Work/Life Blur: Navigating the Grey  ## Metadata - Author: [[Community Pulse]] - Full Title: Work/Life Blur: Navigating the Grey - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/88dc8aac-ff2a-40c6-8401-2fae51d7c7c6 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Work-Life Balance Complexities** - Work-life balance can be disrupted by passion or toxicity in the workplace. - Voluntarily working late on exciting projects contrasts with being forced to work extra hours by poor management. Transcript: Jason Hand You're listening to the Community Pulse Podcast. Welcome your hosts, Mary Thangval, Jason Hand, PJ Haggerty, and Wesley Faulkner. Mary Thengvall Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Community Pulse. Chatting with PJ and Jason today because the topic of work-life balance came up and how sometimes that balance can be out of whack because we want it to be, which is a weird thing to say, But we're excited about the projects we're working on. But also acknowledging that sometimes it's fully because of a toxic workplace environment or toxic management and the expectations are too high. So let's dig in. Jason, you want to share kind of where you were coming from when you brought this up? Jason Hand Yeah, yeah, I would say, well, I think the whole impetus just sort of came at the start of our call, our weekly call, and PJ and I really noticing a little bit of a stark contrast in sort of Our feelings around work after hours or people reaching out to you after hours and just sort of like the conversation around like work-life balance and where do you draw those lines And set proper boundaries and I had brought up that this this past week has actually been a really busy tough week for me I've put in you know I haven't really counted the hours but I've Been working late till like 9 p.m. Or so pretty much every night this week. And I'm totally fine with it. It was a choice I made for reasons. I've thought it through. I've got great management and leadership who have, I've had meetings with every, you know, this week, like our regular meetings and they're aware of my situation and sort of being a Little bit overwhelmed and having to just put in some extra hours but at the end of the day i i'm also aware of the situation and if you know i would tell everybody the exact same thing they're Telling me is don't do that don't work late you're gonna burn yourself out but i know the projects i have on my plate i know i know the deadlines and i know what's going on in my personal life And I've already done the calculus and I'm okay with it. And anyway, just thought that seemed like worth exploring a little bit. PJ Hagerty I was requested to do some mandatory training outside of work hours. And this is something that I, if it was, if it was something similar to what you're saying, Jason, like, oh, I'm working on this project or I'm doing this learning or, you know, I'm just Trying to drill, drill down on a concept or whatever it is. Sure. Okay. No problem. But if it's like, Hey, this is training that is mandatory that doesn't really have anything to do with what I do. Um, and you're, you're telling me that, Oh, it's just four hours to take it. Okay. Well, but you know, I, I am currently an office employee. I have to commute. That takes three hours out of my day, not including like getting up to get ready to get through this rigmarole that is commuting. Um, then, you know, I have to go home. I require sustenance. I'm one of those humans. You know, I'm basic. But at the same time, it's ridiculous. But like, so I've got to cook. I've got to do all that. I've got to prepare a meal to bring to work. I've got to make a meal after I get home from work. I have to clean my clothes. I have to bathe myself. All of these things that when you then say, hey, could you do this extra four hours? It's like, I barely get four hours a day to myself. And you're asking me to do more. That to me, that's a line crossed. And I think in a way, it's the opposite of what you're talking about, Jason, where you're like voluntarily saying like, Hey, I want to get this done. This is a thing that I know that I can manage and it's fine. And your management is actually telling you, no, don't do that. And I'm in the situation where management is like, go do that on your own time. And I think that if, if that's the case, like that's, I think a very toxic situation. Yeah. Jason Hand Well, I think there's, go ahead, Mary. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to add that, that yeah. I mean, no, nobody's forcing me to do anything. I, you know, I'm definitely making choices that at the end are good for me, you know, and that's the part that I think nobody really knows what's good for you other than yourself. I mean, maybe sometimes you're wrong, but I think, yeah, it's a little bit different. Also something you know when it comes to like work life balance working remotely brings this other like element of i kind of work you know probably on average eight hours a day but they're Not eight consecutive hours like there's there's breaks in there and there's there's other things and that's sort of the privilege of working remotely but it also means that maybe There was something in the afternoon i needed to take care of and so because of that i'm gonna have to go put in a few hours later this evening not because i'm keeping score but because there's Stuff that i'm responsible for and i'd rather get it done tonight than to deal with that shit tomorrow yeah yeah 100 well and i think i think there's a balance there too where like been Mary Thengvall Working on you know organizing data and getting spreadsheets done and figuring out formulas and google sheets and everything else that like it's not difficult challenging time intensive Work but it is time intensive in the sense of like no I need to figure out these formulas and then apply it to the thousand different rows of data that are in here to make sure everything's Working properly and then go double check it and then make sure that things are concatenated properly and blah, blah, blah. And like, ([Time 0:00:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/adea5371-913e-4fe1-84c4-76dda7cf4508))