Meaningful Returns

I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it’s not this.

In case you don’t want to click on that link, it’s a story at Reuters about how UBS is offering its investment  bankers two hours a week of “personal time.” This policy is, in typical banky cutesy fashion, called “take two,” and more or less sounds like codified hypocrisy.

I said I don’t know what work-life balance is, and that’s true. It has become in vogue to say something like, “I don’t believe in work-life balance, I believe in work-life integration.” And I suppose that could work, but if we’re honest with ourselves I think we end up with the same question, whether or not our syntax uses balance or integration or any other term.

Because the real question is, “I work, and my work takes up time, and other really important things also take up time. What is time?” And since that is a deeply existential question which is impossible to answer, we just change the wording of the question instead of engaging with the mess of the unknown.

Somewhere in the mess of that question is the bedrock idea of purpose. To have any sort of clarity about the existential question of “work-life balance” is to first consider, “why am I doing any of this in the first place?” And yes, this is a much harder question. But it’s at least answerable. And if we spend our lives answering that question, I think the weird ones about time have a way of working themselves out as a result.