• May 06, 2009  |  6:51 AM MDT

Women Leading Kentucky

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at the Women Leading Kentucky 10th annual conference. It was an impressive gathering of mostly volunteers who are absolutely committed to finding and promoting women. I chatted with the governor of Kentucky, who described the challenges her state is encountering as they recruit young people from around the world. I met the third generation owner of a fabric mill (they now produce the swimsuits that Michael Phelps wore in the Olympics), who has created a college scholarship for Kentucky women. And I met a plastic surgeon, who was not able to attend the entirety of the conference, because he had to race to an operating room to perform several surgeries on children from foreign shores born with cleft palates. He was donating both his time and services.

I was one of three speakers, sandwiched between Robin Waters, a trend observer, and Christie Hefner, former CEO of Playboy Enterprises. Though both of their presentations were chock full of information, one of Hefner’s comments was particularly memorable. After noting our collective on-going and seemingly everlasting search for work-life balance, Hefner referenced a recent McKinsey study and suggested that we are actually in search of a way to balance energy giving vs. energy depleting activities in both our home and work worlds.

Intuitively, this makes perfect sense to me. Whether we think about our lives at work or at home, I think all of us know that there are some activities that produce energy. In my own life, I know that taking a body of research and transforming it into a cogent PowerPoint or a clever chapter gives me just as much of an energy boost as taking a long walk or climbing some rocks. I know that as much as possible, I need to fill my days with projects that produce that positive energy. Similarly, certain activities quickly deplete my energy (any sort of traffic commute, reconciling my credit card statement). To the extent I can minimize those activities, I am a happier person.

Shifting the way we think about work-life balance—to focus more on energy balance—may help us achieve the more satisfying workplaces that everyone seeks.