Work life balance: Is it a myth?
Work/Life balance? Is that even a thing? If it is a thing, is it a good thing? Should work carry as much weight as family/home/life? Let’s face it, if you work a traditional job 8:00 - 5:00 Monday through Friday, you spend the majority of your time at work. That doesn’t feel balanced. Even if you work the lovely three 12 hour shifts per week, you are putting a lot of time into your job. Between work and sleeping, you don’t have a lot of time for the “life” side of the scale.
So, if balance is about time, then we are screwed and will never have equal weight on both sides of that scale? Work will always have more weight. But what if it can be about time spent, versus energy put in, that makes us feel balanced? Which side of the scale gets more of your attention and energy?
Balance has become a buzz word in the last few years; so has self-care. Can they co-exist? Self-care is supposed to help you feel more balanced. But what if you don’t understand either one of those or feel as if they are both unattainable? Or what if you don’t even strive to feel balanced, you just strive to make it through today? And self-care just seems like a self-centered activity.
(As an aside, I wonder if this is a strictly female issue. I don’t often hear men worry about balancing work and life. Is it a mom issue? Is it a parent issue? Hmmmm….)
Do we need balance, or do we just need boundaries? Is it wrong for work to carry more weight than things outside of work? No. Is it wrong for travel, exercise, family, health, fun, etc. to weigh more than work? No. The important thing is to figure out which thing you want to put more of your energy into. Then you guard that thing with boundaries. For example, if you have determined that your family time is more important to you than work is, you put a boundary up that means work does not get to cross into your family time. Your work emails, texts, computer time, etc. do not cross into family time. All jobs have work hours. Adhere to them yourself. When work is over, it is over. After all, when family time is over, it is over. You don’t take your toddler to work with you.
Same goes for any scenario. If you want to put more energy into travel then set a boundary around it. Don’t check your email or anything to do with work while you are away. You get the picture.
What if you do want work to carry equal weight as everything outside of work? That’s OK too. Then you put as much energy into work as you do into things outside of work. What if you want work to be the most important thing in your life and you don’t regret spending the majority of your energy on it? Well then do that. Just put your boundaries up around it.
Protect whatever it is that you want to get the majority of your energy, not your time, but your energy and passion.
This is self-care. Minding your boundaries helps you care for yourself in a whole new way. It gives you permission to say “no,” and “not now.”
The way I see it is that unbalance is the goal. I want one part of my life to carry more weight than other parts.