How Art and Music Enhance Work-Life Balance

After 20 years of software entrepreneurship, this is my personal account of how my quest for work-life balance and emotional wellness ties to arts and music.

In 2003, I only worked for one company that I also founded in 2001, A1 Enterprise. The version of this company today never existed back in 2001. Like me, personally, A1 has also changed over the years. The organizations are like people. They evolve overtime, and must adapt to ever-changing environments and circumstances. People who run businesses are what enable the business itself to adapt. Without adaptive people, there would be no adaptive company. Since there is no question that adaptability leads to longevity, the next question is: how can we make our organizations more adaptable? Simply put, by helping those who run businesses learn to adapt and grow.

The world is facing ever-evolving advancements in technology and communication. This is coupled with unpredictable and disruptively catastrophic events, environmental and human-induced. People and companies must continuously assess and make sense of change. Furthermore, finding ways to cope and treat change through healthy means is a key strategy for success for people and their organizations.

The mind-body-emotional-health-wellness industry has come out strong in this arena. It appears to be evolving quickly in the workplace, and beyond, with some level of seriousness attached to it. This topic is attracting attention these days, and has become another “thing” to formalize and ingest into the business environment. When something becomes a “thing”, it can sometimes lose its fluidity, spark, or flavor. This is a common obstacle professional artists face. Considering their livelihood depends on their artwork, they are in a way forced to stimulate their artistic nature to produce art that sells, simply as a means of survival. I have a humble respect for those who have chosen this path in life. It is by no means an easy path. What more for those who are coupled with responsibilities of raising a family. That seems unbearably stressful, and I admire them for finding ways to get through.

In my personal experiences, art and music are my strong candidates to support positive adaptive change and accounting for wellness and work-life balance. Art and music are typically used as vessels for entertainment and past-times but actually it has so much more to offer.

By my late 30’s, I was never inspired to learn music, sing, much less play an instrument. For 10 years my company has been my sole outlet for creativity, imagination, inspiration, and motivation. I never realized how being so immersed into one intellectual arena could limit my capabilities and opportunities until I ran into a brick wall in 2008. I was in search of a solution to transform A1 Enterprise from an entirely service-based company to a SaaS product-based company. Having no SaaS experience, this objective seemed monumental and unattainable at the time. However, when I stepped back to observe my artistic side through photography, an idea spawned which inspired the dynamic and modular architecture behind our signature product - A1 Tracker. (More here).

The years following 2008, I focused heavily on A1 Tracker product development, sales, and marketing, while building a team to support the company. Being a self-funded and as a single owner, I looked at little else other than the health and longevity of A1.

By stroke of luck in 2012, I was introduced to a flavor of Brazilian music that was completely foreign to me and began mentoring under Chris Mancini, who would eventually become among my dearest friends. The music he introduced me to sparked the desire to learn singing, and to study one of the most challenging instruments and musical genres, Brazilian guitar. I ran with this desire, and allowed it to fully blossom by taking musical studies late in life from some professional musical mentors and teachers who were gracious enough to take me on as their student.

Early on in my musical development, I didn't realize how much I suffered from one-dimensionitis, and craved to engage something artistic outside of work. This became more apparent as time unfolded. As my musical talent evolved, I found ways to harmonize music and express myself emotionally. Playing music and singing now serves as an invaluable outlet for me to maintain emotional well-being while stimulating creativity through learning. More so, music and singing have provided me a language through which I can express myself with others, and appreciate through a fully organic and artistic means.

Now after 10 years, learning music and exploring art helps me balance my work identity and allows me to view things from different perspectives. Music has become a vehicle for me to express and articulate thoughts and creativity from new angles, and this undoubtedly stimulated my creativity within A1 Enterprise. By engaging my mind into non-work related and artistic activities, I am able to approach business, communication, and relationships with new and more intuitive insights. I have discovered patterns I didn’t see before now that I am more open and receptive to new ideas and thoughts.

Even before I first sat down to write this body of work, I took time to carefully choose the song to start my opening lines. I chose Milton Nascimento - Cora??o de Estudante. The Brazilian masterpiece translates into Student Heart. The song was assigned to me by one of my Brazilian teachers, and possesses powerful lyrics about life: learning, hopes, dreams, faith, and friendship - why we are here.

My journey with music will continue through life, and my friends and family have embraced my artistic nature and musical expressions. Music has, without question, brought me closer to my friends, family, and community than work certainly has. In unexpected ways, music and the arts has enhanced many of my relationships in life, enabling me to connect and bond with people I otherwise never would have. This also offered me a space to diversify my emotional holdings, to "re-harmonize" my work-life balance.

To all of the artists of the word, past, present and future:

~Thank You~