I first heard the expression "work-life balance" soon after I started my consulting career in the early 2000's. It struck me as odd because what I experienced and what I observed from co-workers and leaders in my organization had no semblance of what I thought of as "balanced." I found it odd that "work" was what I did at my job and "life" was everything else, but I'll come back to the awkwardness of that distinction.Â
How do we measure work-life balance?
Entering the corporate world having had rigorous training in the sciences, words to me were precise. "Balance" to me at the very least pointed toward the measurement of equal amounts. I imagined a balance scale where you place one of one thing on one side and one of another on the other side until their relative weights or masses equaled.Â
I found it hard to imagine "life" on one scale and "work" on the other. The only way to conceivably measure this was to measure the time spent devoted to each. Of course, I understood that "work-life" balance was never intended to be actually measured, but rather a subjective theoretic construct for personal contemplation, discussion, and ideally, decision. Each person was left to determine what "balance" looked like to them... Not very scientific.Â
In those first years, I along with my co-workers worked long hours, into the nights and on weekends. People would complain about not having any work-life balance. The often proposed remedy to this was to plan time off once the project/work effort was complete. Again, as anyone who has been on this "burn-out" inducing roller-coaster can attest to, this solution is far from "balanced" and not sustainable if you are really interested in anything resembling what the concept of work-life balance points to. I quickly re-framed what was referred to as a consultant's struggle for "work-life balance" instead to be "work hard, play hard."
Over the past two decades, I've watched many employees and business executives chase the elusive "balance" and many more give up and accept their fate of increasingly long hours as they progress in their careers.Â
If not "work-life balance," then what?
In addition, it's been fascinating to witness the evolution of the concept and terminology. The term "work-life balance" seems to have first appeared in writing in the mid-1980's. Blog writer Erik Devaney talks extensively about this in his article offering a rather detailed history on the topic, so I won't attempt to reproduce that here. He also indicates that the term before the mid-'80's was commonly referred to as "work-leisure balance." To me, this seems to produce a little less cognitive dissonance since it removes the overlap between terms. (Last I checked, "life" includes "work.")
I can understand why the terminology evolved since what we do outside of work is more than just leisure. Yet, in the process of replacing "leisure" with "life," we went a little too far in my opinion, or perhaps not far enough... After experiencing the farce of "work-life balance," I took it upon myself to begin considering and talking about work-life "integration." Integration was my attempt then at resolving the cognitive dissonance as well as speaking more honestly about what we do and experience. With the advent of the Blackberry and then more sophisticated smartphones, work became always accessible. With the universal use of laptops and smartphones, work became more integrated into our lives.Â
Work-life blend and R.O.W.E
I then started to imagine that if work came home with me, then why couldn't "home" come to work? Why should the boundary be blurred in only one direction? At that time, I was not in a position to dictate my working hours, but over the years I have seen more and more people embrace autonomy over their time and emphasize results over time worked. This has accommodated more of a blend of "work" and "life" in which people may work late into the evening or on a weekend, but then also take a 2 hour lunch, exercise in the middle of the day, take Friday afternoon off, or gasp!... even take off a Tuesday afternoon. This kind of work flexibility was traditionally reserved for people who were entrepreneurs, but over the past decade, it has grown in popularity and reality. About 5 years ago, I heard a term for it... "work-life blend." A decade ago, I learned about the practice of R.O.W.E., the results only work environment. This was created by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson in which employees are paid for their results rather than the number of hours worked.
Since then, I have run into two major objections to the concept of work-life blend and R.O.W.E. The objection to work-life blend, or work-life integration for that matter, comes from those people who feel like they struggle as it is to set boundaries in which work doesn't take over their lives. They interpret the idea of integration or blend as meaning simply less "balance" and progressively more work. One of the objections to R.O.W.E. comes from industries like the one I am in whose profit model relies heavily on hours billed to clients. With that said, I've seen the gradual shift toward more fixed-fee work and less time and material driven projects. In the spirit of blend and R.O.W.E, I like the following quote:
"Work is what we do, not where we go. Work is what we produce, not when we produce." - Peter Moorhouse
Harmony and Life Balance
Most recently, I was introduced to a new terminology attempting to resolve the dissonance - "work-life harmony." To me, this one feels the most on target with what I have witnessed most people are looking for. This is obviously subjective and puts the onus on the individual to determine what harmony looks like for them. Having gone from work-life balance, to integration, to blend, now to harmony (the best of the four, in my opinion), I have concluded that we'd be best served by removing the distinction between work and life, because it's not true anymore, and never was true. We should accept the fact and responsibility for designing the life balance that we desire and can make work. We need to do away with the reaching semantics and give up clinging to awkward terminology that denies the reality that we spend 50% of our waking hours working on any given workday and a third of our productive years working. We ought to drop the word "work" altogether and simply refer to "life balance" when addressing how we are using our time, energy, and resources for living.Â
This is more than a semantic proposal. Doing this would allow us to carefully examine all aspects of our lives, including work, and individually make decisions about what a balanced life portfolio might look like.Â
Consider this. When you look back on your life, how will you measure the value of it? What tells you now if your life is balanced? How does fulfillment, presence, and the experience of success across multiple facets of your life determine its value? What choice must you make to create a life in which your work is the product of a life you've designed, rather than a life that is the vehicle someone else has designed to keep you working?Â
Create a life in which your work is the product of a life you've designed.
Life Balance Killers and Promoters
Here are the seven Life Balance Killers to avoid and the seven Life Balance Promoters to take action on today.Â
7 Life Balance Killers:
Thinking of work and life as separate things to be distributed optimally in a 24-hour pie chart
Lack of clarity about what you really want to do and want in your life
A job that has consistently long, fixed work hours or requires you to be on call
Working for a micromanaging boss with a command and control management style
Consistently priding yourself on hours worked over hours slept
A job where you are incentivized by the number of hours workedÂ
Consistently prioritizing job security over work fulfillment and impact
7 Life Balance Promoters:
Get clear and honest with yourself about exactly why you do the work you do
Determine what your life is about and identify the nature of work that best expresses that
Identify who you want to impact and what you want that impact to be
Figure out what you need to learn, and commit to developing your best self in service to others
Increase your efficiency by focusing on impact and value over time spent working
Articulate what a harmonious and balanced life looks like for you
Select work that gives you the autonomy to create the balanced life you want
If you invest the time to take these seven balance promoter steps and remove the seven balance killers, you will have taken ownership of your life. You will have a clear picture of the life you want and the contribution you want to make. You will be prepared to step into a balanced life, even if you're not sure as to how to make it happen.Â
I've learned that we need to be ready for the opportunities that will come. The journey isn't often easy, but the result is both liberating and deeply rewarding.Â
For other's perspectives on this, I recommend these articles:
Should You Strive for Work/Life Balance? The History of the Personal & Professional Divide, by Erik Devaney
Work Life Balance Is Going To Be Dead, by Jappreet Sethi
How to Create a Healthy Work-Life Balance, by Shruti, Singhal