It
is perfect. It has never been this good. It is a win-win situation.
I
think you know on which side I am on. Now, it is for me to justify the above
claims.
To
start off, I will take the anecdotal track. Two people who I know up close and
personal are leading such a balanced life that I am truly jealous of them. One
is a man of finance. Let me call him Exhibit No.1.
He
enters his “office” at 7:00 AM and emerges at 7:00 PM. The not-so-curious point
is his “office” is a big room in his residence. Now, let us do an audit of one
day of his life, any day of a week – no weekends for him. He is at work for a
minimum of 12 hours per day; of course, during the other 12 hours, he is
relatively frequently called upon to manage his office work also – damn that
mobile phone. This needs to be counted, at least partially, as working hours.
Check
that. On the other side, he has “working breakfast”, “working lunch”, “working
evening snacks” and, of course, “working dinner”. That is some portion of his
“working hours” has to be shifted to the other side of the ledger – the side of
“Life”. I believe, in the interest of making this not too complicated, we are
well within tolerance limits to take these “Work” hours during the time
allotted to his “Life” equals precisely the intrusion in the other direction –
having brief interludes with his family members on critical matters on “Work”
time.
Twelve
hours for each, “Work” and “Life” – so balanced. As we say, mostly in
mathematics, quod erat demonstrandum
(“that which is to be proven), or, in brief, QED.
I
am offering the second QED below. We now jump to looking at the life of a
practicing engineer – Exhibit No. 2 – working for an MNC with
worldwide-operations. Sun never sets on the projects he is working on – from
New Zealand going westwards all the way to Hawaii, but giving a miss to India. I
would rather focus not so much on the geographic spread of his work as much on
how finishes the tasks and still maintains the vaunted Work-Life balance. Just
to give the context a little more heft, I would mention that he has a six-year
old daughter, as sweetly bothersome to her parents as other kids of that age.
This
fellow (he is nearly thirty years younger to me) goes into his “office”, again
a large room in his house, at 7:00 AM IST and emerges after 7:00 PM. When he
gets into his office, the New Zealand project beckons his attention. OK, he
attends to it. Right on its tail, it is the turn of large projects from
Australia; then Turkey, some countries in Africa and of the Middle East, on to
Europe (UK is a big office with a lot of projects) and then to the company’s
home country, the big, bad, US of A. During this period he also has to manage
more than 30 people who report to him.
OK
he does come out for his chow unlike the person in Exhibit No. 1. But, he goes back
to his office after dinner for about an hour or two, during which time and then
it is bed time! Again, as we did with
Exhibit 1, we would say that he spends 12 hours at “Work” and 12 hours on “Life”.
Perfect Work-Life balance.
Just
so you do not forget, we are talking about Work-Life balance during COVID-19
times.
My
Exhibit No. 3 is yours truly. My life is lot more tilted in the direction of “Life”.
Don’t tell this to my employer ... a private university. The irony is both my
employer and I are hyphenated – I am a visiting-staff and my employer is a
Deemed-University. In my humble opinion, the tilt towards “Life” in my case is
justified; something not very different than what they said about the Big Russian
Bear (in reality, the USSR) – workers pretended to work and the government
pretended to pay.
But,
my “Life” segment has some pin pricks – I never know when I have a task related
to my post, it just plops down on my laps at the most inconvenient times –
again, damn mobile phones. More nauseating – it is always a task “that should
have been over YESTERDAY!” – The SMS in a loud, screeching voice.
But,
there are some more tasks that one in my position could reasonably expect to be
called upon to do. The things are: attend meetings, take interviews, take
classes on “Zoom”, post class notes on Google Classroom, and more recently prepare
students for the end-semester examinations by conducting review classes, on
Google Meet. The more annoying thing is keep the management informed of the things
I have done, with proof.
For
an old-timer like me, getting all these fancy Information Technology things
done is a headache (add to the worry-factor in the “Work” side page of my ledger).
Oh, don’t forget the time required to prepare a dozen end-semester examination
question papers for two courses – half-a-dozen for each. Depending on which
question paper among all the submissions the examination wing has received, if
I am unlucky, one (or perhaps even two) that I prepared may be chosen. Then,
with the Sword of Damocles hanging over me, I have to prepare the solution Key(s)
to make assessment as fair as possible (this really cannot lead to truly fair
valuation of the answer books, but we have to pretend it does).
Still,
I readily admit that I am enjoying this COVID-19 Work-Life balance as I avoid
three hours of commuting everyday (I cannot justify this time on either side of
the ledger).
Call it schadenfreude;
I enjoy having been better placed than Exhibit No. 1 or Exhibit No. 2. Is there
an emoji for what I am feeling? I guess not!
Let
COVID-19 continue without the disease, its spread and deaths. I will be better
placed than others!
Raghuram
Ekambaram
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