Work Life Balance

Something we all struggle with. Something that can destroy families, if we let it. But how do we control it? The difference begins with the classification of work in two buckets - jobs and careers. The fact that this is a binary classification leaves plenty of room for pointing out potential gray areas, but bear with me. Those who have jobs go to work every day, do their job, then come home. They leave work at work, for the most part. Those with careers are constantly working, because the idea is that you need to do what needs to be done in order to get the work done, otherwise you won't advance in your career. So as a result, we have all these people in careers that they may or may not even like, making daily sacrifices for the sake of being able to garnish some level of success from their efforts in said careers. Is it worth it? To the young single guy, maybe. To the middle aged woman who has a family, maybe not. There comes a time when you have to decide what makes you happy. If working makes you happy and you're not a family person, more power to you. But understand your obligations. I always raise an eyebrow when I hear about couples where one partner is making sacrifices for the sake of the other partner's 'career.' It just seems off-putting to me. Here's the good news though. You can have it both ways. You can pursue a career and still preserve a work life balance. It is about using the tools you have available to schedule and prioritize, and being deliberate about how you're using your time. When you're at work, you're 100% focused on work. That's good. You should be. But when you're home at the end of the day, you should have that same right to be 100% focused on your home life, right? Boundaries can be a difficult thing to establish, but they are essential. Part of it comes from empowerment. If you have employees under you, they need to understand that they should be able to handle the matters that come up and need attention when you're not around. And when they can't, every new situation provides you with an opportunity to take their training further and ensure that they're not going to be caught in the same situation again and not know how to handle it. And if they can't develop these skills, there is always the chance that you might just have the wrong person working for you. The converse is also true. Your managers and leaders at higher levels above you need to be able to know that you can be trusted to handle what needs to be handled in their absence. That you're capable. Because if you're not capable, you're replaceable. There are so many people out there that firmly believe they are the only ones who can do their jobs. They are indispensable. Where would the company be without them? Hiring someone else who can quite likely do their job just fine, thank you very much. We are all dispensable to a certain extent. Sure, we might have institutional knowledge that gives us an edge. We might have refined skills. But there's only so much that nets us in the end. So back to the idea of boundaries. It can be a difficult conversation to have with higher levels regarding where they feel established boundaries lie, but it is information worth getting out into the open and clarifying. After all, if you're maintaining a constant presence on your phone and you're checking your email all the time but your boss has no expectation whatsoever that you're to do this, then you're just doing this to yourself. You're shifting your work life balance away from your life to your work. So these boundaries are important to establish. If you are in a job that doesn't present such options for boundaries, then it is a matter of deciding whether that job is right for you in terms of your own priorities. But regardless of your priorities, understand that you need to be 100% in when you ARE working. If your priority is to be in a band but you have to work 25 hours a week as a barista to pay rent, you don't have the luxury of complaining that the barista duties infringe upon your work life balance. That's ridiculous. We all need to work to support ourselves somehow. But what about the dad who already puts in 10 hours a day, comes home to be with his family and enjoy his time with them, and is constantly barraged with work phone calls and emails that must be attended to? To deadlines that require constant after-hours work? We all have those projects that demand extra time, but take a look at your own situation and consider how often this occurs. And while you're doing that, if it is a regular (daily/weekly) occurrence you need to consider simply classifying that time as regular work time. Because that is essentially what it is. Decide what is important to you. Decide whether you are more interested in a job or a career, and how this impacts your personal life. Your family dynamic. Your ability to sustain relationships with others. And be sure you are giving yourself permission to invest time in yourself and others outside of work. You're worth it.