Last week, my wife was telling me about her day trip to downtown Chicago — jazzed after just having returned from a day of professional development, meeting fellow business leaders and discussing potential career opportunities. As she wrapped up the summary of her day, she admitted that the professional environment and “bright lights/big city” had really gotten her excited about what might be around the corner.
Obviously, I was excited for her — but it WAS a bit different than what I had been hearing over the previous few weeks. As background, my wife is a highly successful finance executive, who chose to leave her employer after helping to shepherd her company through an exhausting, high profile merger. Almost overnight, she found herself knocking out projects that have been on our collective lists for years — digitizing old home videos, weather proofing the front porch chairs and organizing 3 moves worth of “treasures” in our basement and attic to name a few — and she has been in heaven! Each time, as she wrapped up a project and pointed herself towards the next — I’d overhear her say “how am I ever going to go back!”
While this could easily be interpreted as storm clouds on the horizon — what stood out to me the most was how important both of these aspects of her life were to her. It reinforced something that I have believed for sometime. Namely that, no matter where you are in your life journey — intentionally giving yourself to your work, to your play AND (not or!) to those relationships that define your community (family, friends, colleagues ) – is more than just “the right thing to do” — it should be your aspiration! It is by no means easy, and dropping the ball becomes a close friend, but what it offers you is a richness and diversity of experience, an appreciation for everything that you have and a realization of how important choice is.
Recently, the Business Insider shared the strategies that 17 highly successful executives employ to balance their work and life. Consistently, the executives espouses two strong themes:
- The focus on being successful at AND outside of work made them better employees, family members and friends.
- To make this integration work – they had to inject flexibility of place and time into their lives to more effectively “pivot” to the next most important marginal priority.
At LifeWorking Coworking, it is this belief that is core to our vision of “Live Life. Do More.” We aspire to be one of your “places” that enables you to play more, to work more and generally to be more of what and who you want to be. We will do this by bringing “work” closer to “play” and “live” – in a way that helps you be your most productive and recognizes and supports the value of ALL aspects of your life.
Check us out — and let us be part of your Life … Working.
