“…in the end, it’s just work.” How to bring your real self and your working persona together and stop being torn between them.

Reading time: 7 min

by Alice Alessandri and Alberto Aleo
Integrating work and life: three reflections from Sweden on survival, shared projects, and commitment, to truly turn September into a new beginning.

We spent our summer in Sweden. It was a season dedicated to researching, planning upcoming activities, attending the international Society for Business Ethics conference, but, as you can imagine, we also had a real holiday full of discoveries, nature, unexpected seaside landscapes, visiting friends, and relaxation.

Our Scandinavian days were also shaped by reflections prompted by everyday life. For instance, in one of the series we are watching (Young Wallander, which is set, of course, in Malmö), the main character’s colleague says: “Don’t beat yourself up, it’s just work.” That line sparked a long chat, and we’d like to share its highlights here, in the hope it proves useful as you face getting back on the treadmill in September.

Integrating work into “real life”.

Some time ago, a participant in one of our courses, after analyzing her way of communicating, said: “This works here at the office, but in real life I act differently.” What struck us was that expression “real life.” Behind it lies the idea that at work, we live a kind of “fake life.” Through this fragmented vision, “real living” gets squeezed into our leftover scraps of time. If that were true for everyone, it would be deeply worrying because we spend most of our lives at work, and thinking that it is separate from our lives makes it sound more like a punishment.

But what if work became an opportunity to express our individual qualities and offer our distinctive abilities (manual, intellectual, creative, and so on) in service of others?

From this point of view, work becomes one of the several dimensions of life (alongside family, friendships, sports, and more) where our talents can unfold. But how can we find a profession where you can truly express who you are?

The answer, we believe, lies in three different dimensions, which we will tackle in the following paragraphs.

1. Rethinking the concept of “survival”.

When it comes to our relationship with work, we have to remember to analyze the idea of survival. Many people primarily see their jobs as a means of ensuring an income to support themselves and their families. But watch out! Just as we once reminded companies in another article, “you don’t live on profit alone”. The same applies to employees: you don’t live on salary alone.

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Our real “survival” is not guaranteed if, in the process of securing it, we ignore, or worse, contradict, the essence of who we are and sacrifice our talents or aspirations.

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As Dante put it: “You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” Translated into today’s terms, it means making room, even at work, for the poetry and humanity we carry within. Doing so won’t just help us bring what we do together with who we are, but it will also increase our odds of survival. Motivated, fulfilled people are more productive and achieve more. Oxford University research found that productivity rises by at least 13%. That’s why Scandinavian companies, famous for their efficiency, actively promote work–life integration and long ago introduced the concepts of sustainable professional growth and flexicurity.

There’s also another reason we should expand our notion of survival to include the need to feel like whole human beings: the massive rise of AI in the workplace. Anyone performing purely mechanical, repetitive work with no personal or human contribution can be “replicated”, and replaced, by an algorithm.

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So when you think about your own self-interest, immediate needs, and survival, today more than ever, it’s wise to adopt a broader perspective.

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What does “survival” mean to you?

2. Moving from individual goals to shared projects.

It’s often said we live in a time when nationalist currents are surging, explained by many as a symptom of rampant individualism. In our view, what truly plagues our era is not individualism itself but the lack of a shared project. Individualism (and its elder sibling, nationalism) implies the will to pursue one’s own interests. But genuine self-interest also means caring about the future, not just chasing immediate gratification through choices that jeopardize it.

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When craftiness replaces intelligence, it’s the individual who suffers the most because they lose the capacity to nurture their own interests through medium to long-term planning.

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What sets Scandinavian societies apart isn’t merely their civic responsibility, their idea of community, or their respect for social rules. These are the effects of their distinguishing feature: their ability to design the future.

Going beyond the logic of the short-term goals and metrics of KPIs (nowadays often replaced by the more forward-looking OKRs) and adopting a project-based vision at the individual, social, and professional levels, generate a plethora of advantages. Compared to an objective or an indicator, a project is able to provide even more meaning and purpose to our tasks. Every project is based on the idea that we are building something, realizing a vision, and shaping a legacy that will outlive us. Projects are what get us out of bed, encourage us to interact with others, and make us feel part of something bigger. In Scandinavia, in addition to five-year plans, social development projects, and active policies are still in fashion, but you also hear this multifaceted, broad, and inclusive project-thinking in everyday conversations. For instance, we asked a Swedish friend’s child, who is really keen on football, about his goals. He said he wanted to train very hard so that his team wouldn’t have to always depend on the same players and to let the other players rest from the constant burden of being successful for the team.

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To reclaim our ability to plan and design, and the creativity tied to it, we need two things: psychological confidence and awareness of our talent. We need to know ourselves, appreciate our true nature, and feel that our environment supports the expression of our qualities.

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What project does your professional activity contribute to?

3. Embracing making an effort and struggling.

Finally, the third and perhaps most crucial point to reunite our personal and professional lives is learning to embrace effort. Many of us have a negative view of commitment or hard work. The fact that in some dialects the word for “work” literally means “toil” says it all. Yet, as the recently departed Giorgio Armani would say: you don’t achieve lasting results without commitment. Focusing on short-term gains, instant returns, or shortcuts is the outcome of a lack of project-thinking and motivation.

Without those two fundamental conditions, i.e., in the absence of purpose and the drive to pursue it, every step feels like torture. As effort has systematically been eliminated, we’re not used to it anymore, and we have become less resilient, less patient, and ultimately less able to “weather the storm”.

Not everyone knows that Swedes truly revere the sea. Across the country and in every season, the young and old alike put on their raincoats and head to the nearest beach to plunge into what, to us, seem like freezing waters. Having spent the last days in a beach hut, we’ve also picked up the habit of dipping into the Baltic. At first, even a few seconds felt unbearable, but with practice, we learnt to enjoy this surge of life in clear waters surrounded by untouched landscapes. It is a truly unique experience.

We tend to forget that the game of life demands courage and effort, that no talent emerges without training, and that the gap between utopia, dream, desire, and reality can only be bridged step by step. In addition to short-term bias, there are other traps that can lead us to frustration, resignation, or premature change, by incorrectly being convinced that if we are struggling, it means something is wrong. It might be due to an “overconfidence bias”, which makes us believe we can manage something without much effort, or because of a planning mistake, where we underestimate the steps needed to achieve something. Either way, the only cure is practice: training, trying, accepting mistakes, and knowing how to start again without giving up at the first difficulty.

Once you’ve reframed survival as your professional mission and defined the project you’ll commit to, ask yourself: what’s the first step?

Answering these three questions will help you overcome the September flood of good intentions that eventually collapse when they are not fulfilled, and it will support you in truly believing in at least one solid project in the months ahead.

“I like September.

It begins with a taste of melancholy.

But then it smells of revolution.

Of renewal.

Even more than spring.”

Angelo De Pascalis

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