Work, Life And Balance
January is that time of year that reminds us all of that often repeated contemporary mantra: work-life balance.
Those three words roll off the tongue and have rolled off the tongue for many an employee, boss or even, heaven forbid, an HR Executive.
They have become the sort of benchmark to one’s life. If for any reason you don’t have it – that mythic balance – then somehow you are not a very good human being let alone employee.
After the excesses of Christmas and New Year, the one thing most people don’t seem to have any of is time. The reason I say “seems” is because no doubt they – you? – reflected while away from work on your winter break about life, its meaning and all those resolutions for the new year of 2020. Then January hits and bang! Everything goes haywire, everything is coming at you from every angle and the pace of life seems to have gone from ‘0 to 100’ in seconds.
So is ‘work, life, balance,’ a myth, or a necessity?
Well, let’s break it down.
First off, the whole concept is predicated on the basis of an organic whole. The balance bit is not a balancing act as much as part of the equation. So it is the work bit, the life bit and then the balance is the glue that sticks it all together.
For most self-employed people, and certainly any entrepreneurs out there, life and work are blurred. It is hard to tell for most of us when work ends and life begins. Again for most self-employed and entrepreneurs the idea of ‘balance’ appears like a luxury. Depending on where you are in your entrepreneurial path and more particularly where you are up to with your business then that will determine the ‘balance’.
Before you simply say something like, ‘well that’s the way it just is’ then you’d better take a moment to look at the impact that imbalance is producing.
Recently the United Kingdom’s Mental Health Foundation carried out a survey. It found the following:
one-third of respondents feel unhappy or very unhappy about the time they devote to work
more than 40% of employees are neglecting other aspects of their life because of work, which may increase their vulnerability to mental health problems
when working long hours more than a quarter of employees feel depressed (27%), one third feel anxious (34%), and more than half feel irritable (58%)
the more hours you spend at work, the more hours outside of work you are likely to spend thinking or worrying about it
as a person’s weekly hours increase, so do their feelings of unhappiness
many more women report unhappiness than men (42% of women compared with 29% of men), which is probably a consequence of competing life roles and more pressure to ‘juggle’
nearly two-thirds of employees have experienced a negative effect on their personal life, including lack of personal development, physical and mental health problems, and poor relationships and poor home life.
This is all food for thought.
The problem for most entrepreneurs is that they are not only self-employed but also their own boss. This, in short, is the perfect storm when it comes to the mental illness dangers when the work, life balance is off-kilter.
Going through the findings in more detail. The feelings of unhappiness about the time spent at work are probably not something we need to worry about. Most of you reading this have chosen this path and taken the steps to make this work you are involved in succeed. You are driven. You want to succeed. You need to succeed and no matter how many hours it takes you are going to succeed. To be honest, you don’t have time to consider whether you are happy or unhappy.
Forty percent are neglecting their other task and responsibilities. I suspect most reading this are guilty on this count. To succeed you have neglected almost everything and everyone in your life to achieve your dream. This has come at a cost. Okay, there is room for improvement there.
Long hours are bringing all sorts of miseries, it seems. Again most entrepreneurs don’t notice the time. That is our concern. Days go by, then weeks and months before you realise you have done very little else but work. And if you think that is an exaggeration then tell me the last time you took a holiday without a work angle attached to it.
Women are more unhappy with all this than men. That is understandable. Women have more calls on their time than men do – or maybe they just take the calls! The perennial struggle for most women is that high wire act of keeping everyone happy. Not sure what the answer is here, although women are better at multi-tasking, but perhaps they need to also admit that sometimes – just like their male colleagues – there is a limit.
The last one is the most interesting, namely, that nearly two-thirds of employees experience a negative effect on their personal lives. The survey then adds in: “lack of personal development, physical and mental health problems, and poor relationships and poor home life.”
That sounds like just about everything in life! If things are that bad because of work then you don’t have a work, life balance issue you need to get a life, a new one!
This is where for me at least things start to unravel when it comes to this survey. What sort of people took part? Not people who, I would wager, enjoy their work. This final bit seems to blame work for everything when many of us know that yes work can be demanding but it can also bring with it a great sense of fulfillment if not downright happiness.
That is of course when you are doing something you love. If you are only doing something for the money, well, you get the money but little else besides.
Maybe the real work-life balance is one where your work is what you love to do and thereby enhances your life in the best way possible and as for ‘balance’? Well, you are just enjoying yourself too much – ever heard of someone who needed to find ‘balance’ when it comes to something they love like a hobby or a holiday? No? Me neither.
