where you put a fullstop to work at some time and concentrated on other areas of your life. Now, even if we get home by 6.30, we still take calls, check e-mail, open our blackberrys or simply, think about work. So, our work lives have eaten away a big chunk of what used to be reserved for other stuff.

At the same time, our role as consumers has gotten bigger too. I remember a time when shopping for new clothes meant buying for the three major festivals of the year - Diwali, Navaratri and Pongal, and one more new outfit on your birthday. Now, we buy for no reason. And we buy even when we don’t have the money to buy, thanks to the generosity of credit card companies.

Out of control, I guess, would be the right way to describe many peoples’ lives.

Which is why, I found interesting these two experiments in helping people control themselves, although in very different areas. The first of these is an experiment by the Boston Consulting Group which forced team members to take ‘complete off-time’ during certain periods. Employees had to be almost compelled to do this, since the prevailing doctrine in such industries is that consultants need to be ‘always on’ (besides the fear of How will I look when I’m taking off if everyone else around me is constantly on?) Not only were they able to develop mechanisms to keep clients reassured, employees who participated in the experiment ended up feeling much more refreshed and stress-free. Surely that will help them to work better and more creatively. While the experiment doesn’t mention any gender differences, I do feel such programs taken up by more large firms will help women - it is usually women who drop out of senior levels in such 24*7 industries, unable to manage a constantly ‘on’ career in the face of childcare and family needs.

Read about the BCG experiment with work-life balance at the Harvard Business website - warning, it’s a really long piece, but if you don’t have the time, at least the first 2 pages are worth reading.

The second experiment is not so much a single experiment, as a bunch of examples on how people are actually understanding the impulsive nature of their compulsion and taking steps to put a brake on it. As the article says, “We are salad people in the future and Cheetos people in the moment.” So, unless we get someone (or something else) to stop us, we’ll go on munching those Cheetos while making earnest resolutions to have more salad in the future. That’s what this article is about - “commitment devices” that help us control ourselves and behave in the rational ways we know we ought to. Go read - it’s a short one-pager and totally worth your time.

apu In General