Day: October 19, 2023

On Success and role models

Taylor Burian

When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

Every time this kind of question comes up I go through two mental processes. Who did I think about last time? Has that changed since?

Usually, I think about the last ten or so years of my life, and the people I’ve met in that time. Almost always I come back to two different people. My brother, and my father.

My Dad has led an eventful life. Many years of military service, corporate office job/life of the 90’s, and lots of education. In those areas he’s accomplished so much and when I look back on how I saw him during the years of each of those stages, I see a different man who is somehow still the same. Maybe it’s just that I got to see different sides of him and the way his core values and habits have been applied. Diligence, perseverance, and drive. Fairness, empathy, compassion, and love. All these things have been part of his success in life, and I see it in my brother.

My brother has been the one who has lived up to the image of our father the most. Although he’s the youngest of four kids, he’s managed to pull off most of the old “American Dream” better than the rest of us. A married, kids of his own, a car, and a home. He didn’t go into the military, our Dad forbid it and always said “I did the time so you wouldn’t have to,” but he’s followed a similar career path otherwise. Maybe not to the heights of Dad, but it was enough to get to where he’s at today. When I look at these two, I like to remind myself that they’re closer in reality to the success we should all strive for and not movie stars, celebrities, and corporate big wigs. Those kinds of people had a combination of luck and gaming the system. My family has busted their asses to get to where they are today. They are the ones I think about when I think “successful.”

Office life and how much time we actually devote to work

Taylor Burian

Digging through my drafts, I found a post I had started working on almost three years ago (oops…) and it stuck out to me as something I really wanted to talk about again. That post was about how many hours people actually devote to work in a day.

The premise behind that post came from a team meeting at work. At the time that I had started drafting that post there was an external non-profit type of organization that independently hosted monthly sessions for business professionals and leaders. Several people from my department would attend regularly and bring back notes to share during team and department meetings so that way even those who couldn’t attend weren’t totally missing out. At this point I’d like to remind you that 2020 was a bad year. COVID controlled our lives for most of that year, and I was “lucky” to be working remote, which I’ll circle back to shortly. Anyways, going out of the house and attending events was not encouraged but by November of that year things had loosened up here.

Anyways, I never attended any of those sessions. So I had to take what I could get from my coworkers. Over Teams and WebEx meetings. It was a great time.

So, with the background handled, circling back to the original topic. How many hours DO you devote to work? On the daily? Weekly?

The talking points and discussion materials provided at that session covered things that I knew in the back of my mind and I had previously brought up in personal discussions with friends and family. The subject wasn’t just about time in the office or at your desk. They covered things like travel time/commutes, morning and evening routines, meal prepping for lunches (if that’s your thing.)

When they talked about all of this, it brought to mind that people working a full time job will actually devote more time than they think they do simply because there are things that happen outside of work hours that we do for the purpose of supporting our work-life balance. We devote more time to work at the cost of time devoted to our personal lives.

Now, as to why I wanted to come back to this drafted topic. That’s because three years ago when I first started that draft, everyone at work was required to go remote and temporarily reduce hours by 40%. Starting back then, my work-life balance was shot. I spent so much time at home that the days blurred together. I didn’t, and to this day still don’t, have a separate space for me to work from when I have to work from home. It felt like I was devoted to work so much more, even though there were times I did so much less even if not by choice. I could get away with condensing my usual activities and routines because I wasn’t commuting. I was steps away from the kitchen and could cook lunch. I could take five minutes to go start a load of laundry.

Things have changed since then, and I’m more less back to the usual work routines I had pre-COVID. No more blurred lines. Work-life balance mostly restored. I have the option to work remote should I need or choose to, but I have otherwise gone back to the office full time because for me it provides a nice separation of work and my personal life.

The way things should be. At least, that’s how it is for me. What about you?