Rewire your life

April 13, 2008

In the last year, I have personally witnessed the following:
• A dad who appears to be in the living room with his wife, an out-of-town
guest, and his two kids—all trying to plan out what to do that day
together. Meanwhile, he’s on his laptop scheduling airline tickets for a
business trip and has no idea what’s going on.
• A father who is sent to the backyard to watch his three-year-old son
while his wife makes dinner, but in fact, spends the whole time on his
cell phone talking to a colleague.
• A high school teacher who spends the good part of every Sunday grading
papers and arrives to work each Monday morning tired and a little
resentful.
• A couple of women who found Internet surfing at work and chatting
nastily about their husbands far more intriguing than doing their jobs for
which they were paid quite well (that is, before they were asked to leave…
permanently).

Now comes a book, CEO of Me: Creating a Life That Works in the Flexible
Job Age, which deals with these very issues. Ellen Ernst Kossek of
Williamsburg teamed up with Brenda Lautsch to help people get a grip on
how technology is worming into the workplace and home.

SELF-HELP
The book has hit a nerve, and Kossek has been featured on NPR, the
Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the Boston Globe, Working
Mother and the MSNBC website. It’s now in its second printing just one
month after it came out in January 2008. This self-help book is insightful
and a bit academic—not surprising given that both authors spend a lot of
time teaching college classes and conducting research studies.
Kossek is a human resource management professor at Michigan State
University, while Lautsch is associate professor of organization studies
at Simon Fraser in Canada.
Over the last several years, the duo has surveyed about 400 people in
several distinct workplaces, ranging from a major manufacturer to a
computer firm.
They interviewed employees who never work at home and high-level
executives (mostly women) who quit their jobs at Fortune 500 companies so
they could work at home.
The authors concluded that there are three types of workers—integrators,
separators and vollyers.
• Integrators blend their work and personal life, whether it’s physically
or psychologically or even both.
• Separators compartmentalize their working selves and personal lives.
• Vollyers are a blend of the first two. They’ll mix it up one day, and
fence off the two spheres of life the next.
Interestingly, the researchers found that a person’s work style didn’t
necessarily make them happy or unhappy. Some people are on the phone about
work-related issues constantly and have no problem with it. Others find it
a royal pain. Take the high-level executives who, after having their
second child, quit their Fortune 500 jobs to form their own consulting
companies.
“One was happy, the other wasn’t. The unhappy one had a husband, who said,
‘Great, you can take care of the kids and watch the baby. I’ll come home
to home-cooked meals and get my MBA at night. Great!’ The happier one drew
a firm boundary line with the family. ‘Just because I’m home doesn’t mean
I’ll pick up the house and take care of the kids all the time. I’m still
working.’”
THE NEED FOR FLEXIBILITY
The researchers’ most consistent finding was that “captive” workers need
more flexibility. Their house could be “in domestic chaos” and they’d
still have to complete their shift.
These workers were not allowed to accept or make personal calls, or leave
work even a half hour early.
Kossek has a flexible work life, but she’s also been a “captive.” She
remembers having her first baby while earning a doctorate at Yale
University. She had to decide whether to teach a class several days after
giving birth or lose her stipend as a teaching assistant. She showed up to
teach the class.
“Academic institutions have this illusion of flexibility, but to be
reasonably successful, you have to be available all the time and
constantly engaged in research and teaching,” she said.
Kossek said a wide range of work is now being done out of people’s homes,
and the trend keeps growing. Home-based businesses, such as freelance
writing, website design and computer programming are no surprise. But
there are new inroads being made, such as Traverse City-based composer
Jeff Gibbs, who wrote music for an international documentary, which was
then edited out of a house in New Jersey.
Kossek considers herself an “integrator” who reacts to work and family
demands all day long. She’s not sure it’s the best style for her, but it
works for now.
Both she and her husband travel a lot, but their house in Williamsburg
serves as their family base. Each week begins with a calendar of who will
be where and when (and that includes the kids). Kossek keeps in touch with
colleagues and family using a cell phone and lap top computer – and, of
course, face-to-face when they are in the same place.

How to Create a
More Flexible Life

“Flex-time can make your life better or it can make it worse,” says author
Ellen Ernst Kossek. “We wanted a book to help people manage their
work-life relationships. The first step is to see yourself in control of
your life, as the CEO of your life. Otherwise it won’t happen.”
Here are Kossek’s thoughts about adding flexibility to our lives:

Take Charge: “Companies aren’t giving health care like they used to and
you can’t expect long-time job security anymore. You could be laid off at
any minute. Your company isn’t going to care if you’re getting a divorce
because your spouse doesn’t have enough time with you. It doesn’t care if
you have a heart attack because you’re too stressed out. It’s up to you
then to make a conscious choice to take charge of your life. That’s the
only way to get the work life balance you need.

Separate Work from Your Personal Life: “We do need some separation. Too
much merging is not healthy. You need some margin. Otherwise work and your
personal life lap over each other in one big blur. It’s confusing for
people. We don’t know who’s working and who’s not. Our kids don’t know.
You can be taking a call and feeling like you have to tell your baby,
‘Shhhh!’ There are new rules we have to figure out.

Don’t Overwork: “We found that in the tele-working group, people were
constantly blurring their work time with their personal time. In fact, we
found people working all the time—in the morning, while they were
commuting, working at night, working on weekends. This is called
‘overwork.’ Because of cost-cutting and the understaffing of
professionals, people are now working 50 hours and even 60 hours a week.
So people are finding if they don’t bring work home, they don’t see their
family.

The Rewards of Work: “Many individuals love their jobs and find it is less
messy to be sucked into working long hours where the rewards are more
immediate than the more mundane and pressing family problems at home. One
of the reasons people do that is they get immediate satisfaction from
work—you have a professional identity where you feel much better about
yourself. It’s seductive and you get immediate feedback. It’s often easier
than at home, where you have to wait 18 years to see if your kids will
turn out or your marriage survives.
“I see people who’d rather answer email than deal with a bad marriage or a
difficult kid. They use technology as an escape hatch. Some may have
ambivalence about their personal lives or feel ‘I don’t really enjoy being
a parent or my work is way more fun than my marriage.’ It’s an addiction,
but it’s socially more acceptable to be a workaholic and bring money into
the family, than to drink or gamble.

Never Home?: “Or sometimes when people say they love their families, they
show that love in different ways. Some put in long hours, putting in the
most time on goals they value most. You might say, ‘I’m caring for my
family,’ but your kids will remember that you were never there for them.
Your husband will remember a computer in the bedroom. So you have to check
in with people and ask them how they’re feeling.

The Need for Flexibility: “On the other side of this are the people who
need flexibility and don’t have any. People who work at grocery stores,
for example. In another research project I did for the National Institute
of Health, one of the biggest things that bothered me were stories where
the employees truly were captive, like a cashier who needed to go to
physical therapy for carpal tunnel, and she couldn’t get off work a half
hour early each day to do that. I still don’t understand why we can’t
design jobs to make it a little easier for people to do all they need to
do in their personal lives and jobs.
“A lot of people are poor up North. The companies up here can’t offer as
much money, but they can offer flexibility to attract people. If companies
could make a few changes or train supervisors on how to be more
supportive, that would make a huge difference in people’s lives.”

Fear of Flexibility: “Some companies have formal polices and programs to
allow greater flexibility, but people are afraid to use them. They’re
afraid because if they’re not seen at work, their boss will view it as a
lack of commitment. When push comes to shove, companies may say they value
people, but there’s a lot of fear.
“To provide absolutely no flexibility is increasingly viewed as a
discriminatory issue against women with children, retirees who have to go
to the doctor in the middle of a day, a single mom who has to do it all.
There is a potential for litigation to grow in this area.

Rewire Your Life: “… To promote the book, we came up with an idea that we
really want to put in full gear for next year. It’s called Rewire Your
Life Day—and celebrate it on March 10, the day when Alexander Graham Bell
officially invented the phone. The point of it is to turn off technology,
and use the time to reflect on how you’re spending your hours. Is it going
where your dreams are? You’re a CEO of yourself. See yourself in control
and that you have a choice in how you manage work/life relationships.
Start being strategic about how you would like to spend each day and
manage technology more effectively.
“It’s a day to ask yourself, how am I spending my time? If there’s a
mismatch, do I need time for change? Reflect on your conflicts in the
past—when you’ve had a fight, when you’ve found it stressful. Were you
trying to spend too much time with work when you’re supposed to be with
your family? Switch your flex style.
“People seem to really like or really hate the idea of Rewire Your Life
Day. There’s a fear of dropping out of touch, especially when you get 200
emails a day that you feel you must respond to. And that’s the problem.
You have cell phones, pagers, Blackberries. I was at a hotel last week
watching people go home. It used
to be that when you get off your shift, that’s it, you’re done! When
you’re driving home, you had some transition time to shift your brain from
work
to home. What I saw at the hotel was an employee taking a cell phone call as
he was walking out the door. ‘What about this! What about that!!’ People
are linked, and they can’t get away.

Your Work Style: “There’s no one ideal work style for everyone. It’s how
you feel about your life that’s important. Or how your husband and kids
feel about it. If they think you are completely work oriented, it’s a
problem. ‘Mom, I want you to be here and not thinking about work all the
time.’ Or maybe it’s your boss saying, ‘You’re not here or when you are
here, you’re too focused on other things.” That’s a problem.
“There’s research coming out that if people don’t take a break, they have
higher blood pressure. They get less sleep on work nights than on
non-work nights. And if you’re not sleeping, there’s a whole host of
health problems over time.
“This issue has big implications—we drink too much, eat too much, yell at
people too much at home because we can’t switch off the bad things from
work. It used to be home was a place of quiet and now work has moved into
the living room.

Making Changes: “After you decide that you might need a change, think
about how what you want will affect your boss or your company. Think ahead
about what their response will be and address their concerns so it will
work for the company. You don’t want to say, “Give it to me or else. Maybe
offer to cross-train with another employee who can back you up when you’re
not at work.
“People are afraid to ask for what they want, especially women. But you do
have to talk to people with whom you live and work with about what you
really want—not in an angry way, but in a way that tells them how you’re
feeling. If you’re a good employee,
with an excellent track record—what’s the worst that can happen? The best
thing is to get an ally at work and go in together. I know of secretaries
who wanted every other Friday off, so they offered to cross train and come
up with a deal. You
save money and we get every other Friday off.
“You don’t have to make big changes. You can cut back on work just a
little bit, and make almost as much money and be there for your children’s
key events. There are little things too. Maybe it’s just picking up the
phone to organize a lunch with your friend instead of trading 25 emails.
Companies are having e-prieve, which I love. They tell people to go
offline for an hour every day. We don’t tend to be creative if we’re
fighting fires all the time. I think we all get stuck in the ‘check your
email every five minutes’ cycle.”

The CEO of Me ($24.99) is available at Horizon Books in Northern Michigan.
A workshop at Northwestern Michigan College is titled “The CEO of Me: A
Worklife Lunch with Author Dr. Ellen Kossek” on April 30, 12- 1:30 p.m.
Call 995-1700 to register. Dr. Kossek also is interested in talking to
people who have taken steps to rewire or unplug their lives or support
future work in this area. Her email is kossek@msu.edu. She also has a
website for readers interested in finding out more about work life
research: kossek.lir.msu.edu.