Is Work-life Balance Unachievable?

By: Clare Mann
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:50
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Many people make changes to their lives to accommodate a desirable lifestyle. However, It is all too easy to find yourself torn between your work and other aspects of your life. So is greater work life balance the solution?

I suggest greater work-life balance isn’t the answer. Firstly, you only have one life, despite dividing your time between work and non-work activities. Apportioning yourself between work and personal life forces you into separation and fragmentation. Secondly, it implies that greater time management will result in expending effort more productively. Lack of time, however, is a red herring in the work-life balance debate – it results in you relinquishing responsibility for the real choices facing you in creating the life you want to live. The solution lies in discovering what is really important, meaningful and significant to you. It requires a reconsideration of the quality of your life – not your work life, home life or family life but the quality of this one thing, which we call Life.

Shifting the Paradigm

The word ‘balance’ implies some sort of seesaw with work on one side and family and personal life on the other. Like scales of justice, it suggests that both sides are equal. It implies constant juggling to maintain balance with sudden or increased demand on one side throwing the other side precariously out of balance. ‘Work-life balance’ is so deeply embedded in our language and every time we see the word balance it reinforces the balancing act.

Changing your paradigm starts by changing your language. I encourage you, in considering your own balancing act to change the concept to work-life integration. Here you move away from the seesaw to see that it is not the only option in the playground. Work-life integration implies a synergy between the different aspects of your life whereby energy is expended more productively. Thus, attaining fulfilment is not so much about work-life balance but more about making conscious choices about your values and how you want to live your life.

Let’s examine the concept of work-life integration in the context of your life. Through practical exercises, you can identify the barriers that inhibit you developing a rich and satisfying life. You can then choose from a wider range of options, explore the implications of taking different paths and accommodate the anxiety that results from choosing.

Barriers to change

Numerous barriers inhibit us making the necessary changes for personal fulfilment. Try the following exercise:

    Consider your own personal work-life balance. Outline the roles you hold under the headings of work and non-work, remembering that your place of work might be at home raising your children and not outside the home.
    Write down as much detail as possible about how you feel in these different roles and the changes you would like to make.
    What are the personal barriers that stand in the way of you creating a more integrated life?

You may have found this exercise challenging, particularly if you consider that your options to change are limited. However, many of the barriers that stand in the way of us changing are underpinned by Myths or unquestioned assumptions about how we should and ought to live our lives. Once identified, we can choose to continue with them or change more in line with our personal values.

If you are interested in exploring how myths inhibit you choosing from the myriad of choices available, go to http://www.mythofworklifebalance.com In addition, you are invited to join the series of teleseminars we provide on work/life integration. To learn more about our teleseminars, go to http://www.mythofworklifebalance.com/teleconference.htm Clare Mann, organisational psychologist and existential psychotherapist is a contributing author to “Awakening the Workplace: Achieving Connection, Fulfilment and Success at Work”, joint author of Strategic Human Resource Development: Strategy and Tactics and author of the “The Myths of Life and The Choices We Have”, an Existential Philosophy-based self-help book. http://www.lifemyths.com

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