Open Thread: How do You Separate Work and Life?
February 27th, 2008 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 9 Comments
We’ve all made fun of the “crackberry” addicts - those folks who take their mobile devices with them everywhere, and can’t go ten minutes without banging out an email unless they’re asleep. And anyone who’s ever freelanced is familiar with the pressures that cause work to expand until is squeezes out everything else. Startup employees and developers generally are familiar with the eternal “death march” projects that cause us to sleep under our desks when we can no longer keep our eyes open to bang out code. In short, the stereotypical web worker has no separation between work and life.
But how true is this for you, our readers? Has work shoved everything else out of your waking hours? Or have you come up with ways to turn off the web, back away, and interact with people face to face? Do you take downtime from your job, or are you compelled to be always available? Here’s your chance to share tips (or horror stories) with your peers.
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9 Comments Post your own comment
Jason Harris says: February 27th, 2008 11:06am
I’m a web technologist, so its weird for me to say, but I separate my two lives by not having a smart phone. If I have tech in front of me, I’ll let it distract me. So I have just a normal dumb phone to give me a break from my email/web/whatever.
dawn says: February 27th, 2008 11:52am
This is one reason (there are others) that I don’t have a cell phone and don’t use IM. I don’t WANT to be readily available at all times. I also recently got a work phone and the ringer is quiet enough that I can only hear it when I’m in the office. That way when I’m off-duty, I’m off-duty. (Because clients WILL call at 8pm.)
But the work insanity waxes and wanes. I have weeks where I can’t even lift my head up and others that I’m taking the kids to the park and not worried about deadlines. So those tough weeks? The ones that have me shaking my fist at the skies? I remind myself that they’ll pass eventually and I WILL get to sleep and see my family again.
Zac says: February 27th, 2008 11:59am
I try not to work over 40 hours, unless I have to. And I don’t think about work when I’m not there. When I walk out the door, my allegiance to work is severed. I love my job, too. And I’m good at it. But it’s what I do, not who I am.
I used to be really bad about working when I got home or letting people call me at home about work-related things. Now I just tune it out or deflect it by telling people to talk remind me at the office unless it’s urgent.
That said, I still sometimes work from home and I certainly talk about work when I’m not there. But I make an effort to avoid it when I can.
There’s more to life than work.
theo geer says: February 27th, 2008 12:38pm
I don’t. Work is my life! :) — in all seriousness it’s true. I’m early gen Y, and I try to live as organically as possible. What that means for work/life balance, is that there isn’t one. Work is part of my life, and I treat it as such.
As with other aspects of my life, it sometimes takes center stage, and other times a back-seat. I do have a full-time gig, so that means I schedule about 40 hours in the office a week. Some weeks I will work an additional 20 at home. Other weeks I’ll only work 25 to 30 total.
Similarly, the rest of my life takes it’s own places. I don’t see how answering an email at 8 in the evening could interrupt me. If I answer an email, it’s because I’m in a place or mood to do so.
Sal Cangeloso says: February 27th, 2008 3:15pm
5 years of web work later and I am still trying to figure this out. Basically if I’m not doing something that is not work, I am working, or reading for work, or doing something that is work related.
I think the tradeoff for working at home is the intrusion of work into the rest of your life. To put it another way, if you feel free to go out and run some errands at 2pm on a Tuesday or go to the gym etc, then the tradeoff is checking your work email on Wednesday at 1am or on Saturday morning, right?
My challenge now is figuring out how to “turn off” at a reasonable time at night after starting work at 8am or so…
Nik Peachey says: February 28th, 2008 1:19am
Why would I want to seperate them? I work from home, so I’m always at work or is it always at home? Having kids about really helps to keep it all perspective.
Brian Dusablon says: February 28th, 2008 12:07pm
I’m able to separate work and home life. I have a full-time day job and my web-worker gig is evenings and weekends. This eats up a lot of my time, I regularly work 70-80 hours in a “normal” week with the two jobs.
However, I don’t start my 2nd gig until the kids are in bed. So I have a 2-3 hour window where it’s all family, then I get back to work.
It’s a struggle right now as I figure out how much work I can outsource and how much I need to do myself while I grow my business, but I figure in the end it will pay off.
Stacy says: February 29th, 2008 10:46am
I constantly find myself struggling on finding a way to be able separate work from the rest of my life. I can usually set myself hours I will work on a project and then leave that project when time is up until the next designated time to work on it. I have also at times shut off my computer and shut the office door.
While these things work most of the time, sometimes I still find myself unable to let go of work even if I need a break.
Jacob Share says: March 1st, 2008 3:19pm
If you work from home, choose a room to be the office and only work when in there.
If you use Firefox, have a work profile and a personal profile.
Separate personal and work cellphones, email addresses, heck, even StumbleUpon accounts.