Over the last two years, I have written several blogs on how to embed things that are important to me as an individual into the workplace to ensure I can function optimally: what I call my strategic acts of selfishness. Up to this day, I plan my workouts to better balance my energy at work, I trigger myself by learning new things every year to stay alert and open for innovation, I learn languages for fun and through that understand my colleagues and customers better; private passions help me fully thrive at work.
Over this last Christmas break, I started reflecting on the opposite, wondering — which skills and experiences from the workplace could I leverage at home? I already know that I am a happier person when I can contribute to something meaningful, have interesting interactions at work and feel that I can develop. But I wanted to expand my thinking beyond those points.
I wondered, do rough business challenges increase my resilience and therefore benefit me when I face challenging private situations? Does experience in analysis and strategy help reflect more effectively and thus help to take the distance that allows clarity? Do interpersonal communication trainings also enrich conversations with friends?
The answer is clearly yes. There are several areas where learnings from the workplace enrich my life also privately. When I thought more about it, I identified the following areas:
Time Management.
Like at work, I have become more structured during the weekend. I started by making lists of to-dos — and even though this is hardly rocket science, the way I approach my time off has changed since I started work. I procrastinate less and tend to start with the least interesting things that still need doing. Having that out of the way creates space for the fun activities that can be enjoyed even more. Apparently, increases in our perceived control over our time have a positive impact not only on our working performance but also on our at-home satisfaction (Journal of Educational Psychology).
This perceived improvement of our time management has several positive spin offs, an important one being the positive impact on eating habits. Even without meal prepping planning more consciously leads to our eating less fast food and more fruit and vegetables. The more consistent meal patterns are, the more they are associated with higher diet quality and subsequently increase levels of fitness and stable body weight (American Journal of Health Behaviour, 2012).
So, by honing our time management skills at work, we may feel as though we have more control of our schedules at-home and maintain healthier habits.
Emotional Intelligence
Professions that involve high levels of interpersonal connection such as teaching or customer-facing and people leadership roles require well-developed emotional intelligence. Improving these skills in the workplace leads to both better professional outcomes and improved personal relations.
In addition, the improved psychological resilience acquired during times of professional stress is something that people can benefit from privately, given that the psychological resilience developed in the aftermath of multiple negative life events has been shown to benefit emotional self-control and particularly emotional self-management (Personality and Individual Differences, 2011).
Most impactful for me have been personality communication trainings. Like most people, I have followed several trainings at work on how to communicate optimally with people with different personality profiles — whether it be MBTI, Insights or any other methodology. Being more aware of how people communicate under stress and how to better recognize what drives people is something that has been extremely useful when going through tough relationship situations in my personal life. Whereas I used to be more emotional with the occasional outburst, the fact I have learned how to stay calm and communicate more effectively has had a very positive impact on some very challenging private discussions. Like many people, I still have much to learn and improve, but I am more constructive when I have challenging dialogue.
Strategic Acts of Selfishness
The Strategic Acts of Selfishness I have written about earlier pay dividends both professionally and privately. Just as I am not able to stay focused and happy at work when I do not work out enough or lack sleep, I am not able to be there for my family, friends nor myself under the same circumstances. Therefore, tactics such as working out, healthy eating, and ensuring enough sleep are the best gifts one can give to oneself — and the evidence of this just keeps growing.
Physical activity programmes have been among the few organisational interventions that show convincing effects on absenteeism, but physical activity could also be encouraged more generally. By adapting organisational interventions to capitalise on and encourage personal individual interventions outside the workplace, stress management in the workplace may be less necessary (BJ Psychiatric Bulletin 2016).
Those who can address their workplace stress and canalize negative emotions will avoid creating strain in their personal lives. Buffering work and home with stress-reducing activities such as exercise, meditation, or something else that separates the two worlds — think singing, arts or whatever you like — will help people avoid the spill-over effect that occurs when workers carry professional strain over into their lives at home (summarizing findings from Journal of Applied Psychology, 2018)
By ensuring we are strategically selfish we can maintain better relationships at home and improve our wellbeing.
Is there a risk of becoming robotised?
But is there no risk to this? When we focus so much on what we can leverage from work at home, do we not risk becoming too business-like or even robotized at home?
I do not think so; after all, the boundaries between work and private life have been decreasing dramatically over the last decades due to mobile technology. Therefore, I think we will only be able to function optimally both privately and professionally if the way we deal with the good and the bad times is natural and in sync with who we are, regardless of whether that is at work or at home. That means bringing our true self to work and leveraging learnings from how we act during work at home. The more we get to know ourselves though all the different interactions we have, the better we will be able to function in all types of situations and the richer our interactions will be.
Seen as such, leveraging professional learnings privately is another strategic act of selfishness.
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