full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work
Unscramble the Blue Letters
So I went back to work, and I've spent these seven years since struggling with, studying and writing about work-life balance. And I have four otnrivesboas I'd like to share with you today. The first is: if society's to make any progress on this issue, we need an honest debate. But the trouble is so many people talk so much rubbish about work-life blnacae. All the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity levae only serve to mask the core issue, which is that certain job and career choices are fanmduanlelty incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day bsais with a yonug family. Now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the stioatuin you're in. And the reality of the society that we're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there lndeiag lives of quiet, screaming dtrioaeespn, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. (Laughter) (Applause) It's my contention that going to work on fiardy in jeans and [a] T-shirt isn't really getting to the nub of the isuse.
Open Cloze
So I went back to work, and I've spent these seven years since struggling with, studying and writing about work-life balance. And I have four ____________ I'd like to share with you today. The first is: if society's to make any progress on this issue, we need an honest debate. But the trouble is so many people talk so much rubbish about work-life _______. All the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity _____ only serve to mask the core issue, which is that certain job and career choices are _____________ incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day _____ with a _____ family. Now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the _________ you're in. And the reality of the society that we're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there _______ lives of quiet, screaming ___________, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. (Laughter) (Applause) It's my contention that going to work on ______ in jeans and [a] T-shirt isn't really getting to the nub of the _____.
Solution
- leading
- leave
- issue
- basis
- desperation
- observations
- situation
- balance
- young
- friday
- fundamentally
Original Text
So I went back to work, and I've spent these seven years since struggling with, studying and writing about work-life balance. And I have four observations I'd like to share with you today. The first is: if society's to make any progress on this issue, we need an honest debate. But the trouble is so many people talk so much rubbish about work-life balance. All the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity leave only serve to mask the core issue, which is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family. Now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the situation you're in. And the reality of the society that we're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. (Laughter) (Applause) It's my contention that going to work on Friday in jeans and [a] T-shirt isn't really getting to the nub of the issue.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
time frame |
2 |
sex walk |
2 |
Important Words
- acknowledging
- applause
- balance
- basis
- buy
- career
- choices
- contention
- core
- debate
- desperation
- discussions
- enable
- engaged
- family
- friday
- fridays
- fundamentally
- hard
- hate
- honest
- hours
- impress
- incompatible
- issue
- jeans
- job
- jobs
- laughter
- leading
- leave
- lives
- long
- mask
- meaningfully
- nub
- observations
- paternity
- people
- problem
- progress
- quiet
- reality
- rubbish
- screaming
- serve
- share
- situation
- society
- solving
- spent
- step
- struggling
- studying
- talk
- thousands
- today
- trouble
- work
- writing
- years
- young