Achieving a balance between work and leisure is difficult. For the vast majority of managers, work is where they spend most of their waking hours. And the feeling that there are never enough hours arises.
But how do you do it?
What do other successful managers do to make work and free time go into a higher unity?
There actually is someone who has investigated.
Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams have collected data over five years through both interviews with managers and questionnaire surveys. The researchers asked more than 4,000 top managers from all over the world how they achieve a balance between work and leisure.
They identified 5 central themes that are important for the top managers' sense of and ability to strike a balance between work and leisure:
Common to all the themes is prioritization. Making conscious choices. Deciding which options to take and which to decline. In this way, you avoid emergency situations dictating your life and work.
We take a closer look at the five themes below:
When you start a big project, the first thing you do is define what the end goal should look like. According to the authors, the same principle applies to living a conscious life. You must define what success means to you and of course be aware that it develops and changes over time.
For the managers in the study, their definition of success extends from being at home at least four evenings each week, to being knowledgeable about what is going on in the lives of family members. For others, it is about having emotional energy for both work and home life.
Important for managers to collect emails, text messages, phone messages and other communications and make a conscious decision about when to spend time on them.
Many of the managers warn against using technology to be in two places at the same time, because they see an advantage in being able to give a task or the family undivided attention.
Several of the top managers even say that they have started to use communication technology less while they are at work. As several people say: "You can't raise a child through the phone". The same applies to team management.
In relation to how the technology is perceived at home, the managers fall into two camps: Approx. a third see technology as a liberator that provides flexibility, others, approx. a quarter see technology as an invader that invades their privacy. (The rest of the leaders are neutral or have mixed feelings)
The advice from both camps is that it is important that managers learn to control their use of technology.
It is difficult to reconcile family life and work life, even for the top managers in the survey. And everyone also agrees that they have to have help to get the cabal going. If the manager does not have a stay-at-home partner, they find support from paid help or family.
The managers in the study also find that emotional support is just as important. Like everyone else, top managers also need to vent frustrations. Here, the managers use family and friends to a large extent. Some also use professional networks to provide a new perspective on a problem.
Support in the workplace is also important. Good colleagues act as sparring partners for the managers. Several of the managers say that had it not been for their good colleagues and understanding bosses, their careers could have been slowed down. Eg. due to health problems.
It is not only time and what it is used for that has an impact on the balance between work and leisure. Your physical location is also of great importance. This is reflected in the managers' answers:
32% has said "no thanks" to international assignments because they didn't want to move their families.
28 % has said “no thanks” to save their marriage.
Again, it's about being aware of what is important to you.
The leaders do not manage it alone. For the managers in the study, it is important that they and their partner have a shared vision of what success looks like. Not just for themselves, but for the whole family. It is to a large extent that the leaders have these common goals that hold the family together. Among other things. because their relationship gives both partners opportunities to work, travel, be parents, etc., which they would not otherwise have had.
Another strength the leaders find in their relationship lies in the partner's complementary qualities. That partners possess strengths that the manager does not have.
Emotional support, the managers describe as the most important contribution their partner has had in relation to their career.
Impossible, some would say.
But maybe it's not actually the fleeting "balance" you should focus on. Perhaps the most important thing is to actually accept that 100 % balance 100 % of the time is impossible. Instead, you must be very aware of when or work or leisure is the focus.
For some, it works on a daily basis:
At 08.00 - 16.00 = work
At 16.00- 08.00 = free time
For others, the phases are longer: days, weeks, months or years are dedicated to the family, e.g. while the children are young or in case of illness in the family.
In return, the career then gets a proper shell on another consciously chosen point in time.
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