Clients, Culture, Growth, Operations, Policy

Work Life, Work-Life, Worklife

March 8, 2019

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I have found that the best way to come to terms with work-life balance, especially as an architect that has been trained from college to expect many sleepless nights, is that balance is not the ultimate goal – adaptability is.

Life is inherently messy and unpredictable. Things are not always going to go as planned and just when you think you have everything under control; something comes out of nowhere. People grow and change, and often you do not know how you are going to react until you find yourself in the middle of it. Becoming a parent of one, and later two, little ones have put me into a constant state of transition.

Despite our efforts to control our environment, being a part of a family, a community, a company, means that you cannot control everything. Finding balance becomes even more difficult when operating as a professional service firm since clients are demanding and equally unpredictable. Architects complicate this further because our work is entirely immersive and hard to leave behind; after all, architecture is all around us.

I don’t know a single architect or designer for that matter, that refrains from having a conversation about something they have seen recently that is really cool or, on the opposite end, terribly unfunctional. I always find my subconscious commenting on everything from a fixture in a public restroom to the weight of a writing instrument (and I realize only an architect would call it a writing instrument).

So what can you control?

You can control how adaptable you design your life and your firm to be resilient despite all of the changes. Here are three places to start:

[01] Work From Anywhere

Technology plays an incredibly invasive roll in finding balance, but it also means that it is an equal enabler. The idea of the remote office isn’t necessarily new, but architects have always found excuses for this be it the: need for powerful computers, software licensing and shared access to files, and the belief that productivity only really happens when everyone is in the office together.

Advancements in hardware, software, and cloud computing have made all previous excuses obsolete. I can run anything on my laptop, have access anywhere with licensing (especially as companies like Autodesk and Adobe move to the software as a service model), and working together even as a remote team has become more commonplace.

The path is clear to allow individuals to get the work done when it’s most suitable to their schedule. Does it have to be entirely remote? No, but even a change that creates greater flexibility in when you come and go from the office gives everyone the opportunity to adapt their week to avoid the rush hour, be there for family, and makes it easier for people to do work at times when they are most productive during the day.

[02] Create Sustainable Sources of Income/Revenue

I have written about expanding services on the Practice of Architecture previously. However, one thing that I have never really written about before is a mechanism for a sustainable and passive source of income that doesn’t require you (or your firm) to continually chase down the next opportunity.

An excellent example of someone who has an architecture background and manages to do this incredibly well is Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com. His start, or what he calls his Plan B Career, launched in 2008 after he was laid off from an architecture firm where he held the position of Job Captain.

Pat also doesn’t give specific examples of how an architecture firm would enable some of his strategies, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take some of his ideas and make them your own or even implement some of them within your firm. It just requires a bit of entrepreneurial thinking on your part.

Please take note though, any real opportunity mentioned is not a get rich quick scheme, but taking some time to put some of these ideas to work for you could potentially mean that you can avoid heightened levels of anxiety about paying employees or, for the individual, having a job when the next downturn comes around.

[03] Continually Grow Your Village & Professional Partnerships

Every new job or potential opportunity in my professional career has been because of my network. Which means as it grows, so does the potential opportunities to do something more and even do something different.

Delivering projects will only continue to be more complex, especially as we continue to demand more out of our buildings. Creating partners today with not only individuals but other firms, that you can rely on consistently deliver, but it will make it easier to:

expand your business development team and touch-points with potential clients
chase the projects you want even if the expertise is not directly in your wheelhouse
collectively identify other areas where you both can provide new services to existing clients
potentially staff up or down depending on project pipeline and team resources
continue to bring greater innovation through fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking when looking for design solutions

I hope that this gives you a place to start considering how you design your practice or your work-life to be a little more adaptable. With constant change, balance is often tough to achieve 100% of the time, but greater flexibility allows you to be more versatile as things unfold.

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