Ending The Struggle For Work-Life Balance | Gail Golden | Modern Wisdom Podcast 194

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   ... I don't ask…

   1. GGGail Golden0:00

      ... I don't ask myself, "Do I have the time for that?" 'Cause it's really easy to cheat. Instead, I started to ask myself two questions. The first one is, do I want to use my energy for that? My finite amount of energy that I've got, do I want to use it for that? And secondly, given that I don't have a lot of empty space in my life where I don't know what to do with myself, I have to ask myself, "If I'm going to take on that project, what am I going to do less of?"

   2. CWChris Williamson0:29

      I'm joined by Gale Golden. Gale, welcome to the show.

   3. GGGail Golden0:33

      I'm delighted to be here.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:35

      Very good to have you here. Talking about work/life balance today. 21st century, I think a lot of people listening will understand when work starts to creep into life, right? The barrier gets blurred between what you're supposed to do by day and what you want to do by evening. So your background, the things that you do, the people you've worked with, what are the common problems that you see people encountering with their work/life balance?

   5. GGGail Golden0:59

      You know, it's a great question. So, uh, very quickly, my background is that for the first half of my career, I worked as a psychotherapist working with, with all different kinds of people who were struggling with various sorts of psychological and emotional and relationship problems in their lives. Mid-career, I decided I was ready to do something different so I went back to school, got my MBA and since then, I've been working with executive coaching and business leadership and different kinds of people with different kinds of issues. The thing that began to dawn on me was that although these two kinds of work and two populations were very different, there was a problem that crossed over those two populations, which was that almost everybody, almost all the time felt overwhelmed, exhausted, inadequate and as if they were not meeting their own or other people's expectations. Whether you were the senior executive of a global Fortune 500 company or whether you were a stay-at-home parent hanging around with little children, that same theme kept coming up. And meanwhile, we've been talking about work/life balance forever, and I thought, "Wait a minute, uh, something is not working here." This concept of work/life balance, I don't know anybody who has a balanced life, myself included. And then we somehow imagine that other people do-

   6. CWChris Williamson2:30

      (laughs)

   7. GGGail Golden2:30

      ... and that just makes us feel even more inadequate and overwhelmed and out of control. Maybe it's time to start thinking about this problem in a different way.

   8. CWChris Williamson2:38

      Uh, I loved your analogy in the book where you were talking about how you always look at other people like they've got it together. You know?

   9. GGGail Golden2:47

      Yes.

   10. CWChris Williamson2:47

       I think you were, you were talking about someone that was learning to play the guitar, and they were a PhD student and did this-

   11. GGGail Golden2:54

       Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson2:54

       ... and had a family and was-

   13. GGGail Golden2:55

       Right, right.

   14. CWChris Williamson2:55

       ... altruistic, weekend, weekend endurance athlete, all that stuff. Um-

   15. GGGail Golden2:59

       Right.

   16. CWChris Williamson3:00

       And from your view, he had it together and the, the, the mother of five who had seven dogs and, and parachutes on the weekend, she had it together and everything else.

   17. GGGail Golden3:09

       Yes. Right.

   18. CWChris Williamson3:09

       But internally, everyone's just a chaotic mess. And I think this asymmetry between what we see of other people and what we see of ourselves is one of the big explanations for why we often feel inadequate, right? You only get to see the highlight reel of everyone else, but you get to see your own blunders from the front row seat.

   19. GGGail Golden3:28

       That is so true. Uh, the phrase that I often use is, "Don't compare your own insides to other people's outsides." And we do that all the time and I'll tell you, one of the, the big realizations for me was, as I was doing that, looking at the people, the kinds of people you're describing and thinking, "Oh my gosh, you know, they're so amazing." And then one day I began to realize that there were people who were looking at me as if I was one of those people who had it all together and was doing it all and I thought, "My God, don't they know what a train wreck I am?"

   20. CWChris Williamson4:02

       (laughs)

   21. GGGail Golden4:04

       (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson4:04

       "I'm so incompetent."

   23. GGGail Golden4:05

       Right.

   24. CWChris Williamson4:05

       "I don't know what I'm doing."

   25. GGGail Golden4:07

       That's right.

   26. CWChris Williamson4:07

       "Sometimes I go, I go, I go, get to work and I find I haven't got any pants on." You know, like just-

   27. GGGail Golden4:11

       Exactly.

   28. CWChris Williamson4:12

       That's ... We've all been there.

   29. GGGail Golden4:13

       That's right. Uh, I'm faking it half the time, you know, all of this stuff. Um, and, but that made me think, "Well, okay, if, if other people think that's my life then I'm probably mistaken about those other people who seem to have it all together." And that got me thinking then about, "Okay, how could we really move towards a life that felt more, more meaningful, more focused, more using my energy for the things that really matter?" And that's what I started to work on.

   30. CWChris Williamson4:48

       You touched on a, uh, a key word there, energy, um-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   (laughs) Exactly. …

   1. CWChris Williamson15:00

      Uh, would you be able to give it an MOT?" And then you come back, and there's just someone Jewish sat there that was like, "Hi. I'm, I'm your new friend."

   2. GGGail Golden15:06

      (laughs) Exactly.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:06

      "I'm here, I'm here to, I'm here to be friends with you." Oh, wait, no.

   4. GGGail Golden15:09

      Right. No.

   5. CWChris Williamson15:09

      We- we are service, we are doing a work-life balance-

   6. GGGail Golden15:12

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson15:13

      ... service.

   8. GGGail Golden15:13

      Right. Okay. So as I say, it's not hard to identify when it's out of whack. You feel bad. You feel lousy. You feel inadequate. You feel like everybody else is doing more than you're doing, that something is not right about your life. And by the way, your suggestion that we do this to ourselves all the time, we say, "Oh, yeah, I can sleep less," really bad idea. Really bad idea. Both psychologically and physically, uh, a recipe for breakdown, um, so not a good idea. So you start with that discomfort. "I'm, you know, this is not working for me." And then my curating model says that the first thing you have to do is to figure out what is your exhibit about. Okay? What is this exhibit you're trying to design? What's it about? At this particular time in your life, what matters to you? What are you passionate about? What, wh- what, what are you focused on or what should you be focused on? And that, of course, changes over your lifetime. Your exhibit at 25 is gonna be probably quite different from when you're 75. Um, but you need to do that work to sort of understand what are the things that really matter, and this is very individual and customized. I mean, I was just talking with a woman this morning for whom one of the main things her exhibit is about right now is making a lot of money. Okay? She's the main earner in her family. She's got two young children, and she wants t- to put her energy into a place that is gonna make a lot of money, that sets her family up to be comfortable from now on. Okay? That might or might not be what drives you or what drives me. But for her, that's what her exhibit is about right now, and she, she then should make choices based on that value, that importance for her. Somebody else, their exhibit might be about, um, I don't know, um, how can I work towards better racial equity in the United States, which is a very big issue for us right now. For that person, they need to then organize their exhibit differently. So for number one, it's what my exhibit is about.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:24

      Mm-hmm.

   10. GGGail Golden17:26

       And then just like a museum curator, you look around at all the stuff you could be putting in your ex- in your exhibit, or you have been putting in your exhibit, and you see that it's kind of a cluttered mess if you put all that stuff in. So you have to start making decisions about what doesn't go into your exhibit, and it doesn't mean it goes in the trash. It may mean that it gets put in the back room for now, but it's not going to be in your exhibit right now. I can give you an example. When I, I mentioned I went back to school mid-career and got my MBA. For two years, I was going to school full-time and running a private practice full-time. I had two full-time commitments, and so I had to do a couple of things. One was I went to my husband and my one son, who were still living at home, and said...... I can't cook for the next two years. (mic rustles) With someone else-

   11. CWChris Williamson18:18

       No, so that, how did that go down?

   12. GGGail Golden18:19

       It went out, it went down great.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:20

       (laughs)

   14. GGGail Golden18:20

       My husband said, "Fine, I got it." He bought a microwave.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:23

       (laughs)

   16. GGGail Golden18:24

       The first microwave we ever had.

   17. CWChris Williamson18:24

       That's such a-

   18. GGGail Golden18:25

       You know?

   19. CWChris Williamson18:25

       ... that's such a bloke solution, isn't it?

   20. GGGail Golden18:28

       Well, it was a terrific solution and it worked great. And for those two years, he did it. I also went to all my friends and said, "I'm gonna be a social dropout for the next two years. I, I will not be able to hang with you guys. (mic rustles) I love you. I'll see you in two years." And that worked out fine with everybody except one friend who was really angry and said, "You know, I must not mean anything to you if that's how you're gonna treat me." And I lost that friend and I'm, and I'm sad about that. But frankly, it was a, it was a curation that I had to do. Those were things I had to eliminate from my life in order to do the things that my exhibit was about which were running my practice, going to school, and trying not to completely destroy my family in the process.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:15

       (laughs)

   22. GGGail Golden19:16

       Um, that, that was it. So number one, what's your exhibit about? Number two, what am I not going to do? And then there's a whole process for how you eliminate stuff, uh, by saying no, by delegating, by, you know, stepping back from things. Al-, there's all kinds of ways you can do that. The next step is, for many people, the most difficult because these are the things, I'm gonna have them in my exhibit, I have to have them in, but they're not the most important thing. So when the, in using the museum idea, they're off in a side room somewhere. If people really wanna look at those things, they can go in. But it's not the focus of the exhibit. In the real life parallel, it means that I make a conscious choice that I am going to do those things just well enough.

   23. CWChris Williamson20:04

       What are some examples of things like that that tend to be in people's lives?

   24. GGGail Golden20:09

       That, that you're gonna do just well enough? Well, again, it varies from person to person. I mean, everyone's exhibit is unique. I can tell you, for my life, pretty much my whole life, housework has gone into the just well enough piece of my exhibit. My home is not immaculate. My, it's never gonna be on the cover of Architectural Digest Magazine.

   25. CWChris Williamson20:30

       Mm-hmm.

   26. GGGail Golden20:30

       It, you know, it's not, it, you know, nobody's come in and condemned it yet, but it's, it's, it's, you know... But my attitude is, if it's visible, I want it to be reasonably tidy. If you open a closet, it's on you-

   27. CWChris Williamson20:42

       (laughs)

   28. GGGail Golden20:42

       ... what you're gonna find. I mean-

   29. CWChris Williamson20:43

       That's such a good heuristic. Yeah, no-

   30. GGGail Golden20:45

       Exactly, you know? It's-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   That's a really important…

   1. GGGail Golden30:00

      or woman? And so, you know, you as, you, you do, give the assessments, you evaluate the results, and then you write a report. So this person who was working for me would write the report and he would send it to me because I cosign it, so I always wanna see how it looks. And it wasn't really written quite the way I would write it. It wasn't that it was bad or that it was wrong. It just, you know, the turn of phrase, it wasn't quite the same, and I would've done more of this and less of that. And at the beginning, I was doing all this redlining and rewriting and then I thought, "Wait a minute." You know, I'm paying this person to write the report. There is nothing wrong.... with the report that he's written. It just doesn't sound exactly like Gail Golden. Well, that's okay. Let it go. And it's that learning how to delegate and let other people do things their own way to their own standard, that's the art of it and so many people have trouble with that.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:55

      That's a really important insight that I hope that a lot of the people that are listening, especially the young entrepreneurs or people that have a desire to go into business, that red pill took me a decade to swallow.

   3. GGGail Golden31:09

      Yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson31:09

      We used to say, me and my business partner used to talk about, we, we would have an ongoing joke about if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.

   5. GGGail Golden31:16

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson31:17

      And here's the absolute perfect example of that. So I run club nights, that's what I've done for the last 14 years, I get people drunk in night clubs and, um ...

   7. GGGail Golden31:26

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson31:27

      We were the directors, I've been the director since I started. I founded the company, director of the company for 14 years and me and my business partner every Saturday for four years without a break, 210 Saturdays in a row until I had a stomach bug that meant that I couldn't, I couldn't be at work. Literally had to be dragged away by a, by a, uh, a virus. Um, we would turn up at 11:00 AM at the club, let ourselves in and do stuff like set up the inflatables because if we delegated it to someone, I knew that may- maybe the inflatable would just be off to the left a little bit and then there's a particular way that they have to put the cable ties around the barriers outside and there'll be a ton of the guys that work for me that are listening and thinking, "Yeah, I remember that bit and I remember that bit and I remember that bit." And, um, i- i- it, that took me, when I look back now, that was my mid-20s.

   9. GGGail Golden32:19

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson32:19

       Every Saturday I wrote off the daytime. I never had a Saturday daytime. I used to know off by heart the different radio presenters that would present on the radio because I'd know who was presenting on my way in, then who was presenting while I was in there, then who was presenting as I left. I hate the radio, the radio sucks. But my-

   11. GGGail Golden32:36

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson32:36

       ... my point is that I sacrificed so much, not only of life where I could've been enjoying life, but that wasn't my highest calling within the business. I could've given that to any student that I could've paid £8 an hour to, they would've got some extra hours out of it and I could've added value in the business in some of the places that only I can. But because-

   13. GGGail Golden32:59

       Yes.

   14. CWChris Williamson32:59

       ... I wasn't prepared to relinquish, I wasn't prepared to delegate and let go of control, what ended-

   15. GGGail Golden33:03

       Yep.

   16. CWChris Williamson33:03

       ... up happening? I ended (laughs) up wasting four years of my life sat in a club, uh, th- th- throwing, trying to throw bits of rope over the top of awnings so that we can, uh, pully up a- a- an inflatable-

   17. GGGail Golden33:15

       Right.

   18. CWChris Williamson33:15

       ... um, and not driving more trade for the business. So th- that is, that's the example for you there.

   19. GGGail Golden33:21

       Totally. You know, one of my clients years ago taught me a very interesting phrase. He was a senior executive in a bank and he said, his motto was, "Only do what only you can do." Now that's aspirational. Everybody has to take out the garbage from time to time, do you know what I mean? Nobody can only do what they are uniquely qualified or talented to do. But using it as a goal, only do what only you can do, is a really good rule for curating your life, for figuring out what you should be putting your energy into. And your story about you spending all this time throwing ropes over things, I mean, absolutely classic. It's, that's absolutely right, yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson34:10

       (laughs)

   21. GGGail Golden34:11

       You know, this delegation piece is often a very big issue for somebody in business who's had a promotion and you get promoted because you're really good at what you've been doing in your job and then you go up one level and it's the most normal thing in the world to, that you want to continue doing what got you promoted which is what you, what the former job was about. Except that's not your job anymore and other people are supposed to be doing that job now and you have got to get out of the, out of the weeds and up to the next level where you are overseeing, supervising, directing, guiding, inspiring, coaching and not doing the work yourself. One of the most difficult challenges for people when they get promoted to a more senior role.

   22. CWChris Williamson34:58

       Relinquishing that control, it is really, really difficult.

   23. GGGail Golden35:02

       Yes.

   24. CWChris Williamson35:03

       Um, and I, you know, I feel, f- f- for the people who don't know the sensation, it, it's almost like quite a mindful activity, the mindfulness gap of when you feel the, the tension sort of arrive in your body and it sort of comes up through your stomach and you feel your shoulders come up and you almost sort of move forward toward the thing that you're doing.

   25. GGGail Golden35:22

       Right.

   26. CWChris Williamson35:22

       Um, and that's a sensation that I get sometimes, I was, like I say, looking at this website, it's kind of consumed me for the last couple of weeks. Oh, that thing and I can feel myself and I'm like, it's, "Is it good enough? Yeah, it is."

   27. GGGail Golden35:33

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson35:33

       "Is it good enough? Yeah, it is." That's fine.

   29. GGGail Golden35:35

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson35:35

       And that just allows us to roll forward. So I, I think you've got a really nice framework there with helping people to relinquish their time, so we've embraced mediocrity-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   What are some of…

   1. GGGail Golden45:00

      it seems to me you have two responsibilities. One is to curate your own life, to utilize your energy in a way that you are putting your best energy into the things that matter the most, to you and to the organization that you lead. And by the way, curation is not a purely selfish process where all I care about is, you know, what's good for me. It also, we, we're social people, we're in a social context, we're thinking about other people at the same time, so, so curating your life as a business leader. But the second part is looking at the environment you're creating, at the messages that you are giving to the people who work for you, and thinking about, "Am I leading in a way that enables and facilitates them to curate their lives?" And, you know, in many cases, the answer is not so much. And s-

   2. CWChris Williamson45:52

      What are some of the, what are some of the ways that people often- (objects clattering) business leaders often create a workplace which doesn't enable?

   3. GGGail Golden45:58

      Yeah. A simple one is, I'm a night person. I get a great idea at 11:30 at night and I fire it out to my people at 11:30 at night or one o'clock in the morning, and I'm the boss, right? And people feel that then there's an expectation that they should respond to that. You know, there's a really simple hack, um, you know, in, in Outlook, which is the messaging system that I use, you can stick delay delivery on your email.

   4. CWChris Williamson46:25

      Schedule send. We love it. We love it.

   5. GGGail Golden46:27

      That's right, schedule send. You know, so I can have my idea... I'm not a night person, by the way, but if I were, and I have my 1:30 in the morning, you know, flash of insight, I write the email and I get it sent at noon or whenever my people are gonna be around, you know? And, and by doing so, I send the message that, "I, I want you to curate your life. I want you to have a reasonable organization of your energy." And I'm gonna take a minute to tell one of my favorite stories about this because I think it's really important. My father was a Holocaust survivor. He escaped from Germany to England, um, in 1939 and spent the war in England. And right after the war, um, children who had been incarcerated in the concentration camps were brought to England for rehabilitation, and there were a number of centers around England where these traumatized children were brought to bring them back to health. And they needed to find people who spoke German, Polish, or Yiddish because that's what these children spoke. So my, they reached out to the community. My dad, who has zero training in this, volunteered to be one of the counselors at one of these rehabilitation centers, and they had one day off a week when they worked at the rehabilitation center. And the director of the center told them, "You are not allowed to be on the campus on your day off. You may not show your face around here." Because he knew that these people were so dedicated to the work that they would be there seven days a week and they would drop from emotional and physical exhaustion. So he made a rule, "You couldn't come in on that day." That, to me, is an example of a, a business leader saying, "I need to think about your well-being, not just my own." He might have said, "Yeah, the kids need you seven days a week, so come on in," and he did not. Um, so that kind of thinking about helping your people to manage their energy so that they can bring their best and they get the breaks they need, whether it's taking their vacation days, whether it's not sending emails in the middle of the night, whether it's saying, "Hey, you know, it's summertime, we're all gonna quit work at three o'clock in the afternoon on Friday."... whatever it may be, to me, that is part of a leader's job to, to help others curate their lives.

   6. CWChris Williamson48:54

      If you're not a business leader, how can you contribute to that environment? Let's say that you're just an employee or a worker-

   7. GGGail Golden49:00

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson49:00

      How can you contribute to that?

   9. GGGail Golden49:03

      It's harder because you don't really have the power that the leader has, and you may be working in an environment that doesn't encourage that kind of curation. I guess my, my first thought is, you quietly do it yourself, you know? You don't have to be tell- ... One of the things I say about mediocrity, by the way, and being just good enough, is when you figured out what you're gonna be just good enough on, don't tell people. Just quietly be good enough. They won't notice in most cases-

   10. CWChris Williamson49:33

       (laughs)

   11. GGGail Golden49:34

       ... right? You don't have to go announcing, "By the way, I'm gonna be mediocre on how well I shine my shoes." Just, just don't care, you know? So in the same way, I think you can quietly curate your life without necessarily making an announcement about it. But it's difficult. I mean, if you're working in a place that has these unreasonable expectations for attendance, length of time, productivity, (sighs) that's very difficult, and I think in many cases, you're wise to find another place to work.

   12. CWChris Williamson50:05

       Mm-hmm. No, I agree. The, the sort of Gary V Hustle and Grind mentality is never one that's really sat super well with me. It's not resonated massively, and I think that a big part of it is that I know ... I think everybody knows in their heart of hearts that the person who's able to go very, very hard for four or six hours per day will outperform the person who's still in the office at 3:00 AM-

   13. GGGail Golden50:30

       That's right.

   14. CWChris Williamson50:30

       ... because the person that's still in the office at 3:00 AM isn't working that hard. They're just sat there, they got their phone out, they're on YouTube. Like the number of times ... So, like I say, I run club nights and a lot of the guys that work for me are students at university, and a lot of the time they'll come in around about the exam period and they'll do a, a full day in the office of revision, but during the full day in the office, I'll have seen them, they'll be on Snapchat for half an hour, they'll have this. I'm like, "Dude, you could have been in and out of here in three hours-"

   15. GGGail Golden51:00

       Right.

   16. CWChris Williamson51:01

       "... if you'd left your phone at home, if you'd put RescueTime or some other sort of, uh, website blocking app on your computer." And you just nailed it. Like if you'd gone ... So this is a- a- another Cal Newport deep workism where he says that work done equals time times intensity. So you can do three hours at a 10 or you can do 10 hours at a three.

   17. GGGail Golden51:22

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson51:22

       And it is hard, don't get me wrong. The higher levels of discomfort, the higher levels of intensity have a lot of discomfort with them because you don't get the little dopamine hits. You've also got to be super, super focused.

   19. GGGail Golden51:32

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson51:32

       But the more that you try and do that, the more that you cultivate a, um, an atmosphere of excellence where you are focused on the things that you're supposed to do, the easier it comes thereafter, and you get greater satisfaction from it. No one, no one wants to spend 10 hours a couple of days before a project deadline doing 50% intensity gray vanilla quality work. You don't want that.

   21. GGGail Golden51:56

       Right.

   22. CWChris Williamson51:56

       It doesn't make you feel satisfied. But you know-

   23. GGGail Golden51:58

       No.

   24. CWChris Williamson51:59

       ... the days that you go in when you s- when you absolutely crush it, five hours in and out, everything's done, you've got the evening to yourself, like that-

   25. GGGail Golden52:05

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson52:05

       That is where work feels satisfying, right?

   27. GGGail Golden52:08

       I absolutely agree. And I, you know, I think, yeah, I mean, you said it. It's, and it's that satisfaction that comes from sprint and recover and the productivity that comes from that is just, you know-

   28. CWChris Williamson52:22

       It's a winner, so-

   29. GGGail Golden52:23

       ... that, that's where, that's a winner. Exactly.

   30. CWChris Williamson52:25

       We've, we've got our workplace sorted. Can we, can we curate a home as well? 'Cause there's, you gotta, you know, I've gotta be a, a mother, a father, a brother, a whatever, housemate, whatever it might be.

Episode duration: 1:00:08