Arguments AGAINST work-life balance

Hey hey!

Find here the second post on our newest topic (work), which not unlike the other one, stems from a couple of articles I found online about a rather controversial topic: "Is work-life balance overrated?" "is it a by-product of a kinda lazy society so afraid of leaving their comfort zone or a really legitimate aspiration?" Again, as in the previous post, you will be the judge, providing you read the opinions of career coach and entrepreneur Hamza Khan.

Here we go!

According to a recent survey by Ernst & Young, one-third of full-time workers globally say that managing work-life has become increasingly difficult. 9,700 workers in the United States, Germany, Japan, China, Mexico, Brazil, India and the United Kingdom revealed that they are working longer hours and harder than ever before, leaving very little time for much else. One could argue that we’re living in a golden age of workplace stress, largely due to the changing role of work in our lives. When work and life blend into each other, how can you begin to achieve an equilibrium that supports your physical, emotional and mental health? Perhaps it’s time to resist the binary construction (or fallacy) that is work-life and consider a new framework altogether. 

In an article for TechCrunch, Blake Commagere challenges the contemporary concept of work-life balance. He says that the problem is not that we don’t have a balance – the problem is that work is our life, and we are trying to incorrectly define the “life” portion as this separate thing for which we have to make time:

He states: "rather than seeking a traditional “work-life balance”, I simply reframed the things in my mind that are typically considered “life balance” as things that are part of my job. I began with a simple premise: at our startup, my productivity and efficiency are critical to the success of the company. This premise did not require any measure of cognitive dissonance – it is a premise I embraced prior to the thought exercise. The result to this premise is that: anything that reduces my productivity or my efficiency threatens the success of my company. Thus, anything that increases my productivity and/or efficiency is part of my job, and anything that reduces my productivity/efficiency is part of my job to not do".

When your work is your life, there’s no such thing as work-life balance. The traditional aspects of the 40-hour workweek are dying, and we must change if we want to increase our productivity and support our well-being. How you change is up to you, but sticking to the same old formula isn’t going to cut it. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, Kevin O’Leary,  in an interview for Business Insider supported Commagere’s idea that there is no such thing as balance: "If you’re going to take the path of an entrepreneur…you have to sacrifice some stuff, which is just unfortunate. But, that’s just the nature of what we’re all dealing with…The sacrifice is there’s no bounds during the period you’re growing the business".

Examine the phrase “work-life balance.” It’s predicated on two assumptions: 

1) Work and life are distinct entities, 

and 2) The “life” elements are equally, if not more, important than the work elements. 

A creative’s work is life; there is no line dividing work and life, because the creative doesn’t consider the work and life as two separate entities. You are a whole creative, and a whole person. Compartmentalizing is futile.

The key to finding balance is to be good to yourself in a way that supports your work. Eat well. Sleep well. Exercise. Nurture healthy relationships. And stop trying to tell yourself that you need to cram more convenience and experiences into the “remainder” of your 168 hours of the week. If you feel possessed by creativity and want to get your idea or product out to the world, it’s important to adjust your expectations: you can have work-life balance, as long as the two are one-and-the-same.

Again, I found this one a pretty interesting read, and I hope you did so, whether you support these views or not!

Article! "Why the Spanish aren't Entrepeneurs"

Hi there everyone!

Scouting the web for some interesting material on the relatively low degree of entrepreneurship among Spaniards, I came across this one, by American professor Jennifer Riggins. I think it makes a pretty compelling read and will hopefully lead to some interesting debates and discussions.

I have chosen a couple of the- in my view- most thought-provoking bits. Apparently, in the writer's opinion (and many of the experts mentioned, who seem to second her views), the Spanish in general, and the youths, in particular, may not be the most ambitious people ever! We have rather low aspirations, or so it seems! An unfair cliché or the sad truth? You decide! (after reading the article!)

Without further ado, here we go! (and remember, these are HER words, not mine!)

Generation Y in Spain isn't asking why, they're just floundering about. Sixty percent of the country's over-educated lost generation of university and master's graduates aged 30 and under aren't getting hired. With around 20 percent unemployment nationwide, these young adults are left to fight over unpaid internships and jobs beneath their experience levels, just to get something to put on their resume. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD,) 44 percent of the Spanish aged 25 to 29 that actually have jobs are working in ones that require lesser skills than they have. So with no families, no mortgages and little else to lose, why aren't more of them creating jobs for themselves?

Many say the Spanish are just lazy, but that's not it. There's something else, intangible, that's developed in the culture and history. The children of Spain aren't raised to follow their dreams. School has become, for the most part, just a place for passing exams, never for debate, discussion or critical thinking. Your curro, or job, is to endure from nine to nine, pushing buttons until the next break. A history of civil war and a 39-year dictatorship, followed by a construction boom and crash, to now, where it's taken for granted that politicians will be corrupt, has led to a nation that's devoutly proud of being Spanish, but that can't define what that even means.

Beyond the absurdly challenging bureaucracy and the fact that banks are hardly offering loans at all anymore, there's something stagnant about the government-controlled education system and the culture, in general, that is keeping the nation's most book-learned generation in history from reaching its potential. SmartPlanet sets out to re-open the discussion of why technically adept young adults are not looking to start their own businesses and why this resistance to altering the status quo has led Spain to be predicted as one of the slowest kids in the PIIGS (referring to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, those most hit by Eurozone crisis,) who will take the longest to climb out of its own economic free fall.

"Upon graduation, 70 percent of Spanish people want to work in large companies, while 70 percent of American graduates want to be their own bosses," writes Juan Angel Hernandez, in a recent op-ed for a Spanish financial magazine, advocating on behalf of start-ups, as a solution to the crisis. He writes about how the goals of recent grads are either to work for the government or one of Spain's top ten companies.

So instead of between 50 and 80 percent of recent grads studying for absurdly competitive government jobs, why aren't they creating their own opportunities? Research has concluded that start-up values can best be instilled at a young age and the education system is not up to the task. It states that: "Entrepreneurship can be learnt at school and should be actively promoted so that young Spaniards can develop skills such as independence, self-confidence and decision-making in situations of risk." The researchers came to the conclusion that, "Young Spanish people don't feel they have been taught how to be entrepreneurs, which is why teachers need to have the relevant tools and materials to teach business acumen and initiative, whilst also fostering their students' interaction with local entrepreneurs."

Blaming the education system -- which only maybe changes when a new political party takes power every eight years -- isn't a new theme. This isn't a nation where kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up. "In high school and university, no one has ever asked them what their motivation is", says Eva Snijders "People here concentrate on whether it's difficult to build a business and why it takes time and money."

Rosaura Alastruey hosts motivational workshops for both the employed and unemployed. She says, "Un emprendedor es un bicho raro," which translates to "an entrepreneur is a rare bug," or a freak or oddball. In Spain, "Jobs are to subsist," she told SP recently. There's no need to like what you do, you just need to have a job.

It seems that you only look to start a company when it's the last thing left to try. Alastruey says, "I have students: 'After a year or two years unemployed, now I want to open a business.' It's the last option."

Folks in their twenties and thirties make up the first generation after the dictatorship of General Franco. "This is the generation where the parents didn't have anything, so their kids have everything, not learning that everything has a cost." The sons and daughters of the post-Franco world aren't living to make ends meet, but are simply waiting for their ideal job or are opositando, the truly Spanish phenomenon of studying for the highly competitive civil service exams. Many, on their parents' dime, study nine hours a day, six days a week for these exams, for one to five years at a time, while some of these jobs-for-life can see 1,000 applicants for only three spots.

As one entrepreneur at a networking event recently said, "You're 23 years old with your whole life ahead of you and all you can dream of is to be a public servant?

It makes one think, innit?

About the importance of Non-Exercise Physical Activity!

Hey!

As you know, unit 8 "Space is the Place" is all about movement and action, something which we know can be sometimes challenging to express in English with sufficient accuracy. 

The unit itself was initiated by me enquiring "what is your movement like?/ how well do you move?" and, while contents having to do with physical exercise per se are going to be tackled in detail in the present unit (for they ALL involve a great deal of movements and actions taking place in space and time), I believe that the concept of "movement" is far more comprehensive and, thus, more important. Sure, I think in this day and age of modern comfort and ubiquitous technology and gadgets galore, it is necessary to include in our routine scheduled/regulated (that is, subjected to rules and standards assessing their correct or ill-performance) physically demanding activities (i.e.: exercising either indoors or outdoors and giving our heart, lungs, joints and muscles some extra work to do), but I also believe the greater service or disservice we are doing to our bodies and health occurs out of the gym, the occasional 10k run, the spinning class or the Paddle tennis game.

Of course, the way we eat (aka: "our diet") is going to play a CRUCIAL role in the way we look and feel, but I also think little attention is paid to our everyday/routine NON-exercise movements. 

I mean, have you ever wondered why some people brag about eating like a horse and look consistently lean while others moan about not skipping one single day at the gym, putting the work and doing whatever their Zumba/CrossFit/Body Pump/ Cardio instructor tells them to, sticking to a sucky, life-depriving diet, and yet, keep struggling to make their bodies reflect even slightly the effects of such a Spartan discipline?  Many will thank or curse their genetics for one or the other, whilst others will point at their "shitty" metabolism ("man, just breathing makes me fat!")

I have a couple of pet theories about this rather banal issue (which may be not 100% right, for they are PET theories ;-)). First, neither the lean guy/girl eats that much, nor does the person struggling with their weight eat that little; well, that's my impression, but there might be exceptions, OF COURSE. But more importantly: just look at the skinny/lean guy/girl and the way they move throughout the day (ever heard the words/phrases "fidgety", "live wire", "hyperactive" "that who cannot stand still if their life depended on it????"), I mean, some are just terribly active when they're not doing sport (walking, cycling, taking the stairs, getting up, cooking, cleaning, picking up things, being irrepressibly expressive and gesticulating....) and, not surprisingly, I'm afraid that is going to OUTWEIGH (pardon the pun!) that 6 to 7 aerobics class at your neighborhood's fitness centre.

Again, just don't call me superficial for giving certain importance to something some might label "shallow/trivial/banal/ frivolous/ worth of Instagram-obsessed dorks" (besides, it's not "body types" that we're discussing here! That is far more complex); I might be concerned about my own body, but I'm rarely concerned about anybody else's. It's the effect this may have on someone's health (physical, mental, emotional, mood, self-confidence, wellbeing...) which interests me way more.

I suggest you take your time and read this article, which incidentally deals with the same matter.

"I move, therefore, I am"

This guy is ace! This video is genius! Expression of movement and direction in English

Hi there everyone! 

The brand new topic we're about to start is arguably one of the trickiest for a non-native speaker of English; it is not theorizing or arguing about the evils of fracking, GM foods or tantric sex in our society, but about talking about events, situations and stories involving movement, action, direction.

I've done quite a bit of research online to see if I could get to the right piece of clarifying and enlightening information on this issue and, while mastering these concepts is essentially a question of endless practice and even that will not ensure that we can express those type of meanings with the ease a native would, I think this video pretty much just nails it in its explanation.

Make sure you sit through it and take some cool notes! You bet it's worth it!

Movement and direction in English

Enter the NED Talks!

Hiya!

I told you a couple of days ago, and I'm pretty positive I mentioned this before, that you were going to have the opportunity of giving some presentations/talks in the classroom for both your teacher and all your classmates' delight!

This is going to be a great chance to train and test your impromptu speech skills as well as face and cope with (and ultimately succeed at it!) stage fright!

It is obvious that I have named these cool oncoming talks after the ubiquitous TED talks, which seem to be just everywhere. I do not really know what TED stands for, but NED stands for "Natural, Enlightening, Dynamic", which means that, unlike their more famous counterparts (TED talks, which usually drag on for more than 20 minutes and you end up wondering where's the bloody substance in them! It's like, "get to the goddamned point already, man!"- or "ma'am!" ;-)), they are meant to be interesting, kinda brief (no shorter than 4 minutes but no longer than 8!) and just featuring you and some background visuals, so we stick to the "natural" component of them. 

You can, for sure, accompany your speech with some visuals of any kind (ppt files, images), but of course, make sure they do not end up replacing your speech! That is what we are/ I am interested in!

I'm sure you have plenty of interesting things to share with us!

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