Five Principles of Balance, an Introduction
Practices for work (in progress) life balance
Introduction
Well-being has been a focal point in my life for a decade and a half, and since graduate school, examining the nuances of how lifestyle choices impact creativity, productivity and happiness has been a fascination of mine.
Having worked at BCG Digital Ventures for over three and a half years, I have been observing, experimenting with, and documenting my experiences with respect to work-life balance. Two years ago, I joined a small team to work on one of the first internally incubated ventures funded by a new program at Digital Ventures called DV Spark.
This small venture was co-founded by Olivia Bryant, a young woman who is a DV Venture Architect, passionate about personalization, integrated medicine and new wellness practices. She came up with the concept and pitched it to several DV partners in our healthcare practice who decided to seed the investment which enabled her, myself and a UX designer to pursue the incubation.
The nature of the team, coupled with the wellness centric content of the Venture created the perfect "petri dish" for experimentation in how to maintain an ideal work-life balance. This context informed powerful insights about how I can care for my own growth and wellbeing, as well as for my teammates’, and highlighted benefits that went hand in hand with this caring; creativity, productivity and fulfillment throughout my time on the Venture.
Though the nature of this Spark Venture is unique, with experience across multiple very different ventures, I have synthesized Five Key Principles, each with actionable habits that if practiced, will help individuals and teams foster a healthier work-life balance on ventures, regardless of the corporate-partner or team make-up.
Human Above All Else
Burnout is Not a Badge of Honor
Growth is Powerful Success Metric
Design Space Into Your Day
Practice, Patience, Repeat
To get the most from this series:
Each principle is part of a five-piece mini series. The principles will be released one by one, and are broken down into practices for the individual “For You” and the team “ As a Team”. Both work together, or separately.
Read the "For You" practices to take your well being into your own hands. Change yourself before you try to change others. Start forming habits to create more space for your well being at work. Lead by example, and gradually culture will change.
Read "As a Team" if you’ve got one of those stellar, open minded teams, to learn which practices you can do together. Change is a process.