As a digital well-being coach and trainer, I often get rather blank looks when I say what I do for a living. "Digital well-being? Sounds interesting, but what does it mean?"

To me, digital well-being is the intersection of the things I believe in and that get me out of bed on cold winter days (like today); making the most of digital, work-world balance, and having freedom and flexibility in my business.

I believe that the World Wide Web and internet have given us unprecedented opportunities as business owners, workers, and people, but that we do not always make the most of them. Digital Well-being is about harnessing the awesome power of the internet to fulfil your work and life objectives and to design your business to suit your lifestyle.

Even since I picked up Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek, I have been convinced that it is possible to create new business models and new ways of working from digital. Businesses no longer need their staff to be sat behind a desk from 9 to 5 yet this still remains the status quo even through flexible working improves employee productivity and happiness.

With digital we can increasingly choose who we work for and how we create value and meaning in our work. It's never been easier to use the social web to set up your own microbusiness - all the tools are free, you just need a good idea. A digital microbusiness can enable you to work on something you are passionate about rather then having to leave your values at the door when you go to work.

With digital we can choose where and when we work. With faster broadband speeds, cloud computing and communications technologies such as Skype, you can choose to work from any where you like - your front room, your local cafe or another country. After the success of Amsterdam last winter and as someone who tries to practice what she preaches, I am relocating to Lisbon for five weeks in December/January to write, hang out and get a fresh perspective for 2012.

In the UK, we seem to be working longer and longer hours and our digital friends of mobile, laptop and iPad mean that we are never far from our work. When you receive hundreds of emails each day, it's tempting to spend our evenings on the couch head buried in our device instead of being with our family. Digital Well-being is using the web to work better, not longer; making smart digital choices that work for you. It's about taking control of your email inbox, making your social media into a fun habit not a time suck, and using the right digital tools and platforms so you can be super effective.

Digital Well-being is about recognizing that we live in a world full of ‘screen time’ and having the awareness and skills to balance our on and offline worlds. Getting offline is essential, for our health and for our relationships.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your digital well-being, then do join me and a small group of friends for a cosy morning at The Hub Islington (with it's roaring wood fire) on Thursday 1 December. It will be 100% offline and great coffee is assured!

Early Bird tickets end today at midnight.

Last weekend, Alex and I travelled to a tiny community called Angsbaka in central Sweden to a conference/festival on living sustainably.

I was there to give a talk on how digital is changing the way we work and also to give a workshop on my programme Mindful at Work (which took place in a round strawbale house - lovely energy!).

The tagline of FuturePerfect was 'an adventure in living well' so I took as my starting point how we can 'work well' especially how digital can facilitate this.

Here in the UK, but increasingly in Sweden as well, the way we are working isn't working. We create lifestyles and behaviours for ourselves that are unsustainable for our planet and that don't make us happy in the long term. The price of maintaining a certain type of lifestyle is having to work long hours or stay in a job you hate but pays well.

“There is more to life than just increasing its speed.”   Mathatma Gandhi

A second issue is that when we are working, many of us are not working very effectively. We create mountains of busywork to keep us from doing our Great Work. Increasing emails, social media and our 24/7 connected culture through our mobile means that we never really switch off from work.

But instead of digital being part of the problem, I see its potential to be part of the solution.

With digital we can increasing choose who we work for and how we create value and meaning in our work. It's never been easier to use the social web to set up your own microbusiness - all the tools are free, you just need a good idea. A digital microbusiness can enable you to work on something you are passionate about rather then having to leave your values at the door when you go to work.

With digital we can choose where and when we work. With faster broadband speeds, cloud computing and communications technologies such as Skype, you can choose to work from any where you like - your front room, your local cafe or another country. You can downshift to the country without having to worry about finding work in rural communities or downshift in the city and work less.

With digital we can choose who to work and collaborate with. We can connect with people on the other side of the world and expand our market globally.

And this is only the beginning. The internet is barely 20 years old and we are only now starting to see some of it's potential.

The overall consensus at FuturePerfect was that by living sustainably we can actually live better and happier lives and I think that our working practices have a huge part to play in this. Everyone has to make a living somehow, but if more people can transition to having a freer and more flexible working life that creates value for others, then we are on the right track.

Digital can be a real enabler of this: an adventure in working well.

About 15 years ago I picked up the seminal book by M. Scott Peck called The Road Less Travelled. In the book Dr. Peck suggests ways in which confronting and resolving our problems, and suffering through the changes, can enable us to reach a higher level of self-understanding.

For me the core message of the book was about taking responsibility for your own life rather than blaming external circumstances.

The title of the book was influenced by the poem by Robert Frost – ‘The Road Not Taken’ which has also been a huge influence on the way I live my life. The last three lines of the poem have always resonated with me:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

 

I took the one less travelled by,

 

And that has made all the difference."

I was reminded of my core belief when I stumbled upon a guest blog post the other day on lifestyle designer Cody McKibben’s blog Thrilling Heroics entitled The Road ‘Most’ Travelled is Fricken’ Dangerous Man. 

The author Jonny warns of the dangers of the road ‘most’ travelled in one hilarious sentence:

“School – Work - Eat Some Strawberry Pie – Die.”

Yikes.

For many people the road most travelled is education (school then university or college) followed by a steady climb up the career ladder. The addictive pull of a regular salary check (I remember what that was like!) keeps us in jobs that we hate because we have mortgages to pay and new shoes to buy. Time and time again when I speak to my friends about their jobs, they sound frustrated and trapped but the alternative i.e. taking the road less travelled is too scary for most.

So what does the road less travelled look like for me:

Having a flexible, fulfilling and sustainable working life that enables me to live my whole life to the fullest.

For example this year my flexible working life has enabled me to:

• Work from anywhere I like, whether that’s the comfort of my front room, the park on a sunny day or a co-working space or coffee shop for company.
• Not count how many days of annual leave I have left – instead I take time off when I want to.
• Pick and choose projects I want to work on and people I want to work with.
• Spend a month at co-working space The Hub in Amsterdam researching and writing about mindfulness at work.
• If the sun is shining (it does sometimes!), to take the afternoon off now and again and go hang out.
• Plan a six week trip to India in the winter to escape the cold (woohoo!).
• If I am tired and unfocussed to have the flexibility to go take a nap, grab a yoga class or go for a walk on the canal.
• Have the time to take on pro-bono work for social enterprises doing amazing work.
• Have a go at planting my front and back terraces with leafy veg and herbs to provide some of our weekly food (thanks to Mark at Vertical Veg for all his advice!).
• Take the whole month of August off to write my new book The Business Yogi: How the Science of Yoga Can Help You Be More Productive, Happy and Healthy at Work (watch this space).

Interested?

Here are some ideas on how you can start to build flexibility into your working life:

• Keep your business overheads low to zero. Work at home or join one of the low cost shared workspaces in your area. Use outsourcers rather than permanent staff members to keep your fixed costs down. Not having fixed overheads means that all the money coming into the business is profit.
• Combine work trips with play by extending your trip by a few days.
• Rent your property when you are away – we rent our gorgeous flat in central London through AirBnB when we go away (which tends to cover most of the trip!). 
• Live a minimalist lifestyle – I gave up buying new clothes and shoes about five or six years ago and have never looked back. I use charity stores and clothing swaps to keep my wardrobe updated for a fractional of the price. For minimal living ideas and inspiration check out the mnmlst or Rowdy Kittens blogs or Leo Babauta's ebook The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life.
• Use a simple cash flow forecast spreadsheet to predict when money is coming into the business so you can forward plan.

The road less travelled can be a scary place with uneven surfaces, unknown bends up ahead and strange noises from the bushes. But it’s a real way of living your life to its fullest.

The road will still be there if you need to get back on that path. Why not take a look at a different way?

[image with thanks to Nicholas_T via CC]

 

This is one of my favourite videos of the year so far.

Chade-Meng Tan, Jolly Good Fellow at Google (that is his actual job title!) talks about how compassion in the workplace is good for people and great for the bottom line.

A compelling business case for more compassion in the workplace. Chade-Meng - I salute you!

This week I am reading a great little book. Called The See-Saw: 100 Ideas for Work-Life Balance, it is billed as a challenging new handbook for 21st century life. Clearly something right up my street. My first thoughts were that it was just for working mums and as a childless woman I was not sure if it was for me.

But the book contains some great advice for everyone - those with families and not, workers and full-time carers, about balancing the different demands of work and life. I think it is fair to say that women find the 'See-Saw' more challenging then men. The author Julia Hobsbawm outlines research that shows that women, even when they work full-time, still take on the majority of the responsibility for housework and childcare. This is certainly the case in my household, something that does not sit well with my feminist values!

At the risk of being controversial (OK go on then), us women do need to realise the part that we play in this. We take on responsibility for household stuff because we are generally quite good at it. Most of us were brought up helping around the house, preparing meals and seeing what needed to be done. Our lovely partners do not sometimes have our years of practice. I clearly remember the first time as a teenager that I had to cook rice for the family dinner. I stormed out of the kitchen in frustration as I didn’t know how to do it. I get frustrated now when my partner, in his rare forays into the kitchen is constantly asking for help, but I need to realise he hasn’t cooked rice or (insert dish here) hundreds of times.

Many of us ladies will also admit to being perfectionists. We like things to be done in a certain way whether it’s cleaning the bathroom or watching what our children eat. When we let others take responsibility we have to let them do things in their own way which, invariably, will be different to the way we would do it. Think of it like a manager-staff role – we all hate to be micro-managed!

Perhaps we also need to apply the principles of Good Enough which I advocate in my work with clients not only to our working lives but to our home lives too. Just as we have to make a decision that we have to let some things go if we are going to cope with our increasing work pressures (Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Work Week talks about The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen), we need to apply this to our home life as well. As women we are very good at beating ourselves up about being perfect. Let’s give that a rest shall we?

We are truly a generation of women who are lucky that we have so many choices but sometimes it seems that all this choice has just meant more work and more stress instead of less. I think we need a new paradigm for working and living if men and women are to lead truly equal lives in today’s society. I will be writing about what this could be in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, if you would like some helpful tips on how to get off The See-Saw, do have a read of the book.

 

The Australian, straight-talking author of "Fat, Forty and Fired" and "Overworked and Underlaid", Nigel Marsh on how to make work-life balance really work. Funny and informative.

Glab a cup of tea and take a well deserved break.

Enjoy.

Most entrepreneurs I know hate the term 'work-life balance'.

"My work is my life" they cry. If you love what you do for a living, and hopefully most entrepreneurs are firmly in this category, why stop working at 5pm? When you are building a business there is always more work you can do. No-one is making you do it. It's your choice.

This attitude completely resonates with me and last year I found myself regularly working until 8 or 9pm until my partner got home (he's an entrepreneur too). There were emails to send, blog posts to read, people to connect with on Twitter. What's a few more hours on the laptop? Is this a problem?

Well, yes and no.

Working long hours, especially if you are building a business, is sometimes necessary. You've got to put the work in to get where you want to go. What can happen, however, is this way of working becomes a habit and our Work-World balance gets out of kilter.

What is Work-World Balance?

Work-World balance is different for everyone but common themes would be maintaining social bonds, looking after our bodies, and fulfilling our minds.

When we are working too hard we can start to neglect our social relationships, whether that is family or friends. We decide to work late again instead of getting home for a family dinner; we cancel after work drinks with friends as connecting with our fans and followers online seems more important; and even when we are with family and friends we are not really present but are continually checking our phone for updates.

Sometimes it is our health we neglect. This is all too familiar in a work-obsessed city like London. In contrast, my month in Amsterdam was an eye-opener - at 5.55pm everyone downs tools and off they head home for dinner! I would suggest that our Work-World balance is off when we start to miss our regular exercise classes or sports due to work or when we regularly don't make time to cook a proper meal and grab a takeaway instead.

Work-World balance is also about connecting with the world around you, doing the things you love (apart from work!) and trying new experiences. Our Work-World balance is off when we don't travel and experience new cultures; when we never get around to reading those books on the nightstand; when we miss a great exhibition or show because we didn't make the time to see it.

As entrepreneurs, we tend value ourselves by how busy we are, by how many emails we deal with, by how many followers we have. When we make a conscious decision to examine why we are working the way we do and perhaps work less, we can feel that our value is threatened. I don't have the answers but it seems to me that we need to find other measures of value and self-worth then just the long hours we put in.

So, what can we do to regain our Work-World balance?

1. Bracket your work

One of my major strategies this year is that of 'bracketing'. Instead of just scheduling your work commitments, try scheduling your 'play' time as well. Make appointments, preferably with others, that you will want to keep. Book for that show on a Tuesday evening with your partner, invite friends around for a mid-week supper, go running with a buddy every Friday before breakfast. Personally, by bracketing my work in this way, I have found that I am actually getting more work done as I have a self-imposed deadline most evenings.

2. Plan, Don't Barcode

'Barcoding' is when we fill our day with back to back activities, tasks and meetings (our diary looks like a barcode, hence the name). This leaves little space for our daily digital activities such as dealing with email or connecting on Twitter, or for the unexpected tasks that naturally crop up, pushing these tasks into the evening. I find it helpful to leave space everyday so that work does not feel overwhelming.

3. Be Mindful

Another strategy is mindfulness and paying attention. We need to continually question what we are doing at work and see if it is creating value for us and our customers. Set little reminders for yourself to ask "am I being productive or just active?” By starting to examine my work in this way, I can see more clearly what my high leverage activities are and what I am wasting time on.

Over to you

How is your Work-World balance?

What strategies do you put in place to ensure that you keep balanced?

[Image with thanks to D Sharon Pruitt via Creative Commons]

 

This week, I am reading Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow - how a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed.

It's a wonderful book, with great insights on topics such as the Slow Food movement started in the small town of Bra in Italy to slow cities and the 'slow' medicine of complementary and alternative therapies . But of course, Chapter 8 on 'Work: The benefits of working less hard' immediately caught my eye.

London-based journalist, Honore tells amusing anecdotes about how since technology (in it's broadest definition) began, mankind have been looking forward to the Age of Leisure. It appears that Benjamin Franklin and Tim Ferriss had something in common - they both thought that with the benefit of technology, man should only have to work four hours a week.

But, of course, the opposite seems to have happened. Not only are we working longer hours than ever, but with broadband and smartphones, we are more connected than ever to our work, and the line between when work ends and life begins is becoming increasingly blurred. And this is not just an issue for employees. Most entrepreneurs I know feel incapable of not checking their email or work voicemail outside work hours.

Read the rest of this post »