February 24th, 2009
Work/Life Balance – The Reality
Yesterday I talked about Work/Life Balance and how I aim to give a comprehensive guide on how this can be done. Today I want to talk a little further on the aims of work/life balance.
Everyone seems to be spouting the phrase ‘Work/Life Balance’ but it is often misconceived as meaning that your work and home life need to be separate entities and time balanced – this is not necessarily the case and would be almost impossible. I believe what most people really want is fulfillment of life inside and outside of work – I also believe that most employees and the self-employed are quite willing to work hard and put in the hours just so long as they enjoy their life and have some control over where and when they work. It means having flexibility to leave work early if necessary or to go to a medical appointment with the ability to make up the hours as needed.
As I said yesterday, Australians work longer hours than those in the USA or UK but we need to understand that productivity is usually lowered (according to Clive Hamilton from The Australia Institute (TAI)). Instead we put in more and more hours to eventually ‘prove’ ourselves worthy of asking the boss to leave a little early to take our children to swimming lessons.
Then there is the ‘Life’ part of Work/Life Balance – the home is usually just another job consisting of caring for children, cooking meals, washing and shopping – when is ‘Life’ actually supposed to happen? I will cover in later posts the need to look after yourself with the correct nutrition, exercise and finding time for oneself but tomorrow I will talk about finding the priorities in your life as a basis for beginning to achieve some balance through clarity and focus.
Visit my site Life Is What You Make It to learn more about what you can do to achieve work/life balance and become more organised at home. In the meantime, feel free to post comments and suggestions.