Yes, career women should "lean in", but they should also learn when to lean back

Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg wants women to stop holding themselves back and to "lean in" to their careers, but another poster girl for success in the media world, Ariana Huffington (of The Huffington Post fame), has written, with respect to her own experience, that women also need to learn when to lean back:

If success continues to be defined as driving yourself into the ground and burning out, it will be disastrous for our families, our companies, and our world.

Huffington is the featured columnist in the "Hard Choices" section of a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Read her short but heart-felt and illuminating piece here.

• Photo-illustration courtesy: Bloomberg Businessweek

• ALSO READ: In today's Mint, "Women must find the strength to soar". Will Sheryl Sandberg's "lean-in" philosophy find takers here in India? Three women entrepreneurs — Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Rashmi Bansal, and Meena Ganesh — talk to Bhakti Bapat Mathew about what it will take to ensure genuine equal opportunity at work in our country.

• ADDITIONAL READING: Legendary investment guru Warren Buffett explains why he is gung-ho about women in the workforce. He also expresses concern about too many women continuing to impose limitations on themselves, talking themselves out of achieving their potential. Read his wise and witty piece here.

• UPDATE (May 17, 2013): In The New York Times, “Lean in” is the idiom of the moment for headline writers.

• UPDATE (October 23, 2013): Read these wonderful and highly relevant columns by Shoba Narayan in Mint Lounge: "Be the woman of your choice" and "A conformist and a rebel". 

How do you know you love your job?

Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO at HubSpot, a marketing software company based in the U.S., has put up a post that has already garnered 2,000 "likes" on Facebook. Some 500 people have tweeted about it and it has been shared almost 9,000 times on LinkedIn.

That's not at all surprising considering Shah (pictured) has addressed a topic that is top-of-mind for all of us: How do we know we love what we do?

Shah has helpfully given us what he says are 14 telling signs that you love your job. These range from "You don’t talk about other people; you talk about the cool things other people are doing" to "You don’t think about surviving. You think about winning" and "You view success in terms of fulfillment and gratification — not just promotions and money".

Check out the list here and then take the mini-quiz at the end of Shah's post (read the hundreds of comments, too) to figure out if you need to register on Naukri.com — or stay put where you are.

• ALSO READ: "If you love what you do, is it 'work'?"

• VARUN CHHABRIA (Class of 2012), associate editor of Books & More magazine, commented via e-mail: "How true! Answered yes to all 14 statements. :)"

• DIYOTIMA SINHA ROY (Class of 2014), currently an intern with JWT in Bangalore, commented via e-mail: "Well, my score is 10/14. :)"

• NIRANJANA MURALEEDHARAN (Class of 2014), currently an intern with R Square Consulting in Bangalore, commented via e-mail: "I have always had this question in mind. The moment I saw the subject of your e-mail, I opened it :) I scored just 7, maybe because I am an intern. Haha!"

"If you love what you do, is it 'work'?"

For a few years now I have been posing this question to all our new students: "If you love what you do, is it 'work'?" And I have been giving them my own example: I get to do what I love — at Commits, at home, even at the gym — because I love what I do. And I try to enthuse Commitscions into feeling the same way about their assignments, their projects, their "work".

However, I guess I am not very articulate on the subject (my wife says I am the worst "communicator" she has met), so I think I have had mixed results trying to convince our students to think like I do. That is why I was so gratified when I read this feature by H.K. Shivdasani in the DNA of September 1 (Page 7): "Work-life balance is humbug".

This is the gist of the article: "If your work is your passion then you won't find the need to strike a work-life balance because you'll enjoy every moment of it."

You took the words out of my mouth, Mr Shivdasani, and I can't tell you how grateful I am.

Here are some excerpts that will, I think, inspire others to believe in our credo:

Melody queen Lata Mangeshkar would practise for hours as a teenager, and she has continued to enjoy her mammoth practice sessions every single day of her life. Sachin Tendulkar, even as a school kid, loved batting practice, hitting balls against a wall well past midnight.

Think of Zakir Hussain, Bismillah Khan, Michael Jackson, or an Olympic winner of your choice. All of them have one thing in common: they never had 'working hours'. And that's because they enjoyed their work so much that no other activity was as much 'fun'. They never knew or needed to practise 'work-life balance'.

And here are other relevant excerpts:

I had said that I'd offer one formula to achieve all different life goals. We discussed success. But what about happiness?

Well, success and happiness go together. Is happiness different from doing something that's fun, gives you joy, and satisfies your needs?

What about someone who wants to give something back to society? You can only give what you have in abundance, and in the field in which you are a master — to give, you must first achieve a lot.

Please read the full article and see how you can apply these principles to your life.

• Shagorika Easwar, editor of Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant, comments: I couldn't agree more. That is what we have also always told our children. To find a career in a field they are passionate about, not one that is 'in' or 'hot' or because it pays the most. That because we so love what we do, it's not like work at all.
  
  It's not a grind when you work long hours or without a break. Take today, for instance. I'd started out thinking I'd catch up on some reading (Arrival City by Doug Saunders) and watch Peepli Live and take an afternoon nap. Well, guess what. A man from Kolkata who is cycling around the world and was supposed to get into town next week got in a few days early — today. Since he is here only for a day-and-a-half, there went my lazy Saturday.
  
  But I had such fun talking to him that it didn't seem like work. 

• Here's a telling quote from music composer Gurukiran in a chat with ad guru and film-maker R. Balki in the October 24 issue of DNA (After Hrs): "I love music and my work. So, in that sense, my work is my biggest time pass. If you are to ask me, if you're doing what you love, then there is no reason for you to look outside work for recreation."

• And here's Vinita Bali, CEO and MD of Britannia Industries, echoing the sentiments expressed by H.K. Shivdasani in DNA. "Somehow people who talk of this [work-life] balance make work sound like something you have to do," Bali writes in the November 19 issue of Forbes India in an article headlined People make too much of work-life balance. "There are aspects of work I may not enjoy or like. But by and large I like what I do, I like working, I like the stuff we do. It also enables me to enjoy what people call 'not work'."

• "Love what you do to stay motivated" is also the credo of Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group. Read his Mint column on motivation here.

• My favourite blogger Maria Popova has a post on the subject, too: "How to find your purpose and do what you love". 

UPDATE (May 2, 2013): I have just discovered on LinkedIn this lovely post by Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO at HubSpot, a marketing software company based in the U.S.: "14 Telling Signs You Love Your Job".