Beyond Juggling

“It was the year after my divorce, and I was working full time and getting my MBA in the evenings,” begins Stephanie, a researcher at a global electronics company. “Each of my three kids was involved in Cub or Girl Scouts—all on different nights—and hockey or ice skating, also on different nights, not to mention the games every weekend. I think I went through that whole year without sleeping.”

Stephanie is recounting her story during a work-life balance seminar. The exercise is a twenty-first century version of “Can You Top This?” with the prize going to the contestant with the most out-of-control experience. The tales are startling, outrageous—and at the same time, almost universally familiar. As Stephanie finishes, the sixty other people in the room all nod knowingly, a silent expression of “Been there, done that.”

In the United States, such out-of-kilter lives have become the rule, not the exception. Little wonder work-life balance is emerging as today’s workplace Holy Grail. Survey after survey shows that when young American talent rank what they most want from their jobs, balance tops the list.

Now the good news: work-life balance is not an impossible dream. In our research, primarily in the United Sates but also in France, Japan, Thailand, and Venezuela, we talked to plenty of people who’ve found workable solutions to the balance dilemma. In nearly all cases, they’ve realized that they won’t achieve balance by running faster, working harder, and cramming more into their lives. They’ve let go of the idea of juggling everything at both work and in their private lives or “having it all.”

This doesn’t mean they’ve dropped out of society and are surviving on organic vegetables and goat’s milk. Most of the successful balancers we’ve studied aren’t interested in an extreme version of the simple life. They accept as a given that the three components of balance—rewarding work, deeply satisfying relationships, and rejuvenating self-care—rarely come together in a tidy, stress-free package. So they use a variety of methods to rebalance their lives into a more satisfying—and sustainable—pattern.

WHY JUGGLING DOESN’T WORK

Forty-five minutes, two seconds. That’s how long Anthony Gatto, juggler extraordinaire, can keep five clubs in the air, and it’s the world record. But add one more club, or two, and Anthony can’t juggle much past a minute.

Anthony’s a professional juggler; most of us are not. But we’re trying to do the same thing with six, seven, eight, or more simultaneous commitments. Patti Manuel, the president and chief operating officer of Sprint Long-Distance, consciously identifies the roles in her life—her juggling props. “I’m a boss, an employee, a friend, a mother, a daughter, and a member of my church and community.” That’s seven. “Balance is about understanding what these roles are and not letting any one of them become dominant. Most of the time, I’m good at this. Other times, I’m trying to manage my way back from chaos.”

Juggling is a knee-jerk coping mechanism, the default setting when time gets tight and it seems nothing can be put on the back burner. As long as our reflexes are sharp, it works; we can “have it all.” For that forty-five minutes and two seconds, we’ve got a challenging work life; a fulfilling relationship; quality time with our friends, kids, or both; and sufficient snatches of personal rejuvenation. Then something happens and it all comes crashing down.

BEYOND JUGGLING

If you’re an exhausted work-life juggler looking for a better way, consider five alternatives gleaned from our interviews with hundreds of busy professionals.

ALTERNATING

Alternaters want it all, but not all at once. Their work-life balance comes in separate, concentrated doses. They throw themselves into their careers with abandon, then cut way back or quit work altogether and focus intensely on their nonprofessional interests.

For example, Murray Low, a Marriott School graduate, is an organization effectiveness manager for Eli Lilly. Over the past fifteen years, he’s been a CPA, worked for a strategy consulting firm, and run the HR department for a steel plant, with three- to six-month stints of unemployment in between. He’s made the most of his time off, skiing fresh powder, mountain biking with his family, developing himself spiritually, and serving the Church.

Others alternate on a daily or weekly basis. These “microalternaters” are focused and intense while at work, but they turn off their cell phones the minute they get home. They refuse to check email at night or on weekends. And they take all of their allotted vacation days, every year. They consider their off-work time to be crucial for deepening relationships and rejuvenating their spirits and energies. In our research, many Europeans used alternating extensively—to the envy of many Americans.

OUTSOURCING

“We have a family of four and a staff of eight,” quips Jon Younger, a New Jersey-based executive. He and his wife have precious little free time to allocate to a seemingly endless list of demands. Their solution: prioritize those activities in which they want to be personally involved, then hire out the rest. On the “personal” list are coaching children’s sports, religious observances, quality time with extended family, walking the dog, and one-on-one time with their two sons. Just about everything else—yard care, food prep, housework, running errands, academic tutoring, vacation planning, and car maintenance—gets outsourced.

Outsourcers achieve work-life balance by off-loading responsibilities—usually in their personal lives—to free up time and energy for those areas they care most about. Their motto might be, “I want to have it all, I just don’t want to do it all myself.” Those with limited disposable income rely on a robust network of reciprocal social support—friends, neighbors, and family members who band together to help each other gain a bit of balance in their lives.

BUNDLING

Bundlers involve themselves in fewer activities, but they get more mileage out of those activities. They examine their busy lives and look for areas where they can double dip. For example, a group of women get together three mornings a week to work out. This accomplishes an important goal for physical exercise, at the same time providing regular social contact and deepening their friendships.

Everyone bundles to some degree, but we also found a lot of faux bundling, a version of juggling in which people fool themselves into thinking they’re multitasking. The most egregious
example: People who talk loudly on their cell phones from the “privacy” of their stall in a public restroom. Sure, they’re doing two things at once. But is it really helping them feel more balanced? The essence of bundling isn’t so much multitasking as multi-purposing. Its genius is in giving separate tasks greater meaning by putting them together.

TECHFLEXING

Techflexers dream about leveraging technology to the point that they can conduct their work from almost anywhere, anytime. The key to their strategy isn’t just technology, but flexibility. Techflexers have figured out how to maximize the control they have over their schedules. They might live in the country, for example, or work at home several days a week, or work during off-hours so as to be present when their children are home. Obviously, techflexing depends on a good information technology infrastructure within the country and locale of choice, e.g., a DSL computer connection.

In contrast to jugglers, techflexers don’t use technology to increase the work hours in a day. Rather, they use it to liberate those work hours from the rigid 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. structure, as well as to enrich their personal lives.

SIMPLIFYING Simplifiers have decided they don’t want it all. They’ve made a lasting commitment to reduce the time and energy devoted to “nonessential” activities, whether at work or at home. The payoff, they hope, is greater freedom—from stress, from debt, from minutia, from the rat race.

In the physics of work-life balance, simplifying strikes us as an equal and opposite reaction to the craziness of juggling. Some people pursue it from the beginning of their careers; others come to it after they’ve tried juggling for a while. In either case, a common characteristic is the will to make some sacrifices—small ones, like “I’ve decided to buy only one color of socks,” or large ones, like “I took a voluntary pay cut and work only four days a week” or “I’ve decided to live in a modest home and drive used cars so I don’t have to earn so much income.”

REBALANCING YOUR LIFE

While everyone juggles and some are very good at it, the five strategies mentioned above—alone, or in combination—have proven helpful in the lives of many people as they strive to juggle less and enjoy life more. None is a panacea; each requires trade-offs. Juggling is even one part of the overall formula for a higher quality life while maintaining a viable and challenging career. Balance, like happiness, appears to be a journey, not a destination.

But if you focus on rebalancing your life—making conscious choices and course corrections as you go—the small changes can have a large impact. Work-life balance isn’t an all-or-nothing phenomenon. An hour or two per week to spend on the things that matter most to us can spell the difference between feeling out of control vs. tired but satisfied. And, in a world brimming over with meaningful opportunities and fascinating distractions, tired but satisfied isn’t a bad way to go.

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Article Written by Kurt Sandholtz, C. Brooklyn Derr, & Kathy Buckner

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kurt Sandholtz, a Marriott School MOB graduate, is a writer, speaker, and private organizational development consultant. He has worked with companies such as DuPont, General Mills, Dell Computer, and Procter & Gamble.

Brooklyn Derr is director of the Marriott School’s Global Management Center and a professor of organizational behavior. He earned his EdD in organizational behavior from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard, UCLA, University of Utah, INSEAD in France, IMD in Switzerland, and EM Lyon in France.

Kathy Buckner, also a Marriott School MOB graduate, is vice president of consulting services for BT.Novations. She specializes in career and employee development and has worked with companies such as General Electric, Ford, DuPont, K-Mart, and Estee Lauder.

This article is adapted from the book Beyond Juggling: Rebalancing Your Life published by Berrett-Kohler in 2002. Find out more about the book at www.beyondjuggling.com.

Art Credit: Detail of color lithograph advertisement for “The Completest Ensemble of the Most Celebrated Stage Performers Ever . . .” from the 20th century American School; private collection, reproduced by Barbara Singer/Bridgeman Art Library: London, New York, and Paris.