[Porsche-O-Phile]

Good question:

I've always been of the mentality that one should "work to live" and not the other way around. Work is there to facilitate the other things in life we find enjoyable.

However as I get older (and perhaps a little crustier) I find myself leaning a little bit more the other way. I certainly see that if I want to eventually go into private practice for myself (I do) I'm going to have to put a lot more time and energy into my work than I do now. I'm not a slacker by any means, but I work my eight honest hours a day and that's it - that's where my obligations end. I'll do overtime on rare occasions that call for it in the interest of getting a job done, but I firmly believe that overtime should be (1) compensated - and well (I make damn sure I'm paid fully for it when it happens) and (2) a rare exception - not the rule. If people are assigning you tasks that take more than eight hours a day/40 hours a week to complete, that's a management failure - not a failure on your part. I also firmly believe that places that burn people for 50, 60, 70 or more hours a week are setting themselves up for serious burnout and morale problems.

I absolutely positively do not mix work and social time. My own time is just that - my own time. I have never worked a weekend and won't. I've told my boss point-blank that if I had to, I'd stay until midnight on a Friday but the day he ever tells me to come in on a Saturday ("my time") he could consider it my resignation. Period. There's no excuse for it. I'm a HUGE proponent of the phrase "lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine". Maybe there COULD be a rare exception, but I have yet to encounter one. For now, we have a good understanding - he gives me adequate and reasonable timetables for job completion and I give him good results. That's the way it SHOULD work and if/when I go into practice for myself, that's how I'll treat MY people.

So what's the "right way"?

Well, two very different schools of thought. There are quite many "old school" Type X management types out there that view people as expendible resources. I tend to align myself with newer, Type Y management philosophy (the "take care of your people and treat them well and they'll take care of you and treat you well" mentality). I don't think there's any hard evidence to show that one philosophy works better than the other in terms of quantitative results (dollars). It probably varies considerably by location, type of business, work ethic of individual employees to begin with, etc. Sometimes a "whip cracking" approach is called for and works and yields good results. I hate doing it though. I tend to be a little more trusting of people and believe that if you allow them to prove themselves, they'll (generally) do so. The ones that require an excessive amount of monitoring, hounding and hand-holding I'd just assume fire outright and replace with better, more "self-starter" types that respond well to direction and task assignment alone.

How'd I get here?

Okay back on topic - I definitely think it's better to keep work and personal life separate. I definitely think it's better to think of your job as just that - a job (unless you have your own business, for example). It's a defense mechanism. If you make your job your life, you've got all the more to lose when you get screwed over or laid off - and that WILL inevitably happen. Take your job seriously though and work well, but don't make it your life. Just my $0.02 on it.