My Stream-of-Consciousness Free Associations on the word, "WORK"

A Word with Marty: "WORK-LIFE BALANCE"

A Researcher Who'd Rather Work Than Be With Family or Have Fun: A mock career counseling session

My PsychologyToday.com article today is a mock career counseling session with a researcher who'd rather work long hours than have fun or be with family. Her husband objects.

Is Contribution All?

It’s popular to extol the “life” part of “work-life balance” and its various manifestations such as exhortations to meditate. The masses have glommed onto such simplisms as “You’re a human being, not a human doing”

Yet, across the 5,600 career and personal advising clients I’ve had over the past 30 years, many if not most of the people who are highly satisfied with their life have a life that's "out of balance.” They work long hours and value doing that.

I make the case for such a life in my PsychologyToday.com article today. 

Milking Every Heartbeat

Perhaps today’s #1 mantra is “work-life balance.” I think that’s misguided. I believe life is better-led when you spend as many heartbeats as possible, perhaps 60 or 70 hours a week, using your best abilities to make the biggest difference to society or at least to your sphere of influence. That’s what I call, milking your heartbeats.

My PsychologyToday.com article today makes the case for the wisdom of that and practically how to make it happen.

Hedonism vs "Workaholism": A debate

For most people, including the Framers, core to the life well-led is "the pursuit of happiness."

Career corollaries include: "Make work fun," "Prioritize work-life balance," and "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." 
Outside-of-work corollaries include: "Life's short. East dessert first," "He who dies with the most toys wins," and "Par-tay!"

Yet some people believe the life well-led is mainly about being productive and contributing, that time spent frivolously could be better spent.

Perhaps the debate I posted on PsychologyToday.com today will help you gain clarity on whether you want to move somewhere new on the hedonist to work-centered continuum. 

On the Personal Essay: An interview with Phillip Lopate

A mark of good writers, whether fiction, essay, or poetry, is the ability to unflinchingly illuminate the emotional issues that people often try to suppress.

A prime exemplar is Phillip Lopate, long acclaimed as a writer of the widest range: from film reviews to poetry, novels to, most of all, personal essays.

Lopate is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, been a judge for the Pulitzer Prize, and is Professor and Director of the nonfiction writing program at Columbia University.  He is my latest The Eminents interview in Psychology Today.

The Bee: A fable that raises stinging questions

My PsychologyToday.com article today is a short fable I wrote about a bee. It raises issues about how to live life. 

I'll be sending a big jar of exceptionally good honey to the commenter who I believe most thoughtfully answered to four questions I ask at the end of the fable.

My latest TIME article: Should you call him "workaholic" or "heroic?"

HERE is the link to my latest TIME article, just published this morning. It asks whether we're too quick to call hard workers "workaholics." Sometimes, the more accurate term is "heroic."

Workaholic or Heroic?

We used to call people who worked long hours "hard workers." Now, we tend to pathologize them as "workaholics," like alcoholics, addicted. My PsychologyToday.com article today argues that many would be more accurately described as heroic. This is an only slightly enhanced version of an article I wrote on this topic for Time.com. So if you read that, there's no need to read this one.

I'm seeking "workaholics" to be profiled in my next book

I'm planning to write a book called "Workaholic!": 30 hard workers tell their story. Its purpose will be to encourage people to respect them rather than pathologize them as workaholics, like alcoholics, addicts. 

If you know someone who, as a way of life, chooses to work 60+ hours a week, I'd welcome their posting their contact information as a comment on this blog post. 

Work-Life Balance is Overrated: Think Twice Before Dubbing People "Workaholics"

Many people who work long hours are more accurately described as "hard workers" or even "heroic" rather than "workaholics."  I make that case in my PsychologyToday.com article today. 

HERE is the link.

Work-Life Balance is Overrated

Work/life balance is overrated. That's the contention of my USNews.com post today.

Some of the most contented, contributory and not-burned-out people I know have worked 60+ hours a week for a lifetime.

HERE is the link.

A "Workaholic" in Action

It's been a busy few days. On top of my usual full docket of career counseling clients, writing my weekly AOL article and weekly USNews.com article, giving a talk to 100 people at Experience Unlimited, and responding to tons of email, I was on five radio shows, mainly questioning whether work-life balance is a goal we all should strive for.

Indeed work-life-balance activists would label me "out of balance" and a "workaholic," evoking comparison to "alcoholic," addicted to something bad.

In fact, it's all been inordinately energizing. And amid it all, I found time to garden, play the piano, hike every day with my doggie Einstein, help my 88-year-old mom, and hang out with my wife. I will admit I didn't spend any time watching TV, playing golf, etc.

In case you'd like to listen, here are the radio shows I've been on since Sunday:

Of course, I was on my own show (NPR-San Francisco) which I devoted to raising questions about three career "truths."

KGO's (ABC-San Francisco) Ronn Owens Program is among the most listened-to on the West Coast. Talkers magazine named Ronn Owens one of the 25 Greatest Talk Show Hosts of All Time. Monday, I appeared on his show for about my 100th time. The interview was an hour long and covered such topics as: When it is and isn't wise to follow your passion, the pros and cons of for-profit vs. non profit careers, and colleges that still are accepting applications for the fall. HERE is the link.

Also, on Monday, I was on WHYY (NPR-Philadelphia) for an hour questioning whether work-life balance is a goal all people should strive for. I argued that, for example, the clerk who spends workweek hours 40-50 ensuring that everyone is paid promptly should not be denigrated as a workaholic but praised as a hard worker or even a hero. I also explained why shorter hours may not address the real reason people are stressed at work. HERE is an excerpt.

Today, I was on the CBC (Canada's NPR) for an hour, also talking about the whether we are too universally extolling work-life balance and unfairly labeling hard workers with the term "workaholic." The host pretty much took the other side. I leave it to you to decide if I held my own.  HERE is the link to that hour.

And as I mentioned in the previous post, today I offered very basic job-search advice to teens on NPR's Marketplace HERE is the link.

I hope you find these audio recordings useful and maybe even vaguely entertaining.

Is it wiser to work long hours or to have balance?

The older we get, the more we realize we only have a limited amount of time to do the things we believe are important. Conventional wisdom is--especially among women--that rather than work more hours, it's wiser to spend the time on relationships and pleasures. I believe that is wrong if your work will do more good overall than the additional time spent on relationships, and especially if you work would not be done or done as well by others. So, I believe that working "crazy" hours and being dubbed a workaholic (while being sure you don't unduly exhaust yourself) is, for many people, key to a life well-led.