10 WAYS FOR WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION

WHEN WORK AND LIFE FEEL LIKE THEY'RE IN CONFLICT, WE CAN SET BOUNDARIES AND TAKE STEPS TOWARD BETTER WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION.

“So, “So, “So, “So, Dr. Hass, let me tell you about how it really started,” said an elegant but frighteningly thin 85 year old, Ms. E. “Things really started to fall apart when my husband was diagnosed with cancer a couple of months ago.”

I squirmed in a hospital room chair. “I want to get to the real reason you have lost all this weight and ended up in the hospital, but I can’t give it the time it deserves now,” I said as I got up and hurried to the door. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

People often ask what the hardest part of my job is as a hospital-based doctor. Telling people about a cancer diagnosis? Resuscitations that don’t go well? Honestly, it’s interactions like the one I had with Ms. E—when I can’t have the conversation that would build our connection and lead to the heart of what ails my patient. Because, often, having those conversations—which are both healing for the patient and meaning-making for me—means missing priceless moments with my family.

That day, I got out of the hospital as soon as I could and jumped into my car. My youngest daughter was graduating from high school that weekend…and I had somehow ended up working through most of it. I had screwed up again, or had I? Perhaps I’d been screwed again by my amazingly rewarding, but at times amazingly painful, job. Driving home to join my family, I realized I needed to give my work-life balance deeper thought.

I have learned that I am not the only one struggling. A recent study by Tait Shanafelt and his colleagues showed that after a slight dip in 2020, burnout rates in my profession increased by almost 100%, with 62.8% of physicians having at least one symptom of burnout and almost half unhappy with their work-life balance. The data are equally dismal in nursing, teaching, and mental health services. In our alwaysconnected world, even those with a “9 to 5” can’t always “leave it at the office” either. Women, especially those with children at home, and people of color tend to suffer more than others.

This is a good time to ask, yet again:

How can we find ways of balancing the needs of people at work, the needs of those at home, and our own needs for both connection and alone time?

Work-life conflict arises in a couple of ways. We suffer when our tasks (like seeing my patients) and our values (like valuing time with my family) are misaligned. That was me walking away from a patient who wanted to talk and stressing to get to my family party before the end of the day!

I don’t like the word “balance” in this context because it suggests tradeoffs: We must take from life to give to work. With balance, there is the implication that life and work are in opposition and that “life” happens outside of work. But, for many of us, work is an important, generative, meaning-making part of life. The struggle is how to integrate work with our other roles and responsibilities—both those we must do and those we want to do. That’s why I prefer to think in terms of work-life integration, not balance.

Work-life integration suggests there can be a blending of work and life and even possible synergies across aspects of life, such as family, work, community, and personal well-being. In my view, our goal should be an alignment of our personal values and our priorities—the tasks we must complete—in terms of our allocation of time and energy.

Conflict can also arise with loss of control of boundaries. Constructing those boundaries needs to be highly individualized. Reading for work in the evening after coaching your child’s team might be a good form of integration for some—but, for others, evenings might be non-negotiable downtime. The goal is to set clear boundaries so we can be present and productive in the tasks we are engaged with.

How exactly to create these boundaries might be easy in principle but tricky in practice; getting it right requires careful thought and repeated revisions. Not getting it right leads to feeling overwhelmed; the resultant stress leads down the road to burnout. So, how should we work toward a state of integration?

What’s most important to you?

Cory Pitre and his colleagues at the University of Indiana developed a great program to help their medical staff with this process. I’m going to borrow from their work in order to suggest steps you can take toward better work-life integration.

One of the first steps in their program involved asking participants to sit down and first write down their values. According to the program, these should be more philosophical; they should be about what guiding ideas we want to live by, such as love, time with family, service to community, wisdom, or self-care.

Then we must identify our most important roles and responsibilities in home, work, and our personal life. These should be specific, such as a yoga class, earning money, caring for kids, patient care, the big project at work, time with friends.

It has been said that “the key is not prioritizing your schedule but scheduling your priorities.” Once you have given some thought to your most important responsibilities and values, you can use that information to guide your schedule-making.

When done in small groups, this exercise leads to durable improvements in work-life integration. Similarly, individual coaching on this improves integration and reduces burnout, according to a 2019 study. Not every organization and individual can afford such coaching, of course, but we can answer these questions on our own and even just with friends who are struggling with similar issues.

Many people have offered plans to allocate our time and energies to improve our work-life integration, but they tend to be about efficiency rather than addressing the cognitive conflicts. For example, telling yourself that you are done with work doesn’t necessarily stop your thoughts about work. Nor do they include strategies for coping with the work-life conflicts that will arise in a busy, purposeful life. This is where a Greater Good-informed work-life integration (WLI) framework can help us, drawing on research that this publication has covered for years. Here are some steps you can take.

1. It starts with self-awareness. Simply recognizing the need for WLI requires awareness; making a habit of noticing where our minds are going and what our body is telling is key to make sure we are on the right path with our plan. Our boundaries are not solid like a stone wall. A defined time frame and locations can help, but in the end the boundaries must be cognitive, too. Our mind is apt to wander to places we would rather not have it go, like back to work! Mindful self-awareness is our best method to investigate why this might be and then work on solutions.

2. Articulate your priorities, plot out your boundaries, and make your schedule. Look at the exercise above and let it inform you as you plan. Weekly or even daily planning is time well spent. As you schedule, plan to take on your important work tasks first when you are at your sharpest. Schedule in time for yourself and those you most care about, too. Put good boundaries around your personal life’s “musthaves.”

3. Hone your time-management skills. Find tech “hacks” to help with planning and coordinating those plans with others, like using and sharing Google Calendar at home as at work. Turn transition times such as commuting into productive time; reflect on your successes and failures as you review your time-management strategies.

4. Delegate. At home this means hiring things out, if you can afford it, and getting those you live with to do their share. At work this means operating at the top of your skill set while empowering others to take on tasks when appropriate.

5. Maximize your attention by taking breaks and working in bursts. Do the tough work in bursts; avoid disruptions and multitasking. You will be more productive and creative if you take breaks that use other parts of your brain. Also note that being outside and vacations make you more productive!

6. Work fluidly but be mindful of your boundaries. It might be OK to take calls when cooking dinner, but only if it gets you time you really want away from work and the work thoughts don’t stay with you all night. You need to know yourself for your boundaries to hold up.

7. Be your authentic self as you connect with others. Essential to WLI is being “the real you” at work; you will be happier, better at your job, and better able to advocate for changes you need to fine-tune your WLI.

8. Communicate. Try talking with family, friends, and colleagues about what’s most important to you. Ask them about their own values, needs, and responsibilities. You might discover what you have in common with your coworkers. At home, you can find out from your loved ones if your idea of WLI works for them.

9. Draw strength from your sense of purpose. Finding meaning in our work and personal life helps affirm our values and provide strength to buffer against the stress that arises when we run into inevitable boundary issues.

10. Go easy on yourself. Stuff happens, the best-laid plans go awry, and most of us don’t have the most realistic expectations. Your house might not be as clean as you like, and your kid’s hair might be better brushed, and not all your work products will measure up. Keep an eye on your values, keep making time to organize—and see what might need to change! Also be sure to give yourself a little love and be thankful for your rich and dynamic life.

Work-life integration won’t look the same for every person; it depends on your personality and type of employment. For those on the computer at home, or for “digital nomads,” the challenges will be around “when am I off work?”—and perhaps about meaning and connection when not regularly in the company of others. For those of us in the people professions, the challenges will be around managing the suffering of others while dealing with misaligned incentives and a lack of control.

Personally, I learned that not thoughtfully working on work-life integration is a form of passive acquiescence to work that can take much more than you’re able to give. I can miss some important events—like that weekend of my daughter’s graduation. Addressing this requires some mindful self-reflection and some bigger conversations about what I need from work and what work needs from me. I suspect delving into worklife integration will provoke similar thoughts in just about everyone.

HOW TO FIND YOUR LOST KEY, LIKE HOW A NAVY FINDS A LOST SUBMARINE

EVERYONE HAS MISPLACED SOMETHING FROM TIME TO TIME, BE IT A PHONE, WALLET, OR SET OF KEYS. WHEN SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARILY VALUABLE, LIKE A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE, IS LOST, A MATHEMATICAL SEARCH TECHNIQUE CALLED BAYESIAN SEARCH IS OFTEN USED TO FIND IT. THE TENETS OF THE TECHNIQUE ARE SIMPLE ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND AND DEPLOY IN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES.

hen you lose your phone, wallet, or keys, you may resort to a few tricks to relocate them. Maybe you’ll retrace your steps. Maybe you’ll look in each of the locations that you typically put them. Or perhaps you’ll try to remember every unusual place you’ve been lately. Each of these choices makes logical sense. When an entity with vast resources loses something extraordinarily valuable, like a nuclear submarine, they call in the big guns of Bayesian search theory to help. Fortunately for the rest of us, the basic concepts are simple enough to distill for finding those everyday items. Even if your missing item is worth merely hundreds of dollars, this mathematical process can streamline the logic of your search, saving you time and money.

The probability that a lost item is found in one place versus another is an intuitive concept that can be turned into a mathematical object. A simple map, divided into a grid, with each section assigned a probability of containing an item, is a form of probability density function. Let’s say that you left your car in a parking lot with 100 spots, and now you have forgotten where you parked. The most basic parking lot probability density function shows one box for each space, each with a probability of 1/100 (or 0.01).

Let’s further assume that you’re not disabled, and there are ten spaces for disabled people. Now the probability density function looks more like 0.011 in 90 of the spaces and 0.001 in each disabled space. (We are further assuming a 10% chance that you made a mistake parking.)

Let’s bring in some more data. The ten parking spots furthest from the store are empty. The chances of your car being there are zero. Now your density function looks like 80 squares with a probability of ~0.0125. If you tend to drive around and around the lot to find the space closest to the door, then the spaces nearer the store have somewhat higher probability, and the spots further out have somewhat lower probability. The point is that each time you acquire more information, the probability density function changes. So, in this way, you can narrow down and speed up your search, beginning with the spots with the highest probability of containing your car, and working your way down the probability list, checking the lowest probability spots as a last resort.

The first map is good, but a second map is even better. This second map contains, for each search area, the chance that you would actually find the item if it were in that spot.

To demonstrate, let’s construct a slightly different metaphor. If your homework has disappeared, it would be easier or harder to find in various places you might look. If the homework is on an empty desk, you’re sure to see it there. If you left it on a cluttered desk, covered with piles of paper, your chances are lower. If it could have blown out the window, the chance it might still be in the yard is much smaller because of the wind. If the dog ate it, your probability of finding it goes to zero.

Now, take these two probability distribution maps and multiply them together. Any search area that is both likely to contain the item and has a high likelihood of you finding it if it’s there will be represented by a relatively large number. These are good places to begin your search. Areas where either the item is easy to spot but unlikely to be, or likely to be but hard to spot, have a smaller number. These are a lower search priority. Areas where it isn’t likely to be and you can’t easily spot it — the dog comes to mind — are relegated to the very last resort.

Finding a fugitive Finding a Finding a fugitive Finding a Finding a fugitive

As you search the areas with the greatest combined likelihood, you should reevaluate your assumptions and update your probability map as you go along. Let’s introduce a third metaphor. Now you’re searching for an escaped convict. Your pack of tracking hounds can smell where he has been recently. Near the prison is a road leading to a bus stop. The probability that he would run up the road to catch a bus is relatively high, and your chances of spotting him if he is near the open road (as opposed to, say, the woods) are high as well. The glass-walled stop where buses only appear sporadically has a similarly high combined probability.

If you are searching the road and the hounds pick up no scent, then the probability that he is at some location further up the road is greatly diminished. The bus stop is now a lower probability location, too. On the other hand, if the dogs do smell something, the bus stop probability has increased.

If this all sounds relatively straightforward, that’s because it is. The trick to the method is to use intelligent reasoning in your probability distributions, including how you modify them as you go. The probability density function of where the object might be located particularly requires serious thought. The best way to form such a function is not to guess, or presume random chance, but to develop a series of hypotheses about why it disappeared and map out where it is most likely to be as a result. Across the search area, assign a probability to each square for each hypothesis, and then multiply those probabilities together. ailure is interesting - it's part of making progress. You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure," says James Dyson, British inventor.

In the case of a missing ship, several probability fields could be constructed by starting with a hypothesis and following its probable conclusions. The first hypothesis might be that the most probable location is centered near where the last radio contact was made, and the probability decreases the further you get from that location. Another hypothesis might be that if a hurricane passed through the area, the path of the eyewall of the storm is the most likely place for the ship to have sunk. If a piece of debris is found floating in one area, then the probability the shipwreck lies nearby goes up, and the probability it is far away goes down. If there is a strong current flowing through the area with the debris, then the upstream path of that current acquires a higher probability, extending back as far as it has flowed since the ship was lost. The areas downstream drop in probability. Bayesian search is a distillation of smart common sense, formalized and made more rigorous with relatively simple mathematical concepts. If you’re looking for a billion-dollar lost treasure, you might sit down at a computer to map out many probability distributions and mathematically combine them. If you’re on an hour-long search for your wallet, a quick and dirty mental implementation of the Bayesian search method can save you time and increase your chances of success.

BILL MURPHY JR. IS THE AUTHOR OF ‘HOW TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL KIDS’ WHICH IS IN ITS 7TH EDITION NOW. HERE HE SHOWS WHAT IT TAKES TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL KIDS, ACCORDING TO SCIENCE WHICH SAYS THESE 4 HABITS MATTER, BIGTIME. STUDIES SUGGEST THAT IF YOU WANT TO DO RIGHT BY YOUR KIDS, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY DO THESE THINGS.

There comes a time in some people's lives when their aspirations for their children begin to rival or even exceed their aspirations for themselves.

It's happened to me since I've become a parent myself. As a result, I've been on a years-long mission to collect as much science-based advice as possible regarding how to raise successful kids. Here are five of the most interesting and useful strategies I've found and highlighted recently. The science suggests that if you want to do right by your kids, you should probably do these things.

1. Make them do chores.

1. them do chores.

1. Make them do chores.

1. them do chores.

Researchers at La Trobe University in Australia recently set out to determine whether children who do chores at home would develop better working memory, inhibition, and other success-predicting behaviors.

They broke chores into three categories: self-care, other care, and pet care. Writing in the peer-reviewed Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, they said their studies showed that kids who did self-care and other-care chores were in fact more likely to exhibit better academic performances and problemsolving skills.

But pet-care chores did nothing either way for the kids' later development. Why not? Maybe it's because pet care chores aren't as strenuous as other chores, or maybe because the kids didn't really view the kinds of things you have to do to take care of a pet dog (walk it, feed it, etc.) to be work.

The bottom line, however? Make your kids do chores. They might not love the idea to start with, but you've got science on your side.

Teaching kids to say "please" when they ask for something can reinforce their tendency to be polite, which makes them more persuasive when they're older. Teaching them to say "thank you" habitually encourages gratitude, which stimulates happiness and makes stress easier to deal with.

And teaching them to say "you're welcome" reinforces confidence by emphasizing that the things they do for others are worthy of thanks. (This is especially true when you juxtapose "you're welcome" with other things people say in response to "thank you," like "no worries!" or "no problem!")

3. Work on their emotional 3. on their 3. Work on their emotional 3. on their their intelligence. intelligence. intelligence. intelligence. intelligence.

Children who develop emotional intelligence also develop "a higher chance of graduating, getting a good job, and just being happy," according to Rachael Katz and Helen Shwe Hadani, authors of The Emotionally Intelligent Child: Effective Strategies for Parenting Self-Aware, Cooperative, and WellBalanced Kids.

Oh, and remember that kids are just that: kids. It's unfair often to expect them to react and respond to things like adults would (or at least, should!).

4. Help them figure out their passion(s). This study was fascinating. Researchers in Scandinavia wanted to determine whether passion, grit, or mindset was the most important factor in predicting young people's success, specifically in an athletic context.

In short, passion turned out to be far more predictive of whether kids were successful; while mindset and grit might have predicted that young people would continue attempting to succeed, it was passion that best predicted whether they actually would.

"For people who are the best of the best in their field, passion is absolutely the biggest factor. It's the essential key to success," one researcher said.

So, when kids are kids, let them explore different things to determine the ones that they're truly passionate about. That's where they're most likely to become the absolute best in their field.

2. Teach them to be polite.

2. Teach them to be polite.

2. This one focuses on three specific words: please, thank you, and you're welcome.

There are many things you can do to develop emotional intelligence (many more listed here), but at the outset, model your good thinking and use of emotions for them, ask them for their ideas, and try not to judge.

Look, no matter what any of us does as high achievers or entrepreneurs, chances are our kids will be a very big part of our legacies.

Imagine spending five years of your life creating 5,127 versions of a product that failed. That's exactly what the inventor of cyclonic vacuum technology, James Dyson did. Until finally, one magical day, he hit gold - finally succeeding in creating the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner.

In some ways, entrepreneurship can seem like a type of madness - not unlike the obsessiveness that overtakes artists. But in Dyson's case, his patience and persistence eventually led to payoff: a multi-billion dollar company known for its creativity and forward-thinking designs.

Today, the Dyson vacuum cleaner is sold in more than 65 countries worldwide. In an interview with Entrepreneur, the inventor explained how he was able to accept a long series of failures without letting frustration overwhelm him. "We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it," he noted. "Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way. Life is a mountain of solvable problems, and I enjoy that."

We live in a rapid-paced society where we access information with the click and point of our finger - which means we absorb data at an unprecedented velocity. You can ask me a question this instant and I will take out my smartphone and spew out random facts.

But is this...actually learning? Sure, we can access Wikipedia and feel like we've become experts on a topic.

But true, legitimate learning doesn't come with ease. I am not advocating you quit researching things online (reading from reputable sources does expand our mind). What I do want is to rid ourselves of this false notion that learning is separate from discomfort.

Failing is painful, it makes you insecure and doubt everything. I know a little about this myself, because I've spent 16 years growing a business that has been met with many stumbles along the way. But here's the secret to entrepreneurship few will say: You have to fall in love with failing. You have to fall in love with your hunger for learning, for discovery, for being an inventor.

JAMES DYSON CREATED 5,127 VERSIONS OF A PRODUCT THAT FAILED BEFORE FINALLY SUCCEEDING. HIS TENACITY REVEALS A SECRET OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP, SAYS AYTEKIN TANK, THE CREATOR OF JOTFORM TABLES, ONE OF THE NOTABLE TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS IN RECENT YEARS.

I am a person who enjoys taking long hikes in nature alone. I've gotten lost on the wrong tracks more times than I can count. But the process of finding the right way out — of learning that there are many paths that can lead us to the right outcome, it's a lesson that stays with me both in my career and in my personal life. I'd like to share some practical tips I've learned from experts and my own experience to help you become a life-long learner unafraid of making a wrong turn.

1. CULTIVATE THE PASSION OF THE EXPLORER

Harvard Business Review contributor

John Hagell III wanted to get to the core of what motivates lifelong learners. What he discovered in his research is that rather than fear being an incentive for learning, it was those individuals who exhibited a "passion of the explorer" who were able to learn and grow.

"Explorers have a long-term commitment to achieving impact in a specific domain that excites them," he writes. "Anything from factory work or financial services to gardening or big wave surfing."

Hagel believes we all have the potential for this form of passion. "Go to a playground and watch children 5-6 years old. They have all of the elements required: curiosity, imagination, creativity, and a willingness to take risks, and connect with others."

Doing this in practice, however, can seem tricky. The fear of making a mistake is so ingrained in us. But it's possible to make these adjustments in our daily lives by making a conscious choice to experiment, test out new possibilities and adapt along the way.

The way of the explorer is to be comfortable with the unknown — because their curiosity surpasses their fears.

2. PRACTICE QUESTIONING THE STATUS QUO

I've offered Dyson as an example of someone taking years to perfect his product - but I should also offer myself as an example. One of our latest products, Jotform Tables, which allows teams to collect, organize, and manage data in an all-in-one workspace - took us a whopping three years to develop. So I am well aware of what it means to relentlessly pursue a vision. But so much of this process started out and evolved by resetting our status quo and in asking ourselves, What else is possible? How might we make our customer's lives even easier?

HBR co-authors Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis advocate for making learning a part of our daily routine, and part of that involves asking propelling questions to explore different ways of doing things. Here are some examples the researchers recommend asking both of ourselves and our teams: Imagine it's 2030. What three significant changes have happened in your industry? Which of your strengths would be most useful if your organization doubled in size? If you were rebuilding this business tomorrow, what would you do differently?

3. EMBRACE THE GROWING PAINS OF RELEARNING

It isn't only failure that brings discomfort. At times it's being swept up in the changing tides we have no control over. If we've learned anything from this pandemic, it's that we've had to relearn how to do things in nearly every domain of our lives - parenting, communicating over Zoom, managing the endless fatigue of an ongoing crisis. But these growing pains aren't all bad, according to HBR co-authors Tupper and Ellis. "Relearning is recognizing that how we apply our strengths is always changing and that our potential is always a work in progress," they note. "We need to regularly reassess our abilities and how they need to be adapted for our current context."

So, how do we remain nimble in the face of change? A few things that have worked for me: counting every small success at the end of each day (even writing it down as a reminder), maintaining my focus on what's working well and continuously being open to feedback.

For me, spending years on prototypes isn't just about tenacity; it's a question of faith. And it's this faith that gives us the courage, confidence and hope to persevere against all odds.

(Credit: Entrepreneur)