Social Media & Family: Finding the Balance

In these hurried times it's getting harder and harder to balance work, family & technology. Years ago, it was just work and family. Now, with blogging, social networking alongside gaming and other activities, technophile parents have found that balancing all that out with a competent family life has become something of a chore in itself. I'm sure the iPhone has an app for it though.

We often get asked how we balance it all out. How we're able to work full time, social network like fiends, blog, freelance, game and still have time for family. Sometimes we don't have an answer, sometimes it's not the one people want to hear. Some of us commute a to work, or go to the gym everyday. Many of us only have about two hours at most each night with the kids before they go to bed. So how do we balance it all out? How do we find time for ourselves, but still keeping family at the forefront?

Not only all that, but how do we fight off the negative stereotypes of social networking in relation to business? Sure, the social networks are great business tools, but is that widely recognized as one of their functions or are they purely looked at as basic time wasters?

In order to answer some of these questions, and to be able to parallel our own lives, I went looking for the hardest working family man I could find that is also inundated with technology, blogging, social media and so on. Enter Evan Falchuk, President and COO of Best Doctors. Evan is a geek through and through. He blogs, even boasting click through traffic from Instapundit and The Atlantic Magazine. Evan rocks an iPhone, he's on Twitter, he's a heavy Facebook and Linkedin user and so on. While this screams of self & business promotion, Evan says he's doing it all for his kids.

Recently, I sat down with Evan to discuss how he does it all and still seems to hold it together.

Tell the readers a little bit about yourself and what you do for a living?

I'm the President of Best Doctor, a healthcare service that helps people be sure they have the right diagnosis and treatment. We sell our services in about 25 countries, here in the US we provide our service to employers who offer it as a health benefit to their employees.

I started doing this 10 years ago - the company was much, much smaller then, so keeping things balanced was easier than it is today. I practiced law in a big DC law firm for six years before coming to Best Doctors. I worked very, very long hours and very rarely had a night or weekend to myself. So what I do now seems like a breeze in comparison. It also helps that I really love it.

What is your day like and how does social media help you manage work and play?

When I'm at our headquarters in Boston, my work day is usually 10-12 hours long. I'm tethered to my iPhone and am constantly reading emails, texts, Tweets, messages on Facebook and blogging over at the See First Blog. When I travel, the days are longer. But what's awesome about technology is that I can be productive no matter where I am.

Social media really helps me bridge the gap between my personal life and work. I love it - even though it has taken some time for my wife to learn to tolerate my constant Facebook status updating, blogging or Tweeting. In all seriousness though, whether it’s to build relationships with clients, business associates or college buddies, social networking and technology make a great combo for any executive’s productivity toolkit. In my case, I could be writing a blog post about healthcare reform, replying to a Facebook comment my wife left on one of my status updates or setting up a meeting with a client via Twitter all within a 15-minute span.

When it comes to my family, I especially enjoy Facebook status updating. I try to keep it interesting for whoever is reading it, so I don't post mundane stuff like I'm standing in line at Dunkin Donuts (unless I'm annoyed that the express line takes cash - it really should be plastic only or else it really isn't any quicker than the other lines.) My wife and I go out to dinner a lot so I think I am sort of a roving restaurant finder for my friends on Facebook, since I seem to regularly share where we're eating.

Social media has also helped me learned some important family lessons. If, for example, your wife has been nice enough to support your idea of going on a ski weekend with the guys, you should *call* her before you post something on Facebook like "the snow is awesome in the bowls this morning."

In the end though, it’s really all about the relationships. Staying connected helps me build business and personal relationships with so many people with whom I might not otherwise be able to. It makes seeing them in real life so much richer and more intimate, because we know so much about what's going on in each others lives and with our careers. I try to share a lot in my social channels, and am psyched when my friends do the same. It helps me appreciate the things I do, especially with my family and kids.

How does your Geek-dad-ness converge?

Being a leader of a multi-million dollar company that I helped build is awesome, but being a dad and husband is special. My wife, Felicia, is, like me, a recovering lawyer. She's home with our kids, ages nine, six and two. It's important to us that we spend a lot of time together as a family and also just the two of us. Technology has done a lot to make that possible. There's a ton I can do outside of the office with technology . So while I'm taking the kids and the dog to the park, I can be Tweeting with other healthcare bloggers, poking fun at friends on Facebook, and checking out new articles and blog posts on my RSS reader.

There's also a terrific organization I belong to called Vistage, members meet once a month to talk about the business and personal issues each of us face. Everyone struggles with work-life balance. We care deeply about our business and our families. And the realization is this: you have as much of a moral obligation to build a successful business as you do to build a successful family life. Technology and social media help make this possible. I wish more people saw it that way.

Any parting shots to those who think there's no way to balance the two?

Well, there's a lot of misconceptions out there. The worst is that tools like Twitter and Facebook are just ways to share mundane information. But it's so wrong. I mean, they can be, if you use them that way, but if you use them right you can build relationships with many more people than you ever would have imagined. And you can use them to be closer to your friends and family. These are important and meaningful things.

But I think in a few years, this kind of question will sound as strange as asking someone whether a cell phone is useful to help balance things in your life. I mean, like, yeah, of course it is. People will think of all of these technologies in the same way - which will be convenient since they'll all be on the same device anyway!

To sum it all up, Evan has utilized social networking as a means to stay connected to the world, whether it be his business, friends or family, not just as a "what I'm doing right now" means of communication like many of us. The most important thing to consider is that no matter what, family comes first. While building a successful business & career is important and imperative to the future of your family, along the way you can't just shed them aside to focus on that one thing. You have to find the balance. Social media has provided a means of communication that actually adds to the experience, rather than isolates. It just has to be used properly and with the right intentions.

I've lamented before about what we're exposing our children to using social media in such excess, but now this is looking at the opposite direction. When we can't be there, we can Skype them a goodnight story. We can tweet our wives when we're on a business trip (yeah, we could call them too but Twitter provides latitude & longitude.) We can use social media as a tool to keep it all connected - business, blogging, social networking & family.

How do you find the balance? Leave it in the comments.