Opinion
There are two different types of workers. Which one are you?
Tim Duggan
Careers contributorMy husband and I have very different working styles. He tends to work intensely during business hours to the allocated finishing time, and then happily switches his computer off, trying very hard to not open it until the next working day begins.
I, however, am the complete opposite. I take my time to chew over work tasks, and my computer usually never stays closed for more than a few hours before I crack it open to tinker away on a different project.
The rise in working from home has benefited some types of workers more than others.Credit: iStock
During the ‘in-between’ moments of life, I check emails, reply as needed, and then log back on to chip away slowly at whatever I’m working on. In short, we both approach how we work from opposite angles.
Researchers who study these common behaviours have identified there are broadly two types of people when it comes to managing work and non-work activities. Knowing which type you are (as well as those close to you) can have a profound effect on how you think about your job and your life.
Christena Nippert-Eng is a sociologist and professor of informatics at Indiana University Bloomington in the US, and has studied how people create rigid boundaries, or not, between their work and personal lives. She classifies almost all of us into two types of workers: segmenters and integrators.
My husband is a segmenter. They are employees who can draw clear, distinct lines between their work and everything else outside it. Segmenters can shut off the work part of their brain the moment they finish for the day, and then concentrate almost fully on the rest of their life outside their job.
The jury is still out on whether being a segmenter or integrator is better for your long-term wellbeing.
I am more of an integrator. We have more fluid lines between work and life, where unfinished jobs tend to loom constantly in the background as we go about other things. One sure sign of an integrator is that we find ourselves checking work emails at all hours of the night and weekends. And yes, even on holidays. This doesn’t mean that our job takes over our lives all the time, just that it’s integrated into many aspects of it.
Which type of worker are you? Well, first up, it’s more likely that you’re an integrator. When Google wanted to find out how these findings applied to a sample of 4000 of their workforce, they discovered that about two-thirds of people identified as integrators, with just 31 per cent considered themselves as segmenters.
In studies, researchers have found that segmenters are more likely to relate to phrases like, “In my life, there is a clear boundary between my career and my non-work roles”, while integrators agree with phrases like, “It is often difficult to tell where my work life ends and my non-work life begins”.
Segmenters and integrators can actually learn a lot from each other. Many us want to figure out how to work less and live more, something that people who can easily segment work from life have trained themselves to be better at.
Conversely, integrators can generally more flexibly fit work tasks around parts of their lives that aren’t always as malleable, like childcare or other responsibilities.
The rise of working from home for professional workers has also been a double-edged sword depending on which type of worker you are. Segmenters, who like clear boundaries, have mostly found it easier to adapt to it, while for many integrators the temptation to simply work all the time has become even more blurred when your home is also your office at the flick of a switch.
Figuring out how to balance life with work is a constant negotiation. Take, for example, even this column that you’re reading right now. I’m writing it while my husband and I are on our mid-year holidays hiking around the Alps.
We’re currently lying beside a lake in sunny Switzerland as I type away happily on my laptop and my segmenter husband naps quietly beside me. It’s a perfect visual summary of our different styles, and neither of us could be happier.
While my husband needs a complete mental break from work to refocus on it, in a strange way it genuinely suits me to think, process and fit work in smaller chunks, no matter where I am.
The jury is still out on whether being a segmenter or integrator is better for your long-term wellbeing. However, the consensus is that at least knowing which one you are can help you find the right way of working that’s best suited just for you.
Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com
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