Work life balance…

Quick post today – it’s been a while, and a lot has gone on. Last weekend I attended the TechStars start-up weekend in Dublin. (http://communities.techstars.com/ireland/dublin). It was a fabulous weekend – a great chance to meet other like-minded individuals and get coaching on how to go through the process of stress-testing a start-up idea, and refining the business model. I met some great people and had a brilliant (if exhausting) time. I think that attending was definitely the best €31 I have ever spent!

I have been needing to diversify my skills into working as a shop-fitter as well over the last week, as my wife is in the process of opening a shop; and so I’ve spent a few days helping her build out shop furniture, and getting the space spruced up a bit. It’s great to see her on her journey too – finding a suitable premises has been really difficult (commercial rent prices in Dublin are generally ridiculous), but I have a really good feeling about this place; and I know she will work her magic to make the shop amazing…

So, amongst everything else that’s been going on, I have managed to make some progress on the speculative web application I’ve been building with a dispersed group of folks across the world (to be announced more publicly once it is a little more polished). The app has four key components: data acquisition, data processing, web service and web front end. I now have a basic system up and running working end-to-end; though it is still in need of a lot of refinement. The really tough part of the problem is the data acquisition and processing system; as this has to be able to acquire and classify unstructured data from multiple sources. Going for a long bike ride in the mountains yesterday gave me head-space to think a design through, and I think I have the basic algorithm figured out… I just need to implement it, see how it works, and then try to refine it.

But the really hard problems that take time and effort to solve are the things that make programming worth doing!

So, what about that work life balance?

Over the last couple of months I’ve been working under my own direction, on my own projects; and although I have been probably putting in several more hours per day of work than I did when I was working for a company, it has felt far less stressful, and far more productive and enjoyable.

So, I was asking myself last night – how come I was happily working at 11pm and feeling lively and engaged? I realised that as I was now completely free to choose the hours I work, and the location where I worked (home, cafe, hillside etc) – then I could fit my work around my needs, and how I felt on a particular day. My overall productivity has been high, but by being in control of when and where I work, the hours of work have had far less of an impact (actually a positive impact) on my well-being.

So why can’t companies allow their employees real flexibility when working – to choose when and where they do their work?

• Trust? Do employers want their employees sitting under their nose, so that they can check that they are doing the work they’re being paid for?
• Co-ordination? Do employers feel that their employees need to be in a single location in order to be able to attend meetings and co-ordinate with their teams?

To me it feels as though overcoming these obstacles would result in a more relaxed, happy, and productive workforce. If a company culture is based on trust, and employees are measured based on what they achieve, rather than the hours they work; then there is no reason to need employees to be present in the office at core hours. And if meetings are kept to a minimum, and co-ordination is done using other tools and using conferencing technology; then, again, there is no real need for teams to be continuously co-located.

Just a thought…