I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on Work/Life balance, and possibly look at this from a different perspective.
I was wondering what were the best 10 moments of my life, here are some that occurred to me without too much thought:
- When I first met Carine, my wife
- When Carine and I got married
- When Dan, my son, was born
- When Jessica, my daughter, was born
- When Lucy, my second daughter, was born
- Winning the Headingley Trophy at Rugby League when I was 10
- Safari in South Africa with Carine, Dan, Jess and Lucy
- Being presented with my degree in Mathematics
- Listening to Dan sing at Carine’s 50 birthday
- Shopping with Jessica and Lucy for clothes in Lucca
I think I could continue for a long time before I actually come up with anything that is work related.
Sure I have worked on some great projects, delivered some great results, had excellent feedback for a presentation, but none of them come close to any of the moments listed above, or any of the others I can think of in the top 50.
So in terms of Work Life Balance, all of my best moments come from Life.
Maybe we should all do this little exercise, and then think about how we should better split our time between Work and Life.
If all of our most precious moments come from Life and not Work, maybe we need to address our focus.
Just a thought 🙂
I think the key is to, as you say, not ‘give it much thought’ when filling out such a list. I, too, did a similar exercise and found similar results…when I didn’t try to ‘think about it too much.’ I believe when we do this in a way other than stream-of-consciousness, etc., we then begin to start listing too many professional achievements.
This in itself tells me something about us, about all people. What really matters? I think you answered the question. Anything else is a matter of us getting in our own way.
Jay fully agree.
I often here people say, i work hard so that i can retire and spend more time with my wife and family.
Which is a bit odd, especially if you’re working late and weekends to achieve that dream.
We give our best to a firm in or that when we are old and weary we can give whatever is left to our loved one.
That kinda seems the wrong way round 🙂
Great comment, keep em coming
You both are obviously right. And I’m sure there are not many out there who’s list have different weights.
But if we reflect our “real lifes” we can find ourselfs many if not most of times out of WLB. The weight most times shifts to “work” rather then “life”. And we all enjoy and push this addrenalin type of work-success and personal achievements to the point where we once again get asked by our sweet son or daughter: “daddy why do you have to always work that long and late..?” The partner usualy has already given up asking the same question.
Then we might again take a few minutes of reflection, might fill our “WLB-list”, hate outselfs for not living to the balance we all keep that high up, promise to ourselfs and the beloved ones that this will change to the better again, but only this important project, or these important set of meetings, or these important customer visits need to finish….
After all we stress ourselfs for a while to force that balance to our wish and after all we fall back into the “success and achievement” pattern. And our beloved ones again understand that they don’t belong to all this “important” subjects. After all they give up.
There is only one way to escape this rat-hole: we have to honestly redefine our “success and achievement” pattern and map where our “success and achievement” comes from and what it really means to us.
Great comment Heinz, i think you really hit the nail on the head.
One other point i would also make is, when we spend time with our kids they really appreciate it, and us, they are really happy we did it, no one else could have made them feel this way. Whereas at work, they are just happy its done, that someone did it, they don’t necessarily care whether it was you or I. They value the result, not time spent doing it, which is the opposite of time spent with our children. They probably do not care what we do, what the result is as long as its us that does it with them.
thanks for the post keep them coming
G
I was discussing this point with someone Gordon & we reached to another angle of this story. 🙂 In my & the other guys case we both agreed our greatest moments were when we got through bigger academic challenges, proved ourself to the world through all the odds at work & university.
I agree most of us lack in the work-life balance & we give too much importance to work. But some people out there are still very ambitious, for them still work is high priority compared to personal life, they feel more happy achieving high at work as compared to life. They can never be happy if they are underdogs at work/an average performers.
Couldn’t it differs from person to person? I would say we all should identify what makes us happy & concentrate more on it, rather than just being part of a rat race 🙂
There is nothing wrong with ambition I have plenty of that myself. I too like to overcome challenges. And even more so help my the overcome them.
But we need to be mindful of the balance that’s all, make sure that as we continue its not an increasing tilt towards work. Adrenalin is an addictive drug and we nee d to make sure we don’t become too addicted to it and miss out on life
G
Nicely explained and touching to everyone. This is a reality and we cannot escape it.
thanks for the comment, much appreciated. No we can’t escape it, but we can try and mitigate it to some extent.
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I don’t disagree with any of the comments Gordon but sometimes to enjoy some of the pleasures of the ‘life’ side requires that you do well at your job, which normally means working hard & being successful, to actually achieve some of these pleasures. Of course nothing can take away the joy of bringing a new child into the world but if you were unable to provide for them adequately it may not be as fulfilling. Having said that I believe I have changed my mentality & achieve a good WLB & it is very rare to have anything to do work related at the weekends anymore – but this is mainly as a result of giving up things in my earlier career to achieve promotions to senior management & the rewards that come with it.
David
I am a strong advocate of work hard play hard, i too like to work hard and achieve great results at work, and for sure their are some achievements that i am proud of too.
I just wanted to be provocative, and make sure that we look at the things in the right perspective.
I know the day i die, no one from any of the companies i worked for will turn up and thank me for my contribution to the success of the company. That doesn’t mean i shouldn’t look to achieve the professional goals i set, but it does mean i should reflect from time to time whether i have the balance right.