Work-life balance. If you’re anything like me, you know that this term is both important to you and simultaneously gives you the shivers. We seem to have a love-hate relationship with balancing our work and our personal lives. Both are important, and none should have priority over the other, but at the same time, striving for this balance seems to create only more disbalance in the form of stress. So, how can we resolve this once and for all?

Work-live balance is a term that was coined almost 40 years ago, it’s as hot of a topic now as it was then. Over the decades, productivity has increased and with that, the struggle for separating our personal lives from our professional ones has, too.

And that’s exactly where the root of the problem seems to be. We try to compartmentalize our lives into blocks of hours where we work and spend time on the rest. But as you and me both know, in the fast paced, changing environment of today, it’s like trying to stay afloat whilst having the Titanic on your shoulders. Some days, work just has priority over our personal lives because projects need to be finished or sudden crises need to be managed, and other days, rarely as they come, are like looking at the clock and watching the time tick by in slow motion. In other words, it’s extremely hard to predict what day it’s going to be if you stick rigorously to a schedule that dictates when you should do what and for how long. 

Most of these times, when unexpected things do happen, we sacrifice our personal time for getting the job done in our professional world. But over time, this flexibility of exchanging one for the other can cause us to build up resistance, rigidness, unconscious habits and even more stress without us even knowing it. It’s like putting the proverbial frog in a pan of water and slowly boiling it to death. 

So, what’s the solution?

Balance

If a rigid schedule doesn’t work, and having no schedule doesn’t work either, how do you fix the work-life balance challenge? Well, let’s start by stopping to call it “balance”. Balance is like trying to stand on a beachball in the middle of the ocean whilst surrounded by a hungry group of sharks; it’s a constant battle against yourself that will sooner get you killed because your heart gave out, then you’ll get your head bitten off. Rather than balance, how about replacing it with fulfillment. Both your work and your persona life should give you purpose, joy and fulfillment. And if that’s not the case, then perhaps you and I should have another conversation. 

Though it’s scientifically proven that what we focus on and give meaning to determines how we feel about it and take actions upon, it would be too simple to say that if you’d change the word, your whole life would change as well – if that would be true, then everybody would be skinny, rich and happy. But it’s a good place to start. Priming your mind to give a different meaning to how you see your work and personal life, and specifically how to bridge the gap between the two, does definitely positively influence your decisions and actions. 

Ok, so no more work-life balance, but work-life fulfillment. What else?

Integration

I stated earlier that most of us try very hard to separate our professional lives from the personal ones. But what if, rather than separation, we integrate the two? After all, you’re one and the same person just doing different things. 

Let’s say you feel like running in the middle of the day. The first question you could ask yourself is “Is it possible?” If you’re swamped with meetings, then obviously, the answer is ‘No, not right now.” But if you can push the things you set out to do to later in the day, then why not? Doing different things can have huge benefits in both areas. Running will not only keep you fit, but it also helps you to clear your mind and make mental space for new ideas and better solutions. So, when you come back from your run, you feel invigorated to take on the things you were working on or you have on your to-do list. 

This isn’t to say you want to multitask. Multitasking has proven to be a non-productive approach to getting things done. Where multitasking is doing one thing partially, interrupting the flow and starting something new before finishing the thing you were working on first – integration is doing one thing at a time, and shifting the focus from the professional to the personal and vice versa. 

D-Days

Virtually every organization offers their co-workers vacation days to compensate their personnel from the rhythm and routine of their job. What often happens though, is that people save up their days and take one or two larger periods of time to take a break from their work. Consequently, this often means that people push themselves more and more to get the tasks done within the deadlines they are set in – building up more and more stress and mental inflexibility, and even physical disharmony. So, when someone does take a holiday after a long time of being under constant pressure, that pressure gets released by the body and people get sick. So rather than to recuperate from a healthy point, they end up needing their vacation days to recuperate from physical, mental and emotional sickness that has been building up over time. 

To prevent this from happening, one could decide to take more shorter breaks in between. A day here, a day there, and voilà, problem solved. Ideally, this would be a great solution. But truth be told, it’s extremely hard just take a day here and a day there. These things need to be planned, and often, well in advance. Though it’s a good idea to take more shorter breaks from work, than one or two long ones, the practicality of it requires more planning. If it’s doable, it’s definitely worth it. 

But if it’s not, consider checking if a couple of D-Day’s per year are a possibility. D-Days are what Simon Sinek calls Duvet Days – a day where you just want to pull the blanket over your head and just don’t want to go to work, but rather stay at home or go to the beach. 

We have D-Days anyway, we often just don’t call them that. We pretend we’re sick, call up our employer or manager, cough a few times whilst trying to convince them we’re sick so we can skip out on work for that day. Rather than having those grey sick-days, it works so much better to have level of transparency within the company culture where everyone can have a couple of D-Days. So, HR, if you’re reading this…

I understand that it takes more than an idea to work out the details for this suggestion, but several organizations have incorporated this concept already and it has shown that D-Days have decreased overall time of absence due to real sickness such as burnout among co-workers as well as an increase in overall productivity. Being able to take a day for yourself without consequences for the team or organization boosts moral, vitality and personal efficiency. Less stress means higher productivity and lower risk of people feeling overwhelmed or overworked. 

Whether or not you a D-Day is possible, the guideline for this article is clear: work-life balance is not a matter of trying to juggle your personal life in one hand and your professional one on the other, it’s putting your hands together and integrating the two to where possible to create a harmony and a level of fulfillment that empowers you to feel pleasure, passion and purpose in everything you do, and have the energy and drive to do it all. 

To your success, 

Robert

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