Julia Hobsbawm Interview: The balancing act

Published on Monday 19 January 2009 18:23

JULIA Hobsbawm knows she's lucky. She runs her own company doing work she adores, and enjoys a happy marriage that includes raising two step-children, plus three more kids that "I grew myself". Julia Hobsbawm knows she's lucky – yet for all her oft-counted blessings, like everyone else, she's sometimes overwhelmed by the conflicting demands of 21st-century living.

When that sensation hit critical mass, she sought the help of a life coach, who helped her get back on track. Now Hobsbawn has written her own book, full of case histories and tips for riding the see-saw of work-life balance without being thrown off.

If the name sounds familiar it's because she's the daughter of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, and the former business partner of our Prime Minister's wife, Sarah Brown (the two women were former schoolfriends and set up Hobsbawm Macaulay, the influential public relations consultancy that helped put a spin on New Labour policies, in the mid-1990s).

Though no longer a publicist, Hobsbawn is the visiting professor of public relations at the London College of Communication (part of the University of the Arts) and the founder and chief executive of the media analysis and networking business Editorial Intelligence. "I'd say I'm a media businesswoman and a multiple mother," she summarises.

Adept at dealing with the press, she speaks clearly and in full sentences. Though we're talking via telephone (our London face-to-face interview having fallen victim to her hectic schedule) her gift is an ability to create an ambience of camaraderie and warmth.

As far as role models go, both her parents are workaholics, and it has rubbed off. "I suppose my work ethic is busyness; part of my motivation for writing The See-Saw was to get my own thoughts straight about my priorities. I've always loved what I do, but the flip side is the temptation to overwork. I wrote this to articulate, 'What are my boundaries?'."

But hadn't she already mapped them out with her life coach, Ginger Cockerham? Hobsbawm has gone from needing help to offering it in just two years. What changed?

"Well, I'm an enthusiast and I definitely felt enthusiastic about this particular life coach," she says, veering slightly off topic. "I'm a fan of quite good assisted self-help. In some senses, Ginger gave me the model for a tip that is one of my top ten, Telephone Tea (they did the coaching via transatlantic phone calls]."

The "ingredients" for Telephone Tea are five or ten minutes and the aforesaid communication device. You e-mail an agenda, schedule a time and then conduct your business via telephone instead of meeting up, to save time. Hmm. In my day this was known as "a phone call".

Hobsbawm talks about life-coaching in the book, crediting Cockerham in the text and in her thank yous. But I'm pushy, so I ask again: what thoughts about her priorities did she still need to get straight? Unruffled, she says: "It was not about an act of catharsis. It was useful to clarify my own thinking, but it mainly came as a result of my enthusiasm.

"I felt this new focus really was helpful, and realised at the same time that I'm pretty obsessed by work-life balance, and other people are too. You could almost say – here comes the soundbite – that work-life balance is the new calorie-counting." Essentially, she says, we calibrate our time all the time.

No argument there. Why, though?

"Partly it is the 'always on-ness'. BlackBerries are both a liberation and a tyranny. So it's partly women working as much as we do, partly the way the service sector has exploded over the past 20 years – there's so much multiple-layered work around – and the technology.

"There's a movement which I applaud – the slow movement, the taking stock, the downshifting. But what I'm trying to advocate is embracing the contradictions life gives you. It's not either/or. I'm in some senses guilty of wanting to have it all, but I'm advocating 'have it all smart'. Plan and be methodical and you can get a lot further. Did you relate to the book at all?"

Er, no, I stammer. I am single, relationship- and child-free, and have different issues. But I lacked the bottle to admit that I found many of her tips too vague to be useful. Anyone who's seriously out to sea needs more "how" and less "why don't you…".

For instance, she cautions readers to pay attention to their health without offering an efficient game plan, such as a list of MOT points to take up with a doctor. She writes, "Make a meaningful 'To Do' list, not a bottomless one" without describing how or explaining where you should make a note of the rubbishy tasks you need to remember to accomplish.

Another tip she lives by is "Trainers in a bag", which does what it says on the tin: by having her trainers ever-accessible she's able to walk between appointments, and get her daily exercise quota without the soul-destroying boredom of laps in a swimming pool or on a treadmill.

This isn't a book for everyone, she offers. "I'm writing for my generation. I'm 44, a mother and a stepmother, but the world does not only revolve around people with children."

But it is a book for her socioeconomic group, surely? I can't see a couple who work shifts and trade off childcare relating to this.

"Anybody who reads self-help books and works and has a sense of overload could relate to this. I'm not insensitive to the fact that there are some people who are struggling much more than others, for whom work-life balance might seem a luxury rather than a necessity.

"Most working people of any socioeconomic group understand these issues: How do I make time meaningful with my children? How do I make myself productive at work, so that I have a career that's not just satisfying but also pays the bills? How do I keep myself in shape, because I'm bombarded by messages about how my life is going to be shortened if I am not? These are not elitist questions."

Maybe I'm being unfair. No-one can reasonably be expected to enact all 100 tips. But does she really think these solutions are within everyone's grasp? One insists "It's never all right to miss your child's big events", and another says "Make sure you do get special time alone together with your partner. This means going away alone, despite the cost and the childcare heartache, at least twice a year for a long weekend."

She says: "I don't regard myself as some kind of isolated 'yummy mummy'. We don't have a nanny. We don't have a cleaner. We don't have children in private school. Part of writing the book was a recognition that I have to stay working and earning, like we all do. My husband runs a small business from home, but he's also the house husband, so I can do what I do because of the in-built childcare. To that extent, I'm in a very different place from most people."

Essentially, hers is a "traditional" marriage, albeit with a gender swap. "Yeah. I don't feel at all defensive about who this book isn't for, because I've never in my life read a book that's for everybody. It comes back to my point, which might sound corny, but I did write the book for me, to say this is what I feel and this is what I'm picking up that the people around me feel."

We wrestle amicably over a few more points and tacitly agree to disagree. Yet for all our differences in outlook and circumstance, ultimately I do relate to Hobsbawm. She admits she can be a control freak and that she and her husband do tussle over their roles – her breadwinner, him breadmaker. She vows she'll never run off to Devon to make jam, but that doesn't stop her envying him being at home with the children sometimes.

The good thing about a see-saw, we finally agree, is that once you hit the ground, the only direction is back up.

&#149 The See-Saw, 100 Ideas for Work-Life Balance, is out now published by Atlantic Books, 6.99

EXTRACT: HOBSBAWM'S TIPS FOR WORK-LIFE BALANCE

IF YOU are overloaded with lots of competing obligations, learn to treat your life like crop rotation! In other words, allow yourself to give priority to some things at the expense of others some of the time.

Don't compare your family to other families. Compare it only to your values and what you think is best for it. If you aren't doing what is best for your family or for you, change may be necessary. But avoid Family Envy, where you think everyone else is doing it better than you – because I bet they aren't.

Choose to let go of something you feel you ought to do but can do without, whether it is cleaning, or networking parties, or visiting friends. Take the time too to think about your real needs and what truly matters to you. Hang on to those things but let go of everything else.

If you feel guilty that you are failing someone you are close to, try to step back and be clear: is it generalised guilt or do you need to put something right? Make it a practical issue, not a fully laden emotional drama. Guilt weighs us all down.

Go for a walk without your mobile phone. Remember that our parents were not contactable every second and we survived. It's rare to miss a true emergency, but we behave as if one is constantly around the corner.