Speaker 1: What I thought I would do is I would start with a simple request. I'd like all of you to pause for a moment, you wretched weaklings, and take stock of

Speaker 2: your miserable existence.

Speaker 1: Now that was the advice that Saint Benedict gave his rather startled followers in the fifth century. It was the advice that I decided to follow myself when I turned 40. Up until that moment, I had been that classic corporate warrior. I was eating too much, I was drinking too much, I was working too hard, and I was neglecting the family. And I decided that I would try and turn my life around. In particular, I decided I would try to address the thorny issue of work-life balance. So I stepped back from the workforce and I spent a year at home with my wife and four young children. But all I learned about work-life balance from that year was that I found it quite easy to balance work and life when I didn't have any work. What a very useful skill, especially when the money runs out. So I went back to work. And I've spent the seven years since struggling with, studying, and writing about work-life balance. I have four observations I'd like to share with you today. The first is if society is to make any progress on this issue, we need an honest debate. But the trouble is, so many people talk so much rubbish about work-life balance. All the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity leave only serve to mask the core issue, which is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family. Now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the situation you're in. And the reality of the society that we're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. It's my contention that going to work on a Friday in jeans and t-shirt isn't really getting to the nub of the issue. The second observation I'd like to make is we need to face the truth that governments and corporations aren't going to solve this issue for us. We should stop looking outside. It's up to us as individuals to take control and responsibility for the type of lives that we want to lead. If you don't design your life, someone else will design it for you, and you may just not like their idea of balance. It's particularly important, this isn't on the World Wide Web is it? I'm about to get fired. It's particularly important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation. Now I'm not talking here just about the bad companies, the abattoirs of the human soul

Speaker 2: as I call them.

Speaker 1: I'm talking about all companies, because commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you as they can get away with. It's in their nature, it's in their DNA, it's what they do. Even the good, well-intentioned companies. On the one hand, putting childcare facilities in the workplace is wonderful and enlightened. On the other hand, it's a nightmare that just means you spend more time at the bloody office. We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life. The third observation is we have to be careful with the time frame that we choose upon which to judge our balance. Before I went back to work, after my year at home, I sat down and I wrote out a detailed step-by-step description of the ideal balance day that I aspired to. And it went like this, wake up well-rested after a good night's sleep, have sex, walk the dog, have breakfast with my wife and children, have sex again, drive the kids to school on the way to the office, do three hours work, play sport with a friend at lunchtime, do another three hours work, meet some mates in the pub for an early evening drink, drive home for dinner with my wife and kids, meditate for half an hour, have sex, walk the dog, have sex again, go to bed.

Speaker 2: How often do you think I had that day?

Speaker 1: We need to be realistic. You can't do it all in one day. We need to elongate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life, but we need to elongate it without falling into the trap of the I'll have a life when I retire. When my kids have left home, my wife has divorced me, my health is failing, I've got no mates or interests left. A day is too short after I retire is too long, it's got to be a middle way. A fourth observation, we need to approach balance in a balanced way. A friend came to see me last year, she doesn't mind me telling the story, a friend came to see me last year and said Nigel I've read your book and I realise that my life is completely out of balance, it's totally dominated by work. I work ten hours a day, I commute two hours a day, all my relationships have failed, there's nothing in my life apart from my work, so I've decided to get a grip and sort it out,

Speaker 2: so I've joined a gym.

Speaker 1: Now I don't mean to mock, but being a fit ten hour a day office rat isn't more balanced, it's more fit. Lovely though physical exercise may be, there are other parts to life, there's the intellectual side, there's the emotional side, there's the spiritual side and to be balanced I believe we have to attend to all of those areas, not just do 50 stomach crunches. Now that can be daunting because people say bloody hell mate, I haven't got time to get fit, you want me to go to church and call my mother and I understand, I truly understand how that can be daunting. But an incident that happened a couple of years ago gave me a new perspective. My wife who is somewhere in the audience today called me up at the office and said Nigel you need to pick our youngest son up, Harry, from school, she had to be somewhere else with the other three children for that evening. So I left work an hour early that afternoon and picked Harry up at the school gates. We walked down to the local park, messed around on the swings, played some silly games. I then walked him up the hill to the local cafe and we shared a pizza for tea. Then walked down the hill to our home and I gave him his bath and put him in his Batman pyjamas. I then read him a chapter of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. I then put him to bed, tucked him in, gave him a kiss on his forehead and said goodnight mate and walked out of his bedroom. As I was walking out of his bedroom he said dad, I went yes mate, he went dad this has been the best day of my life, ever. I hadn't done anything, hadn't taken him to Disney World or bought him a Playstation. Now my point is the small things matter. Being more balanced doesn't mean dramatic upheaval in your life. With the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life. Moreover, I think it can transform society. Because if enough people do it, we can change society's definition of success, away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins, to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well-lived looks like. And that, I think, is an idea worth spreading.

Speaker 3: The precision of a watch is a function of its movement. For Rolex and for Hans Wilsdorf, to guarantee the precision of a timepiece, the pressing question was how to protect the movement itself from the elements, not only water, but also tiny particles of dust. In 1926, a major step was taken with the creation of the world's first waterproof and dustproof wristwatch. The Rolex Oyster was born. Over the years, subtle changes in the design continue to improve the Oyster, adding more comfort while keeping the style contemporary. And, along with style, more functions have been added. A Rolex wristwatch was the first to show the date through a small aperture on the face. It was also the first wristwatch to spell out the day of the week in full. In the early 1950s, Rolex developed professional watches whose functions went far beyond telling the time. Launched in 1953, the Submariner was the first Rolex watch guaranteed waterproof to a depth of 330 feet. Already on an incredible journey of innovation and design, Rolex decided to push the boundaries even further. In 1960, the Batiscav Trieste and Rolex made history. The submersible successfully dived to 35,800 feet below the surface of the ocean. A Rolex Deepsea Special was strapped to the outside. The development of undersea exploration led to the launching, in 1967, of the Sea-Dweller 2000, waterproof to a depth of 2,000 feet. In 2008, the Submariner in gold is redesigned and the case features a new unidirectional rotatable bezel with a Cerachrom disc. Fitted with the patented Rolex Ring Lock system, the Rolex Deepsea safely descends to 12,800 feet. Rolex has incorporated countless hours and more than a century of experience, years of research, innovation, and development into every one of its models, and the benefits arising from this work, including waterproofness, precision, and durability, are the result of Rolex's continuous pursuit of perfection. From the most elegant and prestigious models to the professional timepieces, all are exquisitely crafted. Piece by piece, we design and manufacture every single watch. And the story continues.