Balance…or my lack thereof
“You just always look like you’ve got everything under control” — a friend who had no idea.
Richard’s Big Week
Ok, so I’m going to start by saying, I REALLY tried to get this out on the first Friday of the month like I committed to in my last post but oooh I had a week last week. I’ll get into it, but given the topic of this post, I think there’s a touch of poetry to the fact that that week was one where I lost all balance altogether. And maybe it’s twisted but I really enjoyed it! None of it was implicitly negative, it was a week of mainly celebration and enjoyment. But it definitely wasn’t balanced.
On Monday last week, I had a night out with some of the Black Network committee at the #WomenInTechAwards. We had been shortlisted for the Outstanding Diversity Network of the Year, and felt like a great opportunity to meet some of our team for the first time. Hard to believe but given we were officially launched as a network in October 2020, we’d only been existing virtually up until this point. There was dinner, pictures and great company, to go along with celebrating some of the achievements of women in Tech (with lots of notes to coordinate more submissions for the work our women in the network are doing for next year!). The problem was that while this was all great fun, our category wasn’t announced until 10:48, and the overall ceremony didn’t end until just after 11, leaving me with a hurried taxi ride to St Pancras station to catch my last train. I didn’t get home until 1 in the morning…remember, this was a Monday. What a start.
On Tuesday, I was in the office. Like many of us post-pandemic, I’ve moved out of London to have more space. Of course with that come some additional challenges, like having to leave the house at 6:30 to be able to get in to the office at a good time to do some of the admin and email checks before the day starts. But the day was that little bit more stressful than an average Tuesday, just because we also had our February Early Talent (graduate, and school leaver) induction — link included for anyone who wanted to know more about Deloitte’s programmes or may not have known that we have two intakes in September and February.
Work on Wednesday started at 7am as I was interviewing two potential secondees from our Australian firm. I obviously can’t say too much about them beyond how much I enjoyed the conversations, but what I can say is that this was probably the day that my body really started to struggle. Mentally, I was much slower, and I could feel it impacting my processing time. The decisions I would normally have taken really quickly and easily were that much slower and I was less certain.
Thursday, I had a half day at work, because in the afternoon I had my mum’s graduation. This perfectly captured the consistency of work ethic that she has shown throughout her life as, after taking voluntary redundancy from her job at a large global bank in 2018, a year later, and at the age of 53, she decided to change career altogether and go back to studying. The career in accountancy came more out of necessity to be able to help to provide for me and my siblings growing up, but her heart has always been with helping people. In all aspects of her life she has shown an energy for caring for others that accountancy just wasn’t providing, so it was no surprise when she told us she was retraining as an Occupational Therapist, and even less of a surprise that she absolutely excelled through a pandemic-impacted course. Like in this paragraph, I’m not really the main focus, but driving through London in rush hour took it out of me again.
Friday, just came and went. Absolute blur. Had work, and then it was boys’ night for me and the little one, as Rachael helps out with running an after-school club-type session with the teenagers at Church on Friday nights. She found us both asleep on the sofa downstairs by 9, my laptop open in the honestly laughable belief that I was in any state to write what I’m writing now.
Saturday I left the house at 8 in the morning, went to football in Vauxhall at 10, then to our friends’ baby’s 1st birthday party, before rushing off to choir practice at my dad’s church as Rachael and I were invited to lead worship on the Sunday.
Sunday, we got to church in New Eltham at 9:30, left there at 2 to go to have lunch with our new church’s pastor and his family in Gillingham, before leaving there at 7 again to get back to Gravesend. By this point, I could feel that I was badly off balance, experiencing this whole day like my mind was just a half second behind my body. Alarm bells should have been going off at this point, but I pushed through…
I shouldn’t have. By Monday, I was at 50%, but I had “too much to do”. On Tuesday, I physically couldn’t get out of bed. My whole body had shut down, and no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was ok to continue, my body felt otherwise.
TL;DR I was out on Monday, met new analysts on Tuesday, interviews at 7 on Wednesday, graduation Thursday, busy Friday, then Saturday, and Sunday, burnt out by Monday.
Balancing my responsibilities
I’m sure it would be easy to take the obvious lesson here that is often repeated by those of us working in Inclusion and Wellbeing of the importance of regular rest, especially in pursuit of the elusive “work-life” balance that we hear so much about but it seems like no one outside of the chosen few reality TV stars seems to actually have. But that’s not actually the main lesson I took from it and it’s not the balance I referred to in the title.
I don’t actually regret the way I burned out, like I said it was a lot of fun things. I have just come through some of the most unstable periods of my life in the last few years. (I appreciate that everyone has, but let me just focus on me!) I have gotten married, moved house twice (including buying our first house), become a dad, officially become a Diversity Network lead, and moved into a more internal-facing role with more freedom to focus on inclusive culture development. All of these are great but it has meant that “balance” is a lot more complicated of a concept.
It wasn’t just about work and life. I suddenly had to adjust to all the new responsibilities that I wanted to do well at. I wanted to be a good husband, a good father, a good son and brother, an impactful network lead, an inclusive leader, a good friend. The problem was that I was so wholly focused on who I was for other people, that I didn’t realise that I hadn’t worked out who I was for myself. Without that, I was never going to find my balance.
If you had met me or interacted with me at all since 2020, you probably would have gotten a very polished version of what has been a spectre of the person I recognise as “me”. In 2020, the pandemic stripped me of the wedding of my dreams (I love our wedding day, but I won’t pretend it was the day either of us had planned). We lost the first house we had put an offer in for as the buyer lost a family member to Covid. The immediate impact of the shift to working remotely meant I got kicked off a project for the first time in my career. The murder of George Floyd put me in a position of supporting friends and colleagues as they processed their emotions and reactions to the trauma, all without processing my own. By the end of December, I find out we’re having a surprise baby…someone else who’s going to depend on me. In my head there was no time to be anything less than perfect. There were too many people relying on me to have my life in order, so that was the image I projected. Whether it’s on social media or the few occasions where we were allowed to actually meet people, the Richard they were met with was one who was happy to take calls at 8pm on a Friday and write all these motivational posts and encouraging articles, but was struggling to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day.
Outside of an 8 week period where I was able to speak to a CBT therapist through our workplace services, I never really addressed it. Friends would ask me about the wedding and whether we had a plan to have the big party eventually, and when the housewarming was going to be for either of our places. I couldn’t say, it was all out of my control, as the pandemic was still dictating how many people we could have in one place at any time. And the longer it went on, the more hopeless and powerless I felt. My response to it was to hide away, and after we moved out to Gravesend, the additional challenge (and cost) of actually getting back into London made it even easier to make excuses for not going out to see people often. Add into the equation my disappearance from social media for Lent in 2021, and suddenly I was very isolated with only my “responsibilities” to focus on.
Reconnecting with me
This is exactly why that week really was so good for me. I decided to practice saying yes to things I wanted to do for me. Monday wasn’t just about the network, but a chance to have a FUN night out in London like the old days. If you’ve not heard me talk about him before, please remind me to tell you about how important Josh Graham has been to me, not just in terms of my career, but as a friend (he was one of my groomsmen). Apart from the wedding, there hadn’t been many opportunities to check in outside of our respective responsibilities. Absolutely not the ideal start to the week physical energy-wise but emotionally and mentally I was feeling supercharged!
The work I’m doing now is very demanding, but is also part of my choosing me strategy. It’s unusual as a Manager in our firm to not do client-facing work, but I realised that being true to myself, I have clearly been influenced by my parents’ passion for people (confirmed by celebrating mum’s incredible achievement). And while I am capable of delivering pure tech transformation, it wasn’t where I needed to be. Working with our leadership to design and deliver inclusive culture in our new ways of working means that I no longer had to split my attention, and I actually had motivation to wake up and feel like my work had purpose.
Football and music were my yeses to the things I do to connect with friends and family. I play every week with the boys from uni, the best way to catch up regularly, and get my exercise without feeling like I’m exercising. The choir was extra special because it was the first time outside of our time at home, that I’ve gotten to sing with Rachael since before the pandemic. And she is incredible at it, so despite my tiredness, I was not going to pass up the opportunity to do something I’d missed so much.
Now, obviously, the lesson for me here wasn’t to just endlessly say yes to everything and drive myself in a non-stop loop of exhaustion trying to recreate the old days pre-2020. But it also isn’t about sacrificing myself to the people who I feel responsible to and for either. My balance isn’t a split between life and work, and it’s not always about giving everything equal time, because that’s unrealistic. For me, what my week taught me was that when I give myself permission to care for myself and be selfish in the things I choose to do purely for me, I am able to find a joy that is unmatched.
But part of remembering me and doing things for my own benefit, does still need me to be more considerate of my limited energy. I am still only human, and successful balance means not only saying yes, but sometimes saying no. Both as an individual and a leader, I need to remember there is a power in my no as much as my yes. When the people in my teams see me use both, they are reminded of the permissions that gives them to do the same. To find their own balance and to consider the reasons behind either answer, or even to admit to not knowing the answer at all. In a world where everything is so black and white, and you are forced to work in absolutes, the grey provides a freedom to explore and discover.
I haven’t got my balance right yet, but I’m enjoying finding it again; as a husband, as a father, a son and brother, network lead, a team leader, a friend. But most of all as me: the almost 30-year-old who doesn’t have everything under control…and doesn’t need to.