Pillow Book of Talmud Wisdom

Chapter 32 Enjoy Moderately, Work Moderately—Jews on Enjoyment (2)
Don't have illusions, do your career first and then take care of your family, or run your family first and then work hard.Many times when you have done the former, you will find that it is too late to do the latter.Therefore, you have to give up this kind of sequential thinking, and you should establish a sense of win-win at the same time.You may have different priorities at different times, but please remember that being biased does not mean being biased.Career and family can promote and complement each other.

Many people believe that a man can achieve a family by achieving a career, and a woman can achieve a career by achieving a family.It sounds reasonable, but can a man really have a happy family as long as his career is successful?Can a woman be happy if she really bury her head in her family?

Yes, successful men seem to be more likely to have a happy family.But we should know that if his family is happy, it must be the product of his hard work, not the result of a successful career.If he just keeps his head down on his work and ignores his family, sooner or later his family will ignore him and even betray him.A successful career only provides him with a possibility, and whether he can truly obtain happiness depends on his persistent efforts.

There is often such a prejudice in society that a woman who succeeds in her career will definitely suffer from family misfortune, and if she wants to be happy, she must retreat to the family.Is career really a stumbling block to a woman's family happiness?
Mary Wells Lawrence was an accomplished industrialist.After graduating from Harvard, she became the chairman of the advertising agency Wells Rich Green.She is well versed in business and knows how to work productively.In addition to running her thriving advertising agency, Lawrence worked as a housewife.She managed to fulfill both responsibilities very well.When Lawrence gets along with his family, he can forget about anything at work and just play the role of housewife.Lawrence is an excellent leader in the company and an out-and-out wife and mother at home.

Lawrence told us that nothing is impossible in this world, as long as you are willing to work hard, as long as you are willing to pay.It may be more difficult for women to balance career and family, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.No matter you are working hard outside or you have achieved success, you must always keep your family in mind and care about every family member.Because, you not only want to be a successful person, you also need to be a successful woman.

Balance is a dynamic balance, constantly moving from one balance to another.We cannot achieve an immutable state of balance, but need a constant effort to maintain it.The self has changed, the environment has changed, and the original balance will naturally be broken.If you are not good at adjusting and creating a new state of balance, your life will be thrown into chaos.

Six Steps to Balancing Career Success and Family Life
Balancing career and family is not an easy task. It requires both your intelligence and perseverance.You should arrange your time and energy reasonably, and communicate with your family often to seek mutual understanding while ensuring that the work is completed.You can and should share your troubles and joys with your family, so that they feel that the family is a team, sharing blessings and difficulties together.Don't have such a psychological misunderstanding, and bear everything alone in order not to burden your family.If you think and do this, you will only end up putting up a thick wall between you and your family.

You must not only understand that family and career are connected to each other, but also be able to distinguish career from career and family from family when necessary.You can't affect your mood at work because of some problems in your family, and you can't vent all your anger and anger at the company on your family members.Don't bring a ton of work home to slog away, and don't stubbornly stay at work on weekends instead of entertaining your loved ones and kids.You should understand that distinction is also a kind of balance.

The maintenance of balance requires your uninterrupted efforts, and you cannot take it lightly at any time.Serious problems can arise if you let your guard down.You have to always ask yourself, have you forgotten your family's birthday?How long has it been since the family watched TV together?You also have to reflect often, are you indulging in the sweetness of a small family and forgetting your career?Have you let family become a stumbling block to your career... The process of balancing never stops, and your efforts should never stop.

This kind of balance is a process, not a result, and we must constantly pursue from balance to balance.

Balancing work and family life is a challenge, and we need a step-by-step action plan to succeed.A professor at Harvard University proposed the following steps to balance family and career.Each step shatters fantasy, reveals reality, and lays out key success factors.

Step [-]: Rethink your priorities
Fantasy: We can achieve our professional goals and family goals at different times in our lives.

Reality: Career and family goals cannot be neglected, they must be accomplished at the same time.If we sacrifice our professional goals in order to achieve our family goals, then we are out of balance.Similarly, if we only focus on our career and ignore our family, we will also lose our balance.

At times, you may feel that you have to choose between a successful career and a family life.But extensive research shows that you can do both without giving up either of two things that are equally important in priority.The first step here is to ask you to establish such a belief: You can achieve both a successful career and a happy family within the same time frame; Time is used to achieve another goal.

You have to think carefully about what you value and what you want.You must be proactive and responsible in finding and maintaining a balance between your career and home life.

Being a successful person requires commitment to your career, which makes maintaining a balance between career and family life especially challenging.Career success means attaching many other requirements, which often complicate life.For example, successful people need to consider employees, customers, and suppliers. The demands of these people will increase their pressure; at the same time, they may also need to participate in more meetings, more business trips, more negotiations, and face More contradictions, in this way, the time left for the family is correspondingly reduced.

Notwithstanding the above requirements, success should be an asset, not a liability, and should play a positive role in maintaining the balance between career and family.This is because, for many people, the greatest value of success is that it gives us the opportunity to exercise our leadership and thus help us realize ourselves.

This challenge of exercising leadership requires us to define the balance we seek.The same qualities and skills needed to be rewarding in a career are also necessary to develop strong family relationships, and vice versa.

Balance is the process of constantly adapting to change and making adjustments.In the process, we strive to maintain a harmonious relationship between the two most important things in life—family and career.Because constant change impacts our lives, this balance can only be maintained with consistent effort.This is why we say that balance is a process, not a state.

Balance is not average. Balance does not mean that energy or time is divided between career and family.Some people find it balanced to devote 60 percent to work and 40 percent to family life, while others may choose to devote more attention to family.For this, you can make your own choice by following the steps outlined here.

Step Two: Pursue the Process of Creating Balance
Fantasy: Balance is achieved automatically.

Reality: Must be proactive and responsible, seeking work-life balance.Don't wait for someone else to bring you work-life balance.

Says Jensen: "I used to think that work-life balance was achievable after all without trying hard. I would adjust my schedule as much as I needed to. Then I realized that if I wasn't actively Actively seeking a harmonious balance between work and family life, work will dominate my life, especially for a competitive, sensational person like me."

Jensen made a common mistake.When he prioritizes events, he believes that the balance between career and life is a matter of course.In fact, it's one of the worst mistakes we can make.Achieving balance depends on pursuing a process that includes prioritizing events, achieving forward-looking expectations, defining boundaries for action, and setting internal standards.The bottom line here is that it's up to you to use your own perspective on what constitutes career and family success.

First, let's face up to the simple reality that career-life balance doesn't just happen, it's up to us to manage it.

Second, we should set the respective boundaries of work and life early on.Work can be like water, filling the space you give it.This means you have to set boundaries and limit the space your work can take up.

One way to set boundaries is to prioritize events.We need to know which things are the most important and which things we must give up.In the selection process, we have to consider both from the perspective of career and from the perspective of family.

Instead of worrying about gains and losses, we have to make big decisions about what we really want in life and stick to it, at least for a certain period of time.

Finally, define success on your own terms.As personal wealth grows, our concept of how much money is enough is likely to change over time.The more people we associate with who are wealthier than we are, the more we tend to think that what we have and where we are is not enough.Leaders in particular fall into this cycle of comparison as they advance in their careers.

Define success on your own terms, referring to internal standards: how you feel about yourself, how your family members feel about themselves, what you contribute to others, how you grow yourself, etc.Stop using external criteria—other people's success, income, status, wealth, assets, or acquisitions.

Step [-]: Make a choice with no regrets

Fantasy: We can later make up for what was previously set aside.

Reality: It's impossible, we can't fix it.We cannot turn back the clock if we obsess over our careers and miss out on our children growing up at the expense of our families.Conversely, if we abandon our careers in order to raise a family, it is basically difficult for us to return to the original career track, and we will lose the opportunity to achieve our career goals.

You need to make tough choices now, as balance is achieved by letting go of things you don't want so badly.The art of balancing career and family lies in minimizing the compromises that will allow us to be better at both.

How can this be done?The way to do that is to set things aside.These things seem to be very important to us, but they are not, including things that are good to do but okay not to do, and activities that have little meaning.They don't make you feel refreshed and in a better state of mind to do more important things.These things should take a backseat (or even fade out altogether, if they really don't matter in our lives).

At Harvard, we are often amazed to see how many people, after a few years of hard work, find that successfully completing their chosen courses outweighs many other things in life.In fact, many people recognize who, where, and what in their lives should come first.

As leaders, we tend to take on more responsibility than we can afford.Therefore, it is necessary for us to develop the skills to say "no" to certain duties that are outside the scope of responsibility.A small commitment can crowd out some of the most important things in our lives.If you like a new car, plans for a new home may fall through the cracks.Want to have another baby, and a new job may come to naught.If you want a new job, then further study may have to be foregone.

Let go of something you don't desperately want, and when you decide to let go, you don't have to have any regrets.The secret of a happy life lies in the necessary trade-offs, and we don't have to regret the things we can't perfect.

Step Four: Choose a Career That Can Achieve Balance
Fantasy: Regardless of family factors, choose any job or career that I like most, and I will eventually be able to find time and enjoy family life.

Reality: We must choose our jobs and careers carefully, making sure that the nature of the work allows us enough time to take care of the family.

(End of this chapter)