thoughts on work/life balance

On September 5th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

So last weekend I was in Enschede for Elmine2008 ( the un-conference of the birthday of Elmine Wijnia). It was a couple of great days with a lot of new faces and a complete outburst of new ideas.

As Ton said Elmine2008 was arranged because it's easier to arrange an event than to find one that fits your need.

My initial thought prior to the unconference was that we are actually discussing work/life balance because of the social surplus that we have since 2nd worldwar - a Social Surplus that makes us work harder ( a social surplus as discussed in Gin, Television and Social Surplus by Clay Shirky)

Adding to this, I was at a speech at Network008 in Odense this tuesday by Johan Peter Paludan (director of the copenhagen institute for future studies).

He really opened my eyes to this because as he stated "the company is the new village" - as selfemployed I think it's my peers that is my village. He also argued that it used to be a mystery to him why people was actually not revolting being watched by the "bigbrother society" all the time - but then again, it's in our nature to live in villages, where everybody knows what everyone is doing. The same goes with the connectedness with I think, most of the people participating in Elmine2008.

also Johan Peter told that if our great grand parents they could travel in time and they went and visited us today. They would be impressed. they would think we had it all. But at the same time, they would think we where crazy. Crazy because our life evolves around work. Naturally we don't "just" work in factories like they did in the start of the industrialized world. BUT they worked to support their life. Work was a minor detail. We work to identify ourselves and to keep progressing.

It is very interesting for me to see this shift in society. It makes you wonder - what happened ?

as Ton he putted it, it goes something like this: "I wake up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between I have my life, where some of it I am lucky to get payed for"...

I used to think the same - and I used to say that I set my workboundaries around my daughter.

After hearing Johan Peter Paludan - I think I am as confused as ever. It would be hard for me as an entrepreneur to accept that my work should be separated from the rest of my life. But - maybe it would be good to me to try ?

I don't know - what do you think ?

[worklifebalance, work, entrepreneurship, business, clayshirky, elmine2008, johanpeterpaludan, network008, Tonzylstra, elminewijnia] [14 comments]