Degrees of Interleaving Work and Life

I’m a big fan of interleaving work and life. I do not like a lot of separation.

Work for me tends to happen all the time. Something comes up and needs addressing. Work does not obey a 9am-5pm schedule. It does not take breaks on the weekend.

However, I do not believe that constant exhaustive work is good or healthy. I’m also a fan of interleaving life into work hours. I adjust my schedule so that I get just as much fun time as anyone else.

That’s me. It’s just one way to do things. It’s often more common for sales and marketing types to be “always on” and interleave life more so than engineers.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are people that like to be very segregated in their hours. They like to work full days without interruption. Then they like to go home and not be bothered by work (even avoiding work emails and phone calls). There are benefits to that approach too. This type is more common among engineers.

In either end of the spectrum, there is always the clear need for:

1. Focused hours of work without interruption to make serious progress on projects
2. Refreshing play without the stress of looming work
3. Minimization of context switching costs; if it takes overly long to jump in and out of work or life interleaving becomes more difficult

In our company, we have always had a mix of people on this spectrum of interleaving work and life. I’m not sure if it is good or bad to have a mixed culture with respect to this. We have always managed to get along, but it can cause friction.

I’m boarding a plane right now to Europe for 10 days. I’ll be attending the EO Global Leadership Conference in Greece and the International Workshop on OpenCL in Bristol. I’ll mix plenty of play in with those events and am looking forward to the trip. I’ll be blogging from Europe the next 10 days.

I’m curious what you think about this spectrum. Do you believe one approach to be better than another?