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Is work-life balance really a thing? This week I'm sharing some thoughts about what it means (and what it doesn't mean).
Is work-life balance even a thing?
In preparing to talk about work-life balance at a recent women's wellness retreat, I googled “work-life balance women.” I was surprised to find 1,070,000,000 results. That’s over 1 billion articles, books, images, and more on this topic. It's been discussed a LOT.
I love what one writer has said about this whole issue of work-life balance:
"Work-life balance has been sold to women as being the key to happiness by suggesting all we need to do is to simply find a way to better fill our roles without going crazy. The bottom line message being (unfairly) sold to women is that if we would only prioritize our work lives better we would have more time to spend with friends, family, and on ourselves. . . .
There are plenty of women who do not have a job outside the home that need more balance in their lives. And, what about the career women who love their work so that trying to add more time (balance) baking cookies at home would be to their detriment?
The very term work-life balance implies that there is a balance to be had in the first place (there is not) and if we do not have it something is wrong with us. Work-life balance is just one more task for women to try and find time to tend to; one more thing on our long to do list to fail and feel bad about not accomplishing in a day.
To think we can achieve better work life balance by simply being more prioritized, better organized, or by trying harder, is foolishness at best.
from Why Work-Life Balance Sucks for Most Women
I don’t always get it right. Personally, how I identify whether I am “balanced” is whether I’m present in whatever I’m doing, and I’m not letting the other pieces of my life intrude on whatever important thing I’m engaged in at the time. There are many times I didn’t balance the different areas of my life well. There were times when I wasn’t present the way I wanted to be.
My biggest challenges with respect to finding a workable balance in my own life are my tendency to get absorbed in one thing to the exclusion of others and my difficulty saying no. The big picture way I address these challenges is thinking on purpose about what really matters to me, and paying attention to how I’m actually spending my time. On a day-to-day basis, setting timers and alarms is helpful because it allows me to put boundaries around certain activities; when to start and stop.
What do I know about work-life balance?
* Balance doesn’t mean equal amounts of time to each area of your lives, or even exactly the right amount of time for each.
* No one else can tell you what’s right for you.
* What’s right for someone else might not be right for you.
* You can’t figure it out by looking at someone else’s life.
* The “right” balance changes throughout your life.
So how do you figure it out?
* Be very clear on what’s important to you: Who do you want to be in this world, and why?
* Ask yourself the questions that matter most:
* What kind of life do you want to live? Why?
* What kind of person do you want to be?
* What kind of things does that kind of person do?
* Figure out a way to do those things every day.
* Live and work with purpose. Have a destination in mind. You can’t know what steps to take if you don’t know where you’re going.
* Spend some time understanding the big-picture, long-term view.
Is work-life balance even a thing?
In preparing to talk about work-life balance at a recent women's wellness retreat, I googled “work-life balance women.” I was surprised to find 1,070,000,000 results. That’s over 1 billion articles, books, images, and more on this topic. It's been discussed a LOT.
I love what one writer has said about this whole issue of work-life balance:
"Work-life balance has been sold to women as being the key to happiness by suggesting all we need to do is to simply find a way to better fill our roles without going crazy. The bottom line message being (unfairly) sold to women is that if we would only prioritize our work lives better we would have more time to spend with friends, family, and on ourselves. . . .
There are plenty of women who do not have a job outside the home that need more balance in their lives. And, what about the career women who love their work so that trying to add more time (balance) baking cookies at home would be to their detriment?
The very term work-life balance implies that there is a balance to be had in the first place (there is not) and if we do not have it something is wrong with us. Work-life balance is just one more task for women to try and find time to tend to; one more thing on our long to do list to fail and feel bad about not accomplishing in a day.
To think we can achieve better work life balance by simply being more prioritized, better organized, or by trying harder, is foolishness at best.
from Why Work-Life Balance Sucks for Most Women
I don’t always get it right. Personally, how I identify whether I am “balanced” is whether I’m present in whatever I’m doing, and I’m not letting the other pieces of my life intrude on whatever important thing I’m engaged in at the time. There are many times I didn’t balance the different areas of my life well. There were times when I wasn’t present the way I wanted to be.
My biggest challenges with respect to finding a workable balance in my own life are my tendency to get absorbed in one thing to the exclusion of others and my difficulty saying no. The big picture way I address these challenges is thinking on purpose about what really matters to me, and paying attention to how I’m actually spending my time. On a day-to-day basis, setting timers and alarms is helpful because it allows me to put boundaries around certain activities; when to start and stop.
What do I know about work-life balance?
* Balance doesn’t mean equal amounts of time to each area of your lives, or even exactly the right amount of time for each.
* No one else can tell you what’s right for you.
* What’s right for someone else might not be right for you.
* You can’t figure it out by looking at someone else’s life.
* The “right” balance changes throughout your life.
So how do you figure it out?
* Be very clear on what’s important to you: Who do you want to be in this world, and why?
* Ask yourself the questions that matter most:
* What kind of life do you want to live? Why?
* What kind of person do you want to be?
* What kind of things does that kind of person do?
* Figure out a way to do those things every day.
* Live and work with purpose. Have a destination in mind. You can’t know what steps to take if you don’t know where you’re going.
* Spend some time understanding the big-picture, long-term view.