Right Regrets.
‘Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.’ — Arthur Miller
Our personal struggles aside, a proper and careful framing of the issue of ‘work–life balance’ from a manager’s perspective is vital. Otherwise, we risk getting so worked up about the matter that we may lose the perspective needed to do the right thing — and refrain from doing everything else.
We may overreact in ways that ‘ease the pain’ but create other issues. We may help one person and insult everybody else. We may undershoot on restraint, erring on the side of doing too much.
Let’s start with the basics, though.
While empathy is a noble feeling, you should not take responsibility for managing anybody’s work–life balance but your own. Period.
Let others manage their own time and personal priorities. People who do this well are usually performing better at work. And performance is what you are after, not the hours spent at work. It is not the quantity of hours we put into work that counts, anyway; it is the quality of work we put into the hours. Even if the ROWE hype has faded, its spirit and legacy endure.
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The one and only thing you must commit to and deliver on is that you do not waste others’ time on non-value-adding activities. Even, or especially, if you have a mandate to do so. As Rockefeller pronounced with authority, ‘A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily.’ Make it your daily motto, and you have done enough as a manager.
Then comes dealing with your own related struggles and regrets.
A real bummer is when you realize, rather late in your career, that the whole issue of work-life balance is really a red herring of the corporate world. In extreme cases, it is just another element of corporate PR aimed at placating employees who are poorly managed. A distraction from the real issue of whether the job makes sense in the first place.
Over time, you also realize it is more about work-life integration than balance, as the latter is largely unattainable in today’s world. ‘Work’ and ‘life’ are not separate and competing buckets. These are not hermetically sealed existences; there is emotional spillover. They are blurred, messed up, intertwined. As Alain de Botton observed, ‘Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.’
You must, therefore, be mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared for extended periods of imbalance. For being off course. For the mess that follows.
Miller’s line is a bittersweet, profound acknowledgment that, in life, we will never get to make only perfect choices. Every decision means leaving something else undone, and there is always a cost or price to pay. You must choose between competing demands — and choose consciously.
Right regrets are conscious, intentional, defensible trade-offs; wrong regrets are the choices we drift into, default into, or feel coerced into. Telling the difference is not that difficult if you visit yourself.
And take solace in the fact that every decision is a mistake anyway.
