This photo illustrates the Twitter logo in Warsaw (Poland), 21 September 2022. Twitter … [+]
There’s no such thing as work-life balance anymore.
The only thing left is to work and squeeze in some moments of joy.
That’s the impression you might get if you work at Twitter, a place run by someone who is widely known to work constantly – 100 hours a week or more.
Unfortunately, Elon Musk doesn’t have the luxury to be immune from lay-offs. Esther Crawford, a project manager became an instant social media star after she admitted to sleeping on the ground in her office. She now says she was fired.
Let me take a moment to pause. You should consider reevaluating your lifestyle choices if you find yourself sleeping on the ground in an office. You don’t have to work for a lot. There are other things in life. Also, it doesn’t produce results. Crawford says she has no regrets about working so hard, but I can’t help but wonder if there is anything she could have done differently to keep her job.
It’s unlikely. Being good at work means you might get a raise, you will accomplish great things and might even increase your self-worth, but if your position is not needed anymore, it won’t matter where you sleep or how hard you work. An old boss of mine used to say, it’s not how hard you work it’s how smart you work. Hours in the office don’t count. It’s a matter of work taking over your life, for me.
Are there better ways to live? That’s where my thoughts drifted.
I think there’s one obvious problem. We are now dumber workers because of the plastic gadgets we used to call phones. It takes only a chime to stop us from doing anything. I hope there are no engineers out there who are inventing new bridge materials or life-saving innovations who have a “smartphone” that dings and chimes, bringing their ground-breaking work to a halt. When I’m working at a computer, I keep mine charged.
The first was the notifications from our smartphones, but it’s all grown out of control. Our phones have become so distracting that we are unable to work. My book on productivity was published in the early part of last year. One of my findings is that notification and other intrusions actually hinder work flow rather than enhance it. You can improve your productivity and work-life balance by doing these two simple things. Turn off notifications, then remove any app that interrupts your work day.
Can you work all day?
One tip I’d like to share is that you need to be able make hard decisions about your work life and the meaning of it in today’s world. Set normal working hours. After you have deleted any distracting apps and disabled notifications, you might want to think about why you are working so hard. What are your distractions? What happens when you get distracted? Why?
Asking these questions may help to clarify your motivations for working so hard, and whether or not you are being effective. Does it have to do with success? You could put aside your work at night and do the same thing by being more productive during the day. Even more, I wonder if everyone could be more productive if they stopped working so much and focused more on their motivations.
Perhaps we will discover that there’s more to life than just work. At that point, maybe we’ll stop tapping on our phones and open our eyes to what really matters.
