Forbes
Here is What is Wrong about the Way We Think About 'Work-Life Balance'
By: Lance Salyers
When you hear the term "work-life balance," what do you think of? When you read that phrase, does the picture it creates in your mind's eye look something like this?
It seems whenever the notion of balance is discussed as a function of a healthy life, it is measured in the metrics of time: the blue drudgery of "Work" on one side of the scale, contrasted with the bright light of "Life" on the other. Work, left to its own devices, will steal all of the time that should belong to Life, and achieving "work-life balance" means taking time back from Work and returning it to Life. While contemporary discussions have moved beyond simple "time off" to more expansive notions of "flexibility," the object of the discussion is still the same: better apportioning of time between two competing worlds — our Work and our Life.
This way of thinking is well-intentioned and has been beneficial. It is conventional to discuss, easy to understand and simple to remedy via a change in policies.
It is also wrong.
Life is not an equation, and doing it successfully doesn't come from a mathematically balanced formula of time allocation. Measuring numbers and making sure they align is how you balance tires, not your life.
Instead of buying into the corporate-HR mindset that measures balance by how much time one spends working and the environment in which that time is spent, here are two better ways to think about "work-life balance":
1. Rhythm
Life is about rhythms. Seasons come, and seasons go. Problems arise when the cyclical nature of life's ebb and flow is interrupted, becoming only one or the other all the time. The narcoleptic sleeps all the time, while the insomniac suffers from never sleeping. Health lies in the rhythm of moving between both. The river that only ebbs is soon a dry memory, while the one that only flows becomes a destructive flood.
Work is no different.
In my former career as a prosecutor in a county-level government office, my work hours were pretty tame compared to my law school classmates toiling away at large, private firms: in by 9:00, home by 6:00 ... unless I was in trial. In that case, weekends at the office and outlasting the night cleaning crew was the norm. While I averaged being in the flow of a jury trial about once a month, they did not occur with such predictable regularity. Sometimes I went a few months without a trial. Other times, I slogged through three trials over the the course of two weeks, moving from jury verdict in one case to jury selection in the next with only a bathroom break in-between. It was in times like that — all flow, no ebb — that my sense of work-life imbalance became most acute.
To be clear: it wasn't just the unrelentingly high-demand of my time during those periods that made me feel unbalanced. It was the never-receding stress. Near the end of my career, I went through a three-year period where I went through a series of large, complex, high-profile cases. Though these cases required months of work leading up to their trials, it wasn't my time that they robbed me of during those months. I still got home before dinner, and spent my weekends at home. But, it was the stress that never ebbed away. During those 30+ months, I was in a stress grinder that never let up. By the end of it, I felt like a wrung-out dishwrag. I was burned-out, and surprised by the feeling. Since I loved my job and it felt as a mission for my life, I never imagined getting burned-out on it. And yet, there I was. Six months later, I had changed careers — a previously unfathomable thought.
Forget the clock and the calendar. If your work environment is all flow and no ebb, that's the dynamic that demands balance. When everything is an urgent crisis all the time, something is wrong. When all the news is "BREAKING NEWS," something is wrong. When you haven't taken a day off in six months because everything is important and nothing can wait a day, then it's time to start intentionally building walls to start containing the out-of-control flow of your job. Boundaries around time, topic, or even level of detail can be good places to start. Delegating to others, or simply saying "No," are the tools with which to begin building fences to contain the flow and give you places to rest in the ebb.
2. Self-Identity
If Rhythm is the thermometer that measures whether your work life is imbalanced to the point of running too hot, think of Self-Identity as your barometer which measures the pressure. It is easy to end up with a work-life out of balance when an inordinate amount of your sense of who you are and what makes you valuable comes from the judgments of your professional life. I say this with the voice of experience, as someone who lived the painful effects of a life out of balance due to my over-identifying with the badges of my professional life. Literally.
Of course our professional lives are important. When we do work that matters, it will rightfully lead to a sense of personal purpose, accomplishment, and esteem. There is great dignity in work. That idea is a common thread running through debates as diverse as the efficacy of social welfare programs to the psychological consequences of no longer needing to work thanks to the rise of robotic and AI technology. Recognizing one's value in an occupational sense isn't the problem.
However, there is so much more to anyone's value as a person beyond their performance rating, their month's sales forecast, or their business unit's financial numbers. Yes, it is trite and obvious to point this out ... and yet, it is the obvious that we tend to forget under the stresses and pressures of our work. We forget our purpose beyond our paycheck. We forget the intrinsic value of our family and friends over our finances. We forget that who we are matters more than what we do because what we do will fade someday. Ask high-performance athletes after their time in the arena has ended.
If, in a moment of honest self-assessment, you realize that thinking well of yourself substantially requires your boss to think well of you, know this: your work-life is out of balance, and your priorities have become compromised. It is nearly impossible to take the actions necessary to restore a healthy rhythm to your work and establish necessary margins in your work life if you are afraid of not pleasing your boss. When you find yourself realizing that is where you are, it is time to take a step back and rediscover the importance of what it means to be you. Don't give the heartless machinery of your job one more day to do that for you ... or to you.
A life out of balance must be addressed before things spin out of control. The consequences are too costly to ignore. Use firm boundaries to build the walls to contain the rushing flow of stress if you need to. Take an extended retreat from the daily grind to restore the You apart from your work if you must. Do not give in to the fears of what others will think as you do either. Once these vital tasks are done, you will have a clearer sense of how to spend your time, and you will be a more effective version of you in both Work and Life.
