Leda Writes for Fintech Futures: work life imbalance

Every Thursday, Leda Glyptis, CEO of 11:FS Foundry creates #LedaWrites. This week she tackles the precariousness of hope, risk taking and work life imbalance.

Why do we think of imbalance as a bad thing?

A basketball player in the moment before their most impressive three-pointer is definitely in a precarious state.

The moment before you say “I love you” is free-fall-y as all hell.

Greatness, beauty, daring, chance is predated by a moment of acrobatic, breath-taking imbalance. Always. Sometimes you fall. Sometimes you crash. Sometimes you die. Sometimes you land on your feet. But sometimes you soar.

That chance is what it’s all about. We risk because we hope. The imbalance is your moment of fierce grace.

So what do people mean when they talk about balance?

Especially the work-life type?

Can we have the happy ending without the Messy Middle? No. No you can’t.

I am not the right person to ask. I am told I am too intense on a daily basis. And I don’t mean just at work.

We like your outcomes, but you are full-on, man… can you tone it down a bit? We like how far you go, but the speed and focus… can we like… chill out a bit?

Be it how I deliver at work, how I read, how I live, how I love. Always the same. Can we have the happy ending without the Messy Middle?

No. No you can’t.

I can’t even.

I am really not the right person to advocate for balance. I am a big believer in the dialectic of the enlightenment (don’t sweat it, think “healthy tension”) and if you ask me what I’d go for if I had the choice, it would be a moment shining bright rather than a lifetime of shuffling undisturbed. But I am not for everyone.

Work/life is a continuum. It is you.

So when Louise said that, after writing about the false dichotomy of doing things for love or money, I should take on “work-life balance”, I thought: I am the worst person to speak to that. But that was her point, I guess. Don’t speak to it. Do the exact opposite. Blow it out of the water. Turn it on its head. Do it for the intense misfits. Louise (Dr Maynard-Atem @LMAtem to you) is of #mytribe, she gets it.

Being on the back foot ain’t all that bad

Have you had to go into the office after a break-up? The day after a funeral? The day your younger sister was getting tested because they found a lump in her breast? (She is fine and I cried in the office when I got the all-clear call and I have no shame about it).

If you have, then you know that there is no such thing as draping your personal life over your coat like a scarf in the tastefully concealed cupboards behind reception, as you walk into the office before you grab a coffee and sit at your desk.

Have you ever left the office so hurt by how little your boss sees you, by how cavalier he is about your successes and how critical of your shortcomings that going back to an empty flat was not an option and you sought a friend or a mentor for a session of unadulterated venting that descended into incoherence before it landed on a solution?

The balance part is not about the relationship between them. It is about you in the moment.

Have you gone home to a loved one and taken over a dinner with a repeated loop of doom about a process you can’t change but neither can you understand or respect it? And on you go chasing your tail till they opt to do the dishes for a moment of relief?

So don’t you talk to me about work/life like they are things that can be held apart and weighed against each other to be balanced in measured conformity.

Work/life is a continuum. It is you.

The balance part is not about the relationship between them. It is about you in the moment.

And I say let’s hear it for imbalance.

You get all of me, all the time. Out of balance but never out of synch.

Read the whole story at Fintech Futures.