Have You Arrived At Your Third Space/Place (Splace)?
A Thought For The Christmas Holidays
Starbucks have their third place. There’s home, there’s work and there’s Starbucks! Sony’s PS2 is supposed to be the third space between reality and technology. What about the Third ‘Splace’ in your life, the one that combines your personal and work life?
Predaptive’s work often takes it into discussions about this Third Splace. The language is often around; work/life balance, priorities, 24/7 email, (not) having it all, stress, too much change etc. It seems that the more you try to compartmentalise personal and work activities, the more tension is created around these competing demands.
Third Splace thinking takes a different approach.
Not Physical But Mental
The first thing it suggests is to forget the physical dimension of the problem all together. Doing business email at work is not a problem (for most people), doing it on the commute in the morning is deemed to be a good multi-tasking activity, but doing it at home equals bad news. However, for many people, leaving all work at the front door as a matter of principle is doomed to failure, with any violation met with real resentment.
Third Splace thinking says there is a trade off between the anxiety of (possibly negative) stuff building up for the return to work, versus dealing with it at a time of your choosing during the evening, and having no residual anxiety causing a restless night. It’s reasonable to feel that on a night when you are doing something special, nothing gets done. However, a night when you are alone, with nothing in particular to distract you, a lot of overhanging work can be cleared.
It’s not the physical demarcation that makes a difference to your feelings, it’s whether you feel in control or not.
In addition, this is a two-way street. If you want to order some shopping on-line at work, do it, without guilt. The place isn’t the issue, it’s whether you have a Third Splace mind-set or not.
Not Atomised But Holistic
If somebody in work-time gave you something interesting to think about that would improve your holiday planning, it would be deemed a good thing. What about serendipitously thinking about something whilst out walking at the weekend that could give you an interesting angle on solving a problem at work? This should also be viewed as a good thing.
Thinking should be interest, not compartment driven. We should work at thinking of all kinds that leads to immense satisfaction, pleasure, achievement, or rewards. How and where we use it should be secondary. These positive feelings and thoughts should be just as possible at work as in your personal life, which doesn’t necessarily have a monopoly on good circumstances. Us feeling personally lonely, aimless, undervalued, disliked and worthless are all possible without any help from work.
The Third Splace says happiness (our real life objective) is much more possible when we seek to integrate our life rather than break it up into separate parts. Somebody doing something for money that they would do anyway is not working. They are in the Third Splace. Whilst that might be a difficult to achieve for many of us, we can all seek greater meaning in what we do, in any environment. The minute we say that work has to be endured means we are demeaning ourselves because it’s our choice that we do it. This explains why some people in poorly paid jobs do it so well, with real pride, and some highly paid executives can be so cynical and mediocre.
Not Ideological But Pragmatic
Some people’s route to the Third Splace is religion, but for some this simply creates another compartment, for time to be shared between. The Third Splace is essentially not about finding more time, but about coming to terms with the realities of modern work through a pragmatic response that suggests work is an important part of life that should be engaged with rather than endured. One form of ideology that has a corrosive effect on work attitudes is the desire for status. Organisations use this need this as a lever, whether through the proxy of money (more money, more status), position, or advancement. Most men, (women seem to get this issue in better perspective), are constantly measuring their relative status, which generates real anxiety, which feeds work tension.
Third Splace thinking looks for status through contribution, which is much more under personal control, and contribution can of course come from any dimension of ones life.
A sister article to this one can be read here.
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