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Friday, May 28, 2004

Take Your True Self to Work Day via FC

Compartmentalizing your life can be more than unproductive -- it can be unhealthy. Consider bringing your whole self to your work and move beyond work-life balance.When I go to work, it's as if I leave my true self locked in the car. I go up in the elevator and emerge as Work Self. If I leave in time, I can get back to the car and reclaim my true self. But if I'm too late, by the time I get there, my true self is just out cold." That's how a salesman I hired described his life in corporate America. He had to be two different people. Work didn't want his true self, but he fought hard to keep it alive. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he didn't. A person compartmentalising life,has a work self and what he thinks of as his true self, carefully locked away from each other. This kind of compartmentalization is sometimes called splitting by psychologists, and it has a bad reputation. Once you split off a part of yourself, what's left rules without checks or balances. It can come as no real surprise that when one investigates the lives of many criminals -- white-collar criminals and war criminals alike -- the integration of their work and home lives is strikingly absent. The problem with compartmentalization, it turns out, is that it offers its proponents the opportunity to lie. It helps good people to do bad things.compartmentalization is a characteristic, even a requirement, of so many corporate cultures. What else are corporate fetishes like 24-hour deal negotiations, all-night coding, and corporate retreats if not training for leaving your real self at home? Punishing schedules, endless travel, and repeated relocations are designed to teach you tolerance for leaving your private values in the car. In cultures like these, it can come as no surprise when executives lose their sense of right and wrong; they were trained to lock it away long ago.If we take our whole selves to work, we can transform the culture and sustain ourselves. Think about this the next time you go to the work. When you leave your home or lock and park your car, what are you leaving behind? Take your whole self to work tomorrow and watch what happens.

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Sadagopan's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Trends,Thoughts, Ideas & Cyberworld