Balancing Acts

John Perry Barlow

Cofounder, Vice Chairman, And Cognitive Dissident
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Pinedale, Wyoming

I'm the guy who wrote the Grateful Dead song with the line "Too much of everything is just enough." It sounded good when I wrote it 20 years ago, but I don't believe it anymore: Too much of everything is too much. But it's tricky to find a balance between just enough and too much. The more you get, the less you feel that you have. The faster I go, the faster I feel that I need to go. When I was a rancher, there came a point every day when I had to stop working -- simply because my body couldn't keep going. Work in the information economy is different. We can hammer ourselves endlessly -- or so we think. We're living in an era of explosive abundance. The challenge is to manage our freedom and to strike a balance in the face of endless opportunity. I've realized that I must find the discipline to say "No" more often. It sounds easy, but it's not. Just when I've convinced myself that what I have is more than plenty, the phone rings, and someone offers me something that I can't resist. But then I ask an important question: How thin can I spread myself before I'm no longer "there"?

John Perry Barlow (barlow@eff.org) cofounded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect privacy and freedom of expression on the Internet. Barlow has raised cows in Wyoming and written songs for the Grateful Dead. At present, he is a Berkman Fellow at Harvard Law School.

Linda Stroh

Director, WorkPlace Studies
Professor, Institute of Human Resources & Industrial Relations
Loyola University
Chicago, Illinois

We recently conducted a survey of 900 managers, and we found that people who work more also earn more. Those managers who worked 61 hours or more per week had earned, on average, about two promotions over the past five years. The financial, social, and emotional rewards of working -- and even of overworking -- entice us out of the house and into the workplace. We're all being seduced by what we can achieve.

This seduction isn't a bad thing -- unless it creates an imbalance in your life. The challenge, then, is to understand why you are overworking: Are you escaping something at home? Has your work style become just a habit? Or do you really enjoy what you're doing? Once you pinpoint what drives you, you'll be better at driving your own life.

Linda Stroh (lstroh@wpo.it.luc.edu) has helped more than 30 companies to develop policies related to work-family issues. In addition to her work as a professor, she serves as an academic adviser to the international personnel association.

Melinda Brown

Vice President and General Counsel
Lotus Development Corp.
Cambridge, Massachusetts

A few months after I was promoted to general counsel, I was dashing through the airport when I stopped to buy a book. One title caught my eye: "Care of the Soul," by Thomas Moore (HarperCollins Publishers, 1992). I grabbed it, immediately lost my composure, and began to cry. I'm a very self-contained person. But there I was, having a nervous breakdown in the airport. Over time, I began to understand why.

I was depressed. I felt that I had no control over my life. I spent every day giving -- to my work and to my family. There was no reserve left for me. I had gotten into a cycle where I was incapable of wringing one drop of time to nurture and sustain myself. As a member of my company's operating committee, I felt that I needed to be 100% accessible 100% of the time. I created a situation where I could never be "off."

To me, balance is an illusion -- and to have it as a goal is self-defeating. Instead, take advantage of whatever trade-offs you can make. I don't know how much faster and harder we all can go. There has to be a breaking point. Maybe then we'll be able to slow down and accept a certain level of tedium and repetition. We might have fewer toys, but we'd be able to simplify our world and to enjoy life.

Melinda Brown (www.lotus.com) became General Counsel of Lotus in 1996. Previously she was a senior attorney with the Lotus Notes product-development and marketing organizations.