Work Life Integration

I’ve stopped thinking about how to balance work and life. In terms of work and life there is a transaction cost to what you want your life to look like. I think more of work life integration. Your work agreement with your employer can be viewed as a mix of compensation and incentives that help empower or detract from the life you want.

First principles:
The thought is that “I have problems to solve and people pay for my attention into solving those problems. Financial transaction enables other parts of my life.” Each job does this and in a free market, your compensation is commensurate with the difficulty of the problem you are solving. Some problems simply cost more time and energy.

Practical Outworking at Ground Level:
One example is teams that work on shift. I have a team like this. Part of the problem they’re solving is coverage of a service with a time bound function. So they don’t have the flexibility in the time they can be on or off work. To the point that we put hard boundaries around calling them outside of their shift hours. The other transaction mechanism is if they’re working overnight (11:30pm – 8:30am) that’s a harder problem to solve compared to someone working days(8:00am – 5:00pm). The overnight shift has a 10% stipend over their base salary. What each shift gets back out of the transaction is a very clear stop and start point to work. Some people want or need that in life for a myriad of reasons.

Transacting Back Incentives in Compensation:
That team is paid less than me and it’s a reasonable expectation given their job is limited in scope and clearly defined. I have a larger scope and I’m looking at problems with a longer reach and impact. I also, don’t generally get the same lines of off/on time. I work remotely from a laptop. So long as I do my job I have the ability to be mobile, I can work from where I want, and I can come and go as I please related to work. That IS a great benefit and that IS a double edged sword. If things are healthy I get to “leave on time”, if things aren’t healthy I get 10pm and 2am calls. My time back is part of my compensation, so i’m very incentivized to make things healthy.

Very practical schedule:
I hold to a schedule. It keeps me productive and consistent for my team. I usually end up starting a little before 8am, and working until around 6pm. Then I drop out and jump back online for another hour sometime that evening to wrap up a few things. (The time I get back on is reducing as the kids get older.) Because of my role with FaithTech I sometimes need to work from another city. So I leave early (depending on the city as early as 4:30am) and start work from a cafe somewhere in that city at 8am. I’ve worked from my travel trailer a few times and many times someone asked me to lunch or afternoon coffee or beer around 3pm. I’ve had the ability to say yes and have done so.

What about you? Like if you’ve nailed the work/life integration and comment to share how or ask for help.