There is a lot of talk about Work-Life Balance in the media. What is Work-Life balance?
It is exactly what it says on the tin. In these competitive times, employers, whether in public service or the private sector, are happy to take everything you are willing to give them. That is fine when long hours and stressful conditions are the exception, but it is a real problem when they become the norm. Face it, if you step under a truck tomorrow, you are not going to be remembered for your brilliant advertising campaign, for getting the accounts processed on time every month or increasing your company’s market share. The people who will miss you and remember you are the people outside of work. So, if you are not striking a healthy balance between your personal life and your working life, you are missing the point!
All too often we don’t question our values or attitudes, we don’t re-frame our thinking, we don’t take constructive action on a stressor, until a significant life event forces us to do so. I have lost count of the number of clients who have said, “What’s it all about?” following a serious illness or the loss of a loved one. I think that one of the reasons why the concept of balance comes up so much nowadays is because employees and jobseekers have finally accepted that job security is an extinct concept. As such, there is a very real, (sometimes spoken, more often unspoken) pressure to be seen to be a good corporate citizen, to be a high achiever against your performance standards, to go that extra mile …
Now, I’m not some one-with-the-universe type here – I have a strong commerical-industrial background and I work in that environment every day. I am a pragmatist and a realist and I accept that bucking against a system that subtly and constantly makes these demands of you is not easy; but again I ask, what is the point of life? Of your life? Is it just about putting bread on the table and servicing your bills, or is it a little more than that? Defining these things is rarely easy, hence the need for a managed career plan.
How do I work to achieve balance for myself?
You will find this very difficult to do unless you are working to some kind of plan and assertively sticking to it. Most people can tell you what they are going to be doing on Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, etc. every year. Why can’t we do this on a day-to-day basis? For most of us, it’s because we are reacting, firefighting the myriad demands that are made of us every day.
Take a week. Draw it on a piece of paper and divide it out into a grid of 7 X 24. You can account for quite a lot of that time – sleep, commuting, job, domestic activities. Look at what’s left. What if you were to block out Thursday evening to take your partner out for a swim, a massage and a cheap & cheerful meal? How good would that be for both of you? How hard would you both work to not give that time away? We all do this for important annual events; the items listed above, birthdays, annual leave, weddings, school plays, and so forth. Why don’t we do it on a weekly basis? What about blocking out 2 hours on a Tuesday evening for a long bath with a good book and a couple of glasses of wine? Go whole hog and have candles and incense. Take this concept down to a daily basis. Would blocking out 25 minutes to go for a stroll at lunchtime with your mobile phone turned off be a good idea?
It’s a question of taking yourself and your needs seriously. That Tuesday evening bath gets deferred because your mother calls and wants to moan about Auntie Mabel for an hour. You have placed too low a priority, too low a value, on that bath. Turn the phone off. Get your partner to intercept your calls. Make a plan. Take control. I am not suggesting that you rigidly adhere to some cast-in-stone schedule – you will inevitably have to adjust. But without a plan you are merely following the path of least resistance and that rarely makes for a good balance for you. You will adopt other people’s urgencies and trail along with their agenda instead of driving your own. (The 3 most aggressive words in the English language? “Ah go on.”) A good way of looking at this is to plan out the schedule – colour code it or whatever – and then compare what actually happened with what you wanted to happen in terms of time usage. If you are not happy with the actual, examine why you felt you had to adjust away from the plan and see if there is anything you can learn from that. Play these simple games and you will be well on your way to achieving equilibrium. [I wrote about this in more detail here]
If I want a flexible work arrangement, how do I initiate that discussion with my manager?
Like any good consultant, I answer most questions with the phrase “It depends.” It depends on how flexible you need the arrangement to be, how flexible/inflexible the manager and the company are and very importantly, how vital you are to the smooth running of the company. (Bono has managed to build a lot of flexibility into his U2 schedule, but then, he is a pretty integral part of that company now, isn’t he?) The old adage tells us not to be indispensable, because if we are, we can’t be promoted. The same holds true for flexible working arrangements.
I would recommend either a bald discussion, talking from a position of strength; or a drip-feed strategy, where the concept is gradually introduced and enabled/facilitated. Unless you are Bono, you will need to focus a great deal of the discussion on benefits to the company – and if you can’t talk concretely about benefits, then you will need to at least couch the discussion in terms where the manager won’t be feeling that the company is working for your good rather than the other way around.
<Source: Consult from Internet>
