Ideas in the Wild: Mark Briggs is Helping Us Achieve True Work/Life Balance
What I discovered is that by making small changes to follow a commitment to self-improvement and continuous learning I made everyone around me better. Yes, I am more grounded, more effective at work, more calm and thoughtful, and more grateful than ever, thanks to what I learned in writing the book. But the cumulative impact of that is felt by everyone in my world. When I participate in every interaction with more calm, more purpose, more thoughtfulness, and more gratitude, the person I’m interacting with absorbs that and passes it on. It’s contagious.
After his family was torn apart — twice — former journalist Mark Briggs launched a full-scale investigation into work-life balance. What he discovered was a surprising framework of small, simple changes that can send powerful ripple effects throughout our lives at work and at home.
In researching The Butterfly Impact, Mark interviewed over one hundred people at the prime of their careers — including industry leaders at Starbucks, Facebook, Google, Amazon, REI, The Gates Foundation, Good Morning America, and Gonzaga University’s legendary basketball team. In the book, readers will find their relatable stories of resilience, grit, and triumph.
I recently caught up with Mark to find out what inspired him to write the book, the biggest lesson he learned going through the process, and how he’s applying that lesson in his life.
What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment when you realized these ideas needed to get out there?
Actually, the pandemic. As the world ground to a halt in early March 2020 everyone in my world started to panic a little. Clients, teammates, friends, and family struggled with the uncertainty and anxiety of having their world turned upside down. And understandably so. At one point, though, I realized this was happening in slow motion for me and it all felt familiar, almost comfortable. Since my personal life and professional life had been turned upside down several times I already had plenty of experience and had developed some tools to manage through the disruption.
I started writing essays for my clients with the hope they could relay something helpful to their teams. Dealing with uncertainty, developing resilience, and balancing extreme work-life challenges were all things I had 10 years of experience with so I had a unique perspective that suddenly applied to … everyone.
I had been trying to find the focus for a book on work-life balance that was somewhat unique for more than a year and that’s when it hit me: this is the book I’ve been trying to write. So I started talking to one person about it, then another, and another, and everyone resonated with the topic and had something useful to contribute so I just kept going. After interviewing more than 100 people I realized I had learned incredibly valuable lessons and insights to go with my own experience and felt compelled to combine it all and put it out into the world.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned going through the journey you share in the book?
By making small changes in my personal life, I could make a huge impact on my family, my work, and my community over time. I think the way most people think about self-help or self-improvement can feel selfish or be framed as selfish. As if I’m just working on fixing my own problems so I can be happy. And I think that’s where a lot of people get hung up.
They are so focused on giving and contributing to others, whether at work or at home, or in other parts of their life, that it’s hard to get traction with most standard self-help frameworks, books, or practices. What I discovered is that by making small changes to follow a commitment to self-improvement and continuous learning I made everyone around me better. Yes, I am more grounded, more effective at work, more calm and thoughtful, and more grateful than ever, thanks to what I learned in writing the book. But the cumulative impact of that is felt by everyone in my world. When I participate in every interaction with more calm, more purpose, more thoughtfulness, and more gratitude, the person I’m interacting with absorbs that and passes it on. It’s contagious.
It truly is the airplane metaphor of putting on your own oxygen mask first. Then help others around you, starting with your family.
The opposite is also true, and likely more common: you have a negative interaction with someone at work and carry that to your next interaction, then bring it home to your partner, spouse, friend, child. The ripple effects I write about in the book are positive, but there can also be negative ripples. I think we’ve all had those days when we brought a bad day at work home or a bad morning at home to work. As much as we’d like to have one, there’s no firewall between how we show up at work and life. And if there ever was, even a partial one, the pandemic obliterated that. Work-life balance became work-life blending.
How will you apply this lesson in your life moving forward?
I’ve been telling friends and colleagues that my “full-scale investigation” into work-life balance has helped me so much personally that I almost don’t even need to publish the book for it to be worth all the effort. Of course, the next thought is, if it helped me that much, it needs to be shared as widely as possible! While I acknowledge the pandemic brought forward challenges that I may have been uniquely positioned to navigate, based on the difficulties I had already faced in my life, I am so much better at managing my interactions and being disciplined about my boundaries than before I started writing the book.
Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!
