Work and balance

As the summer travel season gets rolling there will be the inevitable discussions about how much, if any, work should be taken on vacation. It’s cool to read a novel poolside; hey, that’s not work, unless maybe you’re a novelist.

On the other hand, if you’re combing through a 6-inch stack of greenbar printouts so you can review your 120-day aged receivables, it might not be so cool, especially if you’re wearing black socks with zoris and an aloha shirt.

Of course, the real story is connectivity. Most people aren’t hauling physical files around. The office is now as close as your smartphone.

With this in mind, the term “work-life balance” is often used these days. The term is an echo of a similar two-tailed distinction in labor economics; in the economics realm, “labor” means time working and “leisure” means time not working.

In the annals of economics, oceans of ink—enough to float Managaha Island—have been expended scribing graphs that analyze a worker’s theoretical strategies to optimize the labor vs. leisure tradeoff.

But hand-held computing introduces a new wrinkle: Discussions about modern life mention that people seem perpetually tied to the office via the connectivity leash. How much of this is compelled by an employer and how much is, by contrast, driven by the preferences of the worker is a distinction worth pondering.

It’s not the mere existence of an electronic leash that’s at issue. I remember pagers and old-school cell phones. I don’t recall people finding those devices satisfying to use for the mere sake of using them. The leash was a self-limiting proposition.

Oh, how times have changed. It took smartphones and their compelling, glowing screens, to tip the balance into a situation without apparent limits at all.

From what I’ve seen, many people are absorbed in their screens no matter what, be they working, not working, eating, shopping, walking, or even driving. If screen-time is a lifestyle, then it’s going to seep into a work context just because it will seep into any available space. This is probably a self-reinforcing loop. After all, if your mindset isn’t oriented to electronic screens, you’re probably not going to be welcome in a corporate office anyway.

The iPhone was unveiled in 2007. What seemed like science fiction became everyday life. It’s no longer remarkable that you can be on vacation, or at the restaurant, or with your family, or all of the above, while absorbed in a work situation (or any other situation) via your screen.

So, yes, the entire world is in your hand. That world might be virtual, but the attention directed at it isn’t virtual at all.

At this juncture we’re up against more than the allocation of time. As slippery as time is, it’s easy to measure. Labor vs. leisure situations typically use hours as the quantity scale. Makes sense.

But what if we’re dealing with the allocation of attention? This is not well-suited to measurement. It’s going to have a hard time getting any play in the field of labor economics.

And that’s a big paradox with economics and with a lot of other things, too. The only reason to measure things is that they’re important enough to measure (otherwise, why bother?) but the most important things in life can’t be measured.

As a result, the things that can be measured are the things that get studied, and these are the things that get talked about. That’s sensible enough as long as we remain aware that, in some cases, the data aren’t telling us the whole picture, or even most of it.

It brings to mind the old joke about the guy who is looking for his lost car keys under a street lamp. He didn’t lose his keys there, but that’s where the light is.

Back to this work-life thing: Is you is, or is you ain’t, at the office? I guess that depends on if the “you” is the physical you or the attentive you. Which of the two is the real you?

That might be an esoteric question but I’ll offer a very non-esoteric observation: I’ve noticed that people who can manage their attention, and not just their time, usually have their careers moving in harmony with everything else instead of in opposition.

Having pondered this work-life thing it’s time to get rolling with the July 4 festivities. I hear the blender being cranked up. I’m being beckoned to the pool, so I’m going to pull up my socks and join the action.