The Myth of Work-Life Balance

For the last decade, work-life balance has been a hot topic of discussion, explored from all angles by HR professionals, journalists, and most importantly, overworked managers who struggle to achieve that balance between working long hours to accomplish important work and having enough time and energy for life outside of work.

If you believe what you read, it seems you can have it all: a meaningful, rewarding job and time enough to reap the rewards. Based on our own experiences and what we hear from our clients, we’d like to amend the “you can have it all” to “you can have it all, but not necessarily at the same time” when it comes to work-life balance.

The truth is that if you have a rewarding, meaningful job, the work is hard and not likely to be compacted into the typical 40-hour work week. People who achieve great success in their line of work most often like what they do for a living. They don’t see it as work, but as a central part of their lives; a reason for being.

However, even those who love their jobs admit that achieving a balance between work and life outside of work is becoming an increasingly more difficult quest. Balance becomes harder and harder to attain in our ever-connected lives when we are always reachable. Globalization and the speed of technology demands 24/7 responsiveness from us. We are running leaner, more efficient organizations with fewer and fewer people to accomplish the work. Constant change is driven by global competitiveness. While we can attain a balance that works for us, it is often fleeting and can lead to frustration when the balance scales tip heavily towards work.

While achieving the perfect equilibrium of work and personal time is a noble goal to strive for, the reality is that few can achieve and sustain it. Jack Welch caused a controversy when he said “There is no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices.” I agree. You are responsible for your own work-life balance. Knowing that you can never sustain work-life balance indefinitely helps you redefine success in ways that can positively impact both your career and quality of life. Read on for strategies to help you proactively make important choices about your work and life, instead of striving for that ever elusive work-life balance.

1. Build Thinking Time into Your Schedule: Each of us are blessed equally when it comes to time. Every week we are given the same 168 hours. Do you know where you are spending those hours? Are you spending your hours in areas that are important to you and energize you or make you happy? If you had an extra hour each day, what would you do with that hour? If you are going to make choices about where you spend your time, you’ve got to make time to think about the answers to these questions.
2. Make Choices Ahead of Time: You cannot be excellent at all things at all times. If you drive yourself to excellence in all areas, you’ll most likely excel in stress and frustration. Instead, think through your current priorities and determine your focus. At any one time in your career, your highest priority might be work, or life outside of work. If you determine that work is currently your highest priority, your focus and decision making are based on work. If, however, you determine that your children or caring for elderly parents is your highest priority, then your actions are weighted more heavily towards life outside of work. If you take time to think through your current priorities, and make choices ahead of time, then the right balance and allocation of your time will become more apparent. When you are spending time in areas that are important to you, stress levels are reduced and your satisfaction in both work and life outside of work are enhanced.
3. Communicate Your Boundaries: It is so easy to get caught up in the long working hours conundrum. In cultures where working 60 – 70 hours per week is the norm, people wear their weekly hours worked as a badge of honor. It is easy to feel guilty if you slip out before 6:00pm. Don’t buy into the guilt. Just because people are working those long hours does not mean they are any more productive than someone working fewer hours each week, but working efficiently. Set and communicate your boundaries. Be willing to say “no” to a request if it doesn’t align to your vision and goals. If being home early enough to spend time with your family is a priority, let coworkers know that they can depend on you to attend an occasional late meeting or evening out with a client, but otherwise, you’ll be leaving at five o’clock each day. Advise your boss and others that you won’t be routinely checking emails each evening and may not pick up messages until the next morning.
4. Seek Energy, not Balance: Happiness and work-life balance are not the same thing. You can have perfect work-life balance and be in a dead end, uninspiring job that leaves you depressed and exhausted. You can also be working incredibly long hours on a complex, challenging project and be happy, because you are spending time in an area of your life that energizes you. Those leaders who are engaged, energized and in charge of their lives have something more than happiness. Because they can make important choices about where they spend their time, and spend their time in pursuits that energize them, they have fulfillment, which no amount of money can buy.
5. Manage Your Mind-Set: Understand that sustained work-life balance will be a continuing challenge. It is never easy. Think of it as a moving target on a long journey with an unclear destination. But, do continue to think about it and take action. Identify what stresses you, and develop a course of action to reduce the stress. In some cases, stress can be reduced by determining your current priorities, focusing your actions and communicating your boundaries. In other cases, significant change may be the answer, as in leaving for an organization that demands high standards, but is not as definitive about the hours worked to achieve the outcome and allows for individual flexibility.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If chasing work-life balance is making you crazy, concede. Back off and make time to think. Do something different to take charge of your priorities and spend your time accordingly. To avoid becoming a burnout statistic, seek energy rather than balance. To excel at work-life balance, excel at work-life choice.

Image via Flickr, Slimmer Jimmer