and i decided that i would try and turn my life around in particular i decided i would try to address the thorny issue of work life balance
so i stepped back
and four young children
but all i learned about work life balance from that year
was that i found it quite easy to balance
work and life when i didn 't have any work
so i went back to work
and i 've spent these seven years since
the first is if society 's to make any progress on this issue we need an honest
all the discussions about
only serve to mask the core issue
which is that certain job and career choices
are fundamentally incompatible
with being meaningfully engaged on a day to day basis with a young family
now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the situation you 're in
and the reality of the society that we 're in
leading lives of quiet screaming desperation
to enable them to buy things they don 't need to impress people they don 't like
if you don 't design your life someone else will design it for you and you may just not like their idea of balance
it 's particularly important
this isn 't on the world wide web is it i 'm about to get fired it 's particularly important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation
now i 'm not talking here just about the bad companies the abattoirs of the human soul as i call them
because commercial companies are inherently designed
to get as much out of you as they can get away with
on the one hand putting childcare facilities in the workplace is wonderful and enlightened
on the other hand it 's a nightmare it just means you spend more time at the bloody office
we have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life
that we choose upon which to judge our balance
before i went back to work after my year at home
i sat down
detailed step by step description
of the ideal balanced day that i aspired
and it went like this
do three hours work
do another three hours work
meet some mates in the pub for an early evening drink
meditate for half an hour
life when i retire
when my kids have left home when my wife has divorced me my health is failing i 've got no mates or interests left
in a balanced way
now i don 't mean to mock
but being a fit ten hour a day office rat
understand how that can be daunting but an incident that happened a couple of years ago gave me a new perspective
my wife who is somewhere in the audience
and said nigel you need to pick our youngest son harry up from school
we walked down to the local park
as i was walking out of his bedroom he said dad i went yes mate he went dad this has been the best day of my life
moreover i think it can transform society
we can change society 's definition of success
away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins
to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well lived looks like
生词表: