The Work/Life Flatspace
Just had an interesting insight with an entrepreneur friend of mine over the weekend. Alex is a technologist I'm working with on an early stage company just getting off the ground. We were colllaborating on an issue throughout the weekend. In the spirit of levity, I made an offhand comment about this weekend being heavily tilted towards the "work" side of the "work vs life" balance.
But, Alex made an interesting retort with total sincerity, "I disagree. The notion that there should be balance between work and life is the problem itself. Its all just life flatspace with different nodes of activity. The more connectivity and intensity amongst the nodes, the more robust and novel the life."
Alex is right. It seems small, but its a useful reframe of mental model, especially if you are burning really long hours per week and fighting this sense that your "out of balance"... Instead, one can consider that you have a flatspace that is your entire life of activity. Some things you fill it with are professional, some are recreational. Some take lots of concentrated effort, some are relaxing. Some are stressful, some are blissful. Combining all of them creates novelty and robustness for all of your life's activity. The emphasis then becomes one of shaping an aggegrate quality of experience, regardless of whether it might be have been parochially defined as "work" or "play".
