From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 4

In this final post in the series, I wish to reflect on some specific questions related to work and career that people often struggle with and on how the shift to interiority, Bernard Lonergan’s mindful way, if you will, of doing philosophy and theology influences how I think about work-life balance.

Two questions in particular come to mind: 1. What kind of career will bring me the most satisfaction in life? or How can I make the job I have now more meaningful? and 2. How can I strike a better work-life balance? The best answer turns out to be the same in both cases.

Individuals deliberating about potential careers often think not just about the tasks and rewards of the job itself but wider questions about family, society and faith as well. They may frame the question in terms of finding a job that they enjoy that provides sufficient income to raise a family at a hoped for standard of living. Or, they may focus their deliberations on finding a career that allows them to make a decent living while doing some good for society or the planet. In both cases the job itself is instrumental to higher goals and values.

Psychologists have learned that people are most happy or experience the greatest satisfaction when the rewards they seek and the challenges they face are grounded in their own interior lives. Here is where human beings have the greatest degree of control and can exercise the greatest level of responsibility. Those who ground their hopes and expectations on outcomes over which they have little or no control set themselves up for disappointment. And, if they assume responsibility for things outside their control they are likely to experience anxiety or depression. Determining what is and what is not in one’s control may not be easy but it is an important step in the journey toward job, marriage and life satisfaction.

The shift to interiority likewise shifts the question about the most satisfying career track. Traditional wisdom suggests that a good way to approach the question is to find out what needs to be done, determine what can be done by me, and deliberate about which course most aligns with my highest values. To find out what needs to be done is to know about some potential difference that can be made in the world. To determine what I can do is to know about the realistic possibilities of my making that difference and avoiding burnout. To determine which accords with my highest values is to set for myself a goal and standard of responsibility from within. Here is where we meet the challenge of career discernment at core. The satisfaction I derive from my career is determined by my faithfulness to a life of authenticity. By committing myself to a life of genuine attentiveness to, of curiosity and learning about, and of loving responsibility for the tasks and people around me, to that extent the rewards and challenges of my career are grounded in my interiority.

This shift to interiority in which one embraces the challenges of authentic living may be made at anytime. So whether one is thinking about a major, choosing an internship, accepting a job or stepping back and hoping to get more out of a current job, the best option would be to internalize the goal and criterion of success.

The world of work and the world of family life are distinct worlds but the thing my work and my family have in common is me. The real challenge of full adulthood in the modern world is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time and to be able to move smoothly in and out of the diverse worlds of the consumer, the employee, the family member. What is common to all the worlds we inhabit is the need to be as attentive as possible to the people and tasks that populate them and to be as intelligent as possible in making sense of the situation and in knowing what is going on--what are the goals and patterns that make this world be what it is? In whatever world we find ourselves, we make sense of that world by making sense of its goals and structures. Finally, there is a need to be as responsible as possible in living up to the expectations set by that world and by the demands of human authenticity. The more we develop the skills to live up to the challenge of authenticity the more we can be at home in our own skin whether we are in the marketplace, online, at work, or in the bosom of our families.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 3

Those who have created a healthy work-life balance seem to be ‘at home’ wherever they are, in the marketplace, online, at work, at the dinner table or at a family function. Unfortunately, the goal of ‘being at home in the workplace’ may have the negative effect of conflating two different worlds. Studies also suggest that a blurring of work and family roles is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Individuals may expect family to feel or to operate like work or expect work to feel and look like family. This may result is significant social and emotional confusion, notably when work is a family business and the boundaries are easily crossed. It can be helpful to keep in mind the purpose and nature of work and realize that these are not the purpose and nature of family-life.

There is a phenomenon is modern business that seems to many like forcing a square peg into a round whole. That phenomenon is non-financial reporting. Non-financial reporting (NFR) takes into consideration, for example, a company’s sustainability practices, anti-corruption policies and protection of the human rights of its workers and stakeholders. To those who customarily think of business in terms of the maximization of profit, NFR is indeed a square peg. There is, the traditionalist argues, only one bottom line; while advocates for the new approach looks to a triple bottom line encompassing profits, people and the planet. Those in each camp interpret the meaning of business differently. They appeal to diverse criteria in assessing the truth of a company’s actual performance. And they each place a different value on possible changes in practice and policies, that is, what would count as a good thing.

Intuitively, we might expect that those who gravitate toward the ideals and ways of thinking of NFR are the same whether at work or at home and would have an easier time transitioning from work to home. After all, if at work one’s mindset is oriented toward others as people, and not simple as parts of a corporate machine, then the adjustment to a family mindset is not such a large leap. However, there lurks even in the business-oriented mindset of the non-financial reporter a foundational difference in conscious living than is needed at home.

At the heart of NFR is still a business-oriented criterion of what counts as a good thing -- principally assets that explain a company’s market capitalization, its future profitability and contribution to the industry or to the local or global economy in which it operates. The criterion of value remains the same as in financial reporting. It is a pragmatic criterion. What counts as good is what works. Consequently, all individuals regardless of their roles in modern economic living are expected to think about goodness and success in terms of outcomes, from paychecks to ROI, to churn, to carbon-costs. They are also expected to, and are socialized to, feel deeply the importance of these goals and the factors leading to them. Finally, in a data-driven economy directed by opaque algorithms the best NFR improvements in human work amount to a rear-guard actions.

NFP is a much-needed humanization of modern industry. Like the patterns of sociality in parts of the country that subsume retail shopping under into the wider social goals of general friendliness, NFP understands that business is a human activity. But it does not alter the fundamental fact that the human activity involved is business and not friendship at its highest level. It contains a self-referential orientation that is opposed to the orientation adopted between truly intimate friends and loved ones. Such friendship that puts the utility, enjoyment and well-being of the other first, invites sacrifices that business associates, partners and customers could hardly be expected to make.

The transition to homelife is a shift out of this exclusively pragmatic mode of conscious living and into one that involves a kaleidoscope of mindsets and values. Often what counts as good in the interactions among family members is not what works but what is beautiful. The refrigerator in many homes is a gallery dedicated to the value of creative endeavors that win no prizes and earn no lesser accolades than parental love. What counts a good is time spent (quality time) that serves no utilitarian purpose. The worlds of work and home are distinct not simply because of the rules and roles that constitute each, but because of what the members cherish, because of the patterns of feelings and emotions that are expected and appropriate, and because of the values the define each world as a unique sphere of human living.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 2

Striking a work-life balance in modern society is challenging. For many people the period of transition from one to the other is a period of high stress. What’s at stake goes well beyond scheduling work hours so that we can spend enough time at work or shopping, in scholarship or an engrossing hobby, and at home. The challenge we face when turning our attention back to family reaches into our minds hearts inviting us to learn how to move fluidly in an out of two, or perhaps more, very different worlds.

Beyond any surface differences, worlds of human endeavor are forms of conscious living shaped by different expectations regarding meaning, truth and goodness. Some people become very creative in the rituals and hacks they use to help them make mental, emotional and physiological shifts, especially when these diverse worlds exists in the same place either a home office or home studio. But adjusting requires not just adopting new behaviors and patterns of cooperation but engaging distinct modes of thinking, feeling, caring and responsible living. Something that helps the deeper transition is to understand that the worlds of work, commerce and home, as well as the worlds of scholarship and art, are defined in large part by what they exist for or what is of ultimate importance within those worlds.

Communities are structured around goals and differ from each other and in terms of what the members care about most. At the most superficial level, the community of retailers and customers exists for the sake of economic exchange. Whether the interaction and relationship goes any deeper than the handing over of money and gathering-up of purchases may depend in large part on what part of the country the store is located in. How I am expected to act, to think and to feel as a customer is determined by the patterns that make up the world of retail exchange. What members of this transient community of sellers and buyers most care about, what counts and true and good, is utility or being useful to others so that they in turn will be useful to me. This may sound cold and heartless, but as the saying goes, it’s just business. And, without it we would all be at a great loss.

At a deeper level, the social world of friends and acquaintances involves a degree of utility, friends do wish to be helpful to each other, but it differs from the world of economic exchange by the interest and enjoyment each person takes in and from a common activity and the presence of other people. Attending a book club is quite different from visiting a bookstore. In parts of the country where a trip to the grocery store may involve catching up with the retail clerk, economic activity is subsumed within the social world. Stopping in at a bookstore may well turn into a book club meeting. In other contexts, interactions with employees of large corporations or conversations with telemarketers reading from scripts feel phony. Here social interactions feel like a veneer in the service of the economic objectives rather than a genuine interest in and enjoyment of each other and the activity itself. How we operate socially with friends is very different from how we operate simply as customers and business partners. The worlds differ, the expectations differ, the patterns of thought and feelings differ, and the values differ. Consequently, we are different. What counts as true and good in my social world is doing things I enjoy with people that I like.

The highest form of community is one that involves some measure of usefulness, a high degree of enjoyment in each other, and an deep commitment to the well-being of the other. There is something self-referential in the orientation of people to each other in the worlds of economic exchange and social engagement. In the first, all hope to gain something useful. In the second, all hope to gain some enjoyment or pleasure. The highest form of human friendship is oriented to the what is true and good in the other person. In this world, what matters most is virtue. Starting and maintaining this kind of friendship requires the greatest change in me. To be a good friend, I must cultivate a capacity to think and care about my best friend or loved one first. A great friendship is one in which both friends prioritize the utility and enjoyment of the other and desire to see the other grow in virtue and goodness.

The degree to which couples and members of a family cultivate this highest form of friendship determines the goodness and happiness of the family circle. The degree to which individuals develop the skills needed to shift back and forth among these three worlds determines the emotional safety and happiness of the members. All three worlds are needed for a fully functioning society and the mark of full adulthood is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 1

A healthy work-life balance means being able to move, not simply between two different environments, but two different frames of mind and heart. Discovering the difference in ourselves between the patterns in conscious living that make up a person’s work-mode and home-mode makes that shift easier and more peaceful for everyone.

A pattern is the way in which diverse elements are organized in an overall structure, and conscious living is a structure in which we organize the elements of thought, feelings and actions in a particular pattern. This fact of daily living is illustrated in how people speak about an artistic or a scientific mindset or refer to the difference between street-smarts and book-smarts. The notion of patterns in conscious living includes but goes deeper than popular beliefs about multiple intelligences. These patterns, for example, do not just organize how individuals think, feel and act, but also organize these elements in cooperation with others. They are patterns in social living that result in the different worlds in which we live, the worlds we are constructing together.

In subsequent posts in this series I will offer some ideas about the different patterns of thinking, feeling and caring that make up the different worlds of work and home. I will also suggest some ideas related to questions about establishing a work-life balance just to bring out the relevance of the larger questions. So the purpose of this first post is just to suggest some ways of navigating a common transition in everyday life, the transition between work-mode and home-mode.

Transitioning from work to home can be difficult. For some it is a time of high anxiety. Clinicians have noticed that many of a couple’s most heated and sometimes violent arguments begin during this crucial time of transition. Studies also suggest that a blurring of work and family roles is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Intuitively we might image that exhaustion, hunger and stressful commutes, along with left over negative feelings from work itself, contribute to the heightened tension and risk of explosions at home.

But psychologists have begun to suspect something else. Moving from work to home is not simply a change in location. It is a transition from one world with its rules, expectations, roles and cues to another world in which everything is different. It is a transition that requires interior adjustments in ways of thinking, emotional expressions, skills and responsibilities. And, it is a transition that often enough must be navigated in a moment of exhaustion and limited personal resources. Understanding this reality and how to manage external demands and internal challenges is part of what we mean by work-life balance. Balance is not just about spending more time at home. It is about developing a capacity to really be at home.

The organizational structure and culture of a workplace may be fairly hierarchical. Expected and acceptable behaviors may be clearly tied to one’s status, rank, or role. Rewards, approval and esteem may be doled out strictly on the basis of performance and output. At home, spouses and children are rarely impressed with one’s title or latest productivity measures. Roles and responsibilities are often flexible and functionally determined by who happens to be in a position to do what when. Decision-making may not follow clearly defined protocols but emerge in some indefinable manner.

In making the transition from work-mode to home-mode, individuals often find it helpful to provide themselves with cues and rituals that help orient them to the new world in which they are entering. These rituals prepare the body and release feelings and affects from the routine necessary for work life. They prepare the intellect to attend to and think about the people, objects and tasks that populate the world of the home. They help the heart and soul to re-orient to the unique values that constitute family life.In a time when for many people ‘work’ and ‘home’ are the same place, shifting gears may be an even more impossible task.

Couples who do not even notice the difference between the two worlds are at greatest risk for conflict or emotional disengagement.

One way to help transition from work-mode into family-mode is to make use of specific routines that help the body and mind to make the adjustments. Couple therapists encourage clients to develop boundary marking habits and rituals of connection that help effect a transition from work to home. These include:

• Physical reminders to leave work at work, such as taking off work badges and removable insignia or uniforms

• Values-informed scheduling, for example, blocking-off “family-time” or “date-night” on the calendar

• Self-Care and relaxation is helpful and may take many forms and a bit of creativity can pay great dividends. This may include taking time to Admire nature, Listen to music, Take a walk, Meditate and pause for a few deep relaxing breathes, Say some prayers, Shower or bathe

• Rituals of re-connection with loved ones, which may be as simple as a long hug or more strategic as meeting a spouse on ‘neutral ground’ like a restaurant or café

• Most importantly, talk with your spouse and family about home-work boundaries

Individuals who work from home may have to become creative. There are many ideas out there. For example:

• ‘Commute’ to and from work by walking around the block

• Maintain a dedicated workspace in the house that you can leave and forget about

• Set an alarm that sounds at the end of your day or shift

• Change into and out of work clothes (imagine, if you are old enough, Fred Rogers changing his sweater and shoes!)

Above all couples are encouraged to talk together about home-work boundaries, and what each needs at the period of transition.