I read somewhere that in New York, the majority of heart attacks occurs around nine o?clock on Monday mornings. One study showed that that the most common factor in these heart attacks was the fact that victims felt that their jobs had become ?joyless strivings?. In other words, they had reached the stage where they could no longer find meaning in their work. They lived such an unbalanced life focused on work, work and more work, that on Monday mornings, as they faced the prospect of yet another stressful week at work, their heart would give up and say, ?That?s it ? you are not going there any more: I am sending you to hospital.?

Many years ago in Johannesburg, I used to work for a Managing Director who took great pleasure in announcing triumphantly to anyone who cared to listen, ?The purpose of my job is to create stress ? I like to see people on the go.? He would put in long and hard hours, often leaving home for work as dawn was breaking and returning just in time for the eight o?clock evening news. Whilst at the office, he would constantly be on the move, flitting from one meeting to another, chasing staff for their deadlines or barking orders to some unfortunate subordinate who wasn?t moving fast enough. There was an unwritten rule in this company that if you wanted to survive or get promoted, you shouldn?t leave work before at least 6.00 pm ? even though your letter of appointment stated that you were employed from 8.30 am to 5.00 pm. Recently, I asked one of our regular visitors about the MD ? where he was and what had happened to him. He replied: ?Haven?t you heard? He died some three years ago of a heart attack ? right there at his desk. The cleaning staff found him with the phone still in his hand.?

This is not an isolated incident ? who hasn?t heard of the expression, ?A heart attack is God?s way of telling you to slow down?? The universe we live in strives for balance. Night always follows day and sunshine, rain. It doesn?t allow things to pile up for very long ? not even for us the business people. When our lives are out of balance, chaos ensues and stress reigns supreme. After a while, nothing works ? there is simply too much pressure on the job, too much pressure at home and not enough time to cope with either. When we are at work we wish we were not, and when we are on holiday we keep worrying about what?s happening at work. When we are with our colleagues we wish we were spending time with our kids, and when we are with our kids we think of some work-related issues that we still have to resolve. More importantly, we become ?crises-addicts? ? managers who believe that fire-fighting is a legitimate way of managing; that everything has to be done in a hurry; that if we do not try hard we cannot succeed and therefore long hours are simply an essential part of the job.

At the end of it all, our organism stops functioning and even on this small paradisiacal island of ours, we end up in hospital, burned out. Turnover from burnout is wasted money ? and it?s always management?s fault. By pushing our employees or ourselves so hard, we create an unhealthy, stressed out environment where absenteeism becomes the norm of the day, where our employees insist on taking all the sick leave due to them and where crisis-coping mode is the only way we can function. This environment is anything but productive.

We need to learn that balancing our life is something that we should value. We need to realize that this balance is not about better time management but about our values. We may indeed learn all the tricks about time planning and management, but at the end of the day, our lives won?t become balanced until we learn to determine that which we truly value.

Prof Eric Charoux [email protected]