Is work-life balance a reality?

It's the 50^th episode of The Search Bar and host Adam Sparkes welcomes Central Michigan University President Neil MacKinnon to the show. The two sit down to discuss the balancing act between your personal and professional life. President MacKinnon shares some insight into how he finds balance, the importance of mentorship and other thoughts on how you can better find work-life harmony.

Adam: So I'm curious for you, did you ever learn a lesson the hard way about your own work-life balance?

Neil: Yeah, well, that's a great question and fortunately I did not spend time in ICU-

Adam: Yeah, don’t do that.

Neil: So I didn't have The Adam moment, right, of where it kind of hit you was probably, I was really influenced by a mentor. I did my master's degree at the University of Wisconsin, and it was in pharmacy leadership and his name was David Zills. He's almost like a godfather of hospital pharmacy in this country. And it was the first time I really had someone that sat down with me and asked a series of questions over several months of-questions that typically you don't think of, and just for example, like “Neil, how would you define success?” So really basic, what's important to you in life? And so they weren't questions about pharmacy or my discipline, but they were more life questions. And that really changed kind of my approach. And yes, I've had up and downs and we'll probably get into some of those moments in this conversation, but to me to have a mentor like that, that kind of allowed me to start thinking about some of those questions. And then since then, that was 30 years ago. It's been a topic of interest to mind throughout my career in different roles and responsibilities, and as I've now in turn mentored others as well.

Adam: For you, it starts with that great mentor. You're the president of Central Michigan University, under the roof of which we currently reside. As president, how do you view your role as the administrative mentor of campus when it comes to something like work-life balance?

Neil: Yeah. Well, I think of it certainly any risk president, you're being watched. It’s a very public role. People are watching everything you do in the official role, but also if I'm in Meijer or in a restaurant. And so being cognizant of that, trying to be a role model and not that I'm perfect and have it all figured out, but the fact that people are looking in on what I'm doing. And then also just being-with my leadership team, so my 18 direct reports in my cabinet, how I'm modeling that personally to them and my interactions. And just so for example, some basic things where on the weekends, unless it's a crisis, I will use the scheduler. And so my team's used to getting a lot of emails at 6:00 AM on Monday morning. I'm not expecting them to respond at 6:00 AM but it's a way of being respectful of not interfering with their evenings and weekends as well. So just small touches like that. So realizing that, again, I kind of helped set the culture, the tone, and hopefully that trickles down throughout the whole organization.

Adam: I think you're bringing up a really interesting point there because I know especially when you're early in your career, you feel like every communication deserves an immediate response.

Neil: That's right.

Adam: Or you want to give one. And to your credit, that's not always the intention of your leader. Is that because I sent you an email on Saturday, you better call me right now. It might just be they're like, I need to send this off or I’ll forget. What advice would you give to other leaders in terms of that? Is it being more forthcoming or is it just using the schedule? How do you tell people, Hey, it's okay to tell me, I'll get to that Monday.

Neil: Right, right. Yeah, I think part of it's just being upfront and having those conversations. Again, what are the expectations in their team? Of course, you're right, every team is different and even on campus, which is fascinating of a university, we have so many-whether it's facilities management, whether it's communications marketing, whether it's an academic college, and so there's different norms in all of those. But I would argue again, certainly as those in leadership positions have that responsibility to model it and also to show that, yes, your career is important, but it's not your entire life and how you treat family and friends and make time for those, it sends a message. Time is an asset, so it's a resource. And so, one of the most painful things if you've ever done is looking at your screen time on your phone and it's a wakeup call, right?

Adam: It is.

Neil: And so, I think having those moments of just understanding, okay, I've got this amount of time, doesn't matter, your salary, doesn't matter your position. We all have the same amount of hours in a day. We don't know our lifespan. That's different. But making sure you're using it very thoughtfully on how you-and be respectful of others' time as well.

Adam: One of the things that I feel like sometimes for me that I'm up against, and I'm sure you feel the same way, is there's an American culture for work too, which on its highest level surface on that Norman Rockwell surface, that veneer of it, it feels really good and really tough.

Neil: Yes, yeah.

Adam: But sometimes it's a little bit destructive is one of the things that I came to grips with a few years back where I was like, man, people will, if you're working real hard and you're successful, people will kind of clap you right into a wall. They'll just go look at him go! Smash! And then they'll just turn and look at somebody else, right?

Neil: Yeah.

Adam: I mean, do you think that's a hard conversation to have with people, that the only value you give isn't derived from work?

Neil: Right. Well, I think it almost goes back to one of the things I said earlier. How do you define success? So if success is basically you define it as far as a status, a position, if you define it as a certain salary, then it's not surprising that people have that drive. Unfortunately, what I've seen anyway is you can have, if you had friends and colleagues I've worked with have very successful careers, but their marriage falls apart. They don't have a relationship with their kids. It also can impact their physical and mental health as well. And so at the end of the day, was it worth it? And you think of someone who's maybe on their deathbed saying, man, I would gladly trade-if I had just another hour with my family. They're not thinking of their salary or title or things like that. So that's a way of kind of recalibrating things as well. And certainly we want people to work hard and get fulfilled from their careers, but at the expense of everything else. And I think this society, you touched on it, Adam, I think it's more the pendulum is out of sync as far as so much focus on your career and how much money you make and your salary and just your title and responsibilities. But again, at what expense?

Adam: It's always interesting to me, we're both Scottish. I have a lot of family in Scotland, and I was with them this summer for a little while, and it's striking to me how different Europeans live than us, and it's not in this really monumental way where you feel like you're walking around on the moon. But the work-life balance thing, for the sake of my own observation with my family, there's a little bit more of a emphasis on having balance and maybe not being as worried about how big your house is. You know, in general, if you go to Germany or England, they're living in smaller houses than us just in general. And they're kind of taken seven times the vacation though.

Neil: Yeah, that's right. So maybe they're actually living the dream, right?

Adam: Yeah,

Neil: No, there's something to be said about that. You're right. And it is funny how even this concept of work-life balance or harmony differs by different cultures and different places. So certainly in many cultures, it's valuing those friendships, those relationships, and that's why they take those breaks in the middle of the day to hang out with friends and colleagues.

Adam: I'm suspecting this, so I'm making a leap of logic that people, it is a life event, not necessarily crazy. I opened up with saying I almost got myself killed, which is a podcast for another time. It's not always something cataclysmic, but just like having kids, losing a parent,

Neil: That’s right.

Adam: These things that sort of slow us down and make us reflect, I imagine that's where people start to go, man, did I have my priorities?

Neil: That's right. Yeah, you could be. And I think those are wake up moments you shared on a personal level, Adam, you had one of those as well. And I think it's unfortunate sometimes it takes an event like that, but at least you've had that self-awareness now and you reprioritize things. It's interesting. Our top public health officer in the entire country is a US surgeon general, and this is a topic that the surgeon general weighed in 2022. So kind of coming out of Covid where I think a lot of us were kind of questioning balance in life and what we prioritize. He had two reports. The first was in spring of ‘22 that looked just in healthcare workers in burnout and resilience. And way back I was a pharmacist, so this is part of my background, you think of Covid pandemic and the impact on health workers. But later that fall, he had another report that looked at workplace mental health and wellbeing. And in that report he said there's five essentials for any good employer or any individual thinking of workplace-mental health--wellbeing. And one of those five was workplace, what he called work-life harmony or work-life balance. And so here we have our nation's top public health officer saying that as a country, this is a challenge and an area of weakness, something we need to work on better as a society. Again, I don't know if other countries don't have a surgeon general, if the surgeon general, the top public health officer in Germany or Scotland would say the same thing, but at least we have our top public health officer in this country saying this is a serious issue in this country.

Adam: Let's flip that over to students a little bit. Let's talk about the academic side since we are here. I think sometimes either when you've been removed from being in an undergraduate institution or you've never been to one, I don't think people realize the stress that is there. What are the tools that you hope students get as undergrads, like in an undergraduate institute like an institution like ours, how should we be monitoring them for burnout? It's not quite work-life balance, but it's kind of like it is work-life balance, going to school's work.

Neil: It is.

Adam: You're just paying for it.

Neil: Exactly. And essentially my wife Leanne, she was a student athlete and student athletes are some of the ones that really, they have to figure that out because the time management skills, they are on the road, they might be missing class assignments and things like that. So I think we even within our student body, we have some subgroups of students where this really is a central life skill to have. So certainly we want all of our graduates, all of our students to graduate, to cross that stage. Of course, we're coming up to a commencement here as we're recording this, but at the same time, it should also be the skills they pick up. And this really is an essential skill, is understanding and what does success mean to them? How do achieve work-life balance, how do I model that? And yes, we want them all to be successful in their careers and a lot of our focus here is those competencies, those skills, the knowledge to be successful in their chosen discipline or career. But equally important is this other part. For example, for our students, maybe they're from Michigan, they have a dream job they could take in Seattle, and by all means on one hand they should go for that and do that. But if it comes at the expense of severing relationships with their parents and family and friends, was it worth it? And so I think thinking about that before they accept those jobs and thinking also this career I'm choosing, these are the likely hours that I'll be working, how does that impact other things I want to do in my life as well?

Adam: Yeah, that part can be a shock too. Your first real job. I remember I worked at a newspaper two months out of college and I remember getting up for press check and be like, you're on a shift for it. And it was like five o'clock. The idea that five o'clock wasn't bedtime for me when I was 22-

Neil: It's a bit of a wakeup call.

Adam: It was insane, not-like I said, for me, I always tell people when I get compliments that I do things well. I'm like, I hit things like a hammer until they break and then I'm through whatever the obstacle was. And that was really hard for me to figure out at that age because there's no hitting your head through a hammer at 5:00 AM I learned to drink coffee. That's when I became a coffee drinker. But I do feel like that's something that I notice when I talk to students too, is that sometimes even here I'll hear about somebody taking a crazy credit load. And then they're involved in six or seven things and it tends to be these same high performing students. You meet them all the time, right?  

Neil: Yeah, that's right.

Adam: You’re like “I've seen you six or seven times this week. What don't you do?” And the answer is usually sleep. For the students that I engage with often take times to be like, “yo, you need to bring this down a notch just a little bit.” At some point, one extra co-curricular seems like it's going to mean something, but it's not if you don't chill out a little bit. And I think that's tough when you're driven that. Turning off that motor is really, really difficult for some.

Neil: No, I think you're onto something there where I think our personality types does influence how we can-I think part of it too is even to level set this conversation as we're talking about work-life balance, giving people some latitude and grace where it's tough and you're going to have days. I think for our student life, for our students listening to this, if you think of finals week, there's probably is not going to be much of a work-life balance that week. And so we all have days or seasons in life. Usually it's the holidays and other stuff like that. Right. But overall, again, are you prioritizing? You mentioned sleep, right? And so if you think of things like that that are essential for functioning but often get missed. You might be able to do one all-nighter or go a day or two, but that's going to catch up with you. And so again, that balance as far as sleep, food, those sorts of things as well.

Adam: Let's talk about that a little bit because I think there's probably some pretty easy advice there. And sometimes with, I know the advice it's hardest to take is the simplest, which is what are those routines for you or that you'd recommend for other people that are non-negotiable routines? Is it how you sleep, exercise?

Neil: Yeah, so I'll give you a little insight into the day-to-day life of at least this president. So typically, I try to show up at Wariner Hall, my office at 6:00 AM I have a period of, I just do some devotions. My faith is important to me, just reflection to be honest, self-assessment, how I'm doing, and then usually try not to have any meetings before eight. So I really have to, if you think about two hours of this time to get caught up on email, reflect for the day. Also for every meeting I ask that the person meeting with me send the agenda for that meeting at least 48 business hours before that. So it gives me an opportunity as I'm heading into each meeting, I've already thought about the meeting, what are the outcomes? And sometimes I can resolve issues even before the meeting so it makes more efficient use of that time. Most of my meetings where I'm meeting people, I've shrunk from an hour to 45 minutes. So to give that window a break in between, and this is the craziest part, Adam, I try to leave the university at four, which sounds really, really early, but then I go home, change and then work out in the SAC, so our student recreation center. And part of that is just to maintain that physical fitness. I'll then go home sometimes my wife and I will either eat in the dining hall or cook at home, and then we usually have evening events. And then after that, then maybe check email again. On a more strategic level though, something that-a lesson I learned from a colleague at the University of Cincinnati when I was there is to block off what he calls strategic thinking time. And ideally this would be one full day a month and then maybe half a day elsewhere in there. And those are days where I don't respond to email, try not to, of course if there's a crisis or something I'm going to or text, but just to think about big issues facing higher education. It could be enrollment, it could be executive orders, it could be other things. Now not everyone has a position where they can block off a day, and I get that, But everybody in the position you're in should have some time where you're not focused on the day-to-day tasks, but kind of the bigger level, what do I want to accomplish in this role over the next year or setting goals and things like that. So to me, it's I guess a combination of having a pretty rigid schedule, again, the 6:00 AM start and other things, but then also having these strategic thinking blocks where I can just have some liberty of just thinking of these critical issues facing higher education.

Adam: I think that's really good advice, and it is hard to do. I f I put a block on my calendar to figure out how I'm going to do something. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. The trees are right in front of you and you're like, well, these need to get chopped down, or whatever euphemism you want for it. But I do think it's really great advice because often you're overthinking things when you're forced to think about them the second they're coming at you, right?

Neil: That's right. Yeah. And I think a lot of us are, unfortunately a lot of jobs and careers are like that, right? It's just one task after another. I think back in the day when I was a pharmacist, you're filling prescriptions. It's very constant. But to have that take a step back and again, think of what do I really need to accomplish in this role? There's an author, Stephen Covey, kind of a classic text, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One of those habits is time management. So he actually presents in that book a time management matrix where he's at the secret to life or one of those secrets is to look at things in your life that are not urgent but important. And if your entire career, if your life job, if you're doing things that are urgent, you're going to get burned out. That's going to be chaos. You can do that for a while, but if everything is urgent, so the secret, again, what are those things that are not urgent but important? Just like that strategic thinking time I mentioned, right? So it's not urgent, but man, if I didn't have that,

Adam: It would become urgent at some point.

Neil: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So things if you don't do, that's a good point. Then the other quadrants get busier.

Adam: Yeah, I really like that. I do think time management and mental health are pretty directly linked, which is that if you can be busy and not be stressed out, and I think those two things, the intersectionality of those gets real messy for most people. And I would include myself in that, where I've become, as I get older, I am just going to speak for myself, but I'm much more cognizant of, “okay, this is not an emergency right now,” but it's easy. It's easy to have the end of your day turn into something really wild when you could have kind of pre-managed that or not catastrophize something that probably wasn't as bad. I don’t if catastrophize is the word. My boss-

Neil: I'm going to start using that word. That's great.

Adam: My boss used it with me the other day, shout out Amy. And I was like, I think even she was like, “is that a word?” I'm like, “well it is now.”

Neil: We're going with it.

Adam: But yeah, not to create a catastrophe when it's not there I think is really hard because I think when you are under pressure, it is human nature to kind of go “look at how bad this is.” And at least then it forces some sort of an action because easy to fall into inaction if you don't think something is eminent, right? We're actually not super good about thinking about the future. I don't think we're wired to that. That's right. You're supposed to live through today and live through next week, and that's sort of your biology 10 years down the road, five years down the road, man, if you're doing that at all, super mind.

Neil: Well, and it’s good you even mentioned that, because in the field of economics, right, there's actually models that look, whether it's savings or economic and there's more value put on the present, and that's kind of delayed gratification or discounting is kind of the economics term for that. So you're exactly right, and it is hard not to, I've got these urgent things I have to get done today. I think whatever career we're in, we all have those sorts of things. And that's why for me, protecting those strategic thinking blocks is so hard. And to be honest, I've lost some of them. So it's not like every day I get one month, but it is a cumulative effect. If you don't have that time is going to impact your performance in your job.

Adam: Do you think for some people too, that could just be quiet time.

Neil: Right!

Adam: Right. I mean even if you're not solving some huge problem at work or in your life, like you were saying before, taking that time to not be on the phone.

Neil: That's right.

Adam: To not necessarily be engaged in tasks, but to be doing something passive. And I think we're really, we talked about this a little bit. I had a faculty member and we had a conversation about kind of digital overload. And one of the things that we surmised in this conversation was that people aren't very good at self-reflection or at being with themselves anymore because we are so plugged into technology. And I feel like that is a huge influence on it, that dopamine hit-

Neil: Yeah

Adam: Has stopped our ability to just sit and be with ourselves. How do you feel about that?

Neil: You're definitely onto something. It's interesting. We have three daughters in university age, so just seeing the world through their lives is interesting. And our oldest daughter does some journaling and stuff, and that's almost like a forgotten art. So just taking that opportunity just to reflect back and of course some use blogs and other ways to kind of do that reflection as well. But no, you're onto something there as well. And I think also thinking of things that are not just work or your career related as well. So I think that's the other part is essentially to create those boundaries. I think that was the crazy part of a Covid, right? People were working from home and there were no boundaries anymore. And you think about it in some ways that was kind of nirvana like, oh, I'm going to work at home in my comfy clothes, I don't have to go. And there's definitely was some people like parts of that, but I think it introduced other problems where suddenly you had no barriers in your professional life, bled completely into your personal life in a very visible way at home. So yeah, I think those reflection times are important. And also I think spending some time with mentors that can help you do some honest self-assessment. Like where do I need to improve? What are my short and long-term career goals, but also my short and long-term personal or life goals as well. Again, at the end of the day, you don't want to just be very successful in your career and your life fall apart. It's that balance between the two.

Adam: Rest in peace James Span. James Span and I had this conversation almost a year ago, which is if you're mentoring somebody, that's one of the biggest gifts you can give in that mentorship is holding people account for the softer things.

Neil: That’s right.

Adam: We might be like, “how are things going at Central Michigan University? What's happening in your division?” That's an easy conversation for two people that work here to have, but “hey, I heard you were going to start journaling. You actually sticking with that?”

Neil: Yeah,

Adam: “What kind of things do you write about.” That type of mentorship even in professional setting is really good too. So thinking about not just helping fix your own balance, but maybe encouraging the people around you to join you on that journey. And part of doing that is that those soft check-ins, and that was something that James put a lot of emphasis on it. I thought it was really good because when people do it, you go, “oh, these things I do matter. I guess.” I think that's another thing too is when you're thinking about yourself inside of whatever the work life apparatus that you're trying to navigate is, everyone else is doing it too. The person who you think does a lot better than you at work or does a lot worse than you at work or however you rank yourself when you're doing your tasks every day, that person's probably juggling something as well. And I think having a good open dialogue with people I think does really aid in that you feel a little bit less pressure to be perfect. I'm not trying to give anyone imposter syndrome. We're not all truly faking it, but it is to some extent, we all have the same struggles. It doesn't matter how successful you perceive the person next to you or above you to be.

Neil: That's right. Yeah. No, we're all human. And I think a lot about work-life balance is about setting priorities. And again, that's for something like this, the gut check of looking at the screen time on your phone. So again, if you think of time as a commodity, where are you investing it? You can invest it in people relationships. There's a workshop that I often will do on this topic, and so I kind of have seven essentials. I won't go through all seven for the sake of this podcast right now, but for example, one of those would be discretionary time, something that we all lost during Covid, whether it was group activity, travel, that's essential for all of us to have those times for hobbies and discretionary time. If you lose that, you are not going to feel fulfilled as a person. And that's a time investment. Again, even relationships. So I encourage folks even come up with a relationship plan, which sounds a little over the top, maybe cheesy, but if you think of, we probably have listeners that maybe have lost their parents and they're reflecting, did I really invest the time in mom and dad when they were still alive? Right? Because you're not going to get that time back. There's a pastor in California, Francis Chan has a great analogy and we all come from different faith walks, but he has this rope and the very tip of it is colored. And he said, this is your time on earth, maybe 70 years if you're lucky, maybe 80. My dad's 95, so his is a little bit bigger, but the rest is eternity. But how are you investing that tip of that rope? And if you think you touched on this earlier, Adam, on this society, a lot of it is the house, the car, how much money I'm going to make eternity perspective, that doesn't matter at all. It's those relationships. And another way to frame it is what's your legacy going to be? And so at the end of the day, you would hope, if you're on your deathbed, people are talking about, oh my goodness, this is a person who was kind to others, invested themselves into others. They're not going to talk about, again, your work accomplishments and such.

Adam: Generationally. Do you see a shift in how folks are looking at that work-life balance? I feel like I'm an elder millennial. I'm 43 years old. I'm right on the cusp. I graduated high school in 2000 and I remember very much being on the front end of this infantilization of people my age, which is funny, because I’m middle age now. But at work, I remember having a boss who went into a room full of all of us and being like, “y’all are so millennial, you'll only want to do things your way.” And I'm going to tell you what though, it stuck with me because I was like, “I'm never going to talk to a young person like that.” But I do think that they view things a little bit differently than even I did, which was frustrating to my older Gen X boss at that time. How do you see younger people shifting in the way they perceive work and perceive their life?

Neil: Yeah, well, I think you touched on it earlier, Adam. In any population, you have a continuum. So we have some highly driven students here that are just workaholics and are just going to push, push, push, whatever they do. And you've got others that maybe don't have the same kind of drive. So I think in any population there's a continuum, but I think there has been some generational shifts. It's interesting. My background is healthcare and kind of the old model of, you think of medical residents, I was a pharmacy resident, was basically, you're going to sleep at the hospital, you're doing 48 hour shifts. Well, what we kind of learned not surprisingly, is that if you sleep deprived medical residents and that training environment, they're going to make errors and patients are going to get harmed. And so there's been a bit of a pushback. And I think if you look at, again, I'm more familiar with health professionals, a desire among the next generation of doctors and dentists and nurses, others to actually have more of a work-life balance, which I think is a good thing. So in some ways we can learn from the younger generations, maybe they've got that balance figured out or it's a higher priority than it has been in older generations. Maybe it is more that kind of western European model than a US model. And I think that's a good thing. We need to learn from that.

Adam: I mean this is conjecture, but the thing I get from young people more often than not is it's less of a feeling that I just owe you a debt of gratitude for offering me a job. And again, this is massive generalization, so I don't want to put this like you said onto any particular group of people because I also feel like one of the biggest differences between my parents' generation and my kids-and I have teenagers, so my kids are a few years behind yours- it isn't that they're wildly different, it's that they're wildly more recorded. So I think we hear young people and we hear them have these discussions and these conflicts that were in our head or in smaller groups and we hear them out loud. So it's easier for us to judge the swings that are occurring. And it's easier for people to also, I think join in a sentiment go, “oh, you know what? I also feel like I should have better work life balance.” So probably our parents had less of an option to do that and say that out loud.

Neil: Yeah, I think you can't underscore the impact of social media where over half of, I recently heard over half of grade 12 students, their dream job is to be an influencer. So yeah, I think you see that in the impact of my own daughters. They see their friends on vacations and stuff, and it does change the way they think about things. So yeah, each generation has their own struggles and assets around work-life harmony. Going back to the surgeon generals report, I think what he has framed is if you're an employer, you really need to make this a priority for recruiting and retaining employees and especially millennials and younger generations. And so it's not just about the salary, it's not just about the position, but it's about how does this integrate with the rest of my life? And so to me, even as a university, because also an employer, and so I've challenged our own HR department, how are we incorporating the US surgeon general's framework and just for example, two of the things that are in his framework besides work-life harmony. One is am I doing work that matters? So at the end of the day, does anyone care? Right? And we all want that a job where you feel like you're making a difference, that you matter. Another thing that's in his framework are opportunities for professional development, can you grow as an employee over time? That could be going to conferences, getting new skills, new degrees. And so again, that's a more holistic part of work-life, harmony and balance as well to have those parts in it.

Adam: Yeah, I mean, I think that's really good. And I do think younger people I think are onto that a little bit more, but I don't know that it's a massive value shift so much as it's an access to information shift. At least I'm postulating that where I feel like my mom, I'm going to pick-I love picking on my mom. My parents did not go to university. And my mother, I remember she switched jobs really late in her career. My mom had worked in automotive retail, she worked at car dealerships for a long time and eventually was a finance manager of a car dealership. So she had started as a lease check-in person and eventually landed that job.

Neil: Oh wow.

Adam: So she went from doing a relatively “low skill job” to being a manager in the office and decided, well, I need to move car dealerships. And part of it was, I'm overworked. I'm here too much. I feel like they're not listening to me, but I have some leverage. I've been doing this for a while now, so I'm going to this other car dealership. And I remember she accepted the job and was kind of negotiating when she was going to start and everything with them. And I was on the phone with her and she said, well, they only want to give me five paid days. And I was like, my mother at the time was probably in her mid fifties or something, and I remember just having to tell my mother, I'm like, “mom, you tell them no, I want exactly the same amount of days that I had earned over 20 years at the other. You want my 20 years of experience from the other dealership, you're going to buy it baby.” And the notion for my mother to do that at the time was she was taken aback by it. And I think that's the difference where I think my sister or maybe my daughter in the future hears more from other people who have successfully had that conversation with an employer. So are willing to go, “Hey, I want this.” And my mom's fear is that just by asking it, the rug will be pulled out from under her. And I just think that's more that generational difference is those stories aren't shared. My mom didn't hear five other people or say, yeah, just tell them how much time you went off. And you know what? She got the time off though.

Neil: That's good. Okay. Well, I'm glad it worked out for your mom. It sounds like-

Adam: She's retired now.

Neil: Yeah. Okay. I think she was ahead of her time for the US Surgeon General's report, so she was ahead of that. No, you're exactly right. I think, again, going back to employers, it's understanding things like that that are critically important to employees. Again, it's not just the salary or the title, but in her case, to have time off, the time off and to spend with family and friends. And we know that when someone has that balance, they're more likely to be productive. Even if you're just thinking the finances as an employer, you want employees that have that balance, that are motivated. So when they're there, it's not like they're showing up on Monday at 9:00 AM they’re like, oh my goodness, is it Friday already? So just from a business model, it makes sense as well.

Adam: Yeah. Alright. So we have commencement around the corner. This will release afterwards, but we've both got a long weekend coming up. What advice would you give to a young professional who's starting off their career to start it off right with that work-life balance?

Neil: To me, it's finding that mentor, that's a big part of it, starting to ask some of those questions. What does success really mean to me, those seven essentials we talked about earlier. So how do I build in time in my career for discretionary time and hobbies? How do I ensure that those friendships that I've had in university, I've got to plan to maintain those. So I think to me it's that holistic perspective is essential. So it's natural when you're just graduated to be focused on your career, especially those first few years, really there's that motivation drive want to, this is why I went to school for so long, but don't forget the life part too. Again, at the end of the day, you can have a very successful career, but if your relationships fall apart and your personal life is miserable, it's not worth it. And so I think those are often questions maybe a 22, 24-year-old doesn't ask, but I would encourage them to do that. And I think I'm really encouraged. We have a lot of students that already, I think have that balance. Just this week, finals week, last night, I was working in our student gym here, so it means how many students were taking breaks from studying to actually do that. We had a community organization last night that had an event called Midnight Pancakes. There were probably four to 500 students there. And for them just to take that social break for an hour, get some free food. So I think we've got some students that already understand this is important, and hopefully they'll take those skills into their first position post-graduation as well.

Adam: Never turned down free pancakes is what I heard on that one. You got to get there early. It's going to get packed. You want to be getting, it's a lot of food. It's a lot of food. They got some door prizes.

Neil: They did. They did.

Adam: Exactly. Do you know what? Did you go?

Neil: I did, yeah. No, I was there.

Adam: What did they give away? What was the-

Neil: I didn't stick it around. It was like, I think it went till like 1:00 AM So I was there about an hour, Adam, but I was trying to have some sleep last night, too.

Adam: You get here at six.

Neil: I don't want to have bags out of our eyes for The Search Bar. This is episode 50, right? That's right.

Adam: Absolutely. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you coming in. This has been a good conversation. Hopefully we can do it again.

Neil: Well, I say this is a judgment free zone too. Adam, I won't be looking at you every day here. I see you at CMU and asking you how's your work life balance? This is a private conversation. Well, I guess it's not really private. It's being recorded.

Adam: No, it is. Somebody's going to hear it.

Neil: Yeah. Okay. Awesome.

Adam: Thanks Neil. Alright, thank you. Thanks for stopping by The Search Bar. Make sure to like and subscribe so that you don't have to search for the next episode.