4 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN ESTABLISHING WORK STYLE PREFERENCES

I only have one sibling, my younger sister Jessica. Jessica studied occupational therapy in college and has a gift when it comes to intuitively understanding and adapting to peoples’ learning styles. I’ll never forget when she was a camp counselor and her team of grade-schoolers was tasked with memorizing bible verses. She had one student doing hand gestures, another writing the verses out, another walking circles around the table, and yet another under the table verbalizing scriptures to memory. I loved witnessing my sister’s natural abilities in working with her students. It was truly inspirational!

We are beginning to see the workforce better accommodate employees, just as my sister accommodated her students. Flexible working hours and telecommuting are on the rise. With technology what it is today, it’s becoming easier and easier to work from anywhere. Additionally, as executives opt for more integration of their work and personal lives, they are beginning to trust their employees to work in this fashion as well. In fact, these statistics provided by careerswiki.com state that as much as 68% of the global workforce works remotely at least once a month with 18% of U.S. workers working remotely on a full time basis.

While I wouldn’t say that my work-life balance is fully integrated, my lifestyle is becoming increasingly so. In the video below I discuss a few things to consider when working with a fully integrated executive, as well as a few tips to consider when determining your own work preferences. 

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Check out the transcription:

Hey guys, I'm Annie of WholeAssistant.com, and today we're talking all about work-life integration and the things we consider when considering work-life integration.

So the world is moving into a place of just immense technology, and it's bringing the world closer together. And actually, a study was conducted by Zug Switzerland that stated that as much as 70% of the global workforce telecommutes at least once a week, with 53% telecommuting at least more than that, half the week.

So with these numbers and with this, I thought ... and with our executives and how they function, I thought it was worth our time to consider how we want to steer our careers and things to consider when considering full work-life integration. I know for me and my family, my husband's an executive and he telecommutes all the time because the company he works for does not have a centralized office.

And so ... and then my executive too, he likes to be on the go. He doesn't like to be tied down to an office. So there are a lot of benefits when considering complete and total work-life integration, but I just thought I would talk about a few things to consider when ... as we consider steering our career and choices we want to make moving forward for that.

So first of all, get clear on your priorities. We need to be honest with ourselves, and then we want to write these priorities down because externalizing your priorities makes them solid. It makes it something you can go back to and look at. And getting clear on your priorities will help with regards to how you're going to balance work and life and when we consider this work-life integration, how you're going to incorporate work and life together.

Now I personally ... I would say I'm somewhat integrated, but not fully. Like I'm not checking my ... I have very clear boundaries with myself, which is the next tip I have for you guys, is set very clear boundaries for yourself. So for me, this looks like not checking email in the evenings or weekends. Well, I do check some on the weekends, but really not checking them in the evenings after 6 or 6:30, because my family time is sacred and I want to be fully present with my family.

So that is a boundary that I've set up for myself. If my executive needs something after hours, he will text me. It's pretty rare. He's very respectful of my time and my boundaries with my family and all of that. So that's something you need to consider for yourself, are what are your boundaries? What are your non-negotiables?

And then because I run a blog in addition to the work I do for my employer, I have to set very clear parameters around where ... when I work for myself, and when I'm working for him. So I get up at 5 every morning and I'll work until about 8, and at that time I'll stop and I will start working for my regular position, which I also love, and that's the crazy thing. I love both equally. I could not imagine my life without either the blog or my executive, so that's a good position to be in.

And so it's just as I talked about writing your priorities down, it's also really good to write down your boundaries. There again, that externalizes it, that solidifies it, you can go back to it, you can share those boundaries with your spouse and then he can hold you to them or she can hold you to them. So yeah, I would consider ... like always write these things down because it just helps solidify it in your brain and it helps you stay accountable.

And then we want to openly communicate our expectations. My executive knows it's very important to me, my family time's very important to me, and I've got a lot going on in my personal life. So he knows that, and I'm very up-front with that. And then with my family, I also set clear expectations there, and we're constantly renegotiating our expectations when it comes to our time together, when it comes to our family life around work-life integration, primarily because my husband does work from home too, we have to set very clear parameters and boundaries around ... we have to set very clear expectations with one another around our work and life and balance, and it's just ... it's a constant renegotiation.

And then my third tip for you guys is to be fully present with regards to whatever you're doing. So whether you're working or spending time intentionally with family or your spouse, be present. Being in the moment with those we love, and even being in the moment with our work, can be very, very fulfilling, but we actually have to be fully, fully present and focused on what we're doing at that moment. And I know for me, this is hard, especially with email, especially after hours, because I tend to check it. But I try to keep that in check because I really do want to spend time with my family and be present with them.

So just to recap, you want to be clear on your priorities, you want to set clear boundaries for yourself, you want to openly communicate your expectations and be fully present. And I'm really excited about this trend for telecommuting because who wouldn't want to put in a load of laundry while they're working? Who wouldn't want to integrate some of it? Now I'm not saying it has to be fully integrated, but we're able to ... but as we negotiate work-life balance with ourselves and with our executives and with our companies, this is something to consider and it's also something to consider when you consider how you want to steer your career. What type of career do you ultimately want to have, if you're not already in the position you want to have? What type of position do you want to have, moving forward?

And I would say that as our executives integrate more ... are more integrated with their home and work lives, they're open more to us being more integrated with ours.

So yeah, just a few things to consider when considering this type of work-life balance. It may not be the correct type for you. I know for me, it's kind of tricky because I like working during the week and like all of that, but I do not ... I prefer not to work for my executive over the weekend. I prefer that to be family time and blog time.

Yeah, so as we navigate these things and as we negotiate and renegotiate, it's going to be interesting to see how the world turns out and where we're headed globally, in terms of work environments and stuff. It's constantly changing.

So I hope you guys have a great rest of your week, and I will be back here live on my Facebook page next Tuesday at 7 AM Mountain Time, and you guys have a great rest of your week.