I was listening to a talkback radio discussion last night about what constitutes achievement and success in work and life. While not a particularly original topic for evening radio, I was struck by the tone of the calls. During quite a lengthy discussion, not a single caller suggested that success is about climbing the corporate ladder or making money.

The emphasis was on the simple idea that success is about being happy.

Has something changed? Sure, ‘happiness’ and ‘balance’ have been part of the work-life discussion for many years. But, perhaps until recently, they have been given more lip service than committed embrace. We’ve trotted out the old line about no one going to their death bed saying “I wish I had worked more”, then rushed off back to our 50 hour a week jobs.

‘Downshifting’ is the idea of leaving a demanding career for something less onerous, even if it costs you money by way of reduced earnings. The concept has been around since the mid-1990s, but it has largely been seen as sitting in the same cabinet as organic food and renewable energy: a good idea, but still a bit radical. Something ‘other people’ do.

In the last few years, however, I’ve learnt of at least half a dozen of my ‘normal’ friends who have downshifted. Some from big jobs, some not so big. But in every case looking to work less and spend more time at home, with family or simply doing stuff they enjoy doing.

This is not to say that changing jobs and reducing working hours are the secrets to happiness. Nor even that we are any closer to understanding what happiness is.

What is changing, I perceive, is the willingness to pursue happiness or satisfaction, simplicity or balance, or whatever it is that an individual is looking for in their work and life. There seems to be increased acceptance of the notion that it’s okay to take a career risk if the end result will be greater contentment for yourself and your family. And that maybe, for much of the population, money doesn’t buy happiness.

Hanging around for the gold watch is becoming less hip. Instead, work-life balance and flexibility are fast becoming catch-cries for the twenty first century. Working from home is now both environmentally friendly and socially acceptable. Loyally working a sixty hour week for a corporation who will let you go tomorrow if it needs to buttress the share price is starting to be recognised for the con that it is.

Where is this change coming from? A number of factors are at play. Ceaseless cost cutting and the resultant increased expectations on employees is one. Everyone has an overload threshold and more and more people are being pushed over theirs. Increased overall affluence (even if it was an illusion) is perhaps another factor. Or maybe I just have a skewed perspective. What do you think?

“Thinking about thinking? That sounds a bit weird!” said my daughters. So much for the open minds of the young. For the last month I’ve been fulfilling a long term desire to lubricate my mind with the oil of philosophy. Along the way I’ve tried to explain to my offspring (clearly with limited success) what I’ve learnt and why it’s important.

Of course I can understand why the idea of thinking about thinking seems a bit bizarre. In the age of Go! Go! Go! even a pause for thought is likely to get you an impatient push from behind.

Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently announced a summit of 1000 citizens to ‘harness the best ideas across the nation’.

The summit was dubbed a ‘talkfest’ while the media announcement was still warm. Commentators demanded to know how it would lead to concrete action. The idea that there could be any value in a group of smart people simply sharing ideas, in the hope of catalyzing further, even better ideas, is anathema to 21st century society.

Which is why even a small smear of philosophy could give you an edge. It will help you, to borrow from Rudyard Kipling, keep your head while all about you are losing theirs.

Here are three things I’ve learnt to do better in the last month.

First, question your questions. For instance, instead of asking, ‘what am I trying to do?’, go a level deeper and ask ‘why am I trying to do what I’m trying to do?’. Sounds circular? Most philosophical questions do at first, but give it a try. The first answer might be ‘sell lots of product’. Same old same old. The second answer might be ‘give myself more time, better balance’. This answer forces you to consider much broader options.

Second, embrace uncertainty. There is a current tendency to believe that certainty once existed and will again, that uncertainty is somehow an temporary feature of our time. Philosophers (most of them – they will never all agree on anything!) see change as part of the nature of our world. Expecting certainty will only lead to inevitable disappointment.

Third, celebrate being wrong. A challenge and a joy in studying philosophy is getting comfortable with the notion that there are very few absolutely right, or wrong, answers to the way things should be. This contrasts with the way we normally think in our culture. It frees the mind to be much more creative than we traditionally allow ourselves.

Being philosophical doesn’t mean growing a long beard and staring endlessly into the middle distance. It doesn’t have to mean endlessly reading either. It does mean energizing the neurons in your brain and liberating your mind. What that might lead to only you can guess, but it will probably give you a head start over the next guy or girl.

What a buzz. Unexpectedly, on a recent trip to New Zealand, I was able to see, up close, the ‘World’s Fastest Indian’. This was the motorcycle made famous in the uplifting film of that name. 40 years on, Burt Munro’s motorcycle still holds land speed records for its class. It got me thinking about the speed of our working lives.

There’s little doubt the world feels faster. “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place,” as the Red Queen says in Through the Looking Glass. Faster communication. Faster food. Ever more instant satisfaction. “Buy today and pay nothing for 40 months!” cries a local discounter’s advertising.

But I suspect we are reaching some limits.

The absolute land speed record was last broken on the same salt plains that Burt Munro achieved his fame. The record, 1228 km/h, remains unbeaten after 10 years. The previous record (a leisurely 1149 km/h!) took 13 years to break. The water speed record, set by Australian Ken Warby, still survives 29 years on.

On a more human level, a new world record has just been set for the 100m men’s sprint – but it took eight years to shave 0.05 seconds off the previous mark. The 200m record still stands after 11 years. In the women’s events, neither of these records has been broken since 1988.

At work we may think that we’re working faster, but a lot of our sense of increased speed is illusory. We’re running ever faster but still staying in the same place.

Yes, computers continue to gain speed. Moore’s Law (which, put crudely, says that the speed of computers will double every two years) continues to hold. In practice though, more and more complex software soaks up this extra electronic horsepower and we don’t experience a lot of it on our desktops.

Yes, mobile phones, email, instant messaging and their ilk seem to be making our communication more efficient. But they are really only making interruption more efficient. The actual communication bit hasn’t got significantly faster since the dial telephone was invented in 1919.

Yes, perhaps the Internet has some more oomph up its sleeve. But even here I wonder about the practical benefit to most of us of being able to transmit a document in 5 seconds rather than ten.

Which raises the real question. If we are close to the speed limit, is it really worth squeezing out the last few drops of velocity? Bill Munro would think so, but then he liked the world passing as a blur. The rest of us might do better just easing off the gas a little and enjoying the ride.

The first spanner hit the wall with a discordant clang. The second – moments later – struck a truer note and bounced back, hitting Simon on the hand. Expletives followed but were lost in the metallic morass of the engine bay. Simon lifted his shaking head from under the bonnet, slammed it down and ran inside to call Max.

Ten minutes later, his friend pulled up outside.

“Let’s go, Max,” said Simon urgently as he dropped into the passengers seat. “My meeting’s at 9.30 and it’s critical. I’ve got to convince this client that I can cope with this big contract; being late won’t send a good message.”

Leaning forward in his seat, Simon spent the next five minutes spattering Max with the problems of his car and his anxieties about the upcoming meeting, as well as his worries about the declining value of his share portfolio. The onslaught was slowed only when Max hit the brakes heavily to avoid a car which cut in front of them.

“What the…!” cried Simon. “I can’t believe he did that. Catch up and I’ll give him a serve at the next lights.” Ignoring Simon, Max kept his eyes ahead and stayed in his lane. The villainous car turned left at the next side street leaving Max’s passenger muttering to himself about idiots on the road.

Eventually Simon fell silent for a while. Then he glanced at his watch.

Can’t you speed up a bit, Max? We’re 15 minutes away and my meeting’s in ten. If I’m late I’m going to be stressed out and that’s not the impression I want to give. Man I wish this traffic would keep moving!”

Max allowed himself a quiet smile. As he came to a stop at the next lights, he looked across at Simon who was sitting right forward now and drumming his fingers on the dash. The market news announced itself on the radio.

“Turn it up,” said Simon. “This share market dip is going to kill me.”

Max turned the radio off. He ignored his friend’s glare by concentrating on the traffic, allowing the sound of the car to thrum uninterrupted for a time. “You know,” he said after a moment, “your life would be a whole lot more simple if you stopped awfulizing so much.”

“Awfulizing? What the hell does that mean?” asked Simon.

“It means over-worrying about problems that are actually relatively minor in the overall scheme of things.” Max paused then continued. “How much emotional energy have you spend already today? On a share dip which really means nothing: you have no intention of selling any shares at the moment anyway. On a car problem that was easily worked around by ringing me. On a driver who did something stupid but who we will have forgotten about in a few minutes…”

“Okay, okay. I get it, I think. But none of this is going to get me to this meeting on time is it? And that will be bad. It’s a big deal.” Simon checked his watch again.

“Why don’t you ring Kathy and ask her to tell them you’ll be a few minutes late?” asked Max steadily. “Then you can gather your thoughts and not walk into the board room in your current awfulized state.”

Simon grumbled something to himself about awfulizing Max as he rummaged around in his bag to find his phone. Eventually he made the call, talking with his assistant briefly, then fell back into his seat.

“Here we go” said Max, accelerating as the traffic finally opened up a little. “I’ll have you there in no time.”

Simon turned towards Max with a wry smile. “Actually there’s no rush,” he said. “The clients are running 20 minutes late themselves. Car problems apparently!”

One of the principles of creating a simple workplace – a workplace in which it is easy to get things done – is the creation of flexibility. Making it easier for people to do their work when and where they can would seem an obvious way to help employees strike the right balance between work and home.

And it works. I’ve just read interviews with two CEOs – Peter Widdows of Heinz Australia and Tom Quinn of Aker Kvaerner – who describe the significant cultural benefits their organizations have gained from providing their staff with greater flexibility.

Yet relatively few companies have worked this out. Recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggest that in the last 9 years, only 3% more employees have gained a significant say in the hours that they work – in 1997 it was 37%; in 2006 it was 40%. The proportion of employees able to work extra hours in order to take time off was the same in 2006 – 38% – as it was back in 1997.

Particularly interesting to me is that for all the countless reports and studies into management effectiveness and work-life balance in the last ten years, few if any of the indicators in these surveys of working time arrangements have changed at all.

Perhaps, in the end, maintaining the status quo is just easier?

Speaking of Balance, this month’s article for Business Simplification just happens to be on that topic…

It all started well for Russell. Like a growing number of busy 21st century managers, he wanted more balance. He counted himself lucky when he and his wife worked out they could afford him to cut back to four days a week. His own manager, although hesitant, opted to support him rather than risk losing years of knowledge and experience.

In the first few weeks, Russell relished the new arrangement. He was surprised at how the simple act of picking his kids up from school made him feel more a part of his own family. At how relaxed taking part in routine family conversation made him feel. He even found himself (secretly) enjoying playing umpire in sibling spats.

Meanwhile, Russell also felt that he was much more focused and productive when he was at the office. He put that down to the extra ‘headspace’ he seemed to have.

But change crept up on him. It was his wife who noticed first. Where he’d started checking his email from home once or twice a day, that grew to hourly. Twice in a row, calls to the office caused him to be late for the school pick-up. Increasingly, as before, he complained to his wife about the length of his ‘to do’ list.

Russell’s newfound work-life balance was teetering.

Then a news story prompted an epiphany. During a report about a recent bushfire, Russell heard an interview with a farmer bemoaning the loss of his fences. The farmer grumbled that without effective boundaries around and within his property, he had no control. Russell realized that the same applied to him.

He had not established any boundaries around his time. Russell’s full time colleagues worked, more or less, within the ‘natural’ boundary of the weekends. He had not – in his own mind – properly adjusted his own boundaries to fit his new circumstances. He needed to better separate his ‘work’ time from his ‘life’ time.

He had not established any boundaries around his expectations. In the past he had worked hard to manage the chronic frustration that his ‘to-do’ list always seemed to grow more quickly than he could prune it. Now, working less time, he would have to adjust his expectations further. There are only so many hours…

Finally, Russell realized that not only had he failed to properly establish his own boundaries, he hadn’t made them visible to others either. His boundaries, like a national border, would only hold when respected by those on each side of them. Making his boundaries visible would require discipline on his part, clear communication and support from others.

In short, Russell came to understand that you can’t have balance without boundaries.

It took time, but Russell built his boundaries and before long found himself, again, enjoying both more satisfying family time and a more productive approach to his work. Balance prevailed.

Thanks to Leon Gettler’s Management Line for the heads up on a fabulous video showing the managing editor of Forbes magazine struggling to do without his mobile phone and BlackBerry. The challenge was to last seven days – he lasted 40 hours.

This little experiment raises a couple of issues.

First, it is clear from the video that being connected – via email, mobile phone and/or BlackBerry – can be addictive. The experiment’s subject, Dennis Kneile, displays physical symptoms as a result of becoming an isolated island in his connected world. Gettler cites a recent study which has expanded on this.

But the experiment also demonstrates that the real challenge is finding the right balance. Kneile ‘cracks’ because he needs his cell phone to stay in touch with his young daughter – too young to understand an experiment like this. (At 6 years old, she would have no concept of a purely wired world!).

This serves to highlight that all this technology can be useful: who would want to go back to sending faxes and having to find change for public phones – and being out of touch with loved ones?

So – can we have the usefulness without the addiction? We can – but it does take great self discipline. For a start, as I’ve written before, you need to find the ‘off’ button.