Spiderman Suffered From Poor Work-Life Balance

Spiderman, Spiderman,

Does whatever a spider can

Spins a web, any size,

Catches thieves just like flies

Look Out!

Here comes the Spiderman.

Over the holiday break I had the luxury of rewatching some movies I hadn't seen in a long time, including the Amazing Spiderman!  (I don't consider myself the typical comic-book geek, like some of you may already be thinking, but I let you be judge).  While watching Toby Maguire portray the brainy photographer by day and superhero by night, I couldn't help but examine Spider-Man 2 with my HR-lenses on! (Maybe that says something about my HR-geekiness?) 

Lets review the facts:

• Peter Parker struggled with balancing his double life as the potential-boyfriend to Mary Jane Watson, the friend to Harry Osborn, and the nephew to Aunt May. 
• Peter misses Mary Jane's play, loses his job at the Sam's Pizza, misses class and is in fear of flunking out, and is so late on his rent it makes your cringe each time Mr. Ditkovich hollers "rent!"  You just can't help feeling bad for Peter Parker and all of his woes, because he's the good guy (but also because you might be able to relate). 
• Peter's crime fighting ways were catching up with him and he was struggling to balance out his priorities.  Eventually, Peter loses his super-spidy powers!  It doesn't get much worse than this.

While I'm a punctual guy, I can't help but think about a time when I was late to work every day for a week.  No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to make it on time.  I uncharacteristically turned in my homework a day late, I forgot to pay my phone bill, I didn't complete my marathon training schedule, and I cancelled a meet-up with friends.  For that week I became the struggling Peter Parker. 

So what's going on here?  I obviously wasn't swinging from webs and chasing bad guys all night, but I was struggling to balance work with life.  I was working way too many hours, I was taking work home with me after core business time and on the weekend, and I just got run down!  I was out of gas.

So how did Peter Parker get the girl, get his powers back, and defeat Doc Ock?  How did he get his work-life balance back? 

I took away three lessons:

1) He reviewed his problem with fresh perspective.
Peter probably went too far when he gave up on being Spider-Man, but that break helped him see what was important.  I compare this to taking a vacation, and basically taking a breather from work.  Sometimes its difficult to see what the problem is, unless you can step away from the day-to-day fray and really examine how things are playing out with an objective perspective.  We need to decompress as well.

2) He realized he was not invincible.
When he was seen without his mask by citizens after his fight on the subway with Doc Ock, when Harry Osborn ripped off his mask as he laid unconscious on the couch, and when Mary Jane saw that Peter Parker and Spiderman were the same during Peter's final fight in the abandoned warehouse, Peter came to understand that though he had great responsibility as a superhero he was also still just a man.  We have to realize the same thing with our careers.  Though we want to do great things, we must recognize our limitations.  Peter came to the realization that he could still be an Amazing crime fighter, photographer, boyfriend, and family member, but to be successful he had to set priorities and keep up with what was important.  We cannot be all things to all people:  We must organize our priorities.

3) He had help.
Peter still chased villains, and did all the things he liked to do, but he could not have been successful without help.  The citizens stood up for Peter during his fight on the subway, Aunt May helped Peter while being held hostage by Doc Ock on the clock tower by clubbing the eight-legged anarchist in the head with her umbrella cane, and in the final scene when Doc Ock took control over the tentacles that were tapped into his nervous system he aided Peter in conquering himself.  He had help!  The same is true for the professional.  We have to recognize we cannot do everything by ourselves.  Understanding we have limitations puts us in a place to give our best quality work on the things we choose to do -rather than try to do everything, but do each thing poorly.  Being human allows us to schedule properly, to solicit aid and input from others, to delegate work, and to balance our workload.

So maybe Director Sam Raimi wasn't trying to demonstrate work-life balance in the HR sense, but I think with a little imagination you can see how the average professional is just like a superhero!