While you don’t have control over an asshole employer, if you have one, most of us who are of sound mind and body have the capacity for personal responsibility.

Balance is a misnomer. We must own the moment and have mindful presence at work, at home, in high school halls, in shopping malls – be cool or be cast out (sorry, channeling Rush).

Every frickin’ one. It’s takes a lot of work and courage as you say, but we can do it.

My philosophy is that there is only life and the only choice is how you use it. If you are going to let the company define it, what do you think is going to happen?

@Bohdan—You have good taste, my friend.

I’ve been that guy by the beach with a laptop–it can be a little weird traveling on business in a resort area. You can tell who’s who by their choice of footwear. Anyway, in my case, the choice was between being at the beach with a laptop, or being in a cubicle with a laptop. There may have been a drink with an umbrella involved, too. You know what? I’ll take that over the office any day, but I also wouldn’t confuse it with a vacation.

I think that connective technologies like Blackberries, email, etc. are moving us to a more part-time world. In the past, it was difficult if not impossible to effectively coordinate resources unless you brought everyone into a big building for eight hours every day. Part-time work was either focused on a few niche skills or came at a very big income hit versus the same person in the same job on a full-time basis.

Likewise, I have a number of friends who have had their hours and pay reduced proportionally as a cost-cutting measure in the past year. While the income hit hurt at first, a good number have said that once they got used to it, they’re dreading going back to a 5-day work week. Likewise, companies are learning how to integrate part-timers in ways that they haven’t before, and this will stay with them. All of this is pretty new, and I think technology and culture have enabled it.

That being said, I think these changes and flexibilities will also mean that there will be increasing rewards for the type-A’s of the world who keep their bluetooth earpiece in at night and look forward to vacations because it gives them time to work uninterrupted. They will be able to effectively manage and coordinate larger amounts of resources, and that level of immersion will, as always, confer certain benefits. One could argue that this is being seen already with trends in pay in the upper ranks.

To the extent that people are often more concerned with relative rather than absolute status, this could to lead to considerable friction if the part-timers come to feel that they are seen as inferiors. So a lot of this is going to come down to which companies learn how to integrate the two cultures effectively.

the other problem = those a-hole leaders who use every opportunity to reference in public how late they were in the office, or the issue they had to deal with over the weekend, etc. stop wearing your timecard as a badge of honor…your not impressing anyone!

@RoundSparrow – Amen. What we control is our perception. We take control of our time by taking control of our minds. Buddha would be happy.

@Laurie – I love everything you write, you are a breath of fresh air.

I will say something that I didn’t write in the survey: companies can suck it if they think that we’ll accept 24/7 blackberries when the economy gets better and we get nationalized healthcare. They’ll lose that battle.

Sounds like you are a little mini-God who who wants to make life his little oyster and whip it into your form! Boring, the USA has had that attitude for a long long time and parroting is not what life is about.

How about pick up that sand, let it run through your fingers. Look at the waves move. Look at yourself. Acceptance, affirmation, enjoying what it IS – every aspect of life. There’s your balance.

The ultimate balance is to toss out “good and bad” and love it all.